Messy Grace | Caleb Kaltenbach

What up, Crossing Family? I'm so excited to welcome you

guys from all of our different locations and from wherever you

are joining us online or inside. God bless you.

I'm so thankful that we get to partner together and expand

God's Kingdom together. I have a special announcement to

make. You may remember back in

Thanksgiving of last year, we encouraged many of you to

participate with us and making an in your corner gift to help

us acquire our Jacksonville location.

And we have been meeting with title companies and attorneys

and we have been doing all the negotiation stuff.

And about two weeks ago, we were finally able to ink the deal and

we own our Jacksonville campus outright debt free because

there's so many of you guys going on the journey with you.

To those of you in Jacksonville, I hope you know that there is

entire region of Christians who call the crossing home, who are

in your corner and are rooting for you to make Jacksonville one

of the hardest places on planet earth to get to hell from.

And we hope that you will take that as this is a sign that

we're for you and we can't wait to see what God's going to do

through you today. We are in week two of our new

sermon series and you guys have been great.

You didn't clap, you didn't send emails, and you've been

incredibly gentle and respectful so far.

And I want you to keep that energy up as we step into this

second week. And I have brought in Caleb to

come and help us navigate this these next two weeks in the

sermon series. Caleb is a trusted counselor and

guide to churches all across the country to navigate these

waters. He's been down this river many

times and he has been more than generous to come and spend 2

weeks with us to help us learn how to do this well.

How to love God, how to love people, how to uphold scripture,

and at the same time make sure that we are seeking and saving

the lost. He's not going to do this

because he's not the kind of guy who would push it, but he has

written two incredible books. One is called Messy Grace and

the other one is called Messy Truth.

And if you are a Jesus follower, you're a family member, you're a

friend, you're a coworker of somebody who may be in this

situation. These would be go to resources

for you and you can take advantage of the QR code on the

seat in front of you from wherever you're joining and

it'll take you to the Amazon link for those books or you can

get them anywhere books are sold and if you're not a reader you

can get them on Audible or however that is.

But would you please welcome to the and you can clap.

Would you please welcome to the Crossing our good friend Mr.

Caleb Kaltenbach. I can't wait.

You're going to do all thank. You so much.

All right. How are we doing today?

Good. All right.

Hey, I'm so glad to be with you. And by the way, I love.

Pastor Clayton and Pastor Jerry, who was here before him and just

the team here. If you are looking for a church

or somebody invited you, I just want to let you know you are in

a great church. This is a church where you can

follow Jesus and people just wrap their arms around you no

matter who you are, no matter where you are in your walk.

So I hope that you'll keep on coming back and checking out

this church. I hope you also invite some

people with you next time you come.

So anyway, we're we're glad to have you here.

I'm going to start off telling you a little bit about myself.

I'm originally from Columbia, MO, and Kansas City, home of the

greatest football team in the NFL.

I I knew. I knew this church was saved.

There are several of us in California.

I live in Los Angeles now because my family and I enjoy

not having money and we enjoy complications.

So that's why we live there I guess.

But I will tell you this, many Chiefs fans are out there

because of Joe Montana. A lot of people just followed

him over to the Chiefs when he was there in the 90s and they

haven't left because we have our own fan out Thanos now as a

quarterback anyway. Also, I'm married to my

beautiful wife. Her name is Amy and she is a muy

caliente Latina and she goes to the gym every single day, has a

six pack. I think you can tell I enjoy

Netflix a lot. Then we have two kids.

We have my 14 year old daughter Rachel, my 16 year old son Joel.

My son is 6 foot two. I asked my wife if we need to do

a DNA swap. I said I'm not going to be mad,

I just need to know who's paying for college.

That's the biggest deal. There's forgiveness at the

Cross, but we're talking about college right here.

So anyway, anyway, when we first got married, we wanted to have

kids immediately because we were insane, pretty much.

We immediately wanted to have kids, and we tried and we tried.

No matter what happened, we couldn't get pregnant and we

both kind of got destructive in our own ways.

I became a workaholic and my wife started watching Twilight

movies over and over again and I just said we're going to get you

pregnant one way or another because the the vampire

sparkling vampires have got to stop entering our house.

Okay, no more. And we went to a fertility

clinic. We got pregnant with my son Joel

in our first try and my daughter Rachel in our second.

I love them equally. But I got to tell you about

Joel's birth when he when we found out that she was pregnant,

we were so excited. I mean, so excited.

