Latest / REZ CHURCH Podcast / Hope For Your Home - July 20, 2025

Transcript

Hope For Your Home - July 20, 2025 · REZ CHURCH Podcast

0:22
Good morning. My name is Daniel.
0:25
I'm going to lead pastors here at Resurrection Church.
0:27
How about the youth band today, huh?
0:32
You got you bring your kids on on Wednesday nights and that is
0:37
junior high and high school band, worship band that played
0:40
and sang for you today, LED you in worship.
0:42
That's pretty awesome. Hey, I, I was staring at my
0:45
youngest kid just the other day and I was thinking kind of
0:48
through this concept. I think that raising kids in
0:51
2025 might actually be harder than at any other time in
0:56
history. Just so I want you to think
0:59
about this. Up until about 150 years ago,
1:02
you could have like 10 kids throw them outside and like, as
1:08
long as they got like, I mean, you could like they're, they're
1:10
working on the farm and all that.
1:13
You, if you, if you gave them hugs, food and discipline, they
1:17
probably turned out OK. But man, it is not that way
1:21
anymore. Did you know studies actually
1:25
say that we are spending more time paying attention to our
1:28
kids than at any other time that we've tracked in history and
1:32
we're getting worse results? That's wild.
1:37
Well, in fact, why is that? If we're spending more time,
1:39
why, why are we getting well here?
1:41
Here's what I would submit to you.
1:43
I, I would, I would tell you that the, the, the forces at
1:47
work shaping our kids are more present, more powerful, more
1:51
all-encompassing than they've ever been.
1:53
Like social media and Internet and, and streaming content is
1:56
kind of just everywhere. And all of a sudden all of this
2:00
stuff has this ability to develop our kids, whether we
2:05
like it or not. Our, our culture has taken over
2:10
as one of the primary developers of our kids.
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And I'll just tell you that is not good news.
2:16
So, so, so we're seeing in kids in preteen and teens the highest
2:21
levels of preteen depression, the highest levels of anxiety
2:25
and self harm rates in history as as a parent.
2:32
Like some days it feels like the entire world is stacked against
2:37
me as a parent. Not enough time, not enough
2:41
training, not enough money, and certainly not enough energy.
2:49
It feels almost hopeless. Some wise person once said we
2:56
can live about 40 days without food, about 3 days without
3:00
water, about 8 minutes without air, but not a single second
3:05
without hope. And we have some good reasons to
3:10
be discouraged. Discouragement is a universal
3:14
disease, and we all get discouraged.
3:17
Has anyone in here felt discouraged in the last two
3:18
months? You either are raising your hand
3:22
or you're lying in church. I mean, all the introverts are
3:29
like, I don't want to do either. Howard Hendricks said that
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discouragement is the anaesthetic that the devil uses
3:36
on a person right before he reaches in and carves out their
3:39
heart. When you get discouraged, a lot
3:45
of bad things tend to follow in your life.
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Parents, we are raising the next generation of the world in our
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homes right now. What we're shaping the future of
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of the city of Bakersfield, the, the, the, the future of this
4:01
country in our living rooms and in our kitchens.
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I, I want my kids to grow up to have a better chance than I did,
4:08
to make better choices than I did.
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And so as a parent, if you're a parent in this room or if you're
4:13
raising kids in this room, I want you to know the what you do
4:15
matters. I know that it matters to you.
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I know that your kids matter to you.
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But I want you to know that your kids matter to us too, at this
4:27
church. They matter to us.
4:30
And therefore your encouragement matters.
4:33
There is real genuine hope for your home, and I want to share
4:39
it with you today. But to talk about real hope, I
4:42
think it would be important to name the problem.
4:45
So let's start here. Do you ever feel like like
4:48
everything is uphill? I don't mean the story your
4:51
parent told you about how they had to walk uphill to school
4:53
both ways. I don't in the snow in
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Bakersfield, you know, I mean, do you ever feel like life is
5:03
just uphill? Like everything's uphill.
