The Gospel of The Kingdom

I will, I will alleviate that issue. So Marko, if you want

to come up, you all put your hands together for him. We're gonna

pray over you. They're probably tired of hearing me, so it's okay.

So Father, I thank you for my friend. Lord, I thank you

for the message you've put on his heart, and I just say you have

full freedom and authority in this house to minister as the Lord moves on you

this morning. And Father, we just thank you in advance for the word,

and we just thank you for this amazing couple and what you're doing through

them and through their tribe. Lord and Jesus Mighty name and men come up

justin. Can I borro that Mark for one second? I just want to

Catherine has a word that should like to share. Hi everyone, So good

morning. So he calls me Catherine, but I go by Cats so anyway,

it gets confusing. So it was just such a blessing just worshiping with

all of you. There's so much freedom in this house, so much joy

that it's just really blessed my heart. So thank you so much. You're

so friendly, and you know it's really like a family. So well done

to you, guys. For you know, just being a light for the

kingdom. So I just wanted to read from Psalm one hundred and twenty one.

So I hope that this speaks to some of you. It says,

I lift my eyes to the hills. From where does my hope come from?

My hope comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. He will

not let your foot be moved. He who keeps you will not slumber.

Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is

your keeper. The Lord is your shade on your right hand. The sun

shall not strike you by day, nor then moon by. The Lord will

keep you from all evil. He will keep your life. The Lord will

keep your going out, And you're coming in from this time forth and forever

more. And so we have a faithful Father who is always looking out for

us. And I was just thinking from that. I don't know the beautiful

lady that was singing, she's shared that Alice. She shared that song reminded

her of a time in her life and just the guilt that we can often

feel. And so I just thought of from Psalm one hundred and twenty one,

is where is the first place you look when you're in trouble or don't

know what to do, do you look to friends, family, or the

medical profession. There's nothing wrong in looking for help in all these directions.

But the first place the psalmist looks is upwards. So regret looks back,

and fear looks around, and worry looks in, but faith looks up.

Amen and yeah, amen. So the encouragement is that when we look back,

that keeps us in guilt and shape. But once Jesus has forgiven us,

it's done, so we can look forward. And so that's the encouragement

that I had for you. I don't need that, amen. It's always

good when Catherine starts for me, because she's the rose and I'm the thorn,

and so yeah, so she at least settles you down a little bit,

and you guys won't be so mean with me and angry towards me and

all of that stuff. So thank you Love for breaking us. I am

an introvert, believe it or not. I've told justin this many times.

I'm highly introverted, which actually makes sense, right considering I'm a preacher who

you see you just ask me how this is working out for me. It's

not the greatest job position that the Lord called me into, but he did,

and it's a privilege, as Kat said, for us to be a

You guys really are a beautiful house, and I was just I just want

to honor Justin and Lissa and the rest of your team. You guys are

amazing. I mean, honestly, the joy of the Lord is here.

The freedom of the Lord is here, and the Word of God tells us

that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and so

there is freedom in this place. It's tangible. And so I just want

to honor you for what you're doing. I mean, you guys are making

an incredible impact, I'm sure in this city. I know Justin has made

an incredible impact on me, especially with all of his dad jokes. So

I'm glad that those are out of the way for the morning, because hours

beginning to twitch. Where's Justin? You see I start preaching and he leaves.

That's what he does. That's that's great, Thanks Justin. Okay,

Ah, there is up there. Okay, you see looking at me from

above. I like it. You keep being on me. That's good,

that's good. I could see you now, Catherine and I you know,

normally people don't introduce us as well as Justin did. I normally try and

trick everyone and tell them that I'm from Amarillo and they're like, you don't

really sound like you're from Amarillo, And I said, well, what do

you mean? You know I've got a deep South accent, and then I

say, yes, South Africa. It is a dad joke. Justin's rubbing

off of me, so you know, I've got to stop there. In

twenty fifteen, the Lord called us from South Africa. Oh my gosh,

he's sitting at the apostle's feet. I love it. Justin the Bible says

you need to throw your gifts at the apostles feed, not just sit.

Anyway, It's fine. I don't even know if we're actually going to preach

today, but anyway, I said, you guys, I'm going to bring

some of you to Austin, Texas seriously, like you guys are fun.

I love it. You guys are fun anyway. In twenty fifteen, the

Lord called Catherine myself. We have three beautiful children. Unless you're Dean on

Arabella. Unless you're seventeen. Dean's turning fifteen tomorrow, and Arabella is nine

years old, that he called us all year to come and plant to church.

