SPEAKER_00 0:04

This is the Kennesaw First Podcast. Life built on truth.

SPEAKER_05 0:09

Good morning, guys. How are we doing this morning?

SPEAKER_03 0:12

Fantastic, man. How are you? He's still hanging around now in Texas.

SPEAKER_05 0:17

Texas, man.

SPEAKER_03 0:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 0:19

He sent us that video of the line at the barbecue place, though. I can almost guarantee he didn't bring us any barbecue.

SPEAKER_04 0:25

Oh, he he'll he'll talk to Brisket talk, but he won't walk the brisket down here to Georgia. Not at all.

SPEAKER_05 0:31

That's it. He did have time though to make sure that I knew that the Texas women beat South Carolina women in basketball. Don't worry, we'll see in the real dance.

SPEAKER_04 0:43

That's that's his view of bragging rights. That's right. All right. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 0:48

So Patrick Perry jumps into Exodus 19, uh, and we get a really cool picture uh this week. Um, and so as we're kind of opening up this uh the podcast, but really the sermon as well, I just got a warm-up question for us. Have you guys ever worked really hard for something and then not gotten it? Like maybe it was I I'll give you an example of mine, and then maybe that gives you some ideas to jump off of. So I started playing basketball in the sixth grade, and uh I love the game of basketball to this day, it's probably my favorite sport to play. And I remember in middle school working hard, trying my best, trying out for the team, and then getting cut. That stings. So have y'all ever experienced a something like that where you just worked really hard for something, but it didn't pan out.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Yeah, um, I'm not gonna talk about my basketball experience. I was one and out, man. I had some sort of the similar situation. I tried out for pee-wee basketball, and and the um tryout ended up being nothing more than they bounced the ball, threw it to me, and I bounced it and threw it back, and that's that was it.

SPEAKER_05 2:11

That was it.

SPEAKER_04 2:12

That was so it really didn't have a shot at it. But I I could I could tell you the weepy story, but my dad, I was a high school basketball coach. He won the Missouri State Championship two years in a row. Oh wow. So I grew up on the basketball court with him, and so I had a dream of becoming a basketball player. Yeah, that was the end of it.

SPEAKER_05 2:32

Oh, man.

SPEAKER_04 2:33

I was like, nope, not doing that again.

SPEAKER_05 2:35

So you've got the height too, Pastor Pierre.

SPEAKER_04 2:38

Yeah, well, that's okay. Uh it's it's just didn't happen. So it's it's a weepy story. I could tell you the story about how my dad brought basketball shoes to the office for the practice that afternoon, and I had to drag them home and hand them back to him to say, take them out. Oh, yeah. That was that was the brutal reality, man. Thanks for bringing it up today.

SPEAKER_05 3:01

So glad we can dive into that emotional trauma there. What about you, Trey? Still in therapy for me. It's fine.

SPEAKER_01 3:08

I hear, man. Well, man, I always had a dream about being um in law enforcement. Okay. So uh this was back in 2013. I applied for GSP. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 3:20

Um and that's relatively close to right out of high school.

SPEAKER_01 3:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 3:24

Just a few years ago. Yeah, I graduated in 11. Yeah, we did.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Yeah. Um When Chaston graduate? Like 2025, something like that. Youngin'. Um, but anyways, went down. Um, so we had the basic training down in Macon and did the basic training, did all of the physical things, and I felt that it went good, except for the mile run. I hated running long distance. It never worked for me. Never. When I ran track, I always did the 100. Point A, point B, done. Quick, easy. Anything over that? I'm gasping, I'm taking my time, couldn't do it. But yeah, man, I failed it by three minutes.

SPEAKER_05 4:08

No.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Yep. No.

SPEAKER_05 4:11

Do you remember what like the threshold had to be?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Um, if I'm not mistaken, I think it had to be between 10 and 12 minutes for that mile.

SPEAKER_05 4:20

So the mile just got you. It man.

