No Condemnation

This week we're going to jump into chapter eight. If you have your Bibles, I'd encourage you to jump into chapter eight. I know what you're wondering. Where did I get my style? Amen. They say orange is the new style. You know, they don't say that. But I was going to say the other thing. Yeah. And I'm not trying to be like that character in that Comedy Central show that y'all shouldn't be watching either. I, I just wanted to give you a bright, accenting visual for. How some of y'all look. Now, don't hear me the wrong way. I know how many of you all felt judged by the church before. I'm. I'm raising two hands. You meet me for five minutes. You know, they were judging me back when I became a Christian. I walked in. They said you're walking around like a chicken with your head cut off. And I'm like, is what it is? I don't know what to do about it. Until Jesus came into my life and I. I hate that the church has a reputation of. Condemning people that Christ Jesus came to save. But I will say. When I came out here, did y'all notice how I was dressed? Just said, yeah, if you notice, some of y'all must be blind then because I didn't hear you. Did did you notice that I was dressed a little different when I came out of here? Does it look kind of dumb? Somebody needs to get him a magazine. I'm just kidding. Love you. I don't know. I don't know who said what. But I love you. And love of Jesus. I look, I look kind of interesting coming out here. And I think this is how many of us walk into church for the first time and before our relationship with Jesus. What happens? And this is what Paul's been articulating, is we try to get wherever on our own, whether we ascribe it to God, Yahweh, God of the Old Testament, God of the New Testament or not. We're trying to get to our final destination, and we try to do it by pulling up our bootstraps and living in a particular way. For the Jewish believer in Jesus in the ancient world, it was through the law that we find in the Old Testament for a Gentile believer, or for many of us, when we were born and raised in a particular way, we tried to get by. However we felt right about doing it. Or and I'll give you the ABCs of our old life a little bit. We had attitudes toward the future, toward God, toward people, toward life. We had we had some burdens, maybe some baggage. Anyone here got baggage? Be honest, be honest, I got baggage. I'm about to put some baggage together because we're going to Huntington Beach. I thought I was going to get the surf money to do that because of some storm surge from a hurricane. That's terrible. We got baggage, and then we've got curses. I need you to know, just before I jump too far and you're cursed. I know, sounds so negative. When Romans chapter eight today, it's going to be good. It's going to be super encouraging. But I need you to know how we walk into church, into faith, into our life with Christ. We walk in with with layers. I've got layers. I don't know about you. I've got tons of layers. And those ABCs that I gave you are kind of just a little summation of what these layers are. Their attitudes, their their burdens. And then there's curses. And each layer goes a little bit deeper. And I came out here with a couple layers on because Paul gives us a really good illustration for what the wrath of God looks like. The Old Testament does as well. And like I've told you, every metaphor has its own limitations. But God's wrath is often likened to precipitation or rain. Bible actually says the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. That rain could be a blessing. It could also be the wrath of God. And I need you to know this. If you weren't sure about this up to this point, or if you haven't been reading Romans alongside the sermons we've been preaching. The wrath of God is coming. Paul says it is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who have suppressed the truth in exchange for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator, their God, who was blessed forever. Amen. That's just in Romans one. We did the wrong thing. We have no excuse. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against us who walk according to our way, the way of sin and the way of the flesh. I know this sounds extremely churchy. I'm just telling you what Paul's been saying. And so, because of the wrath of God that we all sense within ourselves. CS Lewis would say that every one of us is born with this innate moral or understanding of what's called moral law. There's a way that is, for many of us, the correct way to walk. Now, that's determined in a lot of ways by your upbringing. Your attitude, for example, toward life. Some of you are optimistic. Some of you are pessimistic. My attitude, informed at an early age, definitely informed by sin before I was ever born. My attitude is a layer. It's a layer. I have this attitude mostly because as I go about my way, I have learned some stuff over the years. I might have an attitude toward a person or a thing, or an activity, and this attitude I have, over time, becomes this layer of protection that I put around myself in order to interact with the