All we knew was that God was calling us to Texas, and in

particular to Austin. We had no idea where or when, but suffice it

to say five years later we have had the privilege of leading a local church

there for four years now. We've got an amazing team. God has done

miracles and wonders. He's even given us our US citizenship, so that's amazing.

We've got it a few weeks ago, and so God is good.

And I just do I want to honor those that sent us because they're an

amazing group of people, and I want to honor this house for having us.

It's never an easy thing for me, or something that I take lightly

to preach in somebody else's church, because I suppose I should take it lightly

because I get to leave and then he gets to clean it up. Right.

I often have to do that for other people. I'm just kidding.

We don't have to. But I don't take it lightly. And I really

do pray, and have been praying this week, that I would leave a

deposit here that God wants me to leave. We always want to leave with

something left behind. We don't want to take a withdrawal, and so far

this morning, I feel like we've received more than we've given, and so

I'm hoping that we can make up for some of that and bless you guys

too. And so when Justin asked me to come and preach, I had

been trusting for a word in season for this church. And the challenge with

trusting the word, trusting in the Lord for a word, is that sometimes

the Lord changes things up right. And so this entire week I've been preparing

and planning and getting everything ready for today up until yesterday at five pm,

Yes dat five pm, I was going through my notes again and the Lord

was like, I think we're going to go in a little bit of a

different direction, and so pray for me and maybe pray for all of us.

Then we can get through this and hopefully it makes sense. This is

not a new preach. It is something that is on my heart, something

that has been stirring for some time, and something that I've preached in some

senses before. If you're wondering what I want to preach on this morning,

I want to preach on something that you mentioned earlier today, Justin, and

that is the gospel. I want to talk about the Gospel of the Lord

Jesus Christ. Now they might be thinking, but hang on, isn't the

gospel Christianity? One oh one? I mean, isn't it like the ABC's

of Christianity? Isn't that what we tell lost people? Isn't that what we

do when we first come to our faith? And all of us here,

I would imagine, are relatively mature, and so surely we don't need to

hear this gospel message again. Well, to answer that question, if you

have had it, I know you guys wouldn't because you guys are awesome.

But if you did have that thought in your mind and be like, well,

we know the gospel. I want to tell you a little short story.

A few months ago we had Artie Kendle with us. I don't know

if anyone knows Arty Kendall, but he's a good friend of our church and

we love him dearly. I've had the privilege of having him over every year,

and we've known him for probably about eight or nine years. From South

African days. Anyway, he came to our church and what he said was

that he felt that the next thing on God's calendar for the church was God's

next final great awakening for the church Church, and so he's in his mind

the church is going to experience a new age and a new dawn where we're

going to see God move in ways and in shapes that we've never seen him

move before, preceding the Second Coming of Jesus. Now, I tend to

agree with Artie. I do think that what we are starting to see is

a stirring in the hearts of the church. God is bringing his church back

to justin. I never asked you how long I have to preach? How

long do I have? Like hours, days, weeks, foot, No,

that's okay, let me start two hours. Okay, great, Sorry,

guys, let me just start my clock because you know, I don't

want to get into trouble and never be invited back again. Okay, there

we go. So I do think that God is stirring something in all of

our hearts. I don't know if you've experienced it yourselves, we certainly have.

God is almost shaking his church awake, right, He's waking us up

again to the realities of the kingdom. But Artie said something that challenged me

personally, and I think it might challenge all of us this morning. He

said that in his view, many churches across this nation, and many churches

across this wor world, would miss the final Great Awakening altogether. Now,

I want you to think about that just for a second. Can you imagine

a church missing the final Great Awakening? Can you imagine a church missing God's

revival? Now, if we consider that the church is God's plan for this

world, it's what he chose to declare his manifold wisdom to the world,

It's hard to understand how any church, especially not this church or our church,

would ever be able to miss it. And the answer to why somebody

would miss it, I believe lies in the fact that we have moved away

from the centrality of the authentic Gospel message as a result, the Gospel by

Lodge in the Western Church in particular. And I'm not pointing fingers and I'm

not throwing stones, please hear me what I'm saying. I'm mindful that this

is something I have to God my heart about every single day of my life.

But the fact of the matter is the authentic Gospel has been almost left

behind. In the authentic I mean in the Western Church, it's been replaced,

I want to say this morning with a counterfeit gospel, a gospel of

our own making, a gospel that's removed Jesus from this central point that he

is, and has replaced ourselves at the center of everything. It's almost like

we gather on a Sunday morning to worship ourselves in some senses, not this

church. Of course. It's a gospel that has made everything we do about

our comfort, about our convenience. It's a gospel that's made everything about love,

so much love that in fact, it denies the fact that people even

have to believe in Jesus now to make their way into the Kingdom of God.

