The Giving of The Law

So for most of my life, when it came to eating cake, there was

only one kind of cake that you actually ate, and that was white

cake, vanilla cake. And if some, if I were to come

to your house and you were to offer me chocolate cake, I would

say no because I'm a Christian. And when I decided to give my

life to Jesus, I gave all satanic things up, including

chocolate cake. How many of you guys, you're

Satan followers and you like chocolate cake?

OK, well, we're going to miss you.

And that was just kind of how it was always been.

And, and I liked, I liked vanilla icing.

In fact, when I'd go to Dairy Queen, I'd be really sweet to

the people at Dairy Queen and I'd try to get them to take the

icing off of their ice cream cakes and put it in the cookie

jar Blizzard, which is a cookie jar Blizzard.

It's not on the menu. You have to be a certain size

before they even make you aware of this special part.

And you can get a cookie jar, which is chocolate chip cookie

dough Blizzard and cookies and cream Blizzard.

And then you'd get the icing off the ice cream cake.

And it basically, you do this if you want your doctor to give you

cholesterol medication, this is this is how you get it.

You're like, I've been doing this.

So you're going to have to do something because I'm not giving

this up. And there's kind of how I live

my whole life. My mom has the world's best

icing that she puts on her sugar cookies.

I kind of just live my whole life in this space.

But during COVID, a friend who was living in her house, he

wanted to go to his brother's wedding.

He wasn't allowed to go to the wedding because of all the COVID

stuff. So we were going to drive all

the way up to Chicago and kind of wave from outside the fence.

And so we drove up there to wave outside the fence.

And I've heard a lot of people talk about a restaurant called

Portillo's. You guys know you've heard of

it. Yeah.

So one of you should start one here in town and or actually at

any of our locations because I'll drive.

I'd love to see that. So anyhow, we go through the

drive through because you can't go into the restaurant.

And I see on the menu that they have a shake with cake bites.

And I was like, I mean, I'll try it, you know, But I knew it was

chocolate cake. And I'm like, yeah, So we go

through Portillo's for the first time ever in my entire life.

And while I'm driving through Chicago traffic, I'm sipping on

this shake. And I'm like, that is, that is a

really tasty cake bite. And the guy in in the car said,

did you know that they make whole cakes?

So 15 minutes after I went to my first Portillo's restaurant, I

went to my second Portillo's restaurant of all time.

I was like, put it in the GPS. We're finding another one and I

bought a cake. It turned out to be a chocolate

cake and I got to be honest with you guys, I fell in love.

I have never liked a cake more than I like a Portillo's cake

and the fact that it is chocolate.

I still haven't gotten over it. And something that I knew that I

hated my whole life, I ended up falling in love with.

We are in the middle of a sermon series called Decisions in the

Desert. Because every single one of you

are going to find yourself in the desert at some point in

time. And the decisions that you make

in the desert will define you. They will end up determining

your destiny. And for the next 4 weeks, it's

specifically the next, the next three weeks, we are going to be

exploring the parts of the Bible that you probably thought you

hated. The parts of the Bible you

actually wanted to skip over, but I think at the end of

especially the next three weeks, you're going to find out that

you were about to fall in love with something you previously

thought. You hate it.

I think at the end of it, you're going to see yourself.

You're going to see God and you're going to see Jesus in a

whole new way. That's why I want to welcome

those of you joining at all of our different locations, those

of you who are part of the online family, and especially

those of you who are part of the crossing Inside celebrating 4

baptisms this past month. We love it.

We had an opportunity this week to hang out with some pastors

from the state of Iowa. And one of the pastors was

actually blown away by our inside ministry because he

actually spent three years in jail, got his heart completely

sold out for Jesus, went into full time ministry, went to

Bible college and has doubled the size of his church up in

Atlantic, Iowa. And he just loved the fact that

we're doing minister on the inside.

So if you're on the inside and you have a chance of getting out

one day, we know not all of you have that opportunity.

But for those of you who have a chance to get out and what you

know, God could do some pretty radical stuff through you on the

outside. And those of you who are going

to be stuck in the inside for forever, we hate that for you,

but God and use you too. I also want to welcome those of

you joining us for the first time or the first time in a long

time. And I hope that before you

leave, you'll take advantage of either the QR code on the seat

in front of you, or you'll swing by the new here booth out in the

lobby. Let's get into it.

