The Gospel: New Creation

Well, we are we're nearing the home stretch.

I guess we're really in the home stretch right now of a series we've been in for a little over a month called the Gospel.

We've got this Sunday, next Sunday, and then we're on to something new.

But if you're just joining us, the word gospel means good news.

We use that word to describe the message of Jesus.

And you could actually broaden that to say that the gospel is the story that God has been telling throughout human history.

And it's a pretty epic story.

And personally, it's a story that affects us greatly because not only has what God has done affected our lives, we're actually invited into the story.

You have been invited to play a part in the story that God is telling.

How awesome is that! But here's where we find ourselves very often.

We get excited about the idea of being part of what God is doing, but we don't necessarily understand what God is doing.

It's exciting to think that we're part of this story, but sometimes we don't quite get the story that we're in because, let's be honest, it's not a very simple story.

It's pretty complex, it's pretty nuanced, and it's been going on for a long time.

We are not entering the story at an early point.

And so sometimes we struggle to grow as aggressively as we want to, because we just we get we get held up on things we don't quite understand.

As much as possible, we want to understand the story that we're in.

That's why we're doing this series.

Now, practically what that means is we've broken the story of the Bible into eight chapters, and we've gone through a chapter a week, and here's where we've gone through so far.

We started with creation.

We talked about when God created the world, his intentions for us, what he wanted this world to look like, what he wanted us to look like.

And from creation, we went to a crash, a moment where things got off track.

Things can get off track pretty easily, and things got off track with God's creation.

So God had to move into a mode where now he's bringing the world back to himself.

It's one of the beautiful things about God.

No matter how hard people run from him, he refuses to run from people.

And so God begins this process of bringing us back to himself, and one of the key parts of that process was something called a covenant.

God created a covenant between himself and this group of people that would eventually become a nation called Israel.

And God said, Hey, I'm gonna have you be my people.

You're gonna be the ones that I use to reveal to the entire world who I am and what I'm about.

But this covenant, it was an agreement.

God had his part to play, man had his part to play, and we struggled to play our part well.

This covenant was a law, the law of Moses, and it had obligations and it had rituals and it had rules, and we just couldn't seem to get it.

We thought that the purpose of the covenant was so that we could live the right life.

In fact, the purpose of the covenant was to show us over about a thousand-year period of time that no matter how hard we tried, we just couldn't do it.

Something needed to be done, and that something actually was a someone.

Someone needed to come to fix things.

And that person was the Christ, the Messiah.

Christ is not Jesus' last name, it's a title, it means Messiah.

And God had promised the Messiah who would come and hit the reset button in our relationship with God.

That no longer would it be about these rules and these rituals and us trying to perform, but it would be something that was won for us.

And that was that was Jesus.

And from Christ we went to cross.

We talked about what Jesus accomplished on the cross when he died as a sacrifice to pay the price for our mistakes, for our shortcomings, for our sin.

And from cross we went to conquer.

Jesus conquered death.

He conquered the grave.

The cross did not hold him, the cross did not keep him down.

He got back up and he conquered death itself.

And that has such amazing implications for us because Jesus is our champion, he's our conqueror.

There's nothing that he cannot stop.

And if we ever feel like there's something in our life coming against us, if death couldn't stop Jesus, nothing can stop Jesus.

And so from conquer, we get to creation again, but it's a new kind of creation.

That's what we're talking about today.

And then next week we wrap up with looking at a new covenant, a new agreement, a new relationship between us and God.

But today we are on that new creation.

It's kind of an exciting thing to think about.

God says that when we give our lives to Jesus, we become a new creation.

2 Corinthians 5.17 says, this means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone, a new life has begun.

When you give your life to Jesus, when you when you say, Jesus, I believe you are who you said that you were, I believe that you are God, I give my life to you, I commit my life to you, you become a new creation.

You're new, you're different.

And I don't know about you, sometimes I don't feel as new as I'd like to feel.

Sometimes I look at my life and I think, if this is new, what was old?

Because I didn't give my life to Jesus and wake up the next day taller, better looking, with a six-pack.

Never had one of those.

I'm curious what they're like.

If you have one, congratulations.

It's probably pretty awesome.

You know, I didn't wake up the day after I gave my life to Jesus with a higher IQ.

I didn't have these issues and struggles that were just gone, poof, gone.

I don't even feel tempted to do those things anymore.

That's not how it went for me.

And that does happen for some people.

Some people give their life to Jesus, and like overnight, they're a totally different person.

I'm sure there are some of us in the room who had that experience.

But many of us struggle because we give our lives to Jesus, we do what we believe we're supposed to do, and the newness does not seem incredibly obvious.

That leads to confusion, leads to doubt, it's a struggle.

You know, there are certain things in my life that create a panic in me.

I do a good job of keeping things calm on the outside, but there are moments in life where my brain is just going crazy, alarms are going off, the DEF CON level raises, and one of those things is whenever my wife asks me this one question.

