Standing Ground: Helmets Required

Well, I want to start the message by telling you a sort of sad story.

It's only kind of sad, though.

It's not like super sad.

It's not a story that I'm gonna tell and you're gonna be like bummed for the rest of the day.

You're not gonna go, well, thanks a lot, Justin.

That just ruined my Sunday.

That's not gonna happen.

I have stories like that, by the way.

I have a story about a dog and a cat, and it's an actual story that happened in my family.

And if I told you that story, it would ruin your day.

It would ruin your day.

I'm not gonna tell you that story.

If you want to know that story, you can find me later.

If you're like one of those sadistic people who likes to hear really sad stories, find me like, what's the dog and cat story?

I'll tell you the story.

Just know ahead of time you're gonna feel really sad and you're gonna hate cats.

And so be prepared.

If you're ready for that, ask me the dog and the cat story.

I'll tell you.

This is not that story.

This is just a kind of sad story.

When I get to the sad moment in the story, you're just gonna go like, oh, and then we'll move on.

We'll move on.

But it has a point.

When I was in college, I had a roommate named John.

John ended up being a groomsman in my wedding, a good friend.

We roomed together for one year.

I don't know if any of you ever had this experience where you had a friend at a stage of life when you needed a roommate.

Because you were such good friends, you said, hey, let's room together.

You realize about a month in, if we stay roommates, we will not stay friends.

And that's how John and I were.

So we only roomed together for one year, but we were really good friends.

John played for the college that we went to, he played for the football team.

And I use the word play a little loosely.

He was on the football team.

But he did not play for the football team.

He didn't play.

He didn't really ever get in the game.

Football is one of those sports where you need a lot of guys.

And he was the type of guy, just with where he was at in football, that he needed three to seven people to be injured before he had a chance to play.

It's funny, after every single game, every player on the football team would get a free pizza.

They would like have a pizza that they would take.

And I remember in our junior year, John asked why he was gaining weight.

He's like, man, I feel like I'm putting on pounds.

And I joked with him.

I said, Well, you know, you get that pizza after every game.

I burn as many calories in the game as you do, John.

And so maybe you should like split the pizza.

That was just my way of trying to get some of the pizza, but he wouldn't give it to me.

So John was on the football team.

Well, this one season, John was particularly excited because he felt like things were on the up and up.

He was playing better than he had ever played.

He was having great practices.

In fact, I remember one day he comes back to the room and he's like, hey, coach singled me out in front of everybody.

I think I've got a shot to get in the game this week.

I watched his confidence start to build.

Like he was really excited because he believed that he was this close to getting in the game, and he hadn't done that yet.

And I remember this one week he was he was confident, like super confident.

This is the week.

This is the week.

I didn't really go to the football games, and so I come back to our room to find John doing what he was always doing on the night of a game, eating a pizza.

And he seemed to have a particularly sad look on his face as he devoured this entire large pizza by himself, might I remind you.

I don't know if you've ever seen a man eat a pizza sad, but it's actually one of the most pathetic things you've ever seen in your life.

Like just a dude eating a pizza and shirtless, a shirtless dude eating a pizza, like it's not a pretty sight.

And so I looked at John and I said, dude, what happened?

I could tell he was down.

He said, Oh man.

It was the worst.

He said, about middle of the game, I'm on the sidelines, and the coach calls my name.

He said, So I grab my helmet, I put it on, I snap it on, and I run up to the coach because I'm like, this is it.

This is my moment.

I'm in the game.

He said, the coach looked at me and said, Take off your helmet.

And he was confused because you can't play football without a helmet.

That's a rule.

Helmets are required in football.

And so he paused, he didn't know what to do, and the coach said, Take off your helmet.

So he took off the helmet, and the coach said, One of our players' helmets malfunction.

See, I told you, that was the moment.

One of our players' helmets malfunctioned, and we need your helmet.

And so John just sadly hands him the helmet.

They get that helmet to another player, and then he goes back to the sidelines with the full knowledge that there's no way he's going to get in the game now.

He's the only player on the team without a helmet.