On the other hand, it's a gospel that is so heavy handed.

And so you have these two extremes. One is hypergrace and the other one

is this heavy handed gospel that forces us to become so religious, so conformist,

so bound by legalistic tendencies, that we miss Christ altogether. Now,

I know you might be thinking, but those are two very broad extreme It

could never happen to any one of us, and I'm sure it will never

happen to any one of us in this room. But here's the deal between

those two extremes. Between hyper grace and legalism is a lot of gray area,

and what you find is that, depending on your lean you might find

that there are certain aspects of those two extremes that we begin to adopt in

our lives, especially as we become more mature as believers. And so this

morning, I want to bring our eyes back to Jesus. I want us

to remember that He is the central one around which the church gathers. He

is the only thing that we need to make much of every time we gather

on a Sunday morning, just as you have done this morning. But He

should only ever be the reason why we gather. He is the reason for

this season, right and that's why I love it. It is Christmas time,

not happy holidays. We had to separate celebrate the birth of Christ,

im manual God with us. And so I want to say to us this

morning that a biblical foundation of the Gospel is critical not just for us to

experience the next greater way, but also for us to go into this world

that God's called us to and to minister to lost people. This might come

as a surprise to you, but I want to say to you that sometimes

we can fall under the sort of impression that the way we evangelize to the

world is by inviting people to church. This is not where we evangelize.

And I want to say that although you might have had some evangelism here and

maybe even some salvations, this is the place we come to be equipped.

Defesian Chapter four tells us that Jesus Christ left us with gifts, apostles,

prophets, teaches, evangelis, and pastors that farfold ministry he gave to the

church. Why so that the church could come to maturity so they could do

the works of the ministry. We come here on a Sunday morning to be

equipped so we can go out there and evangelize the world. It's not good

enough anymore for us to invite people to church. Most of the world doesn't

even understand why they need church. Most people don't understand the fall, they

don't understand redemption, that understand who Jesus is in this whole story. And

so when you say to somebody, come to church, they like, what

is it going to do for me? Worse still, when unbelievers do come

to churches, generally what they get is a motivational speech. I don't want

to do that. This morning, I want to preach the Gospel. I

want to preach from Galatians chapter three, and I want to unpack some truths

and some remind us, remind us for all of us about this glorious message

called the Gospel. Now, I do want to say this to you this

morning, that there is a chance that nobody understands what I'm saying because of

my accent, and so we are going to trust, just like on the

dav Pentecosts, that God will illuminate whatever I'm saying, or better, if

I'm saying anything that's nonsense, that you won't hear it at all. But

I think, honestly that's why people keep coming back to our churches, because

nobody understands what I'm saying anyway, So turns me in your bibles to Galatians

chapter three. We're going to read five verses, and I've got four reminders

about the Gospel for us this morning that I believe are relevant to us today.

I'm going to read the five verses and then we'll unpack them as we

go along. It starts off with this, Paul says, Oh, foolish

Galatians, who has bewitched you. It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ

was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this, Did you

receive the spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are

you so foolish? Having begun by the spirit? Are you now being perfected

by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain? If indeed

it was in vain? Does he who supplies the spirit to you and works

miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

I'd like to pray just for a second, if I can, Father,

I pray with this word today, Lord Lord, I submit myself to

your leading Holy Spirit, do what you want in all of our hearts.

Today, Lord Jesus, may you be lifted up in all that we do.

And I pray that this word would find root in our hearts, and

that it would grow into a tree that can produce greate fruit. Lord,

pro over this house today. A pray an abundant blessing in an abundant harvest.

Lord, not just of influence, but of soul's Lord. As more

and more people come into the Kingdom and they see this great light, I

pray this in Jesus name. Amen. My first sort of truth reminders slash

point for us this morning is the Gospel reminds us that our salvation is only

as a product of the Cross. Think of what Paul says to the Galatians.

He says, oh, foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? It

was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Paul's making

it clear that when he went to Galatia on his minished missions mission in minish,

I can't even speak English myself. On his missionary journey with his buddy

Barnabas, the one thing that he preached to them was Jesus Christ crucified.

He preached that and that alone as the mechanism for their salvation. He echoes

this thought in Corinthians. He says this in First Corinthians, chapter two and

verse one. When I came to you brothers and sisters, announcing the mystery

of God to you, I did not come with brilliance of speech or wisdom.

