Getting Bounced from the Most Exclusive Party | Year One

Year One isn’t just about vision—it’s about transformation. And real transformation means learning to obey God even when it’s uncomfortable.
In this message, we’re reminded:
Growth often comes through mistakes and humility
God teaches us through seasons we wouldn’t choose
Righteous living isn’t about being perfect—it’s about surrender

We must let go of the bad… and even the “good” we tried to do on our own
Because the hope of the gospel is this:
Jesus didn’t just save you. He keeps you saved.
We’re like house guests in God’s home. Sometimes we track mud in. Sometimes we mess up.
But His grace keeps welcoming us back—and His goodness is what changes us.

✨ In this sermon:
How to obey God when it’s hard
Why pain can be part of your growth
How to replace self-effort with Christ’s goodness
What it looks like to live surrendered in Year One

🙏 Ask God: Where are You asking me to obey right now?
💬 Comment “I trust You” if you’re choosing obedience this season
🔔 Subscribe for more messages from the Year One series
👉 Watch more sermons: https://www.youtube.com/@FierceChurch

This year isn’t about being perfect.
It’s about being surrendered. 🔥

Transcript

The Fear Of “Making The Cut”

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Let me ask you this question. Have you ever wondered, am I gonna make the cut? You know what that anxiety is like? Am I gonna make the cut? Maybe it's something simple like, you know, am I gonna make the varsity team? I went out for varsity, am I gonna make it? Maybe it is, uh, am I gonna make it into the university that I'm I'm I'm I'm on the edge. I don't know if they're really gonna, if my grades are gonna be quite enough. Maybe it is, I wonder if we're gonna be able to get that loan approved to be able to get the house. And it's we're questioning, is this gonna go through? Am I gonna be chosen? Am I gonna be one of the ones that gets to do this? Not everybody gets to do this. Maybe if you've even had this little panic attack that I've had before. Um, have you ever been in like an international airport and you're headed through customs and you're starting to wonder, do I have all the stuff, man? Like, do I have the passport? Do I have my kids are here? Do I do I need their birth certificates? Are they gonna put my kid in jail right now? Because I don't have the right stuff. You ever been thinking, oh my gosh, this is high stakes right now? Did I make the cut? Well, King David has a great question that he put into a poem, and we're gonna study it today. He said, he wrote, Oh Yahweh, who may sojourn in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy mountain? David's stakes are even higher in this poem. He says, There's something so exclusive, it's the most exclusive thing in the universe. It's the presence of God. Now, when David's talking about the tent and the holy mountain, we want to make sure we get what he's saying, okay? So the tent is the tabernacle. That's like the temple on earth. That's where people would go. If you wanted to go where God was in David's time, you had to go to the tabernacle. But that tabernacle also speaks to and points to a higher heavenly reality, the mountain of God, the place where God's glory dwells forever. So that the tent in David's time was on earth, and then the mountain of God is in heaven forever. And David says, It's such a big deal. And by the way, you might even get killed if you go to the temple. Uh uh Charles Spurgeon surmised that maybe David was talking about in the psalm we're about to read about the time when Uzzah, this is one of the guys that was helping him try to bring the Ark of the Covenant back. And Uzzah reached out and touched the Ark the wrong way and was instantly killed. You know that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where Harrison Ford says, close your eyes, Miriam. It's about to, these guys are about to die. He had a proper fear of God. And it was because Indiana Jones would know the Bible. And he knows, hey man, you might you might get killed with this stuff. So it's it's heavy stuff. And so David, he's he's cautious and he's gonna go through a little list, a little checklist. Do we qualify? Do we make the cut? Now, to understand David's checklist, you need to understand this wasn't just a shepherd boy in a field writing this, okay? This became a liturgical uh psalm that the Israelites, the Jews, would recite as they ascended up into Jerusalem. Let's say that they were, they were gonna go make a sacrifice. It's time for one of the animal sacrifices, they're gonna bring their family. Okay, so now remember, they're gonna recite this, but they're not in their air-conditioned car. Imagine you are there with some family members, and it's hot, and you got several animals behind you, and you got kids crying, and you're asking these following questions as you approach the presence of God, and you're putting it into song. Who may dwell on your holy mountain? Verse 2 He who walks blamelessly and works righteousness and speaks truth in his heart, does not slander with his tongue, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up reproach against his