IN-Security 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.

Man, welcome to our service online.

We're so glad that you guys have joined us.

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

I'm the lead pastor, and here at MetaCurch, our strategy is really simple.

Uh, we meet together and we move together.

Now, because we're in the middle of this pandemic, we obviously aren't able to meet together in person, and so we decided to change up our language just a little bit.

Now we are streaming together and serving together.

And man, I miss seeing you guys so much.

I cannot wait for the day that we're back in our venues.

But I also don't want us to miss the opportunity in the midst of this opposition.

We've been talking about it and looking for it since the very beginning of closing our venues back in March.

And one of the opportunities is that MetaCurch is easier than ever to invite people to.

And so if you're streaming with us live or if you're watching this on a replay, I want to invite you, if you're on social media, to hit that share button.

Specifically, if you're on Facebook, man, you can tag a friend's names right there in the chat.

Invite them to come in.

This is a message that I think will be so, so helpful to anyone that we're able to get this message to.

So while you guys are sharing, I kind of want to introduce the idea that we're gonna be talking around.

Here's what we believe we believe here at MetaCurch that we are a group of ordinary, jacked-up, broken people who are living extraordinary lives as a part of the movement of Jesus.

Now, the reason we're able to do that is because what we see in Scripture and what we are seeing lived out in our lives is that God created us with a purpose.

It matters that we're here on earth and we were meant to live out a significant story.

At the same time, there are all kinds of things that keep us away from that purpose.

There are so many lies floating around your life to distract you from your destiny.

And today, I want to get right to the heart of one of those lies that keeps us trapped in cycles that are so far away from the life we are meant to live.

The title of my message today, and what I want to talk about today, is insecurity.

Would you pray with me?

Father, we love you, and I feel like you have a fresh word for us about this idea of insecurity, the lack of living with security.

It is something we all deal with on some level, and God, it can derail our lives so quickly.

And so, God, show us something new.

Put us on the path to living a secure life, a life that is lived with power and purpose that makes a difference in the lives of the people around us.

We love you.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

In June, right in the middle of you know a global unprecedented pandemic, uh, Katie and I decided we were going to sell our house.

Now, really, what we were looking for is we wanted to find something in our area that, number one, was uh a bit of a downsize for us, but that also was kind of a fixer-upper, something that was gonna require some work and some remodeling, and we found that the perfect situation.

We put an offer on it, it was at an incredible price, and and we got in to the house, and man, we're we're so excited, and and we've been so excited to get in and man change out like fixtures and paint walls and remodel and put up curtains, and and it's like, man, I was thinking, you know, if freaking Chip and Joanna can do it, like surely we've got this, you know, like number one, none of these basic chicks on HGTV have anything on my wife.

Like, she is for real the best decorator I have ever known.

Now, I'm no Bob Vila, uh, but I can at this point in my life watch a YouTube and figure some stuff out.

And this new thing in our marriage, starting about a year and a half ago, where we started tackling these projects, it has been one of the greatest additions to our relationship.

It provides us a lot of opportunity.

Number one, we're working on something together, and so we get to dream together and research together, and we get to look at a room and and try to picture what we could do in there and find the right pieces and figure out how to do it, and it also creates room for conflict.

And just a reminder for those of you who are married or are in romantic relationships or even in your friendships, like conflict is critical to growth in your marriage.

If you don't want to end up 20, 30, 50 years from now being the exact same person, never having grown in maturity, never getting closer to your purpose, then just have no conflict.

But if you want to grow and mature and become more of the person God created you to be, it requires conflict.

And so there's inherent conflict in doing these projects, and we get to work on having healthier and healthier conflict, and then of course we get to actually put our hands on it and do these projects together, and then at the end, we get to enjoy the fruit of our labor.

Not only that, but we're increasing the value of the home that we live in and creating more equity for ourselves and hopefully our children someday.

It's just, it's it's really what I'm trying to say, it's it's an amazing, amazing addition to our marriage.

And we've known each other for over a decade now, been married for the better part of that decade, and so the question is why did it take us so long to add this new element to our relationship?

And the answer is insecurity.

Now, to be very clear, it was not Katie's insecurity.

Uh, all of our relationship and all of our marriage, Katie has wanted to do these projects.

For a long time, she tried to push me into it and motivate me to do it and get me involved, and it's really not that easy.

And and for me, I just couldn't pull the trigger.

Some of you know this about me.