God calls Moses up onto the mountain, and while he's there,

God reveals to him the law. The 1st 10 laws become

incredibly famous. We call them the 10

commandments. Here's what they are.

Exodus chapter 20. And God spoke all these words.

Exodus 20 · chapter mention

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of

the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods

before me. You shall not make for yourself

an image in the form of anything in heaven above, or on the earth

beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them

or worship them. For I the Lord your God and may

jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the

parents to the third and 4th generation of those who hate me,

but showing love to 1000 generations of those who love Me

and keep My commandments. You shall not misuse the name of

the Lord your God. For the Lord will not hold

anyone guiltless who misuses his name.

This is more than just a God fill in the blank or Oh my God,

this is more than that. In my house, since my family has

my DNA, we joke a lot and sometimes it's hard to know are

you messing with me or you telling the truth?

Dad, the toilet's broken. It's running, you know, and what

we used to, what we say in my house is before God.

Like you tell me the truth, hand to God.

That's taking the Lord's name in vain.

I'm now invoking God's name over a practical joke in my house.

My yes should be yes, my no should be no.

You guys know this stuff. Remember the Sabbath day by

keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do

all your work. But the 7th day is a Sabbath to

the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work,

neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or

female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner

residing in your towns. For the 6th day is the is the

day the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and

all that is in them, but he rested on the 7th day.

Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Honor your father and mother, so that you may live long in the

land that you like the Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall

not steal, you shall not give false testimony against your

neighbor. You shall not covet your

neighbor's house. You shall not covet your

neighbor's wife or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey

or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

And some of you are going, I'm glad he put that ox and donkey

stuff in there because that's the only one I haven't messed

up. You're going.

I mean, I've never once seen an Amish guy on an on a donkey and

said, man, I wish that donkey was mine.

Of all the 10 commandments, that's the one I'm the safest

on. I've never once, not once, ever

I've contemplated murdering somebody, but I've never once,

never once been like, man, if that donkey was mine, my, I've

just never had that. Well, it didn't stop there.

By the time God was done, he gave 613 laws.

Some of these laws were about how to worship him.

Some of them were about what to do when you had messed up and

how do you make things right? How do you provide restitution

for the sins that you have committed?

Some were about how to behave morally.

Some were about what their calendar should look like.

Some of the laws were about what their diet should look like. 248

of these laws were positive laws.

You should do this, for instance, when you're raising

your kids, parents, you're like, listen, The Dirty laundry, you

should put it in The Dirty laundry basket.

This is a positive law. Some of them were like honor

your father and mother. You should do this.

There were 365 of them that were negative laws.

Don't do this parents. You guys get this.

Part of parenting is not just positive laws.

Part of parenting is negative laws.

Don't hit your brother right? Or stop hitting your brother.

So when it comes to the to the Old Testament, some of them were

negative laws. Don't steal, don't lie, don't

murder. What made the 10 commandments so

unique and so powerful is that almost every single duty and sin

known to man can be summed up in them.

However, God was doing so much more through the giving of the

Law. One of the primary purposes of

the law was for God to reveal to the people how holy He is.

Another word for holy is separate, completely different.

God is not just somebody that you can throw in the car and go

on a road trip with. He is perfect in every way.

His thoughts are not your thoughts.

His purity is faultless and His Holiness.

He is so separate and different from you that being in His

presence would destroy you, which we're going to unpack next

week. In other words, the law showed

us how God behaved and how God expected His people to behave.

Holy. It's just another way of saying

all together different. So when you were reading the

law, you were going, God is completely different than me.

The second purpose of the law was to show people their

sinfulness. It was to reveal to you and me.

As you're going through the law, it doesn't take long before you

realize you can't keep the law. You can't do all the things that

you were supposed to do to be holy like God.

You are recognizing that it identifies sin at every turn in

your life. And before you start going,

well, I'm doing a pretty good job of keeping this law and this

law and this law. We realize James actually gives

us some insight into what happens in the law.

