SPEAKER_00: This podcast is the Ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information in our church, please visit GrahamProquay.org.
SPEAKER_00: I want to talk to you today about the insufficiency of being human.
SPEAKER_00: And what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, verse 1 is this.
SPEAKER_00: He says, But our brothers could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ, I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.
SPEAKER_00: And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: For while there's jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human a human way?
SPEAKER_00: For when one says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human?
SPEAKER_00: I want to begin with a statement this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And my statement is this is that sometimes I say things that nobody in the room but me understands.
SPEAKER_00: And y'all are like, Every Sunday, dude, are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: That's what we do every Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: We shave our legs and come and listen to you blather on, and we don't have a clue.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it dawned on me because about six weeks ago or something like that, a month ago, because I say this a lot around here to the staff, and they'll tell me something, and I go, Well, you can't help it.
SPEAKER_00: You're just a human.
SPEAKER_00: And they look at me, and one day one of them finally said back to me, Well, so are you, and I said, No, I'm not.
SPEAKER_00: And they were like, That explains a lot right there.
SPEAKER_00: Uh but but what I was trying to say, and I thought I had told them before, because we have a staff devotional on Tuesday mornings and staff meeting, I thought I talked about this, and apparently I had, I hadn't.
SPEAKER_00: And they had all been talking about me behind my back about what do you think he means when he says that they're just human, they can't help it, or they go, hey, I saw.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, they can't help it, they're just human.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying that's okay because, and I was like, I've never explained this to them.
SPEAKER_00: So I in Savaging, I just said, here's where that comes from.
SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 3.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, and don't think church is in building.
SPEAKER_00: He's writing to people, and he's saying, Hey, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_00: You're you're doing this and you're saying this and you're acting this way.
SPEAKER_00: And aren't you being just merely human?
SPEAKER_00: Which, by the way, was the greatest insult you could bestow upon a Christian in the biblical times.
SPEAKER_00: And for some reason, we've kind of let that fall to the wayside.
SPEAKER_00: And what back then was the greatest insult is now just like a natural explanation for our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And so on the day that everyone makes their New Year's resolutions and you kind of figure out what I'm gonna do and you redouble your efforts to do again this year what you were unable to do last year or what you did for 10 days or two months or whatever, and then kind of petered out and just quit.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to rescue you from that and just say, if you make one resolution this year, make it this.
SPEAKER_00: Resolve to not be merely human this year.
SPEAKER_00: Just make it your thing because I hear it all the time.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm just a human, God knows all, and God knows what I can take, and that's just what I can do.
SPEAKER_00: Well, my secretary came on to me.
SPEAKER_00: What was I to do?
SPEAKER_00: I'm just a red-blooded American man, I'm just a human being.
SPEAKER_00: No, you're not.
SPEAKER_00: If you profess to know God, if you profess to be a Christian, to be a Christ follower, to be a person, to say that is to say I'm a Christian, is to say that the Spirit of God lives inside of you.
SPEAKER_00: And if God, men and women, don't miss this.
SPEAKER_00: If God lives inside of you, then for the rest of your life, you can no longer say, I'm just a human.
SPEAKER_00: That excuse is taken off the list of responses for why you screwed your life up or why you sit in front of your TV consistently and drink yourself into a wine-induced stupor before you go to bed.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just human.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I do.
SPEAKER_00: Not okay.
SPEAKER_00: Not sufficient is probably a better word.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, hey, you're doing this.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you acting like mere human beings?
SPEAKER_00: And what he's trying to infer and say to these people is that you're so much more.
SPEAKER_00: Because to say I'm just a human is to reduce Christianity down to nothing more than moralistic therapeutic deism.
SPEAKER_00: Deism being the thought, moralistic basically, let me make people think that I'm really a good person.
SPEAKER_00: Therapeutic, it's all about me feeling good.
SPEAKER_00: Deism, well, deism is the belief that God created the world and he got it spinning and he put it in orbit and like a balloon full of helium, it just floated off, and he's not really involved with it or concerned about it and can't do anything about it.
SPEAKER_00: He just watches from a distance as it all kinds of come unhinged and comes apart at the seams.
SPEAKER_00: And and deism is more practical, I mean, more prevalent than we realize, because there's a lot of people that think God has nothing to do with the day-to-day workings of the world.
SPEAKER_00: You realize that, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just this just this weekend I had a conversation with a friend of mine who said, you know, I don't think God has any control over the rain and all this stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, whoa, what?
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's not even New Year's Eve, and you're talking like a drunk person.
SPEAKER_00: But they weren't.
SPEAKER_00: They were just they believed that.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, our world is full of people that believe that.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the reward for deism.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the payback for believing that.
SPEAKER_00: Because God's not really involved in the affairs of this world.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to live connected to God.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's disconnected from you.