Um, but deep wired into me is this idea that I shouldn't do something if I'm not going to be really good at it.

And that is a ridiculous statement on its surface, and here's why.

Because to be good at something, you have to start doing it, you have to inevitably be bad at something, practice it, and get good at it.

And so if you never are going to do something that you're bad at, then you're never gonna be able to get good at something because you're not going to start anything.

I know it's ridiculous, but it's in me.

Just transparently, that's in me.

And because of this, my entire life I've stayed focused on very, very few things.

Very few things that I had a natural tendency or a natural uh feel for.

And so this idea of doing projects around the house, uh, you know, breaking into walls, changing light fixtures, I didn't realize it's just twisting a few wires together.

Man, I barely knew the difference between like wrenches and screwdrivers.

I was lost, and I was so insecure about my abilities that I never wanted to try.

I mean, I would just imagine starting a project, something going wrong, and now we're gonna have to spend money to fix it.

Uh almost all men live with some kind of financial insecurities.

We like to see ourselves as someone who's providing and taking care and really being careful with finances.

It's like, man, the idea of me trying this thing and then bringing money, I'll be honest, though, that wasn't the real source of insecurity.

The real source of insecurity is the person that I have to pay to come fix my house is gonna be some dude who comes in my house with a tool belt that is a real man who knows how to do these projects.

And I'm like, I don't need any dude coming in my house proving that I'm lesser of a man.

I can do that all by myself in secure.

So I just wouldn't try.

I just wouldn't try.

And for years, we missed out on an opportunity that is growing and maturing our relationship.

Insecurity holds us back from the life that we're meant to live, from trying things that benefit us, from engaging in relationships that are good for us, we all struggle with insecurity.

And the person you're thinking of that you don't think is insecure because they constantly remind you how confident they are, the more someone has to display their confidence, the more insecure they probably are.

And so many people continue dating losers, people who are not good for them because they just know that if they got a good partner, they would ruin it.

And so many people stay at jobs that are unfulfilling, where you have no path forward, because you just know even if you got the interview for another job, you're surely going to blow it up.

Insecurity overwhelms your maturity, it keeps you trapped in juvenile behavior, it takes options off the table, it holds us back and keeps us down.

It is impossible.

You cannot thrive with insecurity.

You cannot thrive with insecurity, and that's a big deal because you were made to thrive.

You were made to live a powerful, purposeful, significant life.

Now, what we could do is we could get into a series and we could call it like remodel, and we could talk about your life as a fixer-upper, and we could take 10 weeks, and we could talk about insecurity in your relationships, and insecurity in your finances, and insecurity in your looks, and insecurity with your children, and insecurity in your hobbies, and insecurity with your parents, and we could cover all the bases, and we can have a big metaphor, and we just need to slap a new coat of paint on your life and take out some baseboards and clean it up.

Like we could do that, and maybe I will someday, but today I have a sense of urgency.

And today I want to drill all the way down to the very root insecurity that is the cause for all others.

The one source of insecurity that whether or not we are consciously thinking about it in our lives, leads us to a life where we have no choice but to be insecure in the world we live in.

Today, I want to talk about eternal security.

Eternal security can be defined as the full assurance, being fully assured, convinced that you will spend eternity with God.

And I want to suggest that until you are fully assured of what comes after this life, you'll never be able to fully thrive in this life.

Until you are fully assured of what comes after this life, you will not be able to thrive in this life.

Now, there are a lot of things that make Christianity incredibly unique.

This idea of following Jesus, our Savior and our leader.

And we talked about a lot of these in our series we did recently on justice.

And one of the things that is really at the bedrock of what makes Christianity unique among all other religions is that it is the one movement where you can actually find full eternal security.

There is no other religion and no other system on earth that can give you full assurance, full security of what comes after this life.

The ability to live your life with full assurance is what separates this movement from everything else.

And it is also the part of our Christian belief that might be the most under attack, both from outside of the church and heartbreakingly from within it.

And this is an issue.

I don't lose sleep over many things, but this is an issue that I lose sleep over.

This is a hill that I am glad to die on.

If you do not have security about where you are going, then by definition, at the most important question of your life, you are insecure.

You cannot live out your purpose, you cannot fully engage, you cannot thrive if you are living with insecurity.

In the Christian scriptures, you see the apostles, uh, these men that Jesus tasked with getting the church movement started, his ecclesia, this movement that nothing could stand against, and they're writing letter after letter to these churches that they've started, and we have a collection of these letters in the Christian scriptures, the New Testament of our Bibles, and over and over they are defending the truth of our eternal security.

