The Confrontation from Jesus

Well, good morning, and welcome to Church of the Grove.

We're so thrilled that you are joining us this morning.

My name is Nathan, and uh I'm one of the pastors here, and we are in the middle of a series uh this morning uh called Jesus the Unsafe Savior, which has just been an incredible thing for our church, and we are so excited about what God is going to do this morning.

As I was kind of preparing, I was reminded of a time in my life of shortly after uh we started here at Church at the Grove.

I've been with Church at the Grove for a long time now, and uh there was the first time that I was going to be able to speak from the stage on Sunday morning.

Uh, this is 11 or 12 years ago, and we were still at Walnut Grove High School.

This is before we had a Walnut Grove campus, before there was a social circle campus.

We were meeting in the high school uh auditorium.

And so I practiced, I I prepared, I did my very best to deliver this message.

I wasn't much of a public speaker for sure, and I got up there and I gave it everything I had.

And I came off the stage just so thankful that it was over, went home for the day, and I got a phone call from a guy that was attending our church at the time, and he wanted to come over and talk to me about the message.

Now, for me, I was a little naive maybe in that moment, and for me, I was thinking, man, he wants to come over and he wants to talk about how the Lord just is really using my words to bring truth to his life, to maybe he wants to change something about his life, he wants to repent of some sin.

Like I'm super pumped and excited about him coming over and sharing about what God did through the message.

And as I began to talk with him in my living room, um he began to pretty much just call me out for an hour.

Um, he sat there and he just pretty much told me that not only did he not like my message, but he pretty much said um that I had no business being in ministry and that I would never make it.

And uh it was a very difficult confrontation to kind of go through, especially at such a young age and just kind of beginning my ministry career.

It was a very, very difficult season.

And it was a confrontation that took place that wasn't something that I enjoyed.

And in fact, it was a confrontation that really led to negative emotions for me.

Like after the conversation was over, I just really wanted to give up.

I started to kind of doubt and say, well, maybe this isn't what God has called me to do.

Maybe this isn't who God has called me to be.

Maybe this isn't the profession that God wants me to be a part of.

It was a hard confrontation.

If it wasn't for people like Russ, our pastor up at Walnut Grove, and uh so many other godly men and women, like I might have given up.

And if it wasn't for them, I probably wouldn't be standing here.

See, confrontation is difficult.

And for some people, they enjoy confrontation.

For me, I'm someone that doesn't necessarily like to confront people.

Especially if I have to really call them out on something.

I'd rather just kind of beat around the bush.

I'd rather not like have to really call somebody out and sit down and have a hard conversation with them.

I'm not someone that tends to be super confrontational.

I might have a little sarcastic snide remark, but it's certainly a lot more difficult to have a confrontational conversation with somebody.

Now, there's other people that are very much the opposite and they love confrontation.

And uh not only do they love confrontation, but they actually look for confrontation, and we call those people psychotic, right?

Because no one should really enjoy confrontation.

But this morning, what we're gonna see as we continue our series and we're looking at the life of Jesus is that Jesus ultimately wasn't afraid of confrontation.

He wasn't someone that was shy, he wasn't someone that was weak, but if confrontation was necessary and needed, then Jesus was going to step into that moment and he was going to confront people in the midst of their sin.

See, confrontation is profitable if it restores the relationship.

And that's ultimately who Jesus was.

Jesus was willing to be confrontational if it was going to restore the relationship.

He wasn't scared, he wasn't a jerk just trying to be mean to people and be angry and just call people out for no good reason.

He wanted to restore the relationship.

Now, here's what's so interesting about Jesus, and when he became confrontational towards others.

He typically didn't tend to be confrontational to the known sinners.

You know, the the prostitute, the woman that was caught in adultery, the tax collector, those types of people, Jesus didn't tend to be confrontational with.

In fact, the woman that was caught in adultery, they wanted Jesus.

The crowd wanted Jesus to condemn her.

He wanted, they wanted him to confront her.

But instead, he just says, Hey, I forgive you.

Go and sin no more.

Because here's what Jesus knew Jesus knew that these notorious sinners, they didn't need to be confronted in their sin because they knew that they were sinners.

But who Jesus reserved his harshest confrontations with were the religious leaders, the people that were the self-righteous, the people that were the most kind of moral people in the community at the time.

That's who Jesus tended to be the most confrontational with.

Because here's the truth Jesus hates religion.

Jesus absolutely hates religion.