We became the annoying couple that you never wanted to have

over because we monopolized conversations and talked about

our pregnancy. You know, it had been two or

three years of waiting, and we finally got pregnant and we lost

friends because that's all we talked about.

And we said, who cares? We'll get new friends.

We'll be alive longer. And I couldn't wait to get to

the hospital because I had seen the movies.

I knew what to expect. I knew that when my child came

out, my son, he would be like there would be a light shining

down from heaven. Epic John Williams, Star Wars

music underneath, you know, He would come out pristine, clean,

grab my finger and with perfect pronunciation would say the word

father. And that is not what happened.

We got to the hospital and everything was great until the

pain hit my wife and she became somebody I had not exchanged

bows with At that point. I tried to comfort her and put

my hand on her shoulder and she looked at me and her eyes were

glowing red. And she said, don't you touch me

right now. And I'm like, Okay, Linda,

Blair, Emily Rose, whatever your name is, we need.

I don't know if we need drugs or a priest.

So we tried the drugs and she went back to loving God and

others at that point. And then the time came for my

son to come into the world and the doctor comes in and what

looks like a hazmat outfit and a welding mask and they put tarp

everywhere. And I'm like, is something

getting ready to explode? Because I've got, I'm not

covered anywhere. And then when my son came into

the world, I remember my expression because I remember

how it felt. My expression went from this to.

I was like, You sure you shouldn't put him back to cook

some more? I mean, I think he's got some

more time left in the oven. And he came out.

He was a color that Crayola had never invented a crayon for.

Ever. OK, he was wrinkled.

He made the most awful noises I've ever heard when he came out

and stuff was coming out of his mouth and like he smelled funny,

his head wouldn't, like, stand still.

And they wrap it in a blanket and they gave them to me.

They said, what do you think? And if you get to know me,

you'll find out real quick. I have a DHD and I really don't

have much of A filter sometimes. And in that moment I just looked

at him in my first words when I was holding my son, where he

looks like a turtle. I looked at my wife and I'm

like, this is what we produced together right here.

This my daughter came out, she looked like this big red juicy

ladybug. And if you had been there, you

would have said. Man, it was messy.

And some of you have been there before, some of you haven't.

Some of you'll be there in the future.

Good luck. And I just want to let you know

that in that moment, I don't know where it came from.

I just love my kid. I just did.

And and I still love my children.

Trust me, my children have done nothing to earn that love.

Listen, OK, They have taken my money throughout the years.

They've gotten me sick. They brought home the stomach

flu. Before children I used to look

like Zac Efron and then I had children.

And now I look like this right here.

I will probably die two years earlier because I have children,

OK? They they have not added to my

life in that way. But at the same time, I cannot

imagine my life without them. So they've done nothing that

they did to earn my love, but yet I just love them.

And I just want to let you know today, whether you know it or

not, that's exactly how God feels about you.

There's nothing that you can do to earn his love our best

efforts. Are but stained gifts that we

offer him. But yet God looks at you.

And when other people say they put you in categories, they

label you, they push you to the side.

God takes you out of the corner. He looks past the categories.

He doesn't pay attention to the definitions and he says that's

my child and he keeps pursuing you until you follow Jesus.

Now that's really good news for all of us.

I don't know about you. I just don't know how God can

love some of the other people in the world.

You you know exactly who I'm talking about too, don't you?

You know the people that you walk down the hallway at work,

you see them coming, You're like, goodnight, and you walk

around the long way to go to the bathroom, you see them at school

and you're like, oh, I'm going to pretend to be on my phone,

even though I'm not you. You like, you're at the gym.

They want to talk to you. You pretend like you can't hear

them. These are the people.

And I'm not talking about the creepers that are dangerous.

I'm talking about the people that don't vote for the

candidate we voted for. I'm talking about the people.

They're in different relationships than we are.

I'm talking about the people that have different ideals that

work in different jobs that wouldn't would never work in

there, that are in situations that we would never think that

we would be in. And yet, here's the thing.

God loves messy people. And the first two were letters

of messy are ME, me. I got to admit that I'm messy.

And that God loves messy people like me.

And God loves messy people not like me.

And so that's really what I want, to talk to you.

I want to talk to you about messy Grace.

And some of you like Caleb. The Lord's grace does not messy.

I get that. Give me some room here and I'll

explain it later on. But I want to talk to you about

messy Grace. The next week I'm going to talk

to you about messy truth. OK, So to kind of help you and I

navigate this, how do we love people that we don't agree with?

How do we love people? That make relational decisions

we would never make. What does that look like?

