The Kingdom Way | Luke 6:43-45 | Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

I want to welcome you in wherever you're joining us from.

If you're here uh in person at our Holotus venue, man, I'm so glad you joined us today.

If you're with us online, I'm so glad that you tuned in.

I'm grateful for our online ministry, uh, all of the many, many people who work hard to make that a reality for us.

Uh, if you are new, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch, and we're in a journey uh for a while now, walking through the gospel of Luke, and we are coming to the end of our second series in Luke.

We've called this the Kingdom Way in this part of Luke's gospel.

Uh Jesus has begun his ministry.

He is demonstrating the way the kingdom of God operates, and he is declaring to us the values of the kingdom of God because Jesus, he took this very sermon that he's preaching right here in the text, and he traveled with it because Jesus was letting us know something that we have to know if we want to take advantage of the life that God has given us, that the kingdom of God is available to you right here and right now.

Amen.

This is not something we wait on, this is something we live in right now, we invest in right now, and we build right here, right now.

And so Jesus preaches this famous sermon.

And in this sermon, he's helping us understand a couple of things.

He comes out of the gate and just lets us know you don't understand reality.

You don't know how life works, you don't know how to measure success, you don't know how to steward your finances, you don't know how to manage your relationships, and there's a reason you don't know.

There's a reason I don't know.

And it's because we are birthed into the kingdoms of this world, and we are overwhelmed by the kingdoms of man.

And the kingdoms of man have formed us and informed us.

And so how we think reality works is based on man.

It's based on this world.

How we measure success is based on this world, the kingdoms of man.

Jesus just jumps out of the gate and he says, We're gonna do things differently in the kingdom of God.

Blessed are the poor in the kingdom of God.

Blessed are the hungry, the weeping, the hated.

In the kingdom of God, you don't go after and get revenge on your enemies.

You love them and bless them and pray for them.

In the kingdom of God, you forfeit your right to judge and condemn.

And instead, you embrace radical generosity and forgiveness of all people because you have been forgiven by your Father in heaven.

To really live as a part of the kingdom of God right here, right now, we grow in our discernment, learning to see reality the way that God sees it.

To do that, we have to be discipled by Jesus and discipled by Christians who are ahead of us and already have more discernment than we have.

We cannot be blind and be led by blind guides.

Now, one of the keys that we have focused on is that Jesus is not teaching and preaching religion.

Here's what I mean by that.

He is not coming in and trying to modify behavior.

This is what religion does.

It comes in and goes, here's the deal.

If you want to be a part of our club, every religion's a club, it's very exclusive.

If you want to be a part of our club, this is how you have to look, this is how you have to dress, this is how you have to talk, this is how you have to sing, this is how you have to vote, this is how you have to move, this is where you need to live.

It's all outside in behavioral modification.

And Jesus comes in and goes, I'm not trying to change your behaviors.

I want your heart, I want your mind, I want your will, I want all of it inside, fully surrendered, fully submitted.

You do that, the behaviors will take care of themselves, the actions will take care of themselves, the reactions, the habits, the relationships, the finances, they'll take care of themselves.

I told you this week one of looking at the sermon on the plane.

Revelation, and make no mistake, what we are getting from the very words of Jesus is revelation from heaven itself.

Revelation changes us from the inside out.

Religion seeks to control us from the outside in.

And far too often in Western Christianity, what we do is just religion, and we destroy the very things that make this movement so unique.

Jesus did not come to start another religion.

The religions are all just trying to help you cope with the pain of life.

Jesus came to take the pain of life and to nail it to his cross.

This is not another religion, this is revelation that leads to relationship with your heavenly father.

And so we're not doing behavior modification at the same time.

What is true is as you are changed from the inside out, over time, what is inside comes out.

One of the ways that we talk about this a lot in the church, and we get it from the text itself, is we talk about the fruit.

Those are behaviors, actions, reactions, habits, stewardship.

That's the fruit.

Jesus' sermon is not trying to change fruit, it's trying to get to the root inside, which leads to out.

