Ephesians Week 4

Welcome to the North Iron Church Podcast.

Our mission is to take the gospel from the upper peninsula to the ends of the earth.

We pray this message will inspire and encourage you in your faith journey.

Enjoy our Ephesians series where we break down Paul's letter to Ephesus.

Good morning, everyone.

Glad you're here.

Grab your Bibles.

We're in the middle of a series in the book of Ephesians.

If you don't have a Bible, raise your hand.

We'll give you a Bible, great Bible for you to follow along to use.

It's free to you.

You can take it home.

You can give it away.

You can just borrow it this morning, leave it in your seat.

Either way, everyone should have a physical Bible, God's word in your hands.

We're gonna be in the book of Ephesians.

This is a book, a letter, a book written to the Ephesian church in Ephesus.

A new work of what God is doing in Asia Minor or Turkey, modern-day Turkey today.

A very significant movement of God is happening where people are getting saved out of a demonic pagan culture and it's restructuring their lives.

Paul is giving these new believers, these new followers of Jesus instructions in how you should live your life as a follower of Jesus.

For the last couple weeks, I have I've shown you how Paul is laying down some theology.

Theology is a big word in that most people don't understand.

It's just the study of God.

It's the study of God.

And I think I said it last week.

God's smarter than you.

And you've all received a culture in some way.

Maybe it's the American culture.

Maybe you lived overseas and it's a different culture.

Every family has a culture.

A lot of businesses have a culture.

And those cultures dictate things to you.

And what's going on in this early church or new church experience in Ephesus is that these people's lives have been turned upside down.

They're finding out that the pagan gods that they were demonically sacrificing to were made up, they were fake, and yet the spiritual demonic world was real and it was having an effect not only on the early church, but the power of Jesus, where people's lives were being changed, people were being healed, people were beginning to gather in large numbers to hear the word of God.

And so the apostle Paul arrives and he lays out in the first three chapters this study of God.

We find, and we'll be there in a couple weeks, we're finally out of chapter one.

We're gonna be in chapter two, verse one.

If you can't find Ephesians, it's in the latter part of your Bible, uh, probably around 1,800 pages.

It's right right after Galatians.

And we're gonna be in chapter two, verse one in just a second, as Paul lays out this theology or understanding about how you should understand yourself about God.

But I want to jump back to culture.

Because when you come into the saving knowledge of Jesus, Scripture says that when you surrender to the Lord, and and we use the term being saved, and you're gonna see that Paul uses this term also, that that you're saved, or sometimes you've heard this term born again, you move into a new way of life.

Scripture says, and we don't fully understand this, it happens in a multitude of ways, but at first your spirit is changed instantly.

It doesn't mat mean that your life changes instantly or your culture changes into instant instantly.

I don't know why I'm having trouble.

You all know why I'm having trouble.

I don't know why I said that.

But that's where the work of being a follower of Jesus.

Because the Lord, his word will come into your life and you say, Oh, I can't live that way.

I believed this way, I gotta rethink how I live my life.

And it ultimately almost becomes offensive to your own person, it becomes offensive to your friends or your family.

What do you mean you stop drinking?

What do you mean you stop lying?

What do you mean you stop sleeping around with any girl you want to sleep with?

It's because God doesn't want those things for me.

Ultimately, I can see the benefit, but I have to trust that that he knows better than me.

And he wants better for me than I even want.

Sometimes I'm I struggle with that, where God, I'll say this oftentimes to people who lose loved ones, that you need to understand that God loves your children or your husband and wife more than you do.

That's hard for us to even understand, and so we have to trust that the way that God is leading me, because I'm following Him, I'm not in charge.

So, Lord, if you want to rework my culture, then I need you to rework my culture because I want to live in you.

I want you to work through me, and so if my personality changes, if my thinking needs to change, if my customs and rituals need to change, if my culture needs to change, then Lord, I put it on the table.

And that's the process of becoming a disciple of Jesus.

I think a lot of you are in kind of that kind of whitewater, as we call it, that rumbling in your life of reworking what God's doing in your life.

Culture really looks like these three things.

It's much deeper than this, but I don't have enough time.

But it's really your beliefs, and that you actually your beliefs create values in your life, and then ultimately it comes down to practices.

What do I do daily with what God is giving in my hands?

How do I walk and follow Him and keep my spiritual eyes, as we talked about last week, open to His to His leading?