How if you have your Bibles through your mobile devices, you

can turn to John Chapter 8. In just a moment I'm going to

John 8 · chapter mention

have the words on the screen for you and if you don't have your

bibles, that's fine, you can just follow along with me.

Now just to set the scene, Jesus has all of his disciples and

Jesus is in the temple courts, which is like the church lobby,

the temple in Jerusalem and he's teaching there.

Whole bunch of people are around him.

And an extraordinary thing happens to him.

Like, I think if Jesus were alive today, he could have his

own reality TV show. There's never a normal thing

that happens to Jesus. And so this is one of these

moments. Take a look at John chapter 8,

John 8 · chapter mention

verse two. I'm going to stop in the middle

of verse six. At dawn he appeared again in the

temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and

he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law on the

Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery.

They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus,

teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery in the

law. Moses commanded us to stone such

women. Now what do you say?

Just going to read the beginning of verse 6 here.

They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis

for accusing him. And so you have the Pharisees

and the teachers of the law. The Pharisees were like the

celebrity pastors of the day. You'd be reading their books,

listen to their podcasts. They'd be speaking at

conferences. And in Jesus's day, there were

some 6000 Pharisees. They're roaming around the land

of Judea. And then you have the teachers

of the law. And and these people have like 7

doctorates, and they don't have a life.

They're 90 years old, still living with their parents,

living in the basement. That's who these people are, OK?

And they hate Jesus. Because the Pharisees, while

they came from good origins and they started out trying to

protect God's word, they have started trying to manipulate

people to their point of view and become controlling.

And they use fear to control people.

And then here comes Jesus and he offers grace and truth,

conviction and compassion. He offers principle and he

offers love. And people are leaving them to

go follow him. So they're always trying to

catch Jesus. And so this is their latest

ploy. They find this woman who is

caught in the act of adultery. Now, don't miss this.

It says they caught her in the act, In, in, in the act.

You're like, how I'm like, I don't know, they're creepers,

right? So they catch her in the act,

They take her out, they drag her through town.

They put her at the feet of Jesus.

And they say Moses says we should stone her.

What do you say? Now here's the interesting

thing. They think they have Jesus in a

catch 22 because if Jesus says stone her, he's keeping the law

but he will lose faith with the people.

But if he says don't stone her, he'll keep faith with the

people, but he's breaking the law.

And if you're not used to reading the Gospels, let me just

clue you in on something that you may or may not know.

Never ever try to checkmate Jesus.

It really doesn't go well. And what's interesting is the

fair season. The teachers law are so worried

about keeping the law that they don't realize they've actually

broken it. They don't have witnesses to

corroborate what she did. They don't even have, like, a

trial. The law says you have to go

through a trial. And here's the other thing,

where's the dude? I guess that doesn't matter,

right? You see, it makes me mad when it

says they're using this question as a trap in order to have a

basis for accusing him. They don't care about her.

They are using her as much as the man who's having an affair

with her was using her. Whether or not you believe in

Jesus, I think you'd have to admit that's messed up right

now. I don't know what your response

would be. Some of you are emotionally

reactive. You'd start yelling and

everybody would be a casualty. Some of you would blow up.

Some of you would internalize it.

But Jesus, he does something weird.

And some of you are like Caleb. Don't call what Jesus does

weird. I'm not saying it was creepy bad

strange. It's awkward.

It's probably something you wouldn't do.

Look at the rest of verse 6. But Jesus bent down and started

to ride on the ground with his finger.

That's an awkward response. Now some of you are not

realizing this because you've read this book, this story, for

a long time. Some of you have been Christians

since God was a boy, Okay. I mean, that's how long.

And you're familiar with this. When was the last time you were

in an argument and you said, hold on, I tried it with my

wife. We were in an argument last week

and I started, I got on the ground, started riding on the

ground. She's like, what are you doing?

I said, acting like, Jesus, I figured one of us should.

I did not say that. You know how I?

You know that? I didn't say that because I'm

alive. The fiery wrath of Latina.

I'm not going to deal with that. No, no, no.

I'm just like yes, ma'am, yes, me, esposa Bonita.

And so a lot of people try to figure out what in the world was

Jesus riding on the ground. Was he riding down the sins of

the people in the crowd was he writing down versus the

scripture? I I found this really

interesting verse. See if you can make the

connection. Jeremiah 1713.

It's in the Old Testament. Lord, you're the hope of Israel.

All who forsake you will be put to shame.

And those who turn away from you will be written in the dust.

And in the Hebrew, this word for dust could mean sand, dirt, mud,

ground. Why?

