2 John 1-6 | Truth reveals Truth

In the book, a second John, Second John.

So your Black Bibles, it don't even have the page on here,

right. So it's like 1223.

It is the book before second John is first John.

All right. So just throwing that out there.

All right. So for you guys that are

visitors, you guys that are new. So what we do at City Post is we

walk through books, we walk through passages, we walk

through scripture. And last the last couple of

months we were going through the book of First John and we were

looking at that question. How do I know that I'm a

follower of Jesus? Like how do I know I'm a

believer in Christ? Does it?

You know, I prayed a prayer, I walked to the front, I got

baptized, I attend church. Like all of those things are

secondary. But the the real test of what

makes you a follower of Jesus versus what does it are the

things that we studied in First John which is you carry the

anointing, the holy spirits in you.

But the main thing is that we now have habitual righteousness

and not habitual sin. So if you are a follower of

Christ and and and the sin in your life like it should bother

you a little bit. So you do look for forgiveness.

You do have a relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ

and also you have love, you have truth.

You are the light of the world because those things kind of

come to the surface when you have a relationship with Christ.

And now we're going to transition to Second John and I

was kind of praying through like what do we walk through next?

And it just kind of felt natural because Second John, what we're

going to look at is that John is going to continue to encourage

the believers of that time. And what's happening in Second

John, is that the Gnostics or the false prophets are

continuing to infiltrate the church.

They're they're continuing to try to make their own converts

with a false gospel, but they're using the hospitality of the

Christians in order to do that. So because we have love, because

we have the like, because the way that believers treat people

are a lot different. Like there shouldn't be any

Karens that are believers. I'm just saying right now, you

know if your food comes out not hot, you should not want to call

911, right? Like so.

Like we should act a certain way because of the love and the

light that we have through Jesus Christ.

And what's happening is that these Gnostics and these false

prophets are taking advantage of the love that that the believers

are showing. And John is going to continually

encourage them saying, hey, remember the truth.

Remember the truth. We are walking in the truth.

We love the truth. The truth is in you.

So don't let something like hospitality.

Don't let these guys come in here and you support them

unknowingly. So we're going to talk a lot

about truth today. That's kind of the recap of

first John and where we're going.

So we're going to look at the 1st 6 verses and then we'll

break it down and then we'll go home.

All right. So if you have your Bibles,

let's go ahead and read verses one through 6 and then we'll

walk through it, says the elder to the lady chosen by God and to

her children, whom I love in the truth, and not I only, but also

all who know the truth. Because of the truth which lives

in us and will be with us forever, Grace, mercy and peace

from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ the Father, Son

will be with us in truth and love.

It has given me great joy to find some of your children

walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us.

And now, dear lady, I'm not writing you a new command, but

one we have had from the beginning.

I ask that we love one another, and this is love that we walk in

obedience to His commands, as as you have heard from the

beginning. His command is that we walk in

love. So let's pray together.

Father, we thank you so much for today.

Thank you for those who are here, and thank you for those

who are watching online right now and for those who are

traveling this summer. And God, I pray that you speak

to us through your word, that you give us ears to hear and

that you just remove distractions and that we're able

to just focus on you just for a couple of moments.

We know that life is busy and there's a lot going on, but help

us to just focus on you because we know we see Christ will never

be the same. And then we pray all these

things. Amen.

All right. So let's go ahead and start with

verse one. All right.

So we got to start right away off the bat.

Verse one, the Elder. Awesome, right.

I was like, OK, that's the random Rick the Elder.

So John, anytime you start a letter and we see this in

Scripture, you kind of introduce yourself.

But this time not like in first John, but John, he's not

introducing himself as John the one who Jesus loved.

John the Apostle of Christ. He's going at it with a title.

He's saying the elder. So what does that mean?

So the elder is a New Testament term that you find in First

Timothy and in Titus. And the elder is pretty much

someone that is in the pastoral office.

So what John is doing is that he's writing the believers as a

pastor. Now he's coming at them saying,

like, you know me, like I've lived a long life.