James chapter 2, verse 10, For whoever keeps the whole law and

James 2:10

yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.

For he who said you shall not commit adultery also said you

shall not murder if you do not commit adultery, but you do

commit murder, you have become a law breaker.

So there might be part of you that's going, hey, I'm doing a

pretty good job. I'm not a cheater and you might

be going, hey, I'm doing a pretty good job.

I'm not a murderer like some of you, many of you, hopefully most

of you have had 0 murders and you're going, I'm doing pretty

good. And some of you are going, you

know, when it comes to adultery, I've only got like, you know,

single digit adultery. I'm doing pretty good.

And what the law says, if the law is not asking are you an

adulterer or are you a murderer, it's asking, are you a law

breaker? You don't get to get puffed up

about the one area where you're doing right.

It's looking at at you holistically.

And when you were under the law, you became aware very quickly

that you were not worthy, that you are not holy.

The third thing that God does in the law, and you're not going to

like this, is he elevates the treatment of people to your

treatment of God. The 10 commandments are a

perfect example of this. The 1st 4 are about how you love

God. The next 6 are about how you

love His people. The fourth major thing that God

does through the giving of the law is that He creates for

Himself a people. The law became a constitution

and a calendar. And if you have a constitution

and a calendar, you create a culture.

And when you create a culture, you create a people.

Let me give you an example. Here in America, we have a

constitution and we have a calendar that creates a culture

that makes us different from other people.

For instance, on July 4th, how many fireworks are they letting

off in England? A 0 Because that is how many

wars that they have won against us suckas right?

We win. We have the same colors on our

flag, except our our colors don't run, we win.

And so they have the same they have their own constitution and

they have their own calendar and it separates us.

And what they were doing is God was wanting people to recognize

that these people with their constitution, with their

calendar, have their own culture, that they were his

people, and that other people would see the interaction

between God and his people, and they would see something about

God. This is in broad strokes, the

summary of the part of your Bible called the Old Testament

or the Old Covenant or another word, the old agreement that God

made with the nation of Israel. And whenever you're reading the

Bible in the Old Testament, you are reading the story of God's

interaction with the nation of Israel, the Jews, the children

of Abraham. And at the end of this covenant,

at the end of this Testament, God makes an agreement, a

promise to the people. And this is the promise.

Keep my commands, obey my commands, and I will bless you.

Run from my commands, ignore my commands, rebelled from my

commands, and you will be punished.

Then Jesus walks on to the scene and Jesus, guess what he does?

He goes up on a mountain and he gives a sermon and we call it

the Sermon on the Mount. You can read it in Matthew

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

chapter 5-6 and seven. And as you're reading through

it, he says things like this. You have heard it said, You have

heard it said. Do you know where they heard it

said in the Old Testament, the law?

Except Jesus finished the you have heard it said with another

phrase. You have heard it said, but I

tell you, you've heard it said in the law.

But I tell you, and you know what?

We were all thinking the law was impossible to keep.

Jesus is going to be super awesome right here.

He's going to make it so much easier on us.

But he doesn't. You're like, are you kidding me

Jesus? Let me explain.

Jesus says you have heard it said you shall not commit

murder. But I tell you, if you have hate

in your heart, you're like what? Jesus, here I am with 0 murders

on my record. He's like, OK, well, how much,

how many people do you hate in your heart?

You're like Jesus, you know, I have a mother-in-law.

How that is unfair. I texted her.

She was fine with it. McCombs just like Clayton.

Give Judy a break. Judy will be fine.

Now he goes, all right, you've already said don't commit

adultery and you're going, I have committed 0 adulteries.

OK, well if you look at someone lustfully, you've committed

adultery in your heart. Like Jesus, I have lusted at

least twice this year. What are you doing now?

Jesus is raising the bar. Now, when you look at the law or

when you look at the teachings of Jesus, but specifically when

you're looking at the law, there were three options people had.

The first one is they could just say I'm rejecting it.

I'm not going to do what you told me to do.

I don't care about it. I'm done with it.

The second option is you could repent over it.

The law would reveal to you that you are a sinful, fallen, jacked

up, messed up person and you'd go, I need saved, I need helped,

I got, I need somebody outside of me to get me through.

