Message - Peace with God

That was good worship this morning.

That was good.

Man.

Really curious.

Um, those of you in the room, everyone online, you can chime in as well, just you know, comment or something.

But but how many of you live with someone who sighs a good bit?

Like, I mean, just like like that.

Anybody here cohabitate with a sire?

Anybody?

Not that many?

I do.

My wife, she sighs.

And uh it's interesting, I whatever your your programmed human response to someone sighing is reveals a lot about what you struggle with as a human being, I think.

Because when I'm at home and and Megan's on the couch and I'm somewhere else in the room, and maybe she's on her phone or something, and and she just my first thought is, what did I do?

Like, I don't know why.

I'm pulling the curtain back.

There's some type of insecurity within me or whatever, probably from childhood.

I don't know, but like, I just go, What if what did I do?

And I'll look at her and go, what's what's wrong?

And she'll be like, nothing.

And I'm like, that's not true.

Because you just side.

And no one sigh for no reason, right?

There has to be something wrong.

And so then I go through this cycle, and she's so tired of it by this point in our marriage.

It's been 15 years of like, no, no, seriously, what's wrong?

You can tell me.

And then she'll say nothing.

And I'll dig and I'll go, was it was it earlier when I said that?

Is that because I I felt like that bugged you and and you said it didn't, but I think it did.

And she'll just be like, stop.

And so I'll stop, but then like 30 seconds later, you know, and it just all starts over again in my mind.

I have a tendency as a person to feel easily accused.

It's just really easy for me as a human being to be like, I bet that person is upset with me about something.

That's something I've dealt with for a really long time.

And it makes me uneasy in situations where I should not be uneasy.

Now, maybe that's not something that you struggle with or deal with.

Maybe for you it's it's kind of a persistent, even if it's subtle anxiety.

If it's you having the ability to imagine the worst possible things happening.

Maybe it's depression, maybe it's just a general angst and frustration with life itself.

It's just this constant thing that keeps you uneasy and unsettled.

As Jesus followers, we're not meant to live unsettled.

Because we follow someone who's called the Prince of Peace.

The Prince of Peace.

If my life is connected to the Prince of Peace, I shouldn't be consistently uneasy, insecure, unsettled, anxious, worried, fearful, depressed.

But when I am, something needs to change.

So we're gonna talk about that this morning.

And if you struggle with any of those things, we're gonna deal with that this morning.

And if you don't struggle with those things, good news, we're gonna safeguard your life from those things because our world works really, really hard to make us unsettled.

The more unsettled we are, the easier we are to control.

And so we're gonna safeguard our lives from those things this morning.

And if you don't mind, I'd just like to pray about it.

So, Father, thank you so much for this opportunity to open your word, to talk, to explore what you've had to say to give us peace.

And I pray, Lord, this morning that as we as we go through all that we're gonna go through, that you would give us, as we walk out these doors, as we turn off what we're watching, when all this is done, you would give us true, lasting, unshakable peace.

And I pray this in your name of Jesus.

Amen.

We're starting a brand new series today called All Because of Jesus.

And what we're gonna be doing, if you're if you're new, is going through Romans chapter five.

We've been going through the book of Romans for a while now, and I kind of liken it to scuba diving, which is something I've never done nor will ever do because of sharks.

Um I know that statistically your chances of dying from a shark attack are low, but if you never go into the ocean, your statistical chance of dying from a shark attack is zero.

And I like that.

I'm gonna keep it that way.

I've always said that Jesus walked on the water, that Moses parted the sea.

We're just not supposed to be in there.

Um so, and that's like really clear.

Like you don't have to look at the ocean much to realize not meant for us.

All kinds of weird stuff's down there.

So I don't do that.

But the analogy of scuba diving, even if you haven't done it, it we all get it, right?

You go down, and uh and Romans is kind of like scuba diving.

You you go down, but every once in a while you gotta come back up and just get some more air.

Romans, if you're familiar with it, it's deep.

It is dense.

It's probably the most comprehensive letter that we have in the New Testament that really details for us who Jesus is and what he's really about and what he came to do, what he accomplished, what it looks like to have him in our lives, what it means to live in response to him.

Romans is dense.

So we've been going through Romans, we've been diving deep, but then we've been coming back up for air a little bit.

Well, today we're gonna start the dive again.

We're in Romans chapter five.

We're gonna call this series All Because of Jesus.

Because if there's a theme in Romans 5, it's the things that God gives us all because of Jesus, and really only because of Jesus.