SPEAKER_00: See how easy the payoff, how subtle that is, and yet how profound it is.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, God's not really concerned.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have to be concerned.
SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to talk to you.
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't kidding.
SPEAKER_00: That's all you get on the insufficiency of being human.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to say any other way.
SPEAKER_00: The staff is so sick of me saying they're just human.
SPEAKER_00: They can't help it.
SPEAKER_00: They look at me and go, that's so arrogant.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's so biblical.
SPEAKER_00: Because unless you embrace this year, that if you are a Christian, if you're here today and you're visiting, you're like, I don't know about all this, I'm just I'm just checking it out, then you're off the hook.
SPEAKER_00: The requirements of the Bible do not apply to you.
SPEAKER_00: But for me, as someone that says, I'm in a relationship with God, there was a point in my life where I was brought by the Spirit of God to an understanding that I'm sinful and separated from God, and only God can make me right with God.
SPEAKER_00: I am so screwed up that Jesus had to die for me.
SPEAKER_00: And the good news of the gospel is that I'm so loved by God, Jesus was glad to die for me.
SPEAKER_00: He was glad.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't make him, I didn't back him into a corner, I didn't, I wasn't moralistic, I wasn't good enough to deserve that.
SPEAKER_00: I don't take a shower in order to take a bath.
SPEAKER_00: Try that on your kids.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but my kids, every night it surprises them they have to take a shower or a bath and brush their teeth.
SPEAKER_00: And so they just fall on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's time to take a bath.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, goodness! Like, that's what y'all did today.
SPEAKER_00: You thought of some wicked way to punish us.
SPEAKER_00: It's called a shower.
SPEAKER_00: Like, well, you smell like a squirrel.
SPEAKER_00: Go get in the shower, okay?
SPEAKER_00: But it never ceases to, or brush your teeth.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like they've been shot with a rifle.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, brush our teeth.
SPEAKER_00: Just look at my wife and go, is this run in your family?
SPEAKER_00: Because it didn't run in ours, okay?
SPEAKER_00: This had to come from.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul says, hey, listen, it it's it's not okay.
SPEAKER_00: You have the Spirit of God inside of you, and so to cop out and go, I'm just a human is no longer an option.
SPEAKER_00: So, because that's true, then how do we appropriate?
SPEAKER_00: Because here's the practical thing about God.
SPEAKER_00: God uses means to achieve his ends.
SPEAKER_00: And so I want to, I really, that's what I want to talk about today, because that's the that's the that that's the sermon.
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand.
SPEAKER_00: Being merely human is not even an option.
SPEAKER_00: Let's don't waste time thinking about it.
SPEAKER_00: Well, okay, Neil, but but no, no, no longer an option.
SPEAKER_00: That means, students, that you can't think the way your friends think about relationships, you can't think the way they think about clothes or food or their body or sex or grass or pizza or cologne or none of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: You have just you your mind is so reshaped and altered by the truth of the gospel that it's just you're not merely human.
SPEAKER_00: And the beauty is that you and I stop being merely human.
SPEAKER_00: It reminds everybody else around us that there's more.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize there was more until I went to work for James Sewell.
SPEAKER_00: He's just a guy I went to work for.
SPEAKER_00: You've heard me talk about it before, and I just remember thinking, you are either crazy, or my life is really, really, really missing something.
SPEAKER_00: And it was the latter.
SPEAKER_00: And every time I was around him, I was reminded of that.
SPEAKER_00: And I was drawn to that.
SPEAKER_00: He was like a clown on fire, and I remember just thinking, man, there's something about that old guy right there that's jacked up.
SPEAKER_00: He was 52 years old.
SPEAKER_00: And he sang.
SPEAKER_00: Like in church.
SPEAKER_00: I'd never seen men sing in church.
SPEAKER_00: Except I went to this crazy church when I was a kid, but they were like, you know, old people and stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And I think he just reminded me early on that it's just not okay, it's not enough just to be human.
SPEAKER_00: And so, because God uses means to accomplish his ends, I want to just briefly tell you how do you how do you get there?
SPEAKER_00: How do you practically escape being merely human?
SPEAKER_00: Number one, go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 1, verse 6.
SPEAKER_00: What do I mean in the beginning?
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean.
SPEAKER_00: Philippians chapter 1, verse 6, the Bible says this, it'll come on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I'm sure of this.
SPEAKER_00: Now you've got to be sure of this.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to get this in the marrow of your bones, not in your head, but in the marrow of your bones.
SPEAKER_00: Be sure of this.
SPEAKER_00: That he who began a good work in you.
SPEAKER_00: Now just stop right there.
SPEAKER_00: He who began a good work in you.
SPEAKER_00: That he is not me.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't begin a good work in me.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't begin a good work in you.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what sustains me.
SPEAKER_00: I have never gotten over the reality and the understanding that my being a Christian is not my idea.