world in a way that I think is right. I want to try to help you understand this, because many of us, we have an attitude that when someone talks to us about Jesus or when Jesus wants to do a work in my life, I might hear the good news of Jesus. I might read the Bible, I might hear it preached. I might run into some random person with a sign on the street. And when I see, hear, touch, experience any of that, the attitude that I have formed for protection now lashes out against the Word of God or something preached. It's just one area. It's an attitude. The second layer, as I've already told you, is that of burdens and baggage. Now the difference is attitude. Yet it might be informed in me, but it's something I kind of choose. It's something I think it's a way that I interact and perceive the world. These these burdens and baggage, those are things that may have happened to us, things that we might have done, that now reside within our psyche and in the way that we operate, and we want to have ever been triggered before. Come on, come on. I get triggered every time my kid loads the loads of dishes the wrong way. Someone must have loaded them wrong when I was growing up. I don't know, but that's baggage I carry. And so when I look at my son and I'm like, you see how their lines in this dishwasher. See, that's my trigger coming out. You know, it's just it's baggage. Some of you, you go into a relationship. You got baggage. And we tend to bring that baggage into the relationship. The same is true when you experience the love of Jesus and you step into that walk with him, that layer you've built of protection because of the baggage that you carry, it impacts your interaction with Jesus. It's a layer. Then there's this deeper layer called curses. You ever heard of generational curses? Before we talk generational curses, we're talking about stuff that's passed down from generation to generation. I think my hair is, you know what I'm speaking of, you know, insecurity just as a curse. Y'all are looking all looking at me. This is going to be on YouTube, guys. Speaking of curses, insecurity is a huge curse. It looks to you I couldn't choose the way I looked. I didn't get to choose. Thank you. You chose me, though. I love you, sweetie. You don't know. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. But you know yours. I got you, I got you, but I'm thinking about these curses. It's like these aren't necessarily things you chose. There are things that they were either innate or formed in you at such an early age. You didn't choose these things. Now we think a lot about addictions, right? Maybe I have a propensity or proclivity for an addiction that my dad or mom or my grandparents struggled with. I see this all the time in and outside of the church. It's people who, looking all the way back. They have an attitude form. They have baggage that stems from something they never chose to experience. But with all of those things, we build a protective layer. Over my attitude. I build that layer, and that layer is meant to help me interact differently. If you have an attitude in the way you interact with the world, then you have a morally right and your morality kind of dictates how you act, that morality dictates how you go about trying to accomplish things in the world. If I were to use Paul's terminology, that morality that you have that says I'm a good person. Pointing to Paul, that's you trying to honor a law and get somewhere, whatever that destination is on your own. The next layer, that baggage, what we do, we go to the psychiatrist, we go to our friends and family members. We go to CrossFit and think, that's going to help. You know what I'm talking about. It's always something. We go somewhere trying to deal with that baggage and and escape that thing that happened to us or that thing we did that we can't forgive ourselves for. Again, a protective layer. It could be avoidance. It could be this, this radical acceptance of that type of lifestyle and moving further and further in that direction, whatever is baggage. And then you surround yourself with these different things in order to protect yourself. And then the curses come and you're like, I tried to protect myself, and you might even do some habit formation and adjustment. You might be the person I went to college. I didn't fail out like my family did. I don't do drugs like my family did. I don't do this, I do this. My kids know that I love them. I never knew my parents loved me, could keep going through all of the things that we would call generational curses. But if you want to go deep enough, there is a curse that you cannot behavior or modify your way out of. And it is the curse of sin. And sin doesn't just hit your activity. Sin has every aspect of you. We don't think about it too often about how sin hits our genetics. I heard from my brother recently because he likes to go get tested, apparently. And we're twins, by the way. He goes and gets tested. He finds out that he's got like high LDL cholesterol. I didn't even know what LDL cholesterol was. He tells me that LDL cholesterol. I'm like, what does that mean? He said, well, you