Maybe I come home from work or I've been out all day and she's had a day to herself, and I'll get home and she's got a smile on her face, and she'll say, Do you notice anything new?

Right?

And that that is that is a terrible situation for me to be in.

For a few reasons.

Number one, I'm not a noticer.

I'm a man, and I know this is a generality, I'm sure there are exceptions, but I do think, men, we are not as aware of our surroundings as women are.

I know this because I'm a man and I've spent time with women.

Like Megan and I can hang out and talk to someone, and we'll walk away, and she'll say, I loved her shoes.

And I'll be like, How why did you why did you even look at her shoes?

And Megan will say, Do you didn't notice her shoes?

And I'm like, I don't know what shoes I'm wearing unless I look and check and go, Oh yeah, those are the ones I put on.

No, I didn't notice her shoes.

I don't notice things.

Once Nathan hid something in my car, he put something in my car and I didn't find it for six months, and it was a microwave.

And it wasn't like some small microwave, it was actually a large microwave, and I just didn't notice it.

I just didn't notice this large, you know, pile of things in the back of my car.

I'm not a noticer.

And so when Megan asked me, do you notice something new?

The fact that she has to ask the question probably means no, I don't.

I don't notice things.

But number two, I know, I know the situation I'm in when she asks that question.

And men, it doesn't matter if it's your mom, your sister, your girlfriend, your fiance, your wife, you've got to understand.

If a woman asks you, do you notice anything new?

In you're in a bad situation.

Like, this is not a multiple choice question.

You've got one shot, you've got one guess, and it's very, very important to her that you get this right.

You just have to understand the situation you're in.

In fact, I think, in the words of what who I believe would be one of the greatest admirals in history, you need to understand it's a trap.

It's an absolute trap.

You are you are trapped.

You need to understand the situation that you're in.

It's a trap.

This last week was May the 4th, so May the 4th be with you.

I had to throw something from Star Wars in there.

Good old, good old Admiral Akbar.

That's his name, if you didn't know.

It's a trap.

Okay.

So when Megan asks me this question, I panic because my brain starts going into all the things I know it could be.

Number one, her hair.

That's what I look at first.

Do you notice anything new?

Is her hair different?

Is it a different shape?

Is it a different color?

Is it a different length?

I don't know because, ladies, you wear your hair in such a variety of ways all the time.

Us men, we're consistent.

We are consistent.

Our hair, if we have it, comes in one of two varieties.

Number one, it's done.

It's been fixed.

Number two, it's not done.

And generally they don't look that different.

But your hair can be, your hair can be like all these different things.

You can do it all these different ways.

My wife's hair changes based on the the weather outside, how humid it is, how much time she had to get ready, what she's wearing, what she feels like, her mood.

Her hair can change.

It just changes.

And so when I'm looking at her hair, going, is it different?

It's always different.

It's always different.

How am I supposed to know?

Sometimes she colors it, but it's like a shade.

Just a shade different.

And so I'll look at her hair, then I start looking around the room, and I'm thinking, did she change the room?

Our house?

Are the walls a different color?

Are the curtains different?

Did we have curtains?

I don't know.

I don't notice things.

And so I just I panic when she asks me that question.

Do you notice something new?

I think sometimes we look at ourselves and we struggle to notice the new thing that God says He's doing in us.

And that that is frustrating.

Because we'd love it to be obvious.

We'd love it to be that there's a change in us that is so so huge, so instant that it's it's obvious to us and everyone around us.

And while that does happen so often, the the change in us feels small and we wonder, is something new really happening inside of me?

Today I want us to understand the new thing God is doing in us.

I want to make sure that we all understand the newness that God is creating in us so that we can see that develop, so that we can become the new person, the new creation that He wants us to become.

And I really want to focus on one word to get that conversation going, and it's the word spirit.

Spirit.

One of the things that the Bible reminds us often is that our greatest struggles are not so much against the things we can see, but very much against the things that we cannot see.

Ephesians 6, 12 says it this way we are 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.

And maybe you're here this morning and you're new and you're going, oh no, I'm in one of those churches.

We're talking about spirits.

Look at the time.

I've got to go anywhere but here.

And I understand sometimes things get over-spiritualized.

I get that.

I also believe that more often than not, things get under-spiritualized.

And so I'll just say this: if you're like, I don't know about this whole spirit thing, have you ever felt like something's just coming against you?

You ever feel like at the worst possible times, what can go wrong does go wrong?

And it's almost like, it's almost like there is some intelligent force out there messing with you, trying to keep you from enjoying your life.

Well, some people in this world would say that you're just crazy and paranoid and it's in your head.

But God would say that's because there is an intelligent, invisible force trying to come against you.

That there is a physical world, but there's also a spiritual world, and the spiritual world affects the physical world.

But this becomes very personal for us because according to God, not only are there spiritual things out there, there are spiritual things in here.

