SPEAKER_00: I looked up a word this morning because I wanted to make sure I was using it right.
SPEAKER_00: It's the word stagnate or stagnation.
SPEAKER_00: And what it means is to stop developing, growing, or progressing.
SPEAKER_00: And people, and what I've found through the years is people who stop asking questions stagnate.
SPEAKER_00: And people who stop answering questions and maybe just give rote answers and responses without really thinking about it, they tend to be stagnating.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we're doing this summer in our summer series is asking questions about things that have to do with the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: And some of it is because some of you are new and have questions about things in the Christian life, and others because I'm not saying you're stagnating, but I'm saying I do when that happens, when I stop asking questions and dealing with even the basic things once again and remembering them.
SPEAKER_00: So some of these seem very basic, and some of them are just very, very profound.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we're looking at today is what is conversion anyway?
SPEAKER_00: Now we've had that question from people, and some of you may have that question and wonder how do I explain that to someone?
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to talk about that, and we're going to read Acts 2.
SPEAKER_00: And because it's Father's Day, and to honor all of your knees and hips, we're going to stay seated as we read Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: So please, in honor of God and his word, remain seated and comfortable, but give your ear to listening to the word.
SPEAKER_00: When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place, and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing of wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, and divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each of them, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
SPEAKER_00: Now I know you all have a question about that at this point, and we're not going to talk about it this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So find me some other time, or better yet, go find Stephen Brooks.
SPEAKER_00: He would talk.
SPEAKER_00: Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven, and at this sound the multitude came together and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language, and they were amazed and astonished, saying, Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?
SPEAKER_00: And how is it that we hear each of us in his own native language?
SPEAKER_00: Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocea, Pontus in Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.
SPEAKER_00: And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, What does this mean?
SPEAKER_00: But others, mocking, said, They are filled with new wine.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and give ear to my words.
SPEAKER_00: For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel.
SPEAKER_00: And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.
SPEAKER_00: Even on my male servants and female servants, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy, and I will show wonders in the heavens above, and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke, the sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
SPEAKER_00: And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Men of Israel, hear these words.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and power and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know, this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and for the knowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.
SPEAKER_00: God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.
SPEAKER_00: For David says concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced.
SPEAKER_00: My flesh also will dwell in hope, for you will not abandon my soul to Hades, the grave, or let your holy one seed corruption.
SPEAKER_00: You have made known to me the paths of life.
SPEAKER_00: You will make me full of gladness with your presence.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the Patriarch David, that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.
SPEAKER_00: Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption.
SPEAKER_00: This Jesus, God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing.
SPEAKER_00: For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.
SPEAKER_00: Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus, whom you crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do?
SPEAKER_00: And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, for the promises for you and for your children, and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.
SPEAKER_00: And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, Save yourselves from this crooked generation.
SPEAKER_00: So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
SPEAKER_00: And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers, and awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles.
SPEAKER_00: And all who believed were together and had all things in common.
SPEAKER_00: And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
SPEAKER_00: And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of confusing things in this passage, but we're going to focus on just a few.
SPEAKER_00: So let me pray and ask God to bless us as we open this up and look at it more fully.
SPEAKER_00: Spiritual reality that we see with eyes of faith and we believe.
SPEAKER_00: And there are things that we experience, and there are some things we haven't yet experienced.
SPEAKER_00: For some of us in this room, we have not yet experienced conversion.
SPEAKER_00: For others of us, we have.
SPEAKER_00: But we want you to help us walk through this passage and help us to understand what that means and what that's about.
SPEAKER_00: Your role in it and our response to it.
SPEAKER_00: Would you bless us and would you be with us?
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I know that I'm handling holy things, things too marvelous and wonderful for me.
SPEAKER_00: So I pray that you would, by the power of your spirit, direct my words, my heart, my mind, and enable me to speak beyond my flesh.
SPEAKER_00: Bless us and be with us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Christ's name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: I was smoking pot the first time I heard the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's not about me.
SPEAKER_00: That's actually my favorite introduction to a testimony I've ever heard.
SPEAKER_00: But it was not about me.
SPEAKER_00: I was listening to a guy years ago, and that's how he began.
SPEAKER_00: And if you want to get somebody's attention, that's how you begin.
SPEAKER_00: Did I get your attention with that?
SPEAKER_00: No, mine's different than that.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in church when and uh looking back, I would say that, you know, at that age, I would say I neither believed or disbelieved.