really can't do anything about it. It's genetic. So so what do I do about it? And he says, well, just be healthy. I guess that helps. And I'm like, I was trying to do that. Thank you, I appreciate that. And so now because of this curse, my my tendency would be I'm going to be healthy, I'm going to be healthy, I'm going to be healthy. Well, you know what? I can't control that. I can't control the fact that that thousands upon thousands of years ago, Adam and Eve, from a tree of knowledge of good and evil, and then they close themselves in fig leaves and hid from their creator. I can't help the fact that lamb murdered the dude. I can't help the fact that Cain murdered his brother. I can't help the fact. Did all that stuff happen? And now I am encountering in my life the wrath of God and the result of sin. It is a curse that I am stuck in and I can try to change my attitude. I can try to deal with the baggage, but I can't fix the curse. But we try. And this is what Paul's been writing about. Half of Romans is spent trying to help people understand, hey, you can do this. You can do this doesn't fix anything because of this curse of sin that wrecks our lives. We're all wretched, stuck in need of a Savior. And we come in and we try to build these layers, you know? Right attitude, burden. I'm trying here. And then. Then curses, which is this is my running jacket, which is why that's on curses. You know, I, I, I struggle so deeply. And the Lord, as I was praying about this sermon and I was praying about this text, as Paul moves away from wretched man that I am, he steps into it. Romans chapter eight, verses one and two. And he says, there is therefore say, therefore, I just want to know you're with me. Therefore there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus for the law of the spirit, this new scale, this new way, this new birth, this new creation that God has called us into, has set us free from the law of sin and death, inhabit formation and activity and the legal code, the Torah. It has set us free. Now, I already told you the law is not completely done away with. It's been fulfilled in Christ Jesus. But now you get to step into something radically different. You couldn't do it on your own. But thanks be to God. He sent his Son Jesus to do it for us. I preached to so many times over. I want to give you the image that God gave me, and the image was of a house. You might close your eyes if you struggle with imagination. You know I made it. See, I get it. If I'm looking at you guys, I'm not even thinking about the house. All right, picture of this house. It's a beautiful, ornate house. And just know this. It's God's house. Jesus is in it. And if you want to think back to the Old Testament prophecy where it says, come all who are weary and heavy laden, and I'll give you rest, you want to think of Jesus's quotation of that passage when he's inviting his disciples and the people who are weary and struggling in need of a shepherd. And he says, come all who are weary, I'll give you rest. That's the invitation that we have to enter into the house the presence of God for all of eternity. It's been provided for and paid for by Jesus life, death, and resurrection. On the cross. There's a house and there's an invitation. Now here's us. We're outside. Incurring the wrath of God. If you want to make the imagery even more rich for yourself. Think of the wrath of God. Like I said as precipitation. The rain, the storm, the hurricane. Polo of God is coming up against all of those who have lived in hostility attitude wise, who have, who have tried to deal with their baggage without God, and who have never dealt with the curse of sin on their life. So without Jesus, you're outside with Jesus. You're inside. Now, why would I wear these jackets? I can't tell you. It's a rain jacket. So why would I wear these jackets? Because something's coming. Someone. Someone? Someone. Okay. Are you with me? As long as you're with me, I don't care about you. Okay. The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness. And it comes in the form of rain. Guys, it is raining down on those of us who don't have Christ. And so what we try to do is we try to put on these layers to protect ourselves from what we think is coming, or what we think we're incapable of getting to. So I put on a layer of, I'm going to try this. This is hard. I'm going to fix. My wife told me I need to wear a hat because my hair was jacked up. After the last one. I tried to. I tried to deal with my attitude. I need a different way. I try to deal with my baggage. But I need a different way. And even if I can fix those things, I got to deal with my sin and I'm fully incapable of doing it. All of those things, or what I try to put on it, might be good works for you. It might be an attitude of I don't care for you. It might be I don't like church people. It might be I'm just going to live my life the way that I want to, and we'll see what happens. Whatever that is, the attitude, the burden is a result of the curse. And when you put on this type of clothing, I'm telling you, this clothing, it doesn't help you get where you want to be