What happened is false teachers began to sneak into these brand new churches, and they would try to start adding works to our faith.

You cannot really have eternal security because it is up to you to do the work to get you to the eternity that you're looking for.

You've got to work.

You gotta follow the laws, you gotta live a moral life, you have to add things to your life and subtract things from your life.

If you want it, you gotta work.

One of the most dramatic examples is the church that Paul started in Colossae.

And they were being attacked from multiple angles.

Hang with me, I'm gonna talk about it and then summarize it.

The first angle was from the Jews who lived in that area.

And the Jews who lived in that area told these new believers that they could believe in Jesus, but they also had to follow the Jewish law.

These are 613 laws that are lined out in the Jewish Torah.

And if you really want to be sure that you're going to heaven, you can believe in Jesus, but you also have to follow the law, works, faith.

That was the first false teaching.

The second came from Greek thought.

And in the Greek world, there were many gods, many deities, many spiritual beings to be worshipped.

Specific in Colossae, we found this Greek cult that worshipped angels themselves.

And what they were saying is that you can worship Jesus, but you can't get to the afterlife with just one spiritual being.

You have to connect and meditate on and worship all of these spiritual beings and all of these angels, or you'll never make it.

Last, there seemed to be a group of Platonic thinkers.

And in Platonic thought, the flesh is inherently evil, and the spirit is inherently good.

And because of this, they believed that Jesus was never in human flesh, that he came to earth, but he was always a spiritual being.

Jesus was never incarnate, in flesh.

They also were ascetics, which means that they would beat themselves, whip themselves, cut themselves.

This was their way of displaying their spiritual superiority by punishing their flesh that was inherently so evil.

Let's summarize.

Jewish thought said you have to follow the law of Judaism, 613 laws.

They're adding works to their faith.

And if you have to work for your salvation, you cannot be secure in it.

The Greeks said that Jesus alone isn't enough.

You have to add these uh other deities and these other spiritual beings.

You have to worship others like angels.

Jesus alone isn't enough.

And if you don't connect with enough of these deities, you won't make it.

You are insecure.

The last is Platonic thought that the flesh and the spirit are are at odds with each other from all eternity.

And Jesus never really was here, even though he claimed to be a man and to die as a man and to raise again, that never really happened.

And in our flesh, it is evil.

And if we're gonna make our way to the afterlife, we have to punish our flesh and display our spiritual superiority.

Man, all of these things were needed to add to your life to ensure that you make it to heaven.

This is a startling list of attacks on this new church in Colossae.

And remember, there is no other system and no other religion before Jesus that could guarantee the security of your eternity.

It's such a novel thought that the culture had no other opportunity than to come against it.

And so, because of this incredible attack on eternal security, we get in response from the Apostle Paul one of the clearest passages affirming eternal security.

And so let's go.

In Colossians chapter two, it says this be careful that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world rather than on Christ.

Paul has seen enough of this in all these different churches that he's planted to know exactly how this works.

This isn't based on scripture, this isn't based on Jesus or the life he lived or what he taught.

This is based on philosophy.

This is based on the tradition of humans, this is based on the elements of the world.

The idea of having eternal security flies in the face of philosophy, human tradition, and our lived-out experience among the elements of this world.

If you want something, you have to earn it.

If you want to be secure, you better deserve it.

This is the way that the world works.

And the idea that someone else would pay the price for you to be able to have an assurance forever flies in the face of our lived experience of us having to earn anything and everything that we get.

Paul also understood that people didn't come with a full frontal attack on their Christian beliefs.

This line that says, Do not be taken captive.

In the Greek, this is like the idea of being lured away.

They would just come in and begin to systematically chip away at your beliefs until eventually you gave up on your security of salvation altogether.

It's almost the picture of kidnappers or sex traffickers.

They often don't just come in these days and kidnap.

What they do instead is they try to lure kids to them.

This week we ended up in a hotel for a little while.

Um, we had some water damage in our new house that we're working on, one of the joys of buying a fixer-upper.

And uh, so we had to stay at a hotel for a little while.

And and our boys are getting a little bit older, and Katie sat him down and talked to him about sex trafficking, which you know, if you're raising kids, you need to be informed on this, you need to be aware, you need to be reading about this.

And she was just letting them know you really have to be on guard because these people are experts at getting information out of you.

