Cornerstone Christian Center
Cornerstone Christian Center
Solomon | Build
The cornerstone sets everything else in alignment. Without it, the entire structure becomes unstable. In our lives, Jesus stands as that cornerstone - the only foundation worthy of building upon.
Pastor J kicks off the new "Build" series by examining what it means to construct our lives as dwelling places for God. Through the compelling narrative of Solomon's temple, we discover how God has always desired to dwell among His people - first in physical structures, and now within us.
Drawing from Ephesians 2, we learn that believers are "being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit." This revolutionary concept transforms our understanding of both worship and identity. No longer are we strangers to God's presence; we're citizens of heaven with full access to our King.
The blood moon serves as a powerful backdrop, reminding us that Christ will return for His church. This urgency calls us to build intentionally, ensuring our lives are aligned with the cornerstone. Like Solomon, who was chosen despite being born from scandal, our past doesn't determine our potential in God's kingdom.
Perhaps most profound is the revelation about the temple veil. When Christ died, that barrier was torn, symbolizing our direct access to God's presence. No longer do we need priests with bells and ropes to approach the Holy of Holies - Christ has made us the temple where God's Spirit dwells.
Whether you're building for the first time or reconstructing after life's storms, this message offers both the blueprint and the invitation.
Connect with a Life Group this semester to continue building alongside others who share your foundation.
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Good morning and welcome to a special breaking news report. I'm Elijah Vance and I'm Deborah Sterling. We're coming to you live with momentous news from Jerusalem, where King Solomon has officially completed the magnificent temple. This has been years in the making, a monumental undertaking that has reshaped the landscape and the spiritual heart of our nation. Indeed, we go now live to our reporter, sarah Jenkins, who is on location, with more details and, we hope, an exclusive interview, sarah. Thank you, deborah and Elijah. I'm live outside the breathtaking new temple. The air is electric with excitement. King Solomon has dedicated this sacred space to the Lord. Your Majesty, what does this day mean to you?
AI Video:Thank you, sarah. This day makes me reflect on my father, david. A flawed man, yes, but always after God's heart.
AI Video:The Lord anointed David for great acts like to slay Goliath. The Lord also anointed me to build his house. That's a powerful legacy. How does it feel to complete such a divinely appointed task? It is humbling, a privilege to honor the Lord and fulfill the vision passed down A truly inspiring message. Thank you for sharing this profound insight. This is Sarah Jenkins. Live from Jerusalem Back to you in the studio.
Jason Brown :Well, good morning. Hey, we're so glad we had this opportunity to worship together at Cornerstone. God
Jason Brown :bless you. If you're a guest of ours, welcome home. We're starting a new series today. It's called Build and we're talking about what it means for us to build our life on Christ. If we haven't met, my name is Jay. It's a blessing to be able to lead this congregation with Celeste and be a part of such an amazing community of faith. Our focus today is a dwelling place for God, and so we talk about this idea of a dwelling place for God.
Jason Brown :We're going to jump off with something that's kind of interesting and hit the headlines recently, which is actually the blood moon that's happening tonight. How many people know there's a blood moon happening tonight? Did you guys see it? It's been on the news, it's been different places. It's interesting, it's a very unique piece that happens every so often and it's one of those things that it starts to ring alarm bells in some different circles where you know they're talking about the end of the world draweth nigh, and the reason they're saying that is because they're looking to scripture. We talked about it in this series this summer, with Minor Prophets looking to Joel and Joel says this, the sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. Friends, that's the marker that we're seeing is these things like the blood moon, things like earthquakes, things like storms, and all these different pieces that are pointing to scripture, the truth that we know from the gospel, that we see it in our very midst, as it happens in the sky above us, and what's interesting about that is that it really points us to the other side of our faith, that we're those that believe that Christ came and lived embodied as a man, and that he took on the sin of the world, living innocently, and became the sacrifice for all people. But that also means is that he is coming, returning as a king for his church, and so what we do in placing our faith in him is seeing that these markers are signs of the times that are happening, and so we need to be those that are ready for what God wants to do. It says that no person knows the time, the day or the hour. So if I told you it was this morning at XYZ time, that's a time that he would be like no, we're going to pass, we'll push it till tomorrow, but the thing is none of us know. I would want it to happen before the end of this service. Somebody say amen to that. Lord, come, have your church, bring, have your church, bring yourself to your church. And we say, come, lord Jesus, return here.
