Stop Skipping To The End

We challenge the habit of racing to the end of the gospel story and missing what Jesus reveals along the way. We explore how reading Scripture through the finished work of Christ reshapes judgment, identity, and the way we see God right now. 
• why destination-first faith misses the gospel’s weight 
• starting with Jesus as the lens for reading Scripture 
• the cross as restoration and reconciliation now 
• judgment as correction that brings things into light 
• darkness defined as ignorance and light as knowledge 
• distortion as a warped view of God and self 
• identity in Christ as the reference point for change 
• deconstruction as releasing old patterns that keep us bound

Transcript

Why We Fixate On Endings

SPEAKER_00 0:02

We're gonna jump straight into it this morning. Uh This message this morning is is really just to like most of mine, I think, is provoke you to think a little bit. Uh it's probably gonna be a little bit different. I'm gonna slow down with it and just kind of hopefully just talk to you a little bit more. Uh we've got a smaller crowd here this morning, so we can do that. We a lot of people must have stayed out late last night. So uh I want you to be able to really see the reasoning that uh we're talking about this this topic this morning. Uh there's there's a purpose behind it. There's it actually comes from somewhere. It was come from a post, uh one of my guys that I I follow on Facebook. It comes from one of his posts that I was reading. Uh he had a thought in there, and when I read it, it just kind of sparked something in me. So I started looking at some stuff and researching it. But uh I've what got me thinking about it was this. You know, there's a lot of times in in church and just when Christians gather together and we when we're talking to each other, there's a lot of conversations around the gospel when we're talking about the gospel, and it seems to always quickly move toward the outcome or the conclusion about how everything is gonna ultimately end. And that's what we pretty much make the whole conversation about Christianity about. How's it gonna end? Now, we may not always say it like that, but ultimately what we get back to is heaven or hell. It's the destination. Where are we gonna end up at? And we make we have made that, the church, I'm saying, has made that really the main focus of what Christianity is all about. Where am I going to end up? What's gonna happen in the very end? And you know, listen to me, those conversations are not unimportant. They're important conversations to have, but they're they're not where I want to begin at today. It's not really what I want to talk about at all today. And let me explain what I mean. It's like if if I was standing up here and I started this morning and I said, Well, I want to tell you guys a story. And I started telling a story to you. And then all of a sudden, about halfway through the story, somebody walks in the door and says, Can you just tell us how it ends? Now think about that a minute. That's not saying that the ending is not meaningful. But if I just jump straight to the end of the story without telling you everything that leads up to it, you're gonna miss everything that gives the ending its weight. Okay? Everything that kind of builds up and builds into that moment of the ending, you're gonna lose it. You're gonna miss it. And also, you really don't get to hear to the story if I just skip to the conclusion. You've missed a whole story. You just want to know what's gonna happen at the end. And we do that a lot. You only hear the conclusion of it. Now I'm saying this because, in the same way, if we only approach the gospel by jumping to the final summary of how everything is gonna end, the final destination of heaven or hell, if we just skip over the rest of the story and say, tell me what happens at the end, then we're jumping straight to the conclusion. And I believe that's what church has taught us to do a lot of times. We want to know are you going to heaven or are you going to hell? And we jump to the end of it. If we do that, though, we miss the living reality that the story itself is actually showing. We miss the voice of Christ all through the story. We miss what he is revealing. We miss what's being restored in the process of the story. Why? Because we're impatient and all we want to do is get to the end of it. Where's this person going to spend eternity? That's what we want to know most of the time. Instead of looking and saying, how has this person's life been redeemed now? How's this person being restored now? We want to skip over all that and just get to the end and say, where is this person going to spend eternity? Now, there's nothing wrong with that question. Like I said, it's not that it's not important. But if we jump to that and make that the main purpose and the main goal, we miss everything throughout the story. And I got to thinking about that, and I thought, you know, maybe that's why we misinterpret so much in Scripture. Because what we put our focus on is how is this thing going to end? Come on, all you got to do is listen to people talk, Christians. Go on Facebook and look at a few posts. All we're talking about is how the world is coming to an end. All this stuff's happening, and we're getting ready for the rapture to happen and all this kind of stuff. Everything that we talk about when it comes to Christianity is about how it is going to end. Our focus is on the conclusion. And because of that, we are missing so much. Most Christians are missing so much of the story because they jump straight to the end of it.

