Do Not Fear - John 14:15-31 - October 18th, 2026

Niklaus Baughn: Morning. And if you've got your Bibles with you, turn with me to John chapter 14. That's where we're going to be this morning. John chapter 14, beginning in verse 16. If we have not had the pleasure of meeting, my name is Nick. I was here with you guys in July, and I serve as one of the pastors at Mercy Hill Church here in not here, in Greensboro, North Carolina. And me and my wife are glad to be with you this morning. You know, every single one of us has fears in our life. You know, some people are afraid of Snakes. Some people are afraid of mascots like the Chick-fil-A cow. Other people, if you're sane and you actually think about life. You're afraid of flying, and you're like me. Because why would people get in a tube in the sky and act like it's completely normal? Thank you for agreeing. Because it makes no sense to me why we fly and think like it's completely normal. I have, like all people who make sense, an insane fear of flying. And I would rather drive 12 hours than fly two hours to get somewhere. And people always say, hey, but it's so much quicker and easier if you fly. And my response. Every time is you know what else is quicker? Death. Death is quicker if I fly. A couple of years ago, my wife and I were flying down to Florida, and in my wisdom and geniusness, the night before we got on the plane, I watched a movie about a plane crash. And then we got on the plane and we hit turbulence. And when we hit turbulence, I think we probably fell like three feet, but in my mind, we had Fallen 15,000 feet in just a second. And in that moment, I go to the person that we all look to for hope. The person who is our emotional support animal on the plane. The flight attendant. It doesn't matter if this girl is 19, had six weeks of training, and is sipping on a sprite. If she is okay, I am okay. If she is freaking out, I am rewriting my will in the notes app. And so we're flying, and I'm getting nervous, and I'm Freaking out, she's okay, I'm still freaking out. And the guy sitting beside us said something along the lines of, Well, brother, if we die, we'll be with Jesus. And like, I want to be with him. I just don't want to meet him over South Georgia. And he's like, It's gonna be okay. It's all gonna be okay. I'm like, I don't need you to talk to me right now, just leave me alone. And I'm holding my wife's hand this entire flight, and because she's calm, she's steady, I'm freaking out. And the guy behind me, you know, he's Watching all this happen, he thinks my wife is freaking out. So he leans forward, he's like, Honey, it's gonna be okay. And I go, Thank you. I I appreciate that. Because it wasn't her freaking out, it was me freaking out the entire time. And when we finally landed, I realized the fear that I had is that I was not in control. Man, fear has a way of reminding us that we are not as in control as we think we are. Maybe for you, it's fear. Of the unknown or fear of lacking control, or for many of us, it's fear of the future. What does the future have for us? And in this passage this morning, what we're going to see is the disciples being fearful of the future because they don't know what's about to happen. So to bring you guys up to context of where we are, it is the night before Jesus is about to be betrayed. The disciples are in the upper room, they've been eating, they've been drinking, they've been talking to each other, and they know that Jesus is about to die, and one of them is going to be the one to betray him. And then Judas Iscariot gets up and he leaves. Judas is out of the room. He's going, meeting with the religious rulers. He's betraying Jesus right now for 30 pieces of silver. And the disciples know that Jesus is about to die. They had been with him for three years. They had done every day of life with him. And they had left everything to follow Jesus. They left their jobs, their families, their friends, their career, and now he's going to leave. And you know what that makes him them? It makes them fearful. Fearful of what a future looks like without him, and fearful of what's to come. In the same way many of us, if we're honest, are this morning. And we look at the future, we look at what's coming, and we're afraid of what's going to happen. And many times we can say, hey, God does not understand this, and the Bible has nothing to say about this. But this text we're going to read this morning talks directly to that. So read with me, beginning in verse. Verse 15. It says, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. Even the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him. For he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans, I will come to you. In a little while and the world will see me no more, but you you will see me because I live. You also will live. In that day, you will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you. And one of the biggest things that people fear, and one of the things that people the disciples feared right here is being alone. And all the way back to when you're a little kid, there's a fear of being alone, and it's