friend, in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear Yahweh. He swears to his own hurt and does not change. He does not put out his money at interest, nor does he take a bribe against the innocent. He who does these things will never be shaken. They will be at the top of the mountain of God. This could also be described as the very best reality possible. And what's better, if you can live than being in the very presence of God himself. Now, if you're one of these Israelites ascending up to Jerusalem to worship, you might be feeling, and this was the point of it, you might feel convicted because you're like, I don't know. I don't think I am ready. I looked at some of those things, those weren't real easy. I feel like maybe, maybe on the way here, I was just gossiping about a guy, you know, about a mile back. That might get me kicked out. It might even get me killed. Maybe they won't let me in. Now, here's two wrong responses to this particular psalm. One is it's it's a little bit of arrogance. It's a little bit of pride. And you're like, no, that sounds good. I I pretty much do that. Um, I'm gonna try to convince you by the end of this message. Um, you might have spoken too quickly. We're gonna go a little bit deeper and look at the nuances of this message. Another potential misstep, though, is to be hopeless, is to read this and be like, oh, I guess you know what? Forget about it. I'm not even gonna go because I'm already disqualified. Those religious people they want to do all their religious stuff. I'm not even gonna play that game, man. I'm out of here. There's no hope for guys like me. And this really does, folks, it keeps people away from God, it keeps people away from church. And sometimes church cultures are so stifling and they're so uh making people feeling you gotta be just so, and you gotta get it just right and be so exact, and it just sucks the spiritual life out of people, and they don't even keep going, don't even give it a go because they're like, I'm already defeated, and I've got people cheering against me. Why would I do this? There's a riddle inside, there's a riddle that you're gonna see that the the the Psalms, the book of Psalms, was arranged the way God wanted it arranged. There's an order to how this was arranged, and we're gonna see if we pan out and we look at Psalm 14, 15, and 16, we're gonna see a little riddle that you don't see unless you're reading the whole thing. Okay, so part of the riddle starts in Psalm 14:1. This is the Psalm right before 15. Speaking about all humankind says, they are corrupt, they have committed abominable deeds. There is no one who does good. There's no one who does good. Andrew, let's see that next slide, buddy. That mountain. There you go. So it's a riddle. You got Psalm 14, there's no one righteous, and yet Psalm 15 says only the righteous enter. Okay, so you could stop right there and be like, that's a contradiction. I'm giving up on the Bible. But you know, I've found, I dude, I've studied the Bible for three decades now, and I'm telling you, there's no contradictions if you look closely. Sometimes when you see a contradiction, here's what's really happening: the spirit of Jesus is saying, Come closer. I've made this strange sounding so you come in closer. And that's because Jesus is a perfect teacher and he knows what every good teacher knows. There's things that you can tell people, but there's also things they don't really own down deep until they go through the process of self-discovery. It's not until they get it for them, because they found it and they unearthed it and they went after it. Now they see it. But there's a missing piece to our riddle. And so we're stuck there. We've been in this series, we just started last weekend, year one. And in this series, what we're doing is we're saying, our church, before we go into the next 15 years, we're gonna pause and we're gonna do some inner work. We're gonna fix up the house, so to speak, on the inside. Before we expand into anywhere else, we want to make sure any renovations that need done on us are happening. And so we started last week. We're gonna be praying and fasting and asking God, would you correct anything in our basement that needs to be fixed up? Because it's a big ask. Like we asked for big stuff. If you weren't here last weekend, you might want to listen to that message. We I walk through here's some of the things that we're gonna ask and believe God for and walk toward for the next 15 years. But we asked for big stuff, and wouldn't it be bad if the very people are saying, We will show the way, we will lead people into the very presence of God, and then we get there and we can't even get in. That wouldn't be so good. So we're gonna take some time. We're gonna look at ourselves and say, Hey, are we sure we can get in? Let's start over. Psalm 15, verse 1. Oh Yahweh, who may sojourn in your tent, who may dwell on your holy mountain? He who walks blamelessly and works right righteousness. This this word blameless. There's two ways to understand this in the Bible. One way is the way it was said about Job. Job was blameless. That didn't mean that he didn't do anything wrong. It's not flawless. It meant when Job was aware that he'd