Speaker 1: Hey, what up?
Speaker 1: It's Mark Carter.
Speaker 1: I'm the pastor of Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm so pumped that you're able to join us today.
Speaker 1: I hope this encourages you, inspires you, strengthens you, gives you hope to keep pressing on, and it's my prayer that this sermon gives you a more expansive view of God's love for you.
Speaker 1: Enjoy the message.
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine.
Speaker 1: There was a medium-sized town and this town had a local painter and the painter was really good, and so they were so excited about his paintings that they built him a museum.
Speaker 1: They're going to show off his paintings.
Speaker 1: And as they got it up and running, they decided you know, we need is, we need a little gift shop.
Speaker 1: People can take something home.
Speaker 1: And they said well, you know what else we need.
Speaker 1: I mean, people are here for a while.
Speaker 1: Why don't we make a little little playground and maybe a carousel and all that kind of?
Speaker 1: Let's put all that in here?
Speaker 1: And as the years went by, they kept building on more and more and more until finally somebody came around and said hey, whatever happened to all those paintings that were a part of this?
Speaker 1: And the director had to admit well, you know, we had to make room for the water slide and all the circus animals, and so we just don't have the painting anymore.
Speaker 1: That's an illustration of sometimes how the main thing can be swallowed up and overshadowed by kind of peripheral things or exterior things.
Speaker 1: Christmas, as you know, is a big deal all around the world right now.
Speaker 1: Billions of people celebrate Christmas and they change, they turn their lives upside down, don't they Like if it's starting for a whole month of the year and at the end of Thanksgiving they give themselves to entirely different things.
Speaker 1: They tear down their homes and they put up all kinds of Christmassy stuff.
Speaker 1: They go see special kind of ritualistic movies that they watch all the time.
Speaker 1: They listen to different songs.
Speaker 1: They travel to places they go to only occasionally.
Speaker 1: They do special events, food events, events, events, people events.
Speaker 1: I don't know what your favorite thing is, but I'll bet you there's a favorite thing that you've got that comes around on Christmas.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's two or three things, but it's either like event-based, meaning you're going to a special thing and you really like that thing, you really like that restaurant, you really like to go to that experience, maybe it's a movie or whatever, or maybe it's people-based there's certain people that you get to see, or maybe you're one of these ones.
Speaker 1: This is the time I don't have to see anybody and so you get to just stay away from everybody and that's all fantastic.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it's a food thing, like, oh, I can't wait till we have this.
Speaker 1: There's just something about it, like there's something probably somewhere that you like this about the season, even if you hate all the rest of the season.
Speaker 1: There's something, probably, that you appreciate.
Speaker 1: For me, that usually is a moment it happens right after the Carter family opens presents on Christmas morning.
Speaker 1: The kids then they go off and do what they're doing.
Speaker 1: My wife goes into the kitchen.
Speaker 1: She makes a delicious breakfast.
Speaker 1: Sometimes she makes crepes with lingonberries and it's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 1: But anything she makes is amazing.
Speaker 1: But in that moment, that's where I get to chillax and I go up into my little space with God and I breathe deep after several days of Christmas Eve shenanigans and getting ready, and then I just reflect on what God has done and how, in his mercy, even amidst all the trials that we all go through, he's remained faithful and blessed me through one more year.
Speaker 1: I don't know what yours is, I don't know what you do, but then I start to think as we get into January, wow, like there's a lot of bad in the world still, like we just did all that all over again and there's still a lot of bad.
Speaker 1: Like the war in Ukraine still happens, and like things like ISIS and October 7th and you know, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, and you can go on.
Speaker 1: Think of your own lifetime, how much bad stuff has happened just in your own lifetime.
Speaker 1: Just the things that have just like, wow, that's horrible, that's horrific that that's happening on planet Earth.
Speaker 1: And as we gain more access to different spheres of the world, we're just more amazed by how much bad is going on.
Speaker 1: And so we can begin to look at something like Christmas and say what are we doing?
Speaker 1: Like, what does this do?
Speaker 1: Because there's kind of like this little myth in the background somewhere that Christmas, you know, it's kind of like we all go in and you hear it in the movies, you hear it in something that somebody says or what you're watching, that says well, you know, christmas, if we could all just come together and all pull together and one more time and everybody just kind of release the good that's in them, you know, then the world will be a better place, and I hear that every year, but the world doesn't get better.