Jason Brown :And we see the imagery of things like the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It's something that we hear about and becomes kind of scary. It's imagery that we see symbolic of what's happening in end times in the book of Revelation. And as we look at those different pieces and characters, each one of them brings about a different thing that's gonna happen or is happening at the end of time. The one that we see with Jesus is him returning as a triumphant king, the holy king of heaven that's returning to have no one stand in front of him, amen. And it becomes kind of scary.
Jason Brown :People are like oh man, the four horsemen. I'm kind of scared. I'm not. The reason I'm not is because that's my king and I belong to him. I'm actually excited. I'm like Lord Jesus, show up, I'm ready. Man, like you know, eastern sky here we go, let's go after it.
Jason Brown :And the reason we're excited about that is because it's our faith is that he will return for his church and he will be the rightful and only true king of the world to rule in peace. And so that's what we believe, for we wanna be those that are ready to live our day with him, every day that he will return. Today, be ready and be intentional in how we're living our life after God. You say amen to that. We're not called to live in fear. We're called to be those that are living according to his purposes, according to the word of God, and that means live ready and build your life in Christ. You know, we talk about often using this imagery of Jesus walking with his disciples, and we do that because that's how we see ourselves as people that are on a journey with Christ. None of us have finished, none of us have arrived. We're all following after him where he's leading us to go. We see ourselves like the disciples, in that way that we want to be more like Jesus, and so that's why, collectively, we're those that love God and make disciples and reach the world, and that's who we are and that's our mission.
Jason Brown :Collectively, as a community of faith, we do that through things like life groups, and today is a unique thing in that we're starting a new semester of life groups today. So it's an opportunity to sign up, get involved, and you really can. You can connect with people around you, you can grow in your faith in God and you also can serve using your talents and abilities. And we encourage you to do so, to be intentional. During this fall semester, all of us are too busy. To add one more thing we're too busy, but what we make priority in our life, we're not too busy for how many people know what I'm talking about? Somehow we still can binge watch our favorite show, and so that just kind of proves that there's margin in there if we wanna make room for something. So let me encourage you to get involved, be intentional.
Jason Brown :Join a life group. It'll be a blessing to you I know it is to me and let it be something that ministers to you to come and to get involved and to be with other brothers and sisters in the faith. And I'll tell you this sometimes they'll be like well, I don't know if I really need that. Well, maybe somebody needs you in their group to be someone that's a new friend. Did you know? We have guests that come all the time. We're so very thankful. If you're a guest of ours, welcome home. We're glad you're with us, but we have guests all the time and what we want to do is be able to be a friend to them and make a connection with a new friend, because what happens is we want to be open to a new person coming so that they can belong with us. Amen, that's what we're called to do. So let me encourage you join a life group. Let it be a blessing to you If you have your Bible, your tablet, your phone.
Jason Brown :Today we're looking to Ephesians 2, and we'll be jumping off there. In the scripture. Scripture says in Ephesians 2, 22,. In him, you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Lord, we pray over your word today, thanking you for making it alive, thanking you for sparking it in our hearts. Lord, making it rhema, and we pray, lord, it would challenge us to be more like your image. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Jason Brown :So we're talking about this idea of build a dwelling place for God, and this idea of dwelling place for God is something that we see throughout scripture. We see it in the tabernacle, we see it in the temple, we see it in the New Testament, but tying back to what Pastor Celeste said last week, how many people were blessed by the season sermon from last week. What a blessing, you know. It challenged my heart and thinking about the season that we're in and what God is saying to us Ecclesiastes, where Pastor Celeste talked about in chapter three, verse one. It says for everything there is a season and for every matter under heaven. It gives examples. It says a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up. Today we're talking about that very thing, about a season of building your life upon Christ.
Jason Brown :We can see in Matthew 21, the namesake of our church. We shared this a few weeks ago at our 39th year, our anniversary of the church of Cornerstone. 39 years, praise the Lord. Matthew 21, verse 42, says Jesus said to them have you never read the scriptures? The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is the Lord's doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.