Starting The Story With Jesus

SPEAKER_00 6:14

So today, I don't want to start with the end of the story. I'm not going to. You're never going to hear me say, let's go to the end and start there. I want to start where the story itself actually begins to speak most clearly, and that's with Jesus. We won't say this out loud. People don't want to say this out loud, but most of the time when we're talking about the conclusion, we're skipping right past Jesus. And we're going all the way to the end. We're skipping past everything he did on the cross. Now at Easter, boy, we'll we'll preach on it, we'll talk about it, we'll talk about him being buried, we'll talk about him being raised up. At Christmas, we'll talk about the death, the burial, and the resurrection. But that's just two holidays. What about the rest of the time? Why don't we talk about what the cross really represents? And I believe too often we are skipping over those things just because we're so focused on what's going to happen in the very end. I'm not worried about the end. And that's one thing that I will honestly say that I believe that the finished work of Christ has developed in me, and I hope it's developed in you. I am not worried about the end. Whether it comes tomorrow or it comes another 2,000 years, I am not worried about it. You're not going to hear me stand behind this pulpit and scare you with all the stories about hell. Because I'm not going there. And I hope you're not. So why are we going to stand up and scare people into and make them listen to something every Sunday morning about a place that they're never going to go? I just think we focus so much on the ending that we have missed the story. And the story's good. There's a lot of really, really good stuff in it. You know, so if we start with Jesus, if we go back and we change our lens, and this is all, you might say, well, this ain't what you've been preaching about. Yes, it is. I'm just changing it up a little bit, giving you a different way to look at it. Because this has everything to do with when I read Scripture, what lens am I looking through? Some people's looking through the lens of destination, eternity. I'm looking through the lens of finished work and what does it mean? So when I read scripture, I start finding things in Scripture sometimes without even looking for it, is simply because of the lens that I'm looking through. I start seeing things in there about what really made the cross important. How does the cross have an impact on my life today? Instead of focusing on the cross and believing in the cross is going to help me end up in heaven. That's a given. Listen, we don't have to talk about that all the time because that is a given. I want to talk about and I want to push and persuade people to understand how can the cross affect my life today? How can it make me live a better life today? How can it bring people together today? You're going to be together in heaven. You're going to walk through the perligation. All the things that we've talked about, we're not doing away. We're not dismissing that stuff. We are just not turning that into a theology. We're saying that he died on the cross to bring back a restoration of his people here on earth. And I am one of those people. You are one of those people. You are a child of God. So now how do I begin to represent heaven, the kingdom of heaven, here on earth? That don't do nothing with taking away heaven. Nothing at all. That's just not my focus. That's not what I'm that. Listen, I'm not ready to go tomorrow. Maybe you are. I've heard people say it before, Lord, just take me out of this old nasty world. No, God, leave me here. I've got things I want to do. I'm enjoying life. I'm not ready to go. And then somebody might say, Well, don't you want to be with God? I'm with God every day. And if you'll listen to me, I can tell you how to be with God every day. Because He's with you. He's joined together in union with us. Why do I have to go somewhere and die physically to be with Him? That's all the finished work saying we have access to Him now. We don't have to wait until we're physically gone to spend time with Him. If we start with Jesus, if we look through that lens and let Jesus Christ be the lens that we're looking through, and we ask things like, who is He? What's He done? What was the purpose of what He done? How far does His does His what He done actually reach into the earth? See, we just think of a God sitting up on a throne somewhere and we're gonna walk through the pearly gates and we're gonna get there and He's gonna be sitting there with this book. Come on now, I know you've probably had these thoughts too. God's gonna be sitting there, or Peter, or whoever's gonna be guarding the gate, and you're gonna get up there and you're gonna walk up to the gate, and hopefully, he's gonna open that book up, and hopefully, your name's gonna be found in it. And then he's gonna start reading out everything that you've ever done in your life. I struggle with that. Because if he died on the cross and all that has been done away with, I struggle to understand how God is gonna bring up every negative, bad, crazy, and dumb thing that I've ever done in my life when I stand before him. Now, a lot of people maybe won't agree with that, and that's okay. I'm just telling you things that I struggle with, and that's what develops my lens when I look through and I read the word. I don't see a God who is waiting on me to get there so he can open up a book and just pour out wrath on me. That's not the kind of God that I believe that I worship. Now, maybe you do. Maybe other people do, and that's that's that's their prerogative to do that. But because I read it through a finished work lens, that's not the kind of God that I see. And that I have to stand before Him up there in the great day of judgment, and I have to stand there in fear and uncertainty and hoping that once he gets through all the dumb stuff that I've ever done in my life, that somehow, some way, that he'll look and say, Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter in. And I'm praying that he won't look at me on that day and say, Depart from me, you worker of iniquity, for I never knew you. I struggle with that. Number one, because those verses is not even about a destination. They're not. We've turned them into that, but they're not about standing at the pearly gate. But because of the lens that we've developed in Christianity of destination, heaven or hell, everything has been about conclusions. And all we're trying to say, all I'm looking at in the finished work of Christ, is saying I'm not focusing on conclusions, I'm focusing on now. How do I be that man of God that he called me to be now? How can you be that woman of God he called you to be now instead of waiting until you get there?