Speaker 1: Like nothing really changes.
Speaker 1: And so is that really what Christmas is about?
Speaker 1: Is it all just like kind of like, hey, let's give ourselves some solace, that if everyone really tried harder, things would be better?
Speaker 1: I want to submit to you that that's really not the message at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, the real message of Christmas, the real message is not hey, man, let's all hang together and maybe we'll get a little bit better.
Speaker 1: The real message of Christmas is yo, things are so bad that the only way to fix it is for the son of God to be put to death on behalf of humans.
Speaker 1: That's what Christmas is really about.
Speaker 1: It's not that we're all just going to kind of get better somehow by cheer and eggnog.
Speaker 1: No, it is that the alarm bells should be sounded because things are so bad.
Speaker 1: The only way we can do anything about it is by embracing the Son of God, who comes and is murdered on behalf of the people in order to reconcile them and the world back to God.
Speaker 1: That's alarming man, but that is the most direct statement of what Christmas is about.
Speaker 1: So in this series we do series here at Fierce in our sermons, and so we've been in a Christmas series over the past few weeks.
Speaker 1: It's called Prepare the Way, and we've been looking back at really Old Testament examples of times.
Speaker 1: Inspired writers were either talking or they were writing and they were saying something that had more than one meaning.
Speaker 1: It had a meeting right there in their circumstance.
Speaker 1: But it also was talking about the Messiah that would come.
Speaker 1: We talked about Abraham a few weeks ago and how the Lord would provide for himself a lamb that could be slain on behalf of the innocent, or of the guilty to make them innocent.
Speaker 1: We talked about Job.
Speaker 1: This past couple days ago my wife talked about Mary, who was really referencing Hannah, who was also a prophetic statement about how Jesus would come and he'd bring the high down and the low up.
Speaker 1: And we're going to finish off right here on Christmas Eve with a prophecy from Isaiah that you probably heard.
Speaker 1: You'll recognize it when we see it.
Speaker 1: You probably heard about it before and it's in a time of decline for the people of Jerusalem, of Judah.
Speaker 1: They're in a bad space.
Speaker 1: They're a bit of a low point, kind of like the MCU right now.
Speaker 1: Things are not going well and for them they keep embracing the ways of evil.
Speaker 1: They're embracing injustice.
Speaker 1: They don't mind murder, they don't mind taking advantage of people.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, they're trying to do a lot of exterior stuff to somehow get God to help them.
Speaker 1: And so they're doing a lot of rituals, they're doing a lot of quote-unquote worship, they're going to temple, they're bringing sacrifices and they're doing everything they can to do it.
Speaker 1: And God is going to break in through his prophet, isaiah.
Speaker 1: He's going to say guys, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: This is a lot of exterior.
Speaker 1: This is a lot of bells and whistles, this is a lot of gift shops, but it's missing the point of what it was your worship is supposed to be about.
Speaker 1: God asks us to worship him.
Speaker 1: He's going to rebuke them for their superficial worship.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it.
Speaker 1: Isaiah 1, verse 10.
Speaker 1: Jerusalem, your rulers and your people are like those of Sodom and Gomorrah, an ancient, destroyed city by this time in the timeline.
Speaker 1: And yet everybody still knows what they mean.
Speaker 1: You're particularly bad.
Speaker 1: Listen to what the Lord is saying to you.
Speaker 1: Pay attention to what our God is teaching you.
Speaker 1: He says do you think I want all these sacrifices you keep offering me?
Speaker 1: I've had more than enough of the sheep you burn as sacrifices and the fat of your fine animals.
Speaker 1: I'm tired of the blood of bulls and sheep and goats.
Speaker 1: He sounds a little exasperated.
Speaker 1: Why does God even ask for worship?
Speaker 1: See, god wanted a people.
Speaker 1: He always wanted a people.
Speaker 1: He wanted a people that would understand his heart and who would understand his character and would respond to him by saying God, wow, I mean you're just like the highest and most important, most wonderful, most awesome thing.
Speaker 1: I get my very being from you.