So I want to read the first 11 verses of Romans chapter 5 to you.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

Just notice as we read just these first 11 verses, we'll go through the whole chapter in about five weeks, but as we go through these first 11 verses alone, just look at how many times it signals to us that all that's being promised to us is really only because of Jesus.

Okay, so let's let's just jump in.

Romans 5, verse 1 begins by saying, Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.

Romans 5:1

It's because of Jesus.

Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory.

Why do we look forward to it?

Because of what Jesus has done.

We can rejoice too when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance, and endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation.

And this hope will not lead to disappointment.

For we know how dearly God loves us because he's given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners.

It was Jesus that came for us.

Now, most people will not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who's especially good.

But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.

And since we've been made right with uh with God in his sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation.

For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son.

And so now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends with God.

It's Jesus that did that.

Jesus made us friends with God, Jesus saved us, Jesus restored our relationship with the Father, Jesus gives us peace, Jesus gives us hope.

All of those things that it talks about, it's all because of Jesus.

And we're gonna explore that over the next few weeks because there are things that we desire to have.

There's a kind of life that I think we all want to have.

Everybody wants a life that is defined by things like hope and joy and confidence and peace.

But that life can often be elusive because a lot of the times we're trying to get that life from things or from people that simply don't have the authority to give it to us.

But Jesus does.

And if we go to him, if he's really the source for all those things that we know we need in life to have the life that we're meant to have, well, if we go to him, we get it.

Because he's Jesus.

And he has the power and he has the love and he has the authority to actually bless us with those things.

Now we're gonna start by talking about peace.

It's the opposite of all those things I began talking about, the opposite of anxiety and worry and fear and stress and frustration and angst and depression and insecurity, all those things.

It's peace.

That's the opposite of that.

And Jesus gives us peace.

We can have peace all because of Jesus.

So I'm gonna go back to verse one.

We're really gonna just go through verse one today.

Um, and that's not indicative of the pace that we're gonna go through this series, by the way.

Uh, but verse one, therefore, since we've been made right in God's sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.

We have peace with God.

Now, this is a really important concept for us to understand.

Maybe you're here and you've been following Jesus for a really long time.

If that's the case, then this is stuff that you need to be reminded of often.

We all need to be reminded of and refreshed on.

Maybe you're new to the whole Jesus thing, maybe you're just figuring it out.

But this concept is huge to have peace with God.

This has implications for every aspect of our lives, so we've really got to understand it.

We've got to engage with this.

And so this morning, I'd like to share with you just three major concepts to understanding what peace with God looks like.

The first one's really simple, it's understanding the relationship between having peace with God and having the peace of God.

It's kind of semantics, but it's a little bit differently.

Normally, when we're talking about peace in God, when we're using those words in the same sentence, we're talking about this kind of inner peace, this peace that the Bible describes as surpassing understanding, a peace that doesn't make sense.

We get that, by the way, from Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 through 7, which say this don't worry about anything.

Philippians 4:6–7

Instead, pray about everything.

I love that, by the way.

Pray about everything.

There's nothing you can't take to God.

Pray about everything.

Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done, and then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand.

His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Normally, when we're talking about peace, and that sounds nice, doesn't it?

That kind of peace, we're talking about the peace of God.

But Romans chapter 5, verse 1 isn't talking specifically about peace with uh the peace of God, rather, it's talking about something it calls peace with God.

Romans 5:1

And here's the the truth, the reality is that we can't have the peace of God until we have peace with God.

We can't experience the peace of God until we experience and understand and grasp the fact that we need, and through Jesus, have peace with God.

Now, this is one of these ideas that has fallen on hard times in recent years because we kind of live in a culture that if something's not warm and fuzzy and and whatnot when it comes to God, we just want to ignore it.

But we got to have mature faith.

Like we got to have a faith that can handle the hard stuff.

We talk a lot here at His Hands about wrestling with God.

We want to be wrestlers.

We want to be people that when we engage with some of the challenging ideas in Scripture, we don't run away.

We just we wrestle with it.

And we trust that God in that wrestling will strengthen us and grow us.

We want to be mature believers.

Even if you're new to the whole Jesus thing, you want to be a mature believer.

And there's this concept of being in opposition to God.

We don't like to think about that.

We'd rather think that God is not opposed to anyone, that God loves everyone, which he does.

But the reality is it's it's very easy to live in opposition to God.

I've done it many times.

I think sometimes we'd like to think of ourselves as either pro-God or at worst, we're like God neutral.

But opposed to God, no way.

No way.

If you look at the life of Jesus, though, you find pretty quickly that it's very, very easy to oppose God.

And in fact, it's easy to oppose him passionately.