I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

The reason that Paul's laboring this point is that the Galicians had allowed a group

of people to come into their church that had convinced them of some other truths.

A little bit of context for you about the Book of Galatians. There

was a group of believers called Judah Iszas. They were Jewish Christians that felt

like gentiles were coming to faith too easily. It wasn't, you know,

so simple as Paul had made it out to me. There had to be

more hoops that they needed to jump through. And I can understand why they

would have done that if you had grown up Jewish following Jewish customs, Jewish

law, Jewish tradition, Jewish ceremonies. And now all of a sudden,

gentiles are grafted into the vine and all they need to do is believe in

the finished work of the Cross to become saved. I want also go,

hang on, you know, I've been dealt a short handier or short straw

what. I don't even know how he's sat in Texas, but that thing.

And so this group of people called judah Ass had convinced the Galatian Church

after Paul had left that while the Cross is amazing, and while Jesus is

great, it's a good start for your salvation. But in order for you

to complete what God had started, you now need to follow the set of

rules regulations, in particular the Mosaic law. And so Paul's pretty angry at

this particular point. He's mad. In fact, you can hear it in

his words. He calls them bewitch. It's like they've fallen under some kind

of spell. It's like, what is wrong with you? The gospel that

I presented you was the entirety of the gospel, But now it seems like

you want to add to the gospel. You want to put things on top

of what Jesus did in order to secure your salvation. It's like buying insurance

to say I'm really really really really really saved now. I think we all

do that sometimes, right. It's almost as if the Galatians had lost sight

of what happened to them in the moment that they got saved. I don't

know if you can remember the day you got saved. Can you remember that

moment that experienced an encounter that you had with God? Make no mistake,

it was an encounter. I remember the day I got saved, and I'll

share that with you a little bit. It happened in a small dusty church

in a small dusty town, in a small dusty rehab in the middle of

South Africa. It's actually the place I met my beautiful wife. Amen.

Love there was, I mean, I love you. I was in rehab

for the fourth time, trying to overcome a life of all sorts of craziness,

deception, lies, crime, crack, cocaine, heroin, addiction,

you name it. I was trying to get over it. And I remember

that particular Sunday. We had church three times week in this particular rehab,

but I remember that Sunday as if it was yesterday. We had a visiting

preacher who had come in to preach the gospel. His name was George Green.

And while I don't remember exactly what he said, I do remember the

moment that he spoke about the Cross. I do remember the moment he spoke

about Jesus. I remember when he said that two thousand years ago, the

God Man Jesus Christ, came to this earth so that he could receive the

punishment that was rightfully mine, and in exchange for that he would give me

his righteousness in return. And then all I needed to do to be saved

was to acknowledge that fact, to acknowledge that was true, to repent of

my sins, to turn to Jesus, and I would be saved. Now

I still remember, not the entirety of it, but I remember all of

a sudden finding myself at the front of the altar, thinking to myself,

this almost does sound to be good. To be true. My parents couldn't

forgive me, and I don't blame him. I was horrible child. I

couldn't forgive myself. But here was this guy telling me that there was this

man who was actually God willing to forgive me, not as I needed to

become one day, not to go and clean myself up first, but to

come to him as I was, and in that moment he would give me

eternal life, and he would forgive me for my sins. You know,

here's the deal. I was looking at everything through a whole lot of presuppositions

i'd made about what righteousness truly is. I also had grown up Catholic and

was Catholic my entire life, and so looking at the Cross through my Catholicism

was also quite difficult, because it's never simple. In Catholicism. There's alway

stuff you need to do, to repent of and to get forgiveness of,

and continue to try and make yourself righteous before God. And so this offered

to me was too good to be true. I remember saying the prayer,

though I remember the moment I felt the flood of God's love and forgiveness enter

into my heart. And I don't remember exactly when it happened, but in

that moment, I knew that I knew that I was loved, forgiven,

set free, redeemed, and that I was now in a different kingdom altogether.

I was in the Kingdom of God, transferred from the darkness to light.

I remember I started speaking in tongues the moment it happened, and I

thought, Wow, this is really wild. Now your experience might be different

to mine. And I'm not saying that every experience needs to be what I

experienced. But the one thing that we can, or at least should be

able to agree on this morning, is that none of us in this room

got saved as a result of somebody preaching to you a set of regulations and

rules. None of us in this room got saved as a result of somebody

preaching to you the Ten Commandments. We got saved because of the preaching of

the finished work of the Cross. It's the gospel message. It's the greatest

story ever told. It's the same thing that saved the thief on the cross.