Judgment Without Fear

SPEAKER_00 15:50

When we begin with Jesus, one of the things that becomes very clear from the very beginning is that the finished work of Christ does not make judgment less real. I'm gonna hit on judgment because that is what the church is focused on. So if we want to preach what's popular in the church, then I'm gonna preach for just a minute on judgment. Because that is the direction that the church is always going in. Judgment. But I'm gonna look at judgment in a little bit different way this morning. Because we're not trying to deny certain things. Okay. Let me say it like this. When we make the lens about Jesus, now listen to this. When we make the lens about Jesus, then those things that we focus so much on, sin, darkness, death, they're not, we can't just take them and throw them out of the gospel and say they're not there. Those things are talked about in the gospel. Okay, we realize that we're not doing away with those things. But when Jesus becomes the ultimate focus, when we begin it with through the lens of Christ, then sin and death and darkness does not have the final word. Jesus is greater than all of those things. The finished work message is not trying to deny or minimize brokenness. Now, I'm using the word brokenness because all of those things I just talked about, sin and darkness and death, all of those things can kind of be brought into that one word of brokenness, according to how you look at it. So the finished work message, we're not trying to deny or minimize brokenness. Things happen in life. We could all go through and tell personal stories about how we've been in a place of brokenness in our life. How we've been in a place where we just didn't think we were gonna make it through. We just didn't know how that this could be happening in my life because I've always believed in God. I've always gone to church, I've always worshipped Him, I've always tried to keep my eyes focused on Him, and then all of a sudden, boom, something hits in life. And we don't quite understand why. We've all been there. These things are real. Every single person in this room has gone through brokenness or is encountering some type of brokenness in your life right now. It's real. But the good news is that brokenness also does not have the final say. We all know darkness is real. Now, again, when we look at darkness, it's a matter of how do I see it? How do I, how do I, what's my definition of darkness? The true definition, if you go back and look at it, is really ignorance. Darkness represents ignorance. Ignorance means I don't know something. I'm unaware, I'm not, I'm not educated in that. I'm ignorant. So therefore, when it comes to some things, I'm walking in darkness in some areas. I'm ignorant in those areas. Ignorance is real. Darkness is real. We've all experienced places where life feels heavy. It feels like, you know, I'm I'm never gonna make it back from this. Life sometimes seems unfair. It sometimes seems unclear. Why do I have to go through this? But the other person, they over there living a life just where they're selling through. We've all been in that place. And I'm slowing down here because I want you to think about that a minute. We've all been there. But we also know that darkness cannot remain where light enters. In the natural sense and in the biblical sense, I don't want to spend too much time going into this because I've talked about it before, but this is where sometimes we need to take our spiritual hats off and set it to the side and not be so spiritual and put our common sense hat on and just understand what the word means. If darkness is represented from ignorance, which means I do not know something, if you tell me to go out and change the engine in that car outside, I am ignorant in that area. I'm not a mechanic. Now I can go take some classes, I can go learn some things, I can go on YouTube, and I can gain some knowledge. And I can gather some information, and guess what? When I do that, Knowledge is light. When I do that, light comes into an area that was dark, and you know what darkness has to do? It has to go now. Why? Because I brought understanding and I brought knowledge in. So guess what? I'm no longer ignorant. So darkness has to flee. It can no longer stay. Light will never have to fight for space with darkness. When light comes in, darkness has to go automatically.

