Speaker 1: Have you ever felt the pressure before where you had to hit all of the right notes and it seems like it's like in traffic, when you have to be somewhere quickly and every light decides to turn against you, or every driver out there all of a sudden becomes hmm, how do I do this with Christian attitude, less of a good driver.
Speaker 1: You see how I did that.
Speaker 1: I landed that pretty good.
Speaker 1: God is not asking for you to be perfect.
Speaker 1: He's asking for you to be authentic.
Speaker 1: Do you know that the world right now is looking for a church who is just who they say they are, because we have been conditioned to put on the fake mask in church?
Speaker 1: Come and have the oh God bless you too.
Speaker 1: Everything is good, god.
Speaker 1: Oh God is so good.
Speaker 1: He is good, but sometimes life is real.
Speaker 1: He is great, but sometimes in the middle of it, in the absence, you know, if you went and stood in a garden and waited and the things that you did not see, you assume that the plant was dead because you saw nothing growing and you left it there.
Speaker 1: You would never be able to harvest.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, where God has planted you left it there.
Speaker 1: You would never be able to harvest.
Speaker 1: Sometimes, where God has planted you.
Speaker 1: It is a dark season, it is a lonely time and sometimes it feels like no one else can see you.
Speaker 1: No one knows where you are.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you, when the Holy Spirit rains down on your life and growth really begins to happen, you will come up through the dirt and through that dirt, like a butterfly, that resistance will become your launching pad to who God has called you to be.
Speaker 1: God wants us to be authentic, and y'all know I'm random and crazy.
Speaker 1: So here we go.
Speaker 1: Sister Judy's birthday is today.
Speaker 1: Happy birthday to you.
Speaker 1: Happy birthday, sister Judy.
Speaker 1: Happy birthday to you.
Speaker 1: And you didn't know that was coming, did you?
Speaker 1: You can try to guess all you want, but you will never figure me out, except for, except for, when I say will you stand for the reading of God's word?
Speaker 1: We just do this at the beginning of the service, in a way of honoring and in reverence to God's word, because his word is alive and active, and we want to honor that today.
Speaker 1: So if you have your Bible, if you don't have it, it will be on the screen behind me in 1 John 1, verse 7.
Speaker 1: If you're taking notes.
Speaker 1: You can write that down or look up there, take a photo with your phone.
Speaker 1: But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us all from sin.
Speaker 1: Let's pray, father, we thank you so much for your presence that has already been so evident here today.
Speaker 1: I pray that, through your humble servant, today that you speak life, that everything that comes out of my mouth, that we read and we follow along with today, from your word, it penetrates the hearts of those who maybe you're on the fence.
Speaker 1: I pray, god, that you give a divine revelation to those who are sitting here today, that they may know you more and that they may see themselves in a clearer picture of how you see them.
Speaker 1: In your precious name, we pray Amen.
Speaker 1: You may be seated.
Speaker 1: I know y'all just got standing so long during worship, but I guarantee you you would probably stand more at a football game you like.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Is that too much truth, right?
Speaker 1: So, if you've been here the last two weeks, the first week we started this series, we launched it out on Easter Sunday and it was talking about how Jesus is our bridge between heaven and earth, from us, from mankind, from our sinful nature.
Speaker 1: He makes us right, righteous before an almighty God.
Speaker 1: He is the lens, or the filter, if you will, that God looks through when he looks at us, when we say, jesus, I need you be Lord of my life.
Speaker 1: He is that bridge between our sinful nature and the Father and there is no other way.
Speaker 1: You can try to build your own man-made bridge to heaven, but it will not work.
Speaker 1: I think of a similar story of a group of people called the Babylonians.
Speaker 1: They were trying to build their own man-made way to heaven and god set that straight pretty quick, to where they no longer could communicate with each other.
Speaker 1: Maybe sometimes we can't communicate so well because we won't stop building our man-made bridges and we stop using the spirit to lead us.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go back to our notes.
Speaker 1: Let's go back.
Speaker 1: There is no other way to heaven.
Speaker 1: Jesus christ is the one and only way to heaven.
Speaker 1: You cannot work and serve and give everything you are to the church and spend one more minute in heaven.
Speaker 1: Once you accept Christ as your Lord and Savior, it is finished.
Speaker 1: God came, sent his son to show that he loves us and that that is the only way.
Speaker 1: No extra credit assignments on this one.
Speaker 1: You either are or you are not.
Speaker 1: What does the Bible say about?
Speaker 1: When God says about lukewarm water, it makes him want to vomit.
Speaker 1: I like the word vomit more because it's a little more nasty.
Speaker 1: Oh, it'll just spit you out, darling, you're fine.
Speaker 1: No, he will throw you up.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 1: Oh, he'll just spit you out, darling, you're fine.
