Edenology | Fully Known, Fully Loved | Chad Bruegman

Hey, I also want to say uh good morning over there at Missouri City campus.

Hope you guys are having an amazing morning of worship.

Everyone at West End downtown.

Love you all.

Uh everybody watching with us online.

Uh grateful that you get to be with us today.

And then of course, as always, at every campus, let's give the most gracious round of applause to all the men at our God Behind Bars campus.

We love you, gentlemen.

So we are in a season that we are every year where we do something that uh we call everybody uh works, and it's just a reminder uh of how much this thing takes a village in order for it to be everything that it is so supposed to be.

We have such an amazing group at every campus of volunteers that it's easy to walk in here week after week and uh just not fully appreciate how seamlessly things go.

And it is because of people like you guys, all those people you see out there making the coffee and uh doing awesome ministry with your kids over across the way, and all of those amazing men and women out there parking you crazy uh angry drivers, uh uh people making us the one God ordained drug that He is allowed, which is coffee, unless you're Mormon, but other than that, it doesn't matter.

Uh there are so many opportunities around here uh for you to get more involved and be a deeper part of what's happening here at River Point and West End Church.

And I just want you guys to know you should have gotten one of these on your way in at every campus, and it tells you all of the different opportunities that you could potentially sign up uh to help us with.

There's also a QR code on there that if you uh go to that with your phone, it will tell you everything you need to know.

And then on the way out of this service in a few minutes at every campus, uh if you fill these out, first of all, thank you.

Um you can drop those off in the giving boxes and you will be getting a follow-up call as to what it's gonna look like for you uh to jump in and play an even bigger role in making this church and this community everything that it is supposed to be.

But before we move on to this series, for all of the amazing people uh at every campus who are already helping in the area of serving and making this thing what it's supposed to be, can we just give them the greatest round of applause right now and just thank them?

There are 300 things that have to happen before I get the privilege of getting up here week in and week out and getting to brag on Jesus and having the privilege of speaking from God's holy word to you guys.

And uh that doesn't fall short on me, man.

I am just so grateful for the amazing uh men and women who serve at all of our campuses, and so uh thank you.

Uh if you're visiting with us or if you missed last week, we are in uh week two of this three-week sermon series that we have titled, As You Can See, uh Edenology.

And the reason for that name is simply this.

I've probably told you this before, but I'm gonna say it again.

I believe that all of life's problems and answers can be found in the garden.

When I say the garden, I mean the garden of Eden.

I've told you this before too, and I'll say it again.

If you do not have a deep understanding of the first three chapters of the Bible, you to some slight slow degree are gonna get the rest of the story wrong.

Everything about why the rest of the Bible was written is in regards to everything that simply happens in the Garden of Eden.

And so I hope that at least once a year we do some type of series, whether we call it this or not, where we are simply taking time to go back to the first three chapters in Scripture and to remind ourselves about the beauty and about some of the brokenness that comes behind what took place uh in the Garden of Eden.

Now, if you missed last week, uh Pastor Chad Harold, uh campus pastor at Missouri City, was here, and he did an amazing job talking to us about Genesis chapter 1.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

And I love Genesis chapter 1, and Genesis chapter 1 doesn't usually get uh the amount of time it deserves.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention Genesis 1 · chapter mention

We usually skip right to it because we love the drama.

I don't know what it is about as human beings, but we love the drama.

But what we often forget, and what Chad reminded us of was yes, the gospel starts with sin, but the Bible does not.

We forget sometimes that God's original desire and intent was that when he made everything, he called it what?

Good.

Good doesn't just mean good like we use it, it means perfect, rhythmic, flawless.

When God made you and I, when he made the rest of creation, it was perfectly holy.

That is God's original redemptive desire for us.

And then this thing that we're gonna look at today, sin enters the picture, and everything starts going south.

Everything starts going crazy, but we'll see next week especially that what's God's immediate response is he immediately goes back into redemption mode, not punishment mode.

He goes right back into redemption mode.

