Show Me My Cross | Pastor Earl McClellan

But we're about to open up our Bibles.

You guys ready to do this?

We're ready to grow today?

We ready to do this?

All right.

I know I am.

If you have your Bibles, why don't you go with me to the book of Numbers?

The Book of Numbers.

We have been in this book for this entire uh month.

And uh we've been reading through it as well.

Uh, I don't know about you guys, but I am not yet done with numbers for the month of September.

But good news is I only have three chapters left, and there's three days left in November, so I'm winning.

Uh if you have not even jumped uh on that journey yet, you can go ahead and begin.

But for the month of October, we're gonna be doing something different.

Uh, I've got an exciting growth plan for the whole church family, but I'm not telling y'all, uh, I'm telling serve team first at the serve team conference.

Uh so they get that information first, and then I'll share it with the rest of the church uh next week.

Numbers chapter 14, beginning in verse number 20.

Numbers 14 · chapter mention

It says, The Lord replied, I have forgiven them as you asked.

Nevertheless, as surely as I live and as surely as the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth, not one of those who saw my glory and the signs I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, but who disobeyed me and tested me ten times, not one of them will ever see the land I promised on oath to their ancestors.

No one who has treated me with contempt will ever see it.

I'm in verse 24 of Numbers 14 now.

But because my servant Caleb has a different spirit and follows me wholeheartedly, I will bring him into the land he went to, and his descendants will inherit it.

We are in a series this month called All In.

And uh we started a couple of weeks ago, and uh, I don't know about you, but it's been pushing me forward.

Uh, not just reading the scriptures, but taking some time out uh as a church family to open up the Bible together and say, God, would you really grab a hold of our hearts?

Uh this all in, we're not talking about half in.

We're not talking about a quarter in, we're talking about all in in our walk with Jesus.

And I recognize, I understand fully, in the day and age we live in, that people are trying to dumb down what it means to be a follower of Jesus and make it so incredibly anemic and weak that we have begun to believe that church attendance is the same as being all in for Jesus.

And that's not the case at all.

There are plenty of people that are in churches all over the world and they are not even half in.

Their hearts have not been captured by the beauty and the majesty of who Jesus is.

I'm not throwing any shade or any judgment on anybody.

I'm just saying for us here at Shoreline City, we are not going to be casual in our faith.

We want to be a people that are saying, Jesus, you can actually have all of me, not just part of me.

You can have my money, you can have my time, you can have my relationships, you can have my past, you can have my present, and you can have my future.

One thing that I have discovered about people that are hungry, and this is you, you're hungry people, you're people that want to grow, you're people that want to develop in your walk with God.

What I have found with hungry people is whenever you challenge hungry people, they're all they're like, yep, give it to me.

I'm ready to go.

Now, if you are casual and kind of one foot in and one foot out, there can be so much clutter in your mind that even when the Holy Spirit is trying to talk to you and trying to get your attention, it can be difficult sometimes to hear what God is trying to say to you because there's so much noise around.

But when you've been fighting, whether it's on your knees or on a walk or in your prayer time, and you're like, God, I want more.

God, I want to grow.

God, I don't want to stop.

God, I want to be all that you've called me to be.

Whenever somebody else says something that kind of connects with your heart and connects with your spirit there, you lift your hand up and you're like, Yes, that's me.

And that's who I know I'm talking to here at Shoreline City.

People that want to be all that God has called them to be, but more importantly, want their hearts to be captured by who Jesus is and what he wants to do in us and through us.

So I don't want you stopping.

I don't want you leaning back.

I want you leaning in.

I want you to continue to say, God, you can have all of me, not just parts of me.

Yeah, uh there are some, I recognize this, that uh we get really close to God in bad times.

And really, really far from God in good times.

In bad times, we're like, I'm here.

Good times, Lord, I'll see you at Easter.

And again, our hearts and arms are open wide, no matter when a person chooses to walk through the doors.

But what Jesus Christ has done for every single one of us does not call for half-hearted devotion.

It's whole-hearted devotion.

Um, let me show you this picture, my wife and I.

Uh, this is from years ago.

She still looks the same, okay?

This is the night we got engaged.

Uh, so this is a minute ago now.

Again, we've been married 29 years.

So this this picture is probably 30, 31 uh years ago.

And um, we got married in Tulsa.

I mean, not married, yeah, we got married in Tulsa too, but we got engaged in Tulsa too at this restaurant called the Polo Grill.

