A Great House - Week 4

Amen. Amen, and Amen, give him one more handclapped this morning. Amen. Amen,

We're gonna be in Second Timothy chapter two again. Second

Timothy chapter two. I hope you've been taking the opportunity

to read this passage of scripture every day. You know

that was my challenge to you when we started this

series the Great House is to read the same passage

of scripture over and over again and allow the Lord

to speak to you. And I think when we do that,

we begin to see things in scripture. God begins to

reveal things that we didn't see when we just made

a casual reading of the word. Second Timothy chapter two.

Let's start reading. In verse twenty, it says, but in

a great house there are not only vessels of gold

and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for

honor and some for dishonor. Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself

from the latter, he'll be a vessel for honor, sanctified

and useful for the mass, prepared for every good work.

Flee also youthful lusts, but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace

with those who call on the Lord out of a

pure heart. But avoid foolish and ignorant disputes, knowing that

they generate strife, and the servant of the Lord must

not quarrel, but be gentle to all able to teach

patient in humility, correcting those who are in opposition. If

God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may

know the truth, and that they may come to their

senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been

taken captivity by him to do his will. Father, we

thank you for your word, see only change agent on

the face of the planet. And I pray that today, Lord,

you bury your precepts deep the fabric of our being,

that it takes root and it brings a harvest of life. Father,

inspire us to be more like you in Jesus name. Amen,

you know we we we read this passage of Grischer,

and I want to go back, and I want to

pick up one particular verse, verse twenty two. Today it says,

flee also youthful lusts, but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace

with those who call on the Lord out of a

pure heart. This is uh. This this phrase youthful lust

is uh. It's really a phrase that that the apostle

Paul uses a lot in his writings, he calls it

youthful lusts here in most places though he calls it

the lust of the flesh. They're the they're the same thing.

And he is talking about that inclination of our flesh,

that inclination of those parts that are not spiritual, those

parts that that were not designed for the spiritual aspect

of life. And you are made of three parts. You're uh,

you're the flesh. That's the part that gets cold and

hungry and ornery and hard to come on somebody. It's

that thing that slants always towards worldly and earthly things,

because it's that part of us that's made from the earth.

Our flesh was created from the pastor shame is such

a beautiful job out of the dirt. He formed us

out of the dirt, and that is why we always lean.

The flesh part of us always leans towards worldliness and

the things of the earth and convenience and all those things,

because it was created from the earth. So we're flesh,

but we're also soul. That's our mind, our will, and

our emotions. It's the way we think and the way

we respond. It's that part of us that is that

is being disciple, that part of us that's being in

the process of being sanctified. It's we are growing to

be more set apart from the world and those things

that our flesh treasures, those things that our flesh reaches for,

and then we're spirit. That's the part of us that

at the moment of salvation is born again. It is

that it's that breath of God that's breathed on the

inside of us, and it's always leaning to do the

will of God. And there's this constant battle that we

feel between the flesh and the spirit. Man, there's there's

this battle that that that we will that we will

fight until the day we go to be with Jesus.

Come on, somebody, you know we think that one day

we're going to beat the flesh, and that there's not

gonna be at that's not gonna happen until we go

be with Jesus. You're always going to have a battle

because the wrong thing is always going to be the

easy thing. Amen. I mean to see that one hundred

dollars bill laying there and nobody's looking to pick it

up and put it in your pocket. That's always the

easy thing. That's always the thing that that that naturally

feels like, hey, I'm just gonna get just a little

bit ahead. You know, there there are there are times

where we're faced with these situational ethicals things in our

lives where maybe you've gone and you know, you walk

up to the register and you give the girl a

twenty and she gives you change for one hundred. Come on, now,

some of y'all that know that has never happened to me.

Maybe that's just a blessing. Maybe that is a blessing

of God. I don't know, Maybe that only happens to me.

And you see her counting it out and she hands

it to you, and that thought crosses, this is this

God's blessing? What should I do in this moment? Because

the reality is she's got to answer for where that

money is. Come on now, and we're faced with these

things and that battle between the spirit man that values

her and her job and you who says, hey, you

know what, I can go buy some new tennis shoes.

I could get a nice hat. I don't know if

y'all wear. My dad had this hat that I'm never

gonna wear it out here, but anyway, I kept it

because you know, it's just a nice hat, and you know,

could I could go do something with this? This is

this would be beneficial to me. And that's our flesh

that says more and more and more, and then our

spirit man identifies with the hurt and brokenness that's going

to happen if we take that and if we put

that in our pocket, because it's going to be detrimental

to the person that made the wrong change, and that

war is always going to wage and rage on the

inside of us. In Galatians chapter five, verse sixteen, it says,

I say them, walk in the spirit, and you will

not fulfill the lust of the flesh, For the flesh

lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.

