Sin, Salvation, and Davy Crockett

Pastor Scott Smith- February 9, 2026

This message explains the doctrine of sin and salvation by framing it as bad news and good news against the backdrop of one central reality: God is real, holy, and perfect, and He defines right and wrong. The bad news is that sin—anything that falls short of God’s perfection—has affected everyone, separating humanity from God and bringing real destruction into both the world and our personal lives. Sin is not merely a list of bad behaviors but a universal condition that no one can fix on their own, whether by ignoring it, comparing themselves to others, or trying to earn God’s approval through good deeds. This message makes clear that sin requires payment, and left to ourselves, we are unable to meet God’s perfect standard.

This message then proclaims the good news of salvation: while we cannot achieve perfection, God made a way for us to receive it through Jesus Christ. Through Jesus’ sacrifice, God satisfied both the demands of holiness and the depths of His mercy, offering salvation as a free gift by grace through faith. The message calls listeners to respond in two phases—first by receiving salvation through trusting Jesus, and second by living lives that honor God, taking sin seriously while resting fully in His grace. It closes with a clear invitation to stop trying to earn God’s love, to respond to it with gratitude and obedience, and to join God’s mission of helping people know and follow Jesus, celebrating new life through baptism and transformed living.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I've got some good news and I've got some bad news. Which would you like first? Yeah, okay, and everybody, yeah, but you've heard this, right? We've all heard this phrase. I've got good news, bad news. Why is good news good news? And why is bad news bad news? Let's get philosophical for a second and actually consider something. Good news must be good news for a reason, and bad news must be bad news for a reason. Why? Because both good and bad news have to operate against a backdrop of a certain reality. Any type of information, the way you interpret the information is based upon the reality through which that information resides. There is a backdrop for it, and let's use a modern example right now. Today is Super Bowl Sunday. Okay, great. Unless you are a Patriots or Seahawks fan, your team is not playing in the Super Bowl. Sorry, Chargers fans, there's always next year. Now, that's the bad news if your team is not playing in the Super Bowl. What's the good news? Well, the good news is you don't have to stress about who wins. You don't care. You can watch the commercials and stuff your face with chicken wings and just be content. And you're like, ah, but I want to, but why are those good news and bad news? Why? Because here's the reality. The reality is the Super Bowl involves a game, football. And in that game, if you win, you are rewarded with the ability to continue playing. And if you continue winning, you'll be rewarded with the ability to continue playing until you get to this game called the Super Bowl. And if you win that game, you are declared national champions. That's the reality of that good news and bad news. The reason we say that is to understand sin and salvation, we have to understand there is a backdrop of reality that this conversation flows from. There is a setting in which sin and salvation will be understood. Because we're not going to understand sin and salvation unless we understand the backdrop of reality that everyone operates in. In fact, we said it at the very onset of our 30-minute theology series about a month ago. And that reality is this there is a God. He is real, he is holy, he is loving, he made everything. And because he made everything, he gets to define everything. That means he defines right and wrong, he defines good and evil. It means that he sets the standard. We have to understand that our bad news and good news in this conversation are both subject to that reality. It is a posture of recognition and submission. And unless we start there, against the backdrop of that reality, we're not going to get anywhere in this conversation. Because everything in our conversation is indeed a consequence of that reality. When we look at the doctrine of sin and salvation, one sounds bad, one sounds good, because one is bad and the other one is good news. So we'll go bad news first, because most people like to get that out of the way. And it's going to tee up our good news conversation. Bad news is this. You ready? Brace yourselves for it. Y'all are all messed up. Every last one of you. What a happy day. Your team's not playing in the Super Bowl. Pastor just told you you're all jacked up. We're all messed up, imperfect people. No, but none of us. None of us are perfect. In fact, and don't take my word for it. Don't take my word for it. The word in church you're going to hear is sinner, but again, don't just take my word for it. I want you to look at this verse here in Romans 3.23. You might be familiar with it. There's a guy writing a letter to a group of people in Rome. They're called Romans, just like you live in America. You're called an American. We understand that. And he writes this letter to the Romans. His name is Paul. He planted multiple churches and then kind of shepherded