The suit that you see me wearing, I do not own.

I had to borrow it from a friend of mine on the basketball team.

I didn't even own my own suit.

Uh, the car that we drove down to get to the restaurant, I didn't own that car.

Borrowed a friend's car.

And we're driving down there.

My palms are sweating.

I mean, they are, I mean, might as well have just been dripping sweat.

Oh, nigga's holding my hand, she's like, whoa.

Your palms are really sweaty.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I just got to shower.

Just got at the shower.

Uh, but I got the ring on me.

I'm up, you know, I know I'm about to ask the most amazing woman on the planet if she's going to be my wife.

And uh, and I uh we get to the restaurant and we we're having we're having dinner, and uh I have the waiter bring out like some flowers, I had like some roses, and then I had some chocolate chip cookies.

Uh uh chips or hoy chocolate chip cookies.

Again, I was on a budget.

Because Onika loves chocolate chip cookies, and then uh I had some other little things, uh, but there's a piano player uh at this particular restaurant.

And uh the piano player, I like gave him the cue, like and he starts playing When a Man Loves a Woman, uh, because that's our song.

So he starts playing it, you know, uh, and and I can hear it in the background.

I'm like, oh, do you hear that song?

And she's like, oh, wait, is that our song?

I'm like, yes, it is, and I get up from the booth and I got that ring, and I, you know, get down on my knee, and I can't remember all the words I said, but you know, you're the most beautiful woman on the entire planet.

I love you so much.

Will you, you know, be my wife?

And she starts scooting away from me, like, are you serious?

Are you serious?

And I'm like, Yes, I'm serious.

What do you say?

And she says, she says, yes, and then we, you know, we hug.

And um, did we kiss too?

She probably kissed me.

I mean, because she was like all over me.

And and so that that picture you saw is after after the engagement.

Um, my my friends were asking me uh when I got back to the dorms, because we still lived on campus.

Uh got back to the dorms.

They're like, did she cry?

Like, no, she didn't cry uh because Omega's not a big crier.

So we the goal was to get tears, you know, streaming down her face.

At least one tear, you know, like Denzel and Glory.

We're trying to get one tear.

That was an old reference.

That's for the onks in the room.

We're trying to get at least one tear, uh, but but no tears.

But she did say uh an emphatic yes.

Well, what she did not do, what she did not do when I asked her to marry me is go.

Sure.

You shouldn't do that.

You shouldn't say, Well, if you want.

My my knee working for that ring, the love that we have for each other, for her to have a response that would sound indifferent, it would not match.

The amount of love that we have for each other, the amount of sacrifice that was put into this moment, if she was flippant in that moment, indifferent, cold, it wouldn't make any, it would have broken my heart.

Even all of y'all are hearing this right now, and you know, you know, no, if somebody goes that all in and you love each other, because again, maybe somebody asked you to marry them, you're like, I don't even know why we just met last week, so no.

Uh go to join.

Uh you that's that's one situation.

She and I have been together for two and a half years.

We had walked through so much stuff together.

We had already decided that we were gonna be together.

We had already had these conversations, it was already an emphatic yes.

This was just us making it official here.

So when I'm on my knee, she says, yes.

She does not go.

We'll see.

She didn't say to me, What do you mean by Mary?

Like Mary?

Like um, like, like, like Mary?

What is no, there's no quotations.

It's Mary.

It's so death do us part.

It's my heart all in, it's your heart all in.

It's no matter what comes our way, we got each other's back.

It's we don't know what the future holds, but we're gonna trust God no matter what comes our way.

That's what I mean by marriage.

It means I'm gonna encourage you and you're gonna encourage me.

It means I'm gonna love you, and you're gonna love me.

It means I'm gonna be there for you, and you're gonna be there for me.

It means if I'm crying, you'll hold me.

If you're crying, I'll hold you.

That means we're gonna laugh till we pig our pants, and that means we're gonna live our lives for God's glory.

That's what it means.

That's what I mean by marriage, that's what we're saying yes to.

And then it comes to our relationship with Christ.

And the Lord through the cross is saying, We in this.

Are we in this?

Are we in this?

What do you mean?

I follow you.

What do you mean?

What do you mean?

What do you mean?

Like you're in charge of my life.

What do you mean?

What Jesus Christ did for us on the cross and reconciled us back to God.