done something wrong, he would immediately go to God and ask forgiveness. He would make sacrifices just in case he or his kids had done something wrong. So that's a form of blamelessness that we could say. Someone who's the heart, the posture of their heart is it's toward God, as they realize they're doing stuff wrong, they walk back toward God instead of away from him. But then again, there's a deeper blamelessness that is really true. Like there's there's no cracks in the foundation. In about 2013, my wife and I were looking for houses. We were trying to move out of our townhouse into a not a townhouse house. And we were going around, and I'd heard, man, always check the basements because you want to see if there's any cracks in the foundation. Because if there's cracks in the foundation, dude, you might be paying for a whole lot of damage that you can never really fix in the years to come. And so we'd go down, and sometimes there'd be like slight cracks, and sometimes there'd be like these giant, giant cracks in the foundation, and like some mooks trying to cover it up with epoxy, but it's like, dude, that's right there, man. I know. You're not gonna sucker me. This is this big old crack in this foundation. The truth is, guys, we can already tell just by reading this, there's cracks in all of our foundations. And what I mean is there's places where our insides are not the same as our outsides. There's places we're not, we might be blameless in the Job sense, which is good. That's a good way to be, but it's not the it's not the real, the truest, the deepest blamelessness. And speaks truth in his heart, verse 3. He does not slander with his tongue. Golly. I think if you're on social media, you're already disqualified from this thing, man. I mean, I can even make it a day without having some kind of an evil thought or like ah about somebody that says something. Even if you're just agreeing with somebody that says something, that's a hard one to make it through. It's it's hard too because it's not even really just what we say, it's our internal monologue. It's like what we're thinking. It's all of our condemning thoughts or our angry reactions, or like the ways we have a uh just a bone to pick with somebody and we just keep leaning into them. All of that is part of our speech, which is really in some sense deceptive or hurtful. Then it goes on to relationships, nor does evil to his neighbor, nor takes up a reproach against his friend. You ever had scorn toward maybe not even just your friend, your neighbor, just anybody? Just someone you ever even slight ones with, or someone you don't even know, but you got scorn in your heart for them. Man, that's that's I'm not doing so well so far, okay? As we go through this checklist. You ever jumped to any conclusions with anybody? Like you just went straight there, you accused them of the worst thing, and they weren't even doing that. What about mock somebody close to you? Mock your spouse, mock your parent, mock your sibling, mock your instructor. Verse 4. Here comes esteem for for role models, in whose eyes a reprobate is despised, but who honors those who fear Yahweh. This is really about who do you admire? Who do you honor? Who do you look to and say, that's awesome, that's a great job. Because if your heroes aren't people that are after it, are going up the mountain of God, if you're if your heroes are people that despise the Lord, you're probably not ready for the house of God. Okay, example. So I think Bill Mayer is clever, I think he's occasionally funny, but I'm also aware, dude, he actively like tries to tear down the idea of a real personal relationship with Jesus. So while I can I can think, oh, he's an he's a good entertainer. What we're saying is if my heart is like, yes, I want to be like him, this psalm is saying, What? What? You've got an agenda to go up to the house of the Lord. Your heroes should be people that are meek, that are humble, that are servants, that don't mind obscurity, that don't care how they look in front of people all the time, as long as they're loving, as long as they're representing Jesus well in the earth. Or financial integrity. He does not put out his money at interest or does he take a bribe against the innocent? This doesn't mean you can't have a mortgage, by the way. See, in this time, we see this in Nehemiah chapter 5. Uh Israel sometimes and the nations around them, they would essentially take advantage of the poor. They would loan to people that were very poor, and they would charge interest that was astronomical. And so really they just lock them in to a place they're never gonna get out. So it's economic injustice. They're just taking advantage of people that are weaker than them financially. Well, you might not be doing that in particular, but is there any place where you're shaping the truth to maybe get out of hat get getting out of having to pay? Or is there any places you know that, man, that's it's really not worth that, but you're that's how much you're trying to sell it for? Is there any other place where you're not being honest about the value of something? Is there ever any place where you knew you were supposed to pay them that back, but