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Like parenting, relationships, marriage, life, work, fitness.
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It's uphill. Like it's just, it's all hard.
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It's all a trudge. The Bible says that's true.
5:19
But the Bible also says that it didn't start that way, that in
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the very beginning when Guy created this world and he put us
5:26
in it, that it wasn't that way, that that humanity did not
5:29
experience death or pain in that way.
5:32
In fact, we, we walked and talked in a garden with God, in
5:36
close relationship with God. But it was humanity, it was Adam
5:40
and Eve who chose to rebel against God when they bought a
5:43
lie from Satan that they didn't need God.
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And as a result, death for humanity entered into the world
5:53
in the form of a curse. That's that's what Genesis 3
5:57
tells us. Here's just a couple lines from
6:00
that curse. To the woman, he said, I will
6:03
surely multiply your pain in childbearing.
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Can I get a name in Almost. You almost know what it's like
6:09
for a man to have a cold. And to Adam, he said he's just
6:18
going to keep trucking on that one.
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And Adam, he said cursed is the ground because of you in pain.
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You shall eat of it all of the days of your life.
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This is when work became hard and not fulfilling.
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Thorns and thistles that she'll bring forth for you.
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And you shall eat the plants of the field.
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Death, pain, toil, work that is frustrating separation from God.
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That event in history is called the Fall, and you and I now live
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in a fallen world under the curse of sin, born into sin and
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death, struggling uphill because things all went wrong.
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And so that feeling that you have, that frustration that you
7:03
have, you are not alone. Look around you.
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Everybody was raising their hand.
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We all feel that when, when, when I was a younger parent and
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we only had two kids at that point.
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And, and I was, you know, I'm working a job and I'm trying to
7:24
raise kids and, and trying to figure out this marriage thing.
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And no matter how hard I worked, it felt like I didn't ever get
7:30
ahead. And no matter how much I, I
7:32
thought I was trying to be a good dad, I always felt like a
7:33
bad dad. And no matter how hard I tried
7:36
to work in marriage, it always felt like I was failing.
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And so, so no matter what I was doing, I just remember one night
7:42
so frustrated and everything revolved around my life.
7:45
Like everything in my life I was frustrated with.
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I was so angry. And I remember yelling at my
7:50
wife like, like, as if somehow it was her fault.
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But oftentimes we take out frustration on people that are
7:55
closest to us. And I remember just screaming, I
7:58
don't know what you want. I don't know how to do this.
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Maybe you can relate to that. And so if you'll give me the
8:10
next 20 minutes or so, I'm going to tell you that the Bible has
8:13
phenomenal hope for you today. Great hope for you today.
8:20
If you don't remember anything else from this sermon today,
8:21
remember this line, this, this one point that we're going to,
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we're going to see in this text. Hope isn't real unless it really
8:28
fixes me. Hope isn't real unless it really
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fixes me. We're going to turn to a letter
8:35
in the Bible called Colossians. It was written by a follower of
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Jesus name Paul to encourage an entire church in the city of
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Kalasai that was going through some suffering.
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They're going through some conflict.
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And he wants them to know that there is real hope, like genuine
8:50
hope. Not, not, not some of the not
8:53
there. In fact, in that time there was
8:54
some scams from some religious groups trying to sell people on
8:57
some stuff. And so he's going to
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simultaneously say, no, that ain't right.
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And let me tell you what real hope is.
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And so in probably the most famous line in that whole
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letter, Colossians 127, he says this to them.
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God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the
9:16
riches of his glory, of this mystery, which is Christ in you,
9:24
the hope of glory, Christ in you, the hope of glory.
9:33
You see, in Paul's day, there were these false teachers in, in
9:37
a lot of these cities in the 1st century, but particularly in
9:40
this one that were, were selling the people on this idea that
9:43
there would be real hope if, if they would do all of these
9:47
religious things and they'd be part of these special clubs,
9:50
that there would be this, this mysterious hidden knowledge that
9:53
they had that no one else had. And all they had to do was earn
9:56
it through a whole series of religious exercises.