And we're defining religion this way that religion is what we must do or behave like in order to gain a right understanding with God, to gain a right standing with God.

It's us working out our salvation.

It's about us working in order to gain God's favor and God's approval in our life.

And Jesus absolutely hates religion.

And so what we're going to look at in this story in Matthew chapter 23 today, we're going to see that Jesus was not afraid to call out these religious leaders.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

And he's going to address the people that were the religious of the day.

And I think that we can take something from what Jesus is teaching us in this passage today, because for many of us, we're we're churchgoers.

Now listen, if you're someone that isn't considered a churchgoer, maybe you're joining us online for the first time and you're watching in this morning, and you would say, Hey, I don't go to church, and maybe the reason I don't go to church is because of the religious people, because of some of the things that Jesus is going to call out in the scriptures this morning.

Man, this is a great morning for you to be joining us because we're going to talk about religious people and we're going to have Jesus call them out and confront us in our religiousity.

Jesus is going to call out our hypocritical selves, and he's going to do it in a pretty bold way.

But Jesus is willing to confront in order to restore a relationship.

And that's what we're going to see in Matthew chapter 23.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

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We miss getting to see your face.

And we would love to know how we can pray for you in the weeks ahead.

And so if you would just fill out that encounter card just to let us know you're still there, that would be fantastic.

But Matthew chapter 23, and while you're going there, just to kind of catch you up, the Pharisees were the religious leaders.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

And they were people that were well respected in the community.

In fact, they were people that if you had a son, you would want your son to grow up and to become one of these religious leaders.

If you had a daughter, you would want your daughter to marry this type of person because they were just so well respected.

They were wise.

They had memorized most of the Old Testament.

And so for them, they were well respected in the community, and everyone wanted to be like them.

They had the they not only knew the commands of God, but they gave their lives to following and living out the commands of God.

But along the way, somewhere, they forgot they and they valued the commands of God over the heart of God.

And so Jesus is going to address them, and he starts this in Matthew chapter 23.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

He's speaking to the crowd and his disciples here, and he says this in verse 1.

It says, Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, the scribes and the Pharisees at sit on the seat, Moses' seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do, for they preach but do not practice.

They tie up heavy burdens hard to bear and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger.

They do all their deeds to be seen by others, for they make their philatographies broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feast and the best seats in the synagogues, and greetings in the marketplace, and being called rabbi by others.

Jump down to verse twelve.

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

So Jesus is speaking to his disciples, he's speaking to the crowd here, and they think that the Pharisees are awesome.

They think that the religious leaders are the kind of the thing that everyone aspires to.

And Jesus is changing and shifting people's view of what they think about the Pharisees and the religious leaders.

And he's saying, listen, they say one thing, but they do something else.

I don't know if you ever had a parent, maybe as you were growing up, and they would say, Do as I do, or do as I say, but not as I do.

That's kind of the Pharisees, right?

That they would say this one thing, but then they would not necessarily live it out themselves.

They had a religion, but the religion was really done for show.

It was to impress the people around them.

They wanted to pray in the streets and in the crowded city center because they knew that if the people saw them in all of their glory, they would have more respect and honor for them.

And so Jesus is shifting the way that the world viewed faith and shifted the way that people were viewing religion of the day.

And he says, listen, if you want to be, uh if you want to be glorified, if you want to be lifted up, you're going to be humbled, but the one that humbles himself will be exalted.

So he shifts the thinking.

And then right after he makes this speech to the Pharisees or to the crowd and the disciples, he turns his attention to the Pharisees themselves.

Now imagine Jesus.

He's invited over to a dinner party, and he's going to sit down at the table with these religious leaders, and he's going to begin to call them out.

This is an awkward dinner party to be at for sure.

This is some confrontational words, but he's willing to go there and he's willing to bring up these tough subjects and call them out in their sins in order to restore the relationship.

And what he's going to do is he's going to give seven woes.

Now, the word woe there is really a guttural outcry of anger and pain.

It's in the Old Testament, it meant this deep sorrow and grief and despair.

But Jesus is after their repentance.

He's after their salvation.

And that's what we see in verse 13.

It says this, but woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces, for you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.

So he begins to call them out, and he's telling them, listen, that the Pharisees are more about door keeping than they are about door holding.

The Pharisees are doorkeepers rather than door holders.

They were more concerned with protecting what they had than inviting people into a relationship with God.

That they were more about people keeping the rules and keeping people out that didn't meet their standards and the measurements that they had created.

