SPEAKER_00: Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
SPEAKER_00: You may be seated.
SPEAKER_00: But good morning.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Danny Batarsi.
SPEAKER_00: I have the privilege of serving on the college team here at 614, and it is absolutely an exciting time of year with students going back from the youngins to the high schoolers to the universities as well.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited to see what God does this fall.
SPEAKER_00: I'm actually going to start this morning by sharing the story of my first love.
SPEAKER_00: I have permission from CC to share this story, so don't worry.
SPEAKER_00: It was December of 2016, and it was Christmas time.
SPEAKER_00: I was 15 years old, and my family were all in our living room sharing a time together, and my brother gave me this envelope, and on the front of this envelope was a car.
SPEAKER_00: And as I began to open this envelope, I saw the most beautiful thing I think I had ever seen.
SPEAKER_00: Through the air, what was flying, soaring, or a pair of car keys.
SPEAKER_00: As I catch them, I read in this envelope that says, Hey, I wanted to gift you a car, as he was getting a new one, but there's two rules.
SPEAKER_00: No speeding and no texting and driving.
SPEAKER_00: 2009, Honda Civic LX, maroon red, her name was Rose.
SPEAKER_00: And I kid you not, it was the most beautiful thing in the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: 15-year-old almost getting my license.
SPEAKER_00: Could not be more thrilled, and I kid you not, I treated that thing like the Mona Lisa, protected it, cared for it for about two months.
SPEAKER_00: And then somehow, Taco Bell bags just found their way in my car.
SPEAKER_00: My backseat quickly became a trash can.
SPEAKER_00: I kept forgetting to take my baseball gear out of the car, so it smelled like a locker room.
SPEAKER_00: And then there was the first time I got pulled over, and then the second.
SPEAKER_00: Let's not talk about the third.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad my mom's not here to tell you about the fourth.
SPEAKER_00: Some beautiful memories, and what I learned around winter time the next year is that when it snows, my high school parking lot becomes a perfect territory to learn how to drift.
SPEAKER_00: And with a 2009 Honda Civic LX with a manual e-brake, you can have a lot of fun with a very thin sheet of ice.
SPEAKER_00: But unfortunately, it was an older car, and for some reason the transmission wasn't working as well.
SPEAKER_00: But then there was the first car accident, and then I took this car to campus, and you guys have the infamous love tap when you're parallel parking.
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard of the love smash?
SPEAKER_00: Because I can tell you all about it.
SPEAKER_00: And that car has too many memories to count, and so on, and so on, and so on.
SPEAKER_00: My first love, the 2009 Honda Civic Alex with plastipped silver to turn it black, went from pristine and cared for to busted up, my friends puking in it.
SPEAKER_00: It was dirty, and honestly, I didn't care all too much about how the car was doing as long as I could get from point A to point B.
SPEAKER_00: I started using that line a lot, as long as I can get there.
SPEAKER_00: And there was this one time I was at an event that involved a lot of paint, and I didn't think to change my clothes before I got in the car.
SPEAKER_00: So it also has permanent stains of paint in it.
SPEAKER_00: But all of that to be said, it took many years and many small moments for this beautiful carrying car to go from pristine to quite literally destroyed in many, many ways.
SPEAKER_00: And funny enough, that's kind of exactly where we find ourselves in our teaching series that we're going through right now.
SPEAKER_00: We're studying the kings, and many of these kings made small decisions over time that led to them being completely separated from God.
SPEAKER_00: It's the idea of decline compounding over time as opposed to one king making one bad decision.
SPEAKER_00: It was one decision that led to another, that led to another, that led to another.
SPEAKER_00: And for some of us, it might start with a Taco Bell bag.
unknown: C.
SPEAKER_00: S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says, day by day, nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.
SPEAKER_00: And that is what we're really going to be looking at this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And the truth is, this could be immensely discouraging and dreadful to think about the decline of humanity and morality as we know it, especially that we've studied this for a few weeks in a row now.
SPEAKER_00: It feels like we just keep getting hit with this reality of like, we're broken, we're broken, we're broken, we're decaying, we're decaying, humanity is falling apart.
SPEAKER_00: But it's important that we look at this because these stories are arrows or they're they're lights on a dashboard of a car.
SPEAKER_00: They point to something else that warn us that something is wrong.