The thief on the cross, sometimes I envy him. I mean,

I don't envy him. I don't want to be across, but I envy

him in that not only did he hear the gospel, the thief on the

cross saw the gospel. He actually saw the Gospel on the cross. He

saw the fulfillment of the gospel. He saw the blood on the cross.

He saw Jesus pouring himself out for the world. And what did Jesus say

to him, Today, you will be with me in paradise. Not go

and do these fifteen things and then maybe I'll consider it and perhaps you might

be good enough. No, today you will be with me in paradise.

And we all have that testimony. And that's Paul's point. He calls them

foolish because they forgot. They forgot what happened the moment they were saved.

And what's worse is that their encounter didn't just end with salvation. It was

the beginning of the work that God was going to do in their hearts.

And that's the second point I have for us, is that the Holy Spirit

is the confirmation of the Gospel message. Listen to what Paul says Galacians Evers

to our only one to learn this from you. Did you receive the Spirit

by the works of the law or by believing what you heard? I'm so

grateful to experience God move in this church with all of you here this morning.

And you know, to be honest, preaching to different people in different

contexts, have different upbringings and different backgrounds that they come from. But I

want to say this to you, it doesn't matter what your experience or view

is on the Holy Spirit. The fact is salvation is not an academic exercise.

It's not about logic or reason. It's a supernatural event. I told

you, he takes us out of the kingdom of darkness, and he transfers

us to the Kingdom of light. He took us from death, and then

he raised us to newness of life. We were blind, but now we

can see. Those who walked in great darkness have seen a great light Isaiah

Chaptain nine, verse two. It's the Christmas message on them. A great

light has shone. Paul says this and Ephesians one, verse thirteen. In

him, you also, when you heard the Word of truth, the Gospel

of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy

Spirit. He is the guarante or of what Jesus has done for us.

Here is the seal that we carry the mark of God. He is the

guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of

His glory. And so no wonder our Paul's confused. He's confused because the

Galatians had experienced the Holy Spirit, or see a little bit later on in

the text. They had seen miracles, signs, wonders, the move of

God speaking in times, manifestations of God's glory. Yet now all of a

sudden they lost their minds. And Paul wants to know, did this encounter

happen once you text, once you ticked all the right legalistic boxes. Did

you do all the right things and then God showed up? Or did God

show up when you accepted what He did for you on the cross? He

says, not about what you do, Galatians, It's about what Jesus did

for you. Here's the deal. The pattern of God hasn't changed what God

did in the early Church. I believe he wants to do today. And

as we look at the many examples throughout scripture of the Gospel being preached,

the result is always the spirit being poured out in greater measure. Think about

the first time the Gentiles were saved. In Act chapter ten, there's this

account with Peter. He goes to Joppa to Simon the Tanner's house, and

he has that weird vision, right. He sees the sheet coming down from

heaven, and on the sheet are clean animals and unclean animals. I won't

go into all the details. But God says to him, rise, Peter,

kill and eat. And Peter's like, hold the bus, Hold the

bus. I'm Jewish. I'm Jewish. Occasion, know that God, I'm

Jewish. Okay, I've never eaten anything unclean. Him off, and God

says to him, in my paraphrase, don't you dare call anything unclean if

I've made it clean, right, Hallelijah, because I get to eat lots

of stuff today. But what ends up happening is Peter gets his commission to

go to the Gentiles for the first time. And God tells him, I

want you to go to this man's house. His name or his Cornelius is

Insuran, and I want you to go there and miss meet them. Peter

doesn't know at that point in time what's going to happen. But at the

same time, Cornelius gets a vision from God and he sends people to go

get Peter, and ultimately Peter goes there. He's in his house with Cornelius

and his family and all their friends. And this is what happens in Acts

chapter ten. While Peter was still speaking these words, and the words that

he was speaking, to be clear, are the Gospel. Is the gospel.

It's well exactly what Paul was preaching to the Galatians. Peter's sharing about

Jesus Christ crucified says. And while Peter was speaking these words, the Holy

Spirit came down on all those who heard the message. The circumcised believers who

had come with Peter were amazed because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been

poured out, even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues

and declaring the greatness of God. Interestingly, whenever the spirit is poured out,

there's one response, and that is we declare God's goodness and his greatness

and his glory. The spirit never gets poured out, and we make much

of ourselves, we make much of Him. Hallelujah. But this got me

thinking, right, our personally long for those days. I personally long for

God's spirit to be pought out in our gatherings, in any gathering that we

have as believers in greater measure. I long to experience the next great move

of God. I don't want to be one of those churches that miss God

moving. But it leads me to ask myself the question, not you guys,

because you guys are doing great. I want you to know that.

