Think Differently about Morality

You may be seated. We're in a new series, I say. New series? It's the second week of this series. It's called. It's Behind Me. Real depth. Real depth. And y'all shallow people in the house just represent. Yeah, it's it's interesting because one of the phrases that I've heard for the longest time is. Someone leaves a church or they come to ours and they stay around and they're just trying to get me better, I guess, and they're like. It's not deep enough or I just don't feel fed. I don't feel like I'm being fed. I say everything that I think the Lord looks at like that. I just don't feel fed. And I'm sitting here. All right. So I just want to be clear. The Bible says that when we trust in Jesus, there's a season of our life where we become spiritual infants. That's okay. Like, if you're new to faith, you haven't experienced faith yet. There is a season of life where I think the Bible says it's his loving kindness that leads us to repentance. But when we repent and trust in Jesus, there is a time period where the Lord is like he's he's all there. It's like all of a sudden I've been addicted to one thing, and now the Lord has just redeemed me from that. And I'm two weeks in and I'm just infatuated with all that God's doing in my life. It is kind of that early stage of spiritual infancy where God is kind enough to us to to recognize that we don't know how to walk on our own, we don't know how to cut our own steak. And as we helps us, and I love that God treats us that way. But most of the people I hear, I'm just not being fed from there. Not that it's mostly people that have been going to church even longer than me, a lot of them. And if there's one thing I've learned is that real depth ends in obedience. Told them I was talking all big out there in the lobby today because someone said that, like really recent, like today recent. And I mean, that is one of the quintessential issues with the American church these days is what happened from church to church, looking for someone. Feed me, please feed me. I need you to feed me. I can't read the Bible on my own. They taught me how to read in school, but I can't read the Bible. I need to be fed. Someone needs to feed me. They need to teach me the deep things of spirituality. And I told a group of guys, so just bear your like, brace yourself. I told a group of guys recently because it's Labor Day, so I can say it. It's different type of labor. But you know, when a woman goes into labor, they have their baby and then they get hungry. Like, what do they do? How do they eat? It rhymes with eat. Some of y'all need to get off the tee, and you gotta start apprehending the nature of Jesus on your own. That's all I'm going to say. I would too much. Maybe it's too much. Maybe. Maybe I should have done at 9:00 instead of said at 1045, I don't know. But I said I was going to say it. Those of you that said it, see, I'm a man of my word, but now I feel really guilty about it. And here's the thing, guys. Here's the thing. I hope that imagery sticks with you because this is what I've experienced. I've been a Christian for 23 years. I've been a pastor for about 17 or 18 years. No, 15 years, exactly 15 years, because I'm 38 right now, became pastor. I was 23. I've been a pastor for 15 years. And here's what I've seen. People who like the idea of God, they say they want depth, but since they've received information, never been inspired, they never really go to the depth that changes their life. And so now they're hopping, I don't care. I mean, you may you may become to the same church the entire time, and you're just wishing they'd bring in a guest speaker because they're not feeding you enough. And I want you to know, like that image like, and I'm just going to be honest with you, I can't do that because I'm a dude. But also it's not. I'm a pastor. My job is to try to elucidate some of God's Word to you. But ultimately, the goal is for God through His Word to speak directly to you. I'm a messenger and I can be helpful, but I can't sustain you. God didn't give me that. God didn't give me that type of food. Moving on. And as we go through this series, we've been going through the book of Romans. We're going to be in Romans chapter three today. I'm really excited about it. I'm going to cover one familiar verse, but the rest of it you're going to hear and you're gonna be like, either you're going to be like, this is deep, or I've heard this before. And so I'm just going to glaze over. I want to encourage you not to just glaze over it because there's some real depth to this passage, but it's going to sound simple. Look at your neighbor. Tell them deep things are often at the surface. That's the longest thing I've ever had, you say, I feel like, and I want to give you a little bit of an illustration or metaphor that will help you understand what I think you could leave here with today, and it would radically shift your, your mindset, how many how many windows users do we have in the room? Raise your hand. I know it's a minority. Like you guys should get status. I was offensive in multiple directions on that one. How many of you are Mac users? Raise your hand real quick. Oh, it's even praise the Lord. Or it looks even for me. I got bright lights in front of me, so I can't quite tell. Just what do y'all think I am? Okay, I'm a mac user. Okay. Praise the Lord. I'm