And instead of them inviting people in, they were keeping them out.

They were the door keepers rather than the door holders.

Now, in our world today, we we see this all happen all the time.

In some churches and in some kind of religious communities, there's kind of these extra set of rules that you have to follow and traditions that you have to follow.

And if you don't follow those commands, you're not invited in.

They're doorkeepers rather than door holders.

You know, some people would say, listen, if you if you have a tattoo, you're out.

You know, if you drink, you're out.

If you're not fitting into our political mindset and our political party we all adhere to, you're out.

And we can fall into this same trap where we become doorkeepers rather than door holders.

That we're enforcing our own personal spiritual rules.

Which let me just say that it's good for us to have convictions, personal convictions.

And we might say, hey, listen, this is my personal conviction, this is what I believe, this is the conviction that God gave me.

But when we begin to enforce our own personal convictions on other people and make them adhere to the rules that we've created that aren't necessarily in Scripture, then we become like the Pharisees.

We become doorkeepers rather than door holders.

And Jesus is calling them out in this.

In the Old Testament, the people of God, the Israelites, the Hebrew nation, the Jewish people, they were blessed to be a blessing to others.

But somewhere along the lines, everything got shifted around, and they had not become a blessing to others, but now they had become people that were keeping people out rather than inviting them into a relationship with God.

And this is the sad reality, and Jesus is calling them out on that.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites.

Because you're a doorkeeper rather than a door holder.

But it gets even worse.

He continues and he says, in verse 15, he says, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you travel across sea and land to make a single proselyte.

And when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourself.

That's pretty strong words, right?

But see, the Pharisees were more concerned with the number of followers they had than building people of faith.

But they they wanted they wanted to build up a large number of followers.

They saw every convert that they could make as a notch in their belt, as a feather in their cap, and they were just concerned with building a bigger following.

They just wanted to have success and see these people turn to their way of life.

And Jesus is saying, listen, you're more concerned about the converts that you're making, and you're making them converts, and they're not even following the ways of God.

They're instead following the legalistic system that you've created, and as a result, they have become twice as much a child of hell, where their father is Satan himself, rather than following the true ways of God.

That they had created the system and they had invested their lives into their personal success rather than building the kingdom of God.

And man, that sounds a lot like our culture and our world today, where we get so concerned and so set in place of building our own personal platform, where we want to make much of ourselves, we want to have more followers on social media, we want to have a bigger platform so that we can have more influence and we want to build our business to be bigger and bigger so that we can be more successful and have more money and do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it.

There's nothing wrong with success, but if you're building your life upon your own personal success and building a following for you rather than building the kingdom of God, then you missed it.

You've absolutely missed what God is calling you to do.

And the Pharisees had fallen into that trap where they were more concerned about building their kingdom rather than building the kingdom of God.

And Jesus confronts them in this, he calls them out, you hypocrites, right?

And then he continues, and he says, Woe to you, in verse 16, woe to you, blind guides, who say, if anyone swears by the temple, it is nothing.

But if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.

You blind fools, for which is greater the gold or the temple that is made the gold sacred?

And you say, if anyone swears by the altar, it is nothing.

But if anyone swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.

You blind men, for which is greater the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred.

So whoever swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it.

And whoever swears by the temple swears by it and by him who dwells in it.

And whoever swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.

See, here's what the Pharisees had done.

The Pharisees had become people that were deceptively dishonest.

And here's what I mean by that.

They would swear by the gold in the temple, and that if they swore by the gold in the temple, then they were bound by an oath to follow through in their commitment.

They had to tell the truth if they were swearing by the gold of the temple.

But if they just swore by the temple, then they weren't bound.

And so they kind of had this way of getting around the truth and not being completely and totally honest.

It's similar to in our world today in the court system, you know, you're expected to tell the truth.

And right before you take the stand, if you've ever had to take the stand, you have to raise your right hand or put your hand on the Bible and you have to say that you are going to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you, God, right?

And when you make that commitment, when you make that oath, then you're supposed to tell the truth.

But if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're someone that has given your life to God and following him, then our yes should be yes and our no should be no.

Matthew 5 tells us that we should not be people that are dictated by our oaths.

Instead, we shouldn't have to swear by anything, but we should be people that are honest and faithful to what we have to say.

And I don't know about you, but this is a convicting one for me.

This is a one that I definitely struggle with because there's a lot of times in my life where I have the opportunity to tell the whole truth, be completely honest, or tell a little white lie.