Jason Brown :Friends, the idea of cornerstone is that it's the setting piece in which we put everything else around. A cornerstone physically is the one that they would lay first upon the foundation to make sure that everything in the building was shored up and correct that it was going to be laid out in the precise way. It was from that cornerstone that everything else is built. That's why, later in Acts, you would see them referencing that very piece of scripture. It says this this Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.
Jason Brown :See, friends, jesus is the cornerstone for us. There is no one else. He fulfills it completely and uniquely, alone in himself. He is the one that we can build our life on for eternity. It's from him that we can build our life up and can trust that. He is a sure foundation. He is the one that we can set our feet on. Friends, there are lots of other things that are taught, and all of those things are good ideas by people, but Jesus alone stands in eternity, and so that's why we can put our life in Jesus Christ. I can tell you this that we can try all the different ways to come to Jesus, but it's only by his sacrifice for us, his grace for us, the extension of what he has done for us that we're in relationship with him. It's nothing we can do. We can't earn enough, we can't give enough, we can't do enough good works. It's not possible. It says in scripture that we are as filthy rags before a holy God, and so we're called to be those that live our life in Jesus Christ, accepting what he's done on our behalf, by faith, the currency of the kingdom, and living and walking according to his statutes.
Jason Brown :Now, last week, pastor Celeste was talking about David and I got a picture of David. This is a statue in Florence. This is the only part of the statue I can show you, and if you know the statue, you know why. But we've been there, had a chance to see the statue and it's pretty amazing. It's awesome and it kind of does give a depiction of who he was, because he was this rough and rugged, you know, courageous, shepherd out in the field, and as a young man, you know.
Jason Brown :Pastor Sless talked about how he wasn't even considered by his father, jesse, to be one of the ones that would be named king. All his older brothers got a look and he was just out there with the smelly sheep, and so it's the thing that God was doing in his heart that it says in scripture how he was worshiping. He was out there with the Lord. He was being a good shepherd. He was courageous. He fought the lion, he fought the bear. He ran them off from the sheep to keep the sheep safe. He knew what it meant to be a good shepherd. He was an icon, a symbol of what would be Jesus later as the good shepherd for all of us. And so David becomes this one that's anointed to be king, takes the place of Saul.
Jason Brown :Saul looked good. He was tall, it said. He was good looking and handsome. He looked like the politician they wanted. He was the king they clamored for. And what they found out is that he wasn't the one in alignment with God's heart as soon as he got in the position, don't we? And so he started believing his own press. And so God was like no, you're not after my heart, I will bring one that is after my heart. And so that's what he brought in David.
Jason Brown :And David does all these things. He fights Goliath. He fights these battles against the Philistines and all the people on every side. He goes to war. He's a warrior. He's a worshiper. He's a statesman. He's a warrior. He's a worshiper. He's a statesman, he's all these things, but he's also a man and he makes a mistake, because he should have been out doing kingly things and makes a mistake and ends up having an affair with a married woman and takes her into himself. She's found out she's pregnant, her husband is fighting in his army and David's army at the front. He tries to cover it up and it doesn't work out and eventually he orchestrates the man's murder to cover up his mistake and it was a compounding effort of all the things that had happened in making errors. And eventually she's there and it finds out that the baby's gonna pass and he wails and he asks the Lord for this son from this one, this wife that he stole away from someone else, that the Lord would have mercy. But the child dies and what happens after that is that he brings her in and Bathsheba becomes his wife and they have another son and that son's name is Solomon.
Jason Brown :Solomon was born of scandal. He was a son of scandal. He was one that the other brothers looked at and they were like who is this? And how many people know that your history, your background, does not mean that's what your future will hold, that in Christ we become a new creation. It says he makes us a new creation. He's the one that cleans us off and sets us up and breaks the chains off of our past and gets us out of the rut into a future. That it is his calling. He did the same with Solomon, but the challenge was to David. David wanted to. He had brought the ark up and brought it into the city. He was excited about this idea of making a permanent house for the Lord. So long they had had the tabernacle, while in the wilderness and as they came into the promised land. But now we wanted to make a house for the Lord, a temple.