SPEAKER_04 4:23

Well, and what's bad about that, I've I've been a runner, and I can tell you the first smile is the hardest mile. Once you get past mile one, it takes about a mile and a half, and then you kind of get into a groove and you can get in a pace. Yeah, nobody gets in a pace in the first mile. So I'd say that was unfair. Yeah, yeah. That was yeah. You want to go run with your second.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Hey, if you want to write a letter of recommendation, you can apply.

SPEAKER_04 4:51

No, you ain't leaving home, you're stuck here with us. We know some people, Kennesaw Police, but uh we'll let you we'll let you stay here with us.

SPEAKER_05 4:59

Now they got that speed radar out there in our parking lot again, though. I would like to see it actually catch you at full sprint. I would love to know what that number is. I would love to do that.

SPEAKER_04 5:07

It's new video time, and I'm doing it this time because I'm not tearing my meniscus.

SPEAKER_05 5:13

The price of energy. Man, church, if you ever wonder how much Perry loves you, it's enough to go tear his meniscus once. So that you'll watch him on Facebook. No, so I bring that up because our world tells us so much about uh our value in our life being based on performance, right? But Pastor Perry, as you explained in your first point of the sermon, thankfully God doesn't work that way. Right? Our salvation's not about our efforts, it's about Jesus. Our salvation is not based on our performance. So uh could you walk us through that? And could you walk us through uh really just the whole uh course of the sermon and help us kind of unpack the truth that we find in Exodus 19?

SPEAKER_04 6:01

Yeah, Exodus 19 is like so full and jam-packed of some just there are about 20 different ways you could take that sermon and look at it. Uh, one of the things, though, that we see is as we kind of a foreshadowing of Jesus in it. We also see, as well, some real attributes of God that just rise to the surface. And um, that particular point was that salvation is not based on my performance, it's based upon God's grace. And that's what Jesus offers to us. Thank God, because we certainly weren't gonna get it by performance. Uh, we we're gonna fail, and we'll see that through the book of Exodus. We'll see the Ten Commandments are always gonna bring you to the point where you realize, okay, I failed in them. And I was watching Billy Graham talk about that. He said, you know, everybody is has has failed and they have broken every Ten Commandment because God said, Jesus said, if you fail in one part, you failed in all of them. So I thought, man, Billy Graham, that was so good. No wonder he was so great. But there's there's three pictures that I just thought were amazing that just jump off the page that give a little bit of a picture and the foreshadowing of the salvation Jesus would bring. And one of them was Jesus, uh, of course, was the one that gave us salvation. And as he gave us salvation, God describes salvation in Exodus 19 in this way. He says, Well, first off, uh, you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptian. I bore you on the wings of eagles. And the picture is really cool because what God did here is this, he said, I'm gonna give you a picture that you understand. And when the eaglet gets on top of the of the eagle, it the the eagle does all the work. The eagle does the flying, and as a matter of fact, the eagle holds it on its back when he flies. And so the picture is that eagle is wise enough to know if anybody shoots up here, and uh he'll shoot through me. Yeah, he'll have to go through me to get to the eaglet. And that's the way God is. Jesus did the same thing. Jesus went to the cross, and uh literally the world shot through him, and and it kept us from what we so greatly deserved, which was of course, sin produces death. Yeah, and so so that was one of the pictures. The other was is in the middle of that, when um when Moses comes down from the mountain, he says, Listen, you're gonna prepare yourself. Um, uh or when they were preparing for the Mark Mountain, he says, three days. Yeah, there's gonna be three days. Um and in this third day, of course, is a picture of what Jesus would do. Jesus on the third day would rise again and then talks about the mountain. The mountain was Mount Sinai, but um, I love how Hebrews relates to this Mount Sinai and then are Mount Zion in Hebrews 12, 18 and 22. He says, For you've not come to a mountain that can be touched as the blazing fire. So that's what we see in Exodus 19, and to darkness and gloom and the whirlwind and the blast of the trumpet and the sound of words, which sound was so that those who heard it begged for no further word to be spoken to them. I mean, the fear of God fell on them at Sinai. But he says, But you have come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. So that's kind of the first part of the whole message. It's to look and to see, okay, what is God trying to say? What's the sermon from Sinai? And God starts with more or less a sermon, a message to us about salvation. And later people would look back to it like the writer of Hebrews and be able to see, okay, they went, of course, to Sinai. We go to Mount Zion, we go to the city of the living God, we go there by grace. So it's a beautiful, beautiful passage. There's a whole lot of imagery that's there. And uh, I just wanted to just uh bring that up out of the shell of the sermon uh and the text and and just help people to see the beauty of how God describes salvation.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