SPEAKER_00: It's God's idea.
SPEAKER_00: If you believe the Bible, He began a good work in you, will bring it to completion at the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's a reference to the end of the world, which is according to the Mayans, is happening this year, so you better get your act together.
SPEAKER_00: You got about 11 months, and then he's gonna lay the wood to you.
SPEAKER_00: It's he who began a good work in you.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean go back to the beginning?
SPEAKER_00: I go back to the beginning, and it it it's it's this boundless well that I drink from.
SPEAKER_00: It's this effusive, overflowing, glorious, thirst-slaking fountain that you just are drenched in.
SPEAKER_00: It's like screwing the lid off of.
SPEAKER_00: I remember when I was growing up, some thug in my neighborhood where I lived, kind of over in the hood, got the tool that you unscrew a fire hydrant with.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember somebody came outside and said, they've got the fire hydrant open.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, I'd never seen that.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, that water comes out of that bad boy.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, they screw that thing off, it was shooting from here to that wall.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there were kids lining up, taking their shirt off, and then trying to drink it.
SPEAKER_00: We all went to school the next day.
SPEAKER_00: Our mouths were misshapen.
SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh yeah, you drink out of fire hydrant.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's the beauty of just embracing this simple truth that my being a Christian is God's idea.
SPEAKER_00: He began this good work in me.
SPEAKER_00: And to not believe that, it's not like drinking out of a fire hydrant.
SPEAKER_00: It's like standing in front of a Coke machine that just took your money and you're beating on the machine, trying to get it do what it's supposed to do.
SPEAKER_00: That is man-centered theology.
SPEAKER_00: You've been ripped off, and nobody knows it more than you.
SPEAKER_00: So, how do I, how do I do this?
SPEAKER_00: I go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: There's also a danger here in going back to the beginning because you can go back to the beginning and there's nothing as big as God to point at.
SPEAKER_00: There's no moment.
SPEAKER_00: Begin this year by asking yourself this question.
SPEAKER_00: Do you go back and can you point at a place and a time where your life went from being merely human to being what the Bible says it could be?
SPEAKER_00: To being what Jesus said in John 10 and 10.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I come so you can have life and have it to the fullest, to have it more abundantly.
SPEAKER_00: When did life become more abundant for you?
SPEAKER_00: And let me just say this, and please hear this.
SPEAKER_00: If you're here today and there's nowhere you can point on, point at along the timeline of your life and say, it was right there that God intersected my life, and I've never been the same.
SPEAKER_00: If you look back and you go, I go back to the beginning, it's like, well, I was born, I lived here, I did this, I did that, I did that, that wasn't good.
SPEAKER_00: Back up, start over, do this.
SPEAKER_00: But there's no period and place you can say, that's where it started for me.
SPEAKER_00: And I've not been the same ever since.
SPEAKER_00: That I'm gonna tell you, I'm not gonna suggest you, I'm gonna tell you, you don't have a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: And the danger is that the church has gotten so good at giving you moralistic, therapeutic, self-help advice that you can go to the church and be active every Sunday and never know God.
SPEAKER_00: Because the church is so creative these days.
SPEAKER_00: And oh, we got children's ministry.
SPEAKER_00: You drop your kid off on a water slide and they shoot out, and SpongeBob is our Sunday school teacher.
SPEAKER_00: And they come out with cotton candy and a popcorn ball and a craft that they made, and they're like, I want to come back next week.
SPEAKER_00: And you never stop and ask yourself, what are we coming back to?
SPEAKER_00: And what are we coming back for?
SPEAKER_00: And so when I said go back to the beginning, I just I'm I'm just acknowledging there's some danger in there because some of you, if you were honest, you go back and there's nowhere along the line where you can point to and say, That's where it happened for me.
SPEAKER_00: Not this is where I started going to church because my wife just rode me and said we're gonna go to church.
SPEAKER_00: But this is where it began for me.
SPEAKER_00: And if it's never happened for you, why don't you come up after the service and talk to one of us?
SPEAKER_00: And you today that can happen for you.
SPEAKER_00: That's the beauty of it.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing, how do you how do you how do you escape?
SPEAKER_00: You go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, you remember the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You remember the gospel, you say, Well, that's that's what do you mean the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: Gospel just means the good news.
SPEAKER_00: The good news.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says it like this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
SPEAKER_00: He says now in verse 1 and 2, he said, I would remind you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't miss that.
SPEAKER_00: I would remind you.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because we forget, we just move past it, we outgrow it.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, I got that, you know, I made the hundred on the Jesus pop quiz.
SPEAKER_00: I know all the answers.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel is not answers, it's intimacy.
SPEAKER_00: It's living closely connected in a daily, practical, real way with the God of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: It affects the way you think, what you watch on TV, what you look at on the internet, how you spend your money, the way you eat, the way you exercise, everything having to do with anything.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel that I preach to you, which you received, and which you stand, and by which you are being saved.