And these are contrary to one another, so that you

do not do the things that you wish. But if

you're led by the spirit, you're not under the law.

The apostle Paul writes that famous passage where he says,

you know, the things I want to do, I don't

do them. The things that I want to do, I

just I just I just just I Sometimes I struggle.

This is a man who who was the author of

one third of the New Testament, and he says the

things I want to do, I don't do. And the

things I don't want to do, guess what I do them?

You know, the apostle, I'm gonna just I'm gonna amenh

so uh. And Paul wrestled with the same thing that

I'm talking about today. He wrestled with that, with that

flesh pulling him in one direction and the spirit pulling

him in the other direction. In Romans chapter eight, verse fourteen,

it says, for as many as are led by the

Spirit of God, these are the son of God. For

you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear,

but receive the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry

out ayb a father. The Spirit himself bears witness with

our spirit that we are the children of God. So

let me just if you always struggle with whether you're

really a child of God, if you struggle with belonging

in the kingdom, if you always feel like you're on

the outside, if you feel like you're not part of

the family of God, it very well could be a

flesh problem, not a spirit problem. It could be that

your flesh always is crying out and we haven't learned

to beat back those cravings. And those desires, and we

get so focused on the flesh side, because after all,

depending on when you get saved, you we may have

lived longer according to the flesh than you have the spirit.

Come on, somebody, you know, if you're here and you

got saved when you were thirty and now you're fifty,

you've only been living for God for twenty years, but

you got thirty years of experience of what it is

to want the flesh. And we discount those things. We

discount those early days of our spiritual of our spiritual maturity.

We discount those days when we weren't even saved, and

we think that suddenly, at the moment of salvation, everything

should just line up. But the reality is we bring

a lot of that baggage over into our saved lives. Amen.

When we look at when we look at Israel, God

delivered Israel out of Egypt in a moment, in a moment,

the Red Sea crashed around Pharaoh's army and Israel was

delivered from Egypt, but it took them another forty years

to get Egypt out of the them. They came out

of Egypt in a moment, but it took forty years

for Egypt to come out of Israel, and we find

all of this guilt and all of this shame because

of this battle that we're fighting in, that we're wrestling with,

and this this thing that every man is going to

fight with, that every woman is going to fight with

this struggle, And when we're building a great house, we

need to just understand that the struggle is part of it.

As a parent, we're going to punish our children when

we shouldn't, and we're not when we should. Come on now,

as a husband and a wife, we're gonna lose our

temper when we shouldn't. We're gonna throw our socks on

the ground when we know they go in the washing machine.

We're gonna have those moments where we are in dire

financial straits and maybe we ponder on the thought of

taking that extra change a little bit too long, or

maybe you did and you put it in your pocket.

We're always going and when we're building a great house,

that struggle is part of it. But realizing that we

can fall into His grace. The Apostle Paul writes a

lot about this tension, this tension between flesh and spirit,

But I think more people live in the gap today

than live under the authority of the spirit. Let me

show you what I mean. Let's read that passage scripture

one more time. Sewo Timothy, chapter two, verse twenty two.

He says, flee also youthful lusts and the apostle Paul.

We've read a great deal about what he said. But

then it goes on and it says, but pursue righteousness, faith, love,

peace with those who call on the Lord out of

a pure heart. Now, I want to just examine this

sentence for just a moment. Flee also youthful lusts, but

pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace with those who call

on the Lord out of a pure heart. So if

he's saying, flee youthful us, but do this, there's something

in the middle of those two things. There's a there's

a natural place where we rest that is fleeing from

youthful us, but it's not doing those other things. And

I think that a lot of us fall in the

gap where we do a good job of saying no

to the bad things. Come on. Now, we do a

good job of understanding that we're supposed to stay free

from sin, that we're supposed to push away those those obvious,

sinful desires in our lives, and there was a whole

When I talk about the holiness movement, I need to

I need to call out because a lot of people

look at me and I've even had people ask me, oh,

you don't think we should be holy? When I talk

about the holiness move I'm not talking about holiness. I

think that we should all be holy. I'm talking about

I'm talking about the theological movement that happened called the

holiness movement, where it was all about outward things. It

was all about the way we look, the way we dressed,

where we go those things. There was a whole movement

that was based on that, staying free from that. It

was if I don't look like the world, I'm okay.

If I don't, if I don't do those things, then

I'm perfect. But the reality is that that's only a

piece of the puzzle. Because God created us for a purpose.

God created us and uniquely gifted each and every one

of us to be part of the Body of Christ,

to fit into the Body of Christ, that together we

could accomplish much, that together we can accomplish things that

alone we can accomplish, or that won't be accomplished if

we don't come together and the apostle Paul writes here

and he says, Hey, Timothy, I want you to I

want you to avoid I want you to avoid youthful lust.