And sometimes you just need to come in and clean house, everyone.

It reminds me of Susanna Wesley.

She got saved in 1739, a couple years ago.

And she so happened, she she came out of a very destructive and negative culture.

It was poor in every single way in England.

She was a part of the lower class, if you will, the working class, where everyone was uh, they made decisions by impulse or or neglect or or they're always in this kind of reactionary mold, and and year after year, and generation after generation, the same kind of damaging sin consequences would come in, and the next generation would do the same thing, and the next generation would do the same thing, and all this hurt and wounds and damage would come into these families because they had this backwards culture.

And in 1739, she got what we would say saved during a communion service.

She happened to go to church, and during communion, she recognized who she was and who Jesus was, and she says that she got saved in that instant.

And she went home even having a difficult husband, and she reworked, rebuilt the culture of her home.

She had multiple children, young children, and so she would begin daily with prayer and Bible reading, and she taught all her kids how to how to read, and she created a life around God's word and being a part of his mission and his kingdom work, totally turned her life upside down and created the culture of God's kingdom in her life.

Her her two sons, she had really uh many, many, many daughters also, but her two sons, John and Charles Wesley, grew up in this atmosphere.

Charles and John grew up, they reworked the Anglican church in England and created the Methodist idea and began to pursue God.

John was this incredible preacher and organizer and theologian.

Charles was this incredible poet and hymn writer.

He wrote over 6,000 hymns.

Some of them, Heart the Herald Angels Sing, was one that he wrote.

It it, matter of fact, it so changed a revival happened in this method of following Jesus, of discipline and God's work and worship and prayer.

And there was this incredible revival in England that bled over into the new world as we were advancing, all these different nations coming to America and pushing into the frontier.

At the forefront of all of those frontiersmen and explorers was the Methodist church preaching the gospel in the utter reaches of the earth at that time.

Because of Susan Wesley, who came in and changed the culture.

Changed the culture.

And some of you are at that place where you're wrestling with that with that idea.

This is what this is what Paul is teaching.

I want to teach you something new.

You're not thinking right about who you are and what you're experiencing in this earth.

God's got a greater plan, so I'm gonna lay this foundation so we can talk about the practice in chapter four and six, and we'll get to that.

But you need to have a clear understanding of how God works and how God sees the earth and all that he's about to do in the world in the past, present, and future.

As many say in God's word, knowing this is the difference between life and death.

And some of you have experienced a lot of deaths in multiple ways, and you're here because you want to follow the Lord and experience life.

So I'm gonna start off.

Paul here is really kind of blunt, but he's blunt on a purpose in chapter two.

He's very blunt and almost shocking in the way.

And so I'm gonna give you a little theological statement as kind of a foundation of what Paul's saying, and we're just gonna walk through that, and then I'm gonna give you four things that are kind of are gonna I want you to grab a hold of and understand.

Maybe you can even write them down, but we'll walk through chapter two.

And here's the first thing that God created us good.

Now, some of you are like, well, Pastor Mark, you've been telling me I suck for all these months, and now you're telling me that God says I'm good.

Well, of course, because you were created in the image of God.

Have you ever heard that?

And if you look at Adam and Eve's life, you can see that Adam and Eve were created without sin in the in a perfect way, in the image of God.

And yet we're infected by sin because of what Adam and Eve did, or can I even say it was really Adam in his coward ways that allowed Eve to walk into a world of sin and infect us so now that when we are naturally born, you don't come out as this perfect little baby, as a little burrito that you coo after every day.

There's a seed of sin in there that doesn't take long.

It's like six months, and that that that little baby is kind of giving you the middle finger already.

You say, Where did that come from?

I'm sorry, all you new moms.

But it's true, and all you parents out there can say, Amen.

That's right.

It doesn't take long for that kid to do things, hey?

And it's a it's an innate, it's like, hey, listen, it's like we're infected.

There's a disease that we're born with, and it's called the sin nature.

Now, now the world doesn't want you to believe that.

The world wants to tell you you're a nice guy, you're a good old boy, but it's a lie, and you know that in your heart.

You know that in your heart.

And you need to understand that God's intention was to create you perfect and good, to be with him.

He wants to be with you.

He can't be around sin, but because of what Adam and Eve did, it injected us with this rotting decay curse called sin, missing the mark.

And that affects us greatly.