That we are spiritual.

God lets us know that we are spiritual people.

We have a spirit, and our spirit is the core of who we are.

It's the core of who we are.

And that new thing that is happening inside of us, that new creation that God says will come, will come forth, it's a spiritual change.

God talked to a prophet named Ezekiel in the Old Testament.

And he spoke through Ezekiel and he said, This I will give you a new heart and I will put a new spirit in you.

I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart, and I will put my spirit in you so that you will follow my decrees and be careful to obey my regulations.

Now, just for some context, this is in that period of history that we talked about a few Sundays ago.

This is the old covenant, the law.

And God is trying to get Israel to follow his commandments, his regulations, and they just can't do it.

They keep getting off track, and he's got to do things to get them back on track, but it just keeps happening.

And so he talks to Ezekiel and he tells Ezekiel the solution.

And it is not that Israel needs to get over themselves and try harder.

And it's not that they just need to buckle down and really commit and do it.

He says something needs to change inside of you.

You need a new heart.

You need a new spirit.

You need to become new.

And notice that not only does he say we need a new spirit, not only will he give us a new spirit, he says, I will give you my spirit with a capital S.

I will put my spirit in you.

Now, when you see spirit with a capital S in the Bible, that is talking about the Holy Spirit.

And if you didn't leave when we said spirit and you're feeling tempted to leave now, look, I'll just say, I understand that the Holy Spirit is kind of a strange concept to talk about in church.

It shouldn't be.

It's kind of funny to think about.

Because the Holy Spirit's not a strange concept for God to talk about all through Scripture, all through the Bible.

Jesus talked about the Holy Spirit often.

But sometimes the Holy Spirit doesn't get talked a lot about in church because we have a hard time categorizing the Holy Spirit, don't we?

You know, when we say God, we we actually mean God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Usually when we say God, we're we're talking about God the Father, but God in the Bible is three persons, one God.

And if that seems strange to you, my go-to example is always shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in one.

There it is.

Proves the Trinity.

Three things, it's one thing.

Okay?

Simple.

Actually, though, what's funny is uh is that that can be kind of a weird concept.

Trinity is a word we've created, by the way.

If you're new to this whole God thing, you've got Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God the Father.

They're all God.

They're not multiple gods, one God, three persons, and that does seem odd, but here's what's really cool: we actually reflect that beautifully.

In Genesis 1, verse 26, then God said, notice it's God's singular, let us make human beings in our image to be like us.

Genesis 1:26

God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit having a conversation.

And so we were made to reflect God.

And so if God exists in this sort of three persons, one God, one person kind of thing, we should reflect that if we're in his image, and I think that we do.

Because we all have a body.

Agree?

May not be the body you want, may not be the body you would have chosen, but it's the body you have.

So enjoy it.

We all have a body, we all have a mind, we have an intellect, we have a personality, we have thoughts, and we all have a spirit.

And sometimes the three of those work in concert with one another, but oftentimes they do not.

And you find yourself having conversations with yourself, having little conversations, little battles with yourself.

For example, this morning, the alarm went off on my phone, and uh and my mind told my body to get out of bed.

My mind said, Justin, it is time to get up.

You have a big day ahead of you.

And my body said, not right now.

And I hit the snooze button.

And my mind and my body had this little fight.

I mean, I'm laying in bed and I'm sort of asleep, and it's just my mind going, You gotta get up, you gotta get up.

And my body's like, no, no.

And I'm not crazy, I don't think so for the most part.

I'm not crazy that I'm having this conversation with myself.

It's just that I'm made in the image of God.

Sometimes my spirit will compel me to do things that my mind does not agree with.

I had an experience not that long ago where my spirit, like deep inside of me, said I needed to do something generous for someone, and I didn't want to.

Because I already gave that month, I checked that box, I did my duty, you know.

I've already I've been generous enough, you know.

That's what God calls us to be generous enough.

And so uh, and so my spirit's like, you need to give this person something.

And my brain is like, uh, you do not pay the bills, Holy Spirit.

I pay the bills.

And uh and I'm sitting there going, This isn't this is not a good time.

I've got kind of a busy month, and and we just had this month where a lot of things were hitting at one time, and so it was just a tighter month than normal.

And I'm sitting there going, this is the worst possible time for me just to throw some extra stuff out there, and this battle happened between my mind and my spirit.

We all have these moments, and it's because we exist reflecting God.

We're not crazy, but but we kind of have a relationship with ourselves.

Sometimes it's a good relationship, sometimes we have a strained relationship with ourselves.

The only difference is that God, he lives in harmony with himself.

So you have God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit is every bit as much God as the Father and the Son.

It's harder for us to understand that because we can picture God the Father.

We have a mental picture there.

We can picture Jesus, but the Holy Spirit, like what is what is that?

I have a difficult time putting it into words sometimes, and thankfully I don't have to be the one that always puts it into words.

Throughout this series, we've been showing you videos from a group called the Bible Project.