Speaker 1: No, he will throw you up.
Speaker 1: Sorry.
Speaker 1: And last week was a bridge to unity.
Speaker 1: Not only right.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 1: We're living in the days after the resurrection, where, for 40 days, jesus went around and he reunited the church that was scattered.
Speaker 1: After they crucified our Lord and Savior, jesus Christ, they began to run and hide behind locked doors.
Speaker 1: Multiple stories of them being locked away in the room and praying, scared, not knowing what to do.
Speaker 1: All of a sudden, the person they had given everything for, many of them had left their jobs to follow Jesus.
Speaker 1: They left their heritage, the thing they grew up doing.
Speaker 1: They walked away from it to follow this man that was supposed to be the king of kings and the Lord of lords, and they were still looking through their physical eyes.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it takes physical pain for us to really begin to understand spiritual wealth.
Speaker 1: And they had to be in this place where they were so vulnerable and so distracted and so dismantled that when Jesus came and started showing himself, all of a sudden that faith began to be rekindled in their hearts and he began to bring unity back to the body again.
Speaker 1: Because Jesus came to unite when he would go out on the mountainside and he would preach his gospel and he would preach to the people about love and how there's only one true God.
Speaker 1: People were drawn to the truth.
Speaker 1: People end up leaving churches because they are drawn to men or man-made things, but when there is a truth, it draws and we don't have to do a thing.
Speaker 1: Jesus didn't have to do a thing, but open his mouth and the word spread.
Speaker 1: Because when miracles begin to happen, when the Spirit of God is in the middle of something and the Spirit of God is prevalent in the body of believers, you don't have to run and tell everybody, because it will happen Immediately.
Speaker 1: After Jesus rose from the grave, he began revealing himself to his followers and this brought unity back to the church, which brings me and also, they just witnessed what had happened to Jesus and they didn't want to be next.
Speaker 1: Now let me ask you this If you were the disciples after Jesus was murdered and hung on the cross, there's not a whole lot of account of 12 disciples at the foot of the cross.
Speaker 1: Even to the opening of the grave, not all 12 went to go see.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you today that I have been in certain situations in my life or certain seasons of my life where I was scared and did not want to go find Jesus and I was sometimes scared that he was going to come find me.
Speaker 1: Can we be a little authentic today that these disciples who were hiding, they were really scared.
Speaker 1: It was a real, true, raw emotion, everything that they knew and loved they had, probably these three years in this ministry.
Speaker 1: There's no telling their parents or whoever had the boats and the fishing nets and all that stuff, people to do all this stuff.
Speaker 1: They had to be replaced because the business must go on.
Speaker 1: So they had no place to return to in some cases because they had spent three years of their life following this man wholeheartedly, with no going back.
Speaker 1: Some of us like tonever mind never mind.
Speaker 1: Listen.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna make residence in God's house, you got to stop navigating back to your old one.
Speaker 1: You have to forget.
Speaker 1: You have to forget where you used to live.
Speaker 1: Remember the lessons you learned, but forget the things that pulled you to it.
Speaker 1: If I was to engulf myself the reason when I came to Jesus now this is going to be crazy to some of y'all when I got serious with God after I got out of jail and got free of addiction, I deleted my Facebook and I don't know about y'all, but to me that was serious.
Speaker 1: I had like 4,000 friends on there.
Speaker 1: They were my friends, you know, but none of them bailed me out.
Speaker 1: Visitation came and it went and none of them showed up.
Speaker 1: Because when you're in the middle of an authentic, real time in your life, you begin to see who's real and who's not.
Speaker 1: In 2 Corinthians 6, it says in verse 2, it says at just the right time.
Speaker 1: I hear you See, in this place where the disciples were at in these 40 days after following the death of Jesus, jesus was showing up to some, but even doubting Thomas didn't.
Speaker 1: I call him authentic Thomas.
Speaker 1: He was real Thomas.
Speaker 1: He just said it.
Speaker 1: How everybody else was doubting in their hearts, but he said it out loud.
Speaker 1: I need to see something.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been in the middle of a season and you're like God, I got to see something?
Speaker 1: Can we be really here today, god?
Speaker 1: I don't know where you are.
Speaker 1: I don't hear you, I don't see you and sometimes I don't even feel you.
Speaker 1: But it's in these times of separation it starts to build our desperation and when we start hungering and thirsting for his righteousness, the things of the world do not matter to us anymore, because maybe God's letting you dangle a little bit so you get rid of some relationships you could have left five years ago.
Speaker 1: Maybe God is dangling you out there, letting you feel the stress and a little bit of anxiety to get you where you start, moving in the right direction, because when you're out there having fun and nothing is going wrong, you will not change.
Speaker 1: I didn't need mommy and daddy until something went bad, and then I came running back home where I knew I was safe, I knew I belonged, only when I needed something.