It has always been and will always be God's desire that we, his image bears, male and female, us humans, that we walk in this perfected goodness that we now know can only be restored through this man, Jesus Christ, and through Jesus Christ alone.

So we get into week two, and uh here's what's gonna happen.

Uh we're gonna see an odd thing between a talking snake or serpent and uh Adam and Eve.

And he's gonna fill them full of lies because God had told them, hey, Adam, hey, Eve, all of these trees in this garden, they are for your consumption.

They are for your joy, they are for you to work, to grow, to till the land, to get great joy from everything.

But there's one tree here that I want you to stay away from.

Because it contains some knowledge of these two things called good and evil.

And God's original desire, we have to remember this, that the word good and the word evil would never be a part of the human lexicon.

He never wanted there to be a continuum or a spectrum between good and evil.

He did not design or equip us to know how to steward good and evil.

This is why we all, especially in religion, all over the world, we're all fighting and arguing about uh what's good and what's evil, and we've all even personally got our own ideas of what we call good and what we call evil.

And there's so much contention and fighting that goes on and trying to uh us to decide again what's good and evil.

And do you know why there's so much contention?

It's because we were never innately designed to have to steward this celestial civil war that's going on between God and the devil.

Between God's angels, his angel army, and the devil's demonic army.

God never wanted Adam and Eve, and by default, you and I, to be involved in this thing that had taken place before he ever spoke any of this into existence.

He's essentially saying, hey, it's above your pay grade.

But then as soon as we bought into the lie of our adversary, the devil, it invited us into this celestial civil war that we were not made to be equipped for.

And this is why we see all of the chaos over history and all of the chaos that we see every night on the news that has happened, is because we got in over our heads with something we were never meant to be privy to.

And so here we pick up, and I'm gonna start in Genesis chapter 2, as we were in chapter 1 last week, and I'm gonna skip down to verse 18, and we're gonna go where we're gonna go today.

Genesis 2 · chapter mention

It says this: it says, The Lord God, after he created Adam and Eve, or after he created Adam, he said this to Adam.

He said, It's not good, Adam, for you or any of us to be alone.

After he just called everything in his creation good, as we looked at last week.

This is the first time in human history God says something actually has the potential to not be good.

And you know what it is?

To be alone.

And so here's what God says I'm gonna do for you, Adam.

I'm gonna make a helper suitable for you.

I'm gonna make a helper suitable for you.

It goes on skipping down to verse 23.

So before we read it, here's what I skipped.

Uh Adam names the animals.

That's pretty cool.

Different sermon for another day.

I don't even know what I would say about that, but pretty cool thing.

And then all of a sudden, God says, Since it's not good for you to be alone, uh, he puts him in a divine sleeper hold, UFC style.

Adam takes a nap, and then when Adam wakes up, there is a naked woman staring at him.

And so what's he do?

He writes some poetry.

He tries to act smooth.

This is the first guy in human history trying to act cooler than he is.

Adam looks at her and says, This is now the bone of my bones, the flesh of my flesh.

She shall be called woman.

For she was taken out of the man.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become what?

One flesh.

They become holy together, not separate, holy together.

Let's use a modern therapeutic term.

They are fully integrated with each other.

One flesh.

This is beautiful.

This is what we all want.

Adam and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.

I've said this before, I'll say it again.

I think this is the single most beautiful verse in all of the Bible.

Adam and Eve were naked and they felt no shame.

Could you imagine that?

Like most of us this morning getting ready.

It's not fun being in the mirror the whole time you're trying to get ready, right?

Because you're naked and you're vulnerable.

And you're seeing everything beautiful about you and you're seeing everything that you would like to change about you.

Imagine a time, it's even hard for our current minds to even fathom what it would be like for all of humanity to be fully naked and there be no shame involved.

Now that was a literal statement in the garden, but it was equally a figurative statement.

When it says naked, do you know what it means?

Adam and Eve were fully known to each other.

Nothing to hide, nothing to cover up, fully known to each other.

And when it says, and they were not ashamed, there was no shame, do you know what that means?

They were not only fully known to each other, but they were fully loved by each other.

