Fulfilled: The Chosen King: Fruit of Repentance with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at MetaCurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

Well, I want to welcome you into MetaCurch.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at Meta.

I am so glad you joined us wherever you are joining us from.

If you are here in our Holodis venue, I am so glad that you came out.

If you're here at Petrenko, or for those who are streaming with us online, however you are getting this message, I'm just so glad that you are here.

We are in a journey that we're calling fulfilled.

We're going all the way through the Gospel of Luke.

We've broken it down into sub-series right now.

We are in a sub-series called the Chosen King.

We're looking at about the first three and a half chapters of Luke.

And where we're at right now, Luke has been paralleling the stories of John the Baptist and his cousin Jesus.

Now, Luke is about Jesus, but John has this essential role.

He was prophesied 700 years in advance that one was coming as the forerunner of the King of Kings.

And that is John.

He is paving the way.

We're spending three weeks on the ministry of John.

That's what we get.

Last week we saw the purpose of his ministry.

John came preaching a baptism of repentance.

In other words, baptism as the symbolic action signifying that you have undergone repentance.

Now, I don't have time for this because I spent like 45 minutes on it last week.

You can go to youtube.com slash metachurch and get caught up.

But we learned that most of us who grew up in church in America, in the West, learned repentance the wrong way.

We were told repentance means to turn around, which it does not.

It's just not what it means in the scripture.

And the problem is the way we have been taught repentance, it is from the outside in.

It is behavioral modification.

The word of God was not written to modify your behavior.

It was written to transform you from the inside out.

Repentance, we said simply, is tearing open your heart, tearing open your mind, tearing open your soul, and allowing God to fundamentally spiritually transform you.

We used the metaphor of a caterpillar to a butterfly.

Repentance is not telling a caterpillar to spend a little less time in the dirt.

It is telling a caterpillar to disappear and become something brand new.

That is the picture of repentance.

Amen?

Amen.

That's important because now we are going to hear preaching.

We heard the purpose of John.

We're going to hear the preaching of John.

We've been waiting 700 years for John the Baptist to come on the scene with the spirit and power of Elijah.

We get one sermon from him.

Some of you have been waiting two years for Taylor Swift to drop her album, and you could not.

You were like, Will Tay Tay ever drop?

You know?

700 years later, we get one sermon, and so we better pay attention.

Next week, we will get John's perspective, both on his ministry and Jesus' ministry.

It's absolutely mind-blowing.

I hope you'll join me next Sunday for that.

But today, we are hearing a sermon from John the Baptist.

And I just want to get into it because I want you to see how it starts.

It starts like this.

He then said to the crowds, large crowds, who came out to be baptized.

It's a friendly crowd.

Came out to be baptized.

Here's how he greets them.

Brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath.

Aren't y'all glad I just say, hey, what's up, meta church, when I start?

Isn't that like much, much nicer?

If just lights came up and I was like, you snakes, slithering your way into service today.

This is rough, bro.

Like, if we're just honest, this is rough.

And I'm just going to be very honest with you.

I have I have preached this already once today.

It kind of is only downhill for like 30 minutes after this, okay?

This is a tough message.

And my commitment as the shepherd here at MetaCurch and handling the Word of God most weekends, my commitment is that I will read it, I will take it seriously, and I will actually tell you what it says.

And so I'm just going to give you an out right now.

This sounds silly.

This is a tough message.

It's very challenging.

Very challenging.

It was very challenging when John preached it in about A.D.

29.

I think it's actually significantly more challenging in A.D.

2025.

This is a tough, tough message.

So this is a judgment-free zone.

You can still get out.

You could check your kids out right now.

You could go home and watch a TED talk.

You could find a pastor who will massage your egos.

That is not gonna happen if you sit in the seats.

And I have warned you, so I do not want any emails after the fact.

You could have left, all right?

I will give you John the Baptist's email and you can hit him up.

So I'm just trying to do what he did about 2,000 years ago.

It's a tough message, but man, like all tough assignments God gives us, it's it's for our good.

And if we can be humble enough and open enough and receive the word, um, this is the kind of challenge that could transform your life in absolutely fundamental ways.

And so I want to get right to it.

And I want to help you understand why John is calling these people, because I when you read it, you're like, John, bro, calm down, man.

Like these people are here to see you and to get baptized by you, and you're just hitting them right off the bat.

I want you to hear what this means and his heart behind it, his intention.