Speaker 1: We do that with God all the time, at just the right time.
Speaker 1: I hear you On the day of salvation.
Speaker 1: I helped you.
Speaker 1: Indeed, the right time is now.
Speaker 1: Today is the day of salvation.
Speaker 1: What does this verse scream.
Speaker 1: We need a Savior.
Speaker 1: We must be authentic before an almighty God that we cannot do this in of ourselves.
Speaker 1: We need Him.
Speaker 1: I get tired of people saying, oh, me and God are good, we got our thing going on.
Speaker 1: You don't know God.
Speaker 1: Then I don't tell God how our relationship is going to be.
Speaker 1: He has mapped it out in his word and that's the way it is, or it ain't.
Speaker 1: And when we finally come to the end of ourselves, when you come to the end of you and you really lay who you are, every flaw, every mess up, some of us have to repent on a daily basis because our mind will betray us, our mouth will betray us, but in this moment we have to submit everything to God.
Speaker 1: When you finally come to the end of yourself and you throw your hands up and scream God, where are you?
Speaker 1: I can't do this.
Speaker 1: Every time he shows up, he shows up.
Speaker 1: You want to hear some words and cries of authenticity?
Speaker 1: Read Psalms and see here's the funny thing, and I love this that it's so put on display for us to read For one, because how many besides me have been in a place where I just need to know somebody else is suffering too.
Speaker 1: I hate when I see everybody else happy and I'm fuming.
Speaker 1: Am I the only person?
Speaker 1: When I'm in a bad attitude and everybody else is happy, I want to punch them, because I've let what I'm going through consume who I am and cloud my mind to where I can't even think straight.
Speaker 1: Have you been so mad you couldn't even think straight Every day?
Speaker 1: Some of y'all are being authentic right now.
Speaker 1: But read David's Psalms.
Speaker 1: It was like he was on a constant roller coaster.
Speaker 1: God, you are great.
Speaker 1: And in the same breath it seemed oh Lord, where are you?
Speaker 1: I'm by myself, my enemies have surrounded me and, oh Lord, you make my enemies scatter.
Speaker 1: And it's like what is wrong with you?
Speaker 1: Bipolar, as far as we know, david might have been the first case, but we feel like this.
Speaker 1: Our emotions can sometimes bring us on the worst roller coaster.
Speaker 1: Five minutes ago, we were good and we were happy, until I left the house and that moron pulled out in front of me.
Speaker 1: And I know why y'all won't put church stickers on your cars, because the way you drive.
Speaker 1: Thank you, man, appreciate it.
Speaker 1: But David was so raw and full of doubt, but a lot of times he, in this doubt, would find the courage to encourage himself.
Speaker 1: You know, what I feel sometimes that happens in our spiritual walk is that we are such babies and we don't want to.
Speaker 1: We want everyone else to cheer us up instead of us putting on our big boy and big girl pants and being able to do it ourselves.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to because in the valley of loneliness you have nobody else to turn to, and that could be a very dangerous place, because all of a sudden you see online what everybody else is doing.
Speaker 1: Oh, their marriage is good.
Speaker 1: Oh, their church is great.
Speaker 1: I see all the photos.
Speaker 1: Oh, they got friends.
Speaker 1: I see all the hearts and the comments and the thumbs up and the little huggy things with the kissy, whatever.
Speaker 1: All these stupid things we get for validation, and none of those are true.
Speaker 1: In 2 Corinthians 5.17,.
Speaker 1: This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.
Speaker 1: The old life is gone and a new life has begun.
Speaker 1: See, when you receive Jesus into your heart, this is the easiest part this one moment, this one decision right here.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to get up to that moment.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to stick to it after.
Speaker 1: But, right when you accept Christ, all of a sudden you feel a freedom you've never felt before.
Speaker 1: When I first knelt down at the altar I've told many of y'all I had a bag of meth in my pocket when I went down and when I came back up I felt like I'm not tall.
Speaker 1: For those that are watching on camera I'm 6'5", but for everybody else who is here it's 5'6".
Speaker 1: Come on, somebody.
Speaker 1: Short people count too.
Speaker 1: Can I get an amen?
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: Probably Goliath was just a regular 5'11 guy and David was just a little short man.
Speaker 1: That's how it goes in my head.
Speaker 1: And so when we come to Christ, like last week we talked about, there needs to be fruit that starts to produce in your life.
Speaker 1: See, here's the thing we want to plant the fruit of God on top of.
Speaker 1: We want to put the seed on top of the garden that we already have.
Speaker 1: And what happens is you're planting healthy, good seed of God on top of weeds and thistles and then you're expecting, when the fruits to start growing, that there's nothing going to be wrong and you're going to produce the right things.