They will play a long game and they will slowly figure out where you live.

They'll start by just figuring out what state you're in, and a week later what city you're in, and a week later you know what neighborhood you live in, and a week, and pretty soon they have the information they need, and you grow comfortable with them.

And that's how kids get lured away and into this evil, evil practice.

And our youngest son was pretty confident.

Like, you know how kids will answer you as if you think they're an idiot when you're really trying to help, like, I'm not gonna give a stranger my address.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I'm not an idiot, you know.

I'm not gonna give someone I don't know where I live.

I mean, I'm not trying to get kidnapped here, you know what I'm saying?

Gosh, y'all just think I'm so stupid.

I mean, I'm I'm 11 years old by now.

You know, I know I got some stuff figured out.

It's like I would never do that.

Man, I'm gonna stand firm.

I mean, I'm a man now, you know.

I'm really a man now.

So it's like, okay, all right.

I'm just letting you know, they are professionals.

Like it doesn't take a lot, and it's hard when someone asks to just tell them you're not gonna give them an answer.

That's a weird thing.

Okay, okay, okay.

An hour later, one of the hotel staff came to our room.

We were out of towels, brought us some towels.

Katie was in uh the bedroom and they were out in the little living area, and she sat and she listened as the person came to the door and said, Oh, are y'all on vacation?

Oh, not really.

Uh oh, do you guys live around here?

Yeah.

Oh, you live in San Antonio?

Well, no, actually, we live out in Hilotus.

Oh, you live in Helotas?

What neighborhood do you live in out there?

Oh, we live in XY neighborhood.

Oh, really?

That's crazy.

What street are you on?

Oh, we're on this street, and by the end of it, they had given our exact address, including the numbers, to this lady.

An hour later is a great learning moment because my wife got to pull them in and say, Do you realize that in 10 minutes you told this person exactly where we lived?

And man, I've got great kids.

He immediately saw it.

Oh my gosh, I did.

Be sure that no one takes you captive.

You see, what happens is we get out of the Bible in our churches, we get out of the Bible, and we move over into the realm of philosophy, and we start looking at how the world works, and it's hard because it's really our only frame of reference.

And it's like, you know, I pay taxes every year.

I've got to do that.

If I make money, I pay taxes, and that's part of how I earn my good standing.

I've got to do something.

I've got a job, I gotta show up and work, I gotta put in the time, 40, 50, 70 hours a week.

Like if I want that paycheck, I gotta do something for it.

And all of a sudden, the human tradition, the elements of this world, the philosophy becomes a lens that we look at scripture and we go, whatever I get, I've got to earn.

And sooner or later that turns into I have to earn my own salvation.

And little by little, we are lured away by the philosophies, tradition, and elements of this world.

And the eternal security that is essential to us thriving and living out our purpose is traded in for what makes sense to us on a human level.

And so in verse 8, Paul gives a warning.

He says, Be careful that no one takes you captive.

Starting in the next verse, verse 9, he begins to dismantle all of the attacks coming against eternal security.

In verse 9, he says, For the entire fullness of God's nature dwells bodily in Christ.

Not just that all of God's deity dwells in Christ, but dwells bodily in Christ.

And of course, the Platonic thinkers said that that was impossible.

Jesus couldn't be incarnate because the flesh is inherently bad and the spirit is inherently good, and they have this dualistic thought.

And many Platonic thinkers thought there were actually two gods, and one of the gods created the spirit world, and one of the gods, you know, actually created the flesh world, and one of the gods was evil, and one of the gods was good, and they were in this eternal struggle together, and of course, that's not what we believe.

We believe that there's one God and three persons, and it completely contradicts who Jesus is.

And Paul says, please don't get it twisted.

The entire fullness of God's nature doesn't just dwell in Christ, but bodily in Christ.

And verse 10, he says, And you have been filled by him, Jesus, who is the head over every ruler and authority.

And the Greek thought said that there are many gods and there are many deities, and there are these angelic beings, and the angelic beings are who we have to connect with if we're going to get to the deities and if we're going to meditate on them long enough, then maybe we can connect with all of these different gods.

And if we spend our life connecting with enough of them, then maybe, just maybe, we'll get to go to paradise in the afterlife.

No security, no assurance.

And he says, Listen, this one man, Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, is the head, he is the ruler, he is the king, he is the Lord over anything and everything in this universe.

Do you see how Paul is just systematically dismantling all of these false teachings in verse 11?