Or the third option you could do is you could become

self-righteous through it. And here's how you became

self-righteous. Instead of using God as your

standard for holiness, and instead of using God's Word as

your standard for holiness, the law, you use the failures of

other people as your standard of holiness.

That's what the Pharisees and the Sadducees did.

What they did is they looked at how other people were keeping

the law and made the decision about how holy they were by how

everybody else was doing it. That's why Jesus, if you read in

the Bible anytime Jesus is saying a pretty hard thing, he

is usually talking to the self-righteous people in the

Bible. He looks at them and says you

are a whitewashed tomb, which means you are really pretty on

the outside, but you are dead on the inside.

You're impressed in everybody else.

Everybody else thinks you are so much holier than everybody else,

but on the inside you are rotten to the core.

Because they were self-righteous.

They weren't using God as their standard.

They were not using God's word as their standard.

They were using the failures of other people.

Have you ever done that? You don't have to raise your

hand for this one, but you don't evaluate yourself on God or

God's Word. You evaluate yourself on other

people, which is how you come to the conclusion that you are a

good person because you can think of people that are worse

than you. And so when you look at people

that are worse than you, you come to the conclusion that you

are pretty good. But losers are not supposed to

be your standard. Failures are not supposed to be

your standard. If your standard is God and

God's word, you would come to the conclusion that I'm a pretty

bad person. But if you look at the failures

of other people, you will come to the conclusion that you're a

pretty good person. And a pretty good person doesn't

need save. They just need some help now and

then. But a person who uses God in

God's word as their standard, they recognize that they are in

desperate need of a Savior. Jesus goes a step further.

He articulates an overview of the Old Testament.

You actually know the answer to this question.

Here's what happens in Matthew chapter 22.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees and the Pharisees.

Sadducees and Pharisees, these are the self-righteous people

got together. One of them, an expert in the

law, tested him with this question.

Can you imagine testing Jesus? I bet that was a riot.

Let's see how it turned out for him.

Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?

Fair question, Jesus replied. Love the Lord your God with all

your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.

This is the first and greatest commandment.

Oh, what is he doing here? And the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself. You see what Jesus is doing?

Same thing God did. He's elevating your treatment of

God and your treatment of others into the same area.

How you love God will impact how you treat people.

How you treat people will impact how you love God.

And then he says this. All the law and the prophets

hang on these two commandments. Jesus is saying take the entire

Old Testament. If you want to get a lens

through which to read the Old Testament, it's this love God

and love people. If you want to understand the

reason behind the Old Testament, law in the Old Testament and the

Old Covenant, He takes our treatment of other people and he

relates it to God. In fact, one of the hallmarks of

an early Christianity, you know, one of the things that early

Christians were known for is how many of them are Republicans?

How many of them were Democrats? Nope, neither of those.

You know what early Christians were known for?

Enemy love. They took this so seriously that

they were known for loving people that didn't treat them

right, loving people that didn't treat them well, loving people

who were their enemies. What else does Jesus do on this

mount? He makes himself a people.

He creates a culture. Look what it says in Matthew

Matthew 5:13–16

chapter 5, verses 13 through 16. You are the salt of the earth.

But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made

salty again? It is no longer good for

anything except to be thrown out and trampled under foot.

You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be

hidden, neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl.

Instead, they put it on the stand, and it gives light to

everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light

shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and

glorify your Father in heaven. This was the desire behind our

men's conference. Uncommon was for us to be

different because ordinary wasn't working.

Christians were never designed to blend in.

We were supposed to stand out in the way that we operated and the

way that we lived and the way that we loved would identify us

as Jesus. People and other people would

see it and be drawn to it and glorify God through it.

You know what Jesus does at the very end of this Sermon on the

Mount? He does the same thing God does.

He makes a promise. He tells a story of a wise man

and a foolish man this way. He says, The wise man hears my

words and puts them into practice, and he builds his

house on a solid foundation. But the foolish man hears my

words and does not put them into practice.

And this man builds his life on a faulty foundation.

And when the storms come, when the winds blow, when the waters

rise and beat against the house, the wise man will be saved, and

the foolish man, his house will be destroyed.