Speaker 1: I'm borrowing my soul and my body and my talents and everything that I have I'm borrowing from you and I just want to like acknowledge it and say thank you and say you are the guy you made me and you are everything.
Speaker 1: Now God also knows, in the midst of wanting us to recognize that, that we need symbols, like we need, we need visuals to really understand things.
Speaker 1: I don't know about you, but I'm a visual learner.
Speaker 1: I can read and I can understand stuff.
Speaker 1: But when you give me a picture, often I just understand it way better, like I just get it on a different level.
Speaker 1: Some of you might be like me, some of you are auditory learners.
Speaker 1: You hear it and then it makes a little bit more sense than if you just read it.
Speaker 1: Well, god knows that we need some examples from time to time.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that's why, even with people like Abraham, he says Abraham, you're not getting this thing.
Speaker 1: I'm telling him make it the father of nations.
Speaker 1: But here here, go out of your tent, look up into the sky, see all the stars.
Speaker 1: Even though you have no kids right now, that's what I'm going to do for you.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a picture.
Speaker 1: That's what it is.
Speaker 1: Even Jesus, he says you know you guys aren't getting it.
Speaker 1: See, I am the bread of life.
Speaker 1: See this bread.
Speaker 1: See how you know you need bread.
Speaker 1: Right, we live in a.
Speaker 1: There's no Walmart here.
Speaker 1: You need bread all the time.
Speaker 1: I'm the bread.
Speaker 1: That's how I'm trying to get you to understand exactly what God means.
Speaker 1: And one of the ways that God helps us understand sin is that animal blood becomes a payment for all the expressions of sin that people give themselves to.
Speaker 1: It's not really a payment, the Bible tells us, but it's a picture of something needs to die to cover this.
Speaker 1: Something innocent needs to be killed in order for the sin that everybody commits to be forgiven.
Speaker 1: And so you can understand God's exasperation a little bit when people are giving themselves to all kinds of evil, and yet they're bringing their offerings and their worship like oh God, we're super pleasing to you and we hope you're going to cooperate with us now and do what we want.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like a spouse.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's pretend that there's a spouse finds out that her husband is cheating on her.
Speaker 1: I mean, she knows that, she's got proof, she knows all things, but he doesn't know that she knows.
Speaker 1: And so he keeps coming around and pretending everything's good, like he's taking her out to dinner, he's giving her cards, he like comes back from being with his mistress and then he pretends like just sits down, eats dinner with them, like nothing's going on.
Speaker 1: And she gets so angry about it she's like what are you doing, dude?
Speaker 1: You think I'm a fool.
Speaker 1: You think I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: Not only do you think I'm dumb that I don't figure this out, but you're choosing someone else instead of me.
Speaker 1: But then you're pretending like you're not.
Speaker 1: What am I supposed to pretend with you?
Speaker 1: That's a little bit how God feels about his people's worship right here in this moment.
Speaker 1: What do you guys do?
Speaker 1: You think I don't know this?
Speaker 1: You're doing entirely different things than what you're saying.
Speaker 1: You're pretending like your heart is true, but it's not true.
Speaker 1: Verse 12, who asked you to bring me all this when you come to worship me?
Speaker 1: Who asked you to do this trampling about in my temple?
Speaker 1: He says it's fake man.
Speaker 1: It's like the wife saying what am I supposed to do with these flowers?
Speaker 1: You think I want this?
Speaker 1: This is meaningless to me.
Speaker 1: It's useless.
Speaker 1: Verse 13.
Speaker 1: To bring your offerings I'm disgusted by the smell of the incense you burn.
Speaker 1: I cannot stand your new moon festivals, your Sabbaths, your religious gatherings.
Speaker 1: They're all corrupted by your sins.
Speaker 1: I hate your new moon festivals and holy days and they are a burden that I'm tired of bearing.
Speaker 1: When you lift your hands in prayer, I will not look at you.
Speaker 1: No matter how much you pray, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with blood and, my friends, the truth is, biblically speaking, all of our hands are covered with blood.
Speaker 1: We've all given ourselves to sin, even if we kind of look around, and people don't always know why they need Jesus.
Speaker 1: Many people even believe in Jesus, but they don't know why they need Jesus, and the reason is because, even though we don't know it, our hands are covered in blood.