Because Jesus lived his life in such a way that no one could really be neutral about Jesus.

It's one of the most amazing things about Jesus.

It's one of the most refreshing things about who he is, is that he just doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room to be neutral about him.

Like you can try for a while, and many people did, but eventually you spend enough time with Jesus, you spend enough time reading what he taught, you look at what he did, and he just he kind of makes it impossible for you not to take aside.

Like, like Jesus says things that people just don't say.

And if they do say them, usually they're either an egomaniac or they're they're insane.

Because he says really, really intense things.

For example, classic example, John chapter 14, verse 6.

John 14:6

Jesus says that I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No one can come to the Father except through me.

That statement doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room.

Right?

Like it'd be so much easier, so much more politically correct if Jesus would have said, I am one of the ways, I'm a part of the truth, and I'm some of the light.

Right?

I'm some of the life.

And I am one of the many ways that you can know the Father.

Like no one would really disagree with that.

Everyone would go, yeah, I'm cool with that.

You can be kind of neutral on that statement.

But when Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me, it's like, oh man, I can't really find the wiggle room there.

I can't find the middle of the road approach to that statement.

Jesus does that kind of stuff all the time.

Maybe even a better example, Matthew 12, 30.

We've got this one on the screen.

Anyone who isn't with me opposes me.

And anyone who isn't working with me is actually working against me.

Sometimes Jesus says things you want to be like, oh, come on, Jesus, don't say that.

Like I've always said that the worst job to have ever had, this job didn't exist, but it's a hypothetical.

If it did would have been Jesus' PR guy.

Because if you were Jesus' PR guy, like you were his publicist, you'd be like, Jesus, what?

Why?

Why did you say you said people have to eat your flesh and drink your blood?

Do you know what how that trends on Twitter?

Do you have any idea what people are saying?

Hashtag cannibal is trending all over the place because of what you said.

Jesus, you can't do that kind of thing.

That would have been a nightmare job.

But Jesus just has this way of speaking in absolutes and with certainty.

It's almost as if he is certain and confident in who he actually is.

Like he knows who he is, he knows his power, he knows his authority, and he's not afraid to talk about it.

Because he says things that just they don't allow you to be neutral on.

And so if you look at the life of Jesus, what you find is anyone who tries to sort of just take this sort of nonchalant stance on Jesus, he won't let them do it.

A great example, by the way, would be his own disciples.

There's this classic story, they show up to this place called Caesarea Philippi.

And it was a city that was filled with temples.

It was a city where kind of Rome and the Jewish world really connected and met.

And Jesus asks his disciples with that backdrop, who do people say I am?

And all the things that they say are really good things.

The disciples say, Oh, people say you're a prophet.

People say you're like Elijah or Jeremiah.

These were these prophets that the people just admired so much.

That you're a great teacher.

And those are all things that should be compliments.

Like, wow, that's a high opinion that people have of Jesus.

But he doesn't seem to be moved by it at all.

He's like, Who do you say I am?

And finally, Peter says, You're the Messiah.

In other words, you're above all those guys.

And Jesus says, That's correct.

He won't settle for that middle-of-the-road opinion.

See, even if God isn't opposed to us, we're often opposed to him because you can't really be in a neutral position when it comes to God, not for long, anyway.

You're either gonna partner with him or you're going to oppose him.

And if I'm honest with myself, I've I've stood in opposition to God more times than I could probably count, more times than I'd like to think about.

How many times have I devalued someone that God died for?

How many times have I dismissed someone that God deeply cares about?

How many times have I given up on someone that God is currently working on?

How many times have I laughed at or celebrated even something that God is against?

See, we can't have the peace of God if we're living in opposition to God.

But here's where it's beautiful: Jesus gives us peace with God.

His death on the cross, it was it was a peace offering of sorts.

He has made peace between us and God.

If we put our faith in him, we have peace with God.

All that opposition, all the times that I've done the opposite of what God wanted me to do or what I should have done, that's all wiped away because Jesus gives us peace with God.

So it doesn't matter if I've been opposed.

It doesn't matter if I've gone left when I should have gone right.

Through Jesus, I can have peace with God.

And once I have peace with God, and there's a restoration and a reconciliation that I have with God, then I can start to experience the peace of God.

So if you want to have a life of peace, if you want to have that peace of God that washes over you, surpasses all understanding, doesn't matter your circumstances, right?

Because real peace is not the absence of conflict, it's the conquering of conflict.

If you want to have that kind of peace that goes with you everywhere you go, it starts by living at peace with God.