Maybe even we could understand a little bit of John's tone coming out, calling everyone a brood of vipers.

This is a metaphor uh that you might be able to understand living here in Texas, especially in our area where there's a lot of construction going on.

So this actually happened to me over the last couple of years.

Right outside of my neighborhood, they were building this massive apartment complex.

And before the apartments were there, it was all woods.

Now, here's something you need to know about snakes.

Snakes are way more scared of you than you are of them.

And I know you're probably scared of snakes.

Most people are.

They are more scared of you, which is why they stay hidden.

They stay in the woods.

But all of a sudden, when the bulldozers came in, the backhoes came in, they start flattening out all these trees, digging up all this brush, the snakes take off.

And all of a sudden, we had never seen a coral snake in our neighborhood.

We're seeing them all the time.

We're starting to spot them.

They were hidden, they were in the woods, but now they've been driven out by all of the noise and all of the construction.

In ancient Israel, where John is preaching, um, they were surrounded by wilderness.

And there was no brush management and there was no fire department.

So it was common that there would be brush fires.

Also, in this area, there were about 30 species of snakes that could have been considered poisonous, deadly vipers.

And so, if there was a brush fire on the edge of your property and you lived in the ancient Near East, you knew I do not go run towards that fire to put it out.

Because I might run towards the fire, but the snakes are slithering away from the fire.

They will stay hidden in the brush, but when fire comes, when suffering comes, when smoke comes, when heat comes, the snakes take off.

This is what John is saying.

He's looking at this crowd.

He is a prophet of God, he is moved by the Spirit of God, and he knows their intentions.

Y'all aren't here to repent.

You're not here to actually change your mind.

You're not here to tear open your heart and tear open your soul and tear open your mind and allow God to do a work.

You are here because John's popular.

John has done whatever the equivalent is of going viral in the ancient world.

He's a wild boy, he lives out in the desert, he wears animal skins, he eats bugs and wild honey, and he preaches in ways that have all of the institutions and establishments all upset.

And so he is the new big thing, and people are traveling out to the wilderness to hear him and to get his baptism, but not for the right reasons.

You see, we learned last week that Israel is occupied by Rome.

They feel like they've been waiting for the Messiah for far too long.

They have grown complacent, and so they are constantly seeking empty religious rituals.

They are looking for more and more sacraments.

As Jewish people, they have 613 laws that they have to follow in the Torah.

They would follow those and they'd come up with more rituals to put on top of it, and more guidelines on those rituals, and more rules for their guidelines.

And all of it was not to build a relationship with God, it was to bargain with God.

If we will jump through enough hoops and do enough rituals, if we will obey the letter of the law enough, even though we don't understand the heart of the law, if we'll obey the letter of the law, maybe we can get God to do what we want God to do.

John is popular, and John's baptism is popular, and so they have now come out to add another ritual to their playbook.

They're wanting to get in the water because that's the thing to do.

They're wanting to get in the water to cover more of their religious bases.

And so I want you to try to kind of hear the tone of John.

Here's what I believe, having read the context, when he says, You brood of vipers.

Who told you the smoke was coming?

Who told you the fire is coming?

What are you running from?

I think throughout the crowd, there would have been a very uncomfortable chuckle.

It wasn't mean, but it was biting and it was sarcastic.

And so I thought, is there something in my life that's kind of a parallel where I would use that same very biting, sarcastic humor?

So I have three kids.

Uh, two of my three kids are now licensed drivers.

So there's your heads up, stay off the roads, you know, follow your heart, do whatever you want to do.

Um, no, they're good drivers.

Uh, but there's this thing that happens when you turn 16, 17, 18, and my older kids are both boys, Lane and Paxton, especially with young men, where you get to that age, you start desiring freedom, right?

And I need all the moms to hear this.

That is a natural and very, very good thing.

And as they earn trust, you need to give them more and more of that freedom so that they can become men.

However, it hurts as a parent.

I've gone through this twice now, because when they're not drivers, they're captive, right?

Even if they want to go somewhere, you get a 20-minute car ride with them, you know.

All of a sudden, as they earn that freedom and they can now drive, it's like, let's have family day at the park.

And you know, a 16-year-old will look at you like, for real?

Like, are you for real?

Like, I'm going to the mall, I'm going to the movies, I'm going to the Six Flags, like I'm out and about now, you know?

And so you lose a lot of that time until you go to the steakhouse.