And you have to have a helmet to play football.

And that means that the coach at that moment was thinking, like, oh no, one of my star players' helmet is malfunctioning.

Who am I guaranteed not to play today?

That's the person whose helmet I need.

And he thought of John.

It's a kind of sad story.

The reason I told that story was not to make fun of John.

John, if you end up listening to this podcast one day, I'm sorry, dude.

But he's doing well.

Life went well for John.

But it's because today we're going to talk about a helmet.

And it's a helmet that's required for us as well.

It's a helmet called salvation.

For some context, we're in a series right now where we're talking about this concept called spiritual warfare.

The main text is Ephesians chapter 6, verses 10 through 12, which says, a final word.

Ephesians 6:10–12

Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Put on all of God's armor so that you'll be able to stand firm against all the strategies of the devil, for we're not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Now, some people read this and they think it's silly or superstitious, but we have to understand this is a clear teaching of Jesus.

A clear teaching of his followers.

That there is a spiritual reality, there is an unseen world.

And there are forces in that unseen world that are against us, that are opposed to God.

We have terms like Satan, the devil, demons.

That stuff is real.

Jesus talked about it, taught about it, dealt with it.

Jesus had conversations with demons.

There's a conversation early in the ministry of Jesus between Jesus and Satan himself.

This is absolutely core to our beliefs as Jesus followers.

I know not all of us in the room are Jesus followers, but if you are, you've got to understand that Scripture teaches us, Jesus teaches us.

That the problems that we deal with, the struggles that we have, they're not merely random experiences that are the result of living in the world we live in.

That there is a force behind so much of what we struggle with.

That there is a force, a strategic and evil force, at work against us, opposing us, trying to put the brakes on the life that God has won for us.

And we're told to take it seriously.

In other words, we're not at the beach, we're on a battlefield.

We talked about this early on in the series that if if you wore body armor to a beach, you would look like a fool.

But you wouldn't look as foolish as someone wearing a bathing suit to a battlefield.

We're not at the beach kicking back.

Not yet.

We will be one day.

Right now we're still in the battle, and Paul tells us to be on guard, to stand firm.

The good news is that we're equipped for the battle.

Verses 13 through 17 go on to say, therefore, put on every piece of God's armor so that you'll be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil.

And then after the battle, you'll still be standing firm.

Stand your ground, putting on the belt of truth and the body armor of God's righteousness for shoes, put on the peace that comes from the good news, so that you will be fully prepared.

In addition to all of these, hold up the shield of faith to stop the fiery arrows of the devil, put on salvation as your helmet, and take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.

So week by week we've been going through this piece by piece, and today we get to that helmet called salvation.

Now, the interesting thing about the helmet is that it's one of the few pieces of armor that we actually get to see the author here, Paul, reference in another one of his letters.

In 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 8, he says, But let us who live in the light be clear-headed, protected by the armor of faith and love, and wearing as our helmet the confidence of our salvation.

1 Thessalonians 5:8

Confidence.

Some translations will say the hope of our salvation.

But when you read hope in the scriptures, it's not talking about some shaky hope.

It's not, you know, like when we say the phrase, I really hope this happens, what that usually means is like it's not gonna happen.

But I hope it does.

That's not the word hope in Scripture.

It's resolute.

It's it's faith, it's unshakable, it's confidence.

So he says that we're to be clear-headed, we're to trust in the helmet of our salvation, the confidence of our salvation.

I had a great boss that used to say, it's hard to be aggressive if you're confused.

I'm gonna tweak that slightly.

Because we could also say it's hard to be confident if you're confused.

My hope today is that we're not confused about salvation and what it is.

There are concepts in Scripture that are confusing.

There are concepts in Scripture that are very hazy.

God just does not make it a priority to explain exactly how it all works.

And if you ever hear someone teach on some of those things and they act like they have perfect clarity on something that scripture doesn't have perfect clarity on, just be cautious.

But then there are other things that Scripture lays out for us and goes into great detail, and we can have a full understanding of how that works, especially through the power of the Holy Spirit, which Jesus promised would teach us.