they seem to have forgotten what it was, and so you're just gonna pay them this back. That's just not financial integrity. He who does these things will never be shaken. Well, okay. That seems almost it almost seems if I didn't know there was more to it, it would almost seem cruel. Okay, so you're just gonna show me like the VIP club and I can't go in. Was that the whole point of telling me this? I can't, I can't get into this super select, cool place to go. And here comes the completion of the riddle into Psalm 16, 14, 15, 16. We keep going. I said to the Lord, verse 2, You are my Lord, I have no good besides you. I have no good besides you. So let's see it again. So I've got Psalm 14, no one is righteous. I've got Psalm 15, only the righteous enter, though. And then Psalm 16 from heaven, God is my righteousness. Well, I go through this whole riddle, man. So we see the value of Jesus. So we see this is who I'd be. Dude, I'm Psalm 15. I'm I've I have no righteousness. There's no way for me to get in. It's only Jesus. Now I see my salvation has nothing to do with me. I don't contribute a doggone thing to this. And this is really important. We've got to understand we we can forget this sometimes. My friends, you and I are so lost that unless the Son of God comes and dies in our place, there's no finding us. That's the only solution. That's the only solution the God of heaven could even come up with. This is it's so extreme. You're so lost. I've got to do this insanely extreme thing in order to get back to you. Jesus is the only one who qualifies for Psalm 15. He's he's the true man, he's the true Israelite. This is about. Jesus is the one, he's the only one. He's always honest, he always defends the innocent, he always has a clean tongue, he's always loving, he's always the only one who doesn't have, check them out, no cracks in his foundation. He doesn't have any. He's the one with the keys to the house of God, to the mountain of God. He's the only one with the keys. And by the way, he's the only one actually that even belongs there. It's his house. And he's the only one in it who should be there by rights. Now check out what Jesus does. Jesus, the one the one who deserves to be there, leaves there. Jesus, who deserves to be in the house of God and the mountain of God leaves there. He leaves the hill and he's crucified outside of Jerusalem on a different hill. And he cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And why did he do that? He did that because Heavenly Father God had to forsake him. Otherwise, it's you and me, and we're outside the door banging on the door. Let me in, let me in, as the fires of hell encroach upon us, about to take us over. Let me in, but I can't get in. There's no getting in unless the Father forsakes the one who qualifies, so he can qualify the one who should be forsaken by rights. That's the only way that I'm getting out of that and getting into the house of God. The qualified one becomes the outsider, and the outsider becomes qualified because Jesus Christ left the Holy Hill to come on a small hill and be crucified and be abandoned by the Father. And this is where we get, this is where we get substitutionary atonement. It's a big theological concept. But don't let anybody talk you out of saying, well, Jesus was just a model. He was just an example. No, baby, he wasn't just a model. He wasn't just an example. He's not just showing us, you know, to embrace good or embrace tough stuff nobly. No, it's a substitution. This is how it works. Jesus is going to be punished for the stuff I deserve and you deserve. And he's going to give us all of his right standing, all of his status, all of his access. That's what we get. And we get it forever. We get it forever. See, if you ever wondered, you're wondering why is God so nice to me? Do you know why he's so nice to you? Because he's treating you like Jesus. He substituted Jesus' standing for yours. He put yours on Jesus and was put to death on the cross. And now when he sees you, he sees Jesus and treats you like Jesus. You say, Well, Carter, why do I still suffer then? Because even Jesus learned obedience by the things that he suffered. See, even Jesus had to understand what it was like. He conceptually, it's not that he didn't understand it, but he conceptually had to live through it because he's the savior that was attempted in all way all things as we are, yet he was without sin, so that he could come to us and relate to us and understand everything we went through. But that means sometimes we have to learn to obey from pain, from loss, from difficulty. That's not the Lord treating us bad, that's him treating us like Jesus. But it's Jesus' VIP slip. That's the only reason we get up the mountain at all. That's how we get in. Imagine it this way: you've seen these movies, man. Somebody will come up, there's like a technological door, and there's like a keypad, and someone just puts their hand on it, you know, and then it's like it reads their DNA and the door opens and they can go in. Here's what happened. Jesus kind of did a reverse identity theft. He said, every time you touch that that scanner, it's gonna read Jesus. Every time you try to get in, Jesus, let him