Jesus says this. You are not getting any brownie

points for knowledge. You are saved.

You are not destroyed when you obey my commands.

Women, you know this, right? Does your husband get brownie

points for knowing where he's supposed to put the dishes when

he's done with them? No, he does not.

No, he does not. When he gets done with that

glass and he puts it on his end table and you go, what are you

doing? And he goes, I know where it's

supposed to go, I just didn't do it.

Do you go? God, thank you so much for this

knowledgeable husband that you've blessed me with.

No. And he goes, all right, fine.

And he goes, And he puts it on the counter.

You go. No.

And he goes And he puts it in the sink.

You go No, he goes, I know it goes in the dishwasher.

No wife is giving their husband brownie points for knowing where

they're supposed to put the dishes when they're done.

Husbands, pay attention. I am blessing you.

The blessing comes from the obedience of you actually doing

what you're supposed to do, right when your kids, when you

tell them this is where your dirty clothes go and you go into

the room and their clothes are everywhere and you go, hi, what

are you doing? You're like, don't worry, I know

where they're supposed to go. In the hamper.

You would go, then put them there.

Whatever Jesus is saying, hey, so you know what I want you to

do? The wise person puts it into

practice. The foolish person doesn't.

You and I are not loving God when we know we are loving God

when we obey what we know. Obedience is the love language

of God and Jesus. With that being said, let me

answer a top 20 question that I get asked as a pastor.

People will come to me and they will say, do the 10 commandments

still apply to me today? Am I still under the law?

Does it still apply? The answer in short is no.

You are no longer under the law. You are under grace.

Let me explain it to you this way.

Some of you just imagine, if you will for a second that you were

driving somewhere and you were speeding.

I know it'll be hard for you guys to fathom it, but just just

try to get there. Like what would that be like if

you were going faster than you're supposed to go?

When you see the speed limit sign, which is the law, does it

make you go faster or slower? Neither.

The speed limit sign has no bearing on how fast you go.

It reveals to you how fast you're supposed to go.

Does that make sense? It can't change how fast you

drive. It informs how fast you drive.

And some of us, we only talk about whether or not we were

speeding when we get pulled over.

And then we only really identify whether or not we were speeding

by whether or not we got a ticket.

And when we get pulled over, we try to justify the behavior that

we know we've been doing for a really long time and just

haven't been pulled over for. And so we when we're talking to

the officer, we're acting like this is our first time at 75.

Who it really got away from me, what the officer should look at

and go listen, look at me straight.

Have you been speeding for the last two years, since the last

time you got pulled over? And we would go, yeah, 100%.

I'm just paying the fast tax here.

That's all I'm trying to deal. Right.

And So what we think is that if we can keep the sin of our

speeding and reduce it to only the times that we get caught,

that that's the extent of our sin.

What the law does is it reveals to us our sin.

Some of your sin you wouldn't know about if it wasn't for the

Law. The law revealed sin in our

lives. You didn't realize you were

speeding until you saw the speed limits.

It reveals sin. The second thing that it does is

there's certain sins that you know about that other people

don't know about. But what the law also does is it

shows us that God sees every sin.

None are hidden from Him. You can hide it from your

friends, you can hide it from your spouse, but you can't hide

your sin from God. Look what it says in Hebrews

Hebrews 4:13

chapter 4 verse 13. Nothing in all creation is

hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid

bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give an account.

So there is a payment that must be paid for every sin that you

have ever committed. And if you broke the law

anywhere, you broke the law everywhere.

The law was simply a mirror to show us the condition of our

soul. Ladies, I'm going to do an

illustration here. I mean no harm, but I think

you'll be able to track with me. Men, just be gentle, OK, ladies

hope I'm guessing that you looked in a mirror before you

walked out of the house today and you know that a mirror

cannot fix your face. It can just reveal the face you

have. Tracking with me and then what

we like to do is we look in the mirror, we realize that there's

some fixing that needs to take place and then we pull out the

drywall mud and we like that person has no wrinkles at all.

You're like, well, she's got drywall in there.