We saw this in First John. He's about 90 years old right

now, but he's like the elder, he's he's coming at them from a

a shepherding standpoint. So he says, the elder to the

lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the

truth and not I, but also all who know the truth.

So what? Who's the lady?

Who's he talking about? Is he writing to a specific

individual? Is he writing to a person?

So what we see here is that John is addressing not a specific

individual, He's not talking about a specific lady.

He's actually talking to a fellowship of believers.

And some of you guys were like, well, Ricky, that doesn't make

sense. It says lady there.

But remember, the New Testament was written in the Greek

language. So the Greek word for lady here

is Kira. And Kira was actually a normal

name that was used back in those days.

It was. It was just very normalized,

almost like in Hispanic culture. Juan Luis, you see that

everywhere, right? In the Anglo culture.

Preston Schuyler. I'm joking.

All right. So Rachel's like my people.

All right. So.

So Kira is actually one of those, those names.

And actually Kira is in the feminine.

So, you know, in the Spanish language.

Yeah. Feminino and masculine, Right.

So it's El Mano, El mana. So here he's using these words

in the feminine, so Kira. And then you also have words

like Ecclesia, which is used to describe the church.

But then also we see an Ephesians how how the church is

the body of Christ, how it's the bride of Christ.

And then we also see like our other churches, you know, we

consider them like our sister church.

So it's just used in the feminine.

If you were in this culture, it would be Ecclesia X.

That was a joke. All right, So that's not true.

So it's it's used in the in the feminine voice here.

And what John is saying is like he's talking to a body of

believers and then look what it says, the lady chosen by God.

So he's addressing their kind of how God chose them, like the way

that he reveals his gospel to us through the Holy Spirit, how he

chooses us and her children. So if the body is the bride of

Christ, and the children are those who are in found in Christ

that belong to God, whom I love in truth, not only I, but also

all who know the truth, something that John is going to

do repeatedly here. He's going to repeat the word

truth over and over and over again.

And the word truth here is a synonym for the gospel.

So he's talking about those who are found in Christ through the

gospel message through Jesus Christ.

So those found in truth. He repeats this again and again.

And he's also reiterating what he talked about already in First

John. So this is the love of Christ,

the obedience, the abiding Christ, the sound belief in

Christ. All of these truths are

expressed in Second John and that's where he's kind of going

here. Now look what it says in verse

2. Because the truth which lives in

us and will be with us forever. So he's talking about what we

learned in First John, how it abides in us.

So once you become a believer in Jesus, you know it doesn't go

away. Like there's none of this.

Like I was a believer for just a few months and I tested it and

now I don't want to do it no more.

Like you never had them in the 1st place.

If that's the case, because once you have an encounter with

Christ, your heart is changed forever and you continue to walk

in the anointing in the Holy Spirit.

You continue to live in Him, you continue to live in the truth.

Now also what I want to point out here is that the what does

the word truth mean? So when you look at the

definition of the word truth, truth and true actually come

from the same Greek definition. And it does not mean the

opposite of false. A lot of us are like, well,

that's what truth is, right? Opposite of false.

Actually in this text, the word truth actually simply means not

hidden. It means to to reveal something,

it means not to hide. So what John is saying is like

the truth of Christ is it's not hidden to anybody.

Everybody should be able to listen to.

Everybody should be able to accept it.

So it's not the opposite of false, it's actually not hidden.

Means to reveal something. Now I want to touch on just two

things that that we see in humanity when it comes to truth.

So one, we either love the truth like we we jump all in because

we have something in us that wants to know the truth about

things. And two, we suppress it.

So let me give you example. So we love this.

You know, I was, I was looking at some like social media.

If you look at like, reels and TikTok and and all of these

like, little like social media videos, there's always something

that talks about revealing the truth, like the real story on

what doctors don't want you to know about eating vegetables.

And you're just like, what? I mean, it's like straight

clickbait, right? You're like, I want to know.

I mean it. It's like it makes no sense.

But they people, it just drives people to it.

You know, growing up and this is going to show my age, but like,

I remember like we would watch VH1, Behind the music.

Anybody remember that when they actually had music videos on

these channels? So it was like behind the music.