SPEAKER_00: So looking at these stories strengthens us.
SPEAKER_00: Quick question for you.
SPEAKER_00: Does anyone here want to walk in freedom?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: Good amount of us.
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody want to walk in purpose?
SPEAKER_00: Definitely for me.
SPEAKER_00: Does anybody want to walk with hope?
SPEAKER_00: All very real.
SPEAKER_00: Me too.
SPEAKER_00: And these stories, they serve to teach us so that we can actually walk in those things and not just talk about them like good Christians do.
SPEAKER_00: But these stories actually help us change so that those things aren't fantasies or ideas, but the reality of our life.
SPEAKER_00: You guys ready to jump in this?
unknown: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: Before we get started on the declare of decay of humanity, though, I think we have to acknowledge what lens we're bringing to this conversation.
SPEAKER_00: When this was written many, many years ago, it was written as an autopsy of sort of what happened in this kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: But as we look at it now, we get to look at it with a little bit of a different lens.
SPEAKER_00: Because you and I are on the other side of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And because you and I are on the other side of Jesus, the idea of hope, the idea of mercy, the idea of grace, those aren't things that we have to search and hope we can find.
SPEAKER_00: We know exactly where they are in receiving Jesus and walking with him.
SPEAKER_00: So it's important we come to this text with an understanding that we aren't going to decay and get lost forever.
SPEAKER_00: There's genuine and real hope in Jesus, no matter how far we have turned.
SPEAKER_00: The age-old saying that nobody is too far gone is only true with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning, we're going to look at a decline of people to learn the patterns that could have been picked up on, and hopefully for our lives, we can see where those patterns might start creeping in, so that you and I can also walk in purity with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to encourage you that as we look into this, it is some heavy weighty things, but we get to look at it of, oh, that's good to know.
SPEAKER_00: Like now that I know, I can learn, I can grow, I can walk in greater maturity, as opposed to, oh my gosh, I'm cooked.
SPEAKER_00: Sound good?
SPEAKER_00: Allow me to pray for us as we get into this.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that your presence is with us.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that we are aware of how near you are to us in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that your grace and your peace wash over us.
SPEAKER_00: That we aren't just here to do good Christian things, but we're here for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So Lord, I pray that whether we are a curious follower of Jesus or a skeptic of the faith, Lord, I pray that we can look to you and learn.
SPEAKER_00: We can see what you have to offer us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're gonna cover 210 years and 19 different kings.
SPEAKER_00: And it sounds like a lot, but there's a few patterns that these kings follow, and we're just gonna follow the patterns this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna begin in 2 Kings chapter 17, verses 9.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read, you can flip there if you would like.
SPEAKER_00: It says, And the people of Israel did secretly against the Lord their God things that were not right.
SPEAKER_00: They built for themselves high places in all their towns, from watchtower to fortified city.
SPEAKER_00: They set up for themselves pillars and asherem on every high hill and under every green tree, and there they made offerings on all the high places, as the nations did whom the Lord carried away from them.
SPEAKER_00: And they did wicked things, provoking the Lord to anger, and they served idols, of which the Lord had said to them, You shall not do this.
SPEAKER_00: Yet the Lord warned Israel and Judah by every prophet and every seer, saying, Turn from your evil ways, and keep my commandments and my statutes, in accordance with all of the law that I commanded your fathers, and that I sent to you by my servants the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: But they would not listen, but were stubborn, as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.
SPEAKER_00: This is obviously a very wordy and dense text with a lot of nuances in it, but again, we're gonna track a macro theme that's going on here.
SPEAKER_00: There's this pastor named John Bevere, who's known for his work in studying what Scripture says around the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And there was one time he visited a friend of his who had gone to prison.
SPEAKER_00: He was a high-profile pastor.
SPEAKER_00: He had national presence and national acknowledgement, who had a very serious and very public moral failure around, I think it was money laundering at that time.
SPEAKER_00: And he sits in front of his friend and he goes, When did you stop loving Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Like, when did it go wrong for you?
SPEAKER_00: And his friend looks him in the eyes and he says, I never stopped loving Jesus, but I stopped fearing him.
SPEAKER_00: And John Bevere goes on to say how this helped him see that a love for God is different than actually walking in a way that honors God.