pastors who also led these churches, and he would write letters of instruction. And the Romans are not too different from Americans. In fact, if you know anything about world history, Rome, a few thousand years ago, is pretty similar to America today. Some stuff was going on. Now I'm not going to go into those things because, quite frankly, I don't have time. I'm not that kind of preacher, and I do not want those emails from you. But just take my word for it. There was some stuff going on. Corruption, craziness, all the stuff you have more in common with Romans from a few thousand years ago than you might think. So when we read this, understand it wasn't written to us, but it is written for us and directly impacts our lives. Paul says this in Romans 3.23. He says, For who? For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I looked that word up all, and it means what you think it means. All. All of y'all are messed up. Let's rephrase that. All of us are messed up. We're all in this together. Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Now that sounds like a churchy thing to say because sin, quite frankly, is a bit of a churchy word. Most of us don't use the word sin outside of a maybe a Christian conversation. Why is that? Because sin, let's admit it, let's just be real for a second. Sin is a bit of a churchy word, and I get that. In fact, oftentimes nowadays, sin is interpreted as a bigoted word. It's maybe maybe a word used and it is interpreted through a condescending tone. Maybe people think sin is a word that only arrogant, judgmental church people use. In fact, I have I have recently heard that that people will ascribe this word sin to a word that evangelicals use to manipulate people into getting the type of society they want to see. Because we think we define what sin is. And the reality is many people don't even know what sin is. You think, uh, some of us in the room are like, well, we figured sin was whatever my mom and dad told me I was doing wrong. That's sin. Or sin is whatever this TikTok video told me was sin. Or sin is, I'm not really sure. What is sin? Let's get some help and let's learn together what sin actually is. Let me introduce you to someone. One point if you can tell me who this is. One point if you can tell me who that is. Oh man, so close, so close. Two points if you can get both. That's Davy Crockett. Yes, Davy Crockett. Two points if you said Fess Parker, the actor who played Davy Crockett. Now, you're thinking to yourself, what on earth is going on at this church? Davy Crockett, sin, what's happening here? Davy Crockett, when I was coming up, was one of my favorite movies. In fact, do you guys remember when Disney Plus first came out? When Disney Plus first came out, it's not a Disney Plus plug, but this is just a picture into the Smith family. And my family's in here too, so I might get in trouble for this, but uh, whatever, man, there's forgiveness. So when Disney Plus, sorry, I don't know where y'all are, but I love you. Um when Disney Plus first came out, it was like your childhood library opened up of all these shows, and so you spent like two hours just scrolling through the shows, and we landed on Davy Crockett, and I just looked at everybody, I was like, this is the first thing we're watching. I don't care what we don't want to watch that. I don't care. You're watching it. We watched Davy Crockett. I made them watch Davy Crockett. Davy, Davy Crockett. Yes! Thank you. To those of you who sang, we just became best friends. Thank you so much. And in Davy Crockett, basically the story of Davy Crockett, he has a friend. His name was Georgie Russell, and he would spin these yarns about Davy Crockett. He would write these songs and tell these tall tales. Davy Crockett killed a bear when he was only three. Anybody have kids? You remember what your kids did at three? You were happy if they went to the potty regularly the right way. They're not killing a bear. Yeah, I mean, what a ridiculous story. These are the tall tales that Georgie Russell would tell about Davy Crockett. And in the first movie, Davy Crockett, he finds himself in a situation, there's this bully, and he confronts the bully, and this bully is stealing stuff from other people. And Davy Crockett says, Well, let's win it back and give it back to the people. And he challenges this bully to uh basically a target shooting conversation or competition. And so the bully says, Oh, I've got you beat. He doesn't know who Davy Crockett is. He's arrogant. He starts off, I'm gonna whoop you, here we go. So they set up these targets and they both shoot, and they both are pretty spot on. I mean, they're both just right down the middle. So then they say, All right, well, we got to do it again to see who wins. And so the bully shoots, and then Davy Crockett, he just kind of pulls his rifle up. He doesn't even breathe. He's just kind of like, mmm, bing, there you go. He looked like Steph Curry shooting the ball. You ever seen Steph Curry shoot the basketball fans? He was just kind of like, there you go. Okay. Nobody loves Steph Curry. Shame on y'all. He's great. There you go. So they get to this competition, and the bully, he shoots his second one, and it gets right off to the side of the first. So you can see, and they're so close together. I mean, he says, less than a finger. I mean, so close. They get