SPEAKER_00: It's just what my family did.
SPEAKER_00: So every Sunday morning, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night, we were there.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I really went because my parents made me, and then when I was getting into junior high and high school, I went because that's where my friends were.
SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted friends.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't looking for Jesus, I wasn't looking for God, I was really looking for community.
SPEAKER_00: I was looking for friends, uh, peers.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but one summer they went to a Christian camp, and I went because that's where my friends went, and it was going to be a fun.
SPEAKER_00: There were lots of games we were going to play.
SPEAKER_00: And there was this one night, middle of the week, where there was this preacher who was preaching, and he said, uh, just as he was preaching, I find myself being drawn more and more into what he was saying.
SPEAKER_00: And he used this illustration that I wouldn't use because I don't think it fully captures what happened on the cross, but it rang true with me.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I'm standing in the middle of the road, there's a car that's coming from me, and Jesus runs to where I ran to where I was, pushed me out of the way to save me while the car hits him.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus was killed while saving my life.
SPEAKER_00: And at that point, it was like that man up front was a PA system speaking from heaven to my soul, to my heart.
SPEAKER_00: And I walked away and had, I don't know if you've seen the movie Elf, but there's this moment where he goes out with Jovi the Elf, or you know, the girl who works in the department store, and he spins around and he says, and I'm in love, and I don't care who knows.
SPEAKER_00: And that was that night for me.
SPEAKER_00: And so everybody else went off to play games, and I went and found this quiet spot on the campus of North Greenville University, and I wept and said, He loves me.
SPEAKER_00: He loves me.
SPEAKER_00: And my heart was changed.
SPEAKER_00: That was my story.
SPEAKER_00: Other people have different stories.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I remember reading several years ago about a student in the United States.
SPEAKER_00: She was she was born in China.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, she grew up in that school system, and the entire school system there that she grew up in was uh seeking to indoctrinate people into not just communism but into atheism.
SPEAKER_00: So everything she heard in society, everything she heard in school was saying, there is no God, there is no God, there is no God.
SPEAKER_00: And one night as a little girl, she stepped outside of her house in her village, went out into the middle of the field and looked up, and there there was, you know, there wasn't light pollution the way there is for us, and she looked up at the heavens and she said, There has to be something more to make all of this.
SPEAKER_00: So she knew there was something, someone that made all this.
SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't until she went to grad school in the United States and stepped on foot on the campus that she immediately met some Christians working at a booth who shared the gospel with her.
SPEAKER_00: In that moment, she believed.
SPEAKER_00: She knew this is the God that I knew existed, but I never knew who he was.
SPEAKER_00: She was converted and brought.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are various questions that people ask, you know.
SPEAKER_00: Hers were is, you know, people ask, is there a God?
SPEAKER_00: How do I know him?
SPEAKER_00: What is he like?
SPEAKER_00: We have those questions.
SPEAKER_00: But we're not answering those kind of apologetic questions necessarily today.
SPEAKER_00: What we're dealing with is what happens when God steps in and there's a change in a person's life, a change that we call conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion is a change in how we relate to God, which is through Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about coming to believe in the existence of a God, a theist, becoming a theist.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about becoming religious, and it's not about becoming moral.
SPEAKER_00: It is actually entering into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing we have to say as we go through, as we begin this, is conversion is our response to God's initiating grace to us.
SPEAKER_00: It's a recognition of his heart towards us.
SPEAKER_00: And the place that we see most clearly God's heart towards us is in Jesus Christ Himself, because Jesus became human like us.
SPEAKER_00: He became a he took on human a human nature, and he didn't have to.
SPEAKER_00: And he lived a life of love in a very hostile world, and he didn't have to.
SPEAKER_00: And he took our sins in his body to the cross and he died for us, and he didn't have to.
SPEAKER_00: And he rose again from the dead to secure our uh justification, our righteousness for God, giving us his joint account so that his righteous status would become our righteous status, and he didn't have to.
SPEAKER_00: So he's shown us incredible love, incredible favor, incredible grace, and he didn't have to.
SPEAKER_00: Because he loves us.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter's whole sermon on the day of Pentecost is about that person, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's the message of Jesus, is what had that amazing impact on these thousands of people that heard the message and saw these things.