Jason Brown :1 Kings 8, it says this in verse 19,. Nevertheless, you shall not build the house, the Lord speaking to David, but your son, who shall be born to you, shall build the house for my name. See, david's hands were bloody. As for war, he wasn't the one to build the house. That needed to be someone else. And so the Lord tasks his son, solomon, the son of scandal, to be the one anointed to be the king. And so David, the warrior, the worshiper, the one with the heart after God. He doesn't get to fulfill that peace, but his son does, and so it's just that he challenges his son to do so In another piece of scripture.
Jason Brown :You see the overlaying parts of scripture in the Old Testament telling the story of the kings in 2 Samuel 7. It says he shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. And what we know historically is that the kingdom of Israel falls apart and Judah breaks off and there's all sorts of infighting and wars and things that happen. But the lineage goes all the way down and eventually comes in the personhood of Jesus Christ. And so this promise that's set here, that was told to David, is also reinforced to his son, solomon, saying listen, the one that will follow you the foretelling of the Messiah, he will be the king forever and he will be an honest and good king.
Jason Brown :First Chronicles picks up with this story here and says, as they start talking to Solomon, he called for Solomon, his son, and charged him to build a house for the Lord, the God of Israel. Now, solomon, as we think of him, he's somebody who you know as he comes to that place. It says that he came and the Lord connected with him and the Lord asked him what do you want? You have a heart after me. What do you want? He could have asked for riches. For riches, he could ask for the death of his enemies. He could ask for power. He instead asked for wisdom to lead the people of God, and as he does, then he gets the wisdom from the Lord. The Lord imparts that wisdom to him and all the other things are added. He has the wealth, he has the power, he has the strategy, but it all came from his wisdom. That came from God.
Jason Brown :You see here the depiction of one of the queens coming to find out about his wisdom, and so his own self. He says in 1 Kings 5, and so I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord, my God. As the Lord said to David, my father, your son, who I will set in your throne in your place, shall build the house for my name, shall build the house for my name. So Solomon sets about to do exactly what the Lord had him to do and he goes and he finds those in Lebanon to send the cedars and he brings about the people that are gonna work on it and be anointed to do the hard work of building the temple, each one of it very specific, as directed by the Lord. Just like the tabernacle sold the temple as well, each and every little part.
Jason Brown :In modern day Israel today you would see it like this where there's the Dome of the Rock, a mosque that sits on the Temple Mount instead of the temple. Both the first and second temples have been destroyed and those stones cast down. But even modern day Jews, as they go to worship in the place where the temple would be, the only thing remaining is the wall that would be on the base of where the Temple Mount was. It's known as the Wailing Wall, and that's where Jews will go and pray, because it's them drawing near to where the presence of God had been sat amongst the people of God and the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant. You can see a depiction of it here. It's in Israel. It's a little model of what it would have looked like in that day and it kind of depicts what that would look like, each piece of the temple being a part where you would walk through, and each one of that signifying part of the sacrifice is signifying the process of drawing near to the presence of God.
Jason Brown :Think about that. We have a God who wants to be in the midst of his people, and so he makes a way for a holy God to be in the midst of a sinful people by creating this temple and a separation of a veil to keep his presence from them. But it was something where he also would be able to be approached, to be worshiped and to have sacrifices, and so they brought in these artists and they started to work with the wood and work with the different pieces of gold. It says they inlaid the whole inside of the temple. You could see the artistry here. There's a depiction of what it would look like, room after room, gilded in gold, giving glory to God. They gave their best. It was the best woods and it was the best of their gold, the best that they had to worship the Lord. It was all intentional. Each detail was shown and each one of it depicted, all the way back to the imagery of the garden, even the menorah representing the tree of life and the different pieces that would be lit before the Lord. It went back to a time where people Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden and they were with him in his presence. But us, as people, we made a sin against God and it broke his heart and the sin inside of us as people separated us away from him and from his presence, and so they were blocked from entering the garden again. So this temple actually makes a way for people to come and to approach the living God again and have community with him, to be intentional each and every step of this, each and every process as they would go forward. You know it was amazing.