up to Davy Crockett's and they see there's no other mark. And they're thinking, he missed the whole target board. And they're laughing at him. And the one guy says, he missed the whole thing. And Davy Crockett, just in his Fess Parker acting ways, just said, Well, let's go take a look. And they stroll on up there, and his friend's like, Davy, how did you miss the whole thing? And the guy doing it is like, hold on a minute. And he takes this kind of pin and he pokes it in. And what he sees is both musket balls are stacked right on top of each other. Meaning that Davy Crockett's second shot was so accurate it didn't even break the plane any other way. It went straight in over top of the other one, which is impossible. Now, why do I share that story? Davy Crockett's accuracy there, boom, one right on top of the other was perfection. Do you know what sin is? Here's what sin is in its original language, as it's defined, not by us, but by God. Sin is anything that misses the mark of God's perfection. So there you go. It's worse than you think. You thought, well, sin is what a pastor says it is. Sin is what this is. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sin is anything short of perfection as God defines it. Anything that misses the mark of holiness or righteousness or perfection, that is sin. It is indeed worse than you think. But we have to understand that reality. God is God, defines the rules, defines righteousness and perfection, thus understanding what sin actually is for us to understand how it affects us, because sin affects everybody. It has a universal impact on the world, and it has a personal impact on us. I mean, think about it. Think about the world without sin for just a moment. Try to just picture just this utopian feeling almost of sin no longer existing in the world. When you go on the internet, you don't see the stuff you see. Now think of sin being absent even in your own life. How healthy your relationships would be. Think about that for just a moment, but that's not the reality we operate in. Why? Because sin has affected everyone. And we have two people we can thank for that. Their names are Adam and Eve. If you're in the room and your name is Adam, I'm not talking about you. The very first two people who ever existed were given one rule and they broke it. One rule. Here's everything for you. It's a perfect life. Just don't do this one thing. And they're like, we should do this one thing. And then if you're like me, look, because if you have kids, you know, patience is a virtue. Grace is a good thing. So maybe you're looking at Adam and Eve and you're thinking, all right, look, they messed up, but look, everybody messes up. Take a mulligan, let's give them a do-over. It's fine. Let's give them a do-over. Let's see what happens. Maybe they were just, you know, they're figuring it out, right? This whole creation thing. It's new. They're figuring it out. So they have kids. And you know what happens? The first kid kills the second kid. You need to understand something about sin and its impact on the world and how people are just utterly hopeless without God. Person number three on planet Earth killed person number four on planet Earth. Humanity did not even make it to a whole hands count of people in existence before we've done messed up twice. That is how sin has impacted the world. As such, it was introduced into the world and it has plagued people ever since. And it also impacts us on a personal level. But on a universal level as far as sin and its impact on us, what that means is that God in his perfection now has to deal with our imperfections. In this same letter to the Romans in Romans 1.18, Paul again instructs through this letter, and he tells them, look, you guys need to understand this reality. Your ungodliness, your wickedness, our sin, as we would call that, does what? It incurs, read it, the wrath of God. Davy Crockett, sin, wrath of God, what kind of message is going on here? This means that sin has to be punished according to God's design. Because God is perfect, we are not. And as such, there's got to be payment for that. That is how sin affects everyone in the world. It separates us from God. Why? Because perfection demands that perfection be attained in order to be united with it. And so God, and the way he designed it, requires everything to be in perfect state in order to be in right standing with him. Well, there's where the bad news comes in. Because all of us are imperfect. And as such, sin has separated everybody because nobody's perfect. And since the introduction of sin into the world, we're separated from God. Unless, unless we can attain perfection, unless we can uh achieve or accomplish holiness or have it bestowed onto us, we'll be separated from God. That's how it affects everyone. And it affects you on a personal level. How many of us have felt the pain of sin, the regret of sin, the confusion of sin, the destruction of sin, because sin destroys. Some of you are newer to sunrise, you're like, but he's supposed to be the funny preacher. Yeah, this is not funny, is it? But it's honest. It is honest. Sin hurts us, it harms us, it hurts others. It keeps us from God's best, it leads to regrets, it builds destructive habits, and it makes us callous to the dangers. One of the devil's greatest strategies, I believe, is not often to just convince