So earlier you began your sermon with a reminder that God rescued Israel before he gave them any commands. So, why do you guys think it's so easy, even for Christians, to slip back into believing God's love is based on our performance instead of his grace?

SPEAKER_05 10:46

Yeah, that's that's a big question for us. I think so much of it, and we talked with the students about this recently, um, was is the idea that we like to be in control. Right? We like the idea that we we can control the outcome. We like to know that if I do X, Y is what happens. Uh if I study for a test, I make a good grade on the test, right? If I work hard, I make the basketball team. If I do this, then then X is the outcome. Um that's just not how life is sometimes. Um we like to give ourselves some kind of concrete standard, um, where as long as I am doing X, Y, or Z, that means I'm in the right spot. But the problem is there's a rub that happens, right, when it doesn't work, um, or when in in our faith life and our walk with Jesus when we fall short. Right? Well, I I gave my life to Jesus, I read my Bible, I pray, I do this, I do this, I do this, I do this. Why am I still not getting this? And so it creates this um almost it right it's a constant reminder of the impossibility of us actually achieving what God created us for on our own. Um we try to do it ourselves so that we can control it. But what really happens is Jesus had to come and die so that he could give it to us. It's a gift, not a not a check. You know, it's not a paycheck, it's a gift.

SPEAKER_04 12:25

Yeah, there's such a distortion today, too, sometimes when people look at the gospel, and uh the distortion is often faith plus something. Yeah. And um, and we want to add something to the cross, and we sell that in the book of Galatians. God deals with that and talks about that. Paul struggled very much with that faith plus something. But also, I think the other side of the story is there's a distortion where people say, Well, if I've accepted Christ, then that that means I walked the aisle of a church, or I, you know, I got confirmed, or I did whatever in my church. I even got baptized. And the whole bottom line is there's really never been a real relationship with God because there's never been an obedience factor. Um, there's never been, hey, my feet, sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. They're just never following Jesus. Yeah. So I think the scripture talks about that. And it says, by your fruit or by their fruit, you will know them. And so there is an outgrowth uh that comes from our salvation, but that's the outgrowth. The true salvation comes not by our own works at all. It comes by grace. Is there a outgrowth? Yeah, we start following Jesus. And there's things that happen in and through our daily life that make it obvious that we know the Lord and that we love him and we're we're his followers. Christ's followers.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

So, Perry, you also uh you also introduce um that young people they receive mixed messages about who God is. So, from your perspective, and I know Ryan, this is probably deep into your ministry, uh, but what are some of the biggest mixed signals people hear about God today, and how should we respond as a church?

SPEAKER_04 14:21

This is a problem in the church in general, because we're living in a culture where what is going on, and I I noted something that we came up in the Arizona Christian University's Cultural Research Center, and they've been studying uh the belief systems and and the thoughts of young people that and and they've taken a constituency of them and they begin to kind of look at this and try to say, uh, what are what are people's questions about God? And a lot of the kids are saying this today, but 50% is what I think uh they came up with. 49 to 50 percent spoke and they said, I have no idea what to believe. They really have no idea to believe because you have one church that's teaching one thing culturally, and kids are on fire for the what's the cultural situations today. And you have questions about the traditional family, there'll be GTQ thing, and then and and some is saying, Well, love is love. And then you have the other side of it where people are asking questions about, well, okay, what about the traditional family? What does the Bible say? And there's mixed messages that are going on with that, so there are a lot of cultural things today that people are asking. I think that's one of the main ones when you look at sexuality, and um, you know, not a popular subject because it, you know, you bring it up and suddenly everybody's like, Well, you're gonna be a judger or you're gonna be a this, and there's a lot of name-calling on that. But really, our job with the message is to represent God and say, This is thus saith the Lord.