All of a sudden, they will pull up, order a$5 drink and a$50 steak, you know?

And so I'm John in that moment.

And I might say something like this you scavengers, you're not here for family time, you're here for a ribeye.

I think that's how John started his sermon.

I think there was this uncomfortable because it was true and it was incisive and it was sarcastic and it was biting.

But I want to show you something else.

Here's how he starts the very next verse.

He says, Therefore, produce fruit consistent with repentance.

He's like, yo, you're not here for the right reason, but I'm glad you're here.

You didn't come for the right reason, I'm gonna teach you anyway.

You didn't come for the right reason, but you might end up in these waters getting baptized for the right reason.

Every parent knows this.

You might have your feelings a little bit hurt because they only show up when there is food on the table, but at the same time, the bottom line, you're just glad they're there, man.

I think this is John's approach in this moment.

Very incisive.

He is calling them out, he is using sarcasm, but now he's going to teach them.

And so he says, therefore, produce fruit that is consistent with your repentance, this inner transformative change that you have allowed the Spirit of God to produce.

Now, John uh has a secret weapon.

He's a prophet of the Almighty Living God.

And so he already knew their intentions were wrong for coming out, and now that he calls them to repentance, he already knows their excuse.

He can read their mail, he knows what's happening in their minds, he knows what's happening in their hearts.

And their pushback is something like this why is John telling us to repent?

We don't need to repent.

Rome needs to repent.

Why is John on our case?

We're not the bad guys here, bro.

I follow all of the laws, I follow all of the rituals.

I've added some more rituals into the mix.

I'm not here to get baptized by this fool just to cover all of my bases.

He's telling me to change.

Rome needs to change, the enemy needs to change.

John, I like it when you're preaching against the power structures and preaching against, but don't turn this at me, bro.

Do you know who we are?

I'm a child of Abraham.

We are the Hebrews, we are God's chosen people.

Telling me I have to change.

He already knows.

He knows their pushback.

Here's the rest of verse 8.

He says, Therefore, produce fruit consistent with repentance, and don't even start.

Husbands, if you are arguing with your wife and she says, Don't even start, you just hit eject on that conversation, bro.

It's over.

You have lost that conversation.

John says, Don't even start saying to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father.

For I tell you that God is able to raise up children for Abraham from all of these stones.

God has chosen you, but you also have to choose God.

John's like, man, just look at our history.

John is a Jewish man.

It's like we have been through cycle after cycle after cycle of blessing, idolatry, judgment, repentance, blessing, idolatry, judgment.

Like God has allowed us to face judgment before, and it will happen again.

He is calling them to this higher level.

He's calling them to be able to receive God's Messiah, Jesus, the chosen king, when he shows up, knowing that that is their only hope.

Every time people saw John, they saw Jesus.

Every time they heard John, they heard Jesus.

Everything he did was to prepare them so that when Jesus showed up, they were ready to receive him fully.

And that's not behavioral, that's not following from the outside in.

It starts from the inside out.

Bear fruit.

You know, the opposite of a fruitful life is a useless life.

Bear fruit consistent with repentance.

Here's the wild thing about living as a Christian with an eternal perspective on your life, what we call a pilgrim's perspective, realizing this world is not your home.

You're a pilgrim.

That's just passing through.

The wildest thing is the realization that you can attain extraordinary heights of success by the standards of this world, and your life ultimately will be found completely useless.

You can have a bank account that everyone on earth would covet, you can have the looks that everyone is striving for, you can have the platform and the influence, you can have the job, you can drive the car, you can own the house, you can wear the clothes.

And if you are not investing your life in something that goes beyond this life someday, it just all burns.

He's called them out.

What are the two things that they're doing?

Two things.

They are running to ritual and they are hiding in their heritage.

Running to useless, fruitless religious exercise rituals, and hiding in their heritage.

They think they're good with God because their greatest grandfather is Abraham.

And John just simply calls them out.

That's not how it works.

And we do both of these things.

You see, the problem in Israel at that time is they had been waiting for a couple thousand years for the Messiah to come, and they had grown hopeless and wary.

And so they start reading the scriptures and they start looking for things that aren't actually in them, and all they want is to get out of their pain, and all they want is to get escape from Rome, and all they want is for God to bargain with them and to get on their page.

And so they're just backwards and they're off course.

And now here we are.

What John did was prepare the people for the first coming of the king.