That's a beautiful thing about the Holy Spirit.

God's not done teaching us.

Because the Holy Spirit's a teacher.

And so we we have concepts that we can really understand, and salvation is one of those concepts.

Scripture talks about it at great lengths, and we can understand it.

But if we don't understand salvation, if we have kind of a hazy understanding of what it really means to be saved, we'll be confused.

And we can't be confident if we're confused.

God wants you to be confident in your relationship with Him, He wants you to be confident in who you are in His eyes.

That's your helmet.

We've got to be clear in order to have confidence.

So let's talk a little bit about what it means to be saved.

I sent out an email to as many people as receive our emails asking if you had stories about a time in your life when you were saved.

And I got a lot of responses.

If I haven't responded back to your email, it's because I got a lot of responses.

Okay, and I have four children.

So email four children, they don't always go hand in hand, but like a lot of responses.

And I learned some pretty awesome things.

I actually think this is important to share.

I got a lot of stories about drug addictions and overdoses and suicide attempts and stories where people's lives have been saved by someone who found them in that state.

The reason I want to mention that is because I think it's really important for us as a church to remember that when we're dealing with something really heavy and dark, we're not alone.

Satan may want to whisper to you that you're the only one, that you're the only one that has that problem, you're the only one dealing with that.

You better keep it hidden, you better keep it secret because the people around you would never understand.

That is not the truth.

You are not the most messed up person in the room.

Because there's a lot of messed up people in this room.

And so I think it's good.

Well, don't clap for being messed up.

That's not a good thing, right?

We're in process, but it's good to know that we're not alone and that other people can understand where we are, where we've been.

But there were some stories that were almost like someone should should film that.

Like that was that was awesome.

There were some really incredible stories.

One in particular, I just thought this was amazing.

This this woman emailed me back and said, when I was 15 years old, I was taking a shower and I had the music up really, really high.

Music was up crazy high, and little did I know that tornadoes were touching down, like right in my neighborhood.

I couldn't hear the sirens because I had the music up so high.

My mom was pounding on the door, but couldn't hear it because of the music.

And so my mom kicks the door down, grabs me out of the shower, which by the way, terrifying experience, right?

Like that's like a horror movie, you know?

You're showering, you're singing your favorite song, and then whoom, someone grabs.

That's terrifying, you know.

Carries me out of the shower down to our basement, literal moments before a tornado hit our house and ripped that bathroom off of our home.

That's that's salvation right there, right?

That's being saved.

We see the word salvation appear a lot in the New Testament.

43 times, actually.

But when we see the word salvation in the New Testament, it's not talking about being physically saved.

For example, Acts chapter 4, verse 12.

Acts 4:12

There is salvation in no one else.

Talking about Jesus.

God has given no other name under heaven by which we must be saved.

That's a bold statement.

Jesus himself said it.

Our world doesn't like the statement that Jesus is the only name.

But there is salvation in no one else, in no other name.

When it says salvation, it's not talking about physical salvation because the early followers of Jesus would preach salvation while being physically harmed, while being martyred and killed.

So the salvation they were talking about had nothing to do with their bodies.

1 Corinthians 1 24, but to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

We've been saved if we've given our lives to Jesus.

Saved from what?

Because I don't hear tornado sirens right now.

We've been saved in a spiritual sense from ourselves.

We've been saved specifically from the power of sin at work in us.

If you have our mobile app, whenever you pull up the message this week, we're gonna link to an awesome video done by this group called the Bible Project that explains the concept of sin really, really well.

If you're not familiar with the Bible Project, great resource.

We link to all their videos on our app because it's just a phenomenal way to learn the scriptures.

But this concept of sin, it's a constant in the Bible.

Here's the basic idea: we are not born neutral to God.

We are not born leaning toward God.

We're actually born with a nature, our human nature, that is opposed to God.

Now that's that's not something that sounds great.

Um anyone who doesn't believe that, I just encourage you to have lots of children and see if that proves true.

Because I got four, and I am convinced that we are not born, we're not born right.