Speaker 1: But the things that you allow to stay in your garden will choke out the life God is trying to bring to your house, the things that you allow to grow and stay in the garden.
Speaker 1: This is why we have to grab it.
Speaker 1: We have to dig it up.
Speaker 1: You will have to do some toiling to your ground so that later you will not be tormented.
Speaker 1: You have to be willing to get your hands dirty, get the shovel out and chop it down past the roots until you know that.
Speaker 1: You know that you know that there is nothing left, because only when you do that then the seeds of the Holy Spirit can be able to take root in your heart and be growing the way they're supposed to.
Speaker 1: And we forget about this because we love to blend and mix things.
Speaker 1: We love to keep our old parts of our life that we really enjoy that.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have trouble with spending money and you worship that God.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have trouble with social media and you constantly are eating what that God is putting out.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have trouble with past relationships that you should have let go.
Speaker 1: Maybe you have trouble with the way that you speak to your spouse.
Speaker 1: Can we get real for a minute?
Speaker 1: Maybe you have trouble, like me, with the way that you speak to your spouse.
Speaker 1: Can we get real for a minute?
Speaker 1: Maybe you have trouble, like me, with the way you get angry at your kid and start yelling.
Speaker 1: Can we be real?
Speaker 1: I know that I have.
Speaker 1: There is anger inside of me that God is working on, but there is no way that it will be purified in me and out of me until the fire comes.
Speaker 1: You cannot purify the golden, have a pure product, if you're not willing to burn out what the impurities are inside of you.
Speaker 1: Now that right there.
Speaker 1: That comes through the power and the infilling of the Holy Spirit, because when he begins to fill you up, it brings buoyancy to the sinful nature and pushes it out.
Speaker 1: It fills you up and pushes out who you were, so that now you can make room for what God is trying to do and plan inside of you.
Speaker 1: I want you to look in Galatians, chapter five.
Speaker 1: Now we're going to do and plan inside of you.
Speaker 1: I want you to look in Galatians, chapter 5.
Speaker 1: Now, we're going to do a little bit of reading right here, but it's very important.
Speaker 1: So in the first verse it says Galatians, chapter 5, this is talking about freedom in Christ.
Speaker 1: Now, the reason we don't have healthy churches is because we have churches full of people who are still bound to their sin.
Speaker 1: Now I know this sounds crazy, it sounds like a little hard line or whatever, but it's time for the church to start being without sin and getting it out of the church so that the body can function and be healthy in the way God sees it.
Speaker 1: Verse one it says so.
Speaker 1: Christ has truly set us free.
Speaker 1: Now make sure that you stay free and do not get tied up again in the slavery of the law.
Speaker 1: Verse two it says listen, I, paul, tell you this If you are counting on circumstances to make you right with God, then Christ will be of no benefit to you, god, then Christ will be of no benefit to you.
Speaker 1: If you're waiting for your circumstances that surround you to help you get right, if you're waiting for the right church to get you healthy again, come on.
Speaker 1: If you're waiting for the right spouse to make you enjoy life again, if you're waiting for the perfect kids, they don't exist.
Speaker 1: A perfect church does not exist.
Speaker 1: Only perfection from God can make you perfect and can make you whole.
Speaker 1: And he does it again in verse 3.
Speaker 1: He says I'll say it again If you are trying to find favor with God, in case you weren't listening the first time If you're trying to find favor with God by being circumcised.
Speaker 1: You must obey every regulation in the whole law of Moses, verse 5.
Speaker 1: To receive, by faith, the righteousness God has promised us for when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, there is no benefit in being circumcised or being uncircumcised.
Speaker 1: What is important is faith expressing itself in love.
Speaker 1: What he's trying to say here is that we try to make spiritual things right in a fleshly way.
Speaker 1: We want to make our spirits right.
Speaker 1: Back in the day, they circumcised.
Speaker 1: If you don't know, ask your mommy and daddy what that means.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying it from the pulpit, but what they would do was do this because of the law of Moses and this was a way that they christened themselves before God that this would make them in right standing.
Speaker 1: They were abiding by the law.
Speaker 1: And Paul is saying here that a physical thing like this holds no power to your spiritual being, that you try to create a spiritual wealth, a spiritual wellness inside of you and you try to do it externally.
Speaker 1: And this is backwards, because you need the fruit to be growing inside of you and start producing externally.
Speaker 1: That affects everything about you.
Speaker 1: When I came back to the Lord and I really gave my heart to him my dad.
Speaker 1: Every time I would see him I was going to say God bless his soul.
Speaker 1: But he's not dead.
Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry, dad, if you're watching, by the way, he'll be here in a couple of weeks to preach, but he's not dead.
Speaker 1: Sorry, sorry, dad, if you're watching, by the way, he'll be here in a couple of weeks to preach.