And so today's message is actually simple.

Uh I want to clarify that doesn't mean the sermon will be short, just simple.

It's a simple premise.

We're in Luke chapter 6, starting in verse 43, Jesus says this a good tree doesn't produce bad fruit.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

On the other hand, a bad tree doesn't produce good fruit.

Now Jesus is speaking to an agricultural culture.

They just get it.

And he's also not teaching religion.

See, some of us are so steeped in religion, we don't even know how to read the first verse today.

Because we hear good and bad tree, good and bad fruit, and we think behavior.

We think good is moral and bad is immoral.

Good is religious and bad is irreligious.

It's much simpler than that.

Jesus is just teaching a concept that is so obvious it cannot be argued with.

Here's the problem good and bad, useful and worthless, according to whom?

Because the way we measure things is by the metrics of the kingdoms of man, which is why we spend almost all of our time on pursuits that the culture tells us are good, but if we are honest, are worthless.

I'm famous on TikTok.

I just got a brand deal.

I'm making money off of my social media.

Useless.

I'm happy for you.

I'm happy for you.

We need good Christian men and women to have influence, not just people who are trying to lead people straight to hell.

I'm happy for you.

And you can't be on social media four hours a day.

Because social media is useless.

We don't know how to measure things.

And so what the kingdoms of men tell you is you don't actually have to build real wealth that's like generational and that sets you free so you can own your things instead of your things owning you.

What the kingdoms of men say is you just need to look wealthy, and you can look wealthy way faster than you can be wealthy.

It takes 20 years of stewardship to be wealthy, it takes a credit card and some foolishness to look wealthy.

And so you can drive the right cars that you never own, and you can wear the brands, but never pay off your line of credit, and you can live in the neighborhood that you can't actually afford, and you're checking all the boxes for the kingdoms of man, but you don't build actual wealth, so it's useless.

You don't own your things, so you cannot master your things, and Jesus created you and gave you dominion over this earth.

You are meant to be a master of things, not be mastered by things, and so you look wealthy.

Congratulations, it's useless.

And so he's just going, like, look, you have trees that are useful and trees that are worthless.

Let me give you a couple of examples.

If you owned an apple orchard, first off, that would be dope.

That would be so cool.

I want to go see your apple orchard.

If anyone here owns an apple orchard, I'd like to go see it.

No one who's ever owned an apple orchard goes to town and brags that they have the tallest apple trees.

No one who owns an orchard shows up and is like, you should see my leaves this year, bro.

I have leaves the size of your head.

No one brags about the bark.

Man, you should see.

I have this nice bright brown bark, I mean stem all the way up the trunk.

It's the only thing you brag about if you own an apple orchard is how many apples you produce.

If you've got the tallest trees with the brightest leaves and the healthiest bark, and your trees don't turn over apples, your orchard is worthless.

It's a failure.

If you have some crooked, naked, no bark looking, two leaves in the whole orchard, and you have a buttload of apples, you win.

And so we care so much about how it looks to the world.

We measure all of the wrong points of success.

It's just the whole sermon.

Jesus is like, you guys, you don't know how life works.

You're investing all that you are and all that you have into things that are worthless.

When Jesus has come and invited you to build a kingdom that will never end, the most useful thing that you could do in your life.

If you want to live a life lived on purpose and with purpose, have you guys ever heard someone say that before?

Then you have to find out what is useful to God.

It's his kingdom.

I'll give you another example.

This one's from my own life.

I do not own an apple orchard, I don't got it like that.

I do own a tomato plant.

It's kind of similar.

We planted this dang tomato plant, and it was right when we got a lot of rain a couple of months ago, and this thing took off, man.

I mean, it's big, it outgrew.

I mean, we put it in a big planter, it's like spread out over the planter.

The only problem with my tomato plant is it grows no tomatoes.

I brought a picture of it just because I'm so frustrated in all these months.

I'm not exaggerating.