Blink 182, right? You're like ooh, I want to know

all the like how they wrote songs and all the drama of the

band. And then you'll see videos use

stuff like Untold Story or revealing even like on A&E you

have the dark side of the ring. WWE, like the real story of when

The Undertaker took on mankind and you're like ooh, I got to

know, you know, same thing. I mean, Making of a Murderer,

the inside story, the real story of Area 51, the truth of the

moon landing. You know, we have all these

things, the secrets of Hillsong Mega Church.

And you're like, ooh, I want to know the truth, the secrets of

the Dallas Cowboys for choking in the playoffs.

Right. I believe.

Ooh, that's a new one, right? How do they do it year after

year? What's the secret Hashtag deck?

Alright, so So I had to throw some jazz.

We love this stuff because there's something inside of us

as human beings that want to know what's real.

Even when we watch these like these reality shows like The

Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Me Love and Hip Hop, right?

What we look forward to are the reunion shows because it's like,

know the truth of the season and you're like, oh, this is going

to be good. Here comes the hot mess.

How many drinks are going to be thrown?

I mean, like, we eat this stuff up.

It is straight clickbait. The problem is, just because it

says it doesn't necessarily mean it is.

But we. There's something inside of us

that wants to know what is real. You know, it sucks us in.

But on the flip side, we also have something inside of us as

humanity where truth could be staring us dead in the face and

we deny its existence. I mean, a doctor could come up

to us and tell us like, hey, Ricky, like you have to stop

eating sugar or you might lose your foot.

And I could look at the doctor like, bro, you don't know what

you're talking about. I'm going like, you just keep

going. Like you deny the truth.

Like you're like, dude, you don't know what you're saying.

I'm not sick. You're just trying to hustle me.

You just want me to Because a big pharma like you start going

down these, like, conspiracy theories when you have someone

who's trying to tell you the truth about your health.

And we do this all the time. We suppress the truth when it

hits us right in the face. I want to give you 2 examples of

this in scripture because some of you guys are like, man, we

don't do that. Yeah, we do.

You know, John, Chapter 18. And it'll be on the screen.

John 18 · chapter mention

I think about there was a couple of things that came to my mind,

you know, when a pilot was meeting with Jesus at his trial

and look at this conversation starting on verse 33.

Pilot then went back inside the palace, some in Jesus, and asked

him, are you the king of the Jews?

Is that your own idea? Jesus asked.

Or did others talk to you about me?

Am I a Jew? Pilot replied Your own people

and Chief Priest handed you over to me.

What is it you have done? Jesus said my Kingdom is not of

this world. If it were, my servants would

fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders.

But now my Kingdom is from another place.

You are a king then, said Pilate.

Look what Jesus says. Jesus answered.

You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born

and came into the world is to testify to the what?

The truth. Everyone inside of the truth

listens to me. Jesus, right there in pilot's

face literally just told him why he's here and that he is the

truth. And look how Pilot responds.

What is the truth? He suppressed it.

It's hitting him right there and pilots like, man, what is the

truth? Retorted Pilot.

With this he went out again to the Jews gathered there and

said, I find no bias for a charge against him, so here's

Jesus, face to the Son of God, face to face with pilot.

Pilot knows what went down. He sees everything.

Pilot can't find any fault with him.

Jesus like men. I'm here to fulfill the Father.

I'm here because I'm the truth and those who lean on the side

of truth will listen to me. And pilots like what's truth?

Anyway, I'm done. Bye.

He just straight up looked them in the face and denied it.

But also we see this in Romans chapter one.

If you look at Romans chapter one beginning in verse 18, we we

go ahead and read this from scripture here.

Sorry, just give me a second. Romans chapter one verse 18 and

and Paul talks about how our our sinful nature kind of does the

same thing to us. Romans 118 It says the wrath of

God is being revealed from heaven against all the

godlessness and wickedness of people who suppress the truth by

their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to

them because God has made it plain to them.