SPEAKER_05 16:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 16:03

And uh, that's one of the reasons why uh I preach through the Bible verse to verse. Let it speak for itself. And the best interpreter of the Bible is actually the Bible itself. It's not what you get off the internet, not what you Google, not what seems to be the popular thing that's been going around uh of conversation. You know about that a whole lot because you're constantly, I mean, you're in the throes of that, where kids are trying to make decisions and trying to see what does God really believe? What are the things that you uh have them ask on a consistent basis?

SPEAKER_05 16:38

Yeah, so you say something uh around the office a good bit, Perry, and that's that we see more and more people are getting discipled by Google. Um, we see that in the student ministry a ton. Thankfully, um, here at Kennesaw First, we emphasize this idea of building our lives on truth. And so, in that, we have created a space um where students can come and essentially have a wrestling ring here on campus, and that's our student center. We ask them, hey, when you have questions, come talk to us. We don't sit there and say, hey, question everything, right? There's an element of faith to our walk with Jesus. And so if you're not struggling with understanding a certain attribute of God and you're able to accept that on faith, great, do that. But when you have questions, don't just run to Google, don't just run to TikTok, don't just run to external sources, come here. God's big enough to handle your questions, right? Um, but so we do get we get questions about God's love a lot, right? And that's where most of it stems from. It's a popular cultural argument because culture wants to dictate what love is, right? And and in culture, they try and say love is uh acceptance, love is affirmation, love is this. Well, unfortunately, that's just I shouldn't even say unfortunately. Biblically, that's not right, right? Uh, God is the essence of love, it is his very nature. It cannot be love if it is against God and who he is. Uh, and so we we get questions about that a lot. How how can a loving God do X or why would a loving God allow Y? And so, you know, we get into the problem of pain a lot of why do good things happen or why do bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. Um we see uh uh we get a lot of those questions, and so what we try and do is point people back to scripture. Uh, the hard thing that we're running into is we end up with especially students, but even adults, uh, if you're listening uh and you're willing to be honest, go look at your screen time on your phone and see what are the you know, you can see what apps take up the most of your time on your phone, how many hours a day are you actually on it? That's what's discipling us, right? And so what a couple of of channels that we've tried to push students towards recently um is one is called Red Pen Logic, uh, with Mr. B. And uh he is a part of the Standorison group. We have a stand a reason uh apologetics course that meets here on Sunday nights. Um super solid stuff. And what he does is he'll take uh a video and do what they call a duet or a stitch where they will they'll show the video of a cultural argument either against Christianity or um some false teacher, is what I'm gonna call them, where they're just saying things that tickle the ears of culture. Um, and they'll break down why biblically it doesn't matter. And they do it with he does it with great grace. Guy's name's Tim Barnett, he's awesome. Um, there's another channel that I've recently been turned on to called Dinks the Puppet, D-I-N-X the Puppet. And it is a puppet. A guy uses a puppet and breaks down arguments, and it's not childish, like he uses it to discuss theological truths or uh again this same kind of mentality, uh, and they do it without tearing people down, right? Because we have a very we have a we have a demographic that is very, I'm gonna say soft, not with the negative connotation that that comes with. Like when I was growing up, if you got called soft, and you're a weak, right? Um, but they're tender, right? They they don't handle conflict well, and so the goal is not to uh tear them down, but their goal is to expose them to the gaps and their the flaws of their ideology and to see the truth, yeah, so that they can build their lives on it, and that's such a vital part of what we need, right? We need people who are able to uh expose those gaps so that we can grow, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 20:44