And so Paul wants to clearly teach this to the Greeks that he's speaking to, the people in Turkey, this new church.

And so he says, you, and these there's two words I want you to underline in your Bible, and we'll talk about what we'll go through those.

You were dead, those two words.

You were dead in the trespasses and sins.

So let me get it right out the bat.

That word you, that means you, all of you.

That means me.

That you need to understand that this is what we do.

We love to blame shift.

Pastor Mark, it's my neighbors.

They're bad people.

Pastor Mark, it's them, it's them people out in Iran.

Them people are bad people.

It's it's our government, Pastor Mark.

It's those lion fans, Pastor Mark.

They're bad people.

Bad people.

And so all of you, you know, you lock your cars, you lock your garage, you lock your house, right?

You put locks on top of locks.

I know people who lock their bedroom, who sleep with a fierce dog in their bed.

They have a Smith and Wesson, so if anyone breaks through, they're gonna meet three people: you, Smith, and Wesson.

Because there's bad people out there.

And I I agree.

I'm not saying that when we look at different cultures or different groups of people, there aren't bad people out there.

Listen, I'm I'm not, I don't believe your skin color has anything to do in your life.

I don't think in any way, but your culture does.

I'm not a racist, I'm a culturalist.

And some cultures are demonic, everyone.

Some culture, some of your culture perspectives in your family are demonic right here today.

And those things need to die, like dead, dead die.

But we always think that the problem is outside of us, but the problem is right in the mirror.

Right in the mirror.

And of course, you know, we look at America, you know, some of us have have been raised very religiously conservative.

Is that a term?

I don't know.

And and and we look at the dirty libs in the world and we say, well, the problem is Hollywood, the problem is M N S S R K C.

I don't even, I can't even say it.

Or the ladies on the view.

They're the ones deteriorating America.

They're the problems, Pastor Mark.

I'm just repeating what you all tell me.

Sometimes I wonder about the things I'm gonna say.

But right now, they're thinking about the church and thinking about us evil people in here.

Those people are judgmental, they're unloving, they're full of wrath and and they create war.

Do you get the kind of the picture I'm pointing?

We're always blame shifting on other and we're not looking in the mirror as the problem.

Or in the past, of course, right?

Those those people in the past, they were just foolish.

Now we're enlightened, everyone.

We have more information than we've ever had on planet Earth.

And granted, I I I know we can look back and say, well, why why did they do that?

Or we can even look at racism or slavery uh in the past and say that wasn't a really great thing, but you need to know and understand there is more slavery today than in the past.

Well, my parents are the problem.

You would think that with all the technology and progressiveness that we have in this world, that we would be better off today than we.

But the 20th century was one of the most bloodiest times on earth.

So, you know, I don't believe in in evolution, but I do believe in de evolution.

And I I this is what sin does.

It doesn't advance you.

It just it just it's like a JRR Tolkien said that evil or sin is like a shadow.

It we think we conquer it and it it shows up again in a different form, and we have a whole new group of vices that we celebrate that are evil and demonic in this world.

Of course, I don't think we came from monkeys, but it seems like there's a lot of monkeys out there.

I guess this is my point, and this is why I'm poking at you.

I like to poke at you because I want you to think.

Because we get we get closed minded in our ideas, we get very territorial, territorial, we get very defensive, and we constantly blame shit.

But but here's the idea I want you to understand, and this is important.

There's only two kinds of people in this world there's sinful people, and there's Jesus.

Are you with me?

There's sinful people and then there's Jesus.

Now we all sin in different ways, and we all have issues that we like, or maybe can I say little pet things that we keep around that are all different, but it you boil it all down.

It is sin nature in our hearts that damages this world.

We can't blame other people, we can only blame ourselves.

We can look in the mirror, and this is what Paul's trying to explain to these people.

You're you're a sinner.

You're a sinner.

I see this all the time when I'm doing marriage counseling because very rarely does anyone walk in and say, it's all me.

It's not my spouse, I'm the problem.

It's never that, it's always the opposite.

Lady, you've been married eight times, and every time it's your husband?

No.

Like at some point I gotta put my foot down a little bit, right?

I just want you to know that the common denominator is you, everyone.

We you know, when we break up, have you ever heard this line?

Hey, it's it's me, not you.

Well, God is telling us, no, it's you, it's definitely you.

That's what he's doing.

In chapter two, that's the theme.