Darkness Means Ignorance

SPEAKER_00 22:42

We use the word a lot distortion. Some people may not understand that word exactly what we're talking about when I say it. But we need to understand that word. Because when it comes to distortion and distorted thinking and distorted images that we see. And I mean distorted images of the way we see God, distorted images in the way we see ourselves when you look in the mirror. Distorted images in the way you see other people. I thought he was a Christian, and look at him, I air sinning. So we now see him, we thought he was a Christian, but now we see him in a distorted way. We see something wrong with him now. We've all experienced distortion. Okay? And I want to briefly talk about the definition of that a minute because we have to, if we're going to use this word and we're going to talk about it, we've got to understand what it means. And it's really simple. A distortion is a twisted or a warped version of something that was originally good and true. I'd like to add this in distortion is when something no longer reflects what it was created to be. Think about that. I have to understand the original purpose, what God intended of me. I have to know that He called me and created me in His image after His likeness. And I have to know what that means. To know that I'm living or seeing myself in a distorted way, I have to have something to compare it to. I think I just answered a question. Why are so many people walking around asleep? Because you can't see the distortion if you don't know your identity. There's nothing to compare it to. Come on, we've all heard people say, this is just who I am. I've talked to people who are battling addiction. And they say, I can't help it. My daddy was like this, my mama done this, my rest of my family, it's just a it's just a gene that's inside me. I cannot help it. And that's become their identity. Now it's really, we know that that's not who they are. But that has become their new identity. So when you try to look at them and you try to help them see a distortion, they don't see it. Why? Because what they're comparing it to is the distortion. Something that is opposite of what God called us to be. But if I can help somebody see their true identity in Christ, if we can get somebody to understand this is who God called you to be, this is what Jesus Christ done for you on the cross. This is what you are entitled to. And you can see the original intent. Now you've got something to compare it to. And now you can begin to see what I'm doing now don't line up with that. What I'm thinking now doesn't line up with that. But I gotta be able to see that first. Because if not, I have no, I have no gauge, nothing to compare it to. That's a sermon that'll be coming to you in the near future. Because that is, I think that is, I think that answers some questions for us. We want people to see the distortion, but what are they comparing it to? They don't know anything different. What is our job? To bring back to their understanding the true nature, the true intent, and the true character of God. Why? Because you were created in his image after his likeness. We always use the example and the phrase that, you know because Jesus said, He says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. So we say all the time, if you want to know who God is, if you want to know what God looks like, if you want to know how God thinks, look to Jesus. But can we be a little bolder and even say that we can look to ourselves? That's what we want to get to. Because we should reflect Jesus. Now I know we're not going to walk around and say that. I hope you understand what I'm saying there. But it should be the point that if I see myself in the image and the likeness of Christ, I understand who I am. I understand that when I make a mistake, maybe I've done something crazy that don't define me. It may slow me down, it may cause me to stumble, but it does not define my identity. My identity is in Christ, and that is not who I am. So I can get up from it, I can rise out of it, I can turn back to who I am and not have to live in a place that God never called me to live in. But if I don't know that, it's almost like spitting in the wind. You're trying to help this person, but all you're doing is pointing fingers at them and telling them how bad they are. Listen, can I tell you a big secret right here? They already know that. You don't have to point out this. Listen, nobody ever had to point out my sin. I did it, I was doing it, but I knew what it was before you did. What I needed was somebody to point out my identity in Christ. Because that's what I didn't know. I knew the crazy stuff I was doing. I had the conviction there. Even when I was out there living in the world, I still had the conviction there. And what do I mean by that? I could do something, and when I got through, it was fun for a season. But when I got done and you know, laying there the next day, and I'd be like, man, I just feel horrible. Why? Because that was my true identity rising up saying, that ain't you. That ain't you. Even before I knelt down and said a sinner's prayer. Even before that, the sinner's prayer didn't create the identity. God did. When