And if you haven't been here, it's an amazing, amazing, awesome group of people.

Go to the Bibleproject.com.

We actually have a link to their mobile app on our mobile app, the His Hands app.

We also have a link on the His Hands app to all their videos.

They create incredible videos that that really help you understand these big biblical concepts.

They have videos for every book of the Bible.

It's really awesome.

And a few weeks ago, they came out with a new video on the Holy Spirit, just in time for this series.

And so rather than me go on and on and on, as you know I can do, um, I wanted to show you this video because in about four minutes it explains the Holy Spirit really, really well.

So let's take a look at this and then we'll come back together.

If you've ever heard the phrase the Holy Spirit, and you want to know what it means, where do you start?

Well, you have to start on page one of the Bible, where the uncreated world is depicted as this dark, chaotic place, but then above the chaos, God's spirit is there, hovering, ready to bring about life and order and beauty.

Okay, but what is God's spirit?

Yeah, so the spirit is the way the biblical authors talk about God's personal presence.

The Hebrew word is ruach.

Ruach.

Yeah, you gotta clear your throat at the end.

So what is it?

Well, ruach can refer to a number of different things, but what they all have in common is energy.

Energy, how so?

So there's an invisible energy that makes the clouds move or the tree branches sway.

Right.

Wind.

So in Hebrew, that's ruach.

Okay.

Now take a big breath.

So you feel that inside you.

Yeah, the air.

Well, specifically the energy, right?

The vitality in your body that you get from breathing deeply, that too is ruach.

And this is the same word used in the Bible to describe God's personal presence.

Just like wind and breath are invisible, God's spirit is invisible.

Wind is powerful, and so God's spirit is powerful.

And just as breath keeps us alive, so God's spirit sustains all of life.

Yeah.

Ruach.

Now, as we continue on in the story of the Bible, we see God's Ruach giving special empowerment to people for specific tasks.

The first person in the Bible this happens to is Joseph.

God's spirit enables him to understand and interpret dreams.

And then it happens to this guy named Betzal, and he's an artist.

God's spirit empowers him with wisdom and skills.

He's given creative genius to make beautiful things in the tabernacle.

And we also see God's Ruach empower a group of people called the prophets.

They're able to see what's happening in history from God's point of view.

That's exactly right.

And here's the problem as the prophets saw it.

While God's Ruach had created a really good world, humans have given in to evil, they've unleashed chaos into it through their injustice.

A new type of disorder.

Yes.

And the prophet said the spirit would come, just like in Genesis 1, but now to transform the human heart, to empower people to truly love God and others.

How will this new act of God's Spirit happen?

Well, centuries pass, and we are introduced to Jesus.

And at the beginning of his mission, there's this beautiful scene where Jesus is being baptized in the waters of the Jordan River.

Yeah, the sky opens up and God's Spirit comes and rests on him like a bird.

The story is saying that God's Spirit is empowering Jesus to begin the new creation.

And we see this happening when he heals people or forgives their sins.

He's creating life where there once was death.

Now, Israel's religious leaders oppose Jesus and they eventually have him killed.

But even here, God's spirit is at work.

The earliest disciples of Jesus who saw him alive from the dead said it was God's energizing spirit that raised Jesus.

This is the beginning of new creation.

Yes, and is still going.

When Jesus appeared to his closest followers, he breathed on them and said, Receive the Holy Spirit.

And soon after that, the Spirit powerfully comes on all of his disciples.

So that they can become a part of this new creation and share the good news and learn how to live by the energy and influence of God's Spirit.

And so today, the Spirit is still hovering in dark places.

Yes, pointing people to Jesus, transforming and empowering them so they can love God and others.

And the Christian hope is that the Spirit is going to finish the job.

The story of the Bible ends with a vision of a new humanity, living in a new world that's permeated with God's love and life-giving spirit.

There you have it.

Some good old-fashioned ruach for you, you know?

So according to God, it's it's his spirit that is that new thing in us that is making us new.

The actual presence of God.

And this is a really, really cool concept to think about.

In the Old Testament, there was this temple.

And the temple was where God's presence lived.

And the people who worship God, they got kind of obsessed with the temple.

So much so that the temple really became like an idol to them.

They were more concerned with the temple than they were with the presence of God himself.

And they had this lofty idea of the temple, and it just got kind of crazy.

And Jesus shows up and he doesn't really think that much of the temple.

He's not wowed, he's not blown away.

He kind of talks about the temple dismissively.

And it really offends the Pharisees and the religious.

Leaders.

But Jesus makes it clear to us: hey, these walls you've built, they might be impressive to you, but they're actually not where God desires to dwell.

Because God has a temple, his intended temple.

The place he wants to live is us.

It's in our hearts.

And when we give our lives to Jesus, his spirit moves in and begins to mess with us.

And begins to make us new.

To make us new.

And you know it's interesting because so often we tend to think of spiritual things as impractical.