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And so Paul is going to, he's going to come into the he's
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going to write this letter to this church and go, no, no, that
10:05
is not true. There's no secret religious
10:07
knowledge, and you certainly can't earn it.
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However, there is a mystery, or there was.
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And the mystery was how God would fix our broken world.
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That was a mystery. You know why?
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Because it wasn't the way anyone expected it to be.
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It was a surprise. My my youngest child is my son
10:28
Quentin. And when he was about 7 years,
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he's always been a really expressive kid.
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If you know him like you know, he's, he's a pretty expressive
10:34
kid, but but he was about 7 years old.
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We were watching this show and there was like this big plot
10:39
twist, like this crazy ending right at the end where it was
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not what we were expecting. We were watching it as a 7 year
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old. I remember his eyes get really
10:45
big and he goes, whoa, and he looks at me and goes plot twist.
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And he goes, I did not see that coming.
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I was like, well, you're 7. So I mean, Paul says that the,
11:00
the way that God would fix the problem, the, the hope for the
11:04
world was a plot to us. It was a shocker.
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And so we're going to look at three, what I think are shocking
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things about how God chose to fix the problem and give us
11:14
hope. And I want to, I want to drill
11:16
in on the details because I think, man, God will encourage
11:20
you today. Like, like as you begin to see
11:23
who he is, he will encourage you.
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I need encouragement. If you need encouragement today,
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say me, OK, we're in the right place #1 The first way that the
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first shocking thing about how God would fix this world and
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give us hope is this. God's hope is humble.
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God's hope is humble. That was shocking.
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The first thing that would shock everybody about how God would
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take care of this problem was the humility.
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Jesus was born into poverty. He's the son of a Carpenter.
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He he multiple times refused an earthly crown.
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Jesus would voluntarily die for us.
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That does not sound very regal or mighty.
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Sounds very humble. God's hope is humble, and that
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means that God is not some distant faraway God who some
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elitist God that doesn't doesn't really care about us like like
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some God from Greek mythology that's just looking down on all
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of us like ants in an Ant farm. No, no, God came down and was
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with us. That means that God is near.
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That means that God became human, means that he can relate
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to our suffering. And that's good news, because
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that means he understands our pain.
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So God's new. God's hope is humble, but God's
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hope is also different, because God's hope is himself.
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It was God himself who came. He didn't create a fix or a
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solution and send it. He came.
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Of all the ways to fix the problem, God coming himself was
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a shocker. Jesus lived a perfect life
12:59
without sin. That's the life that you and I
13:03
should have lived, but we couldn't do it.
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And then he went and voluntarily died on a cross to pay a penalty
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for sin. That's the death we should have
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died but didn't. You know, God couldn't have put
13:18
his hope in me or you because we couldn't have done it.
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We, we, we can't save humanity. I can't figure out how to save
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coupons from being real. Certainly wasn't going to save
13:32
humanity, but God can and did. It was Jesus that had the power
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not only to live that way, but but to be raised from the dead
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three days later. And that wasn't an accident.
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He literally called his shot ahead of time.
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He's like, I'm going to lay my life down and I'm going to pick
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it up three days later. Like that's power.
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And that, let me tell you why that's such good news, because
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that means that a hope in him is not a hope in some new diet,
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some new politician, some new TikTok dance like that's going
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to fix it. Hope is in a God who came, who
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had the power to fix the problem and has the power to fix the
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problem. Now, the third surprise.
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So God's hope was humble and God's hope was himself.
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But the third surprise is this. God's hope disregards human
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power, disregards human power in order to be saved.
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You can't earn it and you'll never deserve it.
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All you get to do is accept it and see that's the exact
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opposite of of what's happening in this the response that Paul
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has in this letter, he's saying, listen, these these are
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religious groups that are selling you on this concept that
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somehow you're going to earn this secret knowledge is the
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exact opposite of actually what God did because you could never
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earn what he did. The truth of unearned salvation
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strips all earthly power from a person.