Forgiving us of our sins, cleansing us of our brokenness, giving us the very breath that we have in our lungs.

You and I couldn't even choose to be born.

God had to choose you to be born.

And some of you might be hating, I hate my life right now.

I'm just telling you that God is not done with you yet.

That God is still working behind the scenes, that he still knows you by name.

He has a plan and a purpose for your life, even if you're in the midst of some really difficult things right now, that God is the one that fashioned you and formed you in your mother's womb, that he knows you by name.

And he said, I'm calling you.

Will you?

Go with me to the gospel of Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 7.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

We would, of course, never say it like this explicitly.

We would never explicitly say, I want to be indifferent.

It's just the way that we, I think, honestly, sometimes unintentionally live our lives.

Maybe it's even the examples that we have seen in front of us that we thought it was a totally fine to live for God on Sunday and then just forget that I have any relationship with Him the rest of the week.

Maybe that's the picture that you've seen, but I want to give you a different picture.

Because sometimes that's the picture we have of marriage.

Sometimes the picture you have is just distorted and it's off.

But we're seeing in the scriptures here, we've seen in the book of Numbers, that it was because Joshua and Caleb had that wholehearted devotion, they were going to receive the promise that God had for them.

And I think the same is true for you.

And you and I have grown too accustomed to maybe some parts of our life being all in.

And other parts of our life belong to us.

And I think God is going, hey, hey, I want all of you.

Luke chapter 7, verse number 36.

Luke 7 · chapter mention

It says, When one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, he went to the Pharisee's house and reclined at the table.

A woman in that town who had lived a sinful life learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee's house.

So she came there with an alabaster jar of perfume.

As she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears.

Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them, and poured perfume on them.

Verse number 39.

When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, he does not say it out loud, he says to himself, if this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is.

That she is, what's it say right there?

A sinner.

Man.

Religious people can be religious.

Here he is at the table.

And you're about to find out the gospel writer, he he writes this beautifully, especially for those of us who are not in first century Palestine.

We don't know that this Pharisee has not done some things that he ought to have done when Jesus came into the house.

We don't know yet.

We're about to find out.

We're about to find out that Jesus has already been disrespected, dishonored, and pushed to the sidelines, if you will, from the jump.

From the time Jesus got in this man's house, this man has been giving Jesus the cold shoulder.

This man has been treating Jesus with familiarity and flippancy.

We don't know it, but we're about to find out.

And this woman interrupting this dinner here has made it abundantly clear who's in and who's out, whose heart is for Jesus and whose heart is for themselves.

And now follow me here, follow me.

Verse number 40.

Jesus answered him.

Again, he didn't say it out loud.

But he just answered him, Simon, I have something to tell you.

Tell me, teacher, he said.

I see him saying this with a smile.

He was just talking bad in his head.

But now with a smile, he's like, Oh, tell me, tell me, teacher.

Two people owed money to a certain moneylender.

And one owed him 500 denari.

This is a deneri is about a day's wages.

So it's about a year and a half salary.

And the other, 50.

So about a month and a half salary.

Neither of them had the money to pay him back.

Now, some of y'all don't know what this is like because you've been blessed your whole life.

Other people, you've experienced this.

I don't know how I will pay this bill.

I don't know how I'm gonna get this right.

I don't know how.

Let me see.

Okay, if I took this from my savings, wait, look at my savings, that's 17 cents.

Okay, can't take anything from my savings.

Okay, let me go, let me borrow money from over here.

Let me ask this person over here.

If you've never been there, you might not understand this pressure.

But some of us understand the pressure of I don't know how I'm going to whether feed my family, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get groceries, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to pay for diapers, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my rent, I don't know how I'm gonna make my car payment, I don't know.

So the pressure that can come with honest financially, Jesus is sharing a story about two people that have these pressures on their shoulders, and one of them has a mountain of debt that is so incredibly large.

The other one has a mountain of debt too, but it's just not as large as the other one.

Now, look here, look here.

You he says neither of them had the money to pay him back, so he forgave the debts of both.

Now, which of them will love him more?

Simon replied, I suppose the one who had the bigger debt forgiven.

You have judged correctly, Jesus said.

Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, I like this.

He doesn't even look at Simon, he's talking to Simon, but he's looking at the woman.

Do you see this woman?

I came into your house and you did not give me any water for my feet.

But she wept my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.

You did not, and she did.

Verse 45, you did not give me a kiss.