in. That's how it works now. That's stitched into you because of the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ into the best possible reality, the presence of God. So what do we do? Now get this. What do we do? We pour all of our trust into this Jesus, and we forsake not just our bad, we forsake our good. Stay with me now. It's not that good is bad. It's not that we shouldn't do good. I'm gonna try to do good, you know, to the world and to my family. The good still has good effects. But if I'm bringing my good as a way to try to get into this mighty mountain of God, it's not gonna let me in. My good is not enough. There's nothing my good even adds to anything. My good is bad. My good can be chucked. I don't need the good. It doesn't help. It only actually condemns me. It's only the good of Jesus. Let me in. That's what gets me in. That means I don't have to keep worrying about my perfect score. You know where this is important. You know when this is really important to remember it's not even my good that's justifying me. It's when you've jacked a lot of stuff up. Dude, it's when you've like blown up your life. It's when you're like, wow, I'm so bad. I failed again and again and again and again, and I keep stumbling. I didn't even know how much I would hurt them. I didn't even know how much I would have a negative effect in this environment. It's then that you need to remember, yeah, well, good thing it's not your goodness at all. It was never your goodness. You the DNA of Jesus Christ has been stitched into you now and forever, so you can't talk them out of it. It wouldn't be a very helpful salvation if, like, he forgave the stuff up to the moment that you trusted him, and then it's like, well, after that, man, you're on your own. No, Jesus is such a worthy and perfect and complete savior that even new sin for you and I doesn't remove the removal of all of our offenses. It doesn't remove it, it doesn't take it away. We've still got it. Let me say it a different way because I think some people really wrestle with this. Are we hearing this? Jesus didn't just save you. Jesus, Jesus is the way, the reason you stay saved at all. You're not doing this. He's doing it because he's merciful, because he's kind, because he's affectionate, because he's not the guy that leaves anybody behind. If he says, I've got you, then baby, he got you. That's what it is. He's not gonna let go. So we can all applaud Jesus. Let's have one more time of applause. And now, from that position, now you and I, because we've trusted him, if you've trusted him, if you trust him not only with your badness, but with your goodness, if you've trusted him, now you and I are house guests. We're in the house of God, we're in the mountain of God. You and I we're sitting there on a sofa, we're just chilling, we're in the house of God. You don't have to worry about access. You already got in. Now you're in, though, and from time to time you're gonna look down and you're gonna see your feet have tracked some mud into the house of God. Okay, now when you're in the house of God, see, it's not your house. You're still a guest. Like you didn't get in here on your own merit. You got led in by Jesus. Okay, so even though like it's your father, yeah, but you're still a guest in this sense. If you're a guest in the house of God and you're looking at your feet and well, I mean, I dragged in all this mud, and the master of the house, I mean, it's it's it's a pretty big diss to not respect his rules and his order and his ways in his own house. If I want to be defiant after he just let me in in grace, that just doesn't make sense, man. It doesn't work right. So what that means is when I fudge the numbers, I'm dragging mud through God's house. When I break my promise, I'm dragging mud through God's house. When I make a commitment that I'm gonna give to this person and that I don't, I'm dragging mud through God's house. When I take just a moment to slander that person online, I'm dragging mud through God's house. Now, good thing I don't get kicked out because there's butt on my shoes, but it should be for a child of God to recognize oh, this is not appropriate anymore. I'm in God's house. This belongs outside. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna scrape this off. And if I have to do it seven times a day, I'll do it. But I'm gonna scrape it off and walk in holiness or walk in obedience to my God, not because I'm trying to get access, I've already got access, but because it's unbecoming of a child of God to do any less. So now, if you're in, it's not about access, but it is and should be and could be about family shining his light as bright as possible in this year one series, in this year one of these 15 years, as we seek to renovate the house so that if God wants to build anything powerful or big or beautiful or whatever he wants to do through us, it's not us that's holding it back. I want to invite you again to embrace this week heart surgery, deeper stuff, not just confess little things here or there. It's asking the Lord, show me deeper, show me more over the next two weeks. We started last week. I'm asking you, fast one meal a week in a way that's safe for you. And