And listen to me, River Point, West End, listen to me.

The chorest human desire and need is that right there.

To be fully known while simultaneously being fully loved.

Whether you walked into any campus today realizing that or not, that is what you want most.

You want it more than riches, you want it more than gold, you want it more than assets, you want it more than amenities, you want it more than vacations, you want it more than awesome hobbies, you want it more than the dream career.

We were designed to be fully known, unapologetically known to our core without one fear of love being taken away from us.

And you know who hates that?

The enemy of your soul.

The one who Jesus said in John 10, 10 wants to kill from you, steal from you, and ultimately destroy you.

The one who Jesus says every time the devil, the adversary, speaks, this is why God didn't want them to touch that tree in the middle of the Garden of Eden.

He wasn't trying to ruin their fun, he wasn't trying to hold things back from them.

He didn't want them to ever have an ear with the adversary because when he speaks, all he speaks to us is lies, and that's what we're gonna see next in Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

They're naked and they are not ashamed at all, and so who conveniently enters the picture?

The enemy.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made.

And he said to the woman, Did God really say?

Isn't that the voice of the enemy, making malodrama out of God's holiness?

Making small and light out of God's design.

Come on, did God Eve, did he really say you must not eat from any tree?

Do you see what he does there in lies?

He said, any tree, and it's just, no, it's just one tree.

The woman said back to him, she got this part right, she said, We may eat fruit uh fruit from the trees that are in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will what?

You will die.

And then listen to what his next punch is, listen to what his next attempt is.

Come on, Eve.

That's a bit dramatic.

That's a bit over the top.

That doesn't seem like a loving creator, that doesn't seem like a good God.

You will not certainly die.

The serpent said to the woman, and then here's what he proposes to her.

For God knows, Eve, that when you eat from it, your eyes will actually be opened and you'll be more like God.

Who wouldn't want to be more like God?

There was nothing better in their day than when they got to walk and talk with God in the garden of the cool of day.

If you were in the literal presence of God right now, the literal unhindered presence of God right now, and someone came to you and said, if you participate in this thing, you're even gonna enjoy it more.

I don't judge them, I would have fallen prey to that too.

He says, Your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil.

So it goes on to say, when the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food, practical, pleasing to the eye, pleasurable, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, which is powerful, she took some and she ate it, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it, and now all of a sudden, all the root source of all human chaos, brokenness, and drama happens right here.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened.

And were they more like God?

No.

Now all of a sudden, for the first time, they're less than what God designed them to be.

They realized they were naked, their divine naivety was gone now.

So what do they do?

They sewed fig leaves together and they made coverings for themselves.

And for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, you and I have become professionals at making fig leaves for ourselves.

Cover-ups, curating our stories, creating a gap between who we are privately and who we are publicly.

This is what sin does.

This is what the enemy wants.

He wants us to live lives full of fig leaves, full of cover-up.

Do you know why?

Because as soon as there's parts of your story that bring shame and we cover them up, do you know what the first casualty is to go?

Intimacy.

You can only be as intimate with any human being, whether it's your spouse, whether it's a parent, whether it's a child, whether it's a best friend or a coworker or someone in church.

You can only be as intimate in relationships as you are honest.

And whenever shame enters the picture, do you know what it creates?

It creates this powerful thing called fear.

Fear that if I'm fully known, even the places I'm ashamed of, if I'm fully known, then guess what I'm gonna forfeit?

Being fully loved.

And because that is what we were designed for, because that is God's core and our basis human need and desire, as soon as we feel shame, this is what makes shame so powerful, and why it's the first negative human emotion to ever enter the picture, because the enemy of your soul knows if I can get you ashamed about any aspect of your life, you are naturally going to want to cover up and hide it.

Curate your story, keep it from people.

And he knows we were designed at our core for relationship, right?

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and then secondly, do what?

Love your neighbor as much as yourself.

And so, what's he do?

I want to get them to not love parts of themselves because that will affect their relationship first with God, and secondly with how they treat each other.

I'm gonna create some chaos with what as the tool?

Shame.

