Walking In Sonship!

You are listening to the Cross Kingdome Sermon of the Week.

We hope you enjoy this message from Justin Carpenter. Good morning, guys.

I get my little table set up here. I just

want to say, it's such a blessing to be a

part of this community. It's great to see people who

are honest and real and go through hard things and

are not afraid to talk about them. I'm just tired

of doing the normal, you know, go to church and

everybody says they're fine, and you sing a couple songs

and you sit down and then you go home. So

I just want to start off by saying thank you.

It's such a blessing to be a part of this

community and to know y'all. This morning Palm Sunday, and

we know the story. Like set the scene right, Jesus

is expecting to come in Jerusalem and he his disciples

go out and grab a donkey. He gets on it.

He rides into town and everybody's putting these palm branches

down in there saying Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosannah. Messiah. Well, that

word means savior. That's what we think, that's what we

know what to mean. But it also means liberator. So

they saw him coming into town, expecting him longingly so

for him to be the king and to solve their

worldly oppression. And as Jesus wrote it in he was weeping.

He's weeping because they missed it. You know, the tenth

and the Son is the day that the Jewish people

pick out the lamb for sacrifice for the Passover, and

Jesus is coming in. They missed it. So I started

asking myself, what how they missed this? And it's so

easy for us on this side of the cross. It's

so easy to pick up this book and we can

read every minute of what happened. Then we know the story.

But those people were walking it out minutes a minute.

So I have a little compassion for them because they

were coming out of four hundred years where God wasn't

saying anything. There was nothing really happening between Malachi, thank you,

I want to say Micah Malachi and John the Baptist,

and so he was silent and the Jews were doing

what they were good at doing, and that is following

the rules. And it's funny because they missed it. Again,

because we know the truth of the ten Commandments. It

was set in place to show us that we can't

do it. But the Jews were over this time. They

started becoming good at doing rules. They started getting puffed

up and proud because they fact they added more rules.

I don't know how many were how many you probably

know how many rules are end up being six hundred

and thirteen rules. So I was asking myself, why we'll

have a good analogy. So let's say I am Justine's

gonna love this one. Let's say I am an expert

at Justin Carpenter. I know everything here is to know

about Justin Carpenter. I know when he was born. I

know what his first words were, I know his dimensions.

Should I say the number that I think it is?

No?

Five? Six? Maybe so? But I don't know Justin. I

just know of him. And so I'm the expert at

Justin Carpenter. I'm such an expert that I become a

professor of Justin Carpenter at Harvard. And people come and

they say like, hey, we want to know more about

Justin Carpenter. And they come to me and I'm like, well,

I know everything about Justin I can tell you so.

So naturally that's going to cause you to have pride.

It's really easy this slide into pride there. Now, let's

say me and Justin are good friends. We're really good friends.

We know each other well, and I know stuff about

Justin because we're friends. I have a relationship with him.

I know, I know how tall he is, but I

know you know what are his hurts are. So all

of a sudden, when you mix in relationship to this,

it changes the whole dynamic because pride doesn't really fit there.

I fit when I didn't know him, and I'm a professor,

but all of a sudd when I have a relationship,

it doesn't anymore. We're just friends. So the idea of

a relationship is so intertwined with humility. It's really hard

to have that relationship at pride at the same time,

and the Pharisees knew a lot about God, but they

didn't have that relationship. And thank the Lord, we are

on this side of the cross and we know all

the words in here and we know what happened. Plus

with that we get the Holy Spirit, so we have

kind of a less of an excuse. But I just

want to pray with ust, dear Lord. I just thank you.

I thank you for your desire for relationship with us.

And I'm up here this morning, Lord, I pray that

no words come out of my mouth that aren't what

you are trying to say. Then nothing about my flesh

gets in the way of this. I thank you for

your son, and I thank you for your desire for relationship,

and we don't want to miss it, Lord name, I

pray man. So a lot of times when Sarah and

I are having discussed conversations, we I have a bad

habit of being like, oh, well, there's two things about that,

or there's there's four points, and it drives me crazy

because it's it's like, I don't know. I say it

with such confidence, like there's only these couple of things

that fit. But I'm going to use that again. So

I'm going to use four points here. Sorry, switty. So,

as I'm digging a little bit deeper into this this

week and looking at this, this issue with pride versus humility,

this issue between a relationship or not having a relationship,

I start thinking of four types of people. So you

have the first type of person who says, there's no God,

they're a human this big on a huge planet, in

a vast uncomprehendible universe, and they're so confident they have

the pride to say there is no God. Now I understand,

like I understand being what's it called when you thanks man,

you are helping me out. I understand being agnostic more

because at least you're saying you don't know, but to

be so confident to say there's not one. And then

there's the second person. And this is the person that

gets to heaven and says, Lord Lord, didn't we prophesy

in your name? Didn't we cast out demons in your name?