Because if I tell the, if I say it just this way, or if I don't give the entire truth, then I can appear to be better than I really am.

And so there's somebody that asked me a question, and I just kind of divert the truth, right?

It's not a total lie, but it's not the complete truth either.

And Jesus is saying, listen, the religious leaders, this is exactly how they had based their lives.

This is the example that they had set.

They had been people that were deceptively dishonest.

They appeared to be honest, but they weren't honest at all.

They were deceptive in their honesty.

They weren't people that were true totally truthful, and Jesus calls them out in that.

Jesus is willing to confront in order to restore the relationship.

It continues.

It says in verse 23, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.

These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.

You blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel.

See, the Pharisees loved the law of God more than they loved the heart of God.

And they were so concerned about following every letter of the law that they were missing out on the big picture of who God was and the character of his character and his nature and how they should be showing that to the world around them.

And so they were told that they had to tithe 10% of everything that they had.

And so for them, they would count out their spices, and they would begin to count all their spices and then make sure that they put 10% of all the spices to one side and then they would keep the other.

And they were so in the details, they were so OCD about following every letter of the law that they had missed out on the heart of God.

That we have a God that has a heart for righteousness, we have a God that has a heart for justice, and they were so concerned.

About following and obeying every single command that they had missed out totally on the heart of God.

They had minored on the majors and majored on the minors.

They had forgotten who God was and how they should ultimately live.

They were fine with counting out their devices.

But man, when it came to loving their neighbor, they totally missed the point.

And I don't know about you, but I think we fall into that trap.

A lot of times we can get so focused on our lives and everything that we have to do.

Maybe it's religious duty, right?

Maybe there's a meeting you gotta attend, or there's a church service you have to get to, and you're so focused on getting there that sometimes we miss out on the people that we pass on the way to the church.

Right?

Like I'm and there's been countless number of times where I've had this meeting with somebody in our church or somebody outside of our church of maybe another ministry that we're meeting with to see if we can partner with.

And I'll be driving down the road.

I'm running a little bit late, I'm going a little bit over the speed limit.

And as I pass by someone that's stranded on the side of the road, and I have this thought to myself, maybe I should stop and maybe I should help this person that's stranded.

But instead, I keep driving because I think to myself, no, I've got important things to do.

I've got to be at this meeting, I've got to meet with this person, I gotta do this religious activity.

And God's calling them out and he's saying, listen, it's okay for you to obey and to try to follow the commands of the scripture that I've laid out.

But I don't want you to miss my heart in the midst of that.

I want you to know that I'm a God of mercy and I'm a God of justice.

And so for the church, the church should be leading the charge in these areas.

And that's not the reputation that a lot of times the church has.

A lot of times the church has the reputation as someone that is so focused on the inside and what's happening inside the walls of the church that we miss what's going on outside of the church.

And we don't focus on the people that are all around us that are hurting and oppressed.

The church should be people that seek the welfare of the city that are looking to uphold righteousness and justice.

When there's a segment of the population that is oppressed, that we should speak out on their behalf.

When there's racial injustice, we should speak up and speak out for the plight of those that are hurting around us.

When there's millions of babies that are being aborted every single year, there's a justice issue in the church.

We should be people that follow the commands of scripture, but we should not miss the heart of God in that.

And the religious leader certainly had done that.

He continues and he gives the next woe, and he says in verse 25, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites.

For you clean the outside of your cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

You blind Pharisees, first clean the inside of your cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean.

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and uncleanness.

So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

I told you this is a tough passage, right?

This is a difficult pill to swallow for all of us as Jesus is calling out these religious leaders.

And here he's calling out the religious leaders because they were more concerned about their reputation than they were about their character.

They were more concerned about their reputation than they were their character.

Back in biblical times, every spring there was the celebration of the Passover.

And so hundreds of people would come into the city and they would visit Jerusalem at that time of the year.

And so right before everyone would start coming into the city, you started to have people that would start to improve kind of the landscape and improve their houses, and they would paint the outside of their houses with this kind of whitewashed paint.

And so then when the sun came out and shone on their houses or on their graves or on their uh uh tombs, then they would sparkle in the sunlight.

And the place appeared to be magical because of the whitewashed tombs and the whitewashed homes.

And they were looking really great from the outside, but on the inside, they were dead.

On the inside, they were like dead people's bones.

They appeared great, but on the inside, they were worthless.