So they put fig leaves on, they cover up.

It goes on to say in verse 8 this.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden of the cool of the day, and here's the natural human response once shame's a part of it.

They hid.

They hid from the Lord, their creator, right?

They hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord called to the man, and he says this, Adam, where are you?

Now, we've talked about this before, but it bears repeating.

God never asks a question he needs the answer to.

Right?

He's omniscient.

He knows everything.

He's asking this for Adam.

This is his first process in dealing with shame.

You cannot deal with any aspect of shame you may have walked in here with from your life.

Whether it's shame that's happened because of current circumstances, shame that's uh been a long-standing part of your story because of maybe how you grew up as a child, shame that you walked in here at any campus with because of maybe uh the worst mistakes, biggest failures you've made in your life.

You can never conquer or get freedom and victory over that shame unless you are a person who so trusts the love of God over your life that you are willing to let God ask you this question, not just once, but often.

This is one of the most we like to talk about spiritual maturity.

I think this is where a believer in Jesus is at.

They're most mature, is when they are unafraid of this very difficult question.

Where are you?

God knew where Adam was.

God knew why Adam was hiding, but God knew Adam could not get any type of freedom from the mistake, the sin they had committed, if he doesn't realize where he's at.

This question is God trying to invite them back to a place of honesty.

Do you know why Adam and Eve are hiding when they hear God's voice?

Because there's now parts of them they don't want him to see.

Because there was part of his design that they had breached and they knew it.

And do you want to know what they were thinking when they hid?

I'll tell you exactly why they hid and why we hid every time.

Is because if God fully knows this about me, he won't be able to fully love me.

Do you know why Adam and Eve put coverings before God ever showed up in the garden?

Was because if Eve knows this part about me, she will no longer fully love me the way we were designed to fully love each other.

If Adam knows this about me, I gotta cover this part up about me, because then my husband will never fully love me, and there is no greater fear in life than to not be loved.

Why?

It is the essence of who God is, therefore who we are.

For God is love.

And so he asks him the question, where are you?

And Adam gives a somewhat honest answer.

He doesn't tell any lies here, he just omits the first part, which was, I broke your command.

But when he says, Where are you?

Here's Adam's answer.

He says, I heard you in the garden, and I was what?

Afraid.

This is the next human emotion that gets introduced that's that's not good.

It's necessary, but it's not good.

Fear.

This is what shame breeds.

Fear.

I was afraid because I was what?

Naked, vulnerable before you now for the first time.

And so my instinct was to do what?

It was to hide.

To which I picture God going, Adam, what were you afraid of?

And Adam would have probably said, Well, I knew that if you knew this and you knew what I did, that you wouldn't love me anymore, that you'd quit showing up to walk with Eve and I in the garden in the cool of the day, and so I was afraid of that, and so I hid from you.

Because there's parts of me now that I don't want you to see, because when I look at them, I don't feel right.

When I look at them, something feels really broken about me, and something feels really wrong, so I was naked and uh I was afraid, so I hid.

And can I just remind us today, when God says, Where are you?

and Adam says, I was afraid, can I remind you what Paul said to us in 1 Timothy?

He said, For God has not given us a spirit of what?

So we can deduce, God has not given us a spirit of fear, but what?

When God's spirit's around, there's power, there's love, unconditional love, and there's right thinking, a sound mind.

So when Adam's afraid here, we know the truth is for him what it is for us, which is that is not the spirit of God making you afraid.

Any type of fear, which is a constant reality in our day-to-day lives, let's be honest.

I just want you to know this when you're feeling it in any form or fashion, it is never the Spirit of God that is giving you that fear.

It is a lie from the pit of hell itself that is trying to keep you keeping your fig leaves on.

Trying to keep you bound by shame of your imperfections, bound by the shames of your less than stellar perfections.

Performance in life.

Trying to keep you what?

Hiding from each other and from God.

You know what the devil's trying to destroy?

What we were created for.

Intimacy.

Which, in its purest form, I'm going to say this 20 more times before I'm done, is simply to be fully known while simultaneously being fully loved.