For since the creation of the world, God's invisible

qualities, his eternal power and divine nature has been made

clearly. So has been clearly seen being

understood from what has been made so that the people are

without excuse. We'll keep reading verse 21.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God,

nor gave neither nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking

became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Although they claim to be wise, they became fools and exchanged

the glory, the glory of the immortal God for images made to

look like a mortal man being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in their sinful desires of their

hearts to sexual impurity for degrading of their bodies with

one another. So if you look at what Romans is

saying, Paul is saying like everything out there in

creation, God is is showing his who he is.

He's showing them his is his qualities.

He's showing them his creation. He's showing them everything.

And because of our godlessness and because of our sinful

nature, we suppress the truth. It's staring right at us in the

face. We see the glory of God and

because of our evil ways we say Nope, no thank you, I'm gonna do

me. Bye.

And what we see in Romans chapter one is that God gives

people over to their sinful nature, as is wrath.

And you know what's scary about this?

Because you could be living life, your life could look

great, you could be making money, be happy, have

friendships, all that stuff, while you suppress the truth.

And what's scary is that your success could actually be God's

wrath on your life. Because at the end of the day,

you're never going to find happiness and joy in those

things. It's never going to fulfill you

as a there's going to be a God shaped hole in you always and

you're always going to need more and more and more.

And God is the only one through Jesus Christ who could give you

real and pure joy. So we suppress the truth as

human beings. We even see it in scripture is

what we do. Now moving to verse 3.

Now John is going to start talking about what the letter is

going to be about. So verse three, he hits them up.

Look what it says. Grace, mercy and peace.

From God to Father and from Jesus Christ.

The Father's Son will be with us in truth and love.

So whenever you study the Bible, you got to pay attention not

just to the words, but the order that the words are in.

And I find it fascinating in verse three that John writes

grace, mercy and peace. Why not peace, mercy, grace.

Why not mercy, grace, peace. Flip them around.

See, what John is doing is that he's lying up.

What it looks like to enter into a relationship with Christ

through the sanctification. It starts with grace, for it is

by grace you have been saved through faith, not of your work,

So that way any man could boast it's all Jesus is doing.

You don't have to work for it. So it starts with God's grace on

our lives. So whenever we have a

relationship with Jesus, he pours his grace on us because we

don't deserve it. Which now comes mercy.

Mercy is you get something you don't deserve.

So we deserve God's wrath because of our sinful nature,

but because our relation with Jesus, he's he's the payment of

that wrath. So he takes it for us.

And then as a result is peace. You experience a peace that

knows no understanding. You can't understand.

Like, man, like I'm able to chill during a crazy tornado in

my life. Why?

Because my foundation, I'm rooted in Christ because of

mercy and peace. So grace, mercy, Peace from God

the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father, Son.

It will be with us. In what?

Truth and love. You know why it's going to be

with us in truth and love? Because that's exactly who Jesus

is. Jesus is truth and Jesus is

love. Those are the bookends of it

all. And because Jesus is truth and

love, he's able to give us grace, mercy and peace.

I love that John does that. In fact, we got to move verse 4,

verse four. It has given me great joy to

find some of your children walking in the truth, just as

the Father commanded us. You know, it's kind of what

Steven talked about. You know Steven, because we

planned this, right? This is crazy.

So this is my mom's favorite Bible verse by by, you know,

just letting you guys know. My mom has this verse all over

her house and I never really understood it, but it's given me

great joy to find that some of your children walking in the

truth. So what is John saying to the

fellowship of believers? There's great joy to find out.

There's there's a, there's a truth to this.

But it's also kind of a sadness here because look what it says.

Great joy. Find what some of your children

walking in truth. You see the word.

Some means Not everyone is doing this.

So for for John, he's like man. There's no greater joy in life.

To see my children, my believers.

To walk in the truth. You see this word walk in the

truth. That's an active verb that means

continually walking in the truth.

Man, parents, this is a cheat code right here.

Because if if you understand this verse that there's no

greater joy for my kids. Now I'm.

I'm stepping out of the fellowship part.

I'm thinking of my children right now.