Because it's hard to teach children to do basic, basic things.

Basic kindness does not come naturally to children.

We're born opposed to God.

There's a force within us called sin.

And it causes us to choose ourselves over others, it causes us to be selfish, it causes us to choose what we want over what God wants.

And that's a problem.

Because God is God.

And we don't have anything within us to combat the power of sin.

Scripture says that apart from God, we are slaves to our sinful nature.

I love that statement because it's so offensive in the world today.

Like if I went out on the streets and I said, Hey, you're a slave to your sin nature, people would say, How dare you?

But you know what you'll hear people say all the time?

Can't help how I feel.

Can't change who I'm attracted to.

I can't, I can't deny my feelings.

So you're a slave to your nature.

Okay.

We can't do it on our own, but but Jesus came.

And he lived a perfect life.

He owed nothing to sin.

No debt.

And he took on the penalty and the debt of our sin.

He took that upon himself, died on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin, paid it in full, and then gave us his righteousness.

If we believe in him and have faith, and that means we're saved.

So if you've given your life to Jesus, you have been saved from the power and the penalty of sin.

You're saved.

Be confident, wear that like a helmet.

Be confident, you've been saved.

But have you really?

Are you sure that you've been saved?

That's a question I think we we hear a lot.

Maybe in a different way.

Am I sure?

Am I sure?

I got saved when I was 10 years old.

Right before fourth grade, vacation Bible school, little Baptist church in Springfield, Missouri.

My family started going to that church because our neighbor invited us.

It was right before fourth grade for me, and I was really excited to not go to church because I didn't like church.

I'd only been a few times at that point in time, and we had just moved to a new house, and that house had a swimming pool.

And the last thing I wanted to do on Sunday morning in the summer was put on dress pants and go to church.

No one likes dress pants.

Well, maybe some, but and if you like dress pants, I apologize.

It wasn't offending you, trying to anyway, but like I don't like dress pants.

I didn't like them when I was in the fourth grade.

But this guy invited us to his church, and he got arrested a week later for embezzling money from his company, and we never saw him again.

And I say it a lot, I love it, it's just poetic.

I'm a Christian because a criminal invited me to his church.

Um, you know?

And that summer I gave my life to Jesus.

I just heard the story of Jesus, I believed it, I had no reason not to, and I went forward one day and I got saved.

I was saved from the power and the penalty of sin.

Now here's the challenge, though.

Very few people have have done their best sinning at 10 years old.

And so I got saved at 10, but then 13, 14, 15, high school, those years come along, and all of a sudden I'm doing things that are way worse, at least from a human perspective, than what I was doing at 10 years old.

And that created a lot of doubt in me.

I started hearing this voice.

Are you really saved?

Are you sure?

And fortunately for me, as a kid who was in church at that time, I had this thing to look forward to every summer called church camp.

I don't know if you grew up in church and you had the church camp experience, but church camp is where you go every summer to get resaved.

Okay?

So, good news, every summer I went to church camp, and every summer there was a guy on the stage, and he was like, Are you really saved?

And you're like, Yeah, I'm saved.

And he goes, Are you sure?

I'm pretty sure.

And then he says, Do you ever struggle with this, this, this, or this?

And you can name four things that every teenager on the planet struggles with, and you're like, I do.

Are you sure you're saved?

Oh no.

I came in sure.

Now, if I had to put a percentage on it, I'm like 85, 87% sure.

And that's not good enough.

And so you go forward in a moment that's emotionally charged, you go forward and you get saved again.

I got saved six times.

And that that created a great deal of confusion in my heart.

I remember actually being in college and struggling to figure out at what moment did I actually get saved.

It was kind of a crisis of faith for me.

Which one was the real one?

And I look back now and I understand with clarity that it was the first time.

It was the first time.

Because that first time I responded to God with faith.

And I didn't just intellectually believe in God.

It's not enough to intellectually believe in God.

The demons intellectually believe in God.

They believe, but not with their heart.

They don't surrender to God.

God is God.

We surrender to God.

We humble ourselves.

