SPEAKER_00: And to glorify God.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about Grand Departway, visit GrandPartway.org.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, we've not just come to declare our neediness, we've come to celebrate your sufficiency, you're our one defense, and you're our righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: What we mean by that is you're the only means possible for sinful, jacked up, messed up people like me to get right with God and be right with God forever.
SPEAKER_01: And so, Lord, we we want to celebrate that.
SPEAKER_01: We're not just here to say we need you.
SPEAKER_01: We're staying here to say, you're our only hope.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have a plan B, God.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have another way to get right with you, to find forgiveness, to know intimate, juicy fellowship with the God of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: You're our one defense.
SPEAKER_01: And the beauty of that is you're so sufficient, we don't need another one.
SPEAKER_01: And so we just kind of stand right now in the sufficiency of all that God is.
SPEAKER_01: And we want to get our heads around the beauty of God being God.
SPEAKER_01: We want to confess, God, that our sinful nature wants to rear its ugly head and we want to be God every once in a while.
SPEAKER_01: We want to act like we're not accountable or we don't have to submit to anybody or anything.
SPEAKER_01: And when we do that, we put it in the ditch, God.
SPEAKER_01: When you're merciful, you're patient, you're long-suffering.
SPEAKER_01: Your kindness finds us and unwinds us.
SPEAKER_01: The book of Romans says that your kindness leads us to repentance.
SPEAKER_01: So, God, whoever needs the kindness of God to be led to repentance today, pour out kindness on them.
SPEAKER_01: We pray.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, illuminate your word.
SPEAKER_01: What we mean by that is make it make sense in our head and in our heart, God, so it can find expression in our hands this week.
SPEAKER_01: We pray all this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone said, Amen.
SPEAKER_01: You can have a seat.
SPEAKER_01: If you got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open it up to John chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't have a Bible, there's one on your row.
SPEAKER_01: I'll be on page 892.
SPEAKER_01: And as I said earlier, we're going to the Gospel of John.
SPEAKER_01: And now when you preach the book of the Bible, that's not licensed just to bore people with the Bible and blame it.
SPEAKER_01: Like, oh, I'm just going through the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: We believe here at Grand Parkway, the Bible is the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It's authoritative, it's powerful, but we also believe this.
SPEAKER_01: It's thought-provoking.
SPEAKER_01: It makes you think things that you by nature wouldn't think.
SPEAKER_01: And so when I say I want to talk to you about the beauty of God being God, I think you'll see what I mean.
SPEAKER_01: Now we started off, we've been in John chapter 6 for about four or five Sundays because we're trying to take the Bible in kind of segments so we could understand it.
SPEAKER_01: This all got kicked off so you get the context of what we read today.
SPEAKER_01: This all got kicked off when Jesus feeds 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish.
SPEAKER_01: That's a story most people have heard about, or they've heard or heard about.
SPEAKER_01: But there was probably, there wasn't just men there.
SPEAKER_01: There were 5,000 men.
SPEAKER_01: There were women and children there as well.
SPEAKER_01: And so it could have been as many as 15 to 20,000 people.
SPEAKER_01: And so the people thought, this is great.
SPEAKER_01: We want a politician that's going to give us bread.
SPEAKER_01: And so the next day they got it.
SPEAKER_01: They want to make Jesus king by force.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, I don't need your vote.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not a politician.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a king.
SPEAKER_01: Kings don't get elected, okay?
SPEAKER_01: I showed up here as king, I'll leave here as king.
SPEAKER_01: So they come to make him king by force, and Jesus says, I'm not going to have any part of that.
SPEAKER_01: And so he leaves, he sends his disciples.
SPEAKER_01: The next day the people get up, they're hungry, and so they want more provision.
SPEAKER_01: So they go seeking Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, seeking Jesus, they find this truth about Jesus that offends them.
SPEAKER_01: Now, by the way, the people that offend you the most have the capacity to teach you the most.
SPEAKER_01: Some of y'all are like, I'm not writing that down.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not writing that down.
SPEAKER_01: The people that you find most, and I don't mean like jerks, but the people that say things that are so thought-provoking, your first response is, that can't be true.
SPEAKER_01: Probably has a capacity to teach you some things you don't want to learn and you need to learn.
SPEAKER_01: And so these people come finding Jesus and he starts talking and they are ticked off.
SPEAKER_01: They're mad.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, What?