SPEAKER_00: If you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, I what what what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: Let me just tell you three things about the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: When I say remember the gospel, the first thing about the gospel is the gospel is cosmic.
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to talk much about this because tomorrow I'm uh I'm talking about gospel centrality at a school here in town.
SPEAKER_00: Uh for six hours.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for those people.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna get it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh because I've just been just just just I'm just like blah.
SPEAKER_00: You say, what is gospel centrality?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna begin by telling them Jesus tells the story of these two builders.
SPEAKER_00: One of them said, Hey, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna just do the quick thing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna build my house on the sand.
SPEAKER_00: And the other one, Jesus said, He dug down past the levels of sand till he found the rock and he built his life upon that.
SPEAKER_00: Gospel centrality, men and women, is a big religious sound and phrase, but basically, it's you and I building our lives on the most sure thing we could ever know in this world.
SPEAKER_00: It is not the stock market, it's not your relationships, it's not your bank account.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, despite all the good and bad news, the stock market was up 6% this year.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, what's the stock market?
SPEAKER_00: That's my question.
SPEAKER_00: There's a stock market?
SPEAKER_00: You say, well, what do you what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: See, the gospel is cosmic.
SPEAKER_00: What I basically mean is the gospel is bigger than we've been told.
SPEAKER_00: Don't think cosmic as in space cowboy.
SPEAKER_00: Think the gospel, see, here's what we've been told.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel, the good news is that God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life, but you're sinful and separated from God, and Jesus came to bridge the gap.
SPEAKER_00: And that's true, but that's not the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel doesn't start and end with me.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel really, if you when I say it's cosmic, it's big, it goes all the way back to Genesis 1.1.
SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, Well, how is that the gospel?
SPEAKER_00: I don't get that.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just, are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean it's cosmic?
SPEAKER_00: Let me ask this question.
SPEAKER_00: How many of you this year, looking back last night before you passed out or you chose to go to bed or whatever, looking back over this past year, how many of you came through things looking back that if you would have known last year on January the 1st, you'd have thought, there's no way I can get through that?
SPEAKER_00: Just see your hand.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, hey, I went through something this year, and now there's no way.
SPEAKER_00: Let's take it up real high if you would.
SPEAKER_00: Just put your hands down.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, yeah, there's no way.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if God would have told me on January 1st of 2011, by the way, guess what this year holds?
SPEAKER_00: You'd have been like, oh.
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, you didn't.
SPEAKER_00: No, that's for my neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: I got his mail again, God.
SPEAKER_00: Let me take this over to him.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: This is what I mean when I say the gospel is cosmic.
SPEAKER_00: It's so big that in the beginning, see, that which way back that was void and formless and dark, it was unknown to you.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: The moment that the doctor said, by the way, the test comes back, has come back, and it's positive.
SPEAKER_00: We need to get another test to confirm, and then we got a plan of action.
SPEAKER_00: Guess what?
SPEAKER_00: All that was void and formless and dark, here's the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why what I mean when I say it's cosmic, it's big.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God was hovering over that.
SPEAKER_00: Long before you got there.
SPEAKER_00: God had a plan for it.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't have an idea, He had a sovereign plan for effortlessly claiming his due glory in that.
SPEAKER_00: Of just saying, Yea me.
SPEAKER_00: Yea me.
SPEAKER_00: You're gonna sing songs in church after this that are gonna come alive and explode off of your tongue because the way I'm gonna be faithful in the midst of this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna all of a sudden be faithful.
SPEAKER_00: I've never been faithless.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I mean when I say the gospel is cosmic.
SPEAKER_00: Second thing about the gospel, the gospel alone has the power to save.
SPEAKER_00: Look at look at me.
SPEAKER_00: I don't preach long if you're a viscer, so you gotta listen fast.
SPEAKER_00: Be an invitation for you, Ronnie, right after the service, right over here.
SPEAKER_00: You and Wade Burgess are laughing.
SPEAKER_00: I can feel you right now.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: The gospel alone has the power to save.
SPEAKER_00: If you and I are gonna escape being mere human, ask yourself, where am I gonna find the power to do that?
SPEAKER_00: Because it's all you've ever known.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, there's a lot of company in humanity.
SPEAKER_00: It's it's just most people you meet are just kind of like, oh, it's just who I am.
SPEAKER_00: It's just there's a lot of company, and so you gotta like escape the gravitational pull of mediocrity.
SPEAKER_00: And your only hope and my only hope is the power that is ours in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Paul said in Romans 1.16, I'm not ashamed of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It is the power of God unto salvation for anyone who believes.
SPEAKER_00: To the Jew first and then to the Gentile, to the religious and to the non-religious, to the Republican, to the Democrat, to the rich, to the poor.