He says, You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands, by putting off the body of flesh and the circumcision of Christ.

Paul goes at the Platonic thought.

He says, Listen, Jesus was here, and you better believe he was all God and all man.

Here bodily.

He goes against the Greeks.

He says that this one man, Jesus, is head over every ruler in authority.

And now he's addressing the Jews.

Circumcision is a huge deal in Judaism.

When a baby boy is eight days old, he is circumcised.

And this is how a Jewish man enters into the Jewish covenant with God.

God created that.

It began with Abraham and his family all the way back at the beginning of Genesis.

And now it has gone on through the generations.

And it's an important sign because it's a permanent sign.

Once you are circumcised, you can't get re-uncircumcised.

It doesn't work that way.

It is a decision that once it's made, it's final.

It's a permanent sign of the covenant.

And because it was so important in Jewish life, they felt like it should also be important in Christian life.

Remember, the Jews said you can believe in Jesus, but you also have to follow the law.

And step one of following the law is entering into the covenant, and the way that you enter into the covenant is through circumcision.

Now, that's a high price to pay.

And here's the deal, I understand uh we're going on quite the tangent about circumcision here.

And so just buckle in and grow up and we're gonna be fine.

It's a really important biblical concept.

You see, now in 2020, uh all kinds of people get circumcised.

Man, Jewish people, Gentile people, people from all ethnicities, all races.

It's not uh uh a religious thing, and it's a normalized thing.

But in the first century, it was strictly Jewish.

As a matter of fact, to everyone else, Gentiles meaning non-Jews, anyone who's not a Jew, it was seen as self-mutilation.

It was seen as barbaric.

Not only that, but it's very dangerous.

Very dangerous.

I mean, you're talking about a world where there's really no hospitals, uh, where there's no sanitation, where there are no like really sharp scalpels, and where literally, as a grown man, to go through a uh a surgery like that, you could bleed to death.

And so Paul is contrasting.

He says, You were circumcised in him, in Christ, with a circumcision not done with hands, putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ.

In Romans, talk Paul talks about the circumcision of the heart.

Do you see the contrast, the security that Paul is telling us?

Paul says, your salvation, your eternal security is salvation through faith.

The Jewish false teachers are saying salvation through surgery.

It's a work, it's another thing that you have to do, and it's just the introduction.

And once you're in the covenant, there's the moral laws and the customary laws and the relationship laws and laws that govern every aspect of your life.

And if it's up to you to work your way to heaven, you will never be able to live with anything short of insecurity.

Paul says, No.

God's not worried about a permanent change in your flesh, he is concerned about a permanent change in your heart.

And how does that occur?

He tells us in verse 12, he says, When you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God who raised him from the dead.

Paul uses this symbol of baptism to demonstrate our new life in Christ.

This is how our hearts are circumcised.

It doesn't say you were baptized and you were raised.

It's not about you working your way to God.

It says you were baptized with him, buried with him.

And many of you have been baptized here at MetaCurch, and you know we say buried with Christ, and it is a symbol that you are being buried to your old life, your sinful life, all of the things that you've done in rebellion to God, past, present, and future, and raised to walk in a new life, a new spiritually circumcised life, something that is permanent and lasting.

In the book of Ephesians, Paul says that when we believe, the Spirit of God comes into our life and seals us until the day of redemption.

It is a promise, an assurance.

It is security.

Jesus, God in human flesh, did what only he could do.

He lived the perfect life, he died to take the punishment of our sins, he rose again, he ascended to heaven, and he has promised.

You want to talk about assurance?

Jesus promised that anyone who believes in him, that he's coming back for us, that someday he's coming to raise both the living and the dead, to bring us to the eternity that is guaranteed to us.

And it's hard because we're broken and we're sinful.

And when we believe in Jesus, we don't magically quit sinning.

We start a process of trying to be more and more like Christ, realizing we'll never attain that perfection on this side of eternity.

And so what about our sin?

Paul anticipated that objection.

In verse 13, he said, And when you were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, he's acknowledging you were spiritually dead.

You were headed to eternal separation from God.

You, Gentiles, non-Jews, he says, In the uncircumcision of your flesh, you're not a part of the covenant of the Jews, you're outside of the work of God.

You are dead and drowning in your sin when you were dead.

He made you alive with him and forgave us all of our trespasses.

And finally, in verse 14, he erased the certificate of debt with its obligations that was against us and opposed to us.