And Jesus calls them out in that and says, Listen, you look really great on the outside, but you aren't necessarily clean on the inside.

And this is this is so easily seen in social media today.

Where we have Instagram, right?

And you never see a picture on Instagram of a family that's fighting, a house that's messy, a mom that doesn't have any makeup on, her hair's all messed up, the kids are going crazy.

You normally see the family that took the dream vacation to the beach, and they all match, they're all color coordinated, and everything looks great and grand, right?

Everything's perfect.

And they look great from the outside, but on the inside, it's not so great.

And we get so focused on our reputation that we miss out on our character.

And the religious leaders, they didn't really protect their character.

They weren't looking to really be clean on the inside, they were more focused on what people saw from the outside.

Man, you show up to church and somebody says, How are you doing?

Great, I'm doing awesome.

Everything's fantastic.

Life couldn't be better.

Man, I look good on the outside, got my act together, but on the inside, I'm falling apart.

Jesus calls them out for that.

And then the final, the final woe that he has here, he says in verse 29, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, If we had lived in those days of our father, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.

Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets.

Fill up then the measure of your fathers.

What he's saying here is that the Pharisees believed that they were better than other people.

And that's really where religion leads.

Religion leads to us thinking that we're better than other people.

The Pharisees thought that they were better than their fathers, they were better than the previous generation.

The other generations that came before them, the prophets of God would come and speak hard truths to the people, and the people didn't want to listen.

And so they had those prophets killed, they had those prophets tortured, that they did terrible things to those prophets because they were calling out their sin and they said, We don't want anything of that.

And they were saying, Listen, we're we're evolved, we're better than they were.

And we would never do that to a true prophet of God.

But what's kind of ironic is that these same religious leaders that Jesus is calling out in this story, literally, days later, we'll have Jesus crucified on the cross.

They'll have him tried for crimes that he didn't commit, and they'll have him beaten beyond an inch of his life, and then have to witness the most heinous, terrible death that you could possibly imagine.

But for them, they saw themselves as better than others, that they would never go down the same trap and down the same path as their fathers before them.

And that's what religion does.

Religion ultimately makes us think that we're better than other people.

And for you, you might be thinking this morning, man, well, at least I don't struggle with that addiction, right?

Or you you look out at somebody else and you say, Well, I don't live that type of lifestyle.

I'm therefore better than someone else.

Well, then the message that you have this morning, if that's your train of thought, is what Jesus is doing.

He's he's confronting you right now.

And he's calling you out in your sin.

Now these are hard truths that Jesus is saying to us.

He's saying again that they were doorkeepers rather than door holders, that they were more concerned with the number of followers than building people of faith.

They were deceptively dishonest, that they were more about the law of God than the heart of God.

They were more concerned with their reputation than their character.

The Pharisees saw themselves as better than other people.

And I don't know about you, but for me personally, this morning, just in a moment of honesty, this is not just I look at this list and think, well, maybe there's one.

Man, I look at this list and I think, man, I struggle with every single one of these.

And I look at this list and it's as if Jesus is confronting me this morning and he's saying to me, You're guilty.

You're just like one of the religious leaders.

And maybe I'm alone in this.

Maybe I'm the only one that struggles, but I believe that the church, the people of God, that we can become so accustomed to just walking through life and we can so easily fall into these traps, and we can become the religious leaders of the day.

And after Jesus calls them out in these different ways, he asks the question in verse 33.

He says, You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell?

I mean, that's a pretty strong word.

He calls them serpents, a brood of vipers.

How are you going to escape?

You're guilty.

There's no way out.

You can't work your way out of this.

Religion tells you that you can work your way to God.

Just do enough good works, and then you'll be able to earn God's favor.

And Jesus is saying, listen, you've tried.

You're the person that has been the most morally upstanding individual that anyone knows in the culture.

And you've still fallen short.

You've still missed the mark.

You've still have been broken.

Who is going to save you?

Who is going to rescue you?

It's a pretty bleak picture.

But if we know the rest of the story, if we know what the gospel message is all about, the answer is Jesus will save them.

Jesus is the answer.

Why does Jesus confront the religious leaders?

Because they need to see that they are sinful, that they are broken, that they are messed up, and that they are in need of a savior.

He wants them to see themselves as who they truly are, and he wants them to turn from their self-righteous attitude and turn to him because he's the only one that gives us hope.

He's the only one that can bring life, he's the only one that can save us from hell.

And we desperately need him.