Didn't I do this? Didn't we do that? And God says,

depart from me? For I never knew you, you workers

of lawlessness, m And I just have this big fear

that you know. I just have this big fear that,

oh is that me? You know? It says to work

out your faith and fear and trembling. And I was

so worried about that. And but then I started thinking,

ask yourself, this, run this scenario through your head. You

are in the presence of God in heaven and you're

talking about yourself. Wheneber I thought about it that way,

I can't imagine. I can't imagine uttering anything about myself

in this presence, So that took a lot of weight off,

but the amount of pride that you that they would

have to have in that situation to talk about themselves

instead of just being on their face in the presence

of God. And the third person. The third person is

the person who knows that they're a sinner and they

know they need a savior, but there's never been like

this radical move of God in their life that changed

them forever. It's almost like they have like Holy Spirit light.

And I can say this was such confidence because for

a majority of my Christian walk, that is who I was.

And as much as it hurts me and pains me

to say it, I think there's a lot of churches

that that's that's where they are in their heart. Chuck

Undall has a great quote that says, I've never met

anybody who is growing in the relationship with God that

didn't go through a hard time. And so many times

God uses those difficult seasons to say here I am son,

and I look back on my difficult seasons with such

joy because that's when God was like, my heart wasn't

a place where he could find me, where he could

come in and as a father. So years ago, Sarah

and I were going through marriage stuff and we were

going to counselors, and I was a Christian, but there

was I would watch other people and I would think, Man,

you know they have this relationship. They're singing these songs

and weeping to about this relationship they have, and I

just didn't feel it. I knew the truth. I was saved,

but there was like this missing something. And so for

during this time, this season of going through all the stuff,

Sarah and the kids would leave for school and I

would be in the living room and I would get

on my face and I would pray, Lord, if you're

my father, I need you to show up. Yeah, this

is all real, Lord, I'm tired of doing it this way.

And I imagine it like this. God was waiting for

my heart to get out of a place of humbleness,

and he was standing over the top of me, and

he was saying, son, you're almost there, almost there, almost there.

And then my heart gets to a place where he

can water it. And then it gets to a place

where he's like, now I can work with this. And

that allows you to all of a sudden realize the

words of these songs are true. I can sing them

now from a place. Yes, you didn't want heaven and

without us, So Jesus you brought heaven down. My sin

was great, but your love is greater. What could separate us?

Now it becomes real, all these words. Man, I'm no

longer a slave to fear. I'm a child of God.

You split the sea so I could walk right through.

My fears were drowned in perfect love. Those words became

real to me. There's like a God works through the humble.

He partners with the humble. He shows the humble what

the direction he's heading. That pride, That pride's a wall,

it says, he despises it. And maybe, deep down, if

I'm honest with myself growing up, I'm a middle class

white guy who's only been to jail one time, and

I thought it was pretty good. Right now's this question

for service? How many has been how many people have

been to jail more than once? That's why this church

is awesome. And I say that because it was so

easy for me. I mean, I wouldn't admitted this to myself,

but it's so easy to me to be kind of like, oh, well,

you know, it wasn't that bad. There's this there was

something that was keeping me from true connection and humility.

And that's what I love about the mercy get girl,

and what I love about the product of road. Guys.

Don't hear me out because so many of y'all. When

y'all get saved, it's a radical change. It is like,

it is like this is what I was and this

is who I am now with my father, where I

was just weep like winding along pretending like I was

kind of good. And it took me that that that

ten days on the floor walking through hard marriage stuff

where God found me. I was saved before, but that's

when my relationship started, you know what I'm saying. So

there's this great book called Beholding. Who's read it? Anybody?

It's good, right, I could just I could just read

this whole thing and we could be done. Oh man,

did I lose the page? Now? I think I did.