SPEAKER_00: The message of the gospel is not about religion, it's not about morals, it's about the heart of Jesus and the centrality of Jesus and the redemptive work of God in the world.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter in his sermon, if you kind of remember back, I just read it, so hopefully you remember a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: Um, Peter in his sermon is telling us if you want to understand the Old Testament, you have to look to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So he gives this quote from the prophet Joel about this big event taking place and this redemptive work that God was going to do.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter's saying, that was fulfilled to you today at Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: That prophecy from long ago, that was fulfilled today.
SPEAKER_00: This prophecy about being raised from the dead and his body not seen decay, that's not about King David.
SPEAKER_00: That's about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was attested by God through miracles as he lived his life on the world.
SPEAKER_00: God was saying, This is my son, he's the one that you should listen to.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus died on a cross, was raised again, and forgiveness of sins is proclaimed in his name.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not about religion, and it's not about just bald theism, and it's not about becoming moral and a good person.
SPEAKER_00: It's about entering into this relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: They did these people that were at Pentecost, they were already very religious.
SPEAKER_00: They were in town for a religious festival.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't need that.
SPEAKER_00: Religion can't save.
SPEAKER_00: We we need Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we see this in Acts chapter 2, verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: This is from the prophet Joel, and it says, And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
SPEAKER_00: That's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_00: But then later he says this, telling us what that name is.
SPEAKER_00: Acts 2, 37 to 38.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers, what shall we do?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 38.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: For most people, this is where they enter in is through experiencing the forgiveness of their sins.
SPEAKER_00: All the walls come down between us and God.
SPEAKER_00: That was my elf moment.
SPEAKER_00: He loves me because he died for my sins.
SPEAKER_00: I understood that.
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's what it's it's not just what we come into it with, but it's once you enter the Christian life, oftentimes we struggle with legalism.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason we struggle with legalism is because we see that God is a very righteous God.
SPEAKER_00: And we have the sense that somehow, somehow, I'm supposed to live in obedience to Him, and we think that obedience is earning God's affection and God's favor.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how it works.
SPEAKER_00: And when you think that about God, you point the finger at God and say, How could you be so stern?
SPEAKER_00: How could you be so demanding?
SPEAKER_00: How could you be so exacting?
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't sound like love to me.
SPEAKER_00: And it leads us in our hearts not to like God and to be frightened of him, scared of him in an improper way.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther said it even more strongly than that.
SPEAKER_00: Martin Luther was a monk, and he was, you know, he's associated with the re the Reformation.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and our understanding of grace today largely came about by him recovering that doctrine of scripture.
SPEAKER_00: But before he understood what the Bible said about grace, he really did understand what the Bible said about God's holiness.
SPEAKER_00: And because he understood how holy God was, he actually said this.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote this at one point.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Love God.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I hate him.
SPEAKER_00: And I hate it, I hate him because his standards are so high.
SPEAKER_00: How do you meet the standards of a holy God?
SPEAKER_00: But in the gospel of Jesus, Martin Luther began to realize that when God is holding forth these standards, he's wanting to hold forth something that we would look at them and say, I could never do that.
SPEAKER_00: So that we would look to God who says, I'm doing it for you in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus was living life on the earth, he was living a perfectly acceptable life to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: And when we become a Christian, when we're converted and we hear the message of the gospel, truly, we realize God has given us the righteous life of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing that has to be done for God to accept me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to keep my nose clean, I don't have to attend anything, I don't have to do anything because Jesus has done it for me, and all God calls me to do is to believe Him.
SPEAKER_00: And then all the sins that I've committed in this life, every single one, is laid on, was laid on Jesus at the cross to pay for my sins.
SPEAKER_00: So there will be no sins of mine that I will be answerable for when I stand before the judgment seat of God.
SPEAKER_00: It will be Christ's record for me.
SPEAKER_00: We call it the great exchange.
SPEAKER_00: My sin goes to Jesus and his righteousness comes to me.
SPEAKER_00: And when Martin Luther recognized this, he said, when I began to see that there is a righteousness you receive by sheer faith, and I receive that righteousness, it was as if I walked through the gates of paradise.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't on me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has accomplished that for me.
SPEAKER_00: And I walk through in the name and the righteousness of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And it's at this point of the forgiveness of sins in Jesus where many people enter in and experience this change towards God.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not, I became a theist and I believe that there's a God, and it's not I became religious and I adopted religious practices like prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that I became more moral and stopped drinking and smoking and doing all those sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00: It's that I entered into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And that brings a change in how we see and understand and ourselves and the world and the people around us.