We give our lives to God.

And I did that as a 10-year-old.

I was saved.

But I didn't understand what salvation really is.

I didn't understand how salvation actually works.

And Satan, he used that to create confusion and doubt.

It's hard to be confident when you're confused.

So, for example, I would read scriptures like Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

Many of you have read this before.

Jesus says, Not everyone who calls out to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.

Only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven will enter on judgment day.

Many will say to me, Lord, Lord, we prophesied in your name.

We cast out demons in your name and perform many miracles in your name, but I will reply, I never knew you.

Get away from me, you who break God's laws.

Now, how many of us hear that and we get excited?

How many of us hear that and get nervous?

But you are.

At least at some point.

I would read scriptures like this and I would get nervous.

What if I'm one of the ones that said, Lord, Lord, but I didn't really know it?

Satan would whisper that in my ear.

You're not really saying.

Because if you were, you wouldn't have struggled with this.

You wouldn't have struggled with that.

I had a porn addiction for 15 years as a Christian.

I battled through that, and Satan used that to create so much doubt in my heart.

So what do we do with that?

The answer is that we need to understand salvation.

See, what I didn't get about salvation was this.

I didn't understand if it was a moment or if it was a process.

Because if salvation was a moment, then why didn't that moment make me someone who was like impervious to temptation?

If salvation's a moment, then why not, at 10 years old, was I somehow completely and totally sin proof?

And if it's a process, well, like, how do I know where I'm at in the process?

That's the frustrating thing about a process.

You don't know where you are.

And that's no way to live confidently.

That's one of the unique things about our faith, people.

If you go to someone, for example, in the Islam faith and you ask them, I mean, it could be the person that's the most devout in the room, are you going to heaven?

They will say, I don't know.

There is no concept of assurance or confidence of salvation in that faith.

Because it's based on human works.

It's based on whether or not you've done enough good to hopefully please a God who's easy to frustrate.

But our faith is not built on us and our ability to do anything.

Our faith's on Jesus and what he did.

And so we read in scripture that we can have assurance and confidence that we can know that we are saved.

We're to have confidence, we're to wear it like a helmet.

See, again, I didn't know if salvation was a moment or a process, and so I had no confidence, and Satan used that to go in there to speak it, and he used God's word to do it.

That's the thing I didn't realize at the time, is that's Satan's MO.

He always twists the word of God to create insecurity in us in terms of where we stand with God and who God is.

We see it from the very beginning of Satan's story.

Genesis 3.

The serpent was the shrewdest of all the wild animals the Lord God had made.

And one day he asked the woman, Did God really say you must not eat the fruit from any of the trees in the garden?

Already he's twisting God's words, using the very words that God had spoken to create doubt.

She says, Of course we may eat from the fruit from the trees in the garden.

It's only the fruit from the tree in the middle of the garden that we're not allowed to eat.

And God said, You must not eat it or even touch it.

If you do, you'll die.

And Satan just lies.

You won't die.

God knows that your eyes will be opened as soon as you eat it.

You'll be like God, knowing both good and evil.

And now she believes that God is holding out on them.

What's funny is that when God creates mankind, when he creates men and women in Genesis chapter 1, he says, Let us make man in our image to be like us.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

So from the get-go, we were like God in the image of God.

But Satan comes in, he takes God's word, and he actually uses it to create doubt.

Because when he says, if you eat this, you'll be like God, he's implying that you're not like God.

And all of a sudden there's doubt.

And Satan uses doubt, he creates insecurity inside of us, and when we're insecure, we're susceptible to a lot of serious mistakes.

Think about how many mistakes in your life, times that you said the wrong thing, did the wrong thing, how many of those times was it was it born out of you being in an insecure place?

Satan thrives with insecurity, but we're to be confident.

And we become confident when we understand our salvation.

Here's the truth about salvation: it is both a moment and a process.

It's both.

See, in the word salvation, we have a few other terms that are embodied in salvation.

We have a term like justification.

The idea of justification is that in one moment, on the cross, on the cross, your sin was dealt with, justified, finished.