What the church does is prepare the world for the second coming of the king.

But it's been 2,000 years, and most Christians have grown weary.

We're tired of waiting.

We don't keep our eyes on eternity, and so we become obsessed with the kingdoms of this world.

And we run to rituals when life gets hard.

And so most Christians do not prioritize the gathering together of the body of Christ at all.

It is like priority number 57 on their list.

It's not just if something big comes up or if I have a vacation or if I am deathly ill.

It's like if I'm tired or if my coffee machine is broken that morning, you know, I have a hangnail.

It's like anything can keep us out of the supernatural body of Christ where there is clarity, where there is provision, where there is healing, where there is revival.

It's like so far down on our priority list.

Except when we have a health screening on Tuesday, then we will be front frickin' row.

We run to ritual.

We come and we sit under the word on Sunday to get direction for our life, and then we wake up and read our horoscope on Monday to get direction for our life.

We run to empty, stupid rituals.

We pray and we hold crystals that have no power to cover all of our bases.

We run to rituals.

We hide in our heritage.

You are not okay with God because your grandmother loved the Lord.

You are not okay with God because you grew up in a church pew.

You are not headed to heaven because someone sprinkled you before you were ever convinced in your mind and convicted in your heart of who Jesus is and what he has done.

You are not a Christian by de facto because you are an American, and America, by the way, has not been a Christian nation for a very, very long time.

And John is not only calling the people out, but he's leading to the obvious conclusion that if we stay obsessed with the kingdoms of the world, if we stay embedded with the idolatry of the age, it always, always, always leads to judgment.

Here's what he says in verse 9.

I'm gonna mention it, we are gonna come back to it.

He says, the axe is already at the root of the trees, therefore, every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and will be thrown into the fire.

This is a prophetic warning, but we are gonna come back to it.

And God used the words of John to cut to the very hearts of the crowd.

And what we're gonna see in this next passage is we are going to see John's application in the only sermon that we ever get from John.

There are gonna be three groups who seek clarity from John.

The first is just the crowds altogether.

The second are the tax collectors, the most hated vocation in Israel, the tax collectors who had sold out to the Roman Empire and were living consumed by wealth while everyone else was impoverished.

The third group, maybe the only people more hated than the tax collectors were the soldiers.

The tax collectors had the job and they had the money, but the soldiers had the power.

The soldiers had the sword, they could enforce their will upon you and they could extort you, and that is typically how they used their power and influence.

Three groups.

And it is really, really worth it.

I don't know how to, I don't know how to get you to my intensity level on this, so I'm just going to say it again.

We waited 700 years for John, and we got one sermon, that's it, and this is the sermon.

And now he is going to land the plane.

All three groups ask the same question.

John, what do we do?

Live a life that is consistent with repentance.

How?

Tell us what to do, John.

And if you are paying attention at all, it just jumps off the page.

There's this thread all the way through his application.

Let's look at it.

Verse 10.

What then should we do?

The crowds were asking him.

He replied to them, the one who has two shirts must share with someone who has none.

And the one who has food must, must, must.

It's not an option.

You want to live a repentant life, you must do the same.

Verse 12, tax collectors also came to be baptized, and they asked him, Yo, John, everyone hates us, hates us.

Like we're the worst.

What do we do?

Now the crowd wants John to say, quit your jobs, dummies.

Like get out of that.

Everyone hates you because you're a tax collector.

That's not what he says.

He told them, just don't collect any more than what you have been authorized.

Quit skimming off the top.

Verse 14, some soldiers also questioned him.

What about us?

What should we do?

And John said to them, Don't take money from anyone by force or false accusation, and just be satisfied with your wages.

There's some things you should know about these three groups.

We already mentioned that the soldiers have the ultimate power.

They got the power of the sword.

They can take you out.

You have to do what they say.

If they want money from you, if they want clothes from you, they want food from you, they want time from you, they want attention from you, they get what they want, and they leverage that power because in the kingdoms of this world, power is to be leveraged over the powerless.

That's how it works.

The tax collectors are crooks.

Like, really, when they said, What should we do?

the crowd was hoping that John would say something like find the highest bridge and jump off of it.

That's what the crowd's hoping for.

Second to that, maybe just quit your job and quit being a crook, but he doesn't.

He's like, man, as long as your job isn't just like by definition immoral, then you can find ways to praise God even in your job.

He's talking to the crowd, and here's what you need to know about the crowd.