like a natural thing. My son's three, and every night, somewhere between two and four o'clock in the morning, I hear him jump out of his bed, land on the floor, and come sprinting down the hallway. Come in our room and he doesn't come to me because he doesn't like waking me up at night. So he goes to my wife and goes, Mommy, I'm afraid. I want to get to bed with you guys. And then I have a two or three-year-old kicking me in the head the rest of the night. But it's because he's got a fear of being alone. All of us. And that's just natural. There's a fear of being alone. And what Jesus is telling the disciples here is that you don't have to be fearful and wake up afraid. Because they will have the helper with them forever. And the helper Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit. And having the Holy Spirit means that you never have to fear being alone. As Christians, Jesus has given us another helper. And the reason he says another helper is because according to 1 John 2:1, John says, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate, a helper, a parakletos, which is the exact same word referring to the Holy Spirit here. With the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. So John calls Jesus our helper. And what Jesus is saying, hey, over the last three years to the disciples, I have been your helper. I have been with you day after. After day walking through life with you, and now you're going to have another one. And he is never going to leave you. He is going to be with you forever. And that is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit isn't just here for a season. The Holy Spirit in believers is with us forever until eternity. No matter where you go, no matter what you do, you can never find yourself outside of the presence of God if you have trusted in him as your personal Lord and Savior. And when you start thinking about the The future, and you do not know where you'll be in five years. And you don't know what your career is going to look like. You don't know what your family's gonna look like, you don't know what diagnosis may come, what the economy may look like, but there is one thing that we can all be sure of. When that gets here, the Holy Spirit will be there. And the big idea of the sermon today is that we don't need to fear because the Holy Spirit in us is better than having Jesus beside us. Having the Holy Spirit in us is better than having Jesus physically standing beside us. And I know you hear that and like, there is no way that makes sense. There is no way that not having Jesus beside us is a better thing. But that's not my idea. Two chapters later in this passage, Jesus is going to say in John 16, 7. It is to your advantage that I go away. For if I did not go away, the helper would not come. So Jesus is looking at the disciples and says, Guys, my leaving is actually a really good thing for you. Like me going to the Father is a good thing. And that's hard for us to believe because for many of us, it's like, wouldn't it just be better if Jesus was physically standing beside us? Like, think about what life would be like. Think about how much confidence we would have if you know Jesus is sitting in the pasture's seat when you're Driving down I-40. Or Jesus is in your office when you're taking that phone call. Or Jesus is beside you when you're going to the bathroom and run out of toilet paper and he can go get you something from the garage. I mean, when we think about what life would be like with Jesus beside us, it can either give us a level of of fear. It's like, man, what have I done that Jesus would be sane? Or it gives us a level of confidence, being like, hey, God is with me right now. But What Jesus says is, you don't just have God beside you, you have the Holy Spirit in you. And Jesus gives us an amazing image of what this looks like and how secure his presence is. He says, I will not leave you as orphans. Man, in the first century, orphans were some of the lowest of the low. And they couldn't care for themselves, they couldn't defend themselves, they had no money, they had no possessions, and the disciples were afraid that with Jesus leaving, that they would end up just like orphans. That they would end up all on their own, defenseless. And maybe this morning that's how you feel. And if you're really honest, you got in the car this morning, you drove here, and you're putting on a smile, and honestly, you feel defenseless. Man, you feel like you're in the middle of something and you are all alone. And what Jesus is saying then and saying now is that he will not leave us as orphans, but they will be his child and you can be his child. And he's coming to them. Not that they're coming to him, because that's the story of the gospel: that God has come to us, that God stepped out of heaven, Jesus put on skin and bone and lived the life that we could not live, and died the death that we deserve so that we could have life. In him. And when you were alone, when you had no hope and no future, Jesus found you in the middle of that, came to us and adopted us as his child. And when God brings you into his family, he