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Because when nothing that I can do, no, no talent, no gift, no
15:12
wealth, no ability can earn it, then it makes all of those a bit
15:16
meaningless in the moment. And here's what that means.
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That means that Elon Musk or, or or Jeff Bezos, they don't have
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any more right to the hope than you or I do.
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So they could be a billionaire and it doesn't matter.
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That's good news because I checked my bank account this
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morning that I am not a billionaire yet.
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Maybe. See, I think it's actually
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sometimes the opposite in the Bible talks about this a little
15:46
bit as it sometimes those that are powerful in this world,
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those that are wealthy in this world, those that are talented,
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sometimes they have the hardest time seeing Christ because
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they're so used to relying on themselves.
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Sometimes it's those of us without resources that come to
16:08
Christ the fastest and easiest. You know, a lot of us struggle
16:15
with the idea that the greatest and most precious gift available
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would be free because valuable things always have a cost.
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And that's true. It's just that in this case,
16:28
someone else paid the bill. Amen.
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The prevailing thought at this point in history in the 1st
16:38
century, was that when God came to fix the problem, he was only
16:44
going to fix the problem for this little subset group, this
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small group of people, this minority group of people called
16:49
the Israelites. And so they had spent centuries
16:51
waiting for God to come and save only them.
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But the actual plan as we read the Bible from the very
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beginning was that God would save all people.
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And so this term we see in this verse, Gentile, it just means a
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non Jewish person like you or me.
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It was a people group that was not expecting salvation, was it?
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They didn't have hope that God would come and fix a problem and
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they certainly had done nothing to deserve it.
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It was truly hopeless. That's why it's such good news
17:27
that that that that you and I get to partake that that me a
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Gentile, a non Jewish person, that me a Sinner can receive
17:36
what God is freely giving. So so when Paul points to this
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mystery, he's simply saying, listen, the truth of how God
17:45
would come and restore hope in this world is shocking.
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And while it was a mystery, now it's not.
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Now it's known and then he explains what that hope is, that
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God saves us and we get to understand what he calls the
18:08
riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you,
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the hope of glory. Now why would Christ in me be
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such a blessing? Why would that be such a big
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deal? Like, why would I look at that
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and even care? OK, listen, this is probably the
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most important thing that you will ever hear from the Bible.
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You ready, everybody? You ready?
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OK. This is why it's so important
18:40
because at the end of the day, despite us acknowledging that we
18:45
live in a Dark World, there are lots of problems like the
18:50
economy, the suffering, the evil, right?
18:52
But here's the problem guys. Even if God fixed every one of
18:59
those problems, I still have to deal with the biggest problem in
19:04
my life. Me.
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I'm the problem now. I have plenty of things in this
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world I can look at and point at and I can try to blame, but the
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reality is I'm still broken. I'm still selfish, I'm still
19:21
prideful. I'm still dysfunctional.
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No matter how many external things change, I'm still my own
19:28
worst enemy. That's that's why people can
19:33
become rich and famous and live in luxury and then have the
19:37
highest suicide rate in the country.
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But, but, but you are wealthy and you got famous and you got a
19:46
house. You have all these possessions
19:48
and you have all these things. Why doesn't it actually satisfy
19:51
you? Because we haven't actually
19:53
fixed the problem. Over half of all lottery winners
20:00
go bankrupt in five years. That should just be a little,
20:04
little bit of a yellow flag. Maybe that money ain't going to
20:07
fix all the problems. Even if we fix all of the
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world's problems, this is my question.
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Who's going to fix me? And if you don't think that's a
20:20
problem, I'll just consider this.
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You don't even have to believe in Jesus, You don't even have to
20:27
believe in God to realize that you already have an idea of
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right and wrong. You do.
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It may be a subjective thing that you've come up with, but
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you still have an idea of right and wrong, and you can't live up
20:39
to that standard, your own that you created, You can't live up
20:44
to that. Philosophers across history have
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talked about this phenomenon. CS Lewis said it this way.