Speaker 1: We don't see it because we're comparing hands with other people.
Speaker 1: And since everybody's hands are red, we don't notice that ours are covered.
Speaker 1: And since everybody's hands are red, we don't notice that ours are covered, but they are.
Speaker 1: Because even when we give ourselves to just calling our brother or sister a fool, even when we hate somebody, jesus says that's actually murder.
Speaker 1: It's not murder, murder, but it's a version of murder.
Speaker 1: It's a demonstration that you're not like God in the way you're supposed to be.
Speaker 1: You're not loving him.
Speaker 1: You're even, as the scripture will say in a second, you're even, just even, when you overlook the good you should have done to somebody, even when you should have protected somebody and you didn't.
Speaker 1: Even when you were supposed to stand up because that's what I would have done, jesus says and you don't.
Speaker 1: God says yeah, your hands are bloody for that.
Speaker 1: You should have and you could have.
Speaker 1: You could have protected and you didn't.
Speaker 1: In verse 16,.
Speaker 1: So he says so, wash yourselves clean, stop all this evil that I see you doing.
Speaker 1: Stop doing evil and learn to do right.
Speaker 1: See that justice is done, help those who are oppressed, give orphans their rights and defend widows.
Speaker 1: The Lord says now.
Speaker 1: Here's the verse that you might recognize the Lord says now, let's settle this matter.
Speaker 1: Some translations will say come, let us reason together.
Speaker 1: You are stained red with sin, but I will wash you as clean as snow.
Speaker 1: Although your stains are deep red, you will be white as wool.
Speaker 1: You are stained red with sin.
Speaker 1: Guys, sin is our biggest problem because we sin every day.
Speaker 1: It's in our minds, it's in our hearts, it's in our reactions.
Speaker 1: It's in our hearts, it's in our reactions, it's in our emotions.
Speaker 1: It's every time that we say no, god, I'm just going to do what I want to do instead of what you want me to do.
Speaker 1: That's sin, that's rebellion, that's treason, and here's what else.
Speaker 1: It jacks up our world, jacks up our soul.
Speaker 1: It messes with our minds, it messes with our bodies, it messes with our relationships, it messes with everything.
Speaker 1: It leads to really poor mental health, because there's stuff inside of you that is antagonistic to the way God made the universe to function.
Speaker 1: It actually was made to function, with everybody being gratefully serving their wonderful God in gratitude, obeying every one of his commands, because they're ridiculously wise and they lead to flourishing, and because of sin.
Speaker 1: That's why we're disconnected from God.
Speaker 1: That's why you can sometimes feel like you are a million miles away from God.
Speaker 1: It's because of sin.
Speaker 1: It's because of the effects of sin on the planet and, as Isaiah himself says this in chapter 59, verse two but the trouble is that your sins have cut you off from God.
Speaker 1: Because of sin, he has turned his face away from you and will not listen anymore.
Speaker 1: My friends, that's why we have what we could just call life ache.
Speaker 1: I had life ache.
Speaker 1: I was looking for something to fulfill my life ache.
Speaker 1: When I was a young man I thought maybe I'll be, maybe I'll be an actor, maybe I can get.
Speaker 1: If I can just get on stage and people can see just something great about me, if they celebrate that, then I'll feel great about me.
Speaker 1: But you know what I began to do?
Speaker 1: That I began to get in shows and I began to see.
Speaker 1: When I walked off stage I feel worse.
Speaker 1: I don't feel like that worked, like people did clap, but I still don't feel good.
Speaker 1: Something's wrong.
Speaker 1: There's a life fake going on inside of me and the life fake produces all kinds of other kind of collateral things going wrong, like fear, like insecurity, like anxiety.
Speaker 1: All these things are really the result of sin, like depression, like resentment.
Speaker 1: Verse 19 says if you'll only obey me Now we're going to see specifically what he means by obey me.
Speaker 1: If you'll only obey me which wasn't, start doing everything right If you'll only obey me, you'll eat the good things the land produces, but if you defy me, you're doomed to die.
Speaker 1: I, the Lord, have spoken.
Speaker 1: Now the truth is they did die.
Speaker 1: They got exiled.
Speaker 1: That nation stopped after about another 150 years.
Speaker 1: They had fits and starts Like they followed God a little.