We have produced two tomatoes, and I kid you not, one of them was stolen by a squirrel in the backyard.

I have yet to eat a tomato from my tomato plant.

And so it'd be ludicrous for me to come up here bragging about my tomato plant because it's taller than my wife now.

You should see how tall it is.

It's like, who cares?

It doesn't do the one thing it's supposed to do.

It's such a simple passage, but if you could apply it, it will change your life.

And so I'm not gonna do a big reveal later.

I'm gonna give you the key idea in this text right now.

What makes a tree good is that it produces its purpose.

What makes a tree good is that it produces its purpose.

The purpose of an apple tree is to grow apples.

The purpose of a lemon tree is to grow lemons.

If it does that, it's a good tree.

I don't care the size, I don't care how beautiful it is, I don't care about the aesthetics.

Is it doing what God created it to do?

Are you doing what God created you to do?

Jesus continues to teach.

Sometimes Jesus lovingly just has to take us back to like pre-K, you know?

He's like, I've given you a lot, love your enemies, blessed are the poor.

Let's go back to pre-K.

Everyone on the mat, crisscross apple sauce.

Here's what he says.

For each tree is known by its own fruit.

Figs are not gathered from thornbushes, grapes are not picked from a bramble bush.

We just know this.

We're talking about the fruits.

This is where religion starts.

Where are the fruits?

Where are the behaviors?

Where are the habits?

How do you look?

How do you sound?

How do you dress?

How do you vote?

Jesus, this whole sermon is aimed at the roots.

And far before it is ever a large apple tree, it starts just as a seed, and the seed must be buried in the ground, and the seed must break apart, and it must form the roots, and roots determine fruits.

Pre-K.

Roots determine fruits.

It's like I know that and you know that, but then somehow we don't connect it to our own life.

What are you rooted in?

You're like really on fire for Jesus one day, and the next day you're cussing out your spouse.

It's like, what are you rooted in?

It's like, man, I want to build the kingdom, but you've never given a dollar to God through the local church.

What are you rooted in?

The beautiful thing we have in scripture: some of you are newer to the faith, some of you aren't convinced yet by the claims of Christianity, some of you have been following Christ forever, everyone belongs here, everyone's loved here.

Just to make sure everyone understands, in the Christian scriptures, what we call the New Testament, we get four gospels.

This is the life and teachings of Jesus.

And then we get letters.

And these letters are written by the very men that God discipled and called and equipped to start and to grow his church.

And the apostles who write the rest of the New Testament, they are never contradicting Jesus.

Say amen, so I know you agree with that.

They're never contradicting Jesus, they're never trying to slightly alter Jesus.

What they're doing is they are applying Jesus' teaching deeper into our life.

That's their job.

They're just coming in and teaching and encouraging and correcting to line everyone up to Jesus.

So the gospels, Jesus Christ is the foundation, and then they come and they make sure that we're building appropriately off of that foundation.

And because of that, we often have the apostles taking teachings just like today's teaching and helping to apply it a layer deeper into our life.

And Paul does that writing to the church in Galatia.

In Galatians chapter 5, he says this I say then, walk by the spirit, and you will certainly not carry out the desire of the flesh.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

We have spirit and flesh.

For the flesh desires what is against the spirit, and the spirit desires what is against the flesh.

They are opposed to each other so that you don't do what you want.

Very important context.

The letters in the New Testament are all written to believers.

And because of that, these letters generally are not teaching you how to go to heaven when you die.

They're writing to people already covered by the blood of Jesus Christ, which means all of their sins have been forgiven, which means there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, which means they are already in relationship with their heavenly father.

And because he's a perfectly heavenly father, he never disowns his children.

Amen?

He's not writing on how to stay out of hell.

These are people who've already been snatched out of hell by Jesus Christ.

So when he says, You've got the spirit, but you still have your flesh, he's not writing to unbelievers.

He's writing to children of God.

And what does he say this tension will do?

Believers, this will keep you from doing what you want.

This will keep you from living that life on purpose and with purpose.