does not foster you for a season. He adopts you and brings you in forever. And Jesus doesn't look at us and pat us on the head and say, Hey, good luck figuring out how to live as my child. He gives us the Holy Spirit and helps us. Live like we belong to the family and follow him. Man, the Holy Spirit, having the Holy Spirit, means you have help to listen to Jesus. Let's keep reading. Verse 21. Jesus says this: whoever has my commands and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. Then Judas, not Iscariot. So I think when John is writing this, this Judas comes to John and is like, Hey, can you just make sure that everybody understands? There's two of us, and I'm not that one. He says to him, Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not the world? And Jesus answered him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word. And the Father will love him, and he will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my word, and the word that you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me. These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Jesus looks at the disciples and he says, if you love him, you will keep his commandments. Many times we see this as we're doing this to earn God's favor, but it's the exact opposite. We obey God, we follow what Jesus says because we've already been adopted as his child. Man, we're following him out of love and obedience as an adopted child, and the Holy Spirit is helping us do it. And when we start talking about the Holy Spirit, and we don't have time to go really in depth on this, you guys will hear in a couple weeks as you continue on in your series in the book of John. But when we start talking about the Holy Spirit, there are many ways where we don't get the full story correct. I mean, if you grew up real Baptist, okay, there's some weird thoughts about the Holy Spirit. You grew up real Baptist, when someone starts lifting their hands in praise. While singing, a real Baptist goes and grabs the casserole dish out of the pantry and leaves, and they say, We're freaking out a little bit. Or you go to the other side of the aisle and Pentecostals feel the air conditioning kick on and start speaking in tongues and saying, God is here right now. Man, those are two drastically opposite sides of the spectrum, and neither one of them fully gets what the Holy Spirit does and fully express what he does. Man, the Holy Spirit does many things, empowers us, teaches us, points. Points to Jesus, he helps, he comforts, he guides, he listens. But what he does here is what John says is he brings to remembrance what Jesus has said to us. I mean, he helps you do what Jesus tells you to do. But there are two ways that people tend to get this wrong. One way is that we know what Jesus says and we ignore it. That's just called disobedience. And we know what Jesus says, but we refuse to do what God tells us to do. We put ourselves over God's word and say, God, I know what you say about love, about sex, about money, about relationships, about all of our life, but I'm gonna do better. I know better than you. I'm gonna do it my own way. And we all do that at times, but my fear is that we do the other much more. And the other is that we obey Jesus' commands without loving him. And that's called religion and legalism. Like we do the right things. We check all the boxes. You come to church, you serve, you give some money every week, but our heart is far from God. Like you come to church on Sunday, you say you're a good person, you don't cheat on your taxes, you've only been to prison once. Like you feel like you're a really good person. But you are a sinner separated from God, and you think that your goodwill will get you into heaven, and it never will. Religion wears you out trying to earn what Jesus has already paid for. The question is not: are you following rules and following the commandments? The question is, are you loving? Man, keeping the commandments of God is not working your way to God, but it's the outflow, it is the overflow of the Spirit working in you and the love that you have for God. Man, the religious rulers in the New Testament, they followed the rules, they followed the commandments, but they were separated from God because they did not love him. Guys, Jesus is not after your obedience without your love. He wants your love and your obedience. And in your life, Jesus is either Lord of all. or not Lord at all. And here's where fear can play a massive factor in this. Sometimes the reason we don't obey Jesus isn't because we don't know what he said. The reason we don't obey is because we're afraid of what would happen if we actually do what he says. Man, the Holy Spirit helps us do what he says and remember it. And every week, the Holy Spirit is speaking to us and moving in our life. And one way he does that is every week being here under the word being preached. Man, as preachers, what we can do every single week is we can open expose you to the Bible, but only the Holy Spirit can expose the Bible to you. Like every week, the pastor is here can get up and open up the Bible and tell you what it