Speaker 1: So he would say every time I had long hair longer than Brother Vernon's, I had the beard about the size of his.
Speaker 1: Hey, you're going to get a haircut Every single time.
Speaker 1: That was his second favorite question when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: The other favorite question he would ask when I was inquiring about a young lady is is she filled with the Holy Ghost?
Speaker 1: How do I ask that, dad?
Speaker 1: I don't even know what that means.
Speaker 1: That was his second favorite question.
Speaker 1: You want to get a haircut.
Speaker 1: So when God started doing things and working on me inside, all of a sudden the drug Steven on the outside started looking different.
Speaker 1: Now it doesn't mean you got to cut your beard and hair and all that other stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm not getting all legalistic, but what I'm saying is, when God starts doing things inside of you, things on the outside start to change.
Speaker 1: You won't say what you used to say, you won't respond in the way you used to respond.
Speaker 1: The things that were once not in modest to you now will be.
Speaker 1: I have seen and listen.
Speaker 1: I have seen personally prostitutes come in churches to come in the church house and guess what?
Speaker 1: They don't dress where things are down here, little bitty skirt on.
Speaker 1: That was about here.
Speaker 1: Before she said, she walked in the back of this church and I'm looking and I'm a kid, I'm like who dresses like that?
Speaker 1: I had no clue what she was, had no clue what her job was, and my mom went back and sat by her, gave her a hug, went and got her a little, you know, because back in the day, you know, people got slain in the spirit.
Speaker 1: Y'all are scared of it now.
Speaker 1: I was just saying Y'all don't worship like you used to and you wonder why God don't move like he used to.
Speaker 1: I hear you, lord, all right, but we had those covers.
Speaker 1: We actually have them here in a little basket.
Speaker 1: I think it's around there, a little cover that covers up in case women fell over you cover their legs.
Speaker 1: She went and put it over her legs, that was it, and she stayed there the entire service and no one kicked her out because they knew that was exactly where she needed to be.
Speaker 1: Now, here's the thing kicked her out because they knew that was exactly what she needed to be.
Speaker 1: Now, here's the thing what are we doing to make people not want to come to a church because we say they're not good enough, yet when, if we're being authentic and real with ourselves and we hold up a mirror to ourselves, we don't deserve to be here either, because none of us before Christ deserved anything that he has blessed us with, and so everything that we have is a direct blessing from what God has blessed us with, because we came to Jesus.
Speaker 1: Get out of the way and let somebody else get some.
Speaker 1: Now, that's going to be hard for some of y'all.
Speaker 1: Now, there's a reason I'm saying this is because there's going to come a day and I believe a day very soon where people are going to come in here that do not look the part, that do not act the part.
Speaker 1: Their mouths are bad, their body odor is bad, they have cigarettes on their breath, they have alcohol on their breath, and let me tell you this from the pastor's standpoint if people come in and have alcohol in the parking lot, we'll hold their beer while they come in and get Jesus.
Speaker 1: Because that's how much I believe in the power and the changing revelation of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Because people should know that Jesus is not someone who came to judge them but to save them, and Jesus Christ will save them from the judgment that will come, that they do not have to experience hell and yes, it still exists.
Speaker 1: I hear celebrities all the time and man sometimes.
Speaker 1: I'm not a violent person, but there's just people I want to punch and they talk about.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean they proclaim God or they get up and they take their little plaque and their little thing.
Speaker 1: They're like I just want to thank God.
Speaker 1: Bro, you don't even know God.
Speaker 1: I've heard your songs.
Speaker 1: Oh, you can't judge, god can judge me.
Speaker 1: That's a scary thing for you to say.
Speaker 1: I don't think you understand who's doing the judging, it ain't me.
Speaker 1: But we have to love those people that we can't stand.
Speaker 1: We have to put up with those people that aren't exactly like us, because at one time someone did the same for me.
Speaker 1: At one time, someone put up with my back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 1: I played.
Speaker 1: I was raised in a Pentecostal church.
Speaker 1: I knew how to play the game.
Speaker 1: I knew the game front and back.
Speaker 1: I could play it so well.
Speaker 1: But when God, when someone finally started loving me past my sin, and they started giving me the opportunity to just sit in a place where there wasn't judgment I'm not saying that we high-five sin, but we have to love the sinner All right, let's go on.
Speaker 1: We must leave behind the old self.
Speaker 1: And why do we do this?
Speaker 1: Why does Jesus say in the very last moments before he ascended to the Father?
Speaker 1: Why does he say to go and make disciples?
Speaker 1: It's because they need to see in us that God can make that kind of change for someone like me and if God can do it for me, someone undeserving and doesn't even deserve to wake up in the house that I'm in, to be a part of the church family, the spouse, the children that I have.
Speaker 1: In my house we have four boys.