And living at peace with God begins by knowing Jesus, by giving your life to him, because when you know him, you're in.

He's the Son.

And he gives you access to God like you could never have on your own.

So that's that's the first concept.

You have to have peace with God if you want the peace of God.

Number two, you have to understand this it is an unshakable peace.

It is an unshakable, unbreakable peace.

One of the biggest tools of our enemy, and we're gonna talk about that here in a second, if that's new language for you, we have an enemy, is to convince us that our relationship with God is on shaky ground when it couldn't be more solid.

So I said earlier that my son has been studying World War II.

I said that during Lord's Supper this morning.

I love that era of history.

And I don't know, any any other people in the room, like history buffs, you just you get fascinated by certain aspects of history.

Anyone in the room falls asleep during history documentaries?

Uh, so you just don't really care.

Okay, cool, I get it.

Um anybody know the name Neville Chamberlain?

Does that name mean anything to anyone?

Who who knows good old Neville Chamberlain?

Not many.

He's one of the forgotten people in history, and it's understandably why.

How about Winston Churchill?

Anyone ever hear of Winston Churchill?

All right, well, never uh Neville Chamberlain, Neville's such a British name, isn't it?

Neville Chamberlain.

He's the guy who preceded Winston Churchill as Prime Minister in Britain.

And in September, October of 1938, Neville Chamberlain was the most popular man in Europe.

He was by far the most adored man in England.

People would see him, they would cheer.

That whole like classic song for He's a Jolly Good Fellow, people en masse sang that about Neville Chamberlain, like for real.

Thousands of people singing that about this guy.

Eight months later, he resigned in disgrace.

And here's why.

Toward the end of 1938, Germany was ramping up its ambitions for conquering territory.

And everyone who was alive at that time was still living with the memory, the fairly recent memory of World War I and how horrific it was.

And no one, I mean, no one wanted to go back to war.

And so Neville Chamberlain, he organized a summit.

And he met with Hitler at the summit.

This is pre-World War II, and he basically just made an appeasement deal with Hitler.

He said, hey, look, if we let you conquer this small territory that you say that you want back, it used to belong to Germany, it had since become independent.

If we let you have that, if we just let you take it and no one opposes you, will you stop there?

And Hitler said yes.

And they signed a peace treaty, and Neville Chamberlain came back to England and he held it up and everyone cheered, and he actually famously said, We have achieved peace in our time.

We have achieved peace in our time.

Less than six months later, Germany invaded Poland and the whole world was at war.

Kind of a little side note, you can never appease evil.

It doesn't work.

It just doesn't work.

But Neville Chamberlain, he he tried, he tried to make peace.

And in our human understanding of peace, peace is often fragile.

When we make peace with someone or something, that peace can fall apart really quickly.

We can have relationships that seem like they're really solid, they're really good, and then the wrong thing is said or the wrong thing is done, and there's a brokenness, and sometimes we can't even come against or come past that brokenness.

Human peace is fragile, but the peace of God is not.

The peace of God is bankable.

There's nothing that can stop it.

When you give your life to Jesus, you now have peace with God.

Like it's given to you.

You can even just picture that.

You put your faith in Jesus, he's like, cool, now we're at peace.

Here it is.

And there's nothing in the world that can break that.

There's no failure, there's no sin, there's no issue, there's no shortcoming.

There's nothing that you can do that can break the peace that God has given you.

Nothing at all.

And like I said a minute ago, One of the main tools of our enemy, we have this enemy.

In scripture, he's often called Satan.

That's not a name, it's a title.

Does anyone know what the title Satan means, what it translates in English?

It means accuser or adversary.

Satan is called in Revelation the accuser of the brethren, which is a very fancy sounding term.

Satan accuses us.

It's cool.

In scripture, there's actually a lot of courtroom language.

And as someone who grew up in an era where law and order was on television, like every hour of the day, no matter what channel you were on, you could flip like two channels up or two channels down.

You're gonna get either law and order, law and order SVU, law and order criminal intent, law and order beach squad.

It was like there's so many law and orders, who knows?

But like it was always on.

So as a kid who grew up, I just was like, oh, law and order.

Saw a lot of that.

That's my whole context for courtrooms, by the way, uh, law and order.

And so uh there's a lot of motifs of courtrooms in scripture.

And here's what's really cool in those motifs, the accuser is never God, the prosecutor is never God.

It's Satan.

He's the one who accuses you.

Now, what's really cool is that the Holy Spirit, the spirit that lives inside of us when we give our lives to Jesus, Jesus promised us the spirit, scripture says when you give your life to Jesus, God's spirit joins with your spirit.