Distortion And Identity In Christ

SPEAKER_00 30:58

it comes to distortion, we have to understand it. We've got to be able to help people see what distortion really means. And see, there's been moments where every single one of us, we have we've been to places in our life and seasons in our life where we didn't see clearly. Moments where our view of God, the view of ourself, the view of the world around us became clouded. But the good news is that distortion is not beyond redemption. That's the good news. The good news is not reinforcing to somebody over and over and over again how if they don't change, they're going to burn in hell. That's not good news. The good news is everything that you're doing that is outside of the will of God, that does not look like God, when you don't think like God, when you do all these things, and you think and look and act in a distorted nature. The good news is that Jesus has already taken care of that, and that that thing has already been redeemed. But you have to see that. You have to understand that. And how do people understand that if we don't ever tell them that? If all we do is beat them up with their past and beat them up with sin, how are they ever gonna see who they really are? So we're not focusing, and that's what I love about the finished work. We're not focusing on human failure, on all the bad things. With a few moments where God steps in and everything just picks up. We've all had those moments. Man, even when you were in the world, you come on, I'm not telling you to go back and live there. I'm just saying think back a minute. When you were in the world, but you know you were doing all this crazy stuff, but then you went to a church service, and I mean the Holy Spirit started to move, and you could not control yourself. You were so excited in that service. You didn't even want to leave, you didn't want to go to begin with, but then when you got there, the Holy Spirit began to move in that place, and you did not want to leave. Awesome moment. And then Monday and Tuesday roll back around. That's a cycle we get on. But see, I love that because God, even in the midst of our bad moments, he will still give us glimpses into who we really are. He doesn't try to hide it from us, and he's not playing hide and seek. He wants us to understand it and to see it and to experience and to and to receive it. He's not hiding our identity from us. So the good news is distortion is not beyond redemption. God is not simply revealing what is wrong with us, he's restoring what has been distorted in us. This is where the whole story of Scripture to me really starts to come into focus a little bit differently than we've always been taught. We're not focusing on human failure. Again, we're not gonna focus on human failure. Listen, we could we could put these chairs in a circle and just start pointing at each other. We know each other well enough to, you probably know something that somebody in this room has done that we would call a sin. We could do that all day. A lot of churches do that as soon as they walk in from the pulpit. But we do it in such a way that it seems so super spiritual. I'm only doing it because, brother, I don't want you to burn in hell for eternity. I want you to walk through the pearly gates with me. So we we we back it up with this spiritual side of us that says, I'm only trying to do this for your good. No, if you want to do something good for them, tell them who they are. Don't tell them what they've done. This is where identity comes into focus. So this is where the scripture starts to come alive, but in a little bit different way. If we don't focus on failure, but we focus on one continuous story of a God who is actively working to restore everything that's been lost. Everything in our life that's wrong. He's working to restore. Jesus, he didn't enter the world as a as a reaction to a crisis. There was more to it than that. He came as as a to deal with the source. What's causing the problem? And it's that distorted nature and that distorted mindset. But he says through him all things were being brought into the reality of what he has already accomplished on the cross. Reconciliation with God. He did not come to only address consequences, he came to deal again with the source, what's causing it. It wasn't just to offer forgiveness, and we say that so often. Most of the time, if we point at the cross and we say, what was the purpose? People's gonna say, for forgiveness of our sins. Yes, that's not a wrong answer, but there's more to it than just forgiveness. He came to reveal the Father. He also didn't come just to prepare people for heaven one day, he came to bring heaven's reality into the present world where we are now. As he is, we are in this world. Not one day we have the opportunity to be just like him now. And we all know what it feels like. I was thinking about this. There's been times that we look back and we realize, we think back on some of the crazy stuff that we've done in life, some of the things that you're not gonna stand up in church and testify about. Some of the mistakes we've made in our life. We know what it feels like to look back and realize that sometimes, if you're being honest with yourself, those things didn't just happen on the outside of our lives. There was things that happened on the inside of us, too. Some things didn't just affect what we do, they also affected how we see and how we think. That's internal. And we focus so much on the external of just behavior. As Christians, when we focus on only the outward behavioral issues, I think it hurts us. Because I believe the deeper issue we face is not that we what we've done on the outside, but what has been formed on the inside. Listen, what's been formed on the inside because of separation from truth.