in the long run. But here's the cool thing when it's raining, there's one really easy thing you can do. You can go inside. Just gonna throw that one out there, right? And when you walk inside, you see all these people in the rain jackets and you're like, oh my gosh, IXI want to say it judgmental. I'm talking about rain jackets right now. I'm going to move to a real serious moment. But it's like, man, they should probably go inside. There's been an invitation. Door's open. Jesus did all it was necessary for us. And, you know, they got a house right there. They should just walk in. And what happens is your perspective immediately shifts the moment you step inside. Right? And you look at it and you're like, oh my gosh, that was more intense than I thought it was. And you're completely dry as you're looking outside. And now the rain isn't something that's scary. That shows the wrath of God. The rain is something that you look at in Phoenix especially, and you're like, oh, that's so cool. I didn't know that. Yeah, I like it. My kids just start thinking. My kids the other day, they were like, hey, it's raining. They're probably going to cancel school. They're six and nine, right? So I'm like, so I did my I did my old person thing. I said, I should have seen me back in the day, walking uphill both ways, 15 miles in the rain and the snow. And they still didn't cancel class. But they've been in this perspective where they don't see it. And when they do see it, they're inside. And so they see it with this really cool, positive perspective. That is the difference. You're trying to earn your way through life, and you're putting on layer after layer after layer. You're like, this will help. This will help, this will help, this will help, this will help. But ultimately the the wrath of God is not just rain, it is eternity separate from God. And anything you put on will not protect you from what's going to happen. In fact, I was about to hyperventilate in the first service because that was so hot and I remember thinking, man, not as hot as. And all I got to do is look inside the house. He's invited me. In fact, he meets me right here at the door. The Bible tells us he's the gate. He's the door. He's the way, the truth and the life. Nobody comes to the father except through him. He's standing here looking at you, and he's like, yo, hey, I know you got all the protective measures, but I got you covered, so come on. I got a roof. You got a rain suit. It's not going to help. Because those attitudes, burdens and the curses. And Bible tells us in Romans chapter eight, there's something radically different happens for us, but it requires something of us. And I want to give you three a, B, c. Of the new life in Christ, because I still got dude, how many of you have seen it when you come to church, right. Like, or you come into your walk with God? I, I trusted in Jesus, but I still got some attitudes. I still got my baggage. I still got a lot of the consequences of my sin. And so when I walk in to the house, this is the image. It's a metaphor. The Bible tells me that I'm a new creation. The Bible tells me the oldest gone away. The new has come. The Bible tells me that when I step into this life with God, it's almost like I've been born again. I could give you ten different ways that it talks about it, but the one, the one thing that I'll tell you is when you step into your life with Christ, there is a fundamental shift in your entire being. In Romans eight. One I would say is that shift. This is how I lived, layered up. In Christ is therefore now no condemnation. I'll say it this way, because it came into my mind and I was thinking about it like, it's like if you're outside. And it rains, you probably going to struggle. If you're inside and it rains, you can remain dry. I think it's the same way in Christ, right? If you're outside of your relationship with God, you can build up all the layers, but you're still going to get wet, you're still going to receive precipitation. But when you step into your walk with God, there therefore now no condemnation. So I was guilty before. Now there's no condemnation. I was layered up before, now fully exposed inside of my creator, and I know him at a deeper level. Right now it's a mirror dimly, but that mirror is going to be soon face to face. And I'll see him. I'll see myself and I'll see the world properly. He's sanctifying me. He's changing me. He's regenerating me by the power of his spirit. And if you go all the way back to Genesis chapter three, you see a holistic reversal of what happened, what happened? What happened? In Genesis three, Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. They were told not to. And the first thing that the curse of sin told them to do was cover up, put on a layer who you don't want to show God that? And then what did they do again? Another layer. They hid behind the bushes. They hid from the God when he hid from God when he came to walk with them. That was what sin caused when they ate. They had knowledge, that knowledge produced in us a desire for activity, a desire to to do something, a desire for habit formation, not a