you to sin, but to convince you that sin is not a big deal. And so the more uh uh common it becomes for you to see it, the more comfortable you become seeing it, thus the more calloused you become when you experience it and you slip and slip and slip because you do not see the dangers of it anymore. But sin cares nothing for your future, it only teases your feelings because sin is destructive. So it has affected the world and it affects us as people because sin separates us from God. He is perfect and holy and requires perfection to be united with him. But we're messed up. So what do we do with that? We have to respond to it on some level. And most people respond to sin a number of different ways. One way that people respond to sin is they just ignore it. And the reason they do that is because uh they'll ignore God. They say, well, look, if I don't believe God is real, then sin isn't a thing, and I don't have to think about that. Or uh I don't like what God says in the Bible, so since I don't agree with that, I'm gonna go ahead and do my own thing and ignore sin completely because if it makes me happy, it can't be that bad. And so feelings, some of you got it. So feelings become your ultimate God. You don't even consider that the choices you make could dishonor the God who made all things and keep you from his best. Modern theologian Paul Tripp says it like this He says, Sin is a rejection of God's authority and his law, setting yourself up as your own authority and your own laws. If you do not believe in the tragedy and universal impact of sin, then you will think that humans have the power to fix humans. Listen to this, it's going to resonate with you. So you put your hope in education, in politics, in philosophy, in psychology, in medicine, and so on. All of these things are beneficial, but they have no power whatsoever to rescue us from the darkness, deceit, destruction, and death that sin has rained down on us all. If, however, you believe that the deepest problem for every human being is sin, and if you believe that no human being is able to escape it on our own, then you know that together we cannot save ourselves. If there is such a thing as sin living in the hearts of everyone, then our only hope is divine intervention. If we are truly lost on our own, then our only hope is the God who made all things would make a way. One of the ways we respond to sin is to completely ignore it because we are ignoring this reality we said from the beginning that God is God, He made all things. The second thing we do with sin typically, second thing a lot of people respond to sin this way is we ignore our own sin and focus on the sins of everybody else. And this is what we do sometimes. You ever read your Bible? And there's just this, just deeply poignant verse that is so challenging. You know, you shouldn't do this. And if you do this, this is what you're like, and you're reading it, and you're like, God, thank you so much for your word. I really hope so-and-so reads that today. Yeah. Your laughter tells me you've been there. You're like, Lord, give me a word today. Oh, yes, Lord, what a word. I hope fill in the blank in-law reads that today. And we end up treating the Bible like a window instead of a mirror. Why? We're afraid to look in the mirror at our own sin. It is safer to look at the sins of others than to deal with our own. Because the more we look at the sins of others, the more it distracts us from our own issues. Well, I don't want to deal with my struggles, so let me just pay attention to the struggles of others so I don't have to deal with them. And here's what happens: this causes us to slip deeper into our own sins. Because we've put them in the corner and we've not acknowledged them, but we still struggle with them, but we don't look at them because we're looking at everybody else's sins. And before you know it, we accidentally drift into becoming judgmental of others. Oh, well, at least I don't sin like they do. One of the most unattractive things about a quote Christian is when we judge people for sinning differently than we do. We are all beggars. It is not to say we don't hold each other accountable. If you are in the family of God, if you claim to be a Christian, you should be held accountable, and brothers and sisters in Christ should hold you accountable out of love in grace. But the moment we start ignoring our own sin because we're so focused on the sins of others, we've missed the dangers of our own sin and how destructive they can be. Don't let that happen. It's a slippery slope. Don't go there. The other way that people respond to sin is to say, Great, I'm type A. I'm gonna fix this on my own. Anyone like that? Nope, I'm gonna fix it on my own. You're like, mm, yeah. The type A's actually did raise their hands. They're like, yeah, yeah, that's me. I love it. I love it. Why do we do that? We look at it and we say, look, all right, that's messed up. Okay, God, I'll show you. I'll earn it. And what do we do? We develop this mantra in life. If I am a good person, God's going to be good with me. We hear that a lot. You hear interviews with people, but they're a good person. Oh, they're a good person. He's like, no, no, no. But I do good things. I'm the right, I'm a right, I'm a right type of person here. As long as I do good enough, God and I, we're good. We say that. And