This idea that, you know, the Holy Spirit, spiritual stuff, we're talking about that.

And I like practical things.

I want to be able to leave on a Sunday having something nice and practical in hand, something that I can take and do something with in life, some life hack that's going to help me have a better week.

I think that's good.

But we often look at our lives and we look at the spiritual stuff and we go, you know, the spiritual stuff, that's just sort of amorphous.

It's hard to get our hands on, and so it's not super practical.

But but look, if you are a spiritual person, if at your core you are spiritual, which I believe we are, what could be more practical than God going with you everywhere you go?

I believe it's the spiritual that's actually the most practical.

That's why it's so important as a church that we talk about spiritual things, that we don't pretend like the Holy Spirit's not a big part of the equation.

Sometimes, unfortunately, that happens in church culture.

The spiritual stuff isn't talked about because there's this fear that if we talk about spiritual things, people are gonna go, I don't know what to do with that.

No, no.

The spiritual is the most practical.

It really is.

This is actually an ad from Radio Shack in 1991.

Uh, I know that feels like a departure.

And here's what's really funny about this ad.

I know you can't read it all.

Uh, there is 0% interest, so rush over there if that's still in effect.

But uh, but on this, on this ad, you'll see a phone, there's a radio, there's an alarm clock, there's an answering machine, I think, there's a computer.

Um there's nothing on the front page of this ad that is not in a smartphone today.

So one device, one device has made all of that obsolete.

It's amazing how practical my phone is, because every day I go somewhere and I've got my phone, I've got my music, I've got directions, you know, I've got an app for everything you can imagine.

I have all the information I need, and I take it with me everywhere I go.

There's nothing more practical than that.

And when you listen to Jesus talk about the Holy Spirit, Jesus talks about the Holy Spirit in this incredible practical way.

It's almost like he's listing features for what the Holy Spirit will do.

In John chapter 14, Jesus says, If you love me, obey my commandments, and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate who will never leave you.

John 14 · chapter mention

He is the Holy Spirit who leads into all truth.

The world cannot receive him because it isn't looking for him and doesn't recognize him, but you know him because he lives with you now, and later he will be in you.

He goes on in that same chapter to say, but when the Father sends the advocate as my representative, that is the Holy Spirit, he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I have told you.

So Jesus says the Holy Spirit will lead us, will teach us, will remind us.

Other places in Scripture, Jesus says that the Holy Spirit will give us the words we need in the situations we need them.

The Holy Spirit will gift us, give us abilities that will basically be like talents that we have from God that allow us to be the people we were created to be.

The Holy Spirit will counsel us, the Holy Spirit will guide us.

I mean, literally, the Holy Spirit does all of these things, all of these incredible practical things that we need because I need to be led, I need to be guided, I need to be counseled, I need to be comforted.

The Holy Spirit comforts us.

I need to be reminded of what God has said.

I need to be taught, I need to be gifted and empowered, I need to be equipped for the life that I have, and the Holy Spirit does all of that, and the best part is when you know Jesus, the Holy Spirit goes with you everywhere you go.

What can be more practical than a God you take with you everywhere?

That's the Holy Spirit.

So what is spiritual is practical.

And if we want to be the new people that God has created us to be, we need to understand what the Spirit is doing.

We really, really do.

Now, for most of my life, even most of my life as a Jesus follower, I was very resistant to the idea of the Holy Spirit.

I believe that the Holy Spirit is real, I believe the Holy Spirit does things, uh, but I was resistant for a few different reasons.

Part of it was my upbringing in the church culture I was part of.

We didn't really deal with Holy Spirit stuff.

Uh, a big reason, though, is because a lot of people that would talk to me about the Holy Spirit were weird jerks.

Um I'm just being honest.

They were either really, really bizarre acting people who use the Holy Spirit as an excuse to just be strange.

And I have read the Bible, weirdness is not a gift of the Spirit.

There's nowhere in the Bible that it says that the closer you become to God, the more difficult it becomes for you to have a normal conversation with a human being.

That's not in there.

So they would be like that.

Or they would just flat out tell me how much more spiritual they were than me in this very backhanded way and say that they would pray that I would get the great thing that they had.

And I was like, if that's the Holy Spirit, I don't want it.

I really don't.

Because again, weirdness is not a spiritual gift, neither is being a jerk.

That's not in the Bible.

I've read it, it doesn't say the deeper you go with God, the more of a jerk you become to people around you, you get spiritually superior.

And so I had this resistance to the Holy Spirit because I didn't want to be like these people who claimed to be the Holy Spirit's representative.

But that became a problem for me.

Because while I was resisting based on some experiences I had, I was also missing this whole aspect of God.

And I've come to a place in life where I don't want two-thirds of God.

I want all of God.

And so I found myself in this difficult place.

I didn't want to become a weird jerk.

I think we can all relate with that.

Do we all agree?

We okay, good.