Start over. I'm gonna find it because it's good dude,

here we go, got it. So you have this, like

when you're this third person that I've been talking about,

you have this understanding of this gospel as being transactional,

not relational. And so let me describe it that, let

me read it out. So how do we move from

a transactional to a familiar gospel? What it starts with

what we believe the purpose of Christ's incarnation, death, and

resurrection really was. Many of us have been taught or

awfully subtly believe that the main purpose for Christ's death

and resurrection was forgiveness. We could call this the transactional gospel.

We have a debt to pay God's and his son

to pay it for us. In this gospel, our relationship

with God is about keeping the sin balance sheet at

zero through repentance, prayers for others to repent, and thanking

God for forgiving us when we do. Here we see

Christ on the cross suffering for a sin so we

wouldn't need to go to Hell anymore, and our lives

are about utilizing the sacrifice to clear the slate every

time we sin. It's a sin focused gospel. Now. I

want to be careful here, because, of course, the scriptures

do tell us that Jesus died for our sins, and

hallelujah for that, but they're also clear that this wasn't

the main reason he came. Just as while I was

working for my dad, you could be right in calling

me his employee, but would be more right in calling

me his son. We're right in saying that Jesus dealt

with our sin through the Cross, but that this isn't

the greater truth of the matter either. It wasn't his

ultimate goal. His ultimate goal was that he would make

himself radically available to us for closeness, closeness once more,

or in the New Testament language, Christ came for reconciliation

as reading as we read in Second Corinthians, forgiveness wasn't

Christ's ultimate goal on the cross. Reconciliation was. And there's

an important difference. Reconciliation literally means the restoration of friendship.

Let that seek in for a minute. And I don't

even know if the disciples even realize this at times,

because they were even walking next to Christ, they were

jocking for position. And one of my favorite things I

think about that makes me tear up is Peter. Something

happens after the death. All of a sudden, Peter goes

from that third person we've been talking about to the

fourth person, because right before his death, he's standing there

and he denies Jesus three times. I don't know that guy,

and However, many months of years later, when he was crucified,

he has to be crucified upside down because he didn't

want to be crucified the same way. There's the Lord

Jesus right side up. He did not feel worthy, so

in the moment of his death, he was like, I

can't do it the same way. So all of a

sudden he's taught he's in before when they're jocking for position,

there's this pride involved, and all of a sudden something

happens after the Cross Holy Spirit relationship comes in and

he refuses to be crucified right side up. Man, that's awesome.

Where are they at? There's this moment when relationship becomes real.

I'm gonna keep on saying this during this message. As

the relationship becomes more and more real, pride has less

and less space. And I do want to say, you know,

I don't want to sit up here as like Sean Kendrick,

mister Elder, like I got it all figured out. I

mean that y'all that are close to me know that's

not true. But I was using the example in first

service a couple of weeks ago. This happens every once

in a while. I'll get done playing guitar and I'll

hop off stage and the first thing they'll go through

my mind is I wonder, who's gonna tell me I

did a good job. But just be honest, right, those

things go through your mind, and the second it does

a lot of times, I'm like, oh, Lord, forgive me

such an idiot. And what's funny, though, is it's different

because I'm gonna send I'm still dragging this flesh around.

Last Sunday when Justin was talking, I told him this already,

so it's not news to him. But he was like

talking a little long, and I've been here for two services,

and I was sitting right there in the front, pew pew,

and I was thinking, oh, quit saying so many words.

I literally thought that, and then I started laughing. I

was like, oh Lord, I'm sorry. But the difference is

now I can I can run to him instead of

away from him. Whatever it is. I can code to

him and say he knows already, but I go, Lord,

I'm so sorry. One. I don't want to lose I

don't want to drift away from the relationship we have.

But more so than that, because we have relationship, I

can say those things.

To him right.

So now, so now that we're talking about all this stuff,

I want to read this verse Romans eight thirty eight.

Stuff is so good, okay, For I'm persuaded that neither

death nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present,

nor things to come, nor any power nor anything else

that is created, we'll be able to separate us from

the love of God in Christ, Jesus our Lord Man.

And sometimes we just read that and it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

nothing can. So as this relationship grows and pride gets

pushed out and humility gets brought in, and they just

grow and grow and grow together. It's less of you

and more of him. And the more you look at him,

the less you're worrying about your what you're good at

and what you're not and who knows it? Luke six.

Humility allows you to love. If you love those who

love you, what credit is it that to you? Even

sinners love those who love them. And if you good,

do good to those who are good to you, What

credit is that to you? Even sinners do that. We

cannot love out of a position of pride. We just can't.

We can pretend like we do. We can pat each

other on the back in here and pray for each other.