If my children walk in the truth, if they walk in the truth

of Jesus Christ, if I drive them to have a relationship with

Christ, everything else in life follows suit if you start right

here. That's why I said this is the

cheat code in life. You don't have to pull your hair

out wondering where your kids are going to study and what

they're going to do for a living and how they're going to like,

you know, make do like what loser is going to marry Elena?

I don't got to worry about that stuff, right?

If she follows Jesus and she puts her life in his hands, the

Bible says that he's the one that directs her steps.

What greater man, what greater joy as a dad to know that my

children are walking in the truth?

And what's sad here is that John's like, oh, but some of

them are not. All of them.

My goal is all my kids and all my church man.

There's no greater joy to know that you're walking in the truth

just as the father commanded. Why is there joy?

Because it's just as the Father commanded.

That means that you are walking in obedience to the word of God.

There's a joy in that. What it does not say is that I

don't find any greater. There's no greater joy than my

children going to church, or my children tithing more, or my

children reading the Bible more or praying more.

All these acts are great, but what John is getting to is like

there's an obedience to Jesus. That's where the joy comes from.

If you could just get this part right, everything else is gonna

follow through. And what's sad is so many of us,

we think Christianity is like this religious thing where you

have to do all these, like, rules and regulations.

And I have to have like, no, like, man, that is so secondary.

Jesus is all about obedience to him.

He's about your heart. He he wants you to know him and

to be forgiven and to have a new life.

But you have got to surrender to him.

You have got to take that step. But man, there's no greater joy.

And now, dear lady, so he's continuing, which he's talking

about the fellowship. I am not writing you a new

command, but one we have heard, we have had from the very

beginning. I ask that you love one another.

It all goes back to love everybody.

You could do all these things, but if you have love, you have

nothing. We see that in First Corinthians

without love, all your words are like clanging symbols.

They're just noise. All your actions mean nothing.

Your righteous acts are like filthy rags.

That's out of Isaiah. So John is reiterating.

He's like man, this is nothing new.

I've encouraged you this way. Continue to love one another.

And in verse 6. And this is love.

There he goes. He's defining it again.

He's reiterating what we learned in first John.

And this is love you want to talk about.

Love is what is love? This is love.

We walk in obedience. This commands as you have heard

from the beginning. His command is that you walk in

love. So what love is he talking about

here is this sacrificial is agape love the love he's talking

to. You want to know how you love

Christ and love God. You walk in His commands, you

obey what he says. That's first John 26.

That's how we know that is what brings us joy.

We walk in obedience to his commands.

How do we know his commands? We have his word and he's giving

it to us. And everyone here can read it.

And I know that there's a little, there's some people are

like, well, Ricky, like I'm not supposed to read it.

They're supposed to tell me what it says.

And I'm like, no, they're not. It's God's revelation to you.

Read it. If you can't read, listen to it.

There's apps, just hear it. So if we obey his word this is

how how we show love is with this.

So what I want to do is just for the last couple of minutes you

know something that I I was praying through is in verse

three. He talks about truth and we know

that truth reveals means that that that you're getting you're

revealing something something is is coming to light.

You know when Jesus said I'm the way, the truth and the light.

Jesus saying like I am revealing myself to all humanity, all

mankind, this is the how, how God's going, I'm God's plan for

the world's redemption. But I also want to talk a little

bit about what truth reveals. What does truth actually reveal?

Some of you are like, well, Ricky talk a lot about that.

So. So I want to take a little bit

of a deeper dive here as we apply this to our lives and what

does this mean? So #1 Truth reveals truth.

Truth reveals truth. Whenever you're confronted with

the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is that we are sinners,

that we deserve God's wrath due to our sin.

But Jesus came and took our place, and now we have a

relationship with God, not by anything we did, but because of

all he did. And we are forgiven, restored,

renewed. And he has given us this new

life, that truth reveals something in us.

When you when you put us together, So what?

What does that truth reveal? Because this is out of verse

two. We see this and and and you

don't have to look it up. I'll just read it says whom I

love in truth, who, who? You know the truth, and it will

be with us forever. So I mean this is constant

sanctification in us. So if truth reveals truth, if

the gospel, what does the gospel reveal to us?