At the same time, I recognized that there was something I did not have.

I'll never forget, and I've talked about this before, but Susan was one of our founding pastors, and I would hang out with Susan, and she would talk about the Holy Spirit, and she had all this joy and all this passion and all this energy and all this life to her, and she wasn't a weird jerk, and it was like, wow, this is amazing.

And I recognized hanging out with her that she's got something I don't have and I want it.

But the problem was, I had been so resistant.

I I had basically said to God, hey God, I want you, I just want you to be in this box that I've created.

I want you, but I want you to live here.

I want you to be predictable.

It was almost like I was saying, I want a supernatural God, but I don't want you to do supernatural things.

I want a supernatural God who is just normal and just, you know, says nice things to me every once in a while.

I like fortune cookies.

Who doesn't?

I like it when I open up a fortune cookie and there's some nice little saying, maybe you can just be a fortune cookie god, and every once in a while you just throw me a nice little line and I go, thanks for that, and I put it in my pocket and I walk away.

But but I got to a certain point where I'm like, I don't want a fortune cookie god.

I want God.

And I don't care that God is difficult to grab a hold of.

I don't care that God is complicated.

I don't care that I don't understand it all.

I want God as He is.

And I began to have this hunger for all of God, which meant experiencing the Holy Spirit.

And you know, it's it's interesting.

I believe that every single person who has given their life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit.

You might look around you and say, I don't know if I do or not.

I don't feel like I have the same things in my life that other people have, and I just don't know if this is for me.

No, it's it's totally for you.

By the way, you have the Holy Spirit in you from the moment you give your life to Jesus.

But it can be kind of like an ember, like this glowing ember that if you if you fan it, it can become a flame.

And if you fan that flame, it become like a fire.

And if you fan that fire, it became a big fire.

If you keep fanning it, you keep feeding it, it can become this raging fire that just changes everything around it, but not in some destructive way, some some beautiful way.

And I had this ember that I was afraid to fan.

That's really the truth.

But I got to the point where I didn't care anymore.

I wanted something.

And I didn't care if my box got broken.

In fact, I was tired of my box because my box was holding me back.

God does not fit in a box.

And so I had this one day, I had this one moment.

And I was praying, and uh, I'll never forget this day.

I was praying, and everything I prayed just sounded so routine.

It just sounded so fake.

I think we've we've all had those experiences where we pray on autopilot, like, oh God, just bless us, and you know, just kind of go through the norm.

And I was saying that, and it's like every time I'd pray five or six words, I would stop, and I'd be like, this, no, I want, I want something real.

So I prayed again, and again, it was like, shut down.

This is just not genuine, this isn't my heart.

And eventually I just sort of cried out to God in a way I'd never cried out before, and I had an experience with God that day that I couldn't categorize, and I thought, oh no, now I'm one of the weird ones.

Right?

See, when you when you start to talk about the Holy Spirit and you start to talk about it really experiencing all of God, it's difficult.

Because you have to wrestle with God.

I think one of the things we have to be very careful about in church is that we don't create a fake God that you don't have to wrestle with.

Sometimes church culture tries to take it, take God and kind of give him a makeover so he fits perfectly with the culture that we're part of, so that you can just take God.

You don't have to wrestle with him at all, you don't have to, you don't have to struggle, you don't have to try to figure him out, he's just exactly what you want him to be, but that's not the real God.

See, the name Israel, this is a name that God gave his people.

It means to wrestle with God.

That's what the name Israel means.

There was a man named Jacob, and he was renamed by God Israel.

Jacob's a jerk.

If you read the Bible, Jacob's not a good guy.

He's a terrible father, he's a coward, he's selfish, he's manipulative, he's a liar, he's a thief, and he never really redeems himself.

I mean, he he is the namesake of God's people.

He he's Jacob, God renames him Israel, and you look at him and you're like, why?

Why would I I mean honestly, I feel like I'm more qualified than Jacob.

I really do.

And uh, and if you read the Bible, so are you, okay?

Because Jacob's just not a good guy.

And what is it about Jacob that, like, God says, hmm, you're the one that I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you the name that's gonna become the namesake of my people in the Old Testament.

And one day I'm I'm listening to a message by a pastor that I really love to listen to, and uh and he noticed something and said something about Jacob that I'd never noticed before.

It's this moment in Jacob's life where he physically wrestles with God, like God shows up to him in a physical form, and Jacob grabs a hold of him.

Which is an odd thing to do, I think.

You know?

Most people, when they when they have God in their their midst in the Bible, they they tend to either like run or they fall on their face and they they freak out.

But Jacob grabs a hold of God, and God's like, let go of me.

And Jacob says, No.

And God says, let you let go of me.

Probably lowered his voice, maybe even whispered, you need to let go of me.

Jacob will not do it.

And so God says, fine, and God touches his hip, and it like breaks his hip.

So much so that the rest of his life he walks with a limp.