says, but the Holy Spirit is the one who has. Has to do the work in you, has to open your eyes to the scripture. Think about it. These guys, the disciples, had been with Jesus for three years. They had sat with him. They had heard him say all these things. And what Jesus says is: hey, you still need the Holy Spirit to explain everything that's going on here. You still need him to bring the word up in your heart and press it into him. And if they needed that, how much more do we? Man, we need the Spirit to do that. And Jesus says in verse 23 that if you love him, God will make his home with you. And that's kind of the story of the Bible boiled down. The story of the Bible can be boiled down to three words: God with us. And in Genesis chapter 1 and 2, God creates everything. And God is walking with Adam and Eve in the garden. God is with them. And then sin enters the world. And then his presence dwells among the people of Israel in the tabernacle and in the temple. But they could not go into it. They could only get so close to the presence of God. And then Jesus come and John says that God literally dwelt among us. And now what Jesus is saying is something even more incredible. That through the Holy Spirit, God is not just going to dwell among his people, he is going to dwell in his people. And then when we get to the end of the Bible in Revelation 21, it says the dwelling place of God is with man. From Eden to eternity. The story of the Bible is God bringing his people to himself. The God of the universe is not far off, but will come and make his home with you. Like, think about that. Think about the supremacy of God. That the God who spoke all of this into existence, the God who holds your breath, who spun the galaxies, the stars, who controls the weather, controls every single thing and holds all of that in the palm of his hand, showing that it's not everything to him. It's just a little thing right here. That God is making his home in you. Man, the disciples feared that they would be abandoned, but what Jesus is saying is that they are actually going to become God's dwelling place the same way if you place faith in Jesus, you are this morning. And the word Jesus uses for dwelling place and home here in verse 23 is the same word he used back in verse 2 when he said, In my father's house are many rooms. Man, think about how John 14 begins. It's something you guys talked about just a couple of weeks ago. And if you missed it, man, don't miss out being here every week. You need to be here to hear the word preached, to gather, to take communion together, to worship God as a community. And if you're not here and something Happens, man. Watch the sermon online. Catch up to what God is doing in this church. But you need to make it a priority. Because two weeks ago, you guys were talking about John 14 and the beginning of this passage where Jesus says, Hey, I'm going to prepare a place for you. I'm going to go to the Father to prepare a place for you. But before this chapter ends, he says the Father and the Son are going to come and make their home in the believer. It's like there's two things going on at the same time. It's like Jesus is standing here with keys saying, Hey, I'm going to go get you a room ready in my dad's house. But until that happens, until it's ready, I'm moving in with you right now into your house. And that's the picture we get in John 14: that Jesus is preparing a home for us with God. While God is making his home with us. And Jesus isn't only preparing a place for his kids and for us someday. Through the Holy Spirit, God is making his dwelling with us right now, with his presence in us. And God's presence in us should lead to obedience from us. But here's the question the disciples are asking. They're like, Jesus, I get it. I get that you're leaving, that you're, that things are about to change, that the Holy Spirit is coming. We know what you're doing. But what do we do when tomorrow comes and you're not standing beside us? Like, what do we do? And Jesus begins in verse 27. He says, This peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Let your not your hearts be troubled, don't let them be afraid. You've heard me say, I'm going away, and I will come to you. If you love me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, and the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, I've told you all these things, so that when it does take place you may believe. And I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. Rise. Let us go from here. And having the Holy Spirit in you means you do not have to fear the future. And Jesus does not promise the disciples and us better circumstances. In fact, for the disciples, their circumstances are about to get a lot worse. And within an hour, Jesus is going to be arrested. He's going to be tried. He's going to be crucified and die. And many of these disciples, actually all of them, will end up facing persecution and death for following Jesus as Lord of their life. And Jesus doesn't look at them and say, Don't be afraid because nothing bad is going to happen. He says, Don't be afraid because I'm going