False Images Of God

SPEAKER_00 40:05

What does that mean? Separation from truth. I don't believe we're separated from God. I don't believe that I can be living, and this is this is just me now. I don't believe I can be living a good, godly life and be in union with him because he's chose me before the foundation of the world. I've accepted that and I become one with him, and then because I make a mistake, that God packs my bags and says, get out. And but separation. How many times have we heard somebody say sin separates you from God? God didn't go nowhere. God is not going anywhere. Well, how do you know that? How can you be so confident? Because I believe his word. And it says he will never leave me, he will never forsake me. Now I can get into a place where I begin to believe things that is contrary to the word of God. I can begin to believe that I've done something bad enough that there is no way that God can stay around me because you know we know that God can't be around sin. That's what we teach. God cannot be in the presence of sin. He even had to turn away from Jesus when he was on the cross. And because that mindset that we teach, we think that every time I fail, every time I make a mistake, then God naturally has to just turn his head from me. Because he can't be in the same place. Well, either he's in the, listen, I can't say that, but then say he'll never leave me or forsake me. One of them's got to be a lie. Both, you know, there's some things we can look and we can say, well, you know, two things can be true at once. Both of those things cannot be true at once. He is not separating from you and staying with you at the same time. He is not leaving us. But my mindset can get into a place to where I think that I'm so bad and I've done so much wrong in my life that there's no way God could ever love me. Now, does that mean God left? No. It means you're seeing something in a distorted way. You're seeing something opposite of what the truth really is. That's distortion. When I'm talking about separation from truth, I think sometimes and too often we've been shaped and molded by false images of God. What do I mean by that? We've been, we have believed and we have been taught that he is distant. We've been taught that sometimes he's very reluctant. It's like stand back and let's just wait and see if they get it right. Give them a little, give them a little time. But they gotta prove themselves. We've been taught that he's, you know, and believe that he's waiting for for failure. It's like he's always waiting to see if we're gonna do something wrong. Instead of, he's moving toward us in love. Even if I'm doing something wrong, he still loves me. But see, then Jesus steps into the story. This is where we're gonna go back to Jesus in a minute. He steps in and reveals something really different than those things I just said. He says that to see him is to see the Father. And what we see in Christ is a God who moves toward brokenness. Not away from it. A God who restores instead of abandoning us. He doesn't abandon us when we do wrong, he restores us. And this is what Jesus shows us. A God who reconciles instead of separating himself from us. The cross was not the moment that God began to love humanity. The cross was the moment that that love was fully revealed to creation. It was God that was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And as he goes on to say, not counting people's sins against them. Since we use the word, not counting people's brokenness against them. That doesn't mean brokenness is ignored. We're not telling people go out and live however you want to live. It don't matter. That's not what we're saying. Brokenness is never ignored. It means brokenness was addressed at a deeper level than outward correction alone. Because the goal is not simply to punish wrongdoing, the goal is to heal what wrongdoing has damaged and restore what has been distorted. Restoration, reconciliation. The resurrection's not merely undoing death, it is announced, it's the announcement of the reality that a new creation. He says we're a new creation. A new creation is breaking into the present world. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. Death is real. We know that. Death is real within human experience here on this earth. But it's not final. The grave is real, but it's not the ultimate place. Loss is real, but it does not get the final word. Jesus has entered into death and come out the other side. And in doing so, he has redefined reality. He's redefined what reality looks like on the other side of the tomb. He came out of it.