I was afraid, so I hid.

And then God says, we got to get even deeper to this.

Who told you that you were naked?

This is God wanting us to recognize that wasn't my voice.

That wasn't my doing.

I didn't put that shame on you.

I told you this before, and I'm going to say it again and I'm going to say it again.

Shame is never a tool in the tool belt of God in his redemption and sanctification of us.

It is never something God uses in any way to reintegrate us back to Him through Jesus Christ, to make us holy again through Jesus Christ.

Does God use guilt?

Yes.

Is guilt a tool in God's tool bag?

Yes.

And a lot of us think those two are one and the same and they could not be more different, right?

Many of you've heard this before when you're talking about the differences between shame and guilt.

What is it?

Guilt is being sorry for something you've done.

That's holy.

That's healthy.

That's the entry point to getting free again from your sin, from your failure, is to let that guilt cause you to confess and call a spade a spade.

Guilt is being sorry for what you've done.

Shame is being sorry for who you are.

And God will never ever take his creation, which Ephesians says is a masterpiece in God's eyes.

You are, whether you think it or not, a masterpiece in God's eyes.

You are the finishing work on his painting that is called humanity.

Who told you you were naked?

He's like, that's not my voice.

And he says, Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?

And listen, this is this is don't get judgmental of Adam because we all do the same crazy stuff.

Do you want to know what Adam's response is to this question?

Who told you you were naked?

You ready for this?

This is crazy.

The woman you put here gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.

I am so glad God is God and I am not.

I would have been done.

You're done.

I'm over it.

Bad experiment.

The audacity.

Right?

Come on, guys, the audacity of Adam.

It's one thing to blame Eve, alright?

We get that.

We're humans.

We're good at that, right?

Blame shifting.

It's their fault.

But to blame God?

Who we know did nothing to make this happen?

The woman you put here, by the way, you remember when, and God's probably thinking, Adam, what was all that bone of bone and flesh of my flesh earlier when it first happened?

Honeymoon period over now?

Now she's the enemy.

Now I'm the enemy.

See what he's doing?

This is fig leaf living, deflecting.

Living as a victim.

Because of an inability to trust that if you're fully known, you're going to be fully loved.

That if God doesn't just see the good in you, but all the bad and even sometimes the ugly of our lives that you won't be fully known.

And so this is when we in human relationships and our walk with God start talking crazy stuff.

He blames who?

God and his neighbor.

What are the two greatest commands?

Jesus said, if you just focus your whole life on these two things, there's no need for any other law.

Everything in life would be redeemed.

Heaven would come back to earth if every human had a capacity to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

And then by default, what would we do?

We'd start to love each other again.

Despite each other.

We'd love our neighbors ourselves.

Isn't it interesting?

The two people he blames and deflects from with his figs leaves is it's your fault, God, and it's her fault.

And this is why when Jesus says the two greatest commands ever is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength, and then love your neighbors yourself.

Notice who he keeps out of that equation.

The person in the mirror.

He says, everything will be restored again.

And what's Adam doing?

He's doing the exact opposite.

And this is the power of sin, y'all.

God doesn't give us commands to make life burdensome.

God doesn't give us his holy commands to keep us down.

God gives us these holy commands because he knows when we get outside of his will and outside of his design, we start acting a fool with each other.

We start hurting each other and start uh instead of helping each other, we start destroying each other instead of redeeming each other.

So he answers that, and then Eve, I think she does a little bit better of a job.

Eve usually takes the brunt of the issues here.

Uh typically, the men, we love to joke about Eve's uh issues in the garden and what she's responsible for.

But let me just remind you of what the apostle Paul said.

He said, Eve was deceived, but Adam sinned.

He didn't say Eve sinned, he said, Eve was deceived.

She bought into the lies of an outside source.

Adam just sinned.

He was told before Eve was ever created not to eat from that tree.

He was the one that was supposed to protect her from that, talk her out of that, pick her up, put her out, do anything you can, get her away from that tree.

Let's go to other trees.

And he just sits along, like, you know, what are you doing?