to be with you in the middle of it. And he says, I will give you peace. And what is peace? Like when we, if you look at the dictionary definition and the way the world is. finds peace. It defines peace as a state of tranquility or quiet, free from disquieting or oppressive thoughts. But according to scripture, peace is not just feeling calm. Peace does not require calm circumstances. It is not the removal of trouble, but is the presence of Christ in the midst of trouble. And there is a difference between peace and happiness. Jesus is never promising happiness here, but what he is promising is his peace. And for some of you, this is not just a theatrical thing or hypothetical thing. You walked in here this morning, and what you need is God to meet you in the middle of what you're walking through. Man, I'm there. I am there. Yesterday I spent I spent the morning with my grandma and my family, as she is dying right now. And right now I need peace. And maybe you're here this morning and you're facing a diagnosis and you don't know what you're going to do or you're dealing with some real kid pain and you're like, God, I just need you in the middle of that, and you don't know what's going to happen. But if you belong to Jesus, you know who is with you. And that's the kind of peace Jesus is talking about. The world wants us to be happy and have like peace. But the way the world wants us to have peace is by manufacturing it, by taking control of our situation, by having more information, more self-reliance, rather than resting in the presence and the promise of God. It would try to have us drown out whatever is making us anxious. So a couple of weeks ago, I broke my AirPods and I bought new AirPods from Costco, because Costco's awesome. And when I got my AirPods, I put them in I was walking down the road and I reached up and I tapped my AirPod. Come to find out AirPods now have noise canceling AirPods and so I hit it and all of a sudden I thought I went deaf. I heard nothing. There was a plane going by, couldn't hear it. My kid was screaming, I didn't hear it. The dog was barking, didn't hear it. And I was like, okay, this is it God. Here we go. And then nothing happened. And then I took the AirPods out and I'm like okay I'm not going deaf Apple just makes some really good AirPods and I'm kind of dumb and didn't know it. And so, but what it did is in that moment, everything around me was drowned out. Like I couldn't hear the dog, I couldn't hear the kids screaming, I couldn't hear an airplane. But nothing in the world had actually changed. I just drowned it out. And ignored it. And that's what the world tries to do with anything that brings anxiety to us is to ignore it, to push it to the side, to drown it out with something else. And maybe for you that's more money, and maybe it's more control, and maybe it's it's more drinks to make you not feel anything at all. The world will try to drown out the anxiety and the stress that we have and give us a false sense of peace on our own. But Jesus offers something completely Different. His peace does not depend on drowning out the problem. His peace can exist while the problems remain. Jesus tells us, do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. And this is not the first time God has said this to his people. If you look back in the Old Testament, in the book of Joshua, Joshua is coming and he's helping Moses lead the people, and all of a sudden Moses dies, and Joshua is standing on the edge of the promised land about To take the people in, to have to fight battles and take control of the land God had promised to the people of Israel. And Moses, who had led the people out of captivity, is dead. And if I'm Joshua, I am freaking out. And Joshua probably is too. And God speaks to him in Joshua 1-9 and says this. Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not be frightened and do not be dismayed, and see why Joshua can be cur courageous. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. I don't know if you've ever been whitewater rafting. I went a couple of years ago. And whitewater rafting is one of those terrifying things that makes no sense, like flying, because what you do is you go to this little shack on the side of a raging river, and a 20-year-old dude named Alston. Gives you a piece of paper that says, Hey, I need you to sign this, which pretty much says, if you die, that's between you and God, okay? And then he gives you a helmet that probably hasn't been cleaned since 1967. And he gives you two little oars, and he puts you in a rubber raft and said and and puts you in the water. And you're sitting there thinking, something about this just don't seem right. But then something changes. Because he doesn't stand on the side of the water and say, Hey buddy, good luck. I hope you figure it out. Hey, just have fun. No, what he does is he steps off the side and he gets in the boat with you. And everything has changed because he knows the river. He knows the rapids. He knows when you need to dig in. He knows when you need to turn. He knows exactly what you need to do. The rapids are still real. The danger is