The actual spirit of God inside of you, he's called the advocate, and that was a legal term for a defense attorney.

So Satan's the prosecutor, but you've got the Holy Spirit as your defense attorney.

That's pretty awesome.

But here's what's even better the judge is Jesus, and he's your brother.

Because you're part of the family of God.

When you give your life to Jesus, scripture says that God adopts us as our very own as his very own children, and we become co-heirs with Jesus, meaning Jesus is our big brother.

So your big brother's the judge, he loves you.

The Holy Spirit's your defense attorney, the trial's rigged in your favor.

Like, how awesome is that?

That's the language of Scripture.

But Satan, he is always the accuser, and he's really, really good at making accusations.

What he wants to do, if you've given your life to Jesus, he wants to make you feel like you're on shaky ground or on thin ice with God when you are not.

Because if he can make you feel like, like maybe God's upset with you, maybe God's angry with you, God's got to be so disappointed in you, God's got to be about done with you, how many more chances can God give you?

The answer is how many do you need?

That's how many he's gonna give you.

Because he loves you.

If you belong to him, you're his child.

And your relationship with God because of Jesus, not because of you, but because of Jesus, your relationship with God is never on shaky ground.

Recently, I was sitting with a woman who's been part of our church for a long time, love her so much, and she just recently had a tragedy in her family, a really serious tragedy.

So I was sitting with her, we were talking, and she was really overcome with guilt.

And she expressed to me that she felt like maybe this was her fault.

Because she said that she had been carrying some anger for a while.

And maybe because of this anger that she had been carrying, God was teaching her a lesson or punishing her because of the anger that she carried.

And I had to sit with her and encourage her and say, look, number one, anger is not a sin.

Because God gets angry, and God never sins.

And Jesus got angry.

I mean, Jesus got so angry one time.

You guys know the story of Jesus tossing out the people who are using the temple to make money and cheat people?

Like, you know that story?

What does Jesus do?

What does Jesus do when he when he sees that happening?

Someone yell it out.

Church can be interactive.

Come on.

Turns the tables over.

Have you ever like turned a table over?

Has anyone ever done that?

Be honest, raise your hand.

Who's turned a table?

I don't mean like that.

I mean, like, really?

I didn't write that was a dad joke.

I'm getting at the oh my gosh, that just happened.

Um that was not planned.

My son keeps telling me that the older I get, I just do dad jokes all the time.

And he's right.

He's right.

I do.

So, but seriously, anyone here ever in anger flip a table?

Raise your hands.

Come on, I want to see it again.

Shameful.

You guys?

How dare you! No, Jesus did that.

It's not like, like I think we like to pretend like he did it gently, you know, like he just kind of came up and was like, this is gonna be loud, but you know, like even that, right?

That was kind of loud.

That's not what he did.

Number one, he sees people cheating others in the temple.

It says that he left the temple and he braided a whip.

I've never braided a whip before.

Raise your hand if you have.

We know who the temple throwers are, or the table throwers rather.

How many whip braiders do we have?

We have a few people in the back who have braided whips.

I'm I'd stay in the back of the row, please.

I'm glad you guys are back row people, don't be front row people.

Okay.

Jesus left, he braided a whip.

Like that takes time.

That's not something that takes five minutes, I would imagine.

And he comes back in with a whip that he himself braided, starts cracking it, and goes up to these tables.

He's like launching them.

Like that's Jesus got angry, but it was a righteous anger.

And so the truth is, anger in and of itself is not a sin.

Because God gets angry.

That's what we do with that anger.

And sometimes even expressing anger isn't a sin because it's it's a justified righteous anger.

And I had to tell this woman, look, you God is not punishing you.

God loves you.

I mean, as a father, I love my kids and I discipline my kids because I love them, but I don't punish them.

I don't think of ways that I can make it hurt.

If I did that, I'd be a horrible father, and God is a better father than I am, for sure.

But what Satan does is he wants to come in and he wants to speak to you and he wants to fill you with shame and guilt to make you think that your relationship with God is somehow shaky when it's not.

Because you have an unbreakable peace with God.

And the way you can know it's the enemy, by the way, is if the result is shame or guilt.

God never operates in shame or guilt or fear.

Because perfect love, which God has for us, scripture says perfect love casts out all fear.

I'm not talking about a healthy awe of God, fear of God.

I'm talking about a trembling and being constantly worried.

That's not how God operates.

But I've seen this happen so many times in church where people begin to confuse the Holy Spirit with their overactive conscience.