You're the problem.

Because you're dead, everyone.

That's important for you to understand.

You're dead.

That's the second word I want you to understand.

You're dead, dead.

Because oftentimes we think that that we're sinful because of our actions, but that's not true.

We're sinful because sin is in our hearts.

That's who we are.

That flows out of our hearts, the action of sin flows out of our hearts.

The word, the word for dead shows us that sin is not an action, it's a condition of our hearts.

We are not sinners because we sin.

We sin because we are sinners.

We're, as Paul is trying to communicate, we're we're dead dead.

We're decaying, we're rotting in a way.

Have you ever opened up your fridge and you smell that smell?

You all know what I'm talking about.

Or you don't even open up the fridge, it's seeping through the vents, and you're like, something in our house is dead, dead.

What it is, it's something that you didn't take care of or you didn't preserve in the right way.

So you open up the refrigerator and you're searching.

Matter of fact, some of you just you're like, I'm I'm just I'm I'm ratchet strapping this refrigerator.

Honey, we're getting a new refrigerator.

Get this thing out of here.

I don't even know what it is.

Can't get the stink out of here, but it's the the lime green Tupperware in the back that's holding that steak you put in there three months ago.

And you don't take that steak out and say, I can fix this.

We'll cook it up and we'll just add a lot of ketchup.

Let's just spice this up.

Let's get just get rid of the smell.

No, because it was dead when you put it in there.

It was you're just trying to slow down the rotting, the rotting process in your life.

This is our nature, everyone.

We're spiritually dead and we're rotty.

As the new King James says, you stinketh.

All right, let's look at what Paul's saying.

Chapter 2, Paul says, the sins in which you were once walked, following the course of the world.

You didn't know this, but your culture is just dictated by the world.

And who is the leader of the world or the prince of this world?

It's it's Satan.

And though you recognize it or not, you're following Satan because you're walking through the cultural steps and and the ways of the world.

We know that the really the three things that kind of drive our society, drives the world, are really money, sex, and power.

Money, we can't get enough of it, man.

Sex, whatever feels good, I'm going to do.

Power, I have to, I need it, I need to control it, and I need to control everyone else.

And these this is the course of the world that Paul is talking about.

You can go into any culture and these three things stand.

You can go into the biggest commune in the world.

I lived there in Russia.

And though they had good initiatives at the beginning, it still these three things came out immediately and became one of the most destructive forces in the world.

It's what the world follows, and Satan is behind those things.

Not making you do them, but we just blindly follow them because this is the course of the world.

And ultimately, you are following Satan, Paul says in the next scripture.

You're following the prince of the power of air, Satan, the spirit that is now at work in us, which are the sons of disobedience.

And some of you are like, well, Pastor Mark, I'm not Satan, I'm not a Satan follower.

I know some, they they live out in Republic, they're all tatted up, and they're murdering chickens down there.

But that's not me.

And yet we we have all the characteristics of what Satan has baited us with, with money, sex, and power.

So we're followers of Satan because our culture is dictating it to us.

And so we readily sit at the table of Satan and we consume.

And he goes on in verse 3.

He says, Among whom all were once lived in the passion of our flesh.

That's that's those three things money, sex, and power.

Carrying out the desires of the body and the mind.

And we're all involved in really two kinds of sin here on earth.

We have the sin of commission and the sin of omission.

Commission is the sin of things that we shouldn't do, and omission are things we fail to do that we ought to have done.

I I like to point this out this way.

Maybe you're you're confused by that.

But this this guy here, Bob the abuser, that's what I call him.

He's the outward sinning guy who's abusing everyone around him.

But this is just as devastating.

I call this guy Johnny Pathetic.

If Johnny, if you're here, I'm sorry.

Bob, if you're here, I'm sorry.

Johnny Pathetic doesn't do anything in life.

He's just a nice guy.

He doesn't step into God's calling.

He's a selfish individual who thinks he's so smart that he's gonna plan out his life and he's gonna walk through it without making any kind of impact whatsoever.

I'm just here for me.

This guy's trying to take it by force.

I'm doing things I should not do, but I don't care because I am the law.

These are the two ways that we we sin.

And we were, and because of it, we were we were children of wrath, Paul says.

We're children of wrath.

Some of you don't like that.

Well, Casimar, can't we be children of sadness?

Children of confusion?

Maybe children of ignorance?