you know what we're doing? We are trying to earn God's approval. We're trying to earn God's love. That brings us to a place of self-reliance. Here's the issue with that. It's where it's dangerous. You're no match for sin. We need God's grace and truth. Because if we try to figure out good on our own, we're going to trip over ourselves every time. Plus, think about this. If your own goodness can earn God's love and make you feel good enough, what happens when you mess up? When you try to earn it on your own and overcompensate and live in such a way that says, well, if I do all of the right things, God will be good with me, two things happen. You can become accidentally arrogant, and so you walk around and you do judge other people for sinning differently than you because you think, well, man, I'm batting a thousand this month, so I'm good. But then the second thing that can happen is once you mess up, if you take credit for the wins, you'll take credit for the losses. And when you fail, you'll start to define yourself as a failure. Thus, you'll start to see yourself through the lens of your sin, not the way God sees you, a person lost without Him, in need of His love and His grace. There's all sorts of ways we can respond to sin. What's the best way to respond to sin? The best way to respond to sin is to understand there's good news and there's bad news. Bad news, sin is real. It separates us from God. The best way to respond to sin is to hear the good news. I'll say it like this: we can't achieve it, but we can receive it. And here's the good news. You're messed up. We've established that. You cannot make your way to God on your own. But God made a way to you. That's the good news. The word you hear in church is salvation. Salvation is a word that means rescue or deliverance. Rescue from what? Rescue from eternal separation with God. If God defines the rules and says that you got to be perfect to be with me, and you are an eternally existent being, you're not a body with a soul, you're a soul with a body. This is a temporary deal. I looked it up online. Mortality rate still at 100%. Everybody in this room, everybody watching online, has an expiration date. And it's not the kind of expiration date like milk where you smell it and it's past and it's still good. No, no, no. When you expire, you expire. Some of you laughed because there's two types of people in every marriage: one who believes in expiration dates and a risk taker. Because God defines the rules, he says what? He says, sin has to be punished. There's got to be payment for this. And you gotta be perfect, and you're not perfect. So here's what you've earned as a result: separation from God. That's actually what humanity earned with its sin. In Romans 6.23, in this same letter, Paul says this. He says, For the wages of sin is death. Death meaning eternal separation from God. What is a wage? You go earn a wage, you earn it. It's a payment that you earn. For what you've earned as a result of sin is death, eternal separation from God. Here is the good news against the backdrop of that reality. But the free gift of God is what? Eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. Perhaps the most powerfully encouraging words in the entirety of the Bible. But it sits against this backdrop that God gave people a law to follow in his perfection. You've heard it in the Old Testament, there is a law. In fact, a lot of people that will argue against Christianity will say, Well, God is mean. He put all these laws together and he knew that nobody could fulfill them. Well, of course. Well, of course. God provided this law for mankind and he said, look, if you can check all these boxes, you'll be perfect. But as we've already established, no one is. And so you think to yourself, well, does that make God mean or unkind? Why did he create law? Did he do it to just lord it over people to show off because he didn't love people and he loved watching us just mess up and figure it out? No. Consider this. Good news and bad news are against the backdrop of reality. How would we ever know, recognize, or appreciate the power, the reach, and the goodness of God's love if we could earn it on our own? We would never see it for what it is. This life-changing, history-altering, God-defined grace through salvation, God's love on display. God did not give people the perfect set of standards to live by because he wanted to see us always fall short. He wanted to show us that without his love, we cannot do it on our own. So that we would appreciate, as our soul yearns to appreciate, the goodness, love, grace, and mercy of God. In his book, Theology for Today, Dr. Elmer Towns writes this He says, The law is simply an expression of the nature of God in the form of moral dictates of God's holiness and moral perfections. Man's best efforts to live according to this standard are futile. That's why we need deliverance. That's why we need the rescue. Because we can't rescue ourselves. It's important to understand. Let's do a little bit of history here. In the Old Testament of your Bible, in Leviticus, you're going to see some of these laws, and here's what we would see: sin, anything that misses the mark of God's holiness, sin required payment. You're going to hear the word sacrifice used in the Old Testament of your Bible. When sacrifices were offered in the Old Testament, in