And that's what we're finding in Exodus 19. God's coming down. And I I find that whole explanation of of what we see God doing. Um God coming down. Just think about that. There's nowhere where he's not, right? He's everywhere, but he says, I'm coming down. And when he does, what we see is holy God. And the way I like to describe it is I mean, it was dangerous. Yeah, like legitimately dangerous. God is saying, Listen, mark off the boundaries around this mountain because I'm coming down. And when he came down, there was it was literally fire and brimstone. Yeah, I mean, legit. And if you go to Sinai today, if you go over to uh to Arabia, you can go to that mountain and you can Google it on the internet and read all kinds of stuff and actually see video footage of it now. But when God came down, it was serious business. Yeah. And so I think what we find here is God saying, I'm gonna come down, I'm gonna reveal to you who I am. I mean, he's about to meet Moses face to face. This is this is a big deal. Yeah. And um I think one of the things that we struggle with is we struggle with this mixed message thing today because we really haven't even stopped to recognize who God is. Yeah. And God is a holy, awesome God to the point where only Moses was invited up the mountain. You know, they're standing at the at the bottom of the mountain. The priests weren't even allowed up there. And so it gives kind of a picture even of what we see, even up to Jesus' day until his death, and he ripped the veil in half, invited everybody in. Without his shedding of blood, there would be no remission of sins.

SPEAKER_02 22:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 22:40

And so why is that? It's because God is a holy God. And when you understand God is a holy God, and that becomes a focus you have, that God is introducing this new nation to, uh, that he's taking through the wilderness and taking to the promised land. He is letting them know I am, this is who I am. I don't want any mixed messages about who I am. I am a holy, awesome God. And even coming in front of me, coming near me is dangerous. And that's that's the absolute truth. And that led me to the final point where I talk about God is inviting us to come near. It was truly possible. It was God, God passed through the barrier uh between us and himself because of his holiness. And he the holy Jesus was able to provide for us something we couldn't get, and that is that salvation. So that's why I believe we begin the whole message on uh salvation is not by performance.

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:47

And um, it's because holy God had to do something and um and he came near so that we could come near.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

So we know that salvation gives us purpose, but doing so, we also need to be a window that people see Jesus through. So, Perry, you you stated in your sermon that people aren't looking for relics of Jesus. They're they're looking for Jesus alive in us. So, what does it practically look like for someone's life to make people stop and say, there's something different about them?

SPEAKER_04 24:27

Yeah. Well, here in this passage, this is just an amazing passage. And oh my goodness, I get so excited about this part. But he said, he he he announces when he comes down. He announces, he says, if you indeed obey my voice, and if you keep the covenant, then you will be my own possession among the peoples. That's everybody on earth. For the earth is mine. And he says, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. These words you shall speak to the sons of Israel. And the question is, is uh believer asking is how do people recognize that? Because that was a problem. I mean, the people responded in this passage together and said, Oh, you've spoken, we're gonna do, but they didn't. They absolutely didn't. And the closest they got to that, it seems to me, as I look at the scripture, finally Solomon, when we get down to the time of Solomon, and Solomon's there, and Solomon prays this prayer and he says, Oh, God, you know, I he didn't ask for wealth, he didn't ask for anything, he just asked for wisdom. And what a moment this was. This was a huge moment. And what they do is is of course, as a matter of fact, the moment was so great when we read it in scripture. The Queen of Sheba came and she she listened to to Solomon uh because God granted his wish. He wanted this wisdom, God gave him both wisdom and wealth, but she came to the point where she said it more or less took her breath away to listen to Solomon. And the reason why is because he was so endowed with the wisdom of God, and suddenly he falls in love with foreign women, and it falls away, and Israel falls away, splits in half, and there's this story of, and and from that, what we find is is we find ultimately in 1 Peter 2 9, this same exact verbiage is used by Peter to say to the church, you are a chosen generation, you are a royal priesthood. So God looked to the church then and said, Listen, they've not done it. But I want to tell you, we were studying the book of Revelation, and when you look at the book of Revelation, it talks about the 144,000 the Jews. One of these days, they're going to do it. I encourage you, I mean, read that in Revelation chapter 12, 13, 14. You can see that they are actually going to finally reach that point where they where they speak forth the truth, where they follow Christ. And uh it's it's one of the glorious things in the future for this planet. And um anyway, but that's revelation, that's not Exodus. But there's so much to, there's so much to unpackage here because God has a plan. But right now, as the church, we are called to be different. And what's that look like? Well, I'll tell you what it looks like. It looks like Jesus. There are things that we do love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, patience, meekness, temperance, you know, all those fruits of the spirit. We uh we're endowed with that. There's there's growth in every one of those areas of our life. And who doesn't want to be about around somebody that has love?