still real. The water is still moving. But you Not alone in it. And that's what God is telling Joshua here. But God does not give Joshua a map of everything that's going to happen. What God gives Joshua is in Himself. And when God does not say, Joshua, don't be afraid because the battles are going to be easy. Don't be afraid because no matter what happens, I'm going to be with you. Man, the answer to fear is not better, better circumstances, it is a greater awareness of who is with you in the middle of those circumstances. And for Joshua, man, God's presence was there. But what Jesus says here to the disciples in John 14 is greater. That God will not just be with them wherever they go, but that the Holy Spirit would be in them. You do not know have to know what tomorrow holds when you know who holds tomorrow and who is in you. And you don't have to be afraid because you will never face tomorrow alone. And God never promised a predictable future, but he always promised his presence. And his presence gives us a peace the world cannot manufacture. Peace that is not grounded in, peace is grounded in the person and work of Jesus Christ, not in the circumstances we find ourselves in. But many times, if we're Christians, we're honor and we're honest, we still find ourselves anxious. We still find ourselves being like, God, I don't have the peace that you say I get when I trust in the Holy Spirit. And many times, trust in you and have the Holy Spirit. And many times, that's because what we have done is we have taken God out of the driver's seat of our life and we have placed ourselves there and started becoming anxious because we keep going deeper and deeper into the things that are worrying us and stressing us out. We feed fear and anxiety by rehearsing the possibilities more than we rehearse the promises of God. And I can sp if you're like me, you can spend hours thinking through every possible situation, everything that could happen, rather than spending time praying and trusting God in the middle of it and remembering what He said is true. And then Jesus tells them something else. He says, I am telling you all of this now, so that when it all happens, You won't think that everything falls apart. That's my translation of it. What he says is, I'm telling you this now because things are going to get worse. And he's giving the disciples and he's giving us an interpretive framework for what's about to happen before we get into it. It's like when you go flying, if you're crazy, and the pilot looks at you and says, Well, he doesn't look at you, the pilot comes on and says, Hey, in about five minutes, we're going to hit some turbulence. What that does, if you're like me, you're still freaking out. But if you're a normal, insane person, when you hit that turbulence, you're not as anxious. Because you're like, hey, there's somebody who knows what's going on, someone who's in control, and has already seen me and prepared me for this. And what Jesus says is, hey, when everything looks bad, I'm telling you this now so you can be prepared. Because what's going to happen is going to look like defeat. It is going to look like everything has gone wrong. Jesus is going to be arrested. He's going to be tried. He's going to die. And it's going to look like Satan has won. But what Jesus is saying is: hey, Satan's not taking my life away from me. I am laying it down out of obedience to the Father. Man, the cross is the ultimate proof that you cannot always interpret your circumstances. You cannot always interpret God's faithfulness by your present circumstances. If you looked at the cross on that Friday at 3 p.m., you would have thought that everything went wrong. In reality, it was exactly what God had planned. And then Jesus ends this passage. And he says one of my favorite things. He says all of this to them about the Holy Spirit, about the persecution, the trouble they're going to deal with. And he says, Rise. Let's go from here. And the reason he does that is because he gives them this peace, not so that they can be comfortable, but he gives them peace so that they can move forward in obedience. Peace has not been given to make us comfortable. Jesus gives us peace so you can move in obedience. Jesus has just told them that love for him leads to following him as Lord of their life and is modeling that perfectly for him as he's going to the cross out of obedience to the Father. And he is not waiting or making excuses. Sometimes what we call waiting on God is really delaying obedience because we're afraid of what obedience might cost us. And fear Often disguises itself as saying, I'm trying to figure out what God wants me to do. When in reality God's made it abundantly clear what we need to do, we're just waiting until obedience feels safe. So here's the question I have for you. And this is the application for us today from this text. What next step has Jesus already made clear that fear is keeping you from obeying? Maybe for you. It's being willing to share the gospel with the person you work with or invite them to church with you. Maybe it's ending the relationship you knew you should not