And oh yeah, brother, let me know. God partners with

and works through the humble Proverbs nineteen one. Humility allows

you to overcome offense. Good sense makes one slow to anger,

and it is in his glory to overlook an offense.

And so here's a hard thing. Guys. If you get

offended easy, maybe you're thinking about yourself too much. Oh

I'm sorry, mercy gay, Hey, mercy gay girls. If you

all get offended when right, Oh I can't the one

house that's crazy. One more little thing. People say that

hurting people hurt people, and there's truth in that, but

just as much so, prideful people hurt people. You walk

in the humility. Of course, our perfect example of walking

humility is Jesus. It's really hard to hurt somebody out

of a mission of humility because a lot of times

it's not about correction. The person is not trying to

If you're in a position of humility, you're not trying

to correct somebody. Your heart is broken that they're missing something.

And if someone comes to you and says something to

you that's offensive, if it hurts your flesh, because maybe

you're carrying too much flesh. So in mark Man, I

didn't put them on. Here we go. Oh, I'm sorry, Matthew,

Matthew five. I think it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sermon

on the Mountain. So this is like the beginning of

Jesus ministry. And he's goes in front of the crowd

and he opened up his mouth and taught them, saying,

these are the beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for thursdays the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,

for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, or

they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger

and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. And

it's interesting because it's easy to think of those people

as like the lowly people in the community that are like,

you know, on the streets or the beggars and stuff.

He's talking with those people, but this person could be wealthy.

It could be elon musk And so let me kind

of explain what I mean. Blessed are the poor in spirit,

for the for Thirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Poor

and spirit means it's the humble recognition of one's spiritual

need and dependence, a humility that you can't do it yourself.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted mourning.

I just imagine being like Lord. I can't do this myself.

I'm broken. Well, he had this, these ten commandments, and

I can't do them. Blessed are the meek, for they

shall inherit the earth. The definition of meek is enduring

injury with patience and without resentment. Tell me that's not

the definition of humility. Blessed are those who hunger and

thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. And hunger

and thirst is a deep and urgent desire for more

uprightness and a right relationship with God. That tit for

tat of pursuing relationship. Less of my flesh, less pride,

more humility. And then to book in his ministry at

the end of Matthew is when he's talking to the

Pharisees twenty three seven woes to describes and Pharisees. Then

Jesus said, to the crowds and to the disciples, describes

and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, So do so,

do and observe whatever they tell you, meaning like in

my mind, that means these guys know the rules, they

know the books, they know. They can recite stuff, but

not the works they do. For they preach, but they

do not practice. They tie up heavy burdens hard to

bear and lay them out on people's shoulders, but they

themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

That pride has built up so much in their lives

that they can't have relationship. They've chosen it over relationship.

It's a better way to say it. They do all

the deeds to be seen by others, for they make

their what's that? How to say that word earlier? How

do you say it? The class stories abroad and their

friends is long, and they love the place of honor

at feasts, in the best seats in the synagogues, and

greetings and marketplaces on thirteen. But woe to use scribes

and pharisees hypocrits, for you shut the kingdom of heaven

and people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves, nor allow

those who would enter to go in. Woe to use

scribes and fairies, these hypocrites. For you travel across sea

and land and make a single proselyte, and when he

comes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a

child as hell as you are yourselves. God despises pride

these guys. Some of them might have the best of intentions.

I don't know. Paul, he had the best of intentions.

And then at and he was doing doing, doing, reading,

the reading the law, and he thought he was doing

the right thing. And then all of a sudden he

had a massive encounter with God. And he went from

a man who was doing doing doing to him and

who would have died for his religion, to a man

who would have died for the people that probably just

got stripped away. Man, it's so awesome. It hurts my

heart that that there's churches and people that just miss it.