this historical narrative that we have, sacrifices for sin required blood. The reason for that is the belief is that life is in the blood. That's why you would hear animals would be sacrificed because they believed life was in the blood. In fact, in Leviticus 17, it says this the life of a creature is in the blood. And I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar. Atonement, big Bible word, it means payment. Why is this important? Because God takes sin seriously. Thus, life and blood were required to atone, to pay for the sins that people would commit. And here's the thing: they had to keep doing it over and over and over again. Why? Because people could never measure up to the perfect standard of holiness that God requires. God set the standard, and that standard is holiness. And by his standard, because he is God, he says that holiness requires that sin be punished. Holiness demands that sin be punished. But mercy compels that the sinner be loved. And because God is just and merciful, he made a way to accomplish both the demands of holiness and the ministry of mercy. That way is Jesus. Salvation, rescue, by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ. God doesn't condone our sin, nor does he compromise his standard. He does not ignore our rebellion, nor does he relax his demands. Jesus satisfied the demands of holiness as punishment for sin was required. And Jesus put God's love on display because God knows we could not pay the price for our sin on our own, and we could not attain the holy perfection that He requires. So Jesus paid that price to make a way for us to be in relationship with God. It is through salvation God's holiness is honored, our sin is punished, we are redeemed. God is God, God is good, and we are saved. That is the good news. So how do we respond to that? How do we respond to that as people? We respond with reverence and appreciation. May we never count the cross a common thing in our lives. We respond with gladness, with sorrow, as we grieve the impact of our own sin. We respond with joy, trusting God in all seasons. If we trust Him with the eternity of our soul, we should trust Him with the entirety of our life. And we respond with gratitude as it generates this posture of submission and following the Jesus way. Why should we respond this way? Because God gave his only Son to accomplish this good news. Salvation doesn't cost us anything. Because we can't pay for it on our own. That's why we need the rescue. That's why we need Jesus. But it costs God everything. Jesus gave everything for us to know God, for us to recognize and receive his love, his grace, his mercy, while simultaneously appreciating his holiness. Imagine a world that recognizes the lengths of God's love. How different that world would look. That's how we should respond. How should we respond as a church to this good news? I'll tell you it's simply this: we mean business. This is not an arbitrary thing. This is not something we do for fun because Sunday happens every Sunday. We mean business. What is our mission? If you are not new, say it with me. Our mission is helping people know and follow Jesus. Why? We operate from that reality. God is God, He is perfect. We are not, and we need a rescue if we want to be in right standing and have relationship with Him for the eternity of our soul's existence. We need Jesus. So as a church, we mean business. We help people know and follow Jesus. That's why we bought that giant horse trough. Because we believe that Jesus changes everything. He is the rescue God provided. So how do we respond to this on a personal level? It's a two-phased approach. It's a two-phase process, really, and how we respond to this good news, bad news situation of sin and salvation. The first is this we accept salvation by grace, through faith in Jesus, that he is God's way to us and the only way to God. Sin requires payment, and Jesus footed the bill. He's perfect, we're not. So he could afford it as he's the only one able to pay it. And as God's Son, he's the only one powerful enough to accomplish it. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're in that place where God has led you to a readiness to receive salvation and to put your faith in Jesus having paid the price. The second phase of that process is that we respond to salvation by living in a way that honors God, by living in a way that takes sin seriously and takes his love seriously, to follow the Jesus way and to submit to the teachings of Jesus, to build our lives on God's word and pursue the abundant, meaningful life we are called to as Christians. So here's my invitation to you. If you're in the first phase of this response and you are ready to accept salvation by grace through faith in Jesus, repentance, meaning, big word for turning away from your old self, turning away from sin, and pursuing a God-honoring, faith-filled life. If that is you, then I would invite you to do just that to receive that gift. Even in this moment, right now, between you and God, make that decision. In that same letter that Paul wrote to the Romans a few thousand years ago, he said, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Do just that right where you are, between you and God. But don't keep it to yourself. We are here for you, and we are here with you. Find somebody in the lobby. As someone in between