SPEAKER_00: And the touch point, the touch point of this is where all this sinks in and we have our moment as you know, as a middle schooler listening to the gospel, it's at that point we call that conversion.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a shift that takes place in our whole interior being, our whole inner being changes.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion brings us a deep holistic change.
SPEAKER_00: So faith is more than getting the fact straight.
SPEAKER_00: That is, that's so important to get the fact straight.
SPEAKER_00: It absolutely is.
SPEAKER_00: But the truth of a subject matters, but conversion is a change not just in what we think might be true, but what we embrace and love as a result of that.
SPEAKER_00: It's a change in our very nature, in our internal wiring.
SPEAKER_00: Something about us is severed, and the power of the old is broken, and it establishes something new.
SPEAKER_00: So, Acts 237.
SPEAKER_00: It says that when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart.
SPEAKER_00: So he's cutting.
SPEAKER_00: The power of the old.
SPEAKER_00: And he's getting deep into their hearts and establishing something new for them.
SPEAKER_00: A new rationale for the way that they live.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know the story of C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis's conversion, how important the Inklings and J.R.
SPEAKER_00: Tolkien and others were to him, and him dealing with gospel truths.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know the story of his wife?
SPEAKER_00: Joy Davidman?
SPEAKER_00: Joy was before she and C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis were married.
SPEAKER_00: She was an atheist.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what she said about her life then.
SPEAKER_00: She said there is only one final beauty to be on your feet, and only one ultimate ugliness to fall on your knees.
SPEAKER_00: She said she didn't need God, so she would stand on her own two feet.
SPEAKER_00: But there was this moment in her life where she was facing something that she couldn't face on her own.
SPEAKER_00: She didn't have the power to do with that.
SPEAKER_00: So when she felt alone and incapable of bringing about change, she suddenly felt the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And she said, All of my defenses, the walls of arrogance and cocksureness and self-love behind which I had hid from God, those all went down momentarily.
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, God entered in.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he cleaved her heart and he stepped into it.
SPEAKER_00: He cut her to the heart, just like he's doing here in Acts chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Once Joy came to believe that God was real, she realized that she had spent her life trying to deny the truth, to bar the doors of her life and keep God out.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what she said after she God came in.
SPEAKER_00: She said, I myself was more alive than I had ever been.
SPEAKER_00: It was like waking from sleep.
SPEAKER_00: I found myself on my knees praying.
SPEAKER_00: I think I must have been the world's most astonished atheist.
SPEAKER_00: So in Acts 2.37, it says, They were cut to the heart.
SPEAKER_00: And then they asked the question, What do we do?
SPEAKER_00: And the first response is to repent.
SPEAKER_00: Now I've looked it up to see where the word conversion appears in my English Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really occur in the English Bible, the word.
SPEAKER_00: It's a theological term that we use to describe the change that's taking place inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: But most of the passages we would go to to talk about conversion use the word repent.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, it's the word shub, that's the Hebrew word.
SPEAKER_00: In the New Testament, there are two other words that talk about a change of mind and then a change in direction.
SPEAKER_00: That's how that works.
SPEAKER_00: And so when the Bible talks about conversion, it's talking about turning, returning, and coming back to God.
SPEAKER_00: So repentance means that I stop with the internal conversation that's negative about God, and instead I listen to what God's actually saying and I respond to him properly.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I've used ELF.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to give you another movie illustration.
SPEAKER_00: I don't like those usually, but this one captured it.
SPEAKER_00: And because we're watching the other Bennett sister right now, I'm just saying.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so some of you have read Pride and Prejudice or probably have seen the A E.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's Father's Day.
SPEAKER_00: Most of you fathers probably haven't seen Pride and Prejudice, but some of you may have.
SPEAKER_00: I have seen it a lot.
SPEAKER_00: It was um it was Rebecca's birthday present every year for us to watch the entire miniseries for her birthday.
SPEAKER_00: So we have lots of lines memorized, et cetera, et cetera.
SPEAKER_00: So uh but in the book, there are the two primary uh people, characters, Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Darcy and does anybody know Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Darcy's middle his first name?
SPEAKER_00: Fitzwilliam, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: So I still have my man card.
SPEAKER_00: I do.
SPEAKER_00: I have that um so Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Darcy and Elizabeth Bennett.
SPEAKER_00: And when you when you start in, she's she wants to give Mr.