Listen to what he says. He doesn't call it the

lust of the flesh. When he writes to Timothy, he

calls it youthful lust. He says, I want you to

continue to avoid those things that you struggled with mightily

in the early days. But now you've learned that those

things are wrong the youthful part of our walk with Christ.

I want you to avoid those things, but I don't

want you to just get stuck in the recliner. I

don't want you to just get stuck, because isolation will

allow us to resist those youthful lusts. Shutting ourself up

alone will all allow us to resist those youthful lusts.

Monastery Living, Come on, somebody will keep you from a chief,

from pursuing youthful lusts. But that's not God's design for

your life. God's design for your life is that not

only do you live free from sin, but you live

attached to purpose. That you live attached to His will

for your life. The unique design that He's put on

the inside of you. It's not just enough to say no,

but we have to learn to say yes. It's not

just enough to make it. We have to thrive. And

purpose allows us to step above and out of the

monotony of life and step into the fullness of who

he is. That John chapter ten, verse ten, life life

and life more abundantly. In Matthew chapter twelve, verse the thirty five,

it says, a good man, out of the good treasure

of his heart, brings forth good things, and an evil man,

out of the evil treasure, brings forth evil things. That

same tension that we talked about earlier. But I say

to you that for every idle word men speak, they

will give an account of it in the day of judgment.

He says, it's not enough to say no, but we

are also going to stand before God and give account

for our idleness, for not embracing and pursuing purpose, for

not finding the thing that God put us here for

and maximizing every moment to achieve greatness for the kingdom.

I want you to think about that that he says,

Hey to give an account for all of those bad things.

But you're going to give account for all of those

neutral things too, for all of those idle things, for

those moments where I just ignored everybody else. I just

ignored the gifts and the passions and the talents that

you put on the inside of me. He's going to

we're going to stand before him, and he's going to

question us about those things too. So let me ask

you a question, the simple question. What are you good at?

What are you good at? What has God gifted you

to do? Now? You know, I that there are professions

that we like to joke about, you know, like attorneys.

Lawyers are one of the ones, you know that we

like to joke about because you know, it just seems

to be, you know, an unrighteous profession because it just

seems like they're all But but I will tell you

that there are righteous lawyers when I'm gonna point to

one in just a second, because you know, when you

look at Taylor's life, he was uniquely designed to be

a lawyer because he argues about everything. You know, he's

good at arguing. I mean, that's that's just simply how

God created him and designed him. He's an arguer. It

doesn't matter even if he believes the same thing you believe,

he's still going to find a way to argue about it.

And he stepped into his purpose, and he is pursuing

his purpose because he realized, Hey, that's what I'm good at,

So that's what I'm gonna do. What are you good at?

What is on the inside of you that you're not fulfilling,

that you're not living out. What is the thing that

you are uniquely designed to accomplish that nobody around you

has that same gifting and talent and passion and wisdom

and knowledge and all of those things that you're holding

back because God says, that's idleness in your life, and

you will give an account for it. Now. Somebody asked me.

A pastor asked me a question one time. He said, Hey,

do you think if you quit, if you quit the ministry,

if you just walked away from the ministry, do you

think you'd go to heaven or hell? And you know,

my knee jerk reaction was, Man, I'm saved, but I'm

uniquely designed to do what I do. And if you

walk away from it, every day you walk away from it,

you give an account for it. So I still think

I would make it to heaven. But my backside might

be warm. Come on, somebody, you know. I mean, I

might need some fire retard of pants, you know, to

make it. But the reality is you are the same way.

Just because you're not called to a microphone in a

stage to to preach a message, you are uniquely designed

for what you're uniquely designed for. One of our board members,

Chase Thomas, is uniquely designed to do what he does,

and God has given him a business because it puts

him in homes where he can have conversations with people

about Jesus. And he talks to me about how he

talks to some of his customers, and I'm thinking, man,

and I've never said this out loud. He's not here today,

so I'm gonna say it if he's watching online. Love

you man. He was said, oh, you know, I was

talking to Hi about the Lord and I was challenging

him on this. I was challenging him on that and

this and that and the other. And I'm like, man,

do you know where they're not going to pay you

at the end. But see, that's the thing. His business

is not about making money. His business is about being

positioned to be able to have conversations with people about Jesus.