SPEAKER_00: So he defines the fear of the Lord as a holy awe and a profound terror of being separated from God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: Not a fear of God himself, but a fear of being separated from God.
SPEAKER_00: Very, very different.
SPEAKER_00: So in this, we're going to see a thread in these kings that they lacked the fear of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: They lacked a desire to stay close to God.
SPEAKER_00: So the first pattern we see across these kings is that their rebellion didn't start as rejection, but as control of God.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Kings 12, it says, And Jeroboam said in his heart, Now the kingdom will turn back to the house of David, or the kingdom's going to turn back to God.
SPEAKER_00: If this people go up to offer sacrifices in the temple of the Lord at Jerusalem, then the heart of this people will turn again to their Lord, to Rehoboam, king of Judah, and they will kill me and return to Rehoboam, king of Judah.
SPEAKER_00: So the king took counsel and made two calves of gold.
SPEAKER_00: He was so close.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam was wanting to bring the kingdom back to worshiping God, so he brings in false idols that they can use to worship God.
SPEAKER_00: On our end, obviously it's like, come on, man.
SPEAKER_00: But to him he was doing what he thought was best.
SPEAKER_00: He tried to worship God, but it was on his own terms.
SPEAKER_00: It was good intention met with impurity, which is still impurity.
SPEAKER_00: But notice, he didn't outright reject God.
SPEAKER_00: He actually wanted to honor God.
SPEAKER_00: And in reality, very few people actually start by rejecting God.
SPEAKER_00: They often start by controlling something with small, reasonable sounding actions, much like what Noah was sharing about finances.
SPEAKER_00: Like it's very reasonable to be financially stable.
SPEAKER_00: It's very reasonable to have a huge emergency fund.
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of reason and understanding behind it, but does that come before trusting God?
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes for us, it's an order of precedence in our heart.
SPEAKER_00: It's one small example of how do we trust God over just taking reason.
SPEAKER_00: And as followers of Jesus in our time, control and the worship of self is said to be one of the biggest hindrances in our walk with God.
SPEAKER_00: But it's important to note that none of those things are new.
SPEAKER_00: We just simply don't change.
SPEAKER_00: Way before the American Western nature that we know now, way before culture was what it is, way before modern individualism and everybody getting to do whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, way before all of that, people still tried to control God.
SPEAKER_00: People still tried to be individualistic.
SPEAKER_00: It just looked a little different.
SPEAKER_00: So at what point do we as the church stop blaming culture for our failures and take ownership over our lives?
SPEAKER_00: It's not culture's fault that we live how we live.
SPEAKER_00: It's not their fault, it's not their fault.
SPEAKER_00: At some point in time, we have to acknowledge that there's some onus on us.
SPEAKER_00: That we have made some choices, good or bad.
SPEAKER_00: Culture has always been really, really evil and rotten ever since the fall.
SPEAKER_00: It's not new.
SPEAKER_00: I could go down just about every sin temptation we have and probably find something in here to show you it's not new.
SPEAKER_00: Is it worse than ever before?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't there.
SPEAKER_00: But I know that this says it was there.
SPEAKER_00: Control was there, wanting to control our lives was there, the worship of self and wanting to do things our own way was all there.
SPEAKER_00: And history just continually repeats itself, oftentimes because we don't change.
SPEAKER_00: As a community, I want to be a people that see the value in what Jesus did in such a way that we actually change.
SPEAKER_00: That we can learn a text like this, be like, okay, like this is a common issue in my life, it's a common issue in lives around me, it's an issue in history.
SPEAKER_00: Like, God, will you give me the grace to change?
SPEAKER_00: What if that was our response?
SPEAKER_00: Or it's like, God, I have no idea how to change.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even know if I'm in the wrong.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to know.
SPEAKER_00: I want to know if I'm in control.
SPEAKER_00: I want to know if I made a mistake.
SPEAKER_00: But oftentimes we just carry on doing what we think is best.
SPEAKER_00: And this exact pattern continues on, but compounds to one layer deeper.
SPEAKER_00: First it was slightly controlling, but the next pattern we see is that they rejected the warnings from God.
SPEAKER_00: In 2 Kings it says that God warned them, but in verse 14 it says, But they would not listen, but were stubborn as their fathers had been, who did not believe in the Lord their God.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't being warned once and ignoring it.