And so their conscience convicts them, and they're filled with shame and guilt, and they think that that must be God, and that's not God, because when God, when he convicts you, which he does sometimes, it's unique.

It's like he can convict you in a way that also affirms you, and you walk away like knowing what needs to change, but excited about it.

And encouraged and equipped.

And the enemy doesn't do that, he leaves you guilty, he leaves you feeling shameful.

That's not God.

Your peace with God, his love for you, it is unbreakable.

And you've got to believe that.

You've got to believe that.

You've got to hold on to that, because if you believe that it's it's breakable, you're gonna live with this stress and this anxiety that you're not meant to live with.

And this brings us to our final point.

It's unbreakable, and this is kind of the whole name of our series, so it's it's a little obvious, but it's all because of Jesus.

I used to, I used to really, really deal with guilt and shame, like on a continual basis.

And a big part of that was because as a young person, I developed an addiction to pornography.

And when I say that on stage, if you feel awkward, I feel more awkward, so okay.

Um but no, I was introduced to it when I was in the third grade, and so like it just became part of my life at a young age, and we started going to church, and you know, the criminals that invited us to church in fourth grade, and so pretty soon I realized this is bad, and I just but I didn't know what to do, so I had all this guilt and this shame.

And I lived with that for so long.

And I would pray, and I would, my prayers would always be the same.

My prayers always began with, I'm sorry.

Now, there's nothing wrong with confessing sins to God, that's a good thing to do.

There's nothing wrong with having a healthy appreciation for God's holiness and recognizing that He's greater than you, but that wasn't where I was coming from.

I was coming from a place of true shame and guilt.

So every prayer was almost like a begging session between me and God.

I'm so sorry, Lord, I'm so sorry.

Please, I'm trying really hard.

I'm I don't know what to do.

And I'll never forget the moment because it was life-changing.

Where someone told me, you know, you realize, Justin, that sin is not the primary factor in your relationship with God.

Because at the time I believed that it was.

If you would have asked me what is the main factor in terms of how God sees you today, I may have given you the right answer, but in my heart of hearts, it was like that.

How recently have I committed that sin?

Someone told me, you know, that that behavior needs to stop, it needs to go away.

It's not good for you, it's not healthy, and praise God, he's put people in my life.

I've been living in freedom from that for like 15 years, which has been amazing, or 12 years, something like that.

That's great.

But but the point is, um you can now I feel more awkward.

Thank you so much.

Um yay, for the pastor, not okay.

Um so that that moment it changed my life because here's what I realized like, oh yeah, the main factor in my relationship with God is Jesus.

It's not even me.

It's not even me.

The main factor in your relationship with God the Father is Jesus Christ.

Because scripture says that when you put your faith in him, you are clothed with Christ.

I mean you're like you're like wearing Jesus right now.

You know?

When God looks at you, he sees you completely and totally through the filter of Jesus.

So when he looks at you, what does he see?

Does he see your failures or Jesus' success?

He sees the success and the goodness and the faithfulness and the obedience of Jesus because you're wearing it, you're clothed in Christ.

And it took me years to realize this.

But the main factor in my relationship with God the Father is not even me, it's Jesus Himself.

And that should give me peace with God.

Because if I have faith in Jesus and I actually believe, I mean, sometimes as Christians, we've got to ask ourselves, do I actually believe what I say I believe?

Everything you do is gonna come from something you believe.

That's just how life works.

If you think something long enough, it becomes a belief.

If you believe something long enough, it becomes like a crystallized truth, and you see it as a self-evident truth, and you'll find evidence that that backs it up.

That's just how our minds work.

So everything that we do comes from something that we believe.

And if you want to change what you do, you gotta start by changing what you think, by changing what you believe.

And if you actually believe that Jesus Christ, the greatest of all people, that Jesus Christ has declared you to be made right in the eyes of God, and that God the Father listens to Jesus Christ and sees you through the lens of Jesus.

If you actually believe that, it should give you an unshakable peace.

Because God sees you the same as he sees Jesus.

See, guys, you gotta understand, and in worship him, you can make your way out.

Jesus has authority.

He has authority, and his authority is so real and so powerful that when Jesus says something, when he declares something, it is like it is when Jesus declared someone healed, they were always healed.

Because Jesus has authority.

And like I said a little bit earlier, I've been thinking a lot about authority lately.

Everything going on in our country right now, it just has me thinking about authority.

And I want to take just a second, I want us to really understand like the authority of Jesus, because having this peace with God, the peace of God, it all comes from trusting the authority of Jesus that when he says you're healed and you're holy and you're set free and you're forgiven and you're in and you have peace with God, you got to believe that.