You know, the years past, I played at a lot

of bars playing music and stuff, and those people are

open to hearing truth. You can sit at a barstool

with the guy and he'll talk back and forth to

you about this book. But unfortunately the experience he's had

with Christians are negative. Jesus God, it hurts God's heart

to see people suffering, wars, children in need. But what

really makes him mad is when the pharisees or the

body gets in the way of someone coming to him. Oh, man,

it agrees with my heart. These people, these churches, this

relationship that's available. So I want to end at guys

with telling A good friend of mine was telling me

this story. It was a dream that he had and man,

it's awesome. So he was kind of living in a

place like that third person I'm talking about. He was Christian,

he was saved, but he had he had this spiritual father,

this mentor that was that was that this guy looked

up to and desired to be. But he was kind

of walking this fence of living in the world and

going to church and he knew the truth. But he's like, God,

I don't he didn't, I don't feel anything that kind

of like the Holy spirit light I was talking about earlier,

hasn't been this radical change. So he has this dream

and he's sitting over there with God and there's these

two houses, two big houses. One of the house's light

is just shooting out of the windows all directions, and

he said, God, whose house is that? And he said, Oh,

that's your that's your spiritual father's house. He's like, oh, yeah,

that makes sense. God loves you. And then he looks

over this other big house and there's light coming out

of it, but it's only coming. It's like an old

school front door with a little window where you can

like peep through to see who was there. That was

open and light was coming out of that, but the

rest of the house was dark. And he said, Lord,

whose house is that? And he knew the answer, and

the Lord said, well, that's your son here, so let's

go inside. So they go inside and the living room

is lit up. In his life. He had accepted Jesus

into the living room. He's like, I know I need you.

You're welcome here. And as they were walking around, God

slowly starts going up the stairs holding my friend's hand,

and my friend knows upstairs is a room. The door

is nailed shut, and that door is filled with everything.

Every hurt that he has from his youth, every sinful

thing that he's done, everything that he's ashamed of, is

in this room. And this guy has nailed it shut.

The door is nailed. He wants to pretend like it's

doesn't exist. So they're walking up the stairs. Jesus God's

holding his hand and he's getting nervous and nervous and nervous,

and he just walks by the door and he feels

so much shame and guilt when he passes that door. Well,

then immediately it flashes day two. They're like, immediately flashes

back downstairs and they're standing there in the living room

and God says, well, let's go upstairs. So they walk upstairs.

This time, my friend it gets to the door, he

slows down a little bit and he keeps walking, but

he keeps walking. God doesn't say anything. Flashes to day

three downstairs. Got the story story is so good. So

so day three they're going up this and this time

he stops at the door terrified, and God puts his

hand on the back of my friend and says, not

until you're ready. And then day four, bottom of the

stairs starts walking up the stairs, and my friend this

time is feeling more confident. He's walking with God. He

has he's He's like, okay, I can do this, I

can do this. Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna do it.

And he gets up to the top of the stairs.

This door's nailed shut right. My friend puts his hand

on it and it won't open. And God said it's okay, son,

It'll open for me. And the door flies open, and

all the junk that's in there, all the shame, all

the guilt, all the things that were done to him

and that he had done, we're blown out of the room.

And God says, now let's redecorate. That is the relationship.

That is what he wants with us. It's not just this.

Come in and sing a couple of songs and know

that you're God and I'm not man. We have an

opportunity for so much more, so much more. And when

that reality sets in. I'm not saying you feel it

all the time. I'm not saying this there's this emotional

high that lasts a lifetime. I'm saying there's a truth

that gets set in your life that, whether you feel

it or not, you know it's true. And so the

Pharisees and so many people Old Testament missed what he

was doing because I knew a lot about him, but

they didn't have that moment where they allowed God to

come in and change everything. So searts your hearts. I mean,

there's no I mean, if you're not saved and you

want to be come up and get prayer. There's great

people here. No one here is gonna judge you if

you're in a place where you're like God, I know

you're real, but I just I don't feel it. I

feel like I have a holy spirit light. I feel

like this is too hard. I feel like my flesh

has too much control over my life. Right now. I'd

hear about this relationship thing like you want to walk

with me, but I don't experience that. Come up and

get prayed. I want to be the Christian that refuses

to be crucified right side up. I want to be

the Christian that knows my Father more and more every

single day, and there's less in my own flesh that

I drag around and every little silly thought that pops

in my mind, like if I hop off the stage

and people ask if I wondering, who's gonna say I

sound good? Thanks?

Oh man?

That stuff I just wanted to be stripped away. And

I want that for y'all to I want that for

our whole church. I want that for the Christian community

in this town. We don't play around anymore where We're

not known to be hypocrites in the community, but we're

no is people who walk in humility. So if we

got some people, come up and pray. If you're in

need of anything, if you're in need of healing, if

you're in need of prayer over your family, if you're

in need of you name it, please come up and

get prayer. That's what this is. This is that's what

we meet in this building for. So come on up.

Thank you so much, guys for listening to me. Thank

you for listening. For more messages and other resources, please

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