Correction That Restores

SPEAKER_00 47:37

This is why judgment, when we use that word judgment, it's not removed in the finished work. And that's one of the misconceptions that people think when we hear, they hear the finished work of Christ. One of the first things they think is that we're saying judgment has been totally removed out of the equation. Judgment has not been removed, it's just been recentered in the character of God that's revealed through Christ. Judgment is not God stepping away from creation. Judgment is God bringing all things into the light of his truth. We say it all the time in here. If you really look it up, and you know, if somebody said, I truly want to understand what judgment is, that's a good thing. Go look it up. Because when we talk about the judgment, we're talking about correction, not separation. So what did he do to bring judgment? He's bringing everything that's distorted, everything that's in darkness, he's bringing into the light so that it can be restored. That's not him pushing us away, that's bringing us in closer to him. It's the exposure of what distorts life, the unveiling of what's been false the whole time, the clearing away of what cannot remain in love. That's why we say that when you see your identity in Christ and you truly get to a place of understanding who you are, there's some things I don't desire anymore. You don't have to force me to stop sinning. There's some things I just don't have a desire for any longer. So, in that sense, judgment is not the opposite of restoration. It is actually one of the ways restoration takes place. Because what cannot be healed in darkness, brokenness must be, brokenness must be brought into light. Things are not healed in darkness. Have you ever wondered why? Darkness, ignorance. If I don't know, because there's nothing to compare it to, I mean, I truly know there's some people who's doing something, and they do not feel like they're doing anything wrong at all. They do not feel like they're doing anything outside of the will of God. Why? Because there's nothing to compare that to. And because God is good, his judgment is never separation. Think about it like this: the same light that exposes our problems is the same light who makes wholeness possible. We don't teach that a lot. We talk about how Christ will expose you. He will bring into light your bad things that you're doing. But we stop right there, but we don't tell people that the same one, the same light that exposes is the same light that heals. The same truth that confronts our sin is the same truth that brings freedom. The same Christ who reveals what destroys life is the same Christ who restores life. So the finished work does not lead us to a smaller view of judgment, it leads us to a larger view of Jesus. And a larger Jesus does not make brokenness less serious. We're not turning a blind eye to sin. It reveals that brokenness is not the final word. Jesus is bigger. So the gospel does not ask us to deny what is broken. The true gospel. It's not saying deny sin, deny what's broken. It reveals that what is broken is not beyond the reach of Christ. It does not ask us to ignore reality. It invites us to see reality, but to see it in the light of Christ. I'm closing