And somewhere along the way, the enemy has come into our lives, he's come into our churches, and he has got us to believe that we can do it on our own.

And looking at Matthew 23 and Jesus calling out the religious leaders, it is clear we can't do it on our own.

We are in desperate need of a savior.

The law was not given to you to obey, it was given to you so that you would break it and you would know that you were in need of a savior.

And this morning, my prayer, I beg God all week long is that he would wake us up, each and every one of us.

He would wake us up to the reality that we can't earn God's favor, that we can't do it on our own, and that apart from him, our destiny is eternal separation from him.

And the only hope we have is Jesus.

Putting all of our trust and all of our hope in him.

Isaiah tells us that all of our good deeds are like filthy rags.

So not what you do on your bad days, but what you do on your good days.

The days that you're waking up and you actually maybe open up your Bible and you read a little bit and you talk nice to your kids as you're getting ready for school or work or breakfast and you drive to school or drive to your employer and you don't speed and you don't cut anybody off and you do everything perfect.

It's the best day that you could ever have.

Even on your best days, are like filthy rags.

We can't live up to the law.

We are in desperate need of a savior.

We need someone to come and to rescue us.

And Jesus is willing to confront us.

He doesn't back away from the truth, but he's willing to confront not just the religious leaders 2,000 years ago, but he's wanting to confront you and he's wanting to confront me this morning so that we can have a restored relationship.

And so, my question for you I don't care if you've been in church your entire life, I don't care if you've been baptized a dozen times, I don't care if you prayed a prayer a hundred times, I don't care of all the religious duties that you can maybe tell me that you have been a part of.

Are you someone that is resting on Jesus for your salvation?

Or are you trying to go about it on your own?

Are you trying to do enough good works in order to somehow please God and earn your way to Him?

Or are you putting all of your chips to the center of the table and betting everything on Jesus, begging him to rescue and save you from hell?

He's willing to confront us this morning so that he can restore the relationship with our Father.

And this morning, if that's the step that you need to take, we would invite you into that relationship.

It's not about what you do, but it's about giving your life completely and fully to Jesus.

Here at Church of the Grove, we say you admit that you're a sinner.

And it should be pretty easy looking at this list for all of us to be able to admit that.

You believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he died on a cross for your sins and for mine so that we could have life eternal.

And then you finally confess him as your Lord and Savior, saying, Hey, it's not about me, it's not about making much of myself, but it's about you.

And I'm willing to give you everything today.

And I want to make you my Lord.

You're calling the shots, you're the one that I'm following all the days of my life.

If that's the step you need to take, I beg you, I implore you, do it today.

Don't wait, don't put it off, don't think that somehow you can earn your way to God.

But instead, know the reality is that we're all broken, and even our best days don't even come close to what comes to meeting the standard that God has set for us.

And so I want to pray for us now that we would be a church that rests our lives and that it puts all of our trust and all of our hope in Jesus and who he is, and that he would not only save the ones that haven't put their faith in him, but that we would also be a church that doesn't preach a message of religion, but instead preaches a message of grace and the message of the good news of Jesus, that in the middle of our sin we can be rescued, we can be saved.

Let me pray for us.

Lord Jesus, we thank you so much that you are a God that does not back down from the hard and difficult truths that we need to hear.

But you're a God that is willing to step in and confront us in the midst of our sin so that we would become aware to the truth and the reality of who we are.

And as a result, Lord, that our relationship with our Heavenly Father would be restored.

Lord, I just pray right now for the individual that's watching this, and maybe they put their hope and their salvation in something that they have based their life upon, about being just a good guy, a good, a good mom, a good wife, a just a good citizen.

And they've thought that, man, their righteous deeds were somehow going to pay off, and that they were going to be able to earn their way to you.

Lord, I pray that today you would wake them up to the reality that they desperately need your grace and your forgiveness, and they would turn and follow you with that today.

Lord, I pray for the rest of us, Lord, that so easily we fall into the trap of the religious leaders, and we fall into the trap of being doorkeepers rather than door holders, and we about our reputation rather than our character.

And Lord, I pray that today, Lord, we would come back to the place where we see you in all of your glory and that we would make you our living hope.

Lord, that you are the only one that can truly restore the relationship with our Heavenly Father.

And let us put all of our hope and all of our faith and all of our trust in you.

Lord, we love you.

We thank you for the reality and the truth of your word this morning.

It's in your name we pray in the name of Jesus.

Amen.