Speaker 1: Heaven help us.
Speaker 1: We have four boys.
Speaker 1: Yesterday all in the house and last night they stayed the night Like, well, we ain't gonna have four kids.
Speaker 1: I know that much.
Speaker 1: And there's all these things that I'm showing these kids.
Speaker 1: Two of them came with me early this morning and we talked just talk to them.
Speaker 1: These young boys are going to remember this later that some pastor took them to church, sacrificed his time.
Speaker 1: Let them come over and eat their food, sit at their table with them and just get to know them.
Speaker 1: That's what we're supposed to do when we make disciples you get to know them.
Speaker 1: But if we're going to reproduce what God has called us to do, if we're going to reproduce that spiritual maturity in us, we first have to be something worth cloning.
Speaker 1: All right, all right.
Speaker 1: Now, this is something that's going to blow you out of the water, because I did a deep study on this and I have read this on the surface before, and I heard the word perfect, but in the English language it does not mean that.
Speaker 1: I mean it doesn't say the same as it does in Greek.
Speaker 1: So listen to this Matthew 5, 48,.
Speaker 1: But you are perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.
Speaker 1: But you are to be perfect Sorry, you are to be perfect even as your Father in heaven.
Speaker 1: That's a large order, but listen to this.
Speaker 1: So let's go deeper.
Speaker 1: In the Greek, the word is teleos and it came to mean perfect, but is more usually used to refer to maturity and completeness.
Speaker 1: God's not asking for you to be in the English perfect's not asking for you to be, in the English, perfect.
Speaker 1: He's asking for you to be mature.
Speaker 1: He's asking for you to be complete.
Speaker 1: You cannot island yourself from the church people and be complete.
Speaker 1: You can't.
Speaker 1: You can't alienate yourselves from sinners and still be complete.
Speaker 1: If we have a quick look at where these words are used elsewhere, this will make more sense in the New Testament 1 Corinthians 2.6,.
Speaker 1: Yet among the mature, we do speak in wisdom.
Speaker 1: Philippians 3.15,.
Speaker 1: Let those of us, then, who are mature, be of the same mind.
Speaker 1: Be of the same mind, james 1.4,.
Speaker 1: And let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete.
Speaker 1: In every scripture we just read the same word teleos is used.
Speaker 1: So it's not asking you to be perfect as we think of it in the English language.
Speaker 1: It's saying just act mature, live like you are complete, live like you know the God that you're claiming you serve.
Speaker 1: Step out in faith, grab people's hand in line at Walmart and begin to pray for them in the spirit.
Speaker 1: You want to see lives changed and you want to see Longview start being what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: Then the church long view start being what it's supposed to be, then the church has to start being who it's supposed to be.
Speaker 1: God wants us.
Speaker 1: He desires for us to be whole, and if you study the Pharisees, you'll begin to see the pattern of their behavior.
Speaker 1: This would be oftentimes.
Speaker 1: They would pray out loud.
Speaker 1: They would point out other sins.
Speaker 1: Oh Lord, don't let me be like that person.
Speaker 1: Everyone else is wrong except for me.
Speaker 1: God, I thank you so much for how right I am.
Speaker 1: All the time that every time me and my spouse argue Lord, help her, because she's always wrong, some of y'all just felt like the rapture took place.
Speaker 1: No one knows scriptures like I do.
Speaker 1: No one follows the law like I do.
Speaker 1: Jesus calls them a very distinct word in all of their arrogance, and it was hypocrite.
Speaker 1: Now, why am I bringing this up?
Speaker 1: Because inside of the church, we want to act like we are of no sin.
Speaker 1: We want to act like we are better, and it breaks up our unity.
Speaker 1: There's patchwork that needs to be done.
Speaker 1: It breaks up our authenticity and people can spot fake.
Speaker 1: They know when you're trying to act like something or when you really are what you say you are.
Speaker 1: And we look at Matthew 23, jesus.
Speaker 1: He criticizes the religious leaders.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read this right quick, before we close Matthew, chapter 23, I'm going to start at verse 1.
Speaker 1: Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees are the official interpreters of the law of Moses.
Speaker 1: He's naming their position that it is a holy and righteous place.
Speaker 1: So practice and obey whatever they tell you, but don't follow their example.
Speaker 1: That's probably where they got.
Speaker 1: Do as I say, not as I do, type thing, for they don't practice what they teach.
Speaker 1: They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you need to stop doing that.
Speaker 1: Well, you just need to quit looking at porn.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to be your accountability partner, but you need to find somebody.
Speaker 1: You need to quit smoking.
Speaker 1: You need to quit drinking.
Speaker 1: There are things that we all need to stop doing, but what we really need to stop doing is being fake in the church and understand that we all have sinned, we all have fallen short and I do not want to be the one that Jesus points to and says.