SPEAKER_01: Shut up! Are you kidding me?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is like, No, I'm not kidding you because I'm God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you find, here's a question to think about as you drive to work tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: Do you find beauty in the fact that God is God and you are not?
SPEAKER_01: Do you find beauty in that?
SPEAKER_01: Do you savor that?
SPEAKER_01: Do you look at that and kind of go, I'm so glad God set the world up like this?
SPEAKER_01: So these people are grumbling because they're talking about, they come to Jesus when they find like, hey, Jesus, dance, monkey, do some magic tricks.
SPEAKER_01: Moses gave the people bread in the wilderness, gave them man out there.
SPEAKER_01: What are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says, I'm the bread that came down from heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And then he talks about a relationship with Jesus that's so intimate.
SPEAKER_01: He says, You gotta eat my flesh and drink my blood.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, What?
SPEAKER_01: This is not fear of the living dead.
SPEAKER_01: What are you doing?
SPEAKER_01: And they totally miss it.
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, Jesus is not responsible for what you don't know.
SPEAKER_01: Be careful that you don't relate to God out of what you don't know or don't understand.
SPEAKER_01: Because then you're gonna be way off.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus keeps talking.
SPEAKER_01: We'll pick up the story in verse 60 of John chapter 6.
SPEAKER_01: When many of his disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying.
SPEAKER_01: Who can listen to it?
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, Do you take offense at this?
SPEAKER_01: Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
SPEAKER_01: It is the Spirit who gives life.
SPEAKER_01: The flesh is no help at all.
SPEAKER_01: The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe.
SPEAKER_01: For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.
SPEAKER_01: After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus said to the twelve, Do you want to go away as well?
SPEAKER_01: Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go?
SPEAKER_01: You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you're the holy one of God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus answered them, Did I not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?
SPEAKER_01: He spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for one, he was one of the twelve.
SPEAKER_01: He, one of the twelve, was going to betray him.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what we like to do is just read the Bible and then make the points out of what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: I want to make three points this morning, and then I want to answer five questions at the end that have been stirred up in the heads and hearts of our people over the past three or four Sundays.
SPEAKER_01: The first point that the text makes this morning is simply this God is always capable of more than we can understand.
SPEAKER_01: God is always capable of more than we can understand.
SPEAKER_01: And the moment you limit God to what you can understand or get your head around, then God is the person that you see in the mirror.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: The moment that you and I limit God to what we can understand or agree with, then what we've really done is we just kind of, God is the person I see in the mirror.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible, all throughout it, it makes the case that God is He's imminent, He's present, but He's also transcendent.
SPEAKER_01: He's other than us, He's better than us, He's bigger and beyond us.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible talks about it.
SPEAKER_01: God talks in the book, in the Old Testament, the book of Isaiah, about chapter 55, about verse 8 and 9, God says, My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, he's like saying laying the groundwork to say, hey, don't get offended when I do things that you don't understand or agree with, because I'm working on a bigger scale.
SPEAKER_01: You're locked in the micro and I'm living and and ruling the world from the macro, the big picture kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01: And this is what happens here in verse 60.
SPEAKER_01: When all of his disciples heard it, they said, This is a hard saying.
SPEAKER_01: Who can listen to it?
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this.
SPEAKER_01: Now, by the way, they didn't inform Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He knew they were talking about him.
SPEAKER_01: Ask yourself this question today at lunch.
SPEAKER_01: If you could know what everybody in a room was thinking when you were in the room, would you want to know?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, see, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01: You could be at a dinner party and somebody walks in and she's standing there, and a woman on the other side of the room looks and in her head just kind of thinks, Really?
SPEAKER_01: You wore that dress?
SPEAKER_01: Where'd you get that?
SPEAKER_01: A garage sale?
SPEAKER_01: And you could just look at her and kind of go, She didn't get it at a garage sale, by the way, and just walk off.
SPEAKER_01: You could have so many just drop the mic moments.
SPEAKER_01: It would be incredible.
SPEAKER_01: And people are kind of like, hey man, uh, you got those winning lottery tickets?
SPEAKER_01: Because help a brother out.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I'm thinking things, and you're knowing, by the way, this same God knows what you think as well.
SPEAKER_01: See, that's why you shouldn't be a poser or a pretender.