No, no, no, no.

We're children of wrath.

And we deserve the punishment of our disobedience towards God.

Well, Pastor Mark, doesn't God forgive us?

Doesn't God why can't God, if He's all powerful, why can't God just forgive and forget?

Why can't He just say, it's okay, man?

Mark, it's alright.

Because God is a God of justice.

And we all love justice, don't we?

We love it.

Now we don't we don't love justice when justice comes our way.

We want justice for those bad people.

But we love it.

I know that because some of you get out of your car and parking lot at Target and run in because they missed a 50 cent coupon on your receipt.

You love man, I must have hit a nerve.

We love justice, and God has to be a just God.

And listen, this is why he made the plan that he made.

He wants to redeem us and justify us.

And so he makes this plan, and here probably the biggest script clip in God's word in verse 4, it says, but God, everyone.

I just told you the truth, it's hard to swallow.

Some of you are on your phone and ignoring me, but I want you to know that you are helpless but not hopeless.

You're helpless, but you're not hopeless.

Because here's the thing about God, an attribute of God, he's rich in mercy, everyone.

Even though he's a God of justice and love, he's a God that is rich in mercy, he's rich in mercy, and because of the great love with which he loves us, he made a way for us to come alive.

Like dead people don't make decisions, everyone.

If you're dead, you're dead, dead.

You don't get up one day and say, Well, I think I'm gonna live a little bit longer.

So, how do I become alive again?

What Paul shows us is that because of what Jesus does on the cross, with the forgiveness of your sin, because he was sacrificed, the justice, the justice of God was taken care of because of what Jesus did on the cross, and so we can enter into God's presence because we're justified by the death of Jesus, and because of faith and compassion and mercy, we can have a right relationship with God because we've been made alive, and I love that Paul uses this.

We've been made alive together with Christ.

And he raised us up, the scripture goes on.

He raised us up with him, and Jesus is seated, he has seated us with him in the heavenly places.

He came into a bunch of dead people, made them alive, brought them up, clothed them in his righteousness, not our righteousness, his righteousness.

He made us sons and daughters of God.

That's the hope of Jesus.

We were helpless, but now we have hope because of what Jesus has brought in as the perfect one who lived the life that Mark Broberg should have lived perfectly but could not.

And he was condemned to die, my death, my payment for Mark Broberg's sin and disobedience, because I was a son of disobedience.

I was a follower, a follower of Satan.

And it's by grace you have been saved.

You can't get it together.

It's by grace and grace alone.

You can't do enough good works.

Well, Pastor Mark, I did help this lady last week.

Does that count for anything?

Not when it comes to your righteousness.

Jesus went to the cross perfectly and paid it all one time.

And so now we get to stand, not in anything we've done, but we stand and we're seated with Jesus.

By grace you have been saved and grace and mercy alone.

Verse 7 says this, so that in the coming age and things to come when we're in eternity, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.

You know in Revelation that when we are with him in eternity, that across our foreheads we will have tattooed Jesus' name, everyone.

It will say Jesus.

And we'll be the only ones.

The angels of God, millions of them, do have never experienced the grace of Jesus, everyone.

And so we'll walk around as individuals, and it'll say across our forehead, Jesus.

That's important for you to understand.

You need to understand your position in this whole understanding of how God works, that you were dead and now you're made alive because you surrendered your life to him and believed in him.

It's for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God.

So let me give you four things you need to understand real quickly here.

The source of salvation is grace.

You are clothed not with your own righteousness, you are clothed with Jesus' righteousness.

That salvation only comes by faith.

Now you need to understand that faith is not per se a Christian virtue.

It's an understanding.

Faith is much like this chair.

When you all came in here, you all chose a chair to sit down, maybe you thought about it or not.

This chair represents what Jesus did on the cross.

And when you come in, much like you come in now, some of you can't remember when you even made that decision.

And so you you you doubt yourself am I even saved?

But even now you're sitting in a chair, and at some point, though you remember it or not, you decided to sit down.

You decided to sit down, and the reason you just know that you decided to sit down, even if you remember it or not, is because you're sitting down right now.

Now, if you want to do it your own way, you can stand on your own merit.

But I I'm telling you, that's death.

That the wrath and justice of God will come at you.

But if you're seated in what the perfect Son of God did, that's faith.

This is faith.

I am fully leaning on what Jesus did in the cross.