But I have to ask myself the question, how come why is it that

I don't get to experience the fullness of God? How Come I'm not seeing

the signs, wonders, the miracles that we saw in the early Church.

What is it that's preventing us from walking into that, from seeing the glory

of God so thick in this room that our children are playing haide and seek

like, and there's us a street revival. What is it that prevents us?

I think there's two things. One of them is quite simply this.

I think often we are scared of God moving justin I love what you said

earlier today, help us not to be fearful of the containers that you use.

God can show up any way he wants. He's God, right last

time I checked. But what I do know as a church leader is that

sometimes there's a little bit of an apprehension like, Okay, Lord, what

are you gonna do? Is it gonna be crazy? How many people are

gonna scare away today? And so what we end up doing is we sometimes

start to program God into our church meetings on pro present and planning said to

we say, okay, Lord, you've got three minutes between song number three

and song number four, We're gonna have a holy spirit moment. God doesn't

work on our timelines. I'm guilty of it myself. Friends, I'm telling

you this is a problem. We need to allow God to move all the

time, whenever he wants. But here's the deal. It's not just up

to the people leading the sheep. It's up to the sheep to be responsive

to that too, because you know we can do it. But people are

like, that's five minutes too long. No, no, no, I've

been told this, you know, Yes, we want to make room for

the Holy Spirit. But you know, the Holy Spirit loves order to we

can we can work on a schedule. Maybe I'll tell you two weeks in

advance when he's going to show up. Anyway, So that's the one reason

I think, I think, I think that happens sometimes. But secondly,

and I think this is the important one. We all allow ourselves to fall

into the Galatians trap. And what that means is this. It's the thinking

that the better we perform for God, the more things we do for God,

the longer we spend in quiet time, the more we read God's word,

the more fervently we pray, the more people we lay hands on,

then God will show up. Now, while those things are great, don't

not do then, Please spend time with God, seek the Lord's face.

But when those things become the reason that you believe God's going to show up,

you know what you've done. You've made it about yourself. And so

it's so insidious because I do it all the time. I love to feel

on fire for the Lord when I'm doing all the right things, when I'm

saying all the right things, when i feel like my quiet time's amazing when

God is closer to me than ever before. Then all of a sudden,

I'm holy and I'm happy and I'm excited. And then the wilderness comes and

I'm like, oh, God's not you anymore. He's definitely not going to

move. God's like, I'll move whether I want you or not. You

know, I love this illustration, and we see this often. You know,

God wants to get us to a place where we trust him to do

what he wants to do, not because of what we've done, but because

of what he already did. Okay, but here's what happens is people come

to faith for the first time, they have that moment we spoke about salvation.

I don't know about you, but I've never met anybody that's recently given

their lives to Jesus that's not excited about it. Right when I first came,

I loved to the Lord man. I was preaching to the dogs,

literally dogs. I was talking to them about Jesus. I was gonna lay

to the dogs when they were sick. I was like, no, we're

gonna pray for them. I was telling everyone. I was telling my family.

I was getting excited, man, and I was getting over the top

and you know, it's all amazing. And we see that with people that

come into the church. They love the Lord. They're excited. They want

to go and minister on the streets and they want to go preach the gospel,

and they want to go move to another country. They want to be

become evangelists, to do mission work until they meet mature Christians. Right then

they meet us. So what do we do. We're like that fire is

great, but it's gonna die. You know, you don't always want to

have that because you know what what you need. We say this, we

love this. No, it's got to burn to cold, it's got to

stay steady. Man. God doesn't want us to be cold. He wants

us to be on fire for him. And that's what we do. We

take people who are so full of God and we just snaff out the flame

until they end up dead. Luck we are, you know, we've had

the privilege. My wife and I and our church are walking alongside churches that

are literally dying. They are dry. There's six or seven people gathering in

a holy huddle trying to protect what they've got, and we say, well,

let's let the Lord move. Oh no, no, no, that's

not how we do things. Yeah, we've been doing this for the last

sixty five years like this, We're like, that's clearly not working. Right,

Let's do something you. God wants to be life into this second.