On the cross, Jesus didn't say, I'm almost done.

On the cross, Jesus said, It is, it's finished.

Your sin was justified in that moment.

And the moment you put your faith in Jesus, you joined him in that moment.

Your sin was justified.

And we see many scriptures that speak to this.

Hebrews chapter 9, 24 through 26, for says, For Christ did not enter into a holy place made with human hands.

Hebrews 9 · chapter mention

It's talking about the temple where priests would go to offer sacrifices every single year like clockwork.

He says, which was only a copy of the true one in heaven.

He entered into heaven itself to appear now before God on our behalf.

And he did not enter heaven to offer himself again and again, like the high priest here on earth who enters the most holy place year after year with the blood of an animal.

If that had been necessary, Christ would have to have died again and again ever since the world began.

But now, once and for all time, he has appeared at the end of the age to remove sin by his own death as a sacrifice.

It's kind of an interesting concept.

It says he's appeared at the end of the age.

The Bible describes God as being a term we call omnipresent.

At all times.

He's in the past, he's in the present, he's in the future, he's everywhere.

He's everywhere.

And so that moment on the cross, that moment didn't really happen 2,000 years ago.

It just happened.

It happened then, it's happening now, it's going to happen in the future.

That moment on the cross, it covers all sin for all time, past, present, and future.

Your sin, past, present, future, once and for all, justified.

Justified.

Romans 3, 23 through 25 says, For everyone has sinned, we all fall short of God's glorious standard, yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight.

And he did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.

For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin.

People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood.

Is there any wiggle room there?

Is there any language that makes us feel like maybe that wasn't finished and done, that there's something else to do?

No.

So in a moment, the moment you put your faith in Jesus, if you've done that, in that moment, you are justified.

But there's this other word.

There's this other word that we've developed, comes from Scripture.

That we use called sanctification.

Sanctification describes the process by which we're becoming the people that God created us to be.

And that process actually started the moment you gave your life to Jesus.

So salvation is both justification and sanctification.

We see this in Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

Therefore, my dear friends, as you've always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.

So he says, Hey, you've been saved, now work out your salvation.

Work it out.

Continue.

He's describing a process.

Hebrews chapter 10, verse 14 really shows us that process in some really beautiful words.

Hebrews 10:14

It says, For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Another translation says, For by that one offering, he forever made perfect those who are being made holy.

And you could actually translate that to say this.

In one moment, he made perfect those who are being perfected.

Which means that you, as a Jesus follower, are perfection being made perfect.

You are perfection being made perfect.

I don't ask for us to do this a lot because it gets weird and you kind of sound like you're in a cult when you do it too much.

Like, I want to say something, I want you to repeat it back to me, but don't repeat it back like you're in a cult, like with no emotion.

Like I am, don't do that.

That's weird.

Okay, it's weird for me.

So just say, say, I am perfect.

Do you realize that that's the way that God sees you?

No, no, there you go.

You know, Jimmy, I'm really good friends with your boss.

I'm just gonna say that.

I'm just joking, I am, but like you're you're probably closer friends with him.

So anyway, um, I am perfect.

Do you but do you believe that?

Like, seriously, do you believe that you're perfect?

Because you should.

Not because you have any any like evidence to back that up.

Who cares about the evidence?

Do you know all that really matters at the end of the day?

What God says.

It's kind of like being a parent.

You know, yeah, you can clap for that.

That's all that matters.

It's like as a parent, you know, there's just times where I feel like I understand a little bit of how the authority of God works because I'll say something and my kids will give me reasons.

I'm like, I don't care.

Do what I said.

Good point.

Do it anyway.

You know what I mean?

Like, just respond.

Like, all that really matters at the end of the day is what God says, because what God says is what happens.

He is God.

When God spoke, the universe existed.

When God speaks, things happen.

I love the story of Jesus being arrested because he says the words I am, which is like his name.

Yahweh is I am.

They say, you know, are you him?

He says, I am, and all the soldiers fall to the ground.

Because what Jesus says, what God says has power.