This will keep you, this flesh, this pull, this fight, it will keep you from living out the values that Jesus has taught us throughout this famous sermon on the plain.

It will keep you from investing who you are and what you have in the kingdom of God, and instead you will live for the pleasures of the kingdom of man.

You see, the good news is we're not like an apple tree, we're not like a grape vine.

They are going to be what they're going to be, they have no other choice.

An apple seed is never going to produce a grapevine.

You understand?

Pre-K.

We are not like that.

And here's where we will see Jesus end his teaching today in just a little while.

Where the metaphor breaks down is you have agency.

God has given you the gift of the freedom of your will, which means you can decide what to root your life in.

And if you root your life in the flesh, you will produce the works of the flesh.

But if you root your life in the spirit, you will produce the fruit of the spirit.

This is what Paul's gonna go on to describe.

In Galatians chapter 5, verse 19, same passage, he says this.

Galatians 5:19

Now the works, I want you to put a pin in the word works.

We'll come back to it.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, moral impurity, promiscuity, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and anything similar.

I'm warning you about these things as I warned you before that those who practice such things will not inherit what?

The kingdom of God.

We have to slow down.

Because the religion that many of us are steeped in will misinterpret this verse.

We here will not inherit the kingdom of God, and we go, if I act like that, I go to hell.

Well, there's a couple problems with that.

Number one, we can read the context, and this is written to believers who are already sealed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

There's another problem with that.

Your works are not what gets you into relationship with God.

Your works are not what gets you to heaven.

It is not by works of righteousness that we are saved, it is according to his mercy he has saved us.

Amen.

If it is up to you, you would have already lost your salvation six times this morning.

Religion says if you want security of paradise, look to yourself.

This is why we have generations of Christians who are professional fruit inspectors.

We're going, I don't know.

You know, they did give a lot in the offering last month, but I also saw them yelling at their kids.

But they did go to Bible study three times, but I did hear them say the F-word when they stubbed their toe.

But they did were just inspecting fruit to see whether or not you might be in the kingdom.

And let me just be very clear: Jesus says, Stop it.

If I want security, assurance of where I'm headed after this life, I might never look at myself.

I look to the cross of Jesus Christ, where every one of my sins, past, present, and future, was laid upon the Lamb of God, prepared to be slain before the foundation of the world, was nailed to that cross when he breathed his last.

He screamed, Tatalus die, the debt is paid, it is finished.

The cross was not a down payment for my sin, and now I pay off the rest.

The cross took care of the whole bill.

I look to my life, I audit myself, not you.

I audit myself.

I take inventory of myself last week.

I make sure the beam is out of my eye.

I make sure that I am living for Christ.

I look at my own reactions, not to see if I am going to heaven, not to see if I'm a child of God, to see if I am living like my Father has called me to live.

All of this behaviorism is holding us back.

And we will fall into these spirals of guilt because of these habits and these sins in our life.

And we stay so focused on the sin that we keep repeating it.

And Jesus is like, I want a deeper.

I want your heart, your mind, your will surrendered to me.

I want you to be a good tree.

And good trees do what they were purposed to do.

Good trees do things that are useful.

You know what's useful?

The fact that the very word of God has been put in our hands, delivered to us, inspired for us, provided for us, protected throughout the ages.

The largest empires in human history tried to stamp it out of existence, but you cannot remove what God has blessed.

You cannot remove what God has blessed.

You cannot remove what God has blessed.

The scriptures are Theonistos, they are breathed out by God Himself.

And because they are breathed out by God, they cannot be stamped out by men.

And so we have the words of God.

And Jesus shows up and goes, Blessed are the poor.

You don't know how to live.

You don't know how reality works.

But I've got great news for you.

God does.

And he's shown you how.

But you're doing worthless things like four hours on TikTok and zero minutes in the Word.

So submit your heart to Him and your mind to Him and your will to Him and let Him begin to do the work from the inside out.