SPEAKER_00: Darcy a chance, but then there's some things that happen that she just doesn't understand how he could act the way that he acts.
SPEAKER_00: So in her mind, she paints him as a villain.
SPEAKER_00: There is so when people say negative things about him, she's quick to accept it.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, that's exactly what I've experienced.
SPEAKER_00: Or when he does something, she immediately attributes it to something bad.
SPEAKER_00: She's snarky with him, she is a little bit ugly towards him in ways that she's not towards other people.
SPEAKER_00: And she is shocked when he actually comes to her at one point and says, You must allow me to admit how ardently I admire and respect you.
SPEAKER_00: She's shocked by this.
SPEAKER_00: She cannot believe that this man actually likes her after he's been so ugly towards her in various ways and prideful and arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: And so she rebuffs his request to take her hand in marriage.
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't want anything to do with him at all based on what she thinks about him.
SPEAKER_00: But later on, as it goes on, you realize she was not right about him, not completely.
SPEAKER_00: That is, she sees his interaction with other people, hears other people talking about the way he's dealt with them so generously and lovingly and kindly, how well respected and liked he is all over.
SPEAKER_00: And then there's this one thing that happens for her where he steps in as a hero and takes care of this family drama.
SPEAKER_00: He just takes it all on himself and functionally removes it for their family.
SPEAKER_00: And she finds in this whole thing that her heart is changing towards him.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's this moment where he is walking with her, uh kind of the situation set up for her in the walk with her, and he and they're having a good conversation, and he says functionally to her, My feelings have not changed.
SPEAKER_00: I still want to marry you.
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't want to marry me, I understand, and I'll just walk away and won't bring it up.
SPEAKER_00: If your feelings are what they were last year, then let me know.
SPEAKER_00: And this is, and I quote, she says, Oh, my feelings.
SPEAKER_00: My feelings are, I'm ashamed to remember what I said then.
SPEAKER_00: My feelings are so different.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, they are quite the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: The opposite.
SPEAKER_00: That's repentance.
SPEAKER_00: It is, there's an internal polarity where I don't want anything to do with God.
SPEAKER_00: But when I see his love in Jesus Christ, I'm cut to the heart.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe and I repent.
SPEAKER_00: And I want him in my life more than my feelings are quite the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever I told myself about God before, I can't tell myself any longer.
SPEAKER_00: He's not the tyrant up in space with his finger on the smite button waiting for me to mess up.
SPEAKER_00: He's the father of my soul, he's the lover of my soul, and he sent his son to pay for all of my sins.
SPEAKER_00: And then when that happens, when you repent and turn, your heart changes.
SPEAKER_00: This passage says that we come to believe.
SPEAKER_00: We trust that God has forgiven all of our sins in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And then something else happens.
SPEAKER_00: Not only do we believe He died for me, but it creates a sense of new meaning and purpose and belonging and peace, hope, a connection.
SPEAKER_00: There's a change in our foundational loyalty, our foundational understanding.
SPEAKER_00: And we believe and find ourselves completely wrapping our minds and hearts around what his agenda is for our lives.
SPEAKER_00: I take on his mission and his purpose for me.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says in Acts 2, 38, that we are repent, that we repent, and we are baptized.
SPEAKER_00: Now, that means more than simply it's a symbol of having my sins washed away.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit more like the wedding ring that I wear.
SPEAKER_00: It's a symbol of being bound together with that woman for the whole of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And baptism is a covenant sign of saying, I am bound with you happily for all of eternity.
SPEAKER_00: I am bound to you in my life, and I've dedicated my life to you.
SPEAKER_00: So that's conversion.
SPEAKER_00: And for a lot of us living in where we, where and when we live, uh we place a lot of emphasis on that initial moment where somebody comes to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And we keep, we talk about it and we talk about it and talk about it.
SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you that mine was very emotional.
SPEAKER_00: And I've had other emotional things since then, but I can remember that moment where all of it sunk in, and I just couldn't help but go away and sob with joy for what God had done for me.
SPEAKER_00: But I think for some of us we have a misunderstanding of that moment, of like, somehow I've got to get back to the emotions of that moment.
SPEAKER_00: I've got to get back to that if you're a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: If you're not a Christian, then uh hopefully God will open your eyes and your heart to be able to experience that kind of movement towards Him.
SPEAKER_00: But for many of us, we kind of want to get back to those emotions.