Speaker 1: They'd get a little bit of revival with two different kings, but then ultimately they turned back to their old ways and God said okay, I'll warn you, and now you get to be exiled from your own land.
Speaker 1: But it's still a choice that we get to make, and we get to make it every year, every day.
Speaker 1: We get to make it on Christmas Eve, for sure.
Speaker 1: We get to make, and we get to make it every year, every day.
Speaker 1: We get to make it on Christmas Eve, for sure.
Speaker 1: Let's learn about Christmas by looking at the Old Testament prophecy.
Speaker 1: Here's two things this Old Testament prophecy teaches us about Christmas.
Speaker 1: Number one more religious activity won't fix anything about our life.
Speaker 1: Ache, more religious activity won't fix anything about our life.
Speaker 1: Ache Now, religious activity.
Speaker 1: It's not that it can't be good.
Speaker 1: It's not that it can't help people.
Speaker 1: It can even, maybe, distract us from our own sin.
Speaker 1: It can distract us from our self-focused desire to pull off what only God can pull off.
Speaker 1: It's our pride that causes us to say I will do it, I will fix the problem.
Speaker 1: But that's not what the Lord commanded us to do, as we'll see in the next point.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't do anything that it's supposed to do, that they're hoping it will do.
Speaker 1: It still leaves us empty.
Speaker 1: It still leaves us with pain.
Speaker 1: It doesn't fix it.
Speaker 1: There's a woman who was man.
Speaker 1: She was burnt out.
Speaker 1: She'd been working all day on the Wi-Fi.
Speaker 1: She's trying to get her devices to connect to the Wi-Fi.
Speaker 1: You know what that's about.
Speaker 1: You know how hard that is sometimes, and so she's trying to get this to happen.
Speaker 1: She's, you know, rebooting the router.
Speaker 1: She's calling tech support.
Speaker 1: She goes out and buys a whole new router trying to get this thing fixed up.
Speaker 1: She's laying there on the floor.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I can't get this happening.
Speaker 1: Stuff is all over the family room floor.
Speaker 1: Her son walks by teenage son.
Speaker 1: Mom, the power's been out all day.
Speaker 1: What's her problem?
Speaker 1: Well, she has a problem, but she's trying to solve the wrong problem.
Speaker 1: The problem is not the wifi.
Speaker 1: The problem is you have no power in the house.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, when we're doing a lot of religious activity, we're trying to solve the wrong problem.
Speaker 1: The problem is not that we need to do more stuff to get God to do what we want him to do, which is what these folks in this passage were doing.
Speaker 1: No, the problem is we've got to get everything back in alignment and come back to true devotion, the center, the point of everything, which is knowing and loving our God through Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: So maybe for you, maybe you know like, hey man, like I listen to podcasts, even like that's how Christian I am.
Speaker 1: You know I got all the devotionals or whatever, and those are good, but the truth is that over time, you start to think about that like a checklist.
Speaker 1: And hey man, I got my checklist done and I feel like God should have answered my prayer because of how many checks I've got in all these boxes.
Speaker 1: And the problem is there's nothing wrong with the boxes or doing the stuff, but the problem is it's not the heart of it.
Speaker 1: And the truth is you haven't really drawn near to Jesus, though in a long time.
Speaker 1: It hasn't been about him, it's been about the system.
Speaker 1: Or maybe truth is dude.
Speaker 1: You pray a lot but, if we're honest, most of your prayers are about your success rather than God's will and how God wants to help the people around you, maybe.
Speaker 1: And so, man, you're pulling the lever and you're like God.
Speaker 1: Why don't you make this thing work?
Speaker 1: And God's like because, man, I'm not into these exteriors, I want the heart of it.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you've got a lifetime of doing all the right things.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're trusting hey, man, I got my kids baptized, so that's gonna be the right thing.
Speaker 1: But the truth is, in the home it doesn't seem like anybody's really intimate with Jesus.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem like the life of flowing out of an intimate walk with God is happening.
Speaker 1: There's just some religious things that happened, my friends, that's just not the same thing.
Speaker 1: And so what do we say?
Speaker 1: More religious activity won't fix anything about our life.
Speaker 1: Fake.
Speaker 1: It won't on Christmas Eve and it won't any other day of the year.