Um, these people were poorer than you can imagine.

Like you think you're poor because your neighbor drives a Lexus and you drive a Honda, right?

Uh, these people would wake up every day with no food, and they would work from the time the sun came up until after the sun went down to fill their bellies and the bellies of the people in their care, and they would go to bed and they would pray to God, just hoping that once again the next day they could wake up and not starve to death.

That's called sustenance living, hand-to-mouth living.

The majority of people would own one set of clothing, and usually not even a full set.

This is how they lived.

And John says to them, if you have two tunics, now the tunic is an undershirt.

It's a wife feeder.

It's not nice, right?

It's like nothing.

But if you have two of them and someone doesn't have one, you must give it to them.

If you have any food, it's probably not enough for you.

But if you have it and someone doesn't, you must give them some of your food.

See, there is a thread through every single piece of his instruction to three different groups.

We get one sermon from John.

Mix it up, bro.

Hit some different thematic points, you know?

It's like humility for this group and hospitality for this group and kindness and grace and mercy.

It's like, no, no, no.

John has one message.

If you want to live a life consistent with repentance, a life that has been spiritually transformed from the inside out, the one key indicator will be generosity.

To everyone, he said, you must, you must be radically, insanely, self-sacrificially generous.

We don't understand this because we don't have one shirt to our name.

We've got a closet of 40 shirts that we haven't worn in two years.

We don't understand this.

You must give it.

We don't know what it is like to just have zero food every morning and go to bed every night with zero food.

And he's saying, when you finally get some food, you must share it.

That is the key indication that you have undergone repentance.

What this means is that a repentant life is marked by generosity.

A repentant life is marked by generosity.

According to John, who is doing heavy, heavy, heavy lifting to prepare people to actually believe in and walk with Jesus, this is the one thread.

It's like you're poor, you have nothing, be generous.

You're a tax collector, you're a wealthy crook, stop being greedy, be generous.

You're a soldier, you have the ultimate power, quit being greedy.

You must be generous.

So why?

Why, according to John, 700 years we've been waiting, what is it gonna take to be prepared for the chosen king?

Generosity.

Why?

I think there are two key things, if we're gonna break down why this matters so much in the lives of Jesus' followers.

And this is where our message gets heavy.

The first reason that generosity is the key indicator of a repentant heart is because we are in a battle of kingdoms.

Scripture makes clear all throughout that there is the kingdom of God.

It will come down to this earth at the end of time, it will last forever and ever.

Nothing will ever stop it, nothing will ever overthrow it.

And there are the kingdoms of man.

And God has created you, He's given you a heartbeat, breath in your lungs, He's given you your mind, your dreams, He's placed a purpose inside of you, He's given you gifts, He's given you skill sets, He's given you family, He has positioned you, He has networked you, He has placed you, He has provided for you.

And the expectation is with all that you are and all that you have, you will build somebody's kingdom.

And it will either be the kingdom of God or it will be the kingdom of men, and there is no gray area and there is no in between.

And the reality is that the modern Western American church, we are praying for revival and we're singing about revival and we're writing sermons about revival, but we focus on the kingdom of God for one hour in one service once a week, and then we walk out and we live by the dictates of the kingdom of man the rest of our time.

Radical, insane, self-sacrificial generosity is a statement of the kingdom that you are building.

I told you earlier, I think that this is a message that is harder to preach in 2025 than it was in 29.

In 29, people had nothing but what they had they owned.

You see, even though we have been purchased at the cost of the life of our king, we are so distracted and we are so drawn to and we are so in love with the kingdoms of this world that Americans live on debt.

We exist on debt, we pile it up, and we do this because we have to have it.

We have to have it, not because God said, because man said.

We have to drive it, we have to live there, we have to wear it, we have to swipe it, we have to eat that, we have to be on the trends, we have to look to part, we have to patch up insecurity that God could take care of if you'd allow him into your heart, but we don't allow God in, so we try to fill deep vats of insecurity with material goods that only leave you empty.

You were created to be Adam, you were created to be Eve, God placed you on this earth, he gave you what you needed, he said, take dominion over it, own it, rule it, run it.

And we can't.

We couldn't be generous like this if we wanted to, because you can't give away things when you don't own them.

We don't own our stuff.

MasterCard owns it.

Frostbank owns it, the mortgage lender owns it, the car company owns it.

We don't own it.