SPEAKER_01: Thinking one thing on the inside and trying to convince everybody else on the outside that you're somebody different.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, good to see you.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, good, good, awesome, wonderful.
SPEAKER_01: Good, good.
SPEAKER_01: Good, good, good.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, if your life's always good, I don't trust you.
SPEAKER_01: You don't live in the real world.
SPEAKER_01: I love Jesus, and I was on the phone with the insurance company today.
SPEAKER_01: They called me and told me what they're gonna give me for my kids' car that their pastel told us.
SPEAKER_01: And I said to the lady, I'm beginning to lose my peripheral vision.
SPEAKER_01: We should hang up now.
SPEAKER_01: And she goes, What happened?
SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm starting to go blind at the injustice.
SPEAKER_01: So I feel my inner redneck coming forward.
SPEAKER_01: You should hang up now.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01: Is everything gonna be okay?
SPEAKER_01: Stop talking.
SPEAKER_01: I love Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I've been a Christian a long time.
SPEAKER_01: I'm a nice person.
SPEAKER_01: But I was like, whoosha, whoo-sah, whoo-hoo hoo.
SPEAKER_01: I just gotta call him back tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: We'll pick it up and go from there.
SPEAKER_01: But here's the thing you say, why should you tell us that?
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna act like that doesn't go all over me because God knows.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not saying if you think it just say it because you've already thought it and God knows.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just saying, God's sovereignty knows no bounds.
SPEAKER_01: He knows what you're thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: Some of y'all have convinced everybody around you you're somebody that God knows you're not.
SPEAKER_01: And that's not an enjoyable life to live.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what God created you to do.
SPEAKER_01: See, when I say God's capable of more than we can understand, in the text, these people are grumbling, they're kind of like, oh, this is a hard saying.
SPEAKER_01: And look at what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: I love this.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Do you take offense at this?
SPEAKER_01: Uh nuh, duh.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 62, then what if?
SPEAKER_01: Any sentence out of the mouth of God that starts with, then what if, it's about to get good.
SPEAKER_01: Then, hey, if you just got to stumble over this, what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
SPEAKER_01: In other words, if you see me ascend back into heaven, what are you gonna do with that?
SPEAKER_01: If this bothers you, be careful.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me, beloved.
SPEAKER_01: Be careful that you don't get to a point where you relate to God out of your offense all the time.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of people that relate to God out of their offense.
SPEAKER_01: They relate to everybody else out of their offense.
SPEAKER_01: That offends me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm done.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna be friends with there, I'm not gonna go there anymore.
SPEAKER_01: It's always that.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that just offends.
SPEAKER_01: I've had people say to me before, well, I just can't believe in a God that would make some people that he knew were never gonna go to heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Why would a loving God make people like that?
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, who are you, old man, that you should answer back to God?
SPEAKER_01: All that person has told me is I've never really read the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: I've got some things that offend me, and I like to tell people about those.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm just like, God's always capable of more than you can understand.
SPEAKER_01: It's helpful to embrace this simple fact, beloved.
SPEAKER_01: Our opinions, our preferences, our interpretations of the Bible, what we want the Bible to say, even when it doesn't say it, our feelings and our fears are not canonical.
SPEAKER_01: They're not canonical.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: Said differently, they're not on the same level with the canon of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of the problems these people have, which is why they're grumbling.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that they don't understand what they're hearing.
SPEAKER_01: They understand it.
SPEAKER_01: It's that they don't like it and they want to make it not true.
SPEAKER_01: They want to look in here and find some loophole in the Bible where they can kind of point to Jesus and go, hey, see, we get to keep believing what we've always believed and what we prefer to believe.
SPEAKER_01: Remind you of anybody?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: There's an honest person right there.
SPEAKER_01: Reminds me of me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, what do you mean?
SPEAKER_01: I gotta love my neighbor?
SPEAKER_01: Are you?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, who's my neighbor?
SPEAKER_01: I got one there and one there.
SPEAKER_01: Because summer has started.
SPEAKER_01: I got kids in my cul-de-sac, and they just come and ring my doorbell and go, You got popsicles?
SPEAKER_01: What I need is a nap.
SPEAKER_01: That's my popsicle.
SPEAKER_01: And when your little punk self rings my doorbell, it interrupts my nap.
SPEAKER_01: And now you want me to get, I can talk to these kids for five minutes.
SPEAKER_01: And they just look at me and go, Yeah, yeah, you got popsicles?