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 28:00

Who doesn't want to be around somebody who has joy? Who doesn't want to be around somebody that has peace? Who doesn't want to have uh be around somebody that has long suffering with other people? Yeah. I mean, that's what it looks like for us to be that kingdom of priest. We're different.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:15

Because the Spirit of God lives in us.

SPEAKER_05 28:19

Yeah. Trey, you asked the question, right? How do we look different? Um, I think it comes down to two things, right? I think it comes down to understanding the weight of our sin. Um, under like basically understanding that we cannot exist the way we were designed to because of our sin and how it separates us from a holy God, like Pastor Perry just said. And then from that, being overwhelmed by the grace that God showed us through Jesus. Um when we are really overwhelmed by God's grace, it compels us to obedience to Him. Right? Um, we were we were talking to the students the other night, and we actually talked about a very similar idea uh in from Ephesians 2, um, and how um the grace that we're shown compels us to good works. Grace produces this attitude of gratitude, right? So when we understand that we don't deserve God's grace, we we deserve God's wrath, but he gives us his grace instead, it overwhelms us to the point that we live differently, right? Not because we have to, not because it's our efforts, but because we love Jesus so much, because we understand what he did for us. That's what changes us, that's what makes us look different. It's not that we're suddenly more spiritual, it's not that uh we have perfect attendance in Sunday school or that we read our Bibles every day, it's that we understand a holy God wanted me.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Yeah. So let's talk about that. Uh God wanting to come near. So in Exodus 19, God is present, but distant because of the sin. But through Jesus, his son, God came near. So why is the idea that the creator of the universe actually wants a relationship with us still hard for many of us to believe?

SPEAKER_04 30:26

I think it's hard because of the fact that we know he's different. And when you know that God is truly holy, I think there's inside the heart of a human being the acknowledgement deep down, whether they want to acknowledge it verbally, deep down that there is a God and he is awesome. I mean, he created the world and he created it with perfection, and there is design in this world. Uh the Bible says a fool says in his heart, there is no God. Uh you have to totally check your brains at the door, the Bible more or less says, to not believe in the God. I mean, it's just really, really true. But I think what happens is we think, well, we're not worthy of that. And we're exactly right. We are not worthy of that. But that's what makes the gospel so beautiful. It is not about what we're worthy of, it's about his worthiness. And what we find is we find in Exodus 19, God wanted to come down. I mean, he could have just wound the clock, put this thing in motion, said, y'all enjoy. Yeah. That was kind of a nice little top to make that I put in it, I spun it and it'll last as long as it can want to, and then it'll it'll burn up, you know. But instead, God said, I want to come down, I want to have a relationship with you. And and what I think there's almost kind of a kind of a struggle with Exodus 19 because you can see God wanting so much to come near to his people, but yet his holiness and their sinfulness separate that. So there has to be boundaries. And so ultimately God did something beautiful. And God said, Listen, build a tabernacle, I'll go be in there. And uh, so that's how much he wanted to be near his people. And then ultimately, of course, that led to after the tabernacle, that led to the temple in Jerusalem, where God was near. But then I think it's so appropriate that when Jesus died, that that his death brought the parting of that wall and partition that they had that God had begun all the way back at the tabernacle time. He said, Listen, there's a holy of holies. The priests only will be able to come in one time a year, and et cetera. And God just made it where he said, I am going, I'm we're gonna get there. Yeah, we are going to get there, but it was going to require require the greatest sacrifice of all. But I don't think we'd feel deserving of it, and we're not. So check that one off. Say, okay, you know, I I'm not gonna approach him because I deserve it. I'm gonna I'm gonna have a relationship with God because he wants it with me. He actually wants it with me, and he's made a way for that to be possible through Jesus.