That's what she has. She's spackling and said you

walk around with other people and are like, she has a great

complexion and the husband's like, I saw her paint it this

morning. Now what we do is, is we try to

make it look like there are no faults and cracks in our lives.

And then we rate ourselves on how we look in in relationship

with other people. The law reveals that work needs

done. Men, when you're in front of a

mirror, the law does not give you a better haircut.

It just tells you that you need one.

It doesn't help you grow more hair.

It reveals that you've lost hair.

And what hypocrites do is that they would use the makeup to

cover up their flaws. But the power was never in the

mirror. The power was never in the law.

It just revealed what was. And what the law was supposed to

do was not to get you to fix your face, but to reveal to you

that you needed a new face. The law was not designed to get

you to fix your heart. It was to reveal to you that you

needed a new heart. And so Jesus walks onto the

stage, perfect and every way, and through what He did, the law

was nullified. It lost all of its power and it

was wiped out. When He was nailed on the cross,

the law was nailed to the cross. The penalty revealed in the law

was nailed to the cross. And when Jesus cried out, it is

finished. He is saying that the righteous

requirement of the law has been met in Him and our sins.

The debt that we have stacked up, the debt that we know about,

the debt that we didn't know about, the stuff that we've kept

hidden has all been nailed, put on his shoulders and nailed to

the cross. And He has paid in full the

righteous requirement that needed to be met for my sin and

for your sin. So that by our salvation.

Yeah, yeah. No.

Watch this. So that means that our salvation

is not based on works. Your salvation is not based on

what you are able to do. Your salvation is by grace that

Jesus poured out on your behalf. By grace he paid what you

couldn't pay. By grace he did what you

couldn't do. And we access that grace through

faith, believing that what Jesus did on the cross is available to

you and me. You might die one day and you're

standing in a long line waiting to get to the judgment seat of

God. And you're next to some buddies

and friends from high school and maybe some, some brilliant

theologians. And you're walking there.

They're going, how do you think you're going to get into heaven?

And you're like, well, you, you know, you're trying to talk

like, well, well, let me ask you some questions.

How did you do it honoring your father and mother?

And you'll be like, if you're being honest, you'd be like,

listen, B plus, like, what do you mean B plus?

Well, I was pretty good except for, you know, junior high, high

school and college, right. OK.

How did you do at loving your neighbors?

Well, I did a pretty good job of loving three of them, but the

4th one, no, that was a no go. We forked their yard a lot.

We we just never never got that figure.

OK. How did you do it loving people?

Well, I'll be honest, a pretty, pretty decent job.

How did you do it? Loving your enemies?

Not good. Not good at all.

I didn't do a real good job of enemy love.

Really. Ever.

Did you ever commit adultery? I'll be honest with you, I got

zero. I got a zero body count there

and 0 adultery's awesome. And lust.

Not good. Did you did you ever did you

ever cheat? Yeah.

Had a class at 10:00 AM and I didn't study for it, but the

person I sat next to did. And together we both got A's.

That's how did you ever. Did you ever steal?

Yeah. Kit Kat from a Casey's.

I was real hungry and it was a hot day and I was like, I want.

I want a Kit Kat. Did you ever lie?

Yep. I did lie.

Did you did? Yeah.

My wife asked me if she looked good.

And we were running behind, so I said yeah, get in the car.

Let's go. How did How did you?

And they're going to look at you baffled because when you start

going through that list, they're going to go, you're a pretty

jacked up, messed up, despicable human being.

What makes you think you're getting into heaven?

And you'll say, well, you as well, you don't understand.

I'm not getting into heaven based on what I've done, I'm

getting into heaven based on what Jesus has done on my

behalf. I don't get in here because of

me, I get in there because of him.

And then you might be thinking, well, if Jesus is grace

increases every time I sin, I should send more.

So that way the grace of God can be displayed even more.

And if you were to think that you'd be an idiot.

Paul says, should we keep on sinning so that grace can

abound? By no means, when you come into

contact with that kind of love, with that kind of excellence,

with that kind of purity, with that kind of holiness, with that

kind of sacrifice, the natural response is not to sin more,

it's to want to sin less. It motivates you to want to do

the things that He's called you to do.