Because when you root in the Spirit, the Spirit, listen, the Spirit always leads you to live the values of the Kingdom of God.

The Spirit always leads you to live out the values of the Kingdom of God.

Listen, the flesh always, without exception, the flesh always leads you to live out the values of the kingdom of man.

And here's what's hard.

If you want to be led by the flesh, just do nothing.

You're born into this world, you're formed by this world, you have a broken sin nature, and if you want to live out the flesh, just do nothing.

You don't have to actively try to live out the flesh.

You're in the flesh.

So just do nothing.

And the current of the kingdoms of this world will sweep you along, and you will forfeit the great inheritance that your father in heaven has for you.

God does not disown his children, but God is also a wise father who does not leave inheritance for children who are investing their lives apart from him.

Listen, like I can get this right, and I'm a very, very imperfect father.

I don't know, I don't have apple orchard money, right?

So I don't know what kind of inheritance I'll leave my kids.

I hope to leave them something.

We try to be very wise with our money to leave my kids something.

It matters to me.

Genuinely, it does matter to me.

I drive old cars.

You know why?

Because I want to leave my kids something someday when I die.

I don't know how much it will be.

I cannot wait to bless my kids like that.

I cannot wait to reward my children.

But if any of my kids decided to turn their back on God and only live for the kingdoms of this world, because I love them, I'd leave them nothing.

They'd still be my child.

I would still love them unconditionally.

But good parents do not leave inheritance to negligent children.

It does not help them, it hurts them.

And whatever inheritance I would leave for my kids, you know, they each get 20 bucks and a pack of Skittles or whatever I'm gonna leave.

If your mom and dad left you a million dollars today, it goes when you go.

I mean, you get it temporarily.

God has an inheritance for you that is eternal.

And the way you store up reward in eternity is by investing in that kingdom right here and right now.

Rooting your life in the spirit and dying to the flesh.

Here's what that looks like.

Paul tells us in Galatians, but the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Notice it's the works of the flesh, not the fruit of the flesh.

It's the works of the flesh, it is the fruit of the spirit.

Why is that?

Because when you root your life into the flesh, you are rooting into something that is dead and cannot produce fruit in your life.

It is the spirit who will lead you to live out the values of the kingdom of God and will naturally, I'm telling you, man, give Jesus your heart, your will, and your mind, and the fruit will take care of itself.

The behaviors will take care of themselves.

Now, I want to apply this to our context well.

We're 2,000 years removed from the letter that Paul wrote, and Paul was writing to pagans.

Now we are on the path back to paganism here in America, and it's coming quick.

But we still have like a Christian hangover in our culture.

We're not Christian anymore as a culture.

We were Christian last night, and we can just still kind of feel it.

Y'all never had a hangover?

You don't understand what I'm saying right now?

We're not Christian anymore, we just have a Christian hangover.

We're like post-post-Christian.

And because of that, there are many people who do not claim Christ, who still live out a lot of Christ's values because our culture was so Christian for so long in the West.

And because of this, there are many of you who are here at our venues or with us online right now, and you can say confidently, that all makes sense.

We're in pre-K, I get it.

Roots, fruits.

But I have some friends who are atheist who are like way more loving than a lot of the Christians I know.

I've got friends who are agnostic, their generosity puts like everybody in the church I know to shame.

How do you make sense of that?

Well, let me just remind you what makes a tree good.

What makes a tree good is that it produces its purpose.

And the world will tell you, find your own joy, find your own truth, make your own way.

What scripture tells you is that God created you and God has a purpose for your life.

And the only path to actual fulfillment is to live out the purpose that God has placed inside of you.

And that will look unique to you from the person next to you because you're unique from the person next to you.

But at the largest view, we all have a core purpose, which is to join with Jesus in building the kingdom of God.

Period.

And so even acts of morality done apart from an investment in the kingdom of God are just fake fruit.

It is fruit that is here temporarily, but does not build anything that lasts.

And the start to a fruitful life is a surrendered heart to Jesus Christ.