desire for connection with our creator. We said, you know what? If I put enough jackets on, Imma cover up to the proper point where I'm living life effectively and the sadness of that is, is is that is the law. Like the law of sin and death that happens in Romans chapter eight verse two, the law of sin and death is this you can do it on your own. But the law of the spirit says, just walk into the room and he'll fundamentally alter every aspect of who you are new birth, new creation, new life, new mercies, new everything. Here's the difficulty. It's hard to check those things at the door. Amen, somebody. Oh, golly, man, I'm still here. I'm still struggling. I know you were in the room, but if you knew me up close, you'd be like, this dude's jacked up. God's been working on me, but I still got some jacked up in me. So here's your new ABC's. The first one. If you want to deal with the attitude, then what you need is a posture of humility that enables you to accept Jesus, move away from attitude, move into acceptance of who Jesus is. That is the humbling thing because you have to admit that you're not good enough. You have to admit your sin. You have to admit that there's nothing you can do to get into your walk with God. That's a tough one, because I've been taught from a young age that I just needed to be good. So for someone saying someone to tell me I'm not good enough took some humility. I've already told you all that story. It was some teenage girl who had a little crush on me, told me I was going to go to hell, and I was like, you think you are? But as I thought on it, the Lord convicted me. He humbled me, and at some point in his humiliation process, I accepted him. And when I walked in to my relationship with Jesus, I realized that not only was I accepting him, but that I didn't need to bring that that attitude I had, or the layers that I had because he was accepting me. No condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. But what about the burdens? The the burdens already happened to me. I already did them. There's nothing I can really do to repair them. All of God. Is this mental weight in me that feels guilty about whatever happened in the past that Satan continues to attack me with? The moment I walked into the house. I should have checked him at the door, but I brought some of them in with me. I think about those insecurities that I have. I'll give you an example. Like there's one white girl thing that I do and, And and it's like, it's not Taylor Swift, it's not true crime. It's. I could keep going. It's not, but I'm not gonna it's not internet sleuthing on TikTok and commenting on things that I'm. I'm just kidding, guys. It's pumpkin spice latte. You hear all the all the girls. Yeah. And so I walked in here with my pumpkin spice latte because I didn't go to bed to like 130 or 2. Y'all pray for my mom. She got a collarbone clavicle issue, you know, and then somebody came in with an American, and they grabbed my pumpkin spice latte and showed other people. Pastor Matt gets pumpkin spice lattes. And then I had to drive home to grab an instrument that I forgot. And on the way home, I was like, my my baggage had me going back to that little man scale that I've told you all about before. When they gave me a 2 or 3 on the scale of 1 to 10, I guess I had a lisp or a speech impediment or something like that. So they thought I was little, not as masculine. And then on the way home, the Lord reminded me, you're in the house, Matt. Don't slip back into that. You don't know. Who cares if they judge you based on that? You're the apple of my eye. Yeah. He was the first born of a new creation. And you're following suit. So, I created you. Would you stress out about. And you know what, Yeah. There's no condemnation for anyone who's in Christ. And if you're in Christ, you can have your pumpkin spice. You know, like, do it. I like it. Brechlin. Just kidding. Guys, that really did happen though. We have to talk about that later. But the curse is it should be the it kind of should be the easiest. It's this interesting reversal. And to deal with my baggage, it's not just acceptance and humility that comes with that, to deal with my baggage. It's walking in the house and starting to see over time that God's Word never returns void, right? How do I know not to stress out about someone thinking I'm girly for pumpkin spice? Well, because I'm the apple of his eye that comes from his word and what his word proves true in my life, it changes every aspect of who I am. And then it does it again, and it does it again, and it does it again. It's like when you walk into that house and you start experiencing the Lord, tasting and seeing how good he is. And then his promises proved true over and over and over. And he tells you to check your baggage and your attitude at the door and you're like, oh, but I want to bring it. But I know, but just try me a little bit, and then you drop it and then you come in and you're thinking that your vulnerability with the Lord and God's people is going to expose you in a way that is damaging. But what you learn is that vulnerability is one of the ways that we