Eve, and she eats it and she gives him, she's like, all right, I'll eat.

Okay, you know, it's like, okay, yeah, so you know.

The Lord God said to the woman, What is this you have done?

And she said this, and she's not lying.

She said, The serpent deceived me and I ate.

Now that's not the full truth because she had already just told the serpent that they weren't allowed to eat from that.

So she knew what she was doing.

She's culpable.

So Adam blames everyone else, and Eve's like, the devil made me do it.

Right?

This is fig leaf living, pushing it off on other people, deflecting, and we don't do that.

Listen to me, hear me when I say this.

I don't think we humans do that because we're inherently bad.

I think we do that because we're inherently scared.

If I'm fully known, if I'm at all culpable for something, and then people know that I am, that I fell short of the glory of God, that I fell short of living the best expression and version of who I am, then the people that uh saw me do that are no longer gonna be able to fully love me, and that is just not true.

So here's what the tie-in is.

Because we subtitled this, it's Edenology, but then we subtitled it from Eden to Easter.

We're gonna celebrate Easter in a few weekends from now, and I can't wait.

It's the central core of our faith.

It's what distinguishes our faith from every other approach to religion on planet Earth, which is that our God is not dead, that he conquered the grave, that he came to do away with the thing we lost in the garden, which was eternity.

He came to bring it back.

He came that death would no longer eternally have a sting over us, that it wouldn't be the end of our story.

So, what's the tie-in right now?

What's got up to right now between uh the Garden of Eden and what we're looking at and Easter, what we're about to celebrate, and I'm gonna go to a part uh in the New Testament that I think says it the best in the fewest amount of words.

This is uh one of Jesus' disciples.

They were incredibly intimate.

You can tell from the readings of the gospel.

Him and John were incredibly close.

So when John speaks, I want to listen to him.

When John's teaching us about Jesus and about the kingdom of God, I want to hear what he says.

Here's what he says.

John says, this is the message that we heard from him, Jesus, and that we now declare to you the church.

So listen to this.

God is light.

And we know from Scripture that that's 100% literal.

The book of Revelation tells us that for an eternity there will no longer be need for a sun, as we know at S-U-N, because God will light up everything.

God is literally light, but don't miss this.

God is equally figuratively light as well, because you know what light represents figuratively?

Truth.

When a light gets turned on, you can now see the reality of the space where that light got turned on in, right?

Nothing's hidden.

You can't fig leaf when life is there.

God is light, truth.

In him there is no darkness.

There is no deception.

There is no cover-up.

There is no breach between who he says he is and how he acts, unlike us, right?

If we claim we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness or lies, we lie and we do not live out the truth.

And I love this.

It goes on to say, but if we walk in truth, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have what?

Fellowship with who?

You'd think it would say God, but it says fellowship with one another.

See, this is what I'm trying to get us to see in week two of this series.

This is the thing that the Garden of Eden has been screaming to us since day one, which is the degree of intimacy you have in any human relationship is completely contingent upon how much two people will allow each other to be brutally honest about the fullness of themselves and still show up to love each other.

Any relationship where you feel fear and therefore start fig-leaving from other people, whoever it is, intimacy gets lost.

And everything we were designed for starts to get lost.

If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship restored with one another.

And you can apply that to every human relationship from marriage on down.

And then, secondly, and even more beautiful, also the blood of Jesus.

When we walk in truth, when we get honest about the fig leaves in our own lives, the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin.

And so let me just talk real quick about being honest with each other.

The book of James says what John's telling us right here in a different way.

I want to read it real quick.

This is what James said.

Another person that was uh intimately close with Jesus.

He was Jesus' half-brother.

They not only grew up together, but then they ended up doing ministry together.

And James says in James 5, 16, therefore, confess your sins to who?

Each other.

Which I say, I don't want to do that.

I don't even enjoy confessing them to God.

And I think God can love me better than them.

Why would you want me to confess it to them?

Confess your sins to each other.

Keep in mind he's talking to the church.

And what?

Then pray for each other.

So that you may be healed.