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He said human beings all over the earth have this curious idea
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that they ought to behave in a certain way and cannot really
20:58
get rid of it. Secondly, they do not in fact
21:02
behave in that way. So I've created a moral standard
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and I can't live up to that. How's that for being a loser?
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CS Lewis says this. He says these two facts are the
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foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe
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that we live in, that we know there's a moral law and we fail
21:30
to keep it. How can I expect to have hope in
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this broken world when I'm broken, When I'm a hypocrite and
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I can't even live up to my own standard of right and wrong?
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Where's the hope in that? Someone needs to fix me.
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And if someone can fix me, then even if they don't fix the
21:53
world's problems right now, maybe I have a real chance at
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satisfaction and contentment. If nothing else changes but they
22:02
fix me, maybe there's hope. And that's what Christ did.
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He came to change us from the inside out, to save us, to
22:17
change us, And he does that from within.
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Christ in me is the hope of glory.
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I'll give you an example of how unnatural this is at times, how
22:34
almost supernatural this is. You know, earlier this week I
22:37
was really frustrated. I was, in fact, I don't even
22:39
know if I said anything, but I was super, super frustrated with
22:42
my wife. And now here's what normal me
22:44
would do and the sequence of thoughts that I'll go through.
22:47
You may not be able to relate to any of these.
22:49
We'll see. But for most of my life, here's
22:52
where I would have started when I was really frustrated.
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I would have been like, you know what, this needs to really fix
22:56
this problem. Some passive aggressive
22:57
comments. You know, she needs to know that
23:02
I'm frustrated. So, you know, I'm somebody
23:06
language, some facial expressions, some a little
23:09
little passive aggressive, you know, like she I got to, I got
23:12
to get this off my chest. You know, you ever felt like you
23:15
need to get something off your chest?
23:17
OK, so there's a couple honest people in here.
23:20
Appreciate you guys. And so, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm
23:27
in the middle of having kind of the little, maybe again, you've
23:30
never done. I'm having a little pity party
23:32
about how I don't really deserve to be treated this way.
23:34
Anybody. Yeah.
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OK. A couple of you.
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A couple of you. And it's not fair, you know, and
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I need to say something except in this moment, in the midst of
23:46
all these feelings, which are very natural for me.
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And I've had them my whole life. There's this second voice, and
23:53
it does not sound like me at all.
23:55
And you know what it's saying. You do not need to get that off
23:58
your chest. You should keep that on your
23:59
chest. What you need to do is go serve
24:04
your wife. I do not like that.
24:11
No, you need to go serve your wife.
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You need to go serve your wife well.
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But I don't think she deserves it.
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Well, neither do you. Oh, I know who's talking right
24:25
now. Hey.
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Hey. Do you remember how I came for
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you? Do you remember how I found you
24:35
when you were my enemy? Do you remember what you thought
24:38
about me when I saved you? I do.
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I do. Go serve your wife.
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Go serve your wife. So, so in, in the moments which
24:54
are very normal of, of selfishness and pride and pity
24:57
party, I am now compelled to act in a way that is not natural for
25:05
me to get up and go make some coffee and pull the car out and
25:11
help people get rid of like, like why I can in those moments.
25:14
Now, even though there's a, a fleshly side that's super
25:18
frustrated, there's also a knowledge that I live under the
25:21
unearned grace of God. Now, an intellectual
25:28
understanding of God's grace is not enough to compel me.
25:35
I can know some facts, but it's not enough.
25:38
So I have to. Here's why.
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OK, let's be real, because I'm far too selfish for that.
25:47
No, no, something's got to compel me.
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It's got to change me. It's got to actually begin to to
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push and change my desire, the desires of my heart.
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So I have to ask this, what power would it take to compel
26:02
someone like me to act like that?
26:08
Because that's not normal. Christ in me means a
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supernatural power that can change the very desires of my
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heart, the very emotions that are coming out.