That's a great explanation.

I'm resting everything in what Jesus did for me, not anything that I can do.

And secondly, you need you need to understand that that this faith is something that I think we all wrestle with.

And I I I I love uh John Bunyan.

It's not Paul Bunyan, it's John Bunyan.

He actually wrote Pilgrim's Progress.

If you haven't read it, you should read it.

He's a an early follower of Jesus, went to prison because of his faith.

He says, has says this, and I I love this.

It's a couple slides.

I'm gonna read through it, and it's written in old English, so it's a little wonky.

But one day, this is John's speaking, he wrote many books.

One day, as I was passing into the field, this sentence fell upon my soul, thy righteousness is in heaven.

And with the eyes of my soul, soul, meaning he had a vision, I saw Jesus at the right hand there.

I say that was my righteousness.

I say that that was my righteousness, so that whenever I was, wherever I was, or wherever I was doing, God could not say to me, He lacks my righteousness, for that was just in front of him.

Speaking of Jesus.

I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame, the good things that I thought I could do.

And it it that made me righteous, better or not, yet my even my bad frame did not matter.

Because my righteousness was in Jesus, for my righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself, and it's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So when Jesus looks at me, I'm sorry, when God looks at me, he doesn't look at Mark Broberg's lacking righteousness, no matter if I'm doing great or I'm doing poorly.

He constantly looks at the righteousness of that's why I'm seated with Jesus.

I'm seated with Jesus.

And thirdly, you need to understand that the effects of salvation are good works, and you need I need to be very clear about this.

Your good works have no indication of your righteousness, but because of the depth that he reached down and pulled me out of the pit of despair and set me up at his sons and daughters, I naturally, because my heart is beginning to change, my mind's beginning to change, my culture is changing, I do good works because I'm made in the image of God.

I do good works because it's pleasing to him.

I do good works because I'm in love with who he is and he's changed my heart.

So I want to know, I want everyone to know.

I want my neighbors, my town, my community, the world to know the power of the resurrection and the redemption and the work of the cross has done in my life to transform who I am.

And even if I misstep, it's about the righteousness of Jesus that is seated at the right hand of God the Father.

I love verse 10.

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Salvation is by faith, everyone.

It's by faith, but it produces always good works in our lives.

You hear me say this all the time, and I think it's important.

I say it all the time, that's why I say it all the time.

But being a follower of Jesus or being a godly person, those are even being a godly person, by the way, that's hard for me to say, but it just means that I love the things that God loves, and I hate the things that God hates.

That's all that means.

God doesn't want you to be a slave who just you just obey him because you're fearful of punishment.

He doesn't want you to be a dog that just obeys the master because you got a big stick.

He wants you to be a sons and a daughter who love the things that he loves and hates the things that he hates.

I'm gonna end with a really gross story.

When I was a kid, my dad moved our family out to uh the deserts of St.

George, Utah.

He wanted to be a missionary to the Mormons out there.

We might have only been the only Christian family, at least in our neighborhood.

There wasn't very many.

Uh at that time, this is in the early 80s, things have definitely changed.

But we went to a very, very small church.

We lived in a way out in the desert.

We went from shoveling snow to shoveling sand.

And we lived in a double wide, uh, double wide oven out there in the middle of the desert.

My dad passed a really, really small church.

I was the sound technician, um, and my sisters played the piano and and the organ, and my dad preached.

There was maybe 20 people in the church, maybe.

Very small.

One Sunday I was I was back there.

Uh it was it the sanctuary like this was only like 20 feet.

It wasn't very big at all, you know, maybe 30 by 30, really small.

And my dad was up preaching, and I could tell as I was listening to him that he wasn't, he wasn't himself for whatever reason.

And and then in the middle of him preaching, his eyes got really big and he vomited up over the pulpit.

He was very, very sick, and he hit there was no other pastors, and so he had to go and and preach.

And it just it was a lot, a lot of vomit, and it just flowed over top of the pulpit.

And of course he ran because he thought he was gonna throw up again.

He was running for the the exit, and as he got close to the exit, he threw up again all over the walls, so it was like a curtain of vomit in there.

Yeah, I was like, this is awesome! The greatest Sunday ever, you know.

I was probably 15, eh?

And I thought, dang, church is over, you know?

And uh and we had this intern who had just just arrived.