SPEAKER_00: This is being warned over generations and ignoring generations of warnings.
SPEAKER_00: God warned them many times that their sin would cause them to be distant from God.
SPEAKER_00: But because they didn't fear God, that didn't concern them.
SPEAKER_00: Being far from God's presence didn't concern them.
SPEAKER_00: So they ignored these warnings.
SPEAKER_00: And in our culture, we get warnings all of the time, whether we see it or not.
SPEAKER_00: One of them being the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Just we do something we shouldn't, and we just feel on the inside of like that's something's not right.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't sit right, I feel I feel guilty, I feel conviction, whatever word we put to it, the Lord stirs something in us of like, that's not right.
SPEAKER_00: Or it's community calling you out.
SPEAKER_00: A friend, someone who actually cares about you, saying that, hey, you messed up, man.
SPEAKER_00: It's an act of love and care.
SPEAKER_00: Or the one that I think you and I get most often, whether we realize it or not, is the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: Whether it's teaching on a Sunday, whether it's in a life group, whether it's through an Instagram reel, when the word of God enters our ears, we have a responsibility to it.
SPEAKER_00: So doom scrolling, we might accidentally be warned, warned, warned, warned, warned without even realizing it.
SPEAKER_00: But we've desensitized ourselves and just said, next, next, next, next, next.
SPEAKER_00: Our culture is considered the age of information, where we have access to every piece of knowledge there has ever been, and AI is only taking that to the next level.
SPEAKER_00: But as people who want to follow Jesus, we have a responsibility to those warnings.
SPEAKER_00: We have a responsibility to this word.
SPEAKER_00: That when God says something that stirs us or challenges us, or even if it doesn't stir us or challenge us, but it's his word, we have a responsibility to it.
SPEAKER_00: So my question, just for you to briefly ponder to yourself, what have you done when you've gotten to the point of needing a warning?
SPEAKER_00: The next pattern after rejected warning, it's this line that's across all of the nineteen kings in 210 years.
SPEAKER_00: It's almost word for word in kings.
SPEAKER_00: And the language is he did not depart from the sins of Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Said fifteen times across all the different kings.
SPEAKER_00: Jeroboam was the first evil king, and for 15 different times, 19 kings, 210 years, none of them departed from the sins of the first.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't say the one right before them.
SPEAKER_00: They went all the way back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: They just carried on sinning.
SPEAKER_00: Much of our culture operates on what is called thin belief.
SPEAKER_00: It's when somebody believes something because they think it is right, not because they actually have a conviction regarding it.
SPEAKER_00: And the church is not free from this pattern.
SPEAKER_00: And this is why all of the things that we do have to be anchored on Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There are so many opinions out there on how you should do church and how you should do Christianity and all the stats and all the books and all the production tips and how to preach a good sermon and everything that there is.
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, if we aren't anchored on Jesus, there's going to be something along the way that enters our thinking.
SPEAKER_00: Something along the way that enters our practice.
SPEAKER_00: Something along the way where we just do it because they did it.
SPEAKER_00: And when it comes to Jesus, there's an immense risk with that because we are broken people who make a lot of mistakes.
SPEAKER_00: Our default cannot ever become what's easily available or what's been done before.
SPEAKER_00: All of the kings, all 19 of them, made the mistake of settling for the belief of a leader before them.
SPEAKER_00: And each and every one of us have had some degree of exposure to different types of teaching and thinking.
SPEAKER_00: You have to weigh up what is God saying?
SPEAKER_00: The failures and patterns in my life, what is God saying?
SPEAKER_00: There are so many different opinions around should a Christian watch horror movies?
SPEAKER_00: Should we celebrate Halloween?
SPEAKER_00: I could go on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00: What is God saying?
SPEAKER_00: And what are the things that have gotten into the culture of the church or Christianity that we do for the sake of inclusivity and love, but ultimately it's just tolerating sin?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what are those things that have so deeply permeated culture?
SPEAKER_00: And we would be foolish to not think there's any.
SPEAKER_00: There are certainly things in the broader church that we've allowed to enter because we're broken people.
SPEAKER_00: Which is why we just need to be willing to be like, okay, God, we we're aware.
SPEAKER_00: Can you help us?
SPEAKER_00: Can you help us walk in grace and can you help us walk in truth?
SPEAKER_00: Not making this lighter than it is, but also not loving people less.