A huge percentage of Americans are spending more money every month than they make on their paychecks.

What this means is we are enslaved and indebted.

The children of God who are supposed to have dominion on the earth are so in love with the kingdoms of man that we have sold ourselves to it.

We couldn't be generous if we wanted to.

To start living for the kingdom of God, it will take work.

You think kingdom building is easy?

This is meant to be the magnum opus, the masterpiece work of our life, building the kingdom of God.

It's the only thing that will last past this life, everything else will burn.

So there's like endless resources and endless programs and endless YouTube videos.

The majority of people, under the sound of my voice, do not live in a budget, so you wouldn't know how to be generous even if you wanted to be.

You don't know where your money goes.

You might not even actually know how much money you make.

This will take work, but it's not impossible work.

You gotta write down your debts, you gotta figure out your income, you gotta write down your expenses, you have to make changes, you have to create margin, you have to pay off your debt, you gotta take back ownership so you can be radically, insanely, self-sacrificially generous and start living for the kingdom that will last.

This matters.

The first issue is kingdom.

The second issue is idolatry.

Generosity is the thread of a repentant heart.

The enemy of generosity is idolatry, and you can watch what happens in idolatry.

It's all throughout the entire scriptures.

The entire Old Testament is blessing, idolatry, judgment, repentance.

Blessing, idolatry, judgment, repentance.

It's a cycle just over and over and over again.

I'm just going to say this, uh, it's gonna land where it lands, it's going to sting.

This is the Holy Spirit of God cutting into you, not to harm you, but to heal you and to set you free.

If you are not, I'm not talking about giving a little bit when you can.

If you are not intentionally, systematically living a radically self-sacrificially generous life, idolatry has a grip on your heart.

There is no gray area.

John does not allow me gray area.

I'm not going to pretend there is some there when there's not.

I know life is hard, I know you're upside down, I know your parents didn't teach you how to manage money.

I I that sure as heck, no, the school didn't teach you how to manage money.

I know you were just out there, you're floating, but it's time.

It is time to grow up and to mature into the dominion-keeping humans that God created us to be.

It's time to own your things.

It is time to dig out of debt.

It is time to sell things that you are attached to because you are looking for something in there that is supposed to come from God.

It is time to downscale your life and to fight your insecurities through exposure therapy, because you will not be wearing the brands you once wore.

You'll be shopping at Walmart, like me and my family, so that you can write a check that actually signals that you care about investing in the kingdom of God.

This is how revival happens.

It starts with repentance, and if you want the sign of repentance, John gives it to us.

It's generosity, and I can't pretend it's not.

You need to know this.

Generosity is spiritual warfare.

You should write that down.

Generosity is spiritual warfare.

It is putting to death your idols.

Sometimes, as I'm scripting these sermons, I get uncomfortable.

This is one of those moments.

I fought the Lord on this.

So here's the problem.

Almost every American Christian organizes their generosity around the kingdoms of this world.

What do I want?

I want a car, I want a house, I want the brands, I want to eat out a lot.

I don't want to make coffee out of a Keurig.

I want to buy it at Starbucks, I want to go through, I want to swipe, I want to impress, I want to show out, I want to keep up.

And so we get all the things we want, and then we see what's left, and that goes to God.

Radical self-sacrificial generosity decides, it plants a flag in the ground.

Here's what I'm giving.

And everything else can go to hell.

Here's what I'm giving, and if I cannot give that and drive my car, I get a new car.

And by a new car, I mean an old hoopty.

Here's what I'm giving, and if I can't eat out 40 times a month, then I eat out five times a month.

Because this is what I'm giving.

I arrange my resources around my decision for generosity.

I put God first.

This is spiritual warfare.

This is taking ground for the kingdom.

Let me tell you what we decided.

And we decided this 15 years ago when our family of four had a household income of$32,000.

We decided we were going to plant a flag and organize our life around it.

Here's what I know that God sees the check that I write to his bride and body, the church.

He sees it.

And let me tell you who else sees it.

The enemies of God, the devil himself sees the check that I write to the bride and body of Christ.

And so it has been my intention, as long as I have been a man, every single month, to write a check that not just honors God, but that puts the devil on notice.

This guy, this guy takes the kingdom seriously.

We might not even bother with this guy.

Look at how seriously he's investing in what he believes in.

And here's what's happening with almost everybody in the American church.

When we give, because it's not consistent.