Jason Brown :Yesterday we hosted an event here at the church and it was an opportunity for a bunch of churches to come together and learn about reaching their community and what it would mean to try to step up to the next place. We had some church coaches and other things happening. We had 21 churches represented here at the church and it was awesome. They came from all different parts of Arizona, all the way up in the Navajo Res, down at the southern border, all the way over from the east and west sides of the state. They all drove in to be intentional with their team, to hear and to learn what was going on, and I love that. I love that our team was able to host them and to serve them and to be a blessing, while we ourselves were receiving as well, getting challenged on mindsets and thought processes of how we can do better to reach those around us.
Jason Brown :And how many people know that? There's two things you can know about pastors. One, they are caffeinated, very caffeinated. We went through lots of coffee. And two, many of them are full gospel. You guys know what I'm saying. And so we ran out of sandwiches at a full gospel preachers meeting, and so we, our team, jumped through hoops, man, and they went and knocked it out and did a bunch more sandwiches and everybody was very gracious, everybody got a sandwich and there was extra to spare. But, man, it was one of those things where you have to have an intentionality to say I'm not just gonna sit back because I got my sandwich, but I'm gonna jump in and make sure that everybody gets fed.
Jason Brown :How many people know what I'm talking about? You have to have a heart for others and I want to say thanks to our team. Can we have a hand for our team that served all these churches? Man, thank you guys, you are a blessing. It's that intentionality, it's living our heart with not just what's in it for me, but how can I be a blessing? They internalize this walk with God, this presence of Lord, and we go back to the scripture that we started with today in Ephesians 2, and it starts to pick up with this very idea of being intentional In verse 19,. It says so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are now fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God In verse 20,. Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In verse 22,. In him, you are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Friends, I love this piece. What an amazing thing, as Paul writes to Ephesus and the church that's there, challenging them to understand the very thing that we learned this summer about how each one of those voices of the prophets was pointing the people to return back to God. It says to repent, to turn around and go back to God. What an amazing thing. And so that's an alignment that we see how they are the ones that are helping lay the foundation. It's from Jesus that everything is set.
Jason Brown :It calls us to be, that we are citizens, that we belong to him. I can tell you, since we lived as expats around the world. You know we had done that for over 10 years in different places and trying to jump through those hoops. As you read it, it says that we're no longer strangers or aliens, we're no longer foreigners. We now are citizens. And being those people, man, I've had to do the bureaucracy of trying to get your paperwork done in Europe. It was crazy the chaos of Cairo and the Egyptian system. It's not even digitized, it's all paperwork and piles and trying to keep my money in my pockets when the Mexican police had other ideas for it. As we lived abroad, we knew that we didn't belong, we didn't have, we weren't citizens there, we were guests there. We were guests there. We were foreigners there. But see the Lord, he calls us citizens of heaven. He calls us those that belong to him.
Jason Brown :And what's amazing is that around the world and we've been in like 70 countries around the world when you go through the airport, most of the time the line for the foreigners is always the long line. They have like one person sort of working and there's a really long line of foreigners and then there's like five people working for the citizens and so you get to speed through and I'm always like does anybody have a spare passport, can I borrow it? You know what I mean. Like try to get out of the line, man, and we come back this summer and we get back into Miami, coming back from outside of the States. Then I'm pumped up. I'm like here we go, citizen line, baby, we're going to go through. I'm in America, you know people, you know feet on the floor. We're back and they're like cool, get in line. It was a super long line. It went all the way down the corridor.
Jason Brown :People thought this wasn't their again. They were not happy. They're trying to, you know, act like they knew somebody in line. Anybody do that. You got to stop doing that. They're like trying to oh hello, friend. Oh hello, are you my cousin? Can I step here Trying to slide in? We're like in the back. It was one of those things where it's like man, if you're a citizen and you have special, special responsibilities, you also have special things that you can do because you belong there. And that's what he calls us for as citizens of heaven belonging to him.
Jason Brown :In scripture we move forward in Ephesians 2, verse 20 and 21, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus being the cornerstone. We talk about the foundation and how it's so important that, as we set our lives, we do so correctly. It's only built in Jesus Christ, it's only built on the direction to return to God and the instruction we hear from the word. That's why we spend our time in the word. It washes over us and it instructs us, it corrects us as we pray, it makes it alive and it starts to challenge us. Even the same piece of scripture you read the week before can challenge you in a new way as the Lord moves it in your heart, and so it becomes this foundation by which you build your life.