I want to tackle one more topic and really try to help this be relevant in our world today.

Last week, Jesus talked to us about what it means to be a hypocrite.

A hypocrite was an actor, someone who's just performing.

They're pretending something that they're not.

I brought a tree with me.

You like how I just have not referenced this at all for 45.

I just pretended it wasn't here.

This is a lemon tree.

It's doing a lot better than my tomato plant.

The only problem that everyone in the first couple of rows can tell just by looking this close is that it's perfect.

And so for it to produce more fruit, I need super glue or duct tape.

God doesn't care about the appearance of fruit.

This could make a great decoration, but that's its purpose.

It will never make a good tree.

Because good trees produce what they're purposed, and this will never produce a lemon.

It's fake.

It's plastic.

I do wonder when God looks at modern American Christianity, if a lot of it just kind of looks like this.

It looks really good.

From the fifth row back, I might have even fooled you.

It looks good from a distance.

We look fruitful on our Instagram page where people can't see how we actually act and we act how we actually react and how we think when no one's looking and how we're behaving in the shadows.

We look fruitful because we can quote a bunch of verses when we're arguing with people online.

If it seems to fit our agenda, we can throw out some verses, we can chat GPT some verses and throw them into our little Facebook arguments.

We look fruitful on the outside with our Christian t-shirts and our little bumper stickers, but God's looking down and going, man, they've got the trappings of it, they've got the religious appearance, but I don't have their heart.

They're not actually rooted in me.

They're not producing life that could give sustenance to those who actually need it.

It's just fake.

And you need to know this.

God is not impressed by the appearance of fruit in your life.

God's looking at the roots.

What are you surrendered to?

What are you filling your mind with?

What are you filling your heart with?

What are you spending your time on?

What are you investing in?

Here's where Jesus ends in verse 45 of Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart.

An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart.

For his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.

It starts with the roots.

We said this on week one.

We're gonna say it again.

True transformation, that's what we're here for.

True transformation comes from the inside out.

It just starts in the roots.

In this sermon, Jesus has not focused on the outside.

But in today's passage, he is acknowledging something.

True transformation comes inside out, and here's what he's acknowledging.

What is inside eventually comes out.

Pressure comes, suffering comes, questions come, disappointment comes, and what is inside comes out.

What you are rooted in will become apparent because we live in a broken world and it will squeeze you.

And when you are squeezed, what is inside will come out.

And so you cannot hide what you're rooted in forever.

You can have a little plastic Christian appearance, but when life comes, you know, I didn't even think about this.

Literally, the Holy Spirit just laid this on my heart.

I had this sitting right outside of my office door at five o'clock this morning.

And I'm guessing my dog walked by it a little too close.

The thing about this tree is it has zero roots.

Like that's it.

That fell at five in the morning right outside my office door, and I almost shot it.

Okay.

Scared me better than coffee, right?

Like, I'm up now.

This is what happens when you have no roots.

We'll say it like this: lasting fruit, meaningful fruit, long-term fruit requires deep roots.

There's a parable that we'll get to in Luke, a farmer who scatters seed, and some of it falls on the path.

It cannot catch any root, so it can't grow.

Some of it falls on the rocky ground.

It takes root, but those roots quickly hit rock, and the plant cannot survive.

It is only when it gets to the fertile ground that it can take deep root, and then it produces a crop tenfold, a hundredfold, a thousandfold.

To get to an apple tree, you have to start with a seed.

The seed must be buried.

Once it is buried, that seed must be broken.

Once the tree is fully formed, it will endure drought, it will endure storms, parasitic invasions.

It's tough to be a tree.

And the ones who make it are the ones that have substantial roots.

I'm describing a tree, but if you've followed Christ for any amount of time, you already know I'm describing your life.

Have you ever felt buried?

Emotionally buried?

Have you felt broken?

Have you been in a spiritual drought?

Crying out to God, feeling like you're not hearing anything, you're not getting anything.

You've encountered storms that shake you and seek to uproot you.