But you know, any men here have injuries you're sort of proud of.

You know, maybe you have a limp or a scar, but you're like, there's a story to this one.

Like, this is, you know, it was a limp, but I'm sure Jacob just lit up.

Anytime someone said, Hey, how'd you get that limp?

He's like, Well, let me tell you.

Okay?

And for all of Jacob's garbage, for all of his shortcomings, this pastor said something, I'll never forget it.

He said, Here's what made Jacob special.

Here's what made him the one that God decided to rename, to name him he who wrestles with God.

Like literally, he wrestled with God.

Jacob would rather have been someone who died holding on to God than someone who lived having let go of him.

And I heard that.

And I recognized how much I had avoided wrestling with God in my life.

How I had tried so hard to find a version of God that just fit what I wanted God to be.

A God I could grab a hold of and not have to wrestle with.

But when you really grab a hold of God, it's like hold on for dear life.

Because you can't contain him and you can't fully understand him.

He's God.

Do you want a God that's normal?

Do you want, do you want a God that's small, or do you want a God that is so great, that is so powerful, that you can spend your entire life holding on to him, trying your best to understand him and know that you're gonna have all of eternity to do the same thing because he's so big, he's so great, he's so different, he's so other, he's so holy that there's no way you can even process him.

What God do you want?

See, the real God, he's amazing, he's incredible.

And if you want to know him, you've got to wrestle with him.

See, the Holy Spirit makes us wrestle with God.

To have a relationship with God where you believe that he's in you, working with you, messing with you, he messes with me.

And he doesn't always have my permission.

But the Holy Spirit creates this wrestling dynamic in our hearts.

And that dynamic is the new thing.

It's that very dynamic that is the new thing happening in us, that new creation.

We're being remade as we wrestle with God.

We're being remade into new people as we allow God to do his thing, as we open ourselves up to all of God, as we open ourselves up to not this concept just of God the Father and Jesus the Son and these very easy for us to categorize aspects of God, but as we open ourselves up and say, hey, I want all of you, Holy Spirit, have your way, we give him room, he takes it.

And the more room we give, the more he takes.

And he makes us new.

And I've watched that happen in my life, and it's been frustrating and hard.

Doing a terrible job of convincing you that this is a good thing.

But it's been everything.

See, for me, where it first started is that I began to enjoy the things that I used to do that I knew God didn't want me to do, less and less.

Now I used to just do things.

Things that I absolutely knew that God would not want me to do that weren't healthy for me or healthy for the people around me, but I liked it, so I would do it, and I'd be like, I did it.

I enjoyed it, it's good.

And then all of a sudden, because of the Holy Spirit, I'm not able to do those things anymore and enjoy it.

I'm doing those things and I'm walking away, not with like guilt and shame, like you're a terrible person, but I'm like, I don't, I need to change.

I don't, I don't even want to change.

I was comfortable, I was happy, but now I need to change, and there's this wrestling happening inside of me.

That's that dynamic.

We're wrestling with God.

By the way, if you do that, that's not a sign that you're a failure as a believer.

That wrestling is a sign of life.

That's the Holy Spirit in you working on you.

That's a good thing.

Let him work, let him work.

And then all of a sudden, you know, certain aspects of my personality started to change.

I mellowed out a little bit.

You know, the Bible says in Galatians chapter 5 that the fruit of the Spirit, the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Galatians 5 · chapter mention

Those are not things that we naturally get better at in life.

We really don't.

It's not like the older you get, the more patient you become.

I know that.

I waited tables for years, and I saw no correlation between the age of my customer and how long they were willing to wait for their food.

Right?

No, the older we get, we tend to get more particular.

We like things the way we like things.

This is the way we do things, this is my schedule, I have this, I do this at this time, and this time we get more and more like that.

We don't just get naturally more patient, more loving, more kind, more generous, more gentle.

We don't, but the Holy Spirit starts to make us this way.

It's the fruit of the Spirit.

Self-control.

It's the last one listed.

That's what I'm holding out hope for.

You know?

I look at my life, I struggle with self-control, but it's the last one.

That's what I tell myself.

It's the last one.

Love is first, self-control is last.

I don't think God's necessarily listing them in order of importance.

Except religion will tell you that self-control is way more important than love.

And God does tell us over and over again that love is the most important thing.

And so, as I let God wrestle with me, as I let God have his way, all of a sudden I'm apologizing to my wife way more.

You know?

I'm saying, honey, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be that way.

I words like, I'm sorry, I was wrong, they could come out of me.

And I could mean them.

That did not happen before.

That's the Holy Spirit working on me.

But it all got to one point, and we're we're about done.

We're gonna wrap up with this.

It all got to a point where I just asked God for everything he had.

I asked God.

I say, God, I want what you have.

I want it.

Jesus says this in John, or in Luke rather, 11.

If you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

When you give your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit, you have that ember inside of you.