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That that's what I mean when I say hope isn't real unless it
26:28
really changes me. Does that make sense to you?
26:36
Like like like, OK, so then then how does this happen?
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Like how do we, how do we go about a change, a real change?
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We're actually want the change. You must surrender to Jesus to
26:53
be changed. There's a whole message of, of
26:56
the gospel. You must surrender.
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Like here's the thing, you don't fix yourself and then come to
27:04
Jesus. You don't clean yourself up and
27:09
then come to G, but that would be like cleaning yourself up and
27:12
then getting in the shower. I don't you're doing it wrong,
27:18
right? But but also it's not enough to
27:20
intellectually know what the shower does.
27:23
If you're standing on the outside of the shower looking at
27:26
it and you know lots of facts about it, it hasn't done
27:30
anything. You got to get in and look in.
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In America because of cultural Christianity, there's tons of
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people showing up once a week staring at the shower.
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I heard a quote this week. It says man if if you teach
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people morals but but they don't know Christ, you're just getting
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tidy unbelievers. You got to know him because only
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he has the power to change you. You got to get in the shower.
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If you're in the youth group, maybe twice.
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You got to get in the shower and you got to let it wash over you
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again and again and again and again.
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If you want real hope. If you want real hope for your
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home. If you want real hope for your
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life, if you want hope that's going to actually solve the
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problem, the problem is me from the inside.
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You have to surrender to God and let Him begin to do work on your
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life. So will you do that?
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No one can push you in the shower.
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That's the way it works. You have to step into the grace
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and the mercy and the hope that God offers.
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If you have never done that before, if you've never
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surrendered your life to God, will you do that today?
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The Bible says you have to place faith in Him in order to be
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saved. Romans 10/9 to 10 would say this
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way. Because if you'll confess with
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your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that
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God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
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For with the heart 1 believes and is justified, and with the
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mouth 1 declares and is saved. Jesus died and was raised from
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death three days later. To offer you this hope, to fix
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the real problem, to offer you a new life as the Lord of your
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life. Listen, I don't know how old you
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are. You've had that many years
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trying to do it on your own. So if you would like to
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surrender to your your life to God today, I want to give you
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that chance. Will you all please bow your
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heads and close your eyes for for just a moment.
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We're going to wrap service up in just a just a second.
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If you're willing to ask God for forgiveness and salvation.
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If you're if you're ready to get in the shower for the first time
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with every eye closed and every head bowed, I just want you to
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quietly say something like this. Jesus, I know I'm a Sinner and I
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can't save myself. I want you to save me and adopt
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me into your family. I surrender everything to you
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when I receive your promise of forgiveness and eternal life.
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Be my Lord, please Jesus. Have you prayed that prayer for
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the very first time? Would you be brave and raise
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your hand for me to see? Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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You put your hands down in Jesus name, Amen.
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All right, real quick, if you just committed your life to
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Jesus for the very first time, welcome to the family in a few
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moments when when we respond to this sermon, we have our prayer
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team up here. We have some tables in the back
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say I raised my hand. We would love to to chat with
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you about what it looks like to have surrendered your life to
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the Lord. I want to celebrate with you.
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We have a gift for you. We're excited for you, for those
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of you in this room that know Christ personally, maybe maybe
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it's because you just surrendered your life to him,
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but maybe, maybe not. Maybe maybe you did it decades
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ago. Ed, you're still overwhelmed.
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And so I want to talk to you for, for the last couple moments
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of the sermon about how the, the hope in Christ, Christ in you,
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the hope of glory, how that works every single day.
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And So what happens is that after you've submitted your life
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to to Christ, after you've said, OK, Christ Jesus, you take over.
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Three things start to happen. And they happen a lot.
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And you need to recognize them so you can lean into them.
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And here's the three things that are going to happen over and
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over and over and over and over and over again.
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Number one, he's going to convict you #2 he's going to
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equip you. And #3 he's going to surround
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you. He's going to equip you.