have victory in Christ Jesus. Right? And he proves himself true over and over and over. But that does mean I need to continue to take steps to experience him. So whereas one step is accepting who he is and what he came to do, and that I can't do it on my own, another step is continuing to take steps of belief in faith. Some of y'all got gift of faith. I, I really don't like I. I don't test God with this level of angst or questioning or frustration. It's more curiosity than anything. But sometimes I wonder, it's like, God, are you in this? Like when we moved out here to start this, this church thing, I'm this southern guy coming out here to to Buckeye, which is the best place to choose if you're going to have a southern accent in the valley. And no offense, I just it's a good place. And I and I struggled deeply in the Lord was like, hey, I gave you an impression, believe me. And then you walk in it and then you're like, yeah, but this person didn't come along, Lord. Or these people came. But then they told me something about me, and I'm really struggling with what they said and wondering whether I can even do this. And he's like, did I call you? Take another step of belief and you'll see. And this is you and your walk with God. Some of y'all are going to come here, and you're going to take a step of faith to get baptized and make your faith public next week. Amen. I hope so. And then what's going to happen? You're going to go back to your house after you stepped into the Lord's house. Metaphorically speaking. You can go back to your house and Satan's going to tempt you. People around you aren't going to understand, and then you're going to be in here like, Lord, I accepted you. But I'm really struggling right now to understand what you're trying to do because I feel like Satan or life is attacking me right now. He's going to say the same thing to you. Keep taking steps of belief, and when you do, my word will never return void. That's how you that's how you deal with that baggage. It goes away as belief fills the space. The curse Jesus dealt with 2000 years ago. But, I still got the consequences of it. And, you know, even this week, I've been having different conversations and and I realize that those things in my life I can't even like, maybe I can make some slight modifications of my behavior, but some of these things are just I didn't I didn't choose ADHD, for example. I didn't choose it. It's just how it was. And so I look at it and it's like, maybe I can do some stuff to fix it a little bit. Neurons are still misfiring and I'm looking at it. I don't I don't know what to do about this. And I'm going to be honest with you guys. It causes problems. And I'm just talking about people coming up to me saying, yeah, my husband's ADHD, D2. That's why we came to the church and I'm like, oh, I can see what we're building here. Interesting. No, it's a serious stuff where I'll be in a conversation and my mind will do the thing, and then I look like a jerk, and I'm sitting here looking at it like, just helpless. And. And if I. If I go the old way, this is me trying to figure out whether it's through medication or meditation or behavior modification. I'm just going to try to fix it. But at some point you get to a deep enough layer where the Lord reminds you again. Hey, aren't you in Christ? Aren't you a new creation? Haven't you been reborn? Don't you think these generational curses that you have will go away as you continue to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. Don't you think I have the capacity? If I can create the world that I can in the new creation, adjust some of your behavior and your generational curse. Don't you think I can do something with it? Yeah. And. And then I'm like, sometimes on a bad day, guys, I'm like, yeah. And yet I'm just being real. And then he's been kind enough to me to even when I'm not reading sometimes to just remind me of his word. And his word in the first seven chapters of Romans tells me that there is a stain of sin in this world. But the moment I step in to his house in Christ, I am new, even if there's still some residue. And I'm not talking about eternal residue, I'm talking about the consequences of my actions and the consequences of the curse. I y'all know I'm not even going to lie to you. Things change radically, fundamentally different. Same world I'm living in. And when I look at that, he reminds me, hey. Continue to speak my name in your life. Continue to take my word into your world. Continue to experience me at a deeper level. Continue to bring. The layers of your guilt, shame the things where Satan condemns you, or some rando condemns you, or where you condemn yourself. Keep bringing these things to me and we'll process through them. In fact, first ones accept second ones believe. Third ones confess. Confess to the Lord the things that you're struggling with. And when you talk to him about it. He he's kind enough to disclose himself to you. But what you can't do, guys, is think that all of these layers are something that is going to save you. Paul says in Philippians, he says, my righteousness, the layers, the things I protect myself with. They are filthy, pus filled racks inside of God. He said. He's not just talking about the bad stuff, he's saying look like a barrister of Pharisees. I went to school, you know, so I would know stuff and have good morality and understand what the Torah says. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day, which means I'm part of the covenant people of Israel, and I'm not bound or stuck in the curse of sin that everybody else is stuck in. I'm part of a different type of people. Paul talks about all of his righteousness, calls him filthy rags, and says that is nothing pure trash. In light of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus and entering into his presence. So what I'm trying to tell you is most of us live in this category. Even if we say we know Jesus and we behavior modify all our way to hell. For if we've trusted in Jesus, we still act like we used to, because sin and beds itself in it. And we're trying to continually modify pus filled rags when all we have to do is step into the house and experience the love of our Savior by accepting him as our Lord, giving our lives to him, taking steps of belief to understand who he is, and then confessing our struggles to him and what he's going to do over time is he is going to. Turn your gaze to the world that he brought you from. You look out the door, the window, whatever the metaphor works for you, and you're going to see all the orange jackets out there. And it's not going to be judgment that you have from that space, because when you know you were bought with a price or for a price, when you know that you've been saved based on no work of your own, when you know that your own righteousness was filthy rags, you look at those people who are still trying to modify their behavior and hopefully get somewhere good, you know, look at them with judgment, but you notice it just like you noticed it when I walked out. You can see it, and I want to encourage you if you have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, I want you to shift your posture from a holy huddle in this room where I get to hang out in the house and allow the Lord to turn your gaze, to look at the world. Who doesn't know him? Not with judgment, but with compassion. Some of you in here right now, are you still wearing the jacket? You don't know what to do about it. Bible says it's so simply confess, believe. Accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, and let him cover all the way that you can't and were never meant to carry. And for those of you who hear this and you're like, cool illustration, man, I want to give you one straight from Luke chapter 15. And what happens is there's a father, there's a house, and there's a me and you filled up with all of our layers. We go about life our own way, try to accomplish something, taking that which God gave us and using it for our own good purposes. But none of those purposes blessed us. We ended up in a pigsty. And the things that we built up for protection are right in there with us. Some of you right now, you're coming to yourself and you're thinking maybe there's a better way. And I want to tell you, utilizing Luke chapter 15, this parable of this son who had gotten stuck and had squandered everything to where he was sitting with the pigs, he had this thought and says, I can drop all of this and go back into the house with my father. And when he makes that decision, he comes back. I don't know how long they didn't give me distances back, like in Luke chapter 15, but he comes back and before he ever makes it to the door, his father meets him out front. He's not concerned about the protective layers built up. He's not concerned about all the struggle or the the pain. He is concerned about the one that he created. The one that he loved. He grabs them. He brings them into the house. And I imagine the the son was looking back and like and dirty. I'm messy. I've got burdens, I've got curses, I've got attitude. And the father's like, not like we're going to slay the gap. And I got a robe for you to put on. And when you walk in, in Christ, that happened. But it was never final. Because while the wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, God's one and only son came to die on a cross, become the blood on the door of your life, so that you could enter into his presence for all of eternity and live a life with no condemnation for those in Christ. Man. I hope for the people in the room who needed this message. I pray that the spirit is working in you right now. In fact, can we just bow our heads and close our eyes? If you're already in the house, that's great. Let God shift your perspective. But if you're not, I've been there. All of us have been there. There's a better way. The prayer team's going to come up, but I want to give you an opportunity to accept, believe and confess Jesus as Lord. You may pray after me. Say, God, I believe that Jesus is your son. I believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. Father, forgive me of my sin. Make me new and I'll follow you.

Luke 15 · chapter mention Luke 15 · chapter mention Luke 15 · chapter mention