SPEAKER_00: Everybody across all spectrums, the gospel has power in it to change that person's life.
SPEAKER_00: Third thing about the gospel, because I don't want you to just hear, remember the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, check, got that number two.
SPEAKER_00: What's next?
SPEAKER_00: Third thing about the gospel, the gospel most glorifies God.
SPEAKER_00: You say, Well, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: Remember at Christmas, and there's so much to say at Christmas, and we just kind of tune out.
SPEAKER_00: We want it to be sentimental, and hey, we know the drill.
SPEAKER_00: No, you don't.
SPEAKER_00: When the angel came and said, Glory to God, the first thing the heavenly host announces about baby Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace to men on whom his favor rests.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that?
SPEAKER_00: Have you heard that before?
SPEAKER_00: Like every Christmas, we preachers roll that out, do we not?
SPEAKER_00: You're like, let me guess, glory to God in the highest.
SPEAKER_00: We've heard it.
SPEAKER_00: Shut up.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why preachers say that.
SPEAKER_00: Because you'll never find peace in a gospel that doesn't give God all the glory.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, some of us are ruthlessly committed to that.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: You see, the gospel most glorifies God, and if We're honest, we have to say that we hate that part.
SPEAKER_00: Because the gospel reminds us that we are unable, deficient, sinful.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing we can take credit for.
SPEAKER_00: We have no inherent means of rescue.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, we have to admit that only God can save us.
SPEAKER_00: And here's why, here's where bad theology comes in.
SPEAKER_00: Pride is the source of all bad theology.
SPEAKER_00: Because pride says, no, wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: I had something to do with that.
SPEAKER_00: Well, let me just ask you: what do you point to in yourself that made God choose you?
SPEAKER_00: What is it that God looked down and said, that would be a good investment of my love?
SPEAKER_00: But human pride, it's not human nature.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe human nature, but it's just pride that kind of says, now wait a minute.
SPEAKER_00: If you'll come up to me on a consistent basis in this church and say, Well, I wish you wouldn't say all that stuff about God did it all, we didn't do anything, and I just ask a question, and I'm not trying to, I'm just trying to be their pastor and say, Well, tell me what did you do that made this possible?
SPEAKER_00: Because if you did something, then you've got something to claim and take credit for.
SPEAKER_00: And God has to share his glory with you.
SPEAKER_00: See, here's the pride-swallowing, ego-destroying power of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing for you to take credit for.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the beauty of that.
SPEAKER_00: Any of you screwed up, wicked, selfish people who are just like me by nature can be transformed by the power of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to deserve it.
SPEAKER_00: You can be hung over right now, and no doubt some of you are.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm so glad you're here.
SPEAKER_00: That's how much I believe the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's not for people who have their act together, it's for people who can't get their act together.
SPEAKER_00: The problem in the American church is it's full of smug, self-righteous people who don't need it.
SPEAKER_00: That's because they've forgotten the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever forget, or else you're gonna outgrow the good news.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly and finally, how do we how do we escape being human?
SPEAKER_00: Give us something practical.
SPEAKER_00: Here's something practical.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly and finally, you have to embrace this that God is for me.
SPEAKER_00: That God is for me.
SPEAKER_00: You say, well, oh, I I think I believed that.
SPEAKER_00: No, you don't.
SPEAKER_00: No, you do not.
SPEAKER_00: If you really believed that God was for you, you would do crazy things like observe a Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: You would take a day.
SPEAKER_00: Do you hear how wacko that just sounded?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are like, he's Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: I thought this was a Baptist church.
SPEAKER_00: Pinch the baby, we're leaving.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_00: If you and I really believed that God is for you, you would take at least one day out of your week and do nothing.
SPEAKER_00: You just rest and bask in the fact that God is for me.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna establish my business, my salvation, as Psalm 62 says, my salvation and my honor depends on God.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, that just, oh, that some of us hear that and you're like, well, that's just laziness.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_00: We mean God is for me.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 8, verse 31.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, What then shall we say to these things if God is for us?
SPEAKER_00: By the way, when he says if in the Greek it's really sense.
SPEAKER_00: He's not asking a question like, well, on the off chance that God might be for you, he's for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do you realize that?
SPEAKER_00: People say to me all the time, Boy, I wish I had your personality.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need my personality, you need my understanding.
SPEAKER_00: I don't understand a lot, but I understand this: that he's for me.
SPEAKER_00: That he likes me.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't just love me because the Bible says he does.
SPEAKER_00: He likes me because he set his affection upon me and he chose me, and I'm accepted by him.
SPEAKER_00: He is for me.
SPEAKER_00: My life is not a representation of what I'm capable of.
SPEAKER_00: My life is a reflection of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not pressure, that's sonship.
SPEAKER_00: He says, What shall we say to these things?
SPEAKER_00: If God is for us, who can be against us?