services found me after first service to say, You said find you in the lobby. I found you in the lobby. I said, You're following Jesus. Yep. Praise the Lord. Maybe that's you. Find somebody in the lobby. Scan that QR code. Let us know. We want to walk alongside of you. Find somebody to pray with you. Don't keep it to yourself. Take that next step. Get baptized. It's ready. Jump into what God is doing. Find community. If that is where you are in your journey with Jesus and you are ready to respond to the gospel, do it now. And this place and this people are here for you, week after week. We want to grow in our faith together. If you're in phase two, then here's what I want to encourage you with live a life that pleases God. I'm going to say something, it's going to be very challenging, but also loving at the same time. So I hope you receive it in both ways. You cannot pursue sin and pursue Jesus at the same time. You will either submit to the leading of sin in your life or you will submit to the leading of Jesus in your life. You're going to have to pick. That doesn't mean you're not going to struggle. Don't hear what I'm not saying. You still struggle with stuff. That doesn't mean you're submitting to the leading of it. But if you are ignoring your sin and submitting to its leading in your life and chasing it down, then you are not chasing the way of Jesus. But you will struggle, and struggle is real. And here's the good news look to your left, look to your right, look behind you, look in front of you. Bunch of beggars. Bunch of beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. We're all messed up in perfect people. That's why we need each other to walk together and grow in our faith together. But you're going to have to get real about some stuff. We are all in need of grace and truth. We all happen to be on this earth at the same time right now, and as a church, we are blessed to walk this journey of life with others. So here's the challenge and the encouragement to get practical with our conversation. If you are in this phase of the response to the good news of salvation, don't hide your sin. Don't hide your sin. Find someone you love and trust, someone who loves you and confess your sins to them for accountability and support. Set up boundaries in your life to help you eliminate certain distractions that tempt you to sin. Put your energy into new things, things that lift your spirit because they honor God. Real deal talk here. Put in the work and find people. Drop the shame, drop the pride, put the selfishness away. Don't give it a grip on your life because everybody within earshot of my voice, in person and online, is in need of the grace of God. Do not let shame and fear keep you from victory over sin in your life because you are afraid to find someone who loves God and loves you and wants to help you walk in that victory. If you're in that phase, look to what Jesus teaches and do something with it. Step by step, day by day. Davy Crockett, sin, salvation, baptisms, what a day. All against the backdrop of this reality. There is a God. He is real, he is holy, he is perfect. He made mankind. And in order for him to communicate and display how powerful his love is, he, in his divine wisdom outside of our own, allowed sin to be introduced into the world, thus separating us from God and solidifying this reality that perfection demands that perfection be attained in order to be united with it. And so God, in his love and infinite wisdom and his goodness and his mercy and his justice, said, since he requires perfection and we couldn't get there on our own, he'll make a way to us. Praise God for the bad news, good news situation of sin and salvation. That though you may be lost, God made a way to find you. And though you may have been lost, God made a way, so you are found. By grace, through faith, Jesus changing everything. Dan's gonna come back up, we'll sing and celebrate in baptism. And as we do that, if you would allow me to pray over you before we continue our time together. God, thank you again for your word. Thank you for making a way. Thank you for loving us so much that you would put that love on display. God, that we would trust your design. God, for those who have made that decision even this weekend to put their faith in you, thank you for the work you're doing in their lives. For those going public with their faith who have already made that decision, thank you for the work in their lives. For those of us who are walking alongside each other, God, continue to work in our lives, that we would take sin seriously, but that we would take your love seriously and that we would respond to it. That maybe for some of us we'd stop trying to earn your love and we'd start responding to your love. God, I pray that we have a posture of recognition and submission, a posture of gratitude. Because you made a way. Thank you for your love and mercy and grace. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Lead us as we follow you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 41:52

Thank you so much for joining us today at Sunrise Church. We hope this message encouraged you and blessed you. If one of the ways that you choose to worship with us here at Sunrise is by giving online. There's a link right here that you can follow taking that name. Everything that you donate helps me donate.