When we give, the devil looks at our check and is like, bro, they're not serious.

God doesn't have their heart.

God doesn't even have their wallets.

This is tough.

Are we okay?

This is tough.

Let me tell you what this isn't.

There are some preachers who will tickle your ears, and here's the message.

Hey man, if you just, if you write, and this is what the if you write me a check, get out of here, bro.

If you write me a check, you'll have that house you want, you'll drive that car you want, you'll get the job you want, you'll have the spouse you want, you'll have that body you want, your hair will grow back.

Like it's miracles on miracles.

That's not this.

That's not why we give.

It's actually deeper.

When you decide to do the work and put yourself in position and plant a flag and arrange your life around wild, sacrificial, real.

I'm talking about, I'm talking about the kind of sacrifice to build the everlasting kingdom of God where it changes things.

My family has had to adjust to this.

I put my beautiful wife for the last 15 years in hoopti after hoopti because we couldn't get a new car without being tempted to lower our offering.

And so I waited to buy my bride a car until I could go buy a car and raise my offering at the same time.

You see, this is kingdom mindset.

My kids, someday they will see how much we gave and they will know we are not playing.

This is not just a job for me.

I'm not checking boxes here.

This is what it takes to see revival, because revival starts with repentance and generosity is the sign.

I can't get around it.

It's in the word.

And this is not to get a bigger house or a better car or newer brands.

It's so much deeper.

This is to set you free.

If you are not living with radical self-sacrificial generosity, idolatry has a root in your life.

And idolatry always leads to judgment.

What it means is you are captured and enslaved by the kingdoms of man and by one act of generosity, you can be set free.

And I mean free.

There is nothing more important than the cost of your freedom and getting back your purpose as a child of God to take your rightful place as owners and stewards of the kingdom while we're here on the earth.

There is one kingdom that will last forever, and every single thing else that we are investing in will burn.

I'm not saying you can't have stuff.

He did not tell the tax collectors to quit their job.

You can have a car, you can buy some Jordans, Lord knows.

You know, it's like you can have things.

Things can't have you.

And in the Western church right now, we don't have things.

Things have us.

And the devil, without even trying, is bleeding us dry of the very resources we need to build the kingdom of God and to reach more people, to prepare the way like John the Baptist did before us, modeled for us and embodied for us, so we can do it as well.

It's work.

This is repentance.

We have to tear open our hearts and root out idolatry, insecurity, lack, and trust God for our provision.

I want to go back because idolatry always leads to judgment.

I want to go back to verse nine.

Here's what John said the axe is already, already, already.

It's already at the root of the trees, and therefore every tree that doesn't produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.

Like all the prophets, there is a now and not yet to John's prophecy.

The not yet is the coming judgment at the end of the age where the entire world will be judged.

But he also says, already, now.

I want to paint a quick picture, I'm running out of time, but as John is speaking this in 29 AD, there's a young man named Vespasian.

He's about 20 years old.

He's in Rome and he's climbing the socio-political ladder.

Forty years later, that's one Jewish generation, Vespasian is the emperor of Rome.

He's ruthless, but not near as ruthless as his son.

Vespasian in 70 AD sends his son Titus to conquer Jerusalem.

Titus comes in and lays siege to the city.

They surround it, they cut off all food and water.

Eventually, they come in, they tear down the walls, they burn Jerusalem to the ground, they tear the temple until not one stone is left on top of another.

In 70 AD, there are thousands and thousands and thousands of men, women, and children who are crucified outside of Jerusalem.

In that moment, Judaism, ancient Judaism, died and it never came back.

I know there is Judaism today, but from this moment, the sacrificial system that had animated the core of Judaism disappeared forever.

The axe, as John was speaking, the axe was already at the root of the trees.

And what is John doing?

He's calling people to repent so that when Jesus comes, they can see him with their eyes and hear them with their ears and receive him in their hearts.

And those who went under the water and truly were transformed from the inside out, they did.

Jesus came and they received him and they followed him through his life, through his death, eventually they sealed Jesus in a tomb.

But those believers, they held the faith.

Hundreds of them said they saw Jesus resurrected, heard him, spent time with him, ate food with him.

They started a movement called the Ecclesia, the church.

Soon this church was so powerful it came under persecution from the leaders of Israel.

As a matter of fact, they even killed one of the believers.

Stephen was the first martyr.

This drove the church, listen, this drove the church out of Jerusalem.