The Lens You Read With

SPEAKER_00 53:25

right here, but it's different. For years, I think we've been teaching fear by constantly reminding people of how bad they are. And we've done it with good reason behind it. We had a good heart behind it because if I tell you, keep telling you how bad you are, then you'll change. So the heart was good. But see, I think now it should be more about the confidence that we have in the one who enters brokenness and restores what was lost. So the gospel does not end just with speculation. It does not end with uncertainty about God, about God's heart toward us. It does not end with questions about whether grace is enough. Can there be too much grace? We've been told that we're guilty of giving too much grace. Does God give too much grace? Should he be a little bit harsher? It ends with Jesus Christ Himself. It starts with Christ and it ends with Christ. The one who reveals the Father, the one who reconciles the world to himself, the one who makes all things new, not just restoring, but actually making things new again. And in him, if we look to him and we see him as the lens, in him and through him, it only comes down to being one thing, and that's life. Not death, not separation, not guilt, not fear. Life. If I look through a lens when I read the scripture, and the lens is Jesus and life, I'm sorry. I don't see condemnation in verses. I don't see guilt in verses. I don't see fear. I don't see an angry father. I just do not see those things. And I know some people would say, well, you're just turning a blind eye to it. I don't think so. And I mean that. I don't think I'm being naive. I think I'm seeing truth. Why? Because the lens that I'm looking through begins with truth. And if I'm looking through that lens, then that's what I'm going to find. If I'm looking through the lens of hate and death and condemnation and guilt, every verse I look at, I will find hate and guilt and condemnation. And if I see the Father that way, then when I look in the mirror, I see myself that way. And then I see the world around me that way. It's real simple. We've got to pay attention to the lens that we're reading scripture through. Several years ago, I made a quote, and I know some people didn't understand what I said at the time. And I said, do not let the Bible get you bound. And I mean, I there's some people who didn't like me saying that. But what I meant by that is if you read the Bible through a lens and everything you see in that scripture does not look like Christ, that's not the gospel you're reading. I mean, you're reading the gospel, but your uh lens is distorting it. And you're getting an interpretation that looks nothing like Jesus. And then you can't figure out why I have the view of God that I have. Because if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. If we have a distorted version of Jesus, then we're gonna have a distorted version of the Father. I think it's as simple as just coming back and saying, what lens are you looking through? That will determine what you see. We don't have to throw scriptures at people all the time. Honestly, sometimes it's better not to throw scriptures at them. But just let them take whatever they're talking about and saying, okay, how did, and I said this on a Wednesday night, I would love to sit down with people of different church or different denomination that differs in theology. They see things a little different than we do. I would love to sit down and just truly have a conversation. Not question whether who's right or who's wrong or anything like that, or cast blame, or I know more than you do, or nothing like that, but just simply say, okay, you see this when you read that verse. I see this when I read the same verse. What's the difference? Why not? Don't give me an interpretation of the verse, but why are we seeing this differently even though we're reading the same words? That would provoke people to say, you know, there's got to be something there. And it goes back to the lens. How I view it is what I'm going to get out of it. I believe that's our part of our job is to help people wake up, to help people see the right lens. And part of that starts sometimes we have to change ours. That's why we talk about deconstruction sometimes. We have to deconstruct some of those old patterns of thinking that don't line up anymore. It's not that we were wrong, it's not that granny and granddaddy was wrong. They taught what they knew. And now we have the ability to and the resources to go a little deeper. And when we get the right lens, I'm telling you, I believe this with everything in me. That when you get develop the correct lens and begin looking through that, the Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit will open up scripture in a way that you've never seen before. Why? Because when you start looking at it in the proper context, man, the Holy Spirit will begin to just bring things out of it. I don't care how many times you've read that verse, he'll start bringing things out of that verse that you've never seen in there before. And why? Because you're looking at it through the lens of truth now. And you'll see something different than you ever did.

Prayer And Blessing

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

Let's pray. Father God, we thank you. We thank you for your word. We thank you for the season that you have us in right now, Father, for what you're doing with us and through us. I pray for every person in this room here, Father, that's within the sound of my voice right now. I pray that you just bless each one of them. I praise supernatural blessings over every person in this room. Father, just touch their lives in a way that you never have before. Begin to open up their minds and their ears and their hearts to receive a revelation that maybe they haven't seen before. But you're beginning to open up this word. You're beginning to deconstruct some of the old things that kept us blind, some of the old things that kept us bound. You have released us from that, Father. And I pray that this word just come alive in a way like it never has. And Father, I pray over every person in this room's family, their homes, their finances, everything they touch, everything, every word that they speak. We pray blessings, Father. And we just decree that none of their words, none of our words, Father, will come back void. That we will speak the word of God and we will see the manifestation of the word of God in our lives and in the people's lives around us. So, Father, we thank you. We'll be careful to always give you the praise, the honor, and the glory in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.