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I mean, he's going to convict you, equip you, surround you.
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He's going to convict me, equip me and surround me.
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He's going to convict me. He's going to equip me.
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He's going to surround me. Say it with me.
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He's going to convict me, equip me, surround me.
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Now let me explain what I mean. God has placed His Holy Spirit
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inside of you. That is part of the salvation
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process. That's what Christ in me means.
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And one of the primary roles of the Holy Spirit is to be a smoke
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alarm. Everyone knows what a smoke
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alarm is at an incredibly convenient time. 3:00 AM this
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morning, the smoke alarm in my bedroom decided it had a low
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battery. But but what's the whole point
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of a smoke alarm? A smoke alarm is there because,
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hey, there's a potential, there's a fire and that matters
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a lot. And so when the smoke alarm goes
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off, you, you, you're like, hey, we better pay attention that or
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because your dogs are freaking out.
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But either way, we better pay attention.
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We better the whole point of the alarm right is to get your
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attention to go Hey there's danger the Holy Spirit responds
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to sin anything that is contrary to God like a smoke alarm and
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goes hey, there's a problem. Sin is dangerous sin is poison.
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Sin will kill you and as a Christian, it's our job when
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when we hear the Holy Spirit to listen and respond to the Holy
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Spirit. The problem is that in modern
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Christianity, like we, we've we've become this, this group of
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people that are rarely actually responds to the work of the
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Spirit instead of like we actually are really, really good
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at tuning him out. Like really good at going.
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I don't hear anything at all. So much so that like if I ask
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most people right now who, who say I'm a Christian, if I go,
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hey, tell me how you discern the will of God in your life and
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what God's doing in your life right now.
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Like where is he leading? What is he saying?
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What is he doing? Like right now, today on a, on a
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Sunday, most people would go and the fact that we don't have an
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answer is dangerous. The the fact that a lot of us
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would go, I'm not even sure how I would know that's dangerous if
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the Holy Spirit's job is to be a guide so that we stay on a path
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and so that we, we, we're working toward pleasing God and
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staying off the edges where we're going to fall into a pit
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and we can't figure out how to actually respond like that's
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dangerous. Yes, we, we should be the
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experts and hearing and responding to the Holy Spirit
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and, and often times I, I don't think we as a people are doing a
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very good job listening. But how do I, how do I know what
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I should be doing in my life if I don't know where God is
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leading? And how do I know where God is
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leading if I'm not even listening?
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And how do I listen if I filled my life up with so much stuff
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that I have no time to talk to God?
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So, so, so we got to start by asking and having some space to
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listen. Secondly, he equips me.
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So he convicts me, but he also equips me.
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He takes, he takes your gifts and your talents and, and, and
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your experiences and your past and, and often times even your
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pain. And he begins to point it and
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fashion it all towards this calling that he has for you.
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When he saved you, it was not for the JV team.
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It was not to be a spectator in the stands.
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When he saved you, he also simultaneously put his spirit in
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you and he called you into works of ministry.
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There's no such thing as a Christian who's not called to
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works of ministry. It's impossible.
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And so you've got this equipping, you've got these
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talents, you've got these gifts. And listen, God has literally
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looked at you and said, I would like to do a great work in the
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world and I and to accomplish that, I want to use you.
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And so I want to ask you, where is that for you?
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What does that look like? Do you know during WrestleMania,
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one of those super encouraging things, if you got to kind of
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watch what was going on, is we had a, a bunch of older Saints,
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some of them that live in the Manor apartments, just just
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people in their 70s, eighties, 90s serving all week long.
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Come on, right. That's worthy of honor.
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Because let me tell you what you're always going to have,
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You're always going to have excuses why not to serve.
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But you're missing out on one of the most encouraging parts of
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the Christian life when you when you have all of these gifts and
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things that God's given you and you let them sit idle.
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It is tough to find contentment when you won't get in the game.
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Christ in you is the hope of glory.
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God gave you a superpower. Go use it.
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And thirdly, God is going to surround you.