It stirs things in you so that way other people can find what

you have found in him. It motivates you to live a life

doing the things He's called you to do it.

It ushers you into a life of obedience so that way other

people can find what you have found in Him.

We're moving to a time of decision.

So there are some of you in this room and watching online.

And right now, if you were to kind of describe yourself, you

would say that you don't have an intimate personal relationship

with Jesus Christ. And that is the heartbeat of our

church is for people to find that.

I'm just going to be honest with you.

When you die, you will stand before God.

And you will either stand on your own account and what you

have done, or you can stand and have Christ stand in your

behalf. And you can stand there on

account of what Jesus has done. And you can kind of wrap

yourself in your own works and you can compare yourself to

other people, but that is not the standard that you will be

measured by. You can stand there and go,

yeah, I was kind of nice a couple times, or you can stand

there, the Bible says, wrapped, clothed in Christ.

Another way I've heard it said is you can stand before God and

he can either see your sin or he can see his Son.

That's what we do when we come into an intimate, personal

relationship with Jesus Christ. We allow the blood of Christ to

wash over us, to cover us. We become clothed in Christ,

We're forgiven in Christ, and God promises that he will

remember our sins no more. As far as the East is from the

West is how far he will separate us from our sin.

And so if you're here today and you've never started an

intimate, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, I got to ask

you, why in the world are you putting it off?

So I'm going to encourage you in just a few moments when the

people in this room stand and sing and come, some of them come

to the steps and pray. I'm going to encourage you.

If you're watching on the chat, would you click that link?

That opens you up to a chance to go into a private chat where

people can talk to you about what that looks like.

And if you're here in this room, you should walk right over there

underneath that screen right next to the baptistry and begin

asking questions about how to begin the relationship that

changes everything. To the rest of you in the room,

I got something really spiritual to talk to you about.

Do you know what the secret ingredient in a Portillo's

chocolate cake is? You're not.

Some of you are not going to believe this mayonnaise.

If I invited you over to my house and you saw a big old jar

of mayonnaise and what's that for?

Well, I'm making cake. Like, I think this guy's a

little sick in the head, all right?

It makes no sense. You put mayonnaise in a cake,

but that is the special ingredient that makes a

Portillo's cake so good. And I have to say this, I'm

already fat enough, so I don't want you guys going out and

getting me Portillo's cake. I want to live to at least 47.

OK, But the secret ingredient in a Portillo's cake is mayonnaise.

Who'd have thought? And some of you are sitting here

and you're kind of going through your Christian life.

And if you were to be honest with yourself, you're like, I

don't really experience God's power in my life.

I don't feel him like I used to. Can I tell you something?

It might be because you're missing the secret ingredient,

obedience. You do not need the Holy

Spirit's power in your life to be complacent.

You don't need the Holy Spirit's power in your life to love

people that aren't nice to you. And if you're wondering why you

don't feel him or you're not experiencing him or you're not

seeing him move, it's because you don't need the Spirit of God

to just know what God wants you to do.

You need the Spirit and the power of God to do what he has

called you to do. And that is released when you

are obedient, when you find yourself in a situation and he

says, love those who persecute you, love your enemies, you're

going, there's no way I could do that.

And Jesus goes, you're exactly stinking, right?

There's no way you can do that on your own.

But in my power and in my strength, you're able to do it.

You see, you're thinking, God, how am I going to fix my heart?

God's going, I'm not here to fix your heart.

I'm here to give you my heart. And my heart is capable of

things that your heart cannot possibly imagine.

So if you're wondering what might be missing in your walk

with the Lord, it just might be obedience that unlocks the

things that you've been missing. Would you stand with me?

God? When I think about this church,

I can't help but think about how much I love it.

I love the people. I love what you're doing here.

And God, I know when I think about how much I love them, it

doesn't even get in the same Galaxy of how much you love

them. You know what they're capable

of. You know what they're struggling

with. You know their hurts, you know

their doubts. And so, God, I'm asking that you

would interact with every person in this room and every person

who's watching online. Yeah, that you would clearly

reveal the very thing that you want them to do, and, God, that

you'd give them the courage and the strength to do it.

In your name I pray. Amen.