If you're doing fake plastic Christianity, you will not survive the storm.

Requires deep roots.

Can I tell you when your roots grow deepest is in your hardest seasons?

Maybe that's why Jesus starts by saying, Blessed are the poor.

They don't look to anything in this world to satisfy them.

They just stand and trust in God and their roots get deeper.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, who fill their heart and fill their mind with the things of God.

And even though the world rejects them, their roots grow deeper.

Blessed are those whose hearts are so moved by the things of God that they weep for the sake of the world as their roots get deeper.

Blessed are those who are hated, excluded, insulted, and slandered because of the name of Jesus Christ.

And as you stand hated by the world, your roots just grow deeper.

In your greatest season of suffering, nobody can see it, nobody perceives it.

Maybe sometimes you can't even see it.

But God is rooting you down in who you are in Christ.

He's rooting you deep in a kingdom that ultimately the gates of hell will not be able to stand against.

God did not save you and redeem you at the cost of his son Jesus Christ, for you to be on fire for God for three months and then go right back to your flesh.

Roots take time.

Be careful.

God didn't call you to be a fruit inspector.

Some of you are looking at your friend who's been a believer for one year and one day, and you're wondering why they still have some habits and why they're still flaky and they don't come to church all of the time.

And just be careful.

Roots take time.

You see suffering in your life and you despise your suffering, God's using your suffering.

The fruit will take care of itself, and we all want fruitful lives.

Focus on your roots.

Surrender your heart, surrender your mind, surrender your will.

Stop investing in worthless things.

Do something useful.

Spend time with God.

Meditate on his word.

Pray without ceasing.

Seek the Holy Spirit.

Follow Christ even when it costs you, even when it's hard.

For some of you, you don't know God.

You're separated from God by your sin.

It's a part of being broken people in a broken world.

And what that means is you can't start living out kingdom values because you're not in the kingdom yet.

But man, I have good news.

The king wants you.

This isn't religion.

All the fake religions, they have a God that's distant, really distant, never comes close.

You got to work your way to him.

The one true God came down and got close to us.

All the fake religions, they have a God that expects you to punish yourself so you can absolve your sins and come to him.

The one true God, he came down and took your punishment for you.

And all he asks for you to be brought into an eternal relationship with your heavenly Father who loves you is for faith.

Believing that Jesus is who he claimed to be, that he's done what he claims to have done, believing that Jesus is your only hope for this life and your only hope for what comes next.

As we close service across our venues, I'm going to ask everyone just to pray with me, to bow your head, to close your eyes.

If you're here and you've never had a moment in time where you have decided, not your grandma took you to church when you were little, not someone sprinkled you as an infant, a moment where you have decided to put your faith in Jesus.

I believe right now, if that's you, the Spirit of God's like pressing you into your seat.

That's because God loves you.

He desires relationship with you.

If that's you, today is the day to get that right.

You're not promised tomorrow.

Get right with God today.

If that's you and you're ready for the first time to put your faith in Jesus, I want to ask you right now, with everyone's eyes closed, to just simply raise your hand up right where you're sitting.

Raising your hand is a symbolic gesture that just says, Today I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Those raising a hand, we know that God sees and accepts your faith.

Scripture tells us that means every sin has been covered by the blood of Christ.

There is nothing that can separate you from your heavenly Father now.

And he's promised you an eternal relationship with himself.

And so all I want to do now, very simply, I want to help you acknowledge this moment of faith.

I'm gonna ask everyone who raised a hand to pray this prayer with me.

I'm gonna ask all believers to pray as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

Let me pray for you.

God, I just give you glory for every hand that went up in the room.

I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would be with them as they walk this new life, that they would find out all that you have for them, what it means to follow after Jesus.

God, I pray for all of us that we would root our lives in you, God, in the values of your kingdom, and the Holy Spirit, that we would die to our flesh so that we can invest in your kingdom.

We love you.

We thank you, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Hey, give the Lord a hand.

Good things are happening.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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