Because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living

water. And if I were a betting person,

I bet Jesus was writing down the names of the Pharisees and the

teachers of the law in the ground.

That's just a guess because we don't know, but it would make

sense. Because he was living out

literally what this says. And basically he was telling

them, You think that you are so close with God because you're

keeping the letter of the law, but you're further away than

this woman is. Hear me out.

Quick tangent. I think it's okay if we do a

tangent in here, but let's find out.

Clayton will let me know afterwards.

Here's the deal. God doesn't care how much you

know. If you don't have any compassion

to show, God could give a rip how much you have.

The Bible memorized. If you don't have any compassion

because you can have correct doctrine, but be a complete

heretic in how you treat people and live out your theology and

God's like, that's a clinging symbol in my ear.

You're like Caleb. I don't like that.

Well, blame Paul. He said it, not me.

Don't get mad at me. Just get mad at Paul.

He's dead, not me. Just leave me alone.

Let's go back to John. Chapter 8, verse 8.

John 8:8

Because they don't get it. Verse seven, I mean when they

kept questioning him, Jesus straighten up and said to them

let anyone of you who's without sin be the first to throw a

stone at her. And again he stooped down he

rolling ground. Now I think this is brilliant

because Jesus knew after that challenge they would not throw a

stone because back then they believed what I believe what

your church leadership believes, that God is the only sinless

being in existence. And so if the Pharisees picked

up a stone and threw it. They would be claiming to not

have sin, and that's like a big deal.

That's called lying. And out of the 613 commands in

the Old Testament, God put lying in the top ten.

You know why? Because lying breaks the

relationship, right? Lying at least harms the

relationship. But there's another reason why

Jesus knew they wouldn't throw a stone.

Because if they picked up a stone claiming to be sinless and

they threw the stone at her, that very stone would be used to

throw right back at them and kill them.

Because if the only sinless being in existence is God, and

they're claiming to be sinless, they're claiming to be God, and

all their friends would know that they've sinned.

And like, that's automatic death penalty.

But you may not believe in Jesus yet, but you got to admit he's

got mad skills. You do not want to get in an

argument with Jesus and I love. Look at this verse nine.

I love verse nine. It's almost comical at this.

Those who heard began to go away one at a time.

The older ones first. I love that until only Jesus was

left with the woman still standing there.

Jesus straightened up, and I can see Jesus kind of hamming it up

a little bit, saying woman. Where are they?

And by the way, that's that's a complimentary term.

There are some people who are like, why do you call her woman?

It's not. No, no, it's 1st century.

It's not like woman. No, he's saying ma'am.

That's another way of saying ma'am, he's being ultra

respectful to somebody that had no respect that day.

Ma'am, where are they? Has no one condemned you?

No one, Sir, she said. Then neither do I condemn you.

I love that. Aren't some of you glad that

Jesus said that? Neither do I condemn you, but go

and leave your life upset. You see a big part of of this

series that Pastor Clayton's doing that he's going to talk

about is really how do you handle faith and love, grace and

truth, compassion and conviction.

And he's got a great sermon he's going to do in a couple weeks on

that. And so today I want to talk

about the grace side of things. Messy grace and somebody like

God, Caleb. God's grace isn't messy.

No, it's not. But it feels messy.

When we're supposed to love people, they're doing things

that we don't like and we don't agree with that help hold views

that we don't like, that we don't agree with.

And so here's the principle I want you to get from this story

right here. Grace is for everyone, and that

includes anyone. I feel like we're not all on the

same page. OK, so I'm.

We're going to do this together. You're going to help me say this

because some of you are looking like a deer before it gets hit

by a car glazed over. Are you serious?

I have to love people I don't like.

Yeah, I know it's hard. God didn't say you have to like

him. He said you have to love him.

OK. Grace is for not everyone said

that. We're going to try again.

Grace is for and that includes. And then I added this.

Dot, dot, dot, even the any ones that we don't like, understand,

or agree with. So here's the thing.

One of my favorite verses is in Romans 5.

While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Christ pursued us before we even liked him.

Jesus died for us before we were even born.

God was pursuing us when we were indifferent about him.

I'm just telling you, grace is for everyone, and that includes

anyone. What does that look like?

What does that look like? When you believe that in your

life, usually you come up to this feeling like grace is

messy, even though it's not because of the emotional

attachments you have in the relationships in your life.

So let me tell you, for a lot of my life who that was for me.