And he's taken it away by nailing it to the cross.

And the reason that so many believers are living without an assurance of their salvation, without a security of their eternal destination, is because our eyes are constantly fixed in the wrong direction.

And so often we are looking at ourselves, we're evaluating our own life, we're aware of our own sin.

We see our own shortcomings, we are wrapped with insecurity, we fail constantly, we sin like it's our job.

And when all of that is compounded, we have to assume there's a chance that we get left behind.

That at the end of it all, we've just gone too far, too screwed up, too much sin, not enough morality.

We haven't told enough people about Christ.

We're looking at ourselves, and Paul says, You were forgiven the certificate of your debt, your sin debt that if it is not paid, will be called in in eternity.

All its obligations, your obligation to live according to your flesh, your obligation to live an insecure life, your obligation to be carried around by the current of our culture, and whatever the world is doing, and whatever the world's watching, and whatever the world's wearing, and whatever the world's thinking, all of those obligations, they were taken away.

Paul says, Lift your eyes, lift your eyes, you're screwed up, lift your eyes.

Paul says in Romans, I myself am the chief of all sinners, lift your eyes, it's not about you.

I know, but I'm screwed up.

Lift your eyes, lift your eyes.

It was taken away by nailing it to the cross.

And our security and our assurance will never come from us.

None of us, not one is good enough.

Our security comes from looking to Jesus.

Our security, our assurance comes from looking to the cross.

And on the cross, Jesus breathed his last breath, and he said, It is finished.

And too often we're living, like he said, it is started.

Too many believers are living as if the cross was the first down payment.

And now through our work and through our actions, through our morality and our spirituality, that we continue making the payments, and if we continue to make them on time, and we don't fall too far behind on our payments, and we continue living a good life, and we don't get the divorces, and we raise our kids decently, and we give a little bit to the church, and we sing the songs on Sundays that maybe, just maybe we'll make it.

Paul said, Don't be taken captive by philosophy, human tradition, and the elements of the world, the way the world works.

And the world's gonna make you earn it.

You want money, you gotta earn it.

You want status, you gotta earn it.

You want fame?

You gotta earn it.

You want a spouse?

You gotta earn it.

And Jesus did something that was so transcendent of everything in this world that it takes true faith to believe that our security does not come from ourselves.

We want so badly to play a role in our salvation, and yet Jesus already paid it all.

You know, there's a lot of people who make good arguments, really good arguments, against the idea of eternal security.

Even people in Christianity.

Some people will say if we can freely choose Christ, then we can freely choose to walk away.

It's an argument based out of our free will.

And we believe in free will.

We believe that you are able to respond to Jesus.

That's why one day you will be held responsible.

And it makes sense.

If I choose to come in the 151 saloon, surely I can choose to walk out of it.

Both of those are a part of my free will, and yet they're missing a very simple solution.

The reality that there are things in your life, all the time, in your lived experience, choices that we make, that once they are made, cannot be undone.

And how does Scripture talk about our eternity?

Jesus said that when you believe in Him, you are born again.

Once you are born, you cannot be unborn.

You can die, that's different, but you cannot be unborn.

Being born is like a door that you walk through, that when the door closes, there's no going back.

It's not about your free will because you never have the free will to do the impossible.

Paul says that we are spiritually circumcised and you cannot be re-uncircumcised.

There's a reason that all the analogies to our salvation are things that once we choose them, we cannot un choose them.

He says you are buried and raised to new life.

When you are resurrected, you can never be unresurrected.

Paul says you are a new creation creation.

And just in case you think, just because I'm new, doesn't mean I can't go back to the old.

He says the old things have passed away.

When you carry a debt, the lender can call it in at any time.

But Paul says the certificate of debt has been paid.

It was taken away, and it was nailed to a cross.

The moment that you believe in Jesus, something happens all the way at the level of your being is a choice you make that cannot be unmade.

You weren't powerful enough to give yourself salvation, and you'll never be powerful enough to take it away.

You can't undo the work that Jesus did at the cross.

The Colossians had some serious pushback against their eternal security.

And that's what insecurity does.

Nothing outside of Jesus has ever given this kind of eternal security, and so the rest of the world around them, the Platonic thinkers and the Greek thinkers and the Jewish thinkers, they're all insecure.

And insecure people want secure people to be where they are.

They drag you into insecurity.

Misery loves its company.

The world outside of Christ wanted to drag Christ followers into the same insecurity that they were facing.