SPEAKER_01: I tell you what, I'll whip all y'all and then give you a popsicle.
SPEAKER_01: And what comes out?
SPEAKER_01: What rises up in me is what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: 1 John chapter 3, verse 16, 17.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, if you have this world's good and you see your brother in need and you close up your bowels of compassion, how does the love of God dwell in you?
SPEAKER_01: But instead, I say to these shirtless vagrants, let me open the garage.
SPEAKER_01: You guys line up and they go, get the scissors, get the scissors, because you got to cut the ends off so they can suck it out.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm sitting there, then they they send out the mating callers, waah, and they just come running like roaches.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, we need an exterminator in this neighborhood.
SPEAKER_01: Bunch of needy kids.
SPEAKER_01: This is how sometimes I just go, I just think, where are your parents?
SPEAKER_01: Why am I parenting you people right now?
SPEAKER_01: I give them a pupsicle, then I give them a little moral lesson, and they go, okay, see you next time, and they walk away.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: See, that's I I agree with my friend here.
SPEAKER_01: That's me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna find some loophole that allows me to just kind of say, leave me alone.
SPEAKER_01: My home is my castle.
SPEAKER_01: I'm off the clock.
SPEAKER_01: They don't think that.
SPEAKER_01: My wife tells all of our neighbors, hey, our home is a city of refuge.
SPEAKER_01: If you ever need anything, just come ring the doorbell.
SPEAKER_01: And if we have it, you can have it.
SPEAKER_01: Shut up! Shut up.
SPEAKER_01: No, they just keep coming.
SPEAKER_01: Just keep coming.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because God's always capable of more than we can understand.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me.
SPEAKER_01: When you stop, when you and I stop at the place of offense, God will leave you there.
SPEAKER_01: And here's how you know God left you there.
SPEAKER_01: You have the same convers, you can have three conversations about everything.
SPEAKER_01: And they're the same conversation that nobody finds as compelling or as interesting as you do.
SPEAKER_01: Second thing that the text tells us this morning is simply this: God controls the salvation process.
SPEAKER_01: God controls the salvation process.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 63, the Bible says, it is the spirit who gives life.
SPEAKER_01: The flesh is no help at all.
SPEAKER_01: Underline that verse in your Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It will help you in many ways, in many situations.
SPEAKER_01: It is the spirit who gives life.
SPEAKER_01: The flesh is no help at all.
SPEAKER_01: The words I've spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe.
SPEAKER_01: For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.
SPEAKER_01: Now, let me when I say that God controls the salvation process, I think it's very important to say this.
SPEAKER_01: You need to make note that God controls the salvation process, but he doesn't play keep away with it.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: God controls it.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, Hey, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.
SPEAKER_01: God controls, he's over that.
SPEAKER_01: He initiates salvation, but he doesn't play keep away with it.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: That means if you're here today and you're not a Christian and God's not looking at you kind of going, yeah, I'm mad at you too.
SPEAKER_01: You just go to hell.
SPEAKER_01: I'm done with you.
SPEAKER_01: Not at all.
SPEAKER_01: God controls it, but He doesn't play keep away with it.
SPEAKER_01: God began to draw me to faith when I was about 16 years old, and I would go out and come home at 2 and 3 in the morning under the influence of certain things.
SPEAKER_01: Can we say it like that on Mother's Day?
SPEAKER_01: And our house, a little shotgun house, about 1,300 square feet.
SPEAKER_01: And I would hold my hands out on the wall, the hallway walls.
SPEAKER_01: And the first door on the right was my mom's room, second door on the on the left was the bathroom.
SPEAKER_01: Third door, second door on the left was a little utility closet where the air conditioner unit was, and the third door was my bedroom.
SPEAKER_01: And so I would just, that's the way I'd find my way, claps into bed.
SPEAKER_01: One night I'm coming in, it's like 2 48 in the morning, and I'm like, and I and I and my hand swipes down the hall wall.
SPEAKER_01: And I hear my mom crying and praying, and she says, Oh God, thanks for bringing him home safe, watching over him.
SPEAKER_01: And he's I'm I think I'm 17 when that happened.
SPEAKER_01: And I just thought to myself, why did I do this to this woman?
SPEAKER_01: This isn't worth it.
SPEAKER_01: It was that first pang of, I use a word we don't use anymore, shame.