My It was my mom and dad. You see, my parents used to be

professors at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and at

Stevens College. And when I was two years old

they divorced and both of my parents went into same sex

relationships. My dad had a lot of friends.

He was never in a monogamous relationship, but my mom was in

a 22 year relationship with a woman named Vera and they were

activists and they moved to Kansas City and I went back and

forth on I-70 between Kansas City and Missouri and I was just

raised in the L GB TQ community. I grew up preschool, elementary

age, middle school, going with my parents to pride parades,

bars, clubs, Hangouts, camping camp outs, all that kind of

stuff. And here's what I learned from

my mom over and over again. OK, Christians will not like you

if you are not like them. That's what I learned.

Christians hate gay people is another thing I learned.

I saw it time and time again. I I was in pride parades, seeing

people holding up signs who claim to be Christians saying

God hates you, turn or burn. And if that wasn't bad enough,

when people from my mom's parade would go try to talk to them,

these socalled Christians would spray them with water and urine,

saying this is what God thinks of you.

That made an impression. I saw family members ignore

their young sons who are dying of AIDS at the start of the AIDS

epidemic in the 1980s. I saw them not go to the

hospital because they're taking a moral stand.

There was a difference between taking a moral stand and being a

moron. I saw families who would go

visit their young sons. My mom and her partner would go

say goodbye to these young men who are in their community, and

their family would be pressed up against the wall like they're

waiting for a firing squad. So I got the message real clear

Christians hate gay people. If you are not like them, they

will not like you. And by the time I got to high

school, my life was just out of whack.

I was sneaking out, partying it up, getting drunk, all that kind

of stuff. And then when I was a sophomore

in high school in the 10th grade, I got invited by another

high schooler to his Bible study that he was putting on at his

house for other high schoolers. And I thought, this is going to

be perfect. I'm going to go and I'm going to

be a pretend Christian, and I'm going to learn about their faith

and I'm going to discredit it and move on the next Bible

study. And you could tell that worked

out real well. That was a great plan.

And so I went and the way that I'm going to describe their

house, if this describes your house, please don't take any

offense. As long as you don't have a

posters of Nickelback in your house.

I think you're good. That band's awful.

Don't ever put up a poster of that band.

But however you want to have you, you have Christian stuff up

on your wall. Good.

Me too. But as an unchurched,

unbelieving 16 year old, I had never stepped foot in a

Christian household, much less a Catholic household.

And when I walked in to this house, it looked like they had

raided a Bible bookstore. Like they had Christian breath

mints. Did you guys know we have our

own breath mints? Did you know that?

Anybody tell you that they're called testaments?

Yeah, right there. And I'm not joking either.

Tell me you're like, huh, huh. Don't Google it right now.

Ask afterwards. Person next to you will tell you

okay. And don't try them unless you

want to see what cyanide and spearmint taste like together.

Then they had the Christian bookstore like art on the wall,

the frame pictures. You know what I'm talking about?

Like I'd never seen a house before where somebody had a

frame picture of a sheep on the wall that they didn't own would

maybe like a Bible verse. I'm like, this is strange.

And then they had a picture of a lion with a cobra and a kid,

little shepherd kid with a Bible verse.

And I'm like, are we going to sacrifice a chicken tonight?

This is these people have framed pictures of animals they don't

own on the wall. And then my friend comes up from

the basement and says, ah, you're here.

We've circled up. Won't you follow me downstairs?

And I'm like, well, this is the beginning of a horror movie.

So I went downstairs to the basement.

Everybody's reading from First Corinthians.

I can't find it because I didn't know God put a table of contents

in there. And I read a verse from First

Chronicles about some dude getting impaled, and they're

like, where are you? And I said, well, I'm in First

Chronicles. They're like, you're in the Old

Testament. I'm like, is there a new one?

Like, I didn't know. We had it updated 2.0.

And so I was really embarrassed, but I really, I started going

back to this Bible study again and again.

And then I started going to another Bible study by that was

led at the University of Missouri, Columbia, by a guy let

it named Roy Weiss. I went to his Bible study over

and over and over again. And I'm just telling you that I

could not get enough because I realized Jesus was not like the

people on the street corners, that he had very deep

theological convictions. He had very real expectations

about how we should pursue holiness and live and treat

other people. But he also had very real,

personal, authentic relationships with people that

the religious elite of the day would have nothing to do with,

people that were pushed to the side, people that were deemed to

be unclean. And I was like, man, I love

Jesus. I don't want the sheep picture,

but I love him. So I started studying what the

Bible had to say about homosexuality and sexuality and

marriage and intimacy. And I came to two conclusions I

still hold today. Number one, I believe that God

designed sex to be expressed in a marriage between a male and

female, and any kind of expression outside of that

design is a sin. But I also believe that our

theological convictions are never catalyst to devalue

another human being, that our biblical beliefs can never be

weaponized to intentionally harm other people.