His we we called him Pastor Bryn, who wasn't even really a pastor, and he was learning under my dad, and so he didn't know what to do.

He'd only been there a couple weeks, and so he gets up instead of saying, Man, obviously Pastor Broberg is sick this morning, you all are dismissed.

I mean, the reek of vomit in there was pungent, everyone, and it was just still flowing like into the yeah, it was just everywhere.

He had a big meal that morning, and so Brynn gets up instead of saying, Hey, you're all dismissed! Go home, let's get out of this.

Someone help me clean it up.

He does.

He says, please take out your hymno.

And he begins, he calls my sisters up, and they start singing, When you all get to heaven, when y'all get to heaven, what a joke.

You know that song.

All four verses.

I distinctly remember that.

Now, what Bryn didn't do, what he didn't do is he didn't say, Hey everyone, I know you can smell this vomit up here.

It's warm and and fresh.

And I don't want any of you come down here and play in this vomit.

I don't want any of you to come down and try to lick it up.

He didn't have to, of course not.

He didn't say that because it would be gross.

No one in their right minds go down and plays in vomit.

That's that's super gross.

If I ever see you do that, we're having a long conversation and prayer and fasting, all that stuff.

He didn't say, hey, I'm gonna put a couple board members down here with a big stick to keep you guys away from this vomit.

Of course not.

But listen, if you were a dog, you'd look at that vomit and say, hmm, fresh vomit.

Maybe I can sneak down there and eat that half hot dog I see down there bobbing around.

I told you it was gonna be gross.

Of course not.

Why?

Because you're not spiritual dogs.

God doesn't want you to be a spiritual dog.

He doesn't want you returning to the vomit of your lives.

But he has something better for you.

And he doesn't want you to obey him because he carries a big stick.

He wants you to love the things he loves and hate the things that he hates.

So let me finish with this last thought because I want to give you some practice when it comes to building a culture.

Some of you are new at this, some of you have heard this multiple times, but you choose to ignore the Holy Spirit in your life.

And I promise you this if you continue to ignore the Holy Spirit, he'll stop speaking to you.

You need to build your life as Suzanne Wesley did in God's word.

It's the difference between life and death, and you're you need to understand it, you need to consume it.

Even if you don't understand it, you need to consume it.

It's God's plan for your life.

There's a lot of feelings out there, there's a lot of people who say, I heard from God.

But listen, you just need to trust in God's word and God's word alone.

Number two, you need to be a part of church for no other reason is that you need to be around like followers of Jesus who can love you, who can help you, who can guide you, maybe even correct you in your culture.

But I'm telling you, that's that's important.

You need to you need to give, you need to be a giver of the first fruits in your life.

God asks for the first 10% of your life, of your time, your talent, and your treasure.

Whenever there's an advancement in your life, in your finances, you need to give the first, not the last, not the last part of the month.

I give this to you first.

Everything I have, God, is yours.

You've given it to me.

So I honor you with this.

I can't stress this enough.

I do that with my time.

Lord, you get you say, Pastor Mark, you're a pastor.

No, no, no, no, no.

I give my time first to the Lord like everyone else.

In serving him, following him.

I use my first of my talents to promote and move the kingdom of God.

And Jennifer and I have always honored God with our first fruits.

And we've never had a need.

He's always positioned us.

And then listen, you need to live a life of adventure because following Jesus, everyone's man, it's an adventure.

It's the greatest adventure.

The greatest adventure of your life.

Some of you are missing because you're in this realm of selfishness.

And your spiritual eyes have it.

Listen, you need to build a following culture of Jesus in your life, and generations will speak highly of your name.

Won't you stand?

I need to pray for it with you.

Father, Lord, we've dedicated the front of this room for you to move, and our prayer partners are coming.

Father, people that we know, Lord, that will lay hands on us for any kind of need.

Scripture, we're following your word in James.

If anyone is of need in any way to find the elders and the leaders of the church and come down and have hands laid upon them, Lord, we walk it down into your presence because this is what we do.

We don't have answers for this world.

Lord, I got issues.

I have cultural problems in my family, in my own personal life.

Lord, I need it to be shaken.

Father, I need it to be destroyed.

Jesus, I find myself alive in you, and I stand on that eternal.

If I'm in Antonagon or Lance or Marquette or Ishwaming, all the youpers here, Father, are looking towards you, Jesus.

And we ask this in your Son's holy and precious name.

Amen.