So it doesn't matter what your track record is, it doesn't matter what you've done in the past, it doesn't matter what happened yesterday.

If God says you're perfect, you're perfect.

And he says, you are perfect.

You're perfect.

Because that means if Satan walks up to you, and Satan's an accuser, in scripture, there's a motif of a court.

It's used very often and all the time, Satan, he's the prosecuting attorney.

The Holy Spirit's the defense attorney, the advocate.

If Satan walks up to you and he says, Hey, who are you in the eyes of God?

He's trying to belittle you, he's trying to make you feel small because God is God, he is holy, he is righteous.

There is nothing in God that is not perfection, personified.

Who are you to him?

What gives you the right to stand in the presence of God?

You can look at Satan and you could say, I'm perfect.

I'm perfect.

Now, what Satan's gonna do when you say that is he's gonna he's gonna try to convince you otherwise.

He's gonna say, Oh, you're perfect, are you?

I just so happen to remember a few things.

In fact, I have a list.

If you're perfect, explain this.

Explain this and this and this and this.

Explain seventh grade, Justin.

Just all of seventh grade.

And you could respond to him boldly.

Oh, I have a perfect explanation for that.

I'm being perfected.

I want you to repeat this and only this, Jimmy.

I am being perfected.

That did sound like a cult.

Um you have to work on that.

You're being perfected.

See, when God sees you, he doesn't just see you right now, he sees the finished product.

And you know what the finished product is?

Perfection.

There will be a day that we are all in heaven worshiping God together with complete perfection.

Not one thing inside of us opposed to God, no conflict inside of us, none whatsoever.

Paul wrote that that when we're resurrected, when we're resurrected in the life to come, that we'll have glorified bodies.

Even our bodies will be perfect.

Not many of you have perfect bodies.

I can't wait to see what mine looks like.

Like, I know I have abs, I've just never seen them, and I'm hoping that that'll be the first time.

Like, look, they're there.

They're there.

We'll be perfect.

And when God looks at you, he sees that that glorified you, he sees it right now.

Why?

Because he's omnipresent, he's at all times.

He's not just in the the the now, he's in the future as well.

I heard a person explain it this way once.

Think about a parade.

When you watch a parade, you see each float go by one at a time, and you're just sitting there like you see it in sequence.

Oh, that one's cool, that one's cool.

You just see the next one.

God sees the parade from the top down, he sees the beginning, the middle, and the end all at once.

Every once in a while we have these moments in life where we get a glimpse of the future and we see how beautiful it is.

If you have children, maybe you've had that moment where you see your kids and just for a moment you see them in the future.

Something happens and you go, Wow.

Wow.

I got a glimpse of who they're gonna be.

I had that happen yesterday with my oldest.

He was playing on my iPad, or so I thought.

He asked for my iPad.

I thought he just wanted to play a game or something, or lose my Apple pencil, which he does.

We actually had a moment this morning.

I couldn't find my Apple pencil, it goes with my iPad.

I use it to make notes.

I asked him, he said, Well, I left it on that chair.

Like he said it just like that.

Well, I left it on that chair.

I'm like, Well, that's not where it goes.

That's not the moment I talked about, seeing the future of who he is.

It's a different moment.

Yesterday, he's playing on my iPad, and he says, Hey Dad, I want to show you what I did.

And I'm kind of thinking, okay, what is this?

Like a little drawing, maybe.

And I turn and he's been he's been writing a message.

And I'm gonna be honest with you guys, it had some theological inaccuracies that I had to deal with.

Like, okay, that's actually not no.

Um, you know, like he actually spent time on his own on a Saturday typing up what he thinks about God.

And it was it was really powerful.

And in that moment, I got this little glimpse of the man that he's gonna become.

A man who loves the Lord, a man who's willing to speak boldly in a world that doesn't like that.

And then he went back to acting like a nine-year-old, losing my Apple pencil.

God sees you that way now.

He sees the future you, not the future you in a year, two years, five years.

I'm talking about the you in heaven, the glorified you, he sees it now.

You're perfect.