But this woman from the time I entered has not stopped kissing my feet.

You did not, she did.

Verse 46, you did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.

You did not and she did.

Now Jesus is giving a compare and contrast.

He, I'm I'm not trying to judge you, I'm not trying, I'm just telling you the facts right here.

I'm telling you what you did not do, and I'm telling you what she did do.

I'm telling you what you did not do, and I'm telling you what she did do.

And now that I can look at the difference between what you did not do and what she did do, I can tell you that there's actually something going on underneath the surface, and you can have all the regalia that you want to on the outside, but there's something that's not right on the inside of you.

So I appreciate you doing this whole elaborate dinner, but I know that you're off because of what you did not do compared to what she did.

Now, don't get mad at me.

We're just reading the Bible here, okay?

Because I haven't said your name at all.

So if there's something you're like, well, you don't know my situation, okay, that's on you and the Lord.

I have not said any, I have not said your name.

I'm looking at everybody.

Okay.

So if there is something that's popping into your head and your heart, that's the Holy Spirit talking to you right now.

Saying, I want more of your heart.

So don't don't don't don't fight against it.

Don't fight against that.

This is not God mad.

This is God's love.

He's drawing you closer to him right now.

Now, what was the difference between that Pharisee and this woman?

Look at this.

Therefore I tell you, verse forty-seven.

Her many sins have been forgiven.

Because she loved it.

And she gave.

And she blessed.

Because she loved it.

I'm going to ask the ushers to help me out.

Online family, you you can do this too.

You can get a printable version.

But ushers.

I want you to start to pass down the row this wholehearted assessment that I have for us as a church.

You're not going to fill it out right now.

I just want you to get it.

Again, the ushers will just be beginning to pass it, and you're just going to grab one and then you're going to pass it down.

And in this wholehearted assessment, there might be some areas on there that you, I mean, they might not really apply to you.

Maybe you're not, you don't have a career right now.

You're one of our teenagers.

You don't have a career yet.

There's also school on there.

You might not be in school right now.

But this wholehearted assessment is us pausing to go, okay, is this area of my life no heart?

Half-heart or whole heart?

No heart?

Half-heart.

Or whole heart.

And what you get to do this week is I want you, whether you're on your walk, you got your spot in your house or in your apartment, where you sit and you pray.

And I want you just to sit and talk to God.

Alright, Lord.

How would I, or how would you want me to assess this area of my life?

This area of my life.

No heart, half heart, or whole heart.

What I have found is the grace of God moves and might and empower.

I don't see if I you guys get cards down here.

And as you pause and do this assessment this week, I'd love for you and your Connect groups to maybe go and talk and just kind of wrestle with some of the stuff.

Don't let shame and guilt be your motivator.

Those are terrible motivators.

We're just saying, okay, God, I just I just I know I want to be all in.

That's what's in me.

So where do I need to grow?

You might look at that list and go, oh my gosh.

I'm no heart in all of these.

Hey, we're glad you're here.

And you can start a whole new journey so you can become all that God has called you to be.

But maybe you have some areas of your life that you feel like, man, this is really, really strong, but some areas that are really, really weak.

As you grab these cards, I want to show you guys something.

Hello, can you hand that to me, please?

This right here is what's called a fooling.

The word literally means to trample on.

Like to step on.

Uh to the 1600s.

Take us back to Japan.

And in Japan and the 1600s, kind of the beginning of the 1600s, the government was trying to shut down Christianity.

So they made these fumies.

And on it is an image of Jesus on the cross.

With Jesus on the cross, they would take this and put it at the feet of someone that they suspected was a Christian.

And they would say, if you trample on, if you step on this image of Jesus, it's you renouncing your faith, and we will not persecute you, arrest you, or ostracize you.

The only thing you have to do is step on this image of Jesus, and you're free to go.

So they're bringing around from village to village, city to city, area to area.

And Christians are confronted with am I going to go public with my faith?

And the government here now is pressuring me.

And if I step on this, then I get to go free.

But if I don't step on it, I'll be persecuted.

There are some Christians that did step on it.

But there's a lot of Christians who did not.

This fumi, though, was birthed out of something that happened a good 40 years or so before they were created.

It's expanding.

It's booming.

And the government is like, the emperor is like, I don't want this.

I want to kill it.

I want to stop it.

So this is where you have, and you can look this up.

They're called the Nagasaki 26.