just. I'm just kidding, guys. So I'm a mac user, and we were all window windows users at some point, but once we were converted to make use, we got used to it. And what I wanted to do is I wanted to try. I borrowed a windows computer from somebody, and it's funny how many sizes of MacBook are there in general. Like if you get a MacBook Pro, how many sizes? Two. There's two MacBook sizes. I mean, there might have some like millimeter differences here and there, but essentially two is the 13 point something inch. And then there's a 15.7in I think is what it is. I think got some other ones. But in general, for the entirety of Mac history, it's been those two with a couple inches difference. Some of y'all like 15in. I just I just do the 13. Y'all 15 inch people either can't see or you're, you're bougie. But I started using the Mac a while back, and I'm used to it. I know when I opened my MacBook exactly what to do. I know I can do command tab. It's going to switch tabs for me. If I do command one, two, three, four, five, six. If I've got like Google open, it'll go from tab to tab to tab to tab to tab. I just torch all something. Today I thought real depth wasn't gonna include anything practical. Like, I know that if I open the launch pad, that's where all my apps are, and if I type, then I can get there that way. Like, there's so many things that I know. If I want to know how much Ram is on there, I click the little apple thing click about. I just do like the back of my hand. I know that these veins are here, actually know this better than the back of my hand because I don't just. It's not my pastime. It's been time looking at the back of my hand. I know this operating system. It's ingrained into me at this point, so ingrained into me that if you were to tell me. To temporarily utilize this HP computer, how many sizes and windows computers I know this thing is a tank could use this for battle. Who open it? Yep, I know windows computers are harder to open. Just kidding. Now I want to see you notice I'm trying to convert from Mac in this illustration to windows, so don't hear me be in computer. All right. So in the first service, I could not find the power button, but I don't want to lie to you and act like that again, so I'm just. It's already on at this point. It went off okay. I got to put the pin in again. And the pin is in my MacBook, actually, because I don't want to bring my phone up here. People keep texting me and that's jacked up. So you should let me. Okay, cool. 23892 I'm just kidding. I just totally made that up. Okay. What do I open a program at? There's a lot of stuff on the desktop over here on the right. And the first one, MSN opened up. What's that? MSN? I just know Safari and Google Chrome, but I've heard of Bing. MSN that's next level. So maybe I still got AOL email addresses. I've seen it and okay, cool. So I type it in, get in there and I can I can move around. Here's what I love about this is there's a number whatever they call that thing a number key on the right side. And if you press numbers lock, I remember that from when I was a kid. It's so cool. I just learned how to use a ten. Key was with my right hand, and I open it. And there's so much space here that I feel like I have to have a full desk. And then I go back to something I used to be familiar with. It was Microsoft Word because I still don't use it on the MacBook and whatever they have for those, I know what they're called, like doc, no sheets and no, I don't know what it's called because I don't use it is not good. Microsoft has got word in office down, but that's like the only thing I could figure out how to use. I see that there's a camera here. It's super blatant and obvious, and I bet this was about $1,000 cheaper than mine. There's a lot of good things about it, but if you were to hand me this, I could probably figure it out. But I would look at you like you're crazy. Someone try to hand me an Android phone one time, and I asked him their coat, and it was one of those things where you got to draw like a masterpiece before you open it. You know, I'm talking about. It's like. It's like, dude, I don't want to do a figure eight star or whatever you want to call this? I don't want to do a star I don't like. Figure out the Star of David to open up a phone. I just do it for one, two, three, four. There were six numbers to open up that computer stressing me out. Just use a passcode. Goodness gracious. I don't know how to do it. The butterflies or the knots in my stomach or whatever. The scientific term for that feeling within your gut that says this new operating system is stupid. Now what's not? I mean, I'm not going to talk about it. It's not. It's just different. And when we come into our walk with God, what often happens is we try to use the same operating system with the new information. And I need to tell you this, your default genetic and environmental operating system does not compute what God did on the cross and what he intends for your life. So you have to change your operating system and word you passage. Today, before I give you my sermon title, I have to. I definitely didn't pull up. I don't even know how to pull up Google Sheets. I'd have to go to MSN and then create an account and all that other. I'm gonna bring it over here so that I'll accidentally step on it when I get excited. That was read as computer. Thank you so