You've been made perfect, completely justified, and guys.

In the meantime, as you live your life with the Holy Spirit inside of you, walking in obedience to God, saying yes to God, humbling yourself before God and just saying, Lord, I'm yours, I belong to you.

He's sanctifying you, he's making you more and more perfect every single day.

So you are perfection being perfected.

And that means Satan has nothing that he can accuse you of.

Because it's all covered.

It's all covered.

If Satan comes to you and accuses you and says, Are you sure you're saved?

You can say, Shut up, Satan, I am perfection being perfected.

That is who I am, and you can say it with confidence, with confidence.

So put your helmet on.

Put your helmet on.

You're not you're not my roommate, John, sitting on the sidelines with no helmet.

You are perfection being made perfect day in and day out.

You are ready to make an impact for the Lord.

You are ready to go into your workplace and bring glory to God.

You are ready to go into your family and be the husband and the wife or the child or the sibling that you're supposed to be.

So that you can bring glory to God and show people that God is real and he is exactly who he says he is.

You are ready for that because you've got a helmet on.

Be confident.

Be confident in who you are.

Because you are who he says you are, and he says you're perfect.

Be confident.

Don't be confused.

Don't be hesitant, be confident.

We're gonna wrap up.

What I want to say at the very end of this, we're done.

Notice by the way, Paul begins Romans chapter 6, verse 10 with a final word, and then there's a lot of words after that.

Romans 6:10

Which gives me great like confidence as a pastor that I'm not the only one that does that.

And when I say I'm done, I'm not really done.

Like I'm kind of done, you know?

That's what Paul says.

But I'm pretty much done.

Look, the only way that you can have confidence in where you stand with God is to know Jesus.

And so if you don't know Jesus, meaning that you've never given your life to him, maybe you've never passed from just belief in him to knowledge of him, to loving him, to committing your life to him, look, that can happen in a moment.

This moment.

All you do is you just say in your heart, Lord, I believe in you.

Jesus, you are you are exactly who you say you are.

And I give my life to you.

That that's a line you cross in your heart.

There's no ritual, there's no, there's no thing you've got to do beyond that.

That just happens.

That can happen right now.

And if you've never done that before, I'm telling you, that's your only hope.

You can't do it on your own.

And why would you want to?

Why would you want to?

He's done it for you.

Accept it.

If that's a decision that you make today, I would encourage you to get baptized right away.

You can go to the main lobby and sign up today, we'll baptize you next week.

Take that first step of obedience and get baptized.

If you are a Jesus follower, I want to give you one scripture.

Hebrews 12 1.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.

And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

You are perfection, being made perfect.

What this scripture says is help him out.

He's sanctifying you, he's making you more like him every day.

Help him out.

If you ever identify anything in your life that you can just call it what it is, sin.

Just call it what it is.

That sin is slowing you down, it's tripping you up.

And you don't need it.

It's doing you no good.

It's not the comfort that you think it is.

It's not, it's not helping you cope.

It's not strip it off, throw it away.

All that does is speed up the process of God making you into who he created you to be.

For all of us, for every single one of us.

We've got to walk out of here with confidence today.

And so stand up if you don't mind.

If you do mind, say seed.

Um we're gonna say it one more time.

We gotta believe it.

I am perfect.

I am perfection.

I am being made perfect.

Believe that.

Wear that like a like a helmet to guard your mind, to keep you from being confused, to make you clear-minded so that you can have the confidence in who you are, because you are who he says you are.

We're gonna finish with hands in the pile.

We're gonna pray.

Find a group of people, make your way around some people.

If you're new, you'll figure this out.

It'll be weird the first time, but after that, it's pretty good.

This is a horrible circle, guys.

This is not even close.

Okay.

Let's pray together, then we're gonna do this.

Lord, thank you for who you are, thank you for who you've made us to be.

You say that we are perfect, and you promise Jesus to be the perfecter of our faith.

So do that, Lord.

We're open, we're willing.

We love you.

We thank you for all that you're doing in our lives.

It's in your name we pray.

Amen.