SPEAKER_00: And then he gives us list.
SPEAKER_00: He who did not spare his own son.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you need a reminder that God is for you, look to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: I want to say this.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a visitor, give me some grace here.
SPEAKER_00: I want to say this.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to assume I'm your pastor and talk to you like I'm your pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Stop demanding that God prove himself to you on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_00: Well, God, if I don't if I don't win the lottery, I'm not going to believe in you.
SPEAKER_00: People that know God don't need that.
SPEAKER_00: He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
SPEAKER_00: Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?
SPEAKER_00: It is God who justifies.
SPEAKER_00: Who is to condemn?
SPEAKER_00: Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us, who shall separate us from the love of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Now notice something.
SPEAKER_00: Look at those words.
SPEAKER_00: He starts off with the very personal pronoun who.
SPEAKER_00: Then he gives this list of impersonal things like tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword.
SPEAKER_00: You're like, well, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the point the Bible's making.
SPEAKER_00: Look at me.
SPEAKER_00: That for some of you in this room, the famine and the persecution is not these, you know, difficult realities that may await you in the new year.
SPEAKER_00: It's the man or woman you're dating right now.
SPEAKER_00: It's a who that is a place of famine.
SPEAKER_00: You say, What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00: The longer you date that person, the less and less and less you'll experience the blessing of God on your life.
SPEAKER_00: Because you can't disobey God and still walk in the blessing of God.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, Who's going to separate us?
SPEAKER_00: Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
SPEAKER_00: He says, as it is written, for your sake, we're being killed all the day long.
SPEAKER_00: We're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: He says, knowing all these things, and all these things, in persecution and nakedness, famine and sword, all these things.
SPEAKER_00: We're more than conquerors through him who loved us.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is saying is, despite my circumstance, I have no doubt that God loves me and He's for me.
SPEAKER_00: He's demonstrated that for me on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: Now let me talk out of my own life and just be practical about how easy it is for that to be thrown into the realm of uncertainty.
SPEAKER_00: We went to my in-laws on Monday and we were there all week and Friday morning at about 5.15.
SPEAKER_00: I had that van loaded and we were pointed on I-10 West, coming back to the promised land.
SPEAKER_00: I rounded my kids up, got them in the van, got the dogs in the van.
SPEAKER_00: My wife's over there resting her eyes.
SPEAKER_00: She doesn't sleep, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: She rests her eyes.
SPEAKER_00: She got some tired eyes because she rests them for about five hours.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're driving along.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm I don't know about you, but I always gauge myself to see how I'm doing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking, because I got my world record time driving from Pensacola to Houston with one stop, quick stop.
SPEAKER_00: I got the kids all narked up on Benadryl.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you got a little stiffle.
SPEAKER_00: Here you go.
SPEAKER_00: I got the dogs tied down the back.
SPEAKER_00: I got like a 32-ounce empty Coke bottle over there.
SPEAKER_00: We ain't stopping, okay?
SPEAKER_00: We are east westbound and down.
SPEAKER_00: I get almost out of Mississippi.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, oh man, it's 739.
SPEAKER_00: Woo! It says Slydale, Louisiana, right up the road.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, man, I'm gonna break my record and I hear.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, we're not in Louisiana yet.
SPEAKER_00: The road makes that noise in Louisiana, not in Mississippi.
SPEAKER_00: They paved the highways in Mississippi.
SPEAKER_00: Apparently, in Louisiana, you don't have a tax base or something.
SPEAKER_00: You can't pave those roads.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what are we on a bridge?
SPEAKER_00: What are we doing here?
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden I had that weird, so I changed the lanes.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the road, it was the tire.
SPEAKER_00: God's sovereign until you get a blowout.
SPEAKER_00: God's good and life's grand.
SPEAKER_00: And all of a sudden I reached up and woke my wife up from resting her eyes and said, Hey, look out the window there, Napoleon dynamite.
SPEAKER_00: Look at that back tire.
SPEAKER_00: Is that the thing?
SPEAKER_00: She goes, Yeah, it's flat.
SPEAKER_00: And I pulled over.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just flat, it shredded the inside sidewall.
SPEAKER_00: And so I thought, well, I'm not going to stop on the interstate here on this little big margin.
SPEAKER_00: So we're just going to drive on the shoulder as far as we can.
SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden, rubber starts stripping off.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty soon we're like the jerk.
SPEAKER_00: We're done on the rims.
SPEAKER_00: Hold on, kids.
SPEAKER_00: Finally make it to an exit.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, when you go three miles an hour, it takes a long time to get anywhere.
SPEAKER_00: We're there on the side of the road, we pull over, and I got that thing.
SPEAKER_00: I've never, you know, had the spare on the ground, so get it off.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little donut spare and screw the little jack up and take the tire off and put the donut spare on there, let it down, shh, the spare's flat as well.