This is God's call to us, the church, to set the tone and set the standard to the world that because we believe in the gospel, because we believe that our love isn't contingent upon our performance, because we believe that the God of the universe is someone who has paid every last price and shed every last necessary drop of blood for the forgiveness and redemption of anyone and everyone who would call upon the name of the Lord, put their faith in the finished work of Jesus, and be saved.

If we truly, church, listen to me, if we truly believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, we should be the least afraid people on planet earth to be as brutally and gut level honest as anybody.

We should fight against fig leaf living more fiercely than anyone on planet Earth.

Why?

Because when two parties agree that you can be as honest with me as you need to be, and I will still be here tomorrow, and I'll still show up in your life.

Do you want to know the freedom that comes from that when we quit having to uh cover things up?

We quit having to uh sit in this uh gap between our private life and who we know who we are in here versus the the message we're trying to send to people out here?

This is reintegrating ourselves back to who we were meant to be.

This is becoming whole again.

This is what the Bible calls being holy, is we confess our sins to each other and healing starts to happen.

Do you know how powerful it is when a group of people get honest about their shortcomings, when a group of people call a spade a spade together?

Do you know how freeing it is when you've got a few people in your life you can look at and you know they know the best about you and they know the ugliest parts of you and they still show up tomorrow?

And you don't have fear that they're not gonna show up again the next day, so you don't have to treat them and walk in fear and have relationships uh based out of fear, but instead it's just this intimacy that comes from saying, Hey, I'm broken in this way, you're broken in this way, I'll tell you yours if you tell me mine.

And this doesn't mean that two people agree to just look the other way when it comes to unholy behavior.

No.

The most intimate people are people who hold each other accountable to redemptive living.

This isn't me saying, yeah if you agree to not punish me for my bad stuff, I'll agree to not punish you, and then we just keep doing a bunch of stuff that harms us and hurts us.

That's not love.

The Bible says uh uh a friend can wound you, but an enemy just does nothing but multiply kisses.

A friend that loves you, the person you know that you can tell and confess the worst parts of you, the biggest struggles of you two, and it's hard and it's difficult, but you know they're gonna still show up unconditionally and be with you then and the next day, that person has the right to wound you.

That person has a right to speak some tough truth to you.

But people who don't really love you, they'll just tell you everything you want to hear, right?

Man, there's something so redemptive and powerful about confession.

When we start to realize, man, I struggle maybe differently than you, but I struggle as much as you do.

When we start as the church getting honest about that, there is freedom in that.

You understand that?

And then the second thing it says is this it says, the blood of Jesus, his son, will purify us from all sin.

Let's go on and read what's next.

If we claim to be without sin, if we if we fig leaf our way through life and act like we've got it all together, so the public perception gives us this fake or pseudo-sense of being the person we think they want us to be, you'll get nowhere.

You are what?

Deceived.

Covering things up versus confessing things is the greatest human deception.

That comes over time with the greatest human consequences.

We deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

But listen to this good news.

We end with this good news right here, church.

If we confess our sins, and I know that's hard, I know that's difficult, but if we confess our sins, he, Jesus, is what?

Faithful and just and will forgive us our sins, and I love this word, purify us from all unrighteousness.

He'll do it.

We don't do it.

He'll do it, and the only participation he's asking from us is honesty.

Confession is the entry point to healing.

Being people who confess to each other so there's healing.

We realize we're in this together.

We realize our brokenness isn't unique to other people's brokenness, it's just part of the human story.

And then we confess our sins open and honest to God, and He every time will be faithful in His justice, it says, to cleanse us and purify us of all unrighteousness.

And so I end today with a call, a corporate call to us as a church to be reminded of the power of confession.

I want to challenge us as you walk out of the doors of whatever campus you're at today.

I want to challenge us to be unafraid of confession.

Do you know what I did yesterday?

I did a really beautiful, painful exercise so that I would hold myself accountable before I got up here and talked to you guys a mean game.

I came to the church and I did what I always do on Saturday.