SPEAKER_01: And shame was redemptive in my life because I thought, I don't think I should put my mom through this.
SPEAKER_01: But I went to bed, slept it off, got up the next night, and did the same thing again.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't make light of that, but I remember that first pang of guilt, like, I don't think I want to be this person the rest of my life.
SPEAKER_01: So when I say God controls the process, one of the core issues you have to settle in your mind is that who's sovereign in the salvation of man.
SPEAKER_01: Here Jesus is just echoing what he said in verse 37 and verse 44 and all through the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And nowhere does he say it more clearly than in Romans chapter 9, starting in verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read these words.
SPEAKER_01: Paul writes, but it is not as though the word of God has failed.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what is the context for this?
SPEAKER_01: Some people were saying, hey, look at the Jewish people.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these people are just, they don't even believe in the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: They don't believe Jesus is the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: And yet you say that God's gonna do a deep work in them.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul says, Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes here, people.
SPEAKER_01: It's not as though the word of God has failed.
SPEAKER_01: Can we begin this morning?
SPEAKER_01: Can you build and bank your life on the fact that the word of God is never gonna fail?
SPEAKER_01: Can you just get to that point?
SPEAKER_01: Because if you're still like, well, I don't know.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, life's gonna be hard for you.
SPEAKER_01: God will give you over to that instability and that uncertainty because a certain God finds uncertainty a little troubling.
SPEAKER_01: Or to quote that great theologian Darth Vader, I find your lack of faith disturbing.
SPEAKER_01: So what the Bible says, for it is not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Not all are children of Abraham because they're his offspring.
SPEAKER_01: What's he talking about there?
SPEAKER_01: Just like today you talk to some people that go, Oh, I'm Lutheran, oh, I'm Catholic, oh, I'm Baptist.
SPEAKER_01: You know, my granddad was a Baptist preacher.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus, that's what the Jews back then, Jesus would start talking to people about a faith in God, not a faith in a religion, and they would say, Oh, we have Abraham as our father.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus just demolished them.
SPEAKER_01: He's like Eminem in Eight Mile.
SPEAKER_01: He's just working at the Burger King, spitting on your onion rings.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying things they're not prepared to hear.
SPEAKER_01: They're just like, oh, oh.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says to them, Hey, by the way, don't hide behind religion.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we have Abraham as our father.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus points at rocks on the ground and says, My father can make sons of Abraham from these rocks right here.
SPEAKER_01: They were so mad.
SPEAKER_01: Here's why.
SPEAKER_01: Like many of you in this room, they preferred religion to relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm I'm Catholic.
SPEAKER_01: I'm Baptist, I'm Presbyterian.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible asks, Are you Christian?
SPEAKER_01: Do you have a relationship with Christ?
SPEAKER_01: But he says this though through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
SPEAKER_01: This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.
SPEAKER_01: For this is what the promise said.
SPEAKER_01: About this time next year I will return and Sarah shall have a son.
SPEAKER_01: And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born, had done nothing, either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls.
SPEAKER_01: She was told, the older will serve the younger.
SPEAKER_01: As it is written, Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.
SPEAKER_01: What shall we say then?
SPEAKER_01: Is there injustice on God's part?
SPEAKER_01: By no means.
SPEAKER_01: For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I'll have compassion on whom I have compassion.
SPEAKER_01: So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy.
SPEAKER_01: For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, For this very purpose I've raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
SPEAKER_01: So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, be careful that you don't require God to be a universalist, because that would render Jesus unnecessary.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: Be careful that you don't require God to be a universalist, because that would render Jesus unnecessary.
SPEAKER_01: You say, I would never do that.
SPEAKER_01: It happens all the time.
SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like the question I quoted earlier.
SPEAKER_01: People say, Well, how could a loving God make people who he knew are never going to go to heaven, they're never gonna come to him, they're gonna go to hell with that.
SPEAKER_01: How could a loving God do that?
SPEAKER_01: The Bible answers that question, Romans chapter 9, by verse 22, and it says just very simply, very plain spoken, it says, to make his wrath and power known.
SPEAKER_01: He talks about the vessels of dishonor, the vessels of destruction, and and these these vessels of honor, people who come to faith in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Now, again, we talked about a couple weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know who they are, we don't know who's gonna come.
SPEAKER_01: So for us, it's the gospel's whosoever will.
SPEAKER_01: We share the good news with everybody.