much, Rita. Give it up for Rita. Yeah. Y'all know y'all know what it's like to be in that green group thread. It's just it's a different operating system. I'm trying to have friends in this place. You know? It's a joke is a joke. I love you if it's green or blue. All right. In Romans chapter three. Beginning. Sorry, I jacked this thing up when I was messing with it a second ago. Beginning in verse 21. Before we dive in, I want to catch you up really quickly. Last week we talked about Romans chapter one, where Paul says to the church at Rome, which is a mixture of Jewish believers in Jesus along with Gentile or non-Jewish believers in Jesus. And this church in Rome is trying to figure out as a first generation group of Christians who did not know Jesus, how do we operate? How do we understand moving away from the Old Testament, recognizing it's fulfilled into a life with Christ? And Paul is writing this, this kind of magnum opus of the Letter to Rome. And in chapter one he says, the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. And what he says is the truths of God are evident in plain. And he says, since they're evident in plain, nobody has an excuse to miss their creator. And through chapter the rest of chapter one, he talks about this thing we called last week depravity. Depravity, essentially is radical distance from God. Like you are so deep in dysfunction, in sin, in whatever it is that took you away from God, that you were actually incapable of redeeming yourself through any type of activity. And in chapter two, in the beginning of chapter three, he goes further to make the case that, like there's not one person who's good but God. Now there's this light kind of connection that you can pretty easily make between. All right, good is equivalent to God. Outside of God, nothing is good. James even indicates that this is somewhere Paul and James, radically in the ugly. And in chapter three, verse 21, he's starting to help us understand what it looks like to shift from the former way the former operating system into a new one. And he's building a case throughout all of Romans. And and I don't want to just dial it in and give you the point that he's going to make in Romans eight or Romans 12. I want to tell you, using Paul's argument, what he's trying to accomplish. So in verse 21, and we'll read through it, here's what he says. But now everybody say, but now. But now means you have to say something really important. But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, says Paul. Taking faith in Christ. And he's juxtaposing or setting it to the side. He's saying, this is different than the law and the prophets, actually the law and the prophets. That is like the Ten Commandments, plus a whole lot of other laws. It's the prophets like Zechariah, Jeremiah, Isaiah. They they wrote these things. They spoke the oracles of God, the character of God, and the attributes of God as shown through the law and the prophets. They witness to this thing that Paul is talking about. He's saying, if you were driving in this lane in the Old Testament, we're in a different lane at this point, one operating system to a new operating system, he says. It was witnessed by the law and the prophets, meaning the law and the prophets are not the be all, end all of what God was trying to do. Verse 22, even the righteousness of God, or specifically the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all those who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly. As I love this word, propitiation in his blood through faith. This was to demonstrate his righteousness, because in the forbearance of God he passed over the sins previously committed. But the demonstration, I say, of his righteousness at the present time, so that he would be both just and justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Where then is boasting? It is excluded by what kind of law of works? No, make it to that means, he said. He's not just saying no, he's saying no. Like, not a chance. Absolutely not. No. But by a law of faith, for we maintain that a man is justified by you with me. Is it there by faith, apart from the works of the law? My sermon title today is Think Different to do it in kind of a mac themed sermon, because that was the thing they say think different. But here's what you got to think in a different OS. You gotta have a different operating system. And from a young age, my operating system was right versus wrong. It was good versus bad, good versus evil. And I say from birth, there's a lot where my parents taught me. The people around me, taught me. The people in church and out of church taught me that if you're good enough, it works out well. If you're bad, it doesn't work out well. But if you want to take it all the way back to the Garden of Eden, there was one thing that God wanted to keep from them. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I find it so interesting and this is why I love, like I do strongly encourage you to meditate because I thought I understood. How many sermons have I preached on. You can't work your way to heaven and all this other stuff. But it was two weeks ago and my meditation time that I'm pondering the Garden of Eden, and he says, why would you? Why would you keep the knowledge of good and evil from me? It's it's because it's a different scale. It's a different operating system. The moment we start thinking good versus evil, we're missing something fundamental. And when Paul says that the law and the prophets, they're on a different lane, they're in a different operating system. But they say good things. They speak witness toward what Paul is talking about. Faith in Christ is a different operating system. It is. It is both amazing and infuriating. Just like moving all those years ago when I moved from Windows to Mac, it was infuriating. And then if I try to go back, infuriating. I've told y'all the story of when we moved from home button to whatever it is now, no home button, and I tried to use somebody like antiquated iPhone with a home button, and I was. I was not cool. I think I throw it, I think I threw it across the room, not hard, but I was like, get rid of this thing, make it away from me. It was it was horrible. God wants you to change an operating system and it is not easy. It's easy to come to Jesus. It's easy to to accept him into your life. But you are turning from one way to a new way. It is difficult. This is what Paul is trying to communicate. And in order to communicate this, he didn't just start with the good news of Jesus, that he died on the cross for your sins and raised to walk three days later, and he wants to transform you from the inside out. No, he has to make a case and help them understand. It was from birth, guys that you had this issue of depravity and sin, and it kept you from God. The Greek word for sin is how Marcia comes from a Hebrew word that essentially meant, and this is one small part of it. People act like sin is always just to miss the mark. There's so much more to it. But one layer or metaphor you can utilize to describe sin is missing the mark. As if I were to shoot a bow and arrow at a target. Missing the mark was the idea that sin you didn't hit the bullseye. And for me growing up, it was always am I. Am I performing well enough to get the well done, good and faithful servant and I avoiding enough bad stuff? Even if you didn't grow up in church, but maybe you grew up around church, you may have said something like this. I'm not going to talk mess about you because God is still redeeming me from this operating system. You might say I'm a good person. I don't do bad things. I do predominantly good things. As if we knew the full extent of the scale that Jesus is looking at. But it's good and bad. We've got to think different, because from the beginning, God wanted to keep us from that scale in the first place. In fact, it's that scale that causes me to clothe myself up and hide from my creator. We've got to find a new operating system. So we got to think different. My first point for you is righteousness isn't about right and wrong. And I know it sounds stupid, right? Literally, the word right is in the word righteousness. Even if you take it back to the Greek, it's there are two different ones, like righteousness or righteous is decays and unrighteousness is right. If you put ABBA for something, I'm teaching you all so much practical stuff. You want to take a gray after this, you're going to pass it, right? If you put an A or an OB before a word that means without or an absence of right, cool. It's like apathy. I don't know what means, but apathy means you're lazy. So that's just just word used, guys. It's from the Latin and Greek, apparently. So anyways, I taught you that. But dude, even that it's righteous essentially meant to be just right correct in good standing. If you took it back to the Jewish tradition, it's within covenantal, the realm of covenantal faithfulness to God. There was there was a wide range or a semantic range for this word. And so what happens is we try to simplify. And so it boiled down to righteous or unrighteous right versus wrong, especially when you got the Mosaic law. And then I'm trying to give you all too much history. Y'all don't want y'all don't want that deep, right? So like, if you take it back, it wasn't about right versus wrong. But even our language deceives us. Now am I saying Paul used the wrong word? No, it was the best word to use. It was really the only word that he could use to describe what he was saying. But many of you know that language is literally just a group of symbols we've put together to try to communicate what's on our heart to somebody else and hope that they receive it. It's just another metaphor. It's just another symbol, something we put together. And I've learned this to understand God. It takes a lot of digging, and I could use a metaphor here. And every time I use a metaphor that I get really excited about with you guys, because it's like it's going to change your perspective on something. There's also the equal and opposite, not fear, but concern and awareness that someone's going to leave here. Judging, judging windows users, you know what I'm saying? Metaphors are always limited. So then I'll jump to a new metaphor. They're going to understand this, but then it misses this. Same with language. I use the big word earlier juxtapose, which means to align something usually structurally and poetically against something else. But that's hard. So I'll just say, you know, side by side by side by side, don't get what I'm trying to get across. Language deceives us. And when we say when we see righteousness where we struggle, it's like, okay, this means right and not right. But I need you to understand