I just started doing my little nerdy Christian Jericho prayer march around here, praying for this weekend, praying for you guys, praying for myself.

And I prayed less for you guys than normal yesterday, and you know what I prayed more for?

I just had this let's take the fig leaves off talk with God.

And I ended, I was coming in here for about a half hour.

I ended up walking, I think I walked four miles according to my Fitbit.

Didn't even mean to.

That's how much fig leaf I had to get off me.

And it was just painfully beautiful, gut-level honesty with God.

Not because God didn't already know everything I was confessing, but because there is something so freeing.

There's a lightness to your soul when you give it to Jesus.

Here's my yoke, God.

Here's my fig leaves.

And you said if I gave you my yoke, you would trade it out for your yoke, which is easy and light.

And by the time I had walked out of here, I felt 10 pounds lighter because of my soul.

It was so hard to call a spade a spade in my own life and not play victim in any area of my decision making, but call it what it was, and just put it before the throne of God.

And I did not feel punished, I did not feel berated, I did not by God in his presence feel less than.

Do you know what I walked away feeling?

I felt God going, hey, I know the best of you, Chad, and I love that.

I know the worst of you, Chad, and I will be here again tomorrow.

I will walk with you in the garden of the cool day every single day.

And God says, all I ask is that you stop putting fig leaves over things so that our intimacy can be everything that it is meant to be.

You realize that?

There's no greater proof of how loved you are, despite you, than the cross of Jesus Christ.

Romans puts it the best.

While we were yet sinners, fig-leaved up, Christ what?

Died.

Jesus would say this greater love have no man than this, that he what?

Lay down his life for his friend.

And what's he do?

2,000 years before you'd even make one mistake in life, one sin in life, 2,000 years before you would do anything to breach God's holiness.

What's he do?

He goes to the cross and says, Father, forgive Chad.

He knows not what he does.

I promise you, this is going to bring so much flourishing in your relationship, in loving God with all your heart, soul, might, and strength is this letting him love you first.

And the cross of Jesus Christ is God loving you first.

John would go on to write, We love because of what he first loved us.

This is the chief fuelant of not just serving God or putting your faith in God, but the fun part, loving God, like really loving God, not just doing religious Christian stuff, but really loving God is trusting that what he did on the cross was enough for you to walk out of here today and be reminded that on your worst day you are unconditionally loved by your Creator and He will continue to show up through your best and your absolute darkest and worst moments.

And all he says is if you want to flourish, be honest.

Keep confessing, keep allowing me to ask you and others to ask you, where are you?

Why are you hiding?

And come out.

And I'm gonna trade out those fig leaves as we'll talk about next week.

This is my plug, don't miss next week, for coverings that will last forever.

So as we walk out of the doors today, I'm gonna ask this that you may consider sometime this week, if you if you want to, doing what I did.

And I didn't plan on it, I just wanted to hold myself accountable before I got up here today.

Just have a walk and talk with God in whatever the garden of the cool today is for you.

Just get alone with God this week and say, God, I'm laying it all out.

I know you already know everything about me, but there is something so beautiful and restorative of just calling everything in your life that needs to be called out.

It's painful in the beginning, but once you get on a roll, man, you start to feel God's kindness.

You start to feel it, and it leads to repentance.

It leads to wanting to change.

It leads to wanting to re-up on what life is all about.

Now, at every campus at the end of our service, we always have these amazing people that are going to stay here as long as you want, and they're going to pray for you.

Some of you might want to even come down and maybe, as an act of faith, do an act of confession with one of them today.

You have that opportunity, but if there's anything at any campus that any of you need prayer for today, we will stay here as long as you need.

Let's pray and we'll pick back up next week.

God, I ask that you would bless every single person here, that you would keep them in the grip of your grace.

That you would cause your face to shine upon us this week.

God, that you would turn your countenance towards every single one of us.

That you would be radically gracious to us in your mercy.

And God, I pray that we all would walk out of the doors of our campus with a peace that passes understanding, that guards our hearts and guards our minds in Christ Jesus.

We pray this.

And everyone said, Man, we love you guys.

See you next week.