SPEAKER_00: It's an immensely difficult challenge.
SPEAKER_00: And hear me when I say this, when we fear God, this isn't us starting to earn God's favor or trying to do all the right on our own strength.
SPEAKER_00: Fearing the Lord ultimately is an understanding of the cross of Jesus and an acceptance of his grace.
SPEAKER_00: That's what fearing God is.
SPEAKER_00: It isn't us striving on the inside, it's us receiving God's love and God's grace and letting him change us.
SPEAKER_00: You and I can't be pure without God.
SPEAKER_00: Fearing the Lord is literally saying, Alright, God, I need you.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very humble acknowledgement of like, okay, Lord, I can't do this on my own anymore.
SPEAKER_00: I've tried.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to love people, I'm trying to love my family, I'm trying to steward my finances well, but I just keep messing up.
SPEAKER_00: My God, will you help me?
SPEAKER_00: It's a humble acknowledgement before God of like, Lord, I just need your help.
SPEAKER_00: What happens next is a compounding effect of control, being warned, rejecting warning, and just carrying on.
SPEAKER_00: There's a significant jump in this step here, in one that I know that we face.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Kings 16 31, it says, and as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Jeroboam.
SPEAKER_00: Nabat, he took for his wife Jezebel, the daughter of Eph Baal, king of the Sidonians, and went and served Baal and worshipped him.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to put that in English for us.
SPEAKER_00: The sins of Jeroboam didn't sting like they used to, which means the conviction lessened.
SPEAKER_00: Same sin, same mistake, less conviction.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that the sin stopped or started more.
SPEAKER_00: They just didn't feel the pain of it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: As if it had become a light thing.
SPEAKER_00: This is mostly seen in habitual sins that we wrestle with.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, this is felt when habitual sin loses conviction, like it used to.
SPEAKER_00: Whether that's pornography, hatred, drinking, pride, gambling, you name it, whatever habit we find ourselves in, when the conviction starts to drop, it is one of the more dangerous moments as followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Because it doesn't mean that God is tolerating the sin more or allowing it.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that God's giving more grace per se.
SPEAKER_00: It could just mean that we're getting farther from God.
SPEAKER_00: It could mean that what used to hurt because it grieved God and separated us from Him now doesn't matter as much because we don't really care if we're that far from God.
SPEAKER_00: It's an intense idea, but it's one that Scripture highlights over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says that the Holy Spirit brings conviction.
SPEAKER_00: So when we don't feel conviction, it could be that we're not aware of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not saying that God's not speaking.
SPEAKER_00: We've just ignored his voice over and over and over again to where we might have stopped listening.
SPEAKER_00: In Israel, and I know in our culture, this led to worse and more evil things becoming the new threshold of what used to feel like conviction.
SPEAKER_00: This is why things like gambling get worse, or things like pornography get worse, or more intense, or worse things you look at.
SPEAKER_00: It's just the brutality of conviction.
SPEAKER_00: We can tolerate more and more evil.
SPEAKER_00: And because we live in a culture that is very in your face of these addictions and struggles, it's more normalized.
SPEAKER_00: So it doesn't sting like it used to.
SPEAKER_00: It got so bad that the reform in Israel couldn't even fix their view of God.
SPEAKER_00: In Israel, they tore down all of the idols in an attempt to restore worship to God.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the kings kept some things in the back, just cleaned up everything on the outside, but kept a couple in the back.
SPEAKER_00: And it's the same mistake that you and I make.
SPEAKER_00: We try behavior modification without true repentance.
SPEAKER_00: We try to clean up the outside, we try to clean up the calendar, we try to clean up our appearance, we try to make things look good and orderly on the outside, all along our heart hasn't budged.
SPEAKER_00: And if it is true that God is interested in your heart and my heart, that he wants you to be loved, seen, and cared for, that he wants you to know freedom and life and mercy, it doesn't matter how it looks on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: I have seen some people who look phenomenal on the outside, full of life, smiling, joyous, engaged, they're serving in the church, they're giving, but they're dying on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: The shame, the isolation, the doubt.
SPEAKER_00: And I've seen people who look real rough.
SPEAKER_00: They're beat down, they're distraught, they don't know if they can do it, they're fighting for their life, but they're coming to Jesus with their struggles.