that righteousness according to God is not about right versus wrong. That is a completely different operating system, and you've got to think differently to understand what he's going for. You might think, okay, well, what is righteousness then? Well, when I was looking into the Old Testament a little bit more, and I was trying to come up with some very practical tools for you, I. Well, I'll just give you a couple of ways that righteousness can be described. Righteousness could be described as God's character. Like, is he consistent with who he says he is? God's character could be God's covenant. Is he faithful to the relationship that he committed to Abraham, to Moses, to David? Is he faithful as he says he would be? It could be God's justice. That would be the one layer where we talk about right versus wrong. Does does God honor and protect the vulnerable? Does he have a scale or standard by which he judges these actions? Could be God's purpose of this move, creation and the direction God wanted it to be. Not when we read the New Testament, we understand it even more because we see that Christ came and died on the cross. So we have a little bit more understanding of how he loves us. And it's his loving kindness that leads us into this place where we get to follow him. And so Christ's fulfillment is a measurement of God's righteous nature, because ultimately, in light of Jesus, we get to see God made flesh. And so we understand him. And I'll simplify it even further. Righteousness isn't about right versus wrong because sorry, I gotta say this. If you think that doing good things will get you closer to God. Doing good things by itself doesn't get you closer to God. If you think doing bad things inherently gets you further from God, let me change it back to the tree. If you think doing good things versus evil things is what makes the world of difference, you got to read your Bible because God will use people who have done the most evil and vile things to accomplish his will, and simultaneously, there will be people who did right, at least in the way they understood it. And they were not used by God. And they may spend eternity separate from God. It's not good versus evil, right versus wrong. Let's simplify it. It is. It's God versus not God. Like, if you want to know the opposite of the opposite of good, you would say evil, bad. You know, I'm using a whole bunch of different words. The opposite of good is evil. The opposite of good is bad. The opposite of bad is good. Right? I want to encourage you to think a little bit differently about it. The opposite of God is bad. The opposite of God is evil. The opposite of God is negative. The opposite of God is frustrated that isolated and depressed. The opposite of God is separate and distant. In fact, my second point is the righteousness of God is about nearness versus distance, not about right versus wrong. Different operating system, radically different operating system. Any of you who've been married in this place or have kids or just have relationships in general, you understand the difference. You just may not be able to articulate it in the same way I'm about to, because right versus wrong is usually not the scale that you appropriate your relationships with, is it? I mean, sometimes it's like, oh, you don't want to hang out with those dudes. They're out there smoking pot by the dumpster. I don't know where they do it. They just I don't know where they did it. I was just like, oh yeah, that's on fire. And then they get in trouble and then they get arrested. And then we hear about it at school the next day. That was just one time. But anyways, in your relationships with your spouse, at that point, you're in covenant relationship with one another. Your primary scale is near versus distant, not good versus bad, right versus wrong. My mom understands this better than anybody. I always joke that she'd bury a body for me. She shouldn't. That sin. It's a terrible thing. If she would do that on my behalf, she should send me straight to jail. That's justice. But again, most of our moms are not looking at their relationship with me through the scale of right and wrong. It's near versus distant because they want to draw near. There's this implicit covenant. We don't even say it. There's this implicit covenant when we decide we're going to have kids that we have is like, I'm going to love my son. I'm going to love my daughter. If since I'm a Christian, I'm going to raise them in the way that they should go. So when they're old, they won't depart from it when they do the craziest stuff. I'm still going to love them. And I'm going to pray that my loving, I'm loving, and I'm kind enough to lead them to repentance. And even if not, no matter what they do, I'm still going to love them. It's not about right and wrong with me. It's about near versus far sometimes, and all I want is for them to be close to me. And when they're distant, I don't love that. With me and my wife, it's not even implicit. It's a marital covenant. And tons of us are like, oh, you did wrong, or you're disconnected or you're frustrated or whatever. So divorce what I want to tell you, like that covenant we enter into is about faithfulness to that covenant. So what do we do? It's not right versus wrong. Like if she were to murder somebody, I would. I'd call the cops on you, sweetie. I would totally do it. And they'd