You know, I look at other people that own businesses

that that they have a business, but that business is

under the gouds of discipling and helping hurting broken and

they put up with things that normal people wouldn't put

up with because they're called to help hurting broken people,

or people that work in jobs and I think to myself,

I don't think I could do that job. But the

reality is that they're set in that environment because they're

called to reach the people that they're working around. Or

it could be that it's someone who who never even

knew they liked hospitality, but they come and they start

serving coffee and they find that it's their purpose and

that every day they're dreaming and they're thinking about the

coffee shop right here at Cornerstone, to serve coffee, to

meet people's needs, to have that hospitable voice into someone's life. See,

it's about purpose and the moment we get out of

the gap, the moment our faith is not just about

not doing the bad, but also doing that thing that

we have purpose for. There is a switch that's flipped

on the inside of us, and there is a passion

that awakens and we begin to run so fast that

we don't think about the negative things anymore. If you're

pursuing purpose with a reckless abandon if you're chasing after

what God has called you to do, if you're doing

those things, you're moving so fast towards Him that all

of those fleshly lust they're just a blur and the

side view, they're in your peripheral because you never slow down. Clay,

you guys can come and get ready. I was reading

a passage of scripture that I just I loved reading

the life of King David, because man, I think if

King David, as messed up as he was could be

a friend of God, I can too. You know, I

try to find people in the Bible can compare myself

to that. I look pretty good. Come on now, and

you know we all know that story of David and Bathsheb,

but you realize the problem that David encountered happened way

before Bathsheba. Because David's purpose was to expand the territory

and unite the kingdoms of Israel. That was his purpose,

was to take ground. He was a warrior king. And

it says in that narrative of David in Bathsheba, it

says that it was in the spring of the year,

in the spring of the year, at the time when

kings were at war with their armies. Let me say

that again. It was the spring of the year, the

time when kings were at war with their armies, that

David was walking on the rooftop of his palace. And

then it happened that he wasn't where he was supposed

to be doing what God had equipped him and called

him to do. That he had his biggest fall. He

was in those idle moments. He was in the gap.

He had fought for so long that he didn't want

to fight anymore, and he was a place he shouldn't

have been because he was no longer pursuing purpose, and

he fell. In the book of Genesis, God is speaking

to Cain and he says, why has your countenance fallen?

Because he wasn't giving pure offerings to the Lord. He says,

why is your countenance falling? Don't you know that if

you don't do right, that sin is waiting at the door,

crouched like a tiger, is what the original language says,

ready to pounce on you. And because he never stepped

into obedience, never stepped into his purpose and his call.

He ended up murdering his brother. See, we think that

just not doing bad is what our faith is all about,

but that's only a small portion of living for Jesus.

It's not that we shouldn't do what's bad, is that

we should do what's right. We should find out how

we're designed. And it just so happens that you're in

a church that is uniquely equipped to help you find

those things out. Antoinette, Mighty woman of God. Her entire

ministry here is helping you discover your purpose through engage.

She's building a team. And listen, I guarantee you that

every week, Caleb and Antoinette and that team that they're

praying for you guys, that they're praying for people to

come and find purpose because purpose equals life and life

more abundantly. So I hope you don't find yourself in

the recliner of life, just protected from everything bad, but

that you step out of the boat and you trust

God in the areas where you're created to itself. And

I asked the question one more time, what are you

good at? Your call is somewhere right there around what

you're good at. If you can't sing it ain't singing. Amen.

If you don't brush your teeth and brush your hair,

it's not breeding. If there's something you're uniquely designed to

do and God is calling you to do it, everybody's

standing with me all over the room. Flee also youthful lusts,

but pursue righteousness, faith, love, peace, and those who call

on the Lord out of a pure heart. I believe

that there's people here that love Jesus and follow him

out of a pure heart, and they want what's best

for you. I'm gonna count to three. If you want

to step into purpose, if you're tired of living in

the idleness of life, you want to step into that.

You need design for your life. When I get to three,

I want you to step out and make your way

to the front. And maybe you're like, oh, yeah, you know,

I'm just so busy. Don't let busyness rob you a purpose.

Oh well, I give I write a check every week.

Don't let don't let the pride of giving rob you

of purpose. Don't let success rob you of purpose. Don't

let fail your rob you of purpose. Don't let contentment

rob you of purpose. Today is the day for purpose

to be born in you. So when I count to three.

If that's you and you say, hey, I want to

I want to step into purpose. I don't want to

coast and glide anymore. I want everything God has for me.

If that's you, step out and move one, two, three,

step out and move right now. I want purpose. Come on,

come on, come on, amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, amen, Come on,

Come on. Purpose, Purpose, purpose, purpose, purpose, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. Listen,

hang with us. We're gonna have communion in just a

little while. We're gonna worship together. Then we're gonna have communion.

But listen, I want you to I want you to

send your faith this way for the people that have

just come down and said I want purpose, and maybe

you should have come, but you hadn't come yet. It's

not too late. The altar is still open. The altar

is still open. That's to clear its worship.