But the only way to believe that is to understand who's talking to you.

It's Jesus Christ.

There's this really interesting story in scripture.

In the book of John, we see Jesus interact with a man named Pilate.

And if you know anything about Pilate, he's he's basically a governor, he's from Rome, and he's charged with keeping the peace and keeping things under control in Jesus' part of the world, which was a really hard thing to do because the Jewish people were very prone to revolt.

And Rome didn't really tolerate that.

In fact, about 60 years after Jesus, they completely and totally leveled Jerusalem.

And so Pilate had a hard job.

And the people that Pilate is trying to govern, the most influential of them, want Jesus crucified.

They want him killed.

And Pilate, in his gut, he knows that Jesus is innocent, so he's trying to figure out what to do.

And he has this like help me help you conversation with Jesus, where he basically is like, Jesus, like, I know you're innocent, I know you don't need to be killed, but these people they want blood, and I'm trying to keep things under control.

Like, give me something, help me out.

And he becomes frustrated.

He becomes frustrated that Jesus won't give him an out.

And so he says something really interesting to Jesus, and we read it in um John chapter 19, verses 9 and 10.

John 19:9

It says he took Jesus back into the headquarters and again asked him, Where are you from?

But Jesus gave no answer.

And here's what Pilate says: Why don't you talk to me?

Pilate demanded, don't you realize that I have the power to release you or to crucify you?

Now, those of you who are in the Lord of Lords, King of Kings, Alpha, Omega, first and last, one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord camp.

That's a long name for a camp, by the way.

Um, but I'm in that camp.

Anybody else in that camp?

Okay?

Yeah.

Right.

Those of you in that camp, think for a second of what it's like for Jesus to be standing in front of someone who is reminding him of the authority that he has.

Because that's what Pilate's doing.

Don't you realize who I am?

Don't you realize the power that I have?

Don't you realize what I can do for you?

And if Pilate really knew he was talking to, that conversation would be flipped.

Where Pilate would have a moment where he would say to himself, Do I realize who's standing in front of me?

Do I realize the power that he has?

Do I realize what he can do for me?

Because Jesus has real power.

He does, right?

Like we live in a time right now where we're seeing authority change, and this is part of our country.

Every four, every eight years, there's you know this little mini upheaval that happens and it's getting more and more intense.

But that was the same as it was in Jesus' day.

It's been like that throughout all of human history.

There's always been people with authority.

And it's funny, very few of those people who have ever held real authority in history, very few of them have a legacy that's even lasted a few years.

You know, I mentioned earlier, how many of you have ever heard the name Neville Chamberlain?

He was the prime minister of England, and like three people even know who he is.

In this room at least.

I mean, there's probably more people than that in the world, but because that's how human authority tends to work.

You know, you have authority for a while, and then eventually, eventually it's just it's gone, and you're not remembered, and nothing you said or did actually has any consequence.

There's actually very few leaders who have ever existed, who've ever held power, whose whose name still carries any weight.

You know, there's people who have who've I've seen about Nero.

If you know anything about the Emperor Nero in Rome, there was a time when the name of Nero made people fall to the ground because his name held sway, his name carried weight.

And today, if you meet someone named Nero, it's probably a dog.

Right?

We don't really name people Nero anymore, because that name doesn't mean anything to us.

And by the way, if your name is Nero, if you're watching, I'm sorry, but I did research, and only 1.09 out of every 100,000 people in America are named Nero.

I actually looked that up, so my my chances of offending were pretty small.

But if I if I hit you, then I don't pray about it.

It was just meant to be.

Um like a name like Napoleon.

Only uh 2.13 out of every 100,000 people in America are named Napoleon.

Um but there was a time when Napoleon is a name, whole armies would move at the name of Napoleon.

And today, if I walked in a room and said, hey guys, in the name of Napoleon, let's get up and let's go, everyone would be like, What?

Your first thought would probably be Napoleon Dynamite.

It's the classic movie.

And that name used to be connected to the most powerful man in the world not that long ago, if you look at human history.

And now it's like a weird guy that just says, gosh, a lot.

Like it's just the name, it's fallen on hard times.

But for all of history, there have been names that carried weight.

Names that for a small season, at that person's name, entire armies would move and people would surrender, and those names have all come and gone.

But the name of Jesus, I get chills when I say it.

At the name of Jesus, people still drop to their knees.

At the name of Jesus, people still stand up in worship.

At the name of Jesus, people shed tears.

At the name of Jesus, people surrender their entire lives.

Because 2,000 years later, what he said still matters.

What he did still matters.