probably blame me for it, but nonetheless. I didn't mean to do that. But it's kind of funny a little bit. It's not funny. It's evil. But, you know, right is wrong. I mean, I would I would enact justice, but there's still love. There's still a covenant relationship. And it's about closeness versus distance and your relationship with God. That's what he cares about. This is why Paul can be an apostle. Paul, the guy who was murdering believers in Christ Jesus. Why? Because Jesus came to him on the road to Damascus. He said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I've got a plan for you. He sends him to Damascus, and then the rest of Paul's life, he is hustling boldly on behalf of his creator. I don't guess it was about right and wrong with Paul. This is why he can say I've considered all his loss in light of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus. It's about getting close to Jesus. It's not about my righteousness, he says my righteousness is but filthy, pus filled, disgusting, ugly, dung ridden rags. I'm just trying to get the translation for you. Is but filthy rags. It's not about right. Your righteousness isn't that righteous. It still keeps you permanently separate from your creator, his righteousness, on the other hand, his fulfillment of covenant faithfulness by sending His Son Jesus to show his love for you, that he would die on the cross for your sins, and then raise to walk to show the power of our creator, displayed before all of humanity 2000 years ago shows us that we are not righteous, but he is. He is both just and justifier. Righteousness is about nearness. And when you look at verses 24 through 26, I want to read this for you. It says being justified as a gift by his grace through the redemption. Now I want you to think of redemption as you go to like, I don't know, First Friday and good year, and they give you a little ticket, one half of the ticket, and on the other half of the ticket they put it into a thing, and then they call your name. You walk up to the front and you redeem that ticket for whatever gift or you want in the little rally raffle thing that they did. That is what redemption looks like. It means I get to draw. I get to draw attention. I get to draw near to God by his grace through redemption, which is in Christ Jesus, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation. It's a Greek word that starts with an I that I don't want to pronounce here in front of you, because for some reason I feel like I'd sound stupid when I said it. But it's a Greek word. The New International Version actually translates this as sacrifice, and other translations will have a different word there. It's a very difficult word to translate. What propitiation is trying to get across here is this idea of penal substitutionary atonement not going to go super far? Hey, y'all want to deep? Yeah. Penal substitutionary PSA. Just remember that public service announcement penal substitutionary atonement. This is how God ultimately saved. And so what an explanation. Meaning that the sin fell on him and he offered forgiveness. It was something that was fully redeemed and restored when Christ Jesus died on the cross. His resurrection validates and proves that. And now he, seated at the right hand of the father wasn't expiation, it was propitiation. It was penal substitutionary atonement. And it is stems from an ancient Jewish culture of atonement and sacrifice. The idea that there was a scapegoat and then there was a lamb of sacrifice. And then when that lamb was slain for the sins of the people once a year, it was brought by one priest into the Holy of Holies, and blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat, which is on the Ark of the covenant. And that mercy seat is almost a direct translation to that New Testament word that we get propitiation from. In other words, the blood that was sprinkled on the mercy seat covered Israel. Jesus's death on the cross offers us not just forgiveness of sins for one year, but forgiveness of all the sins previously committed and the sins that you will inevitably commit. And he buys his blood on the cross, covers you. It's his blood. It's not about right versus wrong, because in order to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat, what do you have to do that one priest has to walk into? What place do I say where? It was Holy of Holies, not allowed. In the Holy of Holies, you walk into the Holy of Holies with blood. I don't I didn't do enough research to know if it was in a cup, or if they just put some on their fingers and that like, like salt Bay or something like that. I don't I don't know what they did, but they walk in. I know he's apparently in trouble for something. God canceled like half the other people. I get canceled one day. I want to be in the club. I don't really I don't really want to be in the club anyway. So. So the priest walks in, sprinkles of blood on the mercy seat. One priest, and they tell you that they wrapped a rope around the dude just in case they got a little too holy in the room, and they had to drag the dude out because he died in the side of God. But what this says is his blood was sprinkled on the mercy seat as a propitiation, meaning that you and I have been brought near to God, to to a Jewish believer in Jesus who understood the atonement and sacrificial system. They're like, you mean you mean I