And so I I just kept on learning and one morning I woke up and I

called my friend Greg. I've been going to his dad's

church on for youth group Sunday evening.

I said, Greg, I think I've turned Christian.

What do we do? He said.

Well, let's go to the Chinese buffet and then I'll baptize

you. And I think that was an Acts 238

1/2. And so we did that.

And I was really nervous to tell my parents because I become a

Christian. I eventually felt like I wanted

to be a pastor and I changed my view on sexuality.

And I had to, as a 16 year old, come out to my 3 gay parents as

a Christian. And they both kicked me out of

their houses for a while. And so when I do talk to a lot

of L, GB, TQ students or young adults, they're like, well, I

thought only like Christian parents did that.

I said no human beings do that. Human beings fear just like

that. As a matter of fact, when we

think about how do we live out this idea of graces for

everyone, that includes anyone. It starts with this principle

right here. Don't allow the fear of some to

determine the value of many. Don't allow fear from some

people to determine the value of many people.

Now, first of all, I want to say there are some people out there.

Some leadership gurus will say, you know, fear.

You know, that's a that's a bad thing.

Those people are morons. No, it's not.

Fear is not a bad thing. God gave you the potential to

feel fear for a reason. Let's say that we're hiking.

I think you again, You can tell I don't hike.

OKI don't I? If if I'm running, you need to

run because whatever's behind me is really bad.

But you'll probably be laughing at the fact that I'm running.

You'll be like, well, that's the most adorable thing I've ever

seen. Like, God, if if we're hiking

and you see a rattlesnake, are you going to be like, well, I'm

going to name her Betsy and I'm going to love her.

And no, no, not too long ago, just two houses down.

My neighbor woke up at 2:00 AM because his siding, last door

was rattling. Somebody's trying to get in.

Turns on the light. There's a mountain line in his

backyard. He had a gun, Handgun.

He like it scared him. He fell back.

It went off. Didn't shoot anybody.

Scared everybody in the house. So I'm.

I'm just telling you, God gave you fear to know.

Oh, oh, trigger warning. You see, But there's such a

thing as toxic fear. That's why people win elections

today. If you get people to be afraid,

you can control them. And you see that some of us in

this room, we live in fear. Here's some free advice.

You don't need to tide for it. I think I can say that.

OK, hear me out on this. OK.

If you want to be less fearful, turn off CNN.

Turn off Fox News. I did.

It's wonderful if something happens.

People text you. They really do.

You always have those friends. They'll text you Okay.

We had a hurricane and an earthquake in the same day in

Socal. A Hurricwake night before.

People like the Hurricanes coming.

I'm like, great. I don't know what to do, so I'm

just going to keep doing what I'm doing.

It's fantastic. You see, I used to be frustrated

all the time because I watch the news too much.

Okay, I turned off the news. I'm not frustrated anymore.

Now I watch Unsolved Mysteries and I'm scared all the time.

So I'm just telling you that my parents exhibited that same kind

of fear because we naturally fear what we don't understand,

what we can't control. But the opposite of fear is not

courage. Fear necessitates leadership.

That's why we always have leadership.

The opposite of fear is empathy, leaning in because we follow the

one that it has all power and knows everything, and that

enables us to engage any situation.

So the first thing we got to do never allow the fear from some

people to determine the value of many people.

I got to go through this real quick.

The second thing, here's what I'm telling you to do.

Think deeper about people, not differently about theology.

I'm not telling you that you need to change your orthodox

beliefs on marriage, intimacy, relationships.

Okay. I'm telling you that if you have

a biblical, grounded, orthodox view on that, keep your view on

the historic judeo-christian marriage.

But I'm telling you, think deeper about people because

nobody is shallow. Everybody is deep, and everybody

is a conglomeration of their hopes and their dreams and

everything else and their failures and their pains and

their upbringing. And so eventually my parents let

me back in. Then I went to Bible College in

southern Missouri, the Mecca of Christianity.

Joplin, MO. Anybody ever been there before?

Yeah. Don't.

If you haven't, don't go for very long.

You know how most family trees branch out down there?

It's just one straight line. It just goes up like that.