Speaker 1: Here's number two.
Speaker 1: God is inviting everyone to a healed relationship, not a guilt trip, not a to-do list.
Speaker 1: God is inviting everyone to a healed relationship Everyone, you know.
Speaker 1: Not a guilt trip or a to-do list.
Speaker 1: You see this, this is what he commanded them to do?
Speaker 1: Verse 18, you are stained red with sin, but I will wash you clean as snow.
Speaker 1: Did you notice that?
Speaker 1: Like he didn't say all right, so go do the things.
Speaker 1: All right, Go do it better.
Speaker 1: Do 100 push-ups, all right, do whatever you're going to do and then come back to me and I'll check it out and see if it's good enough.
Speaker 1: He didn't say that at all.
Speaker 1: He said don't just drop all that, drop what you're doing and come to me.
Speaker 1: It's an invitation.
Speaker 1: Because he's an invitational God, because he's a relational God.
Speaker 1: He says you come to me, I will take care of all the business that needs taking care of All those rituals.
Speaker 1: They don't scrub away the sin, but I can.
Speaker 1: I can just wash it all away because of the blood of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: See, I made you to know that I love you, so I don't need you to do a bunch of jumping jacks.
Speaker 1: I made you to recognize.
Speaker 1: Every time you breathe, that's me reminding you I love you.
Speaker 1: Every time you breathe in, every time you breathe out, every time your heart beats, god is saying I love you.
Speaker 1: I'm keeping you alive because I love you.
Speaker 1: I made you because I love you.
Speaker 1: You exist because I love you.
Speaker 1: I don't need you to do a bunch of works for me.
Speaker 1: I don't need a to-do list done.
Speaker 1: If I needed something done, god says I wouldn't ask you.
Speaker 1: I got more qualified angels, they'll just do it.
Speaker 1: They won't give me any lip either, they'll just do it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't need it done from us All, he needs us.
Speaker 1: Just I need you to wash me, he said.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked because I love to wash my children.
Speaker 1: And he washes us white as snow, clean as snow.
Speaker 1: We get pardoned and we get it.
Speaker 1: Though how do we get it?
Speaker 1: We get it by.
Speaker 1: We get it by faith.
Speaker 1: We get it by deciding to trust and believe that God really can do what he's going to do.
Speaker 1: He can give us a clean slate, and that makes us this theological word that you've heard of before justified, and it's kind of a it's a little kiddie type of a thing way to say it, but it's still true Justified is just as if I'd never sinned at all, just as if I'd obeyed completely, just like Jesus, and that justification is a free gift, just by accepting, not trying to do more like these people of God, but saying I'm not going to just do exteriors.
Speaker 1: God, you need to clean the heart.
Speaker 1: So why don't you come and clean the heart?
Speaker 1: For me That'd be really good.
Speaker 1: Some of you are a little bit techie people, so you know what happens.
Speaker 1: When you erase a hard drive dude, all the stuff that was on it is gone.
Speaker 1: You can't get that stuff anymore.
Speaker 1: That's gone because you erased the hard drive.
Speaker 1: That's what God does with our sin.
Speaker 1: He says, dude, I'm just going to erase it, you don't have to make up for it, you don't have to refer back to it.
Speaker 1: It is just forgiven and gone because of the blood of Jesus.
Speaker 1: You say, carter, but what if I was really really bad?
Speaker 1: I get it because I've been really really bad.
Speaker 1: But check this encouraging verse out Ecclesiastes 7.20,.
Speaker 1: And there is not a single man in all the earth who is always good and never sins.
Speaker 1: Do you know that?
Speaker 1: God knows what you are?
Speaker 1: He knows what you are.
Speaker 1: He doesn't need a bunch of activity to try to make your conscience feel better.
Speaker 1: He needs you just to come to him and believe that he washes you white as wool and that you are entirely clean.
Speaker 1: So you might feel like you've made some mistakes.
Speaker 1: You might feel like you made some mistakes, not maybe even just this week, but maybe years ago.
Speaker 1: And those mistakes, dude, they cover everything you do, even like your great achievements, even the things you do really really good and really right and like everyone's like, yes, you did it.
Speaker 1: You're still living through this lens of yeah, but I did all these other things before, and I'm still.