They wanted to institute the law.

They wanted to downgrade Jesus.

They wanted to earn spirituality by punishing their own flesh.

And you know, I was thinking about how these things translate to our experience in 2020.

And most of us are not coming to church and being like really confronted with saying you have to follow the Jewish law.

But at the same time, we have our own little laws, our own little written and unwritten rules within Christianity to measure each other to see how we're doing and just how spiritual we are.

There are an unfortunate number of churches who would say out loud, we believe in eternal security, and yet will question your salvation anytime you're not living up, or anytime that you are living in opposition.

Anytime they don't see you looking the right way, acting the right way, voting the right way, thinking the right way, speaking the right way, giving the right way.

Anytime there's means to question, they'll question your salvation.

And if someone is questioning your salvation, how can you be living with assurance?

People have created a new law, and many people have even tried to take from the Jewish law in the Old Testament and bring it into the new, all of it to keep people insecure.

An insecure congregation is a congregation that a pastor can very, very easily control.

We give up control.

And if there is anything we can instill in those of you who have believed in Jesus, I pray it is the security of your eternal position.

The Greeks downgraded Jesus.

They said he's just one of, he's one of the spiritual beings.

Connect with them, but you better connect with enough of the other spiritual beings.

There's a similar question we all have to ask today, which is who is Jesus?

And increasingly the world has become more and more hostile to the idea of Jesus as God, Jesus as King, Jesus as Lord.

Instead, Jesus is now one of the philosophers.

The historical Jesus is a good teacher who had good morals.

And yet, when Jesus was on earth, he claimed that he was God Himself in human flesh, the one and only way to heaven.

You don't get to have it both ways.

Either Jesus is God or Jesus is a madman and a liar.

The Platonic thinkers would punish their own flesh.

They would whip themselves, beat themselves, cut themselves, walk on hot coals, shave their heads, wear burlap, wear these pieces of clothing that would cut into them, all of it to feel the sensation of spirituality.

In 2020, we've reversed it.

We've gone from punishing our flesh to worshiping our flesh.

And if it feels good, that's what you do.

And you don't stop at anything to get exactly what your flesh wants.

And all of these are rooted in insecurity.

Insecure Christians who have to flaunt their own spiritual superiority by following laws that could never get you to heaven.

An insecure world that is desperate to be saved but doesn't want the savior.

Insecure people living, worshiping their own flesh as if it's God.

And this is a real problem because you cannot thrive with insecurity.

You cannot thrive with insecurity, cannot ultimately live your purpose and live in the power that Jesus offers you.

However, Paul was giving us the answer that you can only thrive in security.

Our life requires the ultimate level of security that we have a heavenly father who has purchased our lives at the cost of his own son.

And that we can live assured of where we're going on the other side of this life.

In 2017, my daughter came to live with us.

She was four and turned five years old right after she got to our house.

She'd lived a very, very difficult life.

And the first 18 months of her living with us and us going through the process of adopting her were the most difficult thing that Katie and I have ever done.

She was self-sabotaging.

You see, she very quickly began to call us mom and dad, which was a very cool thing, and uh it meant a lot.

Except we also knew that when she had been moved from home to home to home to home, that she had had lots of mom and dads.

And none of those mom and dads lasted very long.

They were always giving her up, passing her on.

She would leave and she would never see him again.

She had spent five years of her life locked in a room, never spoken to.

She had baggage on baggage on baggage.

And she was convinced that Katie and I would be just like all the other moms and dads who would grow tired of her, pass her on, and she'd never see us again.

And so, in her little developing mind, she decided she would speed up the process.

And every day was like a challenge to outdo the chaos and damage that she had done the day before.

And she would hurt others, and she would hurt herself.

She would refuse to sleep, she would refuse to eat, she'd refuse to go to school, and if we got her there, she'd refuse to learn.

She would go to the principal, but unlike most kids, she had no fear of the principal.

Day after day, she would up the ante.

And at the end of the day, when we would finally de-escalate to a point, every night, for 18 months, we'd put her to bed.

And every night, once things were finally calmed down, she would say, You're gonna be my dad forever.

And she'd look at Katie and say, You're gonna be my mom forever.

I'm gonna be in this family forever.

And here's a hint when someone asks something over and over and over, it's because they don't believe you.

She was insecure.

She had a mom and a dad.

But she just wasn't sure we would be there forever.

And tomorrow she was gonna try even harder to force our hand.