Jason Brown :If you ever built anything and you have the wrong foundation, things can be bad quickly. Anybody ever experienced that. We've seen that as we've been across the world in different places, and you know we have certain regulations here in North America and Europe. But if you get outside of those places, you know an earthquake happens or something happens and the foundation of these places just fall apart and suddenly those things that now are becoming a shelter become chaos around them, and it's so sad. We had the same thing happen in Egypt there, and it's so sad. We had the same thing happen in Egypt. There was a hard rain and one of the skyscrapers just fell and hit the skyscraper across the street because the foundation of the building was done incorrectly. The building itself held shape. It hit the other one across the street but everything underneath it was broken.
Jason Brown :And so what's interesting about that is we think about building our life. We think about the plans and how we would put something together as we're trying to construct something. If we're doing this physically, then we would have all the plans laid out, we would map it accordingly, double check and, you know, measure twice, cut once. All those things that we learn that we would be as intentional with our spiritual life to be those that are coming to the Lord and say, lord, I build my life on you and your principles, on what you say, not just good ideas from some concept online I saw on TikTok but, lord, what the word of God says to my life, that I would build it. That has eternal value. Ephesians 2, verse 22,. As we continue forward, it says this in him, you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. A dwelling place for God. See, that very temple that Solomon built.
Jason Brown :There was what we called. It was the veil that was between the holy of holies and the outer places, and that thing was the thing that protected the people of God from the holiness of God. Anyone who would approach the holiness of God. They would fall dead because their sin inside their life would cause them to be dead in the presence of a holy God. So, as those who would go in to make preparation the priests they would go about this whole set of rituals and cleaning and making sure they had done all their, the forgiveness and getting all of the different pieces of worship before the Lord. And as they went in to the Holy of Holies the one time to make that time of year, they had to be rigged up just to make sure that they were good to go in. Do you guys know this? So they had bells on the bottom of their clothes. They had like a rope tied around their leg. Why? Because if they had not done it right, if they really weren't holy in their heart as they went into the holies of holies, the holy presence of God would strike them dead. Yes, they're the high priest or yes, they're the chosen priest for the time, but guess what, that didn't matter. The holiness of God supersedes any of these things.
Jason Brown :So you're like Bobby, bobby, you okay in there. Give us a jingle, bobby. You know what I mean. Like whoever it was, it was like jingle, jingle, jingle. It's like you stop hearing the jingle as you start pulling the rope. You still in there. What's going on, man, could you imagine if you were the one on deck in case Bobby didn't make it? You know you were priest number two. That would be scary, man. It's like Bobby, you know they pull him out by his foot. You're like okay, here we go.
Jason Brown :You can imagine as Christ goes to the cross. It says as he gave up his spirit. It says the veil in the temple was torn into, and what that means is that the very thing separating the presence of God from the people of God was fulfilled and that Jesus had become the sacrifice for all people, for all time, taking on the sin of the world on himself. And as he died, sin died and he paid for those things. And as he did so, it opened up the opportunity for the Spirit of God to rest on the people of God. And in Acts 2, as we see that the early church is anointed by the Holy Spirit of God, the very representation of what was in the Holy of Holies, the flame and the fire. Those things appear upon the church, as now we are the temple of God and the Holy Spirit of God is with you. The church, what a powerful thing to be. The dwelling of the Most High God as he walks with us Citizens, the dwelling of the most high and friends.
Jason Brown :There's a piece of scripture that we see in Psalm 138. It talks to us about that process. It says the Lord will fulfill his purpose for me. Your steadfast love, o Lord, endures forever. O Lord endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands. See, god wants to do something in and through your life. He wants to direct you and mold you and guide you into his image. He wants to use you for his purposes. And if you're here under the sound of my voice and he's someone that he's not done with your story and he has something for you to do still so, let me encourage you in this, that you would be intentional in your life after God, to build your life on Jesus Christ, for everything else is not enough.