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He's going to convict you. He's going to equip you and he's
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going to surround you because we're going to struggle.
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Amen. We're going to struggle.
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I mean, even as Christians, even as people who love Jesus, we're
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going to, we're going to struggle.
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We're going to struggle with conviction of the Spirit.
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We're going to struggle with the calling.
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We're going to struggle because the world is still broken and
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still evil. So, so, So what do you do when
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you've been, when you've given your life to Jesus and you're,
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and you're, you're trying, you're working on it, but you
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just still overwhelmed by life. Guess what?
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It already happened, and they already wrote about it in
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Hebrews 10/23 through 25. Here's what the author says
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about this struggle. He says this.
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Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering.
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Let us hold fast to this confession of hope.
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For some of you, you just made that confession.
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For some of you made that confession a long time ago.
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For he who promised this faithful.
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And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good
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works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of
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some, but encouraging one another.
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And all the more as you see the day drawing near.
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We don't gather here on Sunday mornings because this is the one
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special day a week that God needs worship.
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We, we, we don't gather on Sunday mornings because you only
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read the Bible on Sundays. I hope we gather on Sunday
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mornings so that we can do that worship and and and and speak
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that truth with one another in order to encourage one another
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and stir each other up. Because it's a Dark World and
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you need encouragement. We need to be reminded of hope.
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We need people to speak truth into our lives and we need each
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other. Nobody does well alone for long
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without support, and all of us need someone cheering for us.
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So there's probably a couple of you here who have neglected
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this. You've been casual about your
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pursuit of Christ, acting like 90 minutes on Sunday morning is
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enough. Let me just tell you, it is not.
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We live in a crooked culture. We need a whole lot more hope
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than this. So what I did is I wrote out
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four things in your handout today, either a separate hand on
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your bulletin, 4 things, four different ways to take a next
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step. Here's the first one.
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I want to be baptized now. Here's the good news baptism,
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which is the very next step you take after making a confession
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of faith in Jesus Christ. It is the public declaration.
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If, if that is the next step for you and you've not done that and
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you're checking that box right now, the good news is you can do
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it today because we're about to do baptisms.
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And so if that's you, all you have to do is walk over to that
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door and we have T-shirts and extra clothes and towels and
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everything else. Secondly, I want to join a
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community group. Man, I need some people in my
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life who know what's going on in my life. 3rd, I want to join a
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team and use my gifts to serve in some way.
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And 4th, I want to become a member.
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We're going to start a membership class on Wednesday,
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Wednesday night when kids come back for youth and for level up.
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We're going to be doing membership.
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And so if you're not a member yet of this church and you want
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to do that, you can, you can check that box as well.
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You can check any of those boxes you'd like and respond.
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Here's what I want you to, I want you to perfectly consider
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in this next moment as we pray and respond, what is it that the
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Lord, the Lord is leading you to today?
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To be sensitive to his Spirit as he leads.
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So we're going to, we're going to get our baptism team ready
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and do some baptisms in just a second as we respond.
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But listen, Christ in you is not only the hope of glory, he's the
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reason that we actually can have real hope for our homes.
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I have AI have a daughter that has run far away from God and
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and her family. And so even as in prayer I plead
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with God for her heart, I also still have tremendous hope for
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what he's going to do because Christ in her will change
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everything. That's my hope.
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And Christ in you will change everything for you too.
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You just have to let him. Our prayer team's going to come
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up right now. And elders, we would love for an
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opportunity to pray with you. And so if you want prayer for
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any reason, if you want prayer as help to respond to any of
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these, the, the parts of this message, we'd love to pray with
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you. If you want to go back to one of
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those tables because you just made a profession of faith, we
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would love to talk to you. If you believe that God is
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calling you to be baptized, this is the next step.
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We would love for you to come up and we'll help you with that
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too. If you just want prayer, that's
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an awesome reason to come on up, stand with us.
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We're going to close in this song and some baptisms.
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And you respond as the Lord leads you.
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We love you.