SPEAKER_00: But you're probably not going to, and that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: Because functionally where you are is as good as when you first entered in.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to imagine it's a hot day like today.
SPEAKER_00: You're 10 years old, you run to jump in the pool, you do a cannonball, the best cannonball ever, and when you hit, it's that moment where all the water is displaced for just a moment.
SPEAKER_00: You can feel it if you've done it right.
SPEAKER_00: All the water is displaced for just a moment, and you can feel that, and then there's this cascade of water that shoots up into the air.
SPEAKER_00: It's perfect.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are smiling, you know exactly.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are thinking, I haven't done that for 60 years.
SPEAKER_00: That's okay if you haven't done it in 60 years.
SPEAKER_00: But you hit the water with a big splash.
SPEAKER_00: And at that age, you know, you might want to get out and go do that again, but I want you to imagine, for the sake of the illustration, that you stay in the pool and you're there for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, however long you stay in the pool, and you don't get out and recreate that.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's fascinating about that is at that moment where you jumped in is the moment of entrance, and you there's a change in your condition.
SPEAKER_00: I went from the hot sun into the cool, refreshing water.
SPEAKER_00: 20 minutes later, you're still in the cool, refreshing water.
SPEAKER_00: That hasn't changed.
SPEAKER_00: You're still in the water, you're floating around, you're still wet.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you, me, I was converted when I was 13 or around then.
SPEAKER_00: I was young.
SPEAKER_00: But I've been wet ever since then.
SPEAKER_00: I've still been in Christ ever since then.
SPEAKER_00: That does not change.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need to repeat what happened so long ago.
SPEAKER_00: I don't need to keep recreating that in my mind.
SPEAKER_00: I need to have that big emotional rush that took place 40 years ago.
SPEAKER_00: Because I'm in the water and I've been swimming and I'm with Jesus now.
SPEAKER_00: So conversion is not to be equated with that big emotional experience.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, for some people who are Christians, they may never have had that big emotional experience.
SPEAKER_00: Since the frontier revival movement, we put a huge emphasis on that moment where people jump into the water.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: I love that when people come to faith in Jesus for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: I've been there when people do that.
SPEAKER_00: But for some people, there's no big cannonball into the water.
SPEAKER_00: They just kind of ease into it.
SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: This is from Abraham Kuiper, who is a Dutch theologian.
SPEAKER_00: He said, as the conversion of many people has taken place almost without observation, which often happens in the quieter walks of Christian life, and the conversion of a few only who at first wandered off is incisive, like that of an Augustine, such also is the case here.
SPEAKER_00: For the most part, this witness works gradually and unobserved, and only in exceptional cases is it as lightning that suddenly flames through the skies.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're somebody who didn't grow up in the church, like the girl who was in China that I talked about, she may have had come here and heard about Jesus for the first time, and it was like lightning in the sky.
SPEAKER_00: I'm encountering God for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: But then there are other people who may have grown up in the church their whole lives.
SPEAKER_00: And they don't, they'll say, I don't remember a day when I didn't know Jesus as Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_00: They may not have this big jump into the water with the big cannonball moment and have all these emotions come with it.
SPEAKER_00: Which one of those is better?
SPEAKER_00: To have the big cannonball moment or to grow up in a covenant family where you hear the gospel your whole life?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, it depends on who you ask.
SPEAKER_00: Several years ago, I had two students, I almost said their names, but I'm not going to, just in case they listened to this ever.
SPEAKER_00: I did their wedding.
SPEAKER_00: They had started dating.
SPEAKER_00: She, her dad was a pastor, so she grew up in the church.
SPEAKER_00: She came to Christ at some young age, she doesn't quite remember when.
SPEAKER_00: She always believed in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He grew up not in the church.
SPEAKER_00: He was a baseball player.
SPEAKER_00: He did a lot of bad things in high school.
SPEAKER_00: His world was baseball and girls.
SPEAKER_00: And so when he came to Clemson University and was involved with our campus ministry and came to faith in Christ, he had different baggage than the girl he would eventually marry.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember doing premarital counseling with the two of them, and they're both sobbing.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason they're sobbing is because they wanted the other person's story.
SPEAKER_00: She wanted his story because, in her mind, he understood God's grace in a way that she never did, because he had a closet full of skeletons, things he had done, but he understood what it meant to be really forgiven for really bad things in his life.