I believe God wants to be life into churches across this nation. We have

to be the fire. You know. I love that pictures that cry of

the firebrand being taken out of the fire. And maybe you here, some

of you here this morning are those firebrands that God wants to take out of

here and bring somewhere else, to bring fire to those places. Goodness knows

we need it. Churches become dry when they take what God intended to be

a relationship with Jesus plus nothing and turn it into religion where it's about Jesus

plus what we do for him. Nobody likes that one. Not many people.

Thanks thanks justin I might not come back against I might as well say

everything that I need to say right now. The third point the Gospel doesn't

just save us, it also changes us. Verse three, Are you so

foolish having begun in the spirit or by the spirit, or you're now being

perfected by the flesh? You see under the influence of these people that were

influencing the Galician Church, they took what started off as a gift and allowed

themselves to believe that what started as an act of grace and now could be

completed by following a set of rules and regulations and ticking the right boxes.

Now, I do want to say at this point it's important that we make

a distinction. What Paul's not saying is that living a godly life is easy.

That's not what Paul's saying. Let me tell you it takes a lot

of effort to be godly. But there's a difference between religious and god and

effort. Think about it. As believers, we are consistently reminding ourselves that

we are crucifying our flesh daily, right, We're putting our flesh into submission

that requires effort. We're reminding ourselves that we've been saved, set free.

We're telling the enemy that his lives have no place in our lives. That

requires effort. And so I'm not saying that being a Christian is easy and

doesn't require you to do anything. It requires effort, requires energy, It

requires us to do stuff, and all of that is leaning on him.

That's what we do. We're leaning back on Jesus. But what Paul is

saying is this, once we are saved, believing that you can become sanctified

by following a set of rules and regulations is absolutely false. Believing that if

you just try harder, do more, open your devotional every day more times,

and you'll become a perfect tel of God. That's not the way to

do it. Friends, I'm telling you right now. Please don't stop doing

it though, but that's not the way to become sanctified. And I want

to impact this issue because so many people believe that preaching a gospel of grace

encourages a sinful existence. They think, well, no, you're just too

easy on people. Surely people will just do what they want. Then that's

not what the gospel is about. You see, living in the New Covenant,

one that has transcended the Mosaic law. Living in the New Covenant,

the one that Jesus came to give us, actually holds us to a far

higher degree of holy living than the old Covenant used to think about the Sermon

of the Mound. Jesus says this in Matthew five and verse seventeen. Do

not think that I've come to abolish the law or the prophets. I've not

come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. For truly, I say

to until heaven and earth passed away, not an iota, not a dot,

will pass from the law until all is accomplished. For I tell you,

unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never

enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Golp ouch a lock ouch. That's how I

feel every time I read that Jesus says he came to fulfill the law,

not to abolish it. That word fulfill is critical. Sometimes we think we

just got to continue in the law. No, he came to finish it

off, to complete it, to get it done perfectly. See, the

most Law was a great framework. The nation of Israel needed a way to

honor God and to be separate from all the nations, and so God gave

them the Law. But what's evident when you read scripture is they couldn't fulfill

the law themselves, right, And so God sends his perfect son, who

comes as earth fulfills the law, goes to the cross, perfect and he

completes what God started in the national of Israel. And then he opens up

a new door for us to walk into. That's the New Covenant, a

new covenant that is more interested in our hearts than it is in our actions.

Jesus said, unless your righteousness exceeds that are the scribes and Pharisees,

you'll never enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Gulp again, that statement really does

drive fear into me. But I want to dispel any fear this morning,

because I want to say that, when you think about it, the Pharisees

actually weren't righteous. They were self righteous. They were full of themselves.

The set, the Pharisees cared more about the outside of the cup than they

cared about the inside of the cup. So what is Jesus saying in that

verse. What does he mean? Well, he means that the New Covenant

is not about the outside, it's about our hearts. In fact, when

you go and read Matthew chapter four and chapter five, what you come to

realize is that the Old Covenant there were things that were allowed. For example,

you couldn't commit murder right, But in the New Covenant you can't even

get angry with people. You've got to watch your heart from anger. In

the Old Covenant, you could not commit adultery. But it didn't matter how

you looked at somebody of the opposite sex. And the New Covenant, if

you look at somebody with lust in your heart, you have committed an adultery

right a far higher standard. Old Covenant. Divorce is allowed. New Covenant.

No, the divorce except for one exception. Old Covenant oaths are encouraged.

New Covenant. Become people of integrity. Let to ESPs and you nob

No. Old Covenant. Revenge is encouraged. New Covenant. Forgive your enemies.

Old Covenant, you were encouraged to hate people. Think of the canaan

Uts, the National Metum. I had to destroy them. New Covenant.