SPEAKER_00: I'm about to lose my Jesus on the side of my tan up in here.
SPEAKER_00: The whole time I could think of, I kept thinking, okay, if I could just change in a hurry, I can drive fast because I'm thinking how fast I have to drive to make up this lost time.
SPEAKER_00: Because you know what?
SPEAKER_00: By that point, just the air went out of my world.
SPEAKER_00: Kids look in the woods, somebody see if there's an animal your dad can kill to take out his frustration here.
SPEAKER_00: About that time, Kirk, somebody pulls up.
SPEAKER_00: Cat gets out, looks like he's been in the military, got the hair cut, and he opened his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: I was like, this is military guy.
SPEAKER_00: Come to find out, he's been in the NASA for 36 years.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, cell phone, no signal.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, Yeah, you're not gonna get in the cell phone signal.
SPEAKER_00: You're in the NASA buffer zone.
SPEAKER_00: You're in the middle of the NASA buffer zone.
SPEAKER_00: This is the John C.
SPEAKER_00: Stinner Space Center.
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay, I've seen the signs.
SPEAKER_00: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_00: That means that uh it's 11 miles to a gas station that way, it's 15 miles that way.
SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, I'll just drive real slow.
SPEAKER_00: He goes, No, you're gonna peel that that that spare off and have nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, see, Lord, what it would look like for you to love me now is to make air in this tire.
SPEAKER_00: Come on right now.
SPEAKER_00: And so Bill Nye, the military guy, goes, like I said, we got two options.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, You can get and we can take it off and you can get my car with me.
SPEAKER_00: You're an axe murderer.
SPEAKER_00: I've seen movies about people like you.
SPEAKER_00: And I easily leave my family on the side of the road, or we can go slow and we'll just chance it, and I'll follow you.
SPEAKER_00: Such a restricted facility is the John C.
SPEAKER_00: Sennis Space Center that we pulled up to the gate and the there was a building right there, the check-in place, and they made us pull over right there.
SPEAKER_00: We had to go inside and get badges to come back out to cross the street and park in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, What do we do?
SPEAKER_00: He said, It's a restricted facility.
SPEAKER_00: The Navy SEALs are here.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, is that guy that shot Osama bin Laden?
SPEAKER_00: Is he here somewhere?
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to shake his hand.
SPEAKER_00: So we gave him our license.
SPEAKER_00: We came out, and I kid you not, we pulled across the street and parked, and he goes, You need to take it off again.
SPEAKER_00: He took the spare off.
SPEAKER_00: You hadn't got like this is NASA.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you have like a portable air machine?
SPEAKER_00: Y'all can put people on the moon, but you can't drive somebody out here?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: So I took it off while he told me he played in the praise band in his church.
SPEAKER_00: Because he said, What do you do for a living?
SPEAKER_00: I said, I work for God.
SPEAKER_00: Can you believe I had a blowout?
SPEAKER_00: Me neither.
SPEAKER_00: No, see, here's the beauty of all of this.
SPEAKER_00: He's still for me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm changing my tire.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, you still think I'm for you?
SPEAKER_00: Look at that thing.
SPEAKER_00: That thing just stripped that.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, when you go to the tire store, don't tell them I had a blowout.
SPEAKER_00: I need a new tire.
SPEAKER_00: Their eyes light up and their mouth waters.
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's$185.67.
SPEAKER_00: How much crack have you smoked?
SPEAKER_00: But instead, I just pulled up my credit card and said, I got a wife and two kids and two dogs out in the parking lot.
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if it's$1,000.
SPEAKER_00: Bing! Oh, we've got that tire in the back.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, I'll take this one.
SPEAKER_00: And they zipped it up, put it down there, and I just I comforted myself with this thought.
SPEAKER_00: My world record time was gone.
SPEAKER_00: But I should by nature be burning in hell.
SPEAKER_00: And so should you.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's the beauty of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: But I had to go back to the beginning and remind myself that on July 5th, 1982, he began a good work in me.
SPEAKER_00: He's going to continue it.
SPEAKER_00: Not only did we get a new tire, we drove across the street and we pulled into McDonald's at 1029, and then I serving lunch till 10:30.
SPEAKER_00: The guy changed the sign where I worked to drive through.
SPEAKER_00: Is lunch now available?
SPEAKER_00: Nope, we're not serving lunch till 10:30.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we pulled up at 1029.
SPEAKER_00: It's now 10:30.
SPEAKER_00: No, we're not serving lunch.
SPEAKER_00: That's all right.
SPEAKER_00: God's for me.
SPEAKER_00: You can't vex me.
SPEAKER_00: You get me an egg McMuffin out here that's been sitting under a heat lamp since 7 o'clock this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Those are my favorites.
SPEAKER_00: Got back on the road.
SPEAKER_00: I was supposed to get home at 1.40.