And I preached at this one church when I was in Bible

college for 18 months. We were the largest church

statistically, the largest church per capita in the world

at that time. 50 people in the town, 25 of them went to our

church. Boom.

Largest church in the world per capita at that time.

And for 18 months I preached there the Sunday before my last

Sunday, which I didn't know I was going to have a last Sunday.

But the Sunday before my last Sunday, I brought my mom to

church and she like, you know, thought the worship was awful.

And it it was and somebody like, no, it was beautiful to God.

I'm not talking from his perspective.

I'm sure it was great for him, not for me, not for you either

kid with us. Not right.

No. But it's honest.

Okay. And so the next Sunday, she

didn't show up. But there were two elders

waiting for me on the doorstep and they said, hey, Caleb, we

need to talk to you before you preach.

If you want to keep preaching here, don't you ever bring

somebody like your mother again. We don't like those people.

And I said, well, I I think funny thing is, I don't like you

now. So I quit.

Like, right now I quit. Like you can't quit.

You got to preach. I said, oh, you don't want that.

You really don't? No.

We need a sermon. And so, like, there's a song

when I was growing up by Bon Jovi is pretty popular Blaze of

Glory that if you're going to go out, you know I'd written a

sermon on fasting. Who cares about it, Ripped it up

and threw it away. And I got up there and I

preached the sermon on grace and truth.

And I walked out and I said, God, if you ever allow me to be

in the church, I want to be in the church filled with messy,

broken people, People who are following Jesus, people who

aren't. People who have been in

addictions, people have been divorced something times married

something times. People who are their life were

falling apart. People who are wealthy.

People have no money, people are in gangs, people are in this and

that. People who just don't know what

they're going to do with their life because people that is what

the church is it. It's a beautiful mosaic that God

is united together a broken lives, a glorify him.

You see, I do not believe for a second that Jesus came and died

for a place masquerading as a church.

But it's really a fair sea factory.

And there's a reason why some lamp stands are removed.

And so the last principle that I want you to understand of how we

live out this idea that graces for everyone, that includes

anyone, is this. Acceptance is commanded, but

agreement is optional. You are commanded by God to

accept people. You are not commanded to agree.

Some of you're like, what do you mean by accept, Caleb?

I mean that you love somebody for who they are and where they

are in the moment, no matter what.

But that does not mean you agree with every decision they've

made, their relationships, where they work, their political

views, their opinions. You don't have to agree.

You do have to love them. And if you're not a Christian, I

don't know if this is in the script or not.

Clayton, let's find out. This might be a good reason not

to be a Christian, because when you follow Jesus, you give up

your rights to be indifferent. You give up your rights to be

bitter and unforgiving. You give up your rights to treat

people poorly. You don't get those rights when

you follow Jesus. There's a big difference between

acceptance and agreement, acceptance and affirmation,

acceptance and approval. And so I moved to Southern

California in 1999, back when it was popular to do so and got

married like my wife. She's a lucky lady, I told her.

I said, do you ever know God would bless you so much?

I mean, in your wildest imagination, did you ever know

to your knight in shining armor look like a cross between Grew

Uncle Pester and Doctor Evil? Here, I said, this is your eye

candy you wake up to every morning, she looks at me and she

goes, yay, that you better hope nothing happens to me, because

husband #2 is not going to look like this.

You can tell a lot of our relationship is built on

laughter here. And so we moved to Dallas, TX

for 3 1/2 years because everybody's got to live in

purgatory at some .0. It was awful.

Jerry Jones is there and it's extremely humid, and people

think the Cowboys are still America's team.

And it's like, look, I love living in the 90s as well, but

we got to let go, right? Hey, Jimmie Johnson is gone

anyway. You, you live in your world.

You live in your matrix. That's fine.

Your fairy tale. I'm happy for you, Cowboys fans.

You're so precious. All of you.

You're so precious. And so I moved back to Southern

California eventually. I was after 3 1/2 years.

And while I lived in Dallas, TX, both of my parents, they moved

down there to be closer to our family.

My mother's partner had died. They moved down there.

Then they said, can we start attending your church?

And I said my church that I'm the senior pastor of.

And they're like, yeah, I said, you know what?

I preach about relationships. They're like, yeah, I said come

on over. And two weeks before we left to

move back to Southern California.

Two or three before we left, my parents at the ages of 6/9/70

gave their lives to Jesus Christ.

And it wasn't me, it was the church.

And the church knew what they about my parents and they

disagreed with him, but they treated them well.

And because the church treated them well and they treated them

like humans and not like projects, my parents became

Christians. And then in the last year, both

my parents have gone to be with the Lord.