Speaker 1: Everything that he says is right, it matches up with my word.
Speaker 1: But do not follow his example.
Speaker 1: Do not follow what he is doing, because he is not who he says he is.
Speaker 1: We need a church that believes in the unadulterated word of God and what it says and what it stands for does not change, because the culture does.
Speaker 1: We have backed down and backed ourselves into a corner to where we can't even speak truth anymore and we're afraid to do it.
Speaker 1: We don't have the freedom of the spirit in our churches because we don't want visitors to think we're weird.
Speaker 1: If you've heard me preach once, you know I am weird.
Speaker 1: Have at it, because here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Like I said last week, we'll overthink ourselves into not producing what God is calling us to do.
Speaker 1: We won't say things that we're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: We won't pay for people's stuff at the restaurant, like I said last week.
Speaker 1: By the time it got through my brain of thinking and I was like, oh, I probably need to talk to the wife because we're a team.
Speaker 1: It was already done, they had already checked out.
Speaker 1: It was maybe 10 seconds, but I thought myself out of a blessing on someone else and I could not for the life of me move fast enough to push their card out of the slider thing and put mine in.
Speaker 1: It was too late.
Speaker 1: What are we passing up?
Speaker 1: What opportunities of authenticity, that we could just really be the hands and feet of Jesus to those who don't even know he exists.
Speaker 1: I think it was you the other day.
Speaker 1: One of the girls at your place said I don't even know who Jesus is, who's Jesus?
Speaker 1: Is that not weird for an East Texas person to say who is Jesus?
Speaker 1: We're in the Bible Belt, you know, we know God and stuff or whatever or whatever.
Speaker 1: But we have this gap of authenticity of who God is and who Jesus is and how he wants us to be to those who are lost because we think we are better.
Speaker 1: And listen, I'm not saying that you're acting or thinking this way, but we do it without even knowing it.
Speaker 1: We have conditioned ourselves that if someone is not like us or doesn't fit the status quo of our church, we will not invite them to church.
Speaker 1: Am I wrong?
Speaker 1: She told me a story the other day, if you don't mind me sharing, about somebody who was just talking about getting high at a restaurant was getting food because, oh, when I get high, man, I'm double hungry and she was like oh, we don't want people like that.
Speaker 1: And she was telling me.
Speaker 1: She was like I almost didn't say anything to him and I'm like, and me and her, we've been on the same page with drugs and stuff.
Speaker 1: And then she said the spirit of God came over me and said how dare you, how dare we not pass on the love of God that he has so graciously given to us?
Speaker 1: How dare we put so comfortably that pharisee coat on that we will not reach out to the people who are in a place that we once were.
Speaker 1: If we are to be the church and if we are to be obedient and make disciples, you have to put aside your selfish desires.
Speaker 1: You have to put aside your Pharisee attributes.
Speaker 1: Come on and we need to be authentic and just share the raw, true love with people who don't know him.
Speaker 1: You know why I think Peter was one of the first people out of the upper room preaching the gospel, because that was his personality.
Speaker 1: God knew exactly who he needed.
Speaker 1: He knew exactly what kind of personality would bust out of that door and would start just giving it to him and preaching a salvation.
Speaker 1: He knew exactly what it took.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing God knows exactly who you are.
Speaker 1: He placed things in you, attributes in you, exactly these things in your personality, and you hold them back because you think God can't use you, or you think because of a certain area of your life or an attribute.
Speaker 1: Listen, david was called the man after God's own heart, but he still went to Bathsheba.
Speaker 1: Your sin does not dictate how God has called you to be.
Speaker 1: We've all messed up.
Speaker 1: We mess up daily, but by the salvation of Jesus Christ and the power of his spirit we can go beyond ourselves.
Speaker 1: When Peter was filled, peter was not the one speaking, he was just a channel that the spirit was working through.
Speaker 1: Six times in Matthew, chapter 23, jesus calls the church leaders hypocrites.
Speaker 1: He also calls them five times blind.
Speaker 1: He calls I love Jesus so much.
Speaker 1: Jesus and Peter remind me a lot of each other.
Speaker 1: He called them children of hell, a brood of vipers, and compares the Pharisees to whitewashed tombs that look so beautiful and painted up nice on the outside but are disgusting and full of death on the inside, full of bones and the dead things and everything unclean.
Speaker 1: Jesus spoke to them in such a way that it stripped them of all of their masks and exposed who they were.
Speaker 1: Hypocrisy is the practice of engaging in the same behavior or activity for which one criticizes another, or the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one's own behavior does not conform and does not confirm.
Speaker 1: Let me present this to you in a loving way.
Speaker 1: Does not conform and does not confirm.
Speaker 1: Let me present this to you in a loving way.
Speaker 1: Are you being who you're supposed to be?