Not only do you have to forgive your enemies, but you got to love

them. That's the hardest one, Holy money, that one there is hard.

Now, the point I'm making is this, living a life in the

freedom that Jesus died for and in the power of the spirit is not a

cop out from living a godly life. In fact, it encouraged us to

live a godly life. Now, I don't know about you. I don't

get it right all the time, and I'm probably the only one in this

room, but I don't get this right all the time. I fail at

times, sometimes dismally. And so the second thing that I think Jesus wanted

us to know was this the only way we will ever be able to live

our lives more righteously than the Pharisees is when we allow the Christ in us

to live through us. Romans, Chapter one, verse sixteen and seventeen.

P Paul speaks about this. He talks about the Gospel, and he speaks

about this sicular word he says, for in it the Gospel, the righteousness

of God is revealed from faith to faith. Whose righteousness God's righteousness? From

whose faith his faith to whose faith our faith? Furid Relations Chapter two,

verse sixteen. It talks about the faithfulness of Christ. Some translations say that

it's faith in Christ, but the correct translation, I believe Christal's pisto is

actually the faithfulness of Christ that saves us, his faithfulness, not our faithfulness.

That means when I'm weak, he's strong. That means when I kind

of a faithful life, he can do it through me. And so we've

got to allow the Christ in us to start shining. And that's the only

way we can overcome Auson For existence. And that's exactly how we become more

righteous than the Pharisees. They never had that we do. Sanctification is one

hundred percent the product of God's grace. Yes we put our effort in,

yes we fight our flesh, but it's His righteousness, the righteousness of Christ

Christ in me, the hope of glory that gives me the ability to say

no to things that I couldn't say no to to you days ago. But

the moment we try and white knuckle it and we start thinking, I've got

to do this, Lord, I'm gonna be more holy for you. I'm

going to do better for you and try harder for you. Man, the

enemy just comes in and he starts to heed more condemnation on you and say,

look at you. You really do suck. God doesn't love you.

But when we go back and say, Lord Jesus, it's you and me

that helps me to do what I can't do. And even if I fell,

yes, say your grace is sufficient for me, because there is no

condemnation for those of us whore in Christ Jesus, who walk according to the

spirit and not according to the flesh. And so when we're in the spirit,

there is no condemnation. When we go back to the throne, then

we go back to the Christ and we say, Jesus, this is about

you, not about me. Let me tell you, friends, there is

freedom. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. I'm

gonna end now with us. Preaching the Gospel results in more of god collections

servers. For did you experience so much for nothing? If in fact it

was for nothing? So then does God give you the spirit and work miracles

among you by doing the works of the law, or is it by believing

what you heard? Poor reminds us, and he reminds the Galatians and all

the Signs, the Wonders the miracles that they experienced were due to the Holy

Spirit, not as a result of them doing the right things, or staying

the right things, or becoming the right people, but because they just listened

to the Gospel and responded to the gospel. And there's a warning in this

for us, because the enemy doesn't want the Gospel preached. The reason why

the enemy doesn't want the Gospel preached is he doesn't want a church that's experiencing

the fullness of what God wants to do in us. He wants to get

us distracted. He wants us to focus on other things in the calas in

the Calaise. In the case of the Galatians, it was this group of

judah ass that had brought their culture to gentiles and said this is how you

need to be. In our case, it may be different, but I

want to tell you cultural Christianity in whatever form, is alive and well,

but it will never produce the kind of blessings that God wants to give us.

Cultural Christianity is the form of Christianity that makes us focus on tradition,

on practices, on religion, on our works, on what we do for

God instead of the glorious grace that the Gospel has given us. And so

Cross Kingdom. Do you want more of God? Do you want more miracles,

signs and wonders? Are you hungry to see God move in greater ways?

Then we need to remind each other every single day that the gospel that

God seals with his power and with his spirit is the Gospel of faith plus

nothing in the Cross plus nothing. That's the Gospel. And I pray for

you, Lord Jesus. I pray that this word would take root in our

hearts, would bear much fruit, and that you would stir our hearts to

go out into this world and to be the lights that you've called us to

be. Draw us, Draw to us people, Lord, that are lost,

that are hopeless, that are desperate, that or die, and help

us to give them the message of the Cross, the love of a savior

who came to this earth just so that you could give us your righteousness and

return. I pray for great times of ministry. I pray for breaks,

your Lord, and I pray for a harvest to like we've never seen in

Jesus' name. Thank you for listening. For more messages and other resources,

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