get to draw near to God like the priest did once a year, close to the mercy seat and be covered by the blood of Jesus and experience that type of closeness to him by the blood of Jesus. And Paul doesn't say it as clearly here. He says it I it depends on how you translate it. He says it pretty clearly, but he says it better in Ephesians and in Ephesians chapter two, verse 13. Here's what he says. He says, but now in Christ Jesus, you who were formerly far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. This is why Hebrews says, we can approach his throne boldly, but we jump in and we find ourselves condemned, even though in Romans eight he says, is therefore now no condemnation, that we need a new operating system. In Romans chapter 12 he says, don't be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Everything has to change. You have got to think different. And when you think different, you don't stumble into the right or wrong scale as frequently as you used to. You might say, okay, so what do I do about it? Because I still wake up in the morning, I'm frustrated about where I failed. I've still got work, I got school, I got husband or wife thing, I've got my kids, I've got my grandkids, I've got my my grandparents who want me to be closer. I've got church now and then I've got a like a volunteer leader. If I'm on a volunteer team, then I got a small group leader and then I got not my boss, but my dotted line person who's not really my boss. But they're treating me like my boss. And then I've got the Lord, and then I got the Bible, and then I got all these people that seemed to be gauging me based on how right I'm doing or how wrong I'm doing, and I am constantly judged by this scale. Let the world do it. But God doesn't do it that way. He judges you based on whether you have been submitted to Christ Jesus and brought your life before him, bowed down in humility to the mercy seat, allowed the blood of Christ to be sprinkled on the mercy seat and allow it to cover your life. I did a sermon series in the fall called. It was called soundtracks or something like that, and I had a song I did. You sure I didn't do this one? I wanted to, I don't know, but think of that Rihanna song under my oh brother, brother Ella a that's what it is. It's like, no, you submit your life holy to him. And while you're used to standing in the rain, what you need to do is recognize that the wrath of God has protected you. Or sorry that Jesus has protected you from the wrath of God. So all he says is, hey, just stand under my umbrella a little bit. If you stand up to, you're going to be completely protected, just like the people in the Passover, he says. In his foreknowledge, he passed over the sins, once committed, pass over to a Jewish believer in Jesus. They're going to think about the Passover and what happened. The angel of the Lord went through the city, and all he asked for was that you sacrifice a lamb or a goat, and you put the blood above your door. And if there was blood above your door, the angel of the Lord passed by and didn't kill your firstborn. I said, just put the blood of Jesus over your life. He already he already shed it for you. All you got to do. And this is where Paul's trying to say it is not about right versus wrong. And he says in that final verse he says, for we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law apart from it. So don't look at it. Look at him. The opposite of bad is God. Look at God and what's what's going to happen. This is where Paul says in Galatians. He says it's for freedom that Christ has set us free. Don't use your freedom as opportunity to indulge the flesh, which isn't just, you know, smoking pot by the dumpsters or trash cans or whatever. You always have the trash can. It's not by smoking pot or doing your edibles or all that other stuff. No, it's actually about you trying to live in the old operating system consistently. That's what your flesh wants to do. So I'm gonna stay in the new operating system. Then I'm going to look at the world that operates from the old operating system. And guess what I'm going to do? I'm going to walk from the perspective of coverage, because he covered me by his blood at the mercy seat, and I offered my life to him. It took humility. It took me saying, I can't figure it out on my own. I can't do it on my own. There's nothing I can do. There's not one righteous but God. So I'm going to cling to him and trust that what Paul said Jesus did right here in Romans is going to cover me, not just for eternity, but he's going to help me live a life of abundance presently. And so what? When I look at that, I'm not focused on whether I'm doing right or wrong. I'm focused on whether I'm with him or not. So different guys, to recognize that the God you serve doesn't just want you to meet a standard. He wants you to meet him. That's all he wants. This is why when he walked with him in the cool of the day, he's probably looking at them. When they hid themselves from him, he shows up. God is all knowing. I don't know how it worked. He wasn't like looking around, for he probably knew exactly where they were. But he's like, hey, where are you? I don't know, where are you? He's walking. He wants to go walk with him. And all he wanted was nearness. But because of the knowledge of good and evil, there was distance. They hid from him because of some standard that