There's a memorial to them to this day.

You can go to this hill in Japan, this Nagasaki Hill, and you can see this monument that I'm showing you right now.

These 26 individuals were taken by the government and they were walked some 500 miles, 800 kilometers.

And the whole 800 kilometers, they were tortured and ridiculed.

They were Christians, and the government again is trying to kill the faith, their faith in Christ, trying to discourage other people from following Jesus.

So for this 500-mile walk through the Japanese winter, they are ridiculed, they are disrespected.

Some accounts say their ears were cut, their nose was cut, and they are being paraded through the country to tell everyone else in Japan: if anybody follows Jesus, this is what's going to happen to you.

These 26 men are walking throughout the entire country.

They get there to Nagasaki Hill.

When they get to the hill, they see 26 crosses laid on the ground.

These 26 crosses are for each of these individuals to be crucified.

The crosses are laying on the ground, and every one of them is given another opportunity to renounce their faith.

You don't follow Jesus, you don't believe in Jesus, turn away from him.

There was a 12-year-old boy, and this 12-year-old young man shouts at the top of his lungs, show me my cross.

And he runs to his cross.

12 years old.

There was another 13-year-old young man that was in the 26.

There was another 14 or 15-year-old young man that was in the 26.

There was another 33-year-old man that was in the 26.

They said he was the best preacher of them all.

And when they put him on the cross, he talked about how I forgive my persecutors and he kept on preaching the gospel and said I count my life worth nothing.

I just want to live for Jesus.

12 years old, 13 years old, 15 years old, 33 years old.

I'm trying to tell you the DNA that you have flown through your veins as a follower of Jesus Christ.

And the world is trying to tell you something different.

Teenagers, where I know we can be afraid sometimes to share our faith at work or in our family, but I'm just letting you know there were some people that said, Show me my cross, and they were willing in the midst of losing their lives to say I'm still following.

This was a picture of all in that I heard this summer, and it wrecked me.

On the Sunday that I shared it.

Because I've been on my knees so many times saying, Lord, I want that to be the sound of my heart.

Show me my cross.

So for a moment, I just want you to bow your heads.

I'm inviting the band out here, the team, just to sing for a moment.

Allow our hearts to get washed and cleansed and purified as we surrender our hearts and our lives to Jesus in ways we never even thought possible.

I surrender.

I surrender.

How know you more?

How know you more?

I surrender.

How know you more know you surrender?

I surrender.

I surrender.

Teenagers, single people, married people, moms, dads, grandmas, grandpas.

Men, women, old, young.

God's not done with you yet.

He's not done with you yet.

So Lord, I ask for your grace.

I ask for your power.

I ask for your truth to rule and reign in our hearts.

Shatter the lies that need to be shattered.

And open our eyes once again to the beauty and the majesty of who you are.

May we never become familiar with the cross.

And Jesus, what you've done for us.

Capture our hearts again.

As our heads abowed just for a moment, if you're under the sound of my voice, you've never given your heart and your life to Christ.

You never made him first, you never made him number one.

But you're under the sound of my voice, and you're saying, Man, I don't want to go my own way anymore.

I want to go the way of Jesus.

Maybe there was a time you were following Jesus, but you slipped away, you've gone another direction, and you're like, Man, I don't want to, I don't want to go my own way anymore.

I'm ready to, I'm ready to go.

I'm ready to give my heart to Christ.

I'm ready to turn back.

The Bible uses the word repent, means to turn, change of mind.

So if that's you, you've never given your heart to Christ, or at one point in time you didn't.

You slipped away.

And today you're saying, today is the day that I'm giving my heart and my life to Jesus on the count of three.

I want you to do something simple but bold.

Just want you to throw your hand in the air and say, Yes, that's me.

I want to give my heart and my life to Christ.

Ready?

One, two, three.

Just lift your hand up.

You're saying, yep, that's me.

You're saying, yep, that's me.

I want to give my heart and my life to Christ.

It's probably a mother or a father or grandmother or grandfather praying for you.

That's how you even got to this moment here today.

I know we've been praying for you.

I'm asking everyone to do me a favor, put your hand over your heart right now if you would not mind.

I want everyone to repeat this prayer out loud after me.

Say, dear Jesus.

I ask you to forgive me of all my sins.

I admit I've made mistakes.

And today, I give you my heart.

I give you my life.

Give me the power to live for you in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.

Can we lift our heads up?