SPEAKER_00: I would take the person struggling every single day of the week.
SPEAKER_00: That is where I would want to be if I was on that spectrum.
SPEAKER_00: That is exactly what God wants.
SPEAKER_00: No matter where you are, in victory or in pain, just to come to Him.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't a message of you have to be suffering.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation is just come to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Repentance is coming to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It isn't get your life together or you have to be a disaster.
SPEAKER_00: There's one consistent thread in here.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming back to Jesus in repentance, in purity, in wholeness, and asking for his help.
SPEAKER_00: There's one more layer of this pattern.
SPEAKER_00: And this one is when things blow completely out of proportion.
SPEAKER_00: And at this point in time, there is zero conviction and active rejection of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's the final boss per se of the kings.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't try to look good on the outside anymore.
SPEAKER_00: They were rotten on the inside, and they were rotten on the outside, openly rejecting God.
SPEAKER_00: And this isn't because they silenced God once, they had just completely severed their conscience, severed their conviction by rejecting it over and over and over.
SPEAKER_00: Weighty stuff, right?
SPEAKER_00: But it's important because you and I stand here on the other side with hope and life and opportunity to walk in freedom.
SPEAKER_00: But it's important to see that the condition of our world right now, it gives us a lens for how we can love people.
SPEAKER_00: It gives us a lens for how we ourselves can come back to Jesus in purity, how we can come to Jesus broken, in need of something to help us move forward.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to have it figured out.
SPEAKER_00: If anybody has it figured out, I probably don't trust you.
SPEAKER_00: There's literally no way.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's a day where we're like, okay, yeah, like I've got this life figured out.
SPEAKER_00: And if that day happens, someone slap me.
SPEAKER_00: I've sat with older people enough to know that that day doesn't always come.
SPEAKER_00: And that's okay.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to not know exactly how to move forward.
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to not know exactly how to lead your family or handle your finances or how to perfectly study scripture, but the invitation is the same.
SPEAKER_00: It's coming back to Jesus in repentance.
SPEAKER_00: There's a scripture in Amos 5 I want to quickly read, and I think it's one of the clearer depictions of how God feels.
SPEAKER_00: And I can say that because it's God speaking.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna let him speak for himself.
SPEAKER_00: Amos 5 21, this is God speaking.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
SPEAKER_00: Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them, and the peace offerings of your fattened animals I will not look upon them.
SPEAKER_00: Take away from me the noise of your songs, to the melody of your harps I will not listen, but let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever wondered how God felt, he doesn't want the noise, he doesn't need the fanfare, he doesn't need you to figure it out.
SPEAKER_00: He just wants the righteousness of God to be made known in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And for you and I, on this side of the cross, the righteousness of God is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I could give you a whole nother 30-minute expository presentation of that.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is the most beautiful thing ever.
SPEAKER_00: Way better than my 2009 Honda Civic.
SPEAKER_00: But it's one of those things that you and I at the end of the day have to take ownership over this.
SPEAKER_00: You can't follow Jesus because it's the right thing to do and have no conviction on the inside.
SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, at the same time, you can't have conviction on the inside and not follow Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: One of the great challenges of a sermon like this is that when we silence the conviction so often, we become desensitized to it.
SPEAKER_00: And when you're desensitized to something, you don't know that you're desensitized to it.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the great challenges.
SPEAKER_00: That's why some people can tolerate this and some people can tolerate that, and it's different because we each have different levels of what we can handle.
SPEAKER_00: And the same thing before God, we're each at different points of what stings us.
SPEAKER_00: But the invitation for all of us is the same to let God bring conviction to us.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know where you all sit, but what I do know is that it is in God's word that the Holy Spirit does bring conviction.
SPEAKER_00: And when the Holy Spirit brings conviction, I urge you to listen.
SPEAKER_00: It could be heavy, it could be hard, or it could be joyful and life-giving, but I urge you to listen.
SPEAKER_00: It's the only place that you and I can actually find life.
SPEAKER_00: The only place that there's hope and mercy, it's in the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And when we turn from God, we're rejecting his presence.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna invite the band up.
SPEAKER_00: I want to remind us of the pastor in prison at the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Significant failure.
SPEAKER_00: Made a big mistake and he knew it, and he owned it.
SPEAKER_00: But he openly said, I didn't stop loving God, I stopped fearing God.