that their futile mind gave them. But it's so simple. And infest with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. You'll be saved. It's not right versus wrong. It's near versus distant. I'm going to draw near by the blood of Jesus. You can't draw near by your good works. In fact, you can't even move far. From your bad works. Paul tells us that in Romans chapter eight two, doesn't he? Nothing can separate us from the love of God that we have in Christ Jesus. Now what he did in his righteousness was he paid for your sin. And when you submit to his leadership over your entire life, whatever that means, look at your neighbor and say whatever, whatever that means, it can mean something. It can mean you gotta you gotta not listen to your feelings. You got to not listen to some of this empirical evidence that you've been told from a young age is actually not as accurate as you think it was, but you've just been listening to the wrong historians. It could be. It could be somebody that's in your life that's close, wants you to operate in a particular way. Whatever it is, I'm going to focus on following Jesus, whatever that means. And so I want to give you my big idea. I've already articulated that, but I just want you to memorize this. The way that God wants you to draw near to him is by letting Jesus's sacrifice cover your life. For those of you in the room who are like, now what? Well, for those who have yet to let Jesus cover your life, confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. That's salvation. And he covers you regardless of what you've done, regardless of what you're going to do. As long as you seek him, he's there with you. He never left nor forsook you. He didn't. That's the crazy part, is the wrath of God against heaven, from all ungodliness and to ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. It's that we departed, jumped out of his hand, and did what we felt like doing. He didn't move. Well, he did send his son to die. So he did move. But now he remains for you, constant, available and accessible as you approach his throne boldly. So for those of you who have already trusted in Jesus, what do you do? When the temptation comes in to to use the old operating system? I want you to check yourself a little bit. Sam. Am I seeking right versus wrong, or am I seeking him versus anything else? I choose to seek him. That's more intuitive anyways, because we're built that way. And pragmatically, it it actually makes more sense than we're giving credit to. Because for years in my relationship with my wife, I was trying to honor her in a way that I thought made sense. You know, dishes, taking out the trash, leading her by reading the Bible out loud. Sometimes Bible school. I try to do it in the way that made sense to me, and I like to be served, so I like to serve her. And then over the years, I realized that the very metric or scale that I was utilizing based on my wiring and operating system didn't actually connect me close to her. It was actually creating distance. I tried, I wanted to do it. It was kind of the right thing, but right and wrong doesn't matter as much as you think it does. But when I learned that she just wants me to be detailed about my day and sit and talk with her in the cool of her day. Like that was a game changer because I went from vague to specific real quick. How was your day? Pretty good. No. How was your day? I want to draw near. Well, this morning I woke up. I did this, actually ate this for breakfast. I thought about eating this for breakfast, but I didn't because I'm trying to be healthy today. And then I had my first meeting. In the meeting went well at first, but the second half of the meeting did like this. And then I responded to some text message. You want my phone to read all the text messages and she takes she wants my phone to read all the text messages because she doesn't trust me, because she wants to know about my day. Her metric is different than mine, and I need you to know that God's metric is different than right versus wrong. And if you can get that into your skull, it will radically shift everything. People say it's about religion or it's about relationship, not religion. I think they're right. I think they come often from the wrong perspective. But in this case, I need you to understand if religion to you is right, verse is wrong, get it out of the equation. Because it's near versus distant. So if you are ready to trust in Jesus, maybe you've confessed today already. Do me a favor. Fill out a card. Let us know whether you accepted him for the first time. Let us know whether you rededicated your life to Christ. Let us know if you just want prayer, let us know. The prayer team is going to come up right now, but you can also write your prayer request down on that card. You can receive it here in the room. And if you're someone who's been more connected but you've been operating from the wrong system, talk to somebody. Open your Bible, try to apprehend the nature of God and walk with him, and you'll realize how much better life is when you change the operating system. It's a way better conversion than Windows to Mac. Some of y'all know how good that one was. Consider it today. God, we love you. We thank you. Draw near to us as we seek to draw near to you. It's in Jesus's name that we pray. And God's people said Amen.

Romans 12 · chapter mention