SPEAKER_05 33:31

Anything, right? Yeah, you know, I think we in in the busyness of life and in the consistency of the calendar, we lose how awesome the incarnation of Christ really is, of Jesus becoming man. Um, we get a glimpse of that in Exodus 19, right? Where where the people get to see the might of God on the mountain. Um, they they can't come near. Makes me think of the line from uh from C.S. Lewis, the line, the witch in the wardrobe, you know, is Aslan safe? Uh or is he dangerous? Oh, he's dangerous, but he's safe, right? Um, they get they get this picture of the might of God, but also a pretty powerful picture of the separation that sin causes from him. Um so when you fast forward to holy God the Son putting on flesh, like we see uh described in John 1. Um it's really easy for us to get caught up in in Christmas and the busyness of it and miss the awe that that should inspire, that desire of God to come near, the the desire of God to want that relationship, like you just said, Pastor Perry. Um it's overwhelming if we really understand our state before him as sinners and deserving of hell, that that God that we sin against wants us. You know, um, I learned or I feel like I have learned a lot more about the father's love for us since becoming a father. Um and and understanding that there are days that my kids make me want to pull my hair out, but there's not a single thing they can do to make me love them less.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:28

Um yeah, and to to then transition that thought of that's the way that God feels about me.

SPEAKER_01 35:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:35

Is that there are days uh my sin forces separation here. But because of his love for me, he himself came near so that I could be made right. It's overwhelming. That's a great comparison.

SPEAKER_04 35:50

It really is in the father's picture of you know, when you talk about um your voice and you say, hey, there's not anything that that they could do that would make them love me love them any less, that might be the perfect illustration to help somebody that is struggling with with a with embracing the grace of God. What might might be to understand that listen, if you're a father, at any point, no matter what your child's done, you would be willing to die for them.

SPEAKER_02 36:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:29

So you want to know what was God's motive of seeing even sending his own son, yeah. God coming himself in flesh and tabernacling among us, literally, God moved into the neighborhood, is what I think the the message translation says. But God moved in the neighborhood. Why'd he do that? That question is easily answered by a dad like you and me and Trey, who say, you know what, there's not one minute I wouldn't be willing to give my last breath or the last drop of blood in my body for my own child. And that's what motivated God. That's and God, our love is so much less than the Heavenly Father's love. Yeah. No wonder he's so compassionate. He's looks upon us like we look upon our children. That's a blessing and a gift God gave to us when he made us in his image.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:25

He let us kind of enter into a little bit of an understanding of what it's like to be uh like him.

SPEAKER_01 37:34

So as we conclude, listeners, just stop. Hear God's voice, hear what he's telling you to do. Understand that God didn't save you because you were impressive, he saved you because he loves you. Your purpose isn't to prove yourself to God, is to live as someone who has already been rescued. And that same God who came down on my Sinai, and that same God who came down on Mount Sinai, and the fire and the power came down again through Jesus in grace and love. So wherever you are today, confused, searching, tired, or far from God, the message from Sinai and the cross is the same. God is not sending mixed signals, He loves you, He rescued you, and through Jesus Himself, He's inviting you to come near. Gentlemen, see you next week.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

To stay connected, share this message, subscribe, or visit us online at Kennesaw First.church. We'll see you next time. Keep building your life on truth.