Let's just rip the band-aid, let's get this over with, just pass me on.

And when things would be quiet in the car, she would ask, You'll be my dad forever.

You'll be my mom forever.

Am I gonna be in this family forever?

And we didn't know, we didn't know how long it would take.

But every day was a reminder that my daughter in her mind didn't yet have a father.

And you cannot thrive with insecurity.

You cannot thrive without knowing that there is someone securing your future.

You cannot thrive without assurance that you're a part of a family.

After 18 months, we put her to bed one night, we kissed her, we checked on her, we left, we checked on her, we left.

And as we were walking down the hallway, we realized it was the first night she had ever not asked, and it was like someone flipped a switch, and her behavior every once in a while we'd have a little problem like you just do with kids, but it was night and day.

You can only thrive in security.

And Kimberly may never know the nights that we begged God, she may never know the lengths we were willing to go to.

That we would have done anything, we would have sacrificed anything to have her.

And how does God feel?

Like if you could just see that I gave my son, if you could just see that I would have done anything to get you.

And the world has lured us away and made us believe that we can't have security of our father in heaven.

And I'm a broken man.

The only person who will ever know how jacked up I really am is me and God.

And if I can get it right with my daughter, how much more will our heavenly father get it right?

And so many of you are living in insecurity because you haven't yet come to terms that you have a father who has secured your spot on the other side of this life.

Some of you are living in insecurity because you've never believed in Jesus.

And through that moment of faith, you can have assurance.

If you believe that Jesus is who he says he is, and that he's done what he says that he has done, that he came from heaven to earth, lived a perfect life, died in your place, rose again to defeat death itself, and is coming back for us.

If you believe that, then in that moment everything changes forever.

And you may not feel it, it may not have this spiritual encounter, and the clouds may not part.

For Kimberly, she lived with us 18 months before she ever knew that she was a part of our family.

Just because it's not some out-of-body experience doesn't mean it's not real.

Love, true love, is not always the butterflies and the rainbows and the feelings and the boat rides and the white picket fence.

It's the hard things.

True love is the kind that defeats our insecurities and helps us live in our purpose.

God's offering that to you.

If you're ready, would you pray with me?

Father, we believe that a secure life is a significant life.

Right now I pray for believers who, because of philosophy, human tradition, and the ways of this world, have been unable to believe that they can really have assurance of their salvation.

I pray that in this moment you will begin to show yourself to them.

God, that they will realize that there is a spiritual reality that has happened to them, that they are changed literally forever.

God, I pray for anyone watching this who does not know you.

God, and if they do not know you, they cannot be secure about the most important question in this life, which is what happens after this life.

And God, if they're ready, I ask that they would just acknowledge their belief in Jesus.

If you're listening to this right now and you have never believed, I want to invite you to, in this moment, just acknowledge your belief.

There's nothing magic about the prayers, nothing magic about the moment, bowing your head, closing your eyes, none of it's magic.

It's just acknowledging this moment of belief.

And you can pray something like this Jesus, I choose to believe in you.

I believe you died for me.

I believe you rose again.

And that because I choose to believe in you, that you're coming back for me.

I thank you that you have changed my life eternally.

God, I thank you for those who just prayed that prayer.

I ask God that you would um help us to surround them with this community, that you would help them to get connected with us.

God, that you would continue to build in more and more security into our lives.

We love you and we pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

It's such a privilege to be your pastor here at Meta Church.

Um, some of you have made a decision that as believers in Jesus, uh, you're no longer going to let insecurity of your eternal future uh negate the life that you're supposed to live today.

And we celebrate that with you.

We'd love to hear about that.

And some of you today have made the most important decision you'll ever, ever make during your time here on earth, which is to put your faith in Jesus.

And scripture says that you are now born again and that you are a part of God's family.

So I want to welcome you to the family.

We would love to hear about it.

Um, we'd love for you to reach out to us.

You can email us at info at medichurch.tv.

We let you know how you can take some next steps or get involved.

Email us at info at metachurch.tv.

We love hearing about what God is doing in y'all's lives.

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You can give online at metachurch.tv or you can give by downloading the MetaCurch app.

Lives have been changed through the Spirit of God today.

Man, we want to see more and more.

We want to see God use this ministry and this movement in ways we couldn't imagine.

So make sure you're keeping us healthy through your donations.

Guys, I love y'all.

Y'all continue to stay safe and continue to be the movement.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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