be in in the first place. Maybe for you, it is actually trusting Jesus with your generosity and being generous with your time, talent, and your treasure. Maybe for you, it's being willing to put your yes on the table as God may lead you to go on a church plant or may lead you to leverage. Your life and live sent to see the nations reached with the gospel. Or maybe for you this morning, it's that you surrender your life to the Lordship of Jesus Christ for the very first time. But I just want to talk to you this morning. If you have never placed faith in Jesus, you sh and you are feeling fearing, feeling fearful this morning, you should. Because you are alone. Without Jesus having saved you, you do not have the Holy Spirit in you. The promise here isn't for everybody, it's for those who have placed faith in Jesus. And maybe you're here this morning and you're afraid and you're fearful because you don't have the Holy Spirit in you. You don't have Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior. And you should feel that way. Because you will live the rest of your life and die and spend eternity separated from God. But the thing is, it does not have to stay that way. The Jesus we've been talking about all morning came for you. He lived the life that you could not live, and he died the death that you deserved and rose from the grave, conquering hell, death, and the grave, and is willing to bring you into his family. He stands with arms wide open, ready to welcome you into the family of God if you trust him. If you admit that you're a sinner, you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary to save you, and confess him as Lord of your life, you can place faith in Jesus right now. And I just want to plead with you. And if you've never done that, don't let another day pass without placing faith in Jesus. And I can say this because yesterday I have shared the gospel with my grandma many times. But I'm standing there beside my grandma, and I asked my dad and my grandma's boyfriend to leave the room and look at her in the eye and say, Hey, I know you've been a believer. I know you walked away from Jesus. I know you were baptized at one point, but right now I just want to make sure that you know where you're going if you when you die. Do you admit that you're a sinner? Do you believe that Jesus has done everything necessary to save you? You confess him and Lord of your life. If you're here this morning, I beg of you. Will you do the same thing? You place faith in Jesus. Because he stands ready to bring you in and never to leave you as an orphan, make you his child. Maybe for you, if you've done that today, and your next step is believers' baptism, is going in the waters and saying and confessing to everyone around you that Jesus is Lord of my life. And you have the opportunity to do that. You can talk to the pastors, you can talk to anybody here about what it would look like to go forward in obedience and baptism and what it looks like to follow Jesus as Lord. And I ask you, and is today that day for you? What step of obedience is Jesus calling you to take? And right now, and maybe you're fearful. You're fearful because you don't know what's going to happen when you take it. Would you do anything different if you knew the God of the universe was standing beside you? That God is in you if you place faith in Jesus. And I'm not saying this as just being a guy with the Bible, I'm saying this as someone who's been living this out. Not always well, but someone who's been wrestling with God and and dealing with some big decisions over the past couple months. And it kind of boils down to God, do I love you and I'm and am I willing to follow you in obedience? God never has promised us a predictable future, but he has always promised us his presence. You don't have to know what happens after you take the step of obedience. You have to just know who goes with you when you do. And you can trust him. Whatever that step is, trust Jesus, take the step, and follow in the direction he has. Let's pray. God, we thank you. God, we thank you that you are a good and heavenly Father who loves us. Who does not just love us to leave us, but God, you loved us enough to bring us as your child, to give us the Holy Spirit so we know what to do, to know what steps we need to take. God, to follow you in obedience. And Lord, I pray for every single person here, God, that they trust in you in deeper ways, that they follow you in obedience into whatever you're calling them to do. And God, if it's someone here this morning who has never placed faith in you, God, I pray that they do that right now. God, that they admit that. They're sinner, they believe that you have done everything necessary to save them, and we confess you as Lord of their life. God, for all of us. God, I pray, whatever that next step of obedience is, that you give us the strength and the courage to do it, knowing that we're not alone, but that you are with us. Lord, we love you, we praise you, and we thank you. And the church says, Amen.

John 14 · chapter mention John 14 · chapter mention 1 John 2:1 Genesis 1 · chapter mention