Speaker 1: Are you living in the divine revelation, who God has called you to be?
Speaker 1: From before you were, even in your mother's womb?
Speaker 1: He knew you.
Speaker 1: He knew where you would be right now?
Speaker 1: Are you living in who you're supposed to be or are you living in what you have designed, where you are comfortable?
Speaker 1: Psalm 51 says this, verse 16 and 17.
Speaker 1: But you do not desire a sacrifice, or I would offer one.
Speaker 1: You do not want a burnt offering.
Speaker 1: The sacrifice that you desire is a broken spirit, this brokenness.
Speaker 1: That is what he desires.
Speaker 1: You will not reject a broken and repentant heart.
Speaker 1: Oh God, if the church comes before God with a broken heart and a repentant heart, he will not reject us.
Speaker 1: He will use us, he will lead us and guide us in his vision and his calling for this church, in this community.
Speaker 1: The whole point is to be broken and to understand that nothing in this world, no earthly possessions, no relationship, no church, nothing can make you feel more fulfilled than coming to Jesus and serving him as your Lord and Savior.
Speaker 1: But to do that, you must yield to the Father, and that he is your Lord.
Speaker 1: Please forgive me, and in an instant you are forgiven, not by what you have done and in an instant you are forgiven Not by what you have done, but what Jesus has done for you.
Speaker 1: You can be a well-versed speaker, but until you allow the Spirit to speak through you, there will not be a change.
Speaker 1: All that God wants for us to do is admit that we need him and submit to him.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you that sometimes it's hard for me to submit all that I am to God.
Speaker 1: I got one minute, so I don't know if you women know this, but I know you guys do.
Speaker 1: We are creatures of sight.
Speaker 1: There will be something.
Speaker 1: I have an Instagram.
Speaker 1: I have a Facebook that I share with my wife.
Speaker 1: There are, there's some things that will just pop up.
Speaker 1: I showed my wife before.
Speaker 1: I've showed Pastor Aaron and maybe Brother Howard up there.
Speaker 1: I would just get on Instagram and click the little it's like the eyeglass thing or whatever to search, and I don't have to search anything in there.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, these women just show up half-dressed might as well call them naked and I did not search that, but it has found itself on my phone.
Speaker 1: And so this last week I submitted to something, and it's not because I have an issue, it's because I don't want to have an issue.
Speaker 1: A lot of times we don't take the preventative measures.
Speaker 1: We try to clean up the mess after the sin.
Speaker 1: And so what I told my wife Thursday or Friday?
Speaker 1: I said, listen, because I have like four or five Instagram accounts for business and then personal and all this stuff.
Speaker 1: I said, listen, every account that I have is now yours.
Speaker 1: I logged into her stuff on her phone and I logged into each account.
Speaker 1: You can change in between all of them.
Speaker 1: And she said baby, I trust you.
Speaker 1: I said it's not about you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that you trust me, but I don't trust me.
Speaker 1: And I sure don't trust the devil, because I know that his job and his purpose is to kill, steal and destroy.
Speaker 1: If he can get you in the private times, when nobody's around you, he can get you in public, because that will be seeds that will be planted in your spirit privately.
Speaker 1: That then will come out, and then you'll be divorced 20 years later wondering what in the world happened?
Speaker 1: It's because the seeds that were planted and you allowed to come into your garden 20 years ago.
Speaker 1: What are you allowing to be planted in your heart?
Speaker 1: What are you allowing to stay because it's comfortable to you?
Speaker 1: Or what are you allowing to stay in your garden because right now it's not producing any bad fruit?
Speaker 1: Just because right now there's no bad fruit doesn't mean later there won't be.
Speaker 1: And so I submitted myself to my wife and I said listen, you see what I see.
Speaker 1: Any message or whatever that anybody sends me, it is now yours.
Speaker 1: You will get a notification too, because I needed someone that I can trust to make sure that my garden stays clear.
Speaker 1: You are going to have the hardest time to keep your garden clear if you were doing it alone.
Speaker 1: I want you to be in your own life and in this church.
Speaker 1: Real authenticity, people, I believe people in this very seat right here there's going to be.
Speaker 1: People come to you and you're going to think that you are not.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not a pastor, I'm not a preacher.
Speaker 1: I don't study my word like I should.
Speaker 1: I don't pray like I should.
Speaker 1: Why are they coming to me and talking to me about God?
Speaker 1: Because when there is light inside of you, wherever you go, it lights up the room and that darkness has to run and I believe people here are going to be producing the fruit that will produce more fruit in the house of God we talked about.
Speaker 1: The devourer cannot even touch.
Speaker 1: God has played.
Speaker 1: You are a royal priesthood.
Speaker 1: You do not have to go to seminary or go through classes or go through all this thing to minister where you are, to your circle of influence.