In doing so, it spread the gospel to the ends of the earth.

But not only that.

In 70 AD, what John had prophesied 40 years earlier, when Titus came to the city, the only people not there were the believers, those who had repented and lived a life showing the fruit consistent with repentance.

You know what we know about the earliest believers?

They were the most insanely generous Christians who have ever walked the earth.

And of course they were.

They are following a leader who was so generous, he stepped out of heaven and into our mess and gave his life for us.

We are there.

We have been waiting on the return of our king for 2,000 years.

It's very interesting.

Peter, a good friend of Jesus and one of the apostles, he was leading a church just a few decades after the resurrection of Jesus, and the people were already tired.

They were like, bro, it's been like 30 years.

When is this fool coming back?

You know, how long do we have to wait?

Here's what Peter tells him, 2 Peter 3.

He says, Dear friends, don't overlook this fact.

With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day.

The Lord does not delay his promise.

Verse 9, the Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to what?

Help me to what?

Repentance.

They were tired of waiting like 30 years later.

We are 2,000 years later, but Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, says, guys, calm down.

2,000 years to the Lord.

It's two days.

He's not delaying because he's on vacation.

He's patient.

He's giving you time to repent.

Here's the next verse.

But the day of the Lord will come.

It will come like a thief.

And on that day the heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will burn and be dissolved.

And the earth and the works on it will be disclosed.

Judgment is coming.

They were tired of waiting in 60 AD.

We're tired of waiting in 2025.

We don't know when Christ will return, but we know He will.

It's not our job to know.

It is our job to be ready.

You get ready by tearing open your heart, your mind, your soul.

Allowing God to begin to transform you from the inside out.

And you want to know the hallmark of repentance.

Radical, insane, self-sacrificial generosity.

Church, the axe is at the roots.

We don't know when.

Six months to the day, what would change in my life?

If I knew Jesus would return for a fact, six days from today, what would change?

Here's my guess.

I would begin living the most radically self sacrificial, generous life to God and to others.

Time is of the essence.

If you do not Know Jesus, time is of the essence, and you are not promised tomorrow.

And Jesus did come in the ultimate act of generosity, proved his love for you, and that while you are still sinning in rebellion against the king, living as your own God and your own king, he gave his life for you.

Jesus proved his love.

Jesus proved his dominion when he walked out of his own grave, and he was laying down proof that he could actually offer you life after death as well.

And all he asks is for your faith.

A repentant life is a life that shows the fruit of repentance.

However, Jesus made clear it is not by works of righteousness by which you are saved.

If you want eternal life with God, it is only by faith in Jesus, convinced in your mind and convicted in your heart that Jesus is who he says he is and has done what he claims to have done.

And when you believe, Scripture says you are born again, adopted into the family of God and given eternal life with him.

I'm out of time.

Let's pray across our venues.

If you'd bow your head and close your eyes, I want to get right to it.

If you are here at one of our venues, maybe you're with us online, you've never had a moment in time where you have put your faith in Jesus.

In other words, you cannot answer the question of if you die today, what would happen?

What comes next?

If you cannot answer that question, you are insecure in the ultimate sense, and that can change today.

Jesus can make good on his promise.

He proved that 2,000 years ago.

And what he asks is for your faith.

One moment, real belief.

And so if you're here and you've never had that moment, my guess as the Holy Spirit has gripped your heart, is calling you into this decision.

With everyone's eyes closed, right now, if you're ready to make that decision for the first time, as a symbolic gesture, I want to ask you, right where you're sitting, to just raise your hand.

Across our venues, by raising your hand, what you're saying is today, I choose to put my faith in Jesus.

I'm not running to ritual, I'm not hiding in heritage, I am trusting only in Jesus, who he is and what he's done.

Amen.

Amen.

For those who raised a hand, I want you to know that God sees and accepts your faith right now.

And what I want to do is help you acknowledge this moment through a very simple prayer.

When I ask you to repeat this with me, I'm gonna ask all the believers across our venues to pray this out loud as well.

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.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

If this was helpful to you and you want to help us get the word out, you can subscribe to this podcast.

You can rate and review or share it with your friends.

If you want to get connected further with what MetaCurch is doing, you can go online to metachurch.tv.

There you can learn how to take next steps.

You can learn where our different venues are at if you ever wanted to visit, and you can also give financially to help push this movement forward.

Man, I love you guys and I hope you have a great rest of your day.