SPEAKER_01: We pray that all would come.
SPEAKER_01: And in the meantime, we do not take up an offense at God because we cannot understand God.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, the greatest work of God is not the conversion of man, the greatest work of God is the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_01: The greatest work of God is not the conversion of man.
SPEAKER_01: The greatest work of God is the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: He invites us to join him in the pursuit of his glory.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the Bible says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 31, whatever you do, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all for the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: I was talking with a friend this week, and uh I she went to a school here in town that I spoke at.
SPEAKER_01: Uh they would say, Hey, can you come to chapel?
SPEAKER_01: Can you come to spiritual limits this week?
SPEAKER_01: And she goes, Do you do that anymore?
SPEAKER_01: I said, No, I got in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: And she said, What happened?
SPEAKER_01: I said, I told them, because kids were asking, I get tired of kids asking dumb questions.
SPEAKER_01: Can I just be honest on Mother's Day?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, hey, Pastor, is it wrong to smoke marijuana?
SPEAKER_01: Is it wrong to do this?
SPEAKER_01: Is it wrong to do that?
SPEAKER_01: Basically, is it okay for me to keep doing what I'm already doing?
SPEAKER_01: And so I stood before these kids and I said, Hey, here's the deal smoke all the pie you can to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: Have all the sex you can to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: And they were offended because that's what religious people do.
SPEAKER_01: And I got had to go see the the the teacher.
SPEAKER_01: The teacher's like, I cannot believe you told those kids.
SPEAKER_01: To smoke all the pot they can to the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, how much pot can you smoke to the glory of God?
SPEAKER_01: See, when you put your life in the context that it was created for, the glory of God, some things become obvious.
SPEAKER_01: And meanwhile, you guys are just engaging over here in religious behavior modification.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I doubt we'll have you back.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Please, let me.
SPEAKER_01: This makes me want to do some day drinking, and I'm a man of the cloth.
SPEAKER_01: That ain't good.
SPEAKER_01: He's like, please don't joke about that in front of our students.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, some of them day drink already.
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, now by the way, it's not where you think.
SPEAKER_01: Some of y'all are trying to figure out where he's talking about.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the point.
SPEAKER_01: And don't miss the point.
SPEAKER_01: It's just it God does what God does for his glory, not our agreement.
SPEAKER_01: God does what God does for God's glory, not my agreement or my approval.
SPEAKER_01: Not, hey, yeah, God, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, that's okay.
SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
SPEAKER_01: See, when you embrace the simple truth that God is sovereign in salvation of humanity, it does two things.
SPEAKER_01: Number one, it leaves you with a deep sense of gratitude towards God.
SPEAKER_01: It leaves you with a deep sense of gratitude towards God, not for God, like, oh, I'm so glad God exists and God's God and the beauty of God.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Towards God.
SPEAKER_01: You can tell, I believe this about a church.
SPEAKER_01: You can tell a church that is taught the Bible by how they worship.
SPEAKER_01: Just listen to how they worship.
SPEAKER_01: When it comes time to sing, as we say, a church that's been consistently fed good biblical doctrine, when it comes time to worship, I mean there's like an air raid siren, goes off.
SPEAKER_01: Because we've got to get down to the get down.
SPEAKER_01: It's not this indifferent, oh, they're not singing my favorite song from Bethel today.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't like that.
SPEAKER_01: Next, next.
SPEAKER_01: What do I mean?
SPEAKER_01: One thing is that it leaves with a deep sense of gratitude towards God.
SPEAKER_01: Years ago, I was in Louisville, Kentucky, at a conference for preachers, people in ministry called together for the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: There's like six or seven thousand of us there.
SPEAKER_01: We're in the Yum Center where they uh they uh uh uh uh uh Louisville, the University of Louisville plays basketball.
SPEAKER_01: And it's just surround sound.
SPEAKER_01: There's one guy leading worship with all these people in one piano.
SPEAKER_01: No band, just one guy at a piano down there, and they all they sing is hymns.
SPEAKER_01: It's my favorite part.
SPEAKER_01: I love the hymn sing more than the preaching.
SPEAKER_01: And on the time I was there, I went one year by myself because I was just like, hey, I had conference money, hadn't used it.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, I went.
SPEAKER_01: I thought I just want to get refreshed.
SPEAKER_01: We start singing the old hymn, And Can It Be.