SPEAKER_00: He wanted her story, where he had grown up in a Christian family, had never done anything bad, and he didn't have these memories of things that he wished he could forget.
SPEAKER_00: So which one of those is better?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But it was God's plan for them to go to have the story that they had.
SPEAKER_00: Another issue that we find with conversion is the idea that we think conversion just immediately fixes all the broken things in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: If I become a Christian, then I'm not going to struggle anymore.
SPEAKER_00: That's not true either.
SPEAKER_00: Those of you who have walked with Christ for a long time, you know we're still tempted.
SPEAKER_00: We still fall into sin.
SPEAKER_00: It can be a hard thing.
SPEAKER_00: I remember I was sitting in one of my seminary classes, and I think one of my professor told the story.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't him, but it was somebody else.
SPEAKER_00: And there was a student sitting in the class.
SPEAKER_00: They were talking about the struggle with sin.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the students asked this godly 86-year-old seminary professor, Professor, when does the struggle with lust end?
SPEAKER_00: And this godly seminary professor sat there for a little bit, looked at his watch, and he said, I don't know, but it's sometime after 86.
SPEAKER_00: We struggle with things.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make the struggle go away, but it brings, but Jesus and the Holy Spirit come into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: Conversion brings resources into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the things it brings is as soon as we have dropped the binoculars, as soon as we have entered, we know that we've done something wrong, we can enter into God's presence and find He loves us, accepts us, embraces us, draws us in, helps us to deal with the guilt and with the consequences of the things that we do.
SPEAKER_00: Now here's the thing, I find that the struggle with sin, besetting sin, continuing sin, however you want to say it, in my life and people I've known through the years, is why they understand the grace of God so well.
SPEAKER_00: Because they have to depend on Jesus every day.
SPEAKER_00: Every day.
SPEAKER_00: It also means this.
SPEAKER_00: It means you don't depend on your feelings.
SPEAKER_00: You may have dry spells and not feel the way you've felt at first, but your acceptance before God is through Jesus and Jesus alone, not your performance.
SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't mean also that your life is going to be daisies and diadems, you're going to face hard things, and God still loves you in the midst of the hard things, and he's not going anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: Even if you do, every time.
SPEAKER_00: Rebecca and I heard a story recently.
SPEAKER_00: To me, it's a very powerful story.
SPEAKER_00: Um there's a man who's a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Um like some of us in here, he had a uh previous marriage, married a lady, had a daughter from the previous marriage, and uh she got sick and passed away.
SPEAKER_00: And this man is a Christian, and he was angry because he prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed for God to deliver his daughter and make her well.
SPEAKER_00: And God didn't.
SPEAKER_00: And he was angry.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I don't want anything to do with God anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And he rejected Christianity and walked away.
SPEAKER_00: Ten years later, ten years later, uh, today, he's preaching.
SPEAKER_00: He's a preacher.
SPEAKER_00: Ten years he walked away.
SPEAKER_00: Why did he come back?
SPEAKER_00: Because at some point God cut into the heart.
SPEAKER_00: At some point God entered in.
SPEAKER_00: And God who said, You're mine, that I'm never gonna let you go.
SPEAKER_00: You're mine.
SPEAKER_00: That gives me hope.
SPEAKER_00: It gives me hope for people I love.
SPEAKER_00: It gives me hope when I see people who are struggling to walk away from.
SPEAKER_00: I hear so many stories about people who get angry because God didn't want to do what they wanted him to do, and they walk away for a time.
SPEAKER_00: But eventually, because their hearts changed, they may come back.
SPEAKER_00: It's a beautiful picture.
SPEAKER_00: Truly converted, brought in.
SPEAKER_00: So where are you?
SPEAKER_00: In the midst of that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'd love to talk with you about that.
SPEAKER_00: We started our conversation today about questions and being stagnant.
SPEAKER_00: Uh I love questions.
SPEAKER_00: I love questions because one, uh, it forces me to articulate things that I haven't articulated in a while and reminds me, it helps me in my faith.
SPEAKER_00: But also love questions uh because it helps other people to realize they're not alone.
SPEAKER_00: Their questions are questions that all of us have.
SPEAKER_00: Your questions aren't unique, and there are answers for them.
SPEAKER_00: So if something I've said today sparks a question for you, uh let's do lunch.
SPEAKER_00: Let's do breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: I'll treat.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to talk with you more about these things.
SPEAKER_00: So let me pray for us.