Speaker 1: I got to carry this cross because it was pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Guys, that's not the gospel.
Speaker 1: That's not what Jesus came for you to have.
Speaker 1: He came for you to have freedom.
Speaker 1: He came for you to freely enjoy being white and clean and sinless, as the Lord Jesus himself.
Speaker 1: Now what we need, though, is we need to abandon our own attempts and we need to turn to Jesus.
Speaker 1: Jesus has got a plan.
Speaker 1: He says I'm just going to forgive you.
Speaker 1: I'm going to die on the cross for your sins, and I'm going to forgive you 100% free, and that's the purpose of Christmas.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take all the debt that your sin has accrued and, listen, all the damage your sin has done to others and to yourself.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to take it away and I'm going to nail it into my own hand on the cross and I'm going to let it die there.
Speaker 1: I'm going to let it be judged.
Speaker 1: So, don't worry, it's not that, it's not that, it's just, it's not that no one ever deals with it.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's being dealt with.
Speaker 1: No-transcript.
Speaker 1: I don't know if mom or dad is really on my side, so I don't know if I should do this.
Speaker 1: Parents want kids to trust them.
Speaker 1: I want you to do it, but I want you to trust me because my heart for you is full of love.
Speaker 1: I'm asking you to do the right thing, god says.
Speaker 1: I want you to just trust me that I've got your good in mind.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to trick you.
Speaker 1: It really is.
Speaker 1: Just come by grace, through faith, and I will forgive, and from there we'll do all the rest of the things.
Speaker 1: Now he promises these, these people of God, these Jerusalemites hey, there is life.
Speaker 1: If you choose to do this, if you choose to come to me and get clean, there's life.
Speaker 1: Let me give you some examples of life that you've seen.
Speaker 1: You know about this in people's lives when they trust God, well, you tend to get more peace.
Speaker 1: You tend to get more peace because you know that you have peace with God.
Speaker 1: So there's no like anxiety about that.
Speaker 1: You tend to get more guidance, meaning, even if you still make a lot of dumb choices.
Speaker 1: You're still making more right choices than you would have, because there's guidance through the Holy Spirit, there's guidance through God's word, there's freedom, just the joy of knowing wow, I did, I like jacked stuff up this week and I never have to pay for that.
Speaker 1: I don't have to feel bad one more day about that, like I'm moving on.
Speaker 1: It's easy to get up and just move on.
Speaker 1: Yes, I made a mistake.
Speaker 1: Now here I'm up and I'm moving on.
Speaker 1: It tends to produce just a wiser life.
Speaker 1: It tends to produce more confidence because, dude, I'll tell you I mean, you guys know this when you know that God is behind you no matter what not that he endorses everything you do, but when it's just like my God, my dad, is with me, like he's down with me and even if I do jack some stuff up, he's got the power to fix it.
Speaker 1: There's just a different confidence level that can come when we trust Jesus.
Speaker 1: About that.
Speaker 1: Marriages don't always, but tend to get better.
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 1: Because people get more selfless as they follow Jesus.
Speaker 1: They have more power to love.
Speaker 1: They start to become more humble.
Speaker 1: They're easier for at least Jesus to correct, if not their spouse.
Speaker 1: Parenting doesn't always, but tends to get a little bit better, because parents now have this thing of like oh, I need to be intentional with my kid in maybe a way that I wouldn't have before, because that's what God does with me.
Speaker 1: It's not that this always happens exactly this way, but trusting Christ tends to produce better finances because you're getting the wisdom of God's word and that wisdom tends to produce the results of well, you know, you have a better work ethic, you save more, you don't get into debt as much, you can kind of build as things go.
Speaker 1: Even doors open.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if you've seen this.
Speaker 1: I've seen this.
Speaker 1: People become a better person and so doors start to open for them, like they're just more reliable, they're a nicer, kinder person.
Speaker 1: So doors that would have been shut now people like want to hire them because they're not such a maybe case.
Speaker 1: But Jesus wants us to trust him.
Speaker 1: Why did this work?
Speaker 1: It worked because here it is Colossians 2.14.
Speaker 1: He canceled the unfavorable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it by completely nailing it to the cross.
Speaker 1: Some of you need to trust Christ today.