SPEAKER_00: He stopped caring if he was distant from God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: And it just got worse and worse and worse.
SPEAKER_00: And I know it to be true experientially and statistically that many of us live in dissatisfied bodies, always reaching for relief, always reaching for satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to encourage us with this truth out of Psalm 34:9.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack.
SPEAKER_00: That is what happens when you and I come to a place of being near God, in his presence, close to him.
SPEAKER_00: The fact that God is a provider is no longer an idea, but it's our reality.
SPEAKER_00: Where we long for hope, where we long for comfort, where we long for identity, where we long for purpose, God restores all of those things to us when we are close to his voice.
SPEAKER_00: And as I close, I want to present this thought to you.
SPEAKER_00: And it's this idea that arrival is a myth.
SPEAKER_00: On this side of heaven, you will never stop growing.
SPEAKER_00: You'll never actually reach a place where you can say that I made it.
SPEAKER_00: Because you and I are directional beings.
SPEAKER_00: The only time where anything is ever finally final is when Jesus comes again or we die.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only time.
SPEAKER_00: Until then, we're directional beings.
SPEAKER_00: And what repentance does is it restores our direction.
SPEAKER_00: It restores us back to being aligned with God.
SPEAKER_00: But until we get to Jesus, you and I have the opportunity to grow, to be made alive again, to know one another, to stand with one another, to encourage one another.
SPEAKER_00: Because a day is coming when Jesus returns.
SPEAKER_00: Our opening scripture is Hebrews 12.28.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.
SPEAKER_00: This morning, as we close, my invitation for us is simple.
SPEAKER_00: And it's to invite the Holy Spirit into our hearts, to invite him into our minds.
SPEAKER_00: And for those of us who might have a severed conscience or we struggle with what we should feel convicted about or not, this is when God consensitize us again.
SPEAKER_00: And when he does that, it is always through the lens of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The idea that Jesus brought restoration and redemption, that Jesus brought identity and purpose.
SPEAKER_00: But in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, it says, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you and I want to walk in the fullness of God, we have to be broken before Him and say, God, will you make me stand?
SPEAKER_00: Will you strengthen my legs?
SPEAKER_00: Will you grant me hope?
SPEAKER_00: Will you grant me purpose and identity?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to invite us to stand.
SPEAKER_00: Our prayer ministry team is going to be forward.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to encourage you that if you're at a place in your life where you just want more of God, this doesn't require you to feel sick to your stomach with conviction.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't require you to know exactly what you want.
SPEAKER_00: But if you just want more of God, that is who the Holy Spirit is going to come to.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he can't come to you if you don't want him, but he's an honoring God.
SPEAKER_00: There's this phrase that John Tyson uses often.
SPEAKER_00: He says, the Spirit comes where he's wanted.
SPEAKER_00: He's not going to force his hand upon you, but he accepts your invitation every time.
SPEAKER_00: And this morning I'm inviting you to invite God into your heart again.
SPEAKER_00: To invite God into your mind again.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to encourage us again, I'm saying that phrase a lot, but I'm going to keep saying it.
SPEAKER_00: When you leave this place and go home is when it actually matters.
SPEAKER_00: If you come to Sunday and do your best to fear God and then leave and do your own thing, it doesn't do any good.
SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing they were doing.
SPEAKER_00: But when you leave is when it matters and how we honor God.
SPEAKER_00: So that is why we have to ask the Spirit to be with us.
SPEAKER_00: So he can walk with us and encourage us and stand with us.
SPEAKER_00: So, Father, I thank you for these people.
SPEAKER_00: Your children, whose names you had in mind on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: That you did not leave them empty-handed, you did not leave them in their pain, you did not leave them in their suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And for those that are strong in Jesus, Lord, I pray that you fan a flame into them, that they may stand and run with you with endurance.
SPEAKER_00: That they will not hold up, they will not settle, they will not tolerate the culture that they live in.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, for those who are broken or searching or uncurious, or they're curious, Lord, I pray that you're present to meet them and open their eyes to see you.
SPEAKER_00: To invite them again into redemption, invite them again into hope, invite them again into mercy.
SPEAKER_00: For you love them dearly, and they are not alone.
SPEAKER_00: So, Holy Spirit, will you be with us this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Will you change us?