SPEAKER_00: I had it timed out.
SPEAKER_00: Got home at 4.59.
SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
SPEAKER_00: And the van is loaded with luggage and Christmas presents, and my kids forget that they're all their presents.
SPEAKER_00: I got from my in-laws a jar of mixed nuts.
SPEAKER_00: I could just grab those and carry them in on my own.
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, the people who have the most stuff in the back of the van run in the house like their hairs on fire.
SPEAKER_00: And carrying it to a and just start playing with it.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm going to beat them kids.
SPEAKER_00: And so I'm hauling stuff just in like a pack mule.
SPEAKER_00: And they're just sitting down right there in the middle of the hallway.
SPEAKER_00: Look at my doll.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to shoot that doll with a BB gun.
SPEAKER_00: And that little thought went to my head.
SPEAKER_00: You still think I'm for you?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00: My wife, once I got back on the road, she rested her eyes some more.
SPEAKER_00: Look back there, both of my kids, and my I'm looking in the rearview mirror, just kind of thinking, I could drive these people to Canada right now, they'd never know it.
SPEAKER_00: See, here's how you escape.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's for you.
SPEAKER_00: He's for you.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just tell you this, and and I'm done.
SPEAKER_00: Don't turn Romans 8, about verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: Before we start, when he says that, you know, hey, if God be for us, he says this.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, God's not given us a spirit of fear.
SPEAKER_00: You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you receive the spirit of adoption.
SPEAKER_00: His sons, his daughters, but we cry, Abba Father.
SPEAKER_00: Just start thinking, just start making note on this first day of the year how much of our society and culture is predicated on fear.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, see, when you lose confidence in the gospel, you begin to look for other things to do and to accomplish and achieve what only the gospel can achieve.
SPEAKER_00: That's why the church has been one of the greatest perpetrators of fear over the past 50 years.
SPEAKER_00: That's why some of you had bad experiences at church as a little kid, because they lost confidence in the gospel, in the good news, and they turned to fear.
SPEAKER_00: But see, when you turn when you when you turn away from this to fear, you're trying to make an appeal on something that's not in you.
SPEAKER_00: You didn't receive the spirit of slavery where you fall back into fear.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because you're not slaves.
SPEAKER_00: You're sons and daughters of God.
SPEAKER_00: You're not indentured servants trying to, oh, please, I know we're having cutbacks.
SPEAKER_00: Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't.
SPEAKER_00: I need that.
SPEAKER_00: I need my job.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have a job.
SPEAKER_00: You have a relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the other person in the relationship is crazy about you.
SPEAKER_00: He's for you.
SPEAKER_00: What then shall we say to these things?
SPEAKER_00: If God is for us, who can be against us?
SPEAKER_00: So when you wage war to escape the insufficiency of just being human, take comfort with the thought that God's for you.
SPEAKER_00: And you remember the gospel because it has the power.
SPEAKER_00: The power.
SPEAKER_00: The power that you're going to need.
SPEAKER_00: You don't fall back into just religion and just rules.
SPEAKER_00: You go back to the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And you remember, hey, there was a point in time where God revealed Himself to me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not in this alone.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not working on myself.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not standing in front of the Coke machine going, give me back my money or give me a coat.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody has screwed the opening off of the fire hydrant and it's pouring out.
SPEAKER_00: And when you taste and see that the Lord is good, you kind of go to work tomorrow and you kind of talk different.
SPEAKER_00: Last night, my youngest said to me about Dick Clark, while because we had to stay up till midnight.
SPEAKER_00: Which I'm like, I don't care about that.
SPEAKER_00: Dad, he talks funny.
SPEAKER_00: And I went on to explain to her how he's had a stroke, but what I really wanted to say was he drank out of a fire hide.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happened.
SPEAKER_00: You never recover from that.
SPEAKER_00: But instead, I said he had a stroke a long time ago, and it's affected his speech.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_00: I just want you to go to work tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00: Talk a little funny because you've tasted and seen.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: I pray God that your goodness would displace their badness.
SPEAKER_00: I pray God that your goodness would beckon and woo them to a relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: Not just religious activity like going to church, but uh escaping being a human because of a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: That's our prayer today, God.
SPEAKER_00: Make it our experience.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: And everyone said, Stand to your feet.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for beginning your new year with us.
SPEAKER_00: Hold your hands out.
SPEAKER_00: Let me speak a blessing over you.
SPEAKER_00: Your sons and daughters of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: He has seen you at your worst.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, he cannot be impressed.
SPEAKER_00: But because he's seen you at your worst, he accepts you.
SPEAKER_00: Depart now and live as accepted people, cherished by God, paid for by Jesus, and sealed by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: This is who you are.
SPEAKER_00: This is who he calls you to be.
SPEAKER_00: Get out of here now and be that.
SPEAKER_00: In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.