Speaker 1: Like it's super simple.
Speaker 1: We've been talking about it.
Speaker 1: It's really this easy.
Speaker 1: You just come to him and get clean.
Speaker 1: He already forgives you.
Speaker 1: You're not too far gone.
Speaker 1: There's hope for people like me and people like you.
Speaker 1: And so the question just is is your heart ready?
Speaker 1: Is your heart ready for the king in a manger?
Speaker 1: Is your heart ready to embrace him and say, jesus, would you cleanse?
Speaker 1: I've been doing all my own things.
Speaker 1: I've been doing some of them good, some of them bad, all of them trying to like manipulate life to give me the results that I want.
Speaker 1: I'm tired of it.
Speaker 1: I know it doesn't help.
Speaker 1: You're not thinking it's awesome.
Speaker 1: I'm just coming to you and asking you to cleanse my heart again.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this question what if you are the present?
Speaker 1: On Christmas, we talk about Jesus being the present, and Jesus is, but what if, in a different kind of way, you're the present?
Speaker 1: What if you coming to Jesus and saying I want you to cleanse me, or maybe cleanse me again, and I want you to cleanse me for the purposes of being used, for your purpose on this planet.
Speaker 1: I've been holding stuff back and I want to give it to you and ask God make me your gift, make me a gift to the whole doggone world and make me a gift to you.
Speaker 1: Here's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to give all of us the opportunity to pray that and maybe pray it again.
Speaker 1: Maybe I like to pray it every stinking Christmas man, because I just want Jesus to know, hey, I don't need, it's not like I need you to like make sure it worked, because I know it worked.
Speaker 1: But nevertheless, god, I am for you and I just want you to know I'm all in on trusting you completely.
Speaker 1: That's what pleases you, then.
Speaker 1: That's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: I want to trust you completely to wash me and wash me again, and wash me again.
Speaker 1: Let's bow our heads first, father.
Speaker 1: I pray in Jesus' name that you'd fill us with the appreciation, the gratitude of what it cost you to come to live an entire life, then to be entirely betrayed and vilified and then murdered and executed.
Speaker 1: And you did it all because you hated the idea of spending eternity.
Speaker 1: Apart from us, some of us, we just want to admit God, we're tired of doing our own religious thing but not connecting it to knowing you more deeply.
Speaker 1: We want to know you more deeply.
Speaker 1: We need to start at the right place.
Speaker 1: God in your mercy.
Speaker 1: We come to you we say would you wash us?
Speaker 1: Wash us clean as wool, take away the red, stained guilt of our sin.
Speaker 1: Apply the blood of Jesus to it so that we are entirely free of it.
Speaker 1: God, forgive us and then make us such a beautiful creation, renewed creation, new creation in Christ, that we bless the rest of your world by the way.
Speaker 1: We know you and walk with you and follow you right into eternity.
Speaker 1: Father, forgive our sin, forgive us for all the ways that we prioritized us and still do over you and still do over you and again or for the first time, come, fill us with your spirit.
Speaker 1: We want our heart to be your home.
Speaker 1: We want us to be the house of God For you to live in unencumbered.
Speaker 1: You can move about the entire home, go in any room you want.
Speaker 1: We are your thing.
Speaker 1: We trust you again.
Speaker 1: Sweet Jesus on Christmas Eve.
Speaker 1: In Christ's name, amen and being his witness in our generation, check out Fierce Church.
Speaker 1: We'd love for you to join us, either digitally or in person.
Speaker 1: Also, if you're looking for leadership development-related content, don't forget to check out the Fierce Leadership Podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts from.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to those of you who give generously to support this ministry.
Speaker 1: It's because of you that this is possible.
Speaker 1: You can click on the link in the description to give now, or visit fiercechurch for more information.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this podcast, why not subscribe?
Speaker 1: Share it with your friends?
Speaker 1: Click on the share button, take a screenshot and share it on social media or wherever you would share such things.
Speaker 1: Whatever challenges you're facing, I know you can make it.
Speaker 1: Don't give up.
Speaker 1: Hang on to Jesus.
Speaker 1: He won't let go of you.
Speaker 1: Jesus loves you so much and we love you.
Speaker 1: I hope someday we get to meet in person.