But when you get to the point in your life where you say explicitly, God, I want the Holy Spirit to take over my heart and my soul in a way that I have not experienced.

When you ask for that, oh man, be ready.

When you get to the place where you say, I am not satisfied with a fortune cookie God, I want it all.

I want you.

I want to be like Jacob.

I want to grab a hold of you and I will not let go.

When you ask for that, he is faithful.

And I say that because I believe that there are many of us here.

I've been this person.

Sometimes I still am this person.

Sometimes it's okay to ask for things over and over again.

We can be like children that way.

Just ask and ask and ask and ask.

Maybe you're here this morning and you you've never asked God into your life.

You've never begun that.

By the way, he wants you so bad.

He loves you.

He wants to know you.

He wants you to know him.

He wants you to know what it feels like to be known by him, to be loved by him.

And all you gotta do is ask.

You just say, Jesus, I want you in my life.

But I do believe that there are those of us here who have asked for that.

We've done that.

We asked Jesus into our life and we're excited, but maybe we still have a holdup when it comes to the spiritual stuff.

Maybe you're like me and you don't want to be a weird jerk.

I don't think I'm a weird jerk.

Some would call me weird, some would call me a jerk, but I don't think I'm a weird jerk.

And if I am, that's not the Holy Spirit, that's just me.

But maybe you've never gotten to the place in life where you have said, you know what?

Forget the fact that I don't understand it all.

Forget the fact that it doesn't all make sense, that I don't have a category for it.

You know what, God?

I want you.

I want the Holy Spirit, I want the mysterious, I want the supernatural, I want, I want all of it, and so I'm throwing caution to the wind and I'm saying that I don't care if it doesn't make complete sense, I'm asking for more.

There's a man named Elisha, he was the protege of a prophet named Elijah.

Elijah did great things for God, and right before Elijah goes to be with God, Elisha says, Hey, Elijah, I want twice the spirit that you have.

Elijah was a man that we should look at and say, I just settle for half of the spirit that he had.

But Elisha said, I want double.

You can ask for double.

You can ask for more.

And I just say all this to say if you've never asked for the Holy Spirit, or more of the Holy Spirit, ask him.

Let go of the box.

Let go of the fear.

And ask him to give you a portion of him, unlike anything you've been given before.

He is the new thing inside of us.

The Holy Spirit is the new thing inside of us, making us new.

It's a process.

A new life has begun.

But the more you ask, the more you desire, the more room you make in your heart for the Holy Spirit to move, the more you become that new thing that you're promised to be.

So ask.

We're gonna pray.

We're gonna wrap up with a song.

And by the way, this song is a chance to ask.

It's a chance to ask for more.

It's a chance to ask God for everything He's got.

So do that this morning.

I encourage you to.

We love you guys.

I love you guys.

I love getting together with you every Sunday.

I'm so excited for what God has in store for us.

I just want us to be a church of people who aren't afraid of whatever God has, who aren't afraid of what we don't even understand.

I want us to be a church full of people who are like children who just say, I want it.

I just want that.

My kids ask for things that they don't even understand all the time, right?

They'll ask for they don't understand how much they cost, that's for sure.

Um but there's something about children that have a desire for something that they couldn't even get their hands around if they had it.

I want us to be like that.

I want to be like that.

So let's pray together.

And let's ask for God to give us everything He has.

Not two-thirds, all of Him.

Pray with me.

Jesus, we love you so much.

Thank you for all you've done for us.

Thank you for bringing us together.

And Lord, as I said that, I just stepped on Nathan's little little pedal thing and I felt something click.

And so please pray that uh his guitar doesn't sound really weird.

I don't know what those things do, but I bet they're important.

I did.

I felt it click like right here.

I don't know.

My eyes were closed because I was praying like a good Christian.

And then I stepped on that.

It's really pretty big, though.

It's pretty small.

I don't all I get is a table.

But okay.

Um thank you so much, Lord, for this church.

You know, we I love that we can take you seriously without having to take ourselves seriously.

That's actually really nice.

God, I I don't even feel like I articulated what I needed to articulate right now.

But I don't really care about that because I believe that you are the greatest interpreter that's ever existed.

And I I'm just gonna trust that you're gonna interpret every word spoken today into our hearts.

I guess, Lord, I'm just asking that you would give us a hunger that we've never had before.

As individuals and as a church, that we would have a hunger to experience your presence.

That we would not be people who don't get in the water because we're afraid that it may not be the temperature we prefer.

But that we would be people who jump in.

Just like like Carlos said in that video we watched from the youth group, that we got we just gotta go all in with you.

And Lord, I don't I don't I don't really care that your spirit is difficult to comprehend.

I want to experience everything you have.

And I believe there's a lot I've never experienced.

I want it.

So help us desire that as a church.

Help us desire that for one another.

Help us be excited for experiencing whatever you have for us, Lord.

We want your spirit.

We want to become the new thing that you promise we will become.

And we ask this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.