His name still carries weight because Jesus has real authority.

And that authority that Jesus has, he has used to declare that you are made right in God's sight, that you have peace with God, that you're part of the family of God, that your sins are forgiven, that you're completely free, that you have mercy, that you have grace, that everything has changed.

He uses that authority to say that about you.

Do you believe that?

And if you do, that should give you peace with God.

So the next time you hear that voice that accuses you and that attempts to make you feel like you're not on solid ground that tells you that you should feel ashamed, that you should feel guilty.

You can be like God the Father when He enters the garden in the one of the earliest stories in Scripture, and Adam and Eve said, We were hiding from you because we were naked, and God the Father says, Who told you that?

You can have that same type of audacious questioning when you hear that voice, you say, Whose voice is this?

Because that's not the voice of my father.

Whose words are these?

Because my father never makes me feel ashamed or guilty because he's freed me.

That's not the voice of my God.

That's you, Satan.

Shut up, because I belong to Jesus and I have peace.

I have peace.

I want us to be done with worry and fear and anxiety.

And I'll tell you this: if you want to be done with those things, stop stop looking at the world around you for a moment.

And just look at Jesus.

If you look at the world around you to give you some anchor for peace and comfort, good luck.

It's never worked.

But if you look at Jesus, gosh, he's amazing, he's solid, he's unchangeable.

He brought the whole world to his knees in three years.

And he never picked up a weapon, and he never took anything by force, he just surrendered everything, and the world changed, and it's still changing.

That's the God that we serve.

And he has said that you are free, that you have peace with God the Father, that your sins are done, and you got to believe that.

Because if you have the peace with God, you get to experience the peace of God.

So here's what I want us to do.

I want us to wrap up.

I'm gonna stop talking, which is a minor miracle, by the way.

Side note, please pray for me.

Um, uh I am going on a five-day retreat uh starting tonight, and it's a silent retreat where I'm not allowed to talk for five entire days.

Um and it might it might break me.

I might come back next week and just stand here with a microphone and just be like, I don't know, guys.

Actually, I was talking to some people this morning, like, please I I actually am serious.

I don't ask you guys to pray for me very much.

I don't know what I don't know what I'm gonna do.

I might just I told Matt, Matt's actually going for a few days as well, and I said, hey, if you don't see me at any of the meals, just come to my room.

And if I'm huddled in the corner, like just talking to myself, like slap me or something, just do something to help me out.

Um no, but seriously, what I want to say, I'm sorry.

That all started because I said I'm gonna stop talking.

And then that reminded me, which all this is emphasizing my inability to control what comes out of my mouth, hence the need for a five-day silent retreat.

Okay.

What I want us to do now that I am done talking is I want us to worship just a little bit longer.

All right, and uh just for a few more minutes.

Because sometimes, you know, there's concepts that we talk about where the the action step is to go out and to do something, you know?

Um and if you want to go out and scream to the mountains in the sky, I have peace with God, then by all means do it.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But there's other concepts that we talk about, and there's not really like a practical do this step.

The most practical thing we can do is just go right back into God's presence and worship and recognize what he's done for us and who he is, and and just thank him because he's Jesus, and all because of Jesus, we have peace with God.

So I'm gonna pray, we're gonna worship just a few minutes longer.

I want to encourage you, stay for this.

Sometimes when it's that last worship song, which we don't even do every week, it's like some of y'all are if you gotta go, you gotta go.

But if your kids are being watched, someone else is watching your children and you're not even paying for it.

Like, just stay, stay as long as you can, okay?

Milk that and just be in God's presence for a few more moments because he is Jesus, he is the King of Kings, and He's with you and He's for you, and He's giving you peace with God.

So, Father, thank you so much.

Thank you, Lord, for making peace, for restoring our relationship with the Father, with the Creator.

And just like we read in Romans, you did that, Lord, while we were enemies of God, while we weren't even we weren't even trying necessarily to honor, to honor the Father.

We were living for ourselves, consumed with with everything that would bring us pleasure and joy, and in that state, you came for us to save us, to love us, to free us, to give us a peace that we could never have earned on our own.

And so, Jesus, thank you.

Help us to enjoy your peace, help us to grab a hold of it, help us to recognize that when fear and anxiety and worry and stress and all of those other things, when insecurity or feelings of accusation are going through our mind, going through our hearts, Lord, that we would recognize that that is not you, that that is our enemy, that it has no place in our lives, and help us cling to you and to the peace that you give.

We pray all this in your name.

We love you, we worship you.

It's in your name Jesus we pray.

Amen.

Love you guys.