Jason Brown :Friends, today we have an opportunity to respond to his love for us, to his message for us, and maybe you're here and you have never made a decision to follow Jesus. Today's your opportunity to do so. Each one of us has to answer that question of have we embraced Jesus? For us, the symbol of the cross is one of power. It's one of power because it's a symbol where Jesus went and he gave up his life for you and for me. He went and took all of our sin and all of our mistakes and all of our brokenness and he took it to the cross and he paid for the sin of the world, all of my sin, all of yours. He paid for it once and for all, for all people. And so it's by our belief in him and saying Jesus, I believe you are who you say you are Lord, I place my faith and my trust in you today that we are made righteous. In the scripture, paul writes to the church at Rome. He says it like this because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes and is justified. With the mouth, one confesses and is saved.
Jason Brown :Friends, today is your day. It's your day to say yes to Jesus, to invite him into your heart and life, to start a new relationship with him. I'm going to encourage you that you would search your heart today, life to start a new relationship with him. I'm going to encourage you that you would search your heart today. Maybe you're here and you've never made that decision before. Today is your opportunity. Maybe you have made a decision in the past but you haven't been living for God. It's your opportunity to recommit your heart and life to him.
Jason Brown :If you're here in the room, if you'd stand to your feet where you're at, bow your heads. If you're here in the room, if you'd stand to your feet where you're at, bow your heads. If you're online, take a moment and pause whatever you're doing for what God wants to do in our lives right now, in this moment, as Christians are praying friends, we already had people this morning make that commitment to Jesus to invite him into their heart and life. People making decisions to be saved by grace through Jesus Christ. Today is your opportunity to do the same, as heads are bowed here in the room. If that was you and you'd say, pastor, I just want to be included in that prayer. Today, I want to make that decision to follow Jesus for the first time or for an opportunity to recommit my heart to him. If that's you, if you just raise your hand right where you're at and you say that's the decision I want to make today, to invite him into my heart and life.
Jason Brown :Thank you Jesus. Thank you Jesus, as people are making decisions today. Thank you, lord. Thank you Lord. Thank you Lord. Friends online as well, that's you. Praise the Lord.
Jason Brown :I'm gonna ask if everyone would, if they would pray this prayer out loud after me. Lord, thank you for loving me. Thank you for sending Jesus. I believe Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I believe he rose again. Forgive me of my sins. I surrender my life to you. In Christ's name. I pray Amen, amen. Friends, we rejoice that you make a decision to follow Jesus today. Those that raised your hands powerful, amazing. Hey, if that was you, connect with us. We have people in the back. We want to be able to put materials into your hands so you can live this life successfully after God. If you're online, message us. We don't want you to do this life alone.
Jason Brown :Prince, today we have this opportunity, as we play this last song and we come to this altar, to make a place with God and to draw near to him, to ask him for more of his impartation, for more of his spirit, for more of his grace and wisdom, to live this life after him, to be intentional in building our life in the way of God and not our own concept, to come for him, for healing, for insight, for anything that we need, because he is our source. Lord, we thank you so much and we pray. Lord, just giving you all the praise and all the glory today. Lord, thank you for opening this word to us and to our hearts. Lord, thank you for giving us the example of David and Solomon, lord and Lord, their obedience to you, Lord, and the details of being intentional and following after God and what it means to build the house of the Lord, to be the dwelling of the Most High God and live for you. Lord, that you empower us, lord, to be a good example of what that means. Lord, to shine, lord, with the brightness of the gospel message to those around us. Lord, as we come to this altar, we do so with hearts after you, to draw near to you for an impartation, lord, for wisdom, for direction, for healing. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
Jason Brown :Hey, just a reminder for you in case you didn't know. We're having a Mercy House Gala. That's coming out the first week of October and we're celebrating over 30 years of Mercy House, which is our community outreach center that's here in Avondale. It's a blessing to be able to fundraise to that event. Let me encourage you to buy tickets. Make it a date night, bring some friends along with you. You get to hear about the ministry of Mercy House and its opportunity for us to help raise funds for the operations of the ministry.
Celeste Brown:And life group signups are today. So as you head out, you'll see a QR code. Scan it, view it, see what there is, ask questions, find out what group fits for you and sign up for something. It is going to be an amazing season.
Jason Brown :Before we go, we are to pray this blessing over us. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord, make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. Lord, lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Lord, I pray a blessing upon your church, your people. Lord, you empower us by your spirit to live your love out to those around us. Pray all this in the powerful name that is Jesus Christ. Amen, amen, know this we love you very much here at Cornerstone. God bless you.