So if the Gospels is the good news, the first thing that the

truth reveals is the bad news. So as we look at our lives, when

we look at the truth of the gospel, then we have to look at

the truth of ourselves. And the truth is that we are not

good people. Like the truth is I'm a terrible

person. I'm selfish.

I'm prideful, like I don't love the way that I should.

All of these things are revealed when I when I look at the Gospel

message, I reveal the sinful nature of me, of myself.

Romans 117 even says it For in the Gospel, the righteousness of

God is what revealed, A righteousness that is by faith

from first to last, just as is. Just as it is written, the

righteous will live by faith because the righteousness of God

is revealed to us. We look at how terrible we are.

Something you're like, man, Ricky, I'm not a bad person.

How many How many times have you failed yourself.

More than you. How many promises have you

broken to yourself. How many times?

Like, I'm starting Monday. I'm gonna go and start training

for the the Countdown couch to 5K, right.

I'll start somewhere. I'm gonna go Waterburger real

fast. I mean, like we we we tell

ourselves all these things and and like, we're not good people.

And the truth is that we're sinful, we're terrible.

That's humanity for us, compared.

Well, what are we comparing it to?

We need a standard. Well, when you compare yourself

to a holy and righteous God, your sinful nature reveals how

terrible you are. And the truth is that it.

I'm just going to throw this out there for some of us.

The truth is, is that we're not anxious, we're not depressed,

we're not addicted. The truth is that we watch porn

for four hours a day. We fill our mind with terrible

things. We have abuse in our life that

we have not managed yet. We still have unforgiveness in

our hearts from something that our parents did to us or

relationship. Some of us were molested, abused

sexually. Like like, we're just going to

push it all out there. Let's just be honest.

So what ends up happening is that we start medicating

ourselves when the real truth is our hearts.

And the Bible points this out. And until you deal with the

truth of who you are, you're going to continue to medicate

yourself. You're going to continue walking

in circles. Jesus does the most loving

thing, like so loving that some of us, we miss it.

Because what Jesus does is that Jesus passes through the self

medication and all the little surface stuff and he goes

straight to the disease, which is our sin.

We see this at the woman at the well.

Remember that story? The woman at the well, he's

talking to her and and and he's like I am the living water.

If you drink of me like you shall never thirst again.

And the lady's like, yes, give me the water.

Hey, why don't you go get your husband?

You see, Jesus could have easily stopped with the lady saying yes

like I do want it? Let's sign her up for a church.

Let's get her discipled. No, but what he does is that he

knows that there's a deeper issue here.

And the deeper issue is why do you have 5 husbands and the

other one's still not your husband?

What's behind all this? Why are you here by yourself?

Does the same thing with that Kias everybody Jesus meets, he

doesn't just like cuddle them and say, oh like I love, you

know what he does? He gets to the root of the

disease, which is a sinful heart, and he heals the disease.

So that way you are now made a new person.

So I'll be honest, man, for some of us, it's not that you're

addicted. There's something so much deeper

there that truth is going to reveal.

But if you do not bring it to the surface, it's going to be

hard for Christ to take that. You can't.

He can't take anything that you don't bring to the altar.

So you've got to present it. So think about this.

Let's say that I'm playing at home with Elena and we're

wrestling now let's do Olivia because we're wrestling.

So we're wrestling on the couch and Livy pushes me down and I

land on one of Elena's scissors by accident.

So I run to Rachel and I have scissors sticking out of my arm.

They just kind of protruded right through it and I'm like,

hey Rach, I need a little bit of help here.

I don't think I could just yank this thing out.

And Rach is like, great, let me help you.

And she goes, gets the first aid kit and then she goes and she

just pours hydrogen peroxide on it.

She puts Neosporin on it, and then she puts band aids on it,

but she does not remove the scissors.

And I'm walking around, I'm like, hey guys, we're gonna heal

soon now some of y'all looking like, man, Ricky, that's so

dumb. You know what the issue is?

It's popping right out. Well guys, it's the same thing

for our central nature. As we know what the issue is,

the truth has revealed it. Many of us know what the problem

is. We don't want to reveal it, but

the truth has exposed it. And unless you give that to the

Lord, unless you give that to Jesus, you will continually be

walking in circles of self medication trying to figure out

how to fix it. And the problem is, you cannot

fix what's broken out of a broken system.