And I just think every time I hear a worship song, they are

standing before the throne of the Lamb and they're

worshipping. Just like it matters what you

believe, it also matters how you treat people.

Never give up on grace, And even when grace feels messy, you just

got to know God provides the opportunity for you.

To have a life altering conversation, the difficult

conversation and grace and truth sometimes, but you've always got

to have grace there and that's what it means to love people and

messy grace and right now we're going to move into a time of

decision. All he's good.

And this is a special moment because I get the opportunity to

have this moment, which I don't get to do very often, with all

of our different locations. And what I want to do is we're

getting ready to close out the services.

I want to remind you that God is not just a God for messy other

people. He's a God for messy people like

you. Every single one of you, you

have your mess that you bring to the table.

And our God, He doesn't compromise on the truth, and he

also doesn't compromise on how he loves us.

What I want to remind you is that the gospel is still good

news. That it is the kind of news that

reaches out to messed up centers just like you and me.

And it shows us a way forward. It shows us a way out.

It shows us a better way. And deep down to the core of our

being, we believe that God's way is the best way.

And that's why we have good news, and it's why we have a

better way to live and love in our world.

And there are some of you today who you have never trusted God's

better way. You've never said, I want to

make Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior of my life.

You've never said I want to start an intimate, personal

relationship with him. And for those of you who've been

coming around the crossing for a while, you've heard me talk

about this. But every single week at all of

our different locations, there are people who are joining us

for the very first time. And so would you give me just a

moment to talk to them? My story is this, that the

single greatest decision that I ever made.

Was making Jesus Christ the Lord and savior of my life.

And I know what you might be thinking.

Well, yeah, Clayton, you're the preacher.

And I'm sure Caleb would agree with me.

But I want you to know is I'm not the only one that that's my

story. In fact, my story is similar to

so many stories in the room that you are in right now.

In fact, I'll prove it to you crossing family.

If the single greatest decision that you ever made is making

Jesus Christ the Lord and Savior of your life, would you put your

hand up? See, I promised you I wasn't

lying. His Grace is not just good for

me, it's good for you too. I got to tell you a second

thing. Not only is it the single

greatest decision that I have ever made, my single biggest

regret is that I didn't do it sooner.

Crossing family. If that's your story too, would

you testify? You're thinking, man, I got to

get my life together 1st and then I can start my relationship

with Jesus. No.

If you could save yourself, God wouldn't have sent Jesus.

If you could turn it around, he wouldn't have died on the cross.

If you could fix you, you wouldn't need fixing.

He mentioned the verse in his sermon that while we were still

sinners, Christ died for us. His love is not available to you

once you get it all figured out. His love is not available to you

after you say the right things and believe the right things.

His love is working on your behalf right now, and I think

the reason why he has you here is so you can start that

relationship today. And so at all of our different

locations, in just a moment, the people around you are going to

stand and sing and the band's going to start leading us and

worship. And some people are going to

come up to the steps and they're going to get down and pray.

But if you're here today and you're going, you know what?

I need to turn some stuff over to God.

I need to start the relationship that I desperately been longing

for, that I was destined for. You can make your way to the

right side or the left side of the stage, and there's a

baptistry. And there will be somebody on

staff who would love the opportunity to talk with you to

the rest of you in the room, specifically the Christians.

Here's what I'm going to ask you to do.

Would you join me in spending a little bit of time at the steps,

praying? That not only would we do a

better job of knowing our scriptures so we know what God's

best way is, but that he would also give us His spirit and His

strength to live that best way and to treat people that best

way. Maybe there's people that you

care about, people that you love, that you desperately want

to have a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Would you pray that God would use you and open up

opportunities and doors for you to have those conversations?

Maybe you're the kind of person who wants to see your workplace,

your school, your environment, your family changed that.

God would use His Holy Spirit to transform you in such a way

where you live in a way that draws them closer to Jesus.

Because one of the best testimonies that you can ever

give somebody is a transformed life right in front of them.

And what if God wants to use you?

Would you guys stand with me, Heavenly Father?

I'm believing that you're going to do big things in this church

this weekend. That there are people who are

going to drop off things that they've carried for way too

long. That people are going to pick up

the call to be the people you have called them to be.

That they're going to live the life that you destined for them

to be. But, God, we know that we can't

do this life and do the things that you've called us to.

On our own power and on our own strength.

We're going to need your Holy Spirit.

And so God, bring about a transformation in us.

In your name, I pray. Amen.