in this, we're asking, God, would you go deeper? Use some tensions in my life to reveal what's maybe happening that I don't realize. This past week I was listening to a podcast and I heard about this kind of famous pastor who has a new book out and he's going on this big, awesome trip. And I'm hearing this and I'm just like, I don't want to hear this. I turn off, change to a different station. And it was almost like it wasn't audible, but the Spirit of God stopped me and like pointed me to what I was doing there. He's like, What was that? You just turn it off. What was that? And as with some self-reflection, oh, oh, that was jealousy. I didn't even know that was there. Like I would publicly say it, oh, this guy's awesome, like he's a great blessing to the body of us. But in that moment, it was like, I don't want to hear that. And it was ugly and it was muddy. It was not the way of a brother who was saved by grace through faith. So this week, let's look deeper. God, would you use any tensions in my life? Show me me, show me, help me pay attention to my feelings. Why did I just respond that way? Is it possible? Because the Lord is saying, look here, you asked, you've been fasting, this is what I'm trying to scoop out. It's a little bit deeper. And all you have to do when you find that is just ask for forgiveness. But it might be for you, jealousy, it might be greed, it might be resentment, it might be just pride. Whatever it is, we want to be exposed to the Lord. Now, for some, you might still be outside the house. You might be looking at the fence and you're like, I don't know, dude. I don't know if I can get into this. I don't feel like I have what some of the people I hear say they have. If that's true, let me just remind you, because you and I have both heard just now. All of us together, we just heard Psalm 15. We know. We don't measure up. We know, you and me, we're not gonna make it on our own merit, dude. You and me, we're not blameless. But there's one who is blameless. There's one who not only always speaks the truth, he is the truth. We've got one who qualifies who the outsider. Qualifies the outsider. That's who he qualifies. So let's stop trying to qualify. Let's bring him our sin. Let's bring him our pain, let's bring him all the things. For those of you that know, like you've actually done damage. Like you've done things, you didn't just like do a little fib or something like that. You've hurt people, you've hurt lives, you messed something up, you weren't intentional when you were supposed to be. You don't even know what went wrong because you didn't step in there. For those folks, bring Jesus that stuff. Bring him all your good, bring him everything you got, and let's put it in his hands and trust the king. Trust the king with it. Jesus, I uh I repent, I ask you for forgiveness. Here's all my stuff. Access granted forever and ever. I want to give you the opportunity because I remember people all the time, they they hear that, but they've never done it. So I want to do it together right now in prayer as we and before we go into worship. What I want you to do is if you've never actually made that deal, like you've you've done churchy stuff or whatever, or you've done you've looked at Bibles or whatever, but it never stuck like we just talked about it. You never got it that Jesus has to be your access. You can't bring him stuff. I want to pray with you. And we're gonna give your whole heart and your whole life over to Jesus, and you'll have permanent access forever. And I'm gonna pray this prayer, and I'm gonna end it this way. Amen. Jesus is Lord. And when I say Jesus is Lord, I want everybody to say it together. Jesus is Lord, and then we'll go into worship. Are you ready? Let's bow our heads. God, who can ascend your hill? Who can be with you on God's mountain? Nobody except Jesus. He's the true man, he's the true Israelite, he's the only one. Thank you, Jesus, that you left that to come get us so you could give us your status and your acceptance. And God, I just want to say today, I'm asking for forgiveness for living a life apart from you, for not being yours, for all the ways that I hurt people, that I left things undone, that I didn't love the way I've been loved. God, would you forgive me? I believe that Jesus Christ died for my sin and rose from the dead, and he forgives me and gives me his right standing with God. Now fill me with the Spirit of Jesus that will help alert me to when I've got mud on my shoes. Not to condemn me, but to better represent the master of the house. In Jesus' name. Amen. And all God's people said, Jesus is Lord. Alright, folks, that's all the time we have, but thank you so much for listening to this sermon. If you got a lot out of this, feel free to share this with somebody who might need it. Also, there's a ton more content on our website, on our YouTube channel, on our Instagram channel, on our TikTok channel. Feel free to check all that kind of a thing out. Also, if you're interested in leadership type stuff, go ahead and check out our podcast or any other blogs or videos or anything over at BibleLeadership.com. And whatever else you do, make sure that you believe God for something big today.