It's going to keep you there. Which leads to #2.

So if truth reveals truth about ourselves, truth also reveals a

solution. It's not funny.

Like we have the gospel. So, Ricky, I I know that I'm a

terrible person. I know that I'm I'm like a

sinful person. Like I've tried all these

things. Like, what do I do?

What's next? So what's we see?

The we see the answer in verse 3.

Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ

the Father Son will be with us in truth and love.

You see, the answer is Jesus. Not just church, Not just no.

A relationship with Jesus is the answer to all of this.

He's the one that heals your heart now, is it like a genie

and a bottle where it just all goes away?

Like your life is great for the rest?

Like forever? Absolutely not.

We live in a sinful world, but we now have a solution that

works. And he forgives us and he walks

with us and he gives us comfort and he gives us peace.

And there's some things that he does supernaturally that you

can't explain. And that's only through the Holy

Spirit. That's only through a

relationship with Jesus Christ. Everyone else is going to fail

you. Every self help book is going to

fail you. Every great podcast will fail

you. Christ is the only one who will

never fail you. I will fail you, but Jesus

won't. Jesus is the only one.

He won't fail us. You know it's interesting.

Something I was thinking about, You know, way that this culture

suppresses truth is that we cancel things.

When something comes at us that we don't like, we ghost, we

cancel it. We're like, I'm no longer going

to take part in that. I disagree with it by now.

I'm not talking about like that person was abusive.

So because of the love of my of the victims, I'm not going to.

No, no. I'm talking about things that

come at us in our lives that we just push away.

I started thinking, why do you think people disappear from

church? It's not church hurt.

Maybe there was something that arose that confronted them.

And you know what I thought about?

Like, I just felt we cancel. We we suppress what exposes our

idols, and there's some idols that we have in our lives that

we want to hold on to. So when something exposes that,

we tend to cancel it or go away from it because we want to keep

this thing here. So the solution to all of this

is a real relationship with Jesus Christ.

And then the last thing. And then we'll we'll we'll be

done. We'll just spend a little time

and worship. The last thing is truth reveals

great joy. Y'all truth reveals great joy.

That's something John says. He's like men.

There's no greater joy than to know that some of my children

are walking in the truth. You want to experience great joy

in your life. Submit your life to Jesus.

I know you're like, Nah, Ricky like Nah, that's not it.

No, no. Submit your life to Jesus.

The end game is not a better life.

It's not marriage. It's not sexuality.

The end game is not money. The end game is you having a

relationship with Christ, period.

You come as you are, come to Jesus and watch the joy in your

life skyrocket. And parents, your goal.

I'm just going to talk. I'm be honest.

Parents, your goal is this verse right here.

Bring your kids to the foot of the cross.

Bring them to Christ. Do everything you can and you

pray for them no no matter how long it takes.

You pray for them that they meet Jesus.

Everything in life is secondary to knowing who Christ is and to

be walking in the truth and pray for us and we'll have a little

time of worship, little time of response.

And listen, if you're here in this room and you're like, man,

Ricky, like it's. I want that.

I want that truth. I want that relationship with

Christ while we worship, I'm going to be standing right here.

Come see me. We're going to embarrass you.

We're going to, like, call. No, like, let's talk.

Let's have a conversation. Let's talk.

Come to know Jesus, it's the greatest joy that you ever

experienced. Let me pray for us, Father.

We love you and we thank you so much because God, you love us so

much that you expose the truth of who we really are.

And it's not pretty. But God, instead of you just

pushing us away, you actually invite us in.

Not just invite us in, But Lord, even when we were enemies, you

have made us your friends. Not that you just made us your

friends. We also gave your life for us.

We don't deserve that. So, Father, I pray that you help

us experience great joy and have a relationship with you, Father,

which only comes through Christ. So, Jesus, we love you, we thank

you, and we praise you for all that you're doing in our lives.

And yam, we pray all these things.

Amen. This worship together.