SPEAKER_01: This is what I mean when I talk about it, it leaves you with a deep sense of gratitude towards God.
SPEAKER_01: Not for God.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I appreciate you.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, God, but towards God.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, something compelling is coming out of me, and it's rooted in this gratitude.
SPEAKER_01: As Dan Dehan said one time, the highest motive in heaven and earth for obedience is love coming from gratitude.
SPEAKER_01: I'm standing there and they start singing just one guy on the piano, the old hymn, and can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood?
SPEAKER_01: Died he for me who caused his pain, for me who him to death pursued.
SPEAKER_01: Amazing love.
SPEAKER_01: How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?
SPEAKER_01: Now, I cannot sing.
SPEAKER_01: It's painful.
SPEAKER_01: I got a kid that's pitch perfect.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like a musical savant.
SPEAKER_01: Can hear something, get out of ukulele, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, and start singing.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, shut up, show off.
SPEAKER_01: I'm over there, you know, like a drunk at the bar.
SPEAKER_01: It's like Chewbacca singing.
SPEAKER_01: It's just, I mean, she's just like, Dad, could you stop?
SPEAKER_01: You're flat on that note.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I didn't know what that means.
SPEAKER_01: Flat?
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what that means.
SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna get my praise on.
SPEAKER_01: Get your praise on by being quiet.
SPEAKER_01: She told me one time, God's glorified when you're quiet.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Your mom told you to say that.
SPEAKER_01: I ain't listening to that.
SPEAKER_01: But here's what my point.
SPEAKER_01: They get to the chorus, and people know how to sing it, it kind of jumps all over the place.
SPEAKER_01: Uh my gosh, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh, it's dy for me.
SPEAKER_01: And they start coming, it started coming out of me.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, if gratitude's in you, it's gonna find a way out.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm standing there and I'm gonna start looking around because I'm self-conscious.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, hey, I don't want to cry in front of these people.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know these people.
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm like, you know, you try to hold it in, and it's like and so they're doing the it's like the Vienna Boys choir with a bunch of men, and I'm like, and then I couldn't.
SPEAKER_01: They got to the second verse.
SPEAKER_01: He left his home in heaven above, so free, so infinite his grace, emptied himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race.
SPEAKER_01: And when they sang that, the dam broke.
SPEAKER_01: I just you tried to hold it in, and I just went and I doubled over and just sobbing.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, oh, this is not good.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I don't live here because I'd have to kill all these people and move.
SPEAKER_01: And then I started glancing around, and people are crying everywhere.
SPEAKER_01: And about from here to those steps over there, there's this guy like 107.
SPEAKER_01: He looks like a human question mark.
SPEAKER_01: He's all, I've seen him, I've seen him on the week at the conference.
SPEAKER_01: That brother's got his handkerchief.
SPEAKER_01: He's so old he still carries a handkerchief.
SPEAKER_01: You ain't none of y'all got a handkerchief today.
SPEAKER_01: My brother had that thing in my glasses, and we just stomping into his hands.
SPEAKER_01: And we got through this time.
SPEAKER_01: I didn't sing a lick.
SPEAKER_01: I just, I just cried the whole time.
SPEAKER_01: Just oh, oh, oh gosh.
SPEAKER_01: And I looked over in that old man just smiling at me.
SPEAKER_01: I almost walked over to him and said, Would you just hold me for a minute?
SPEAKER_01: And it was, I sat down.
SPEAKER_01: I I don't even know what the guy talked about that preached.
SPEAKER_01: I was just like, I turned to the guy next to me and said, Oh man, you got a cigarette?
SPEAKER_01: It's just no good.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: What am I saying?
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying that when you embrace, look at me, stop laughing, you're in church.
SPEAKER_01: When you embrace what the Bible actually says, not what you prefer to say, not what you want it to say, but what it actually says, here's what it does, beloved.
SPEAKER_01: It leaves you with a deep sense of gratitude towards God that is compressed and it will compulse you to kind of let it out on occasion.
SPEAKER_01: It just happens.
SPEAKER_01: Second thing it does is it informs how you pray for the unconverted.
SPEAKER_01: You stop giving them a false sense of confidence, like, you know, I know God wants me, but I'm I'm I'm just too school for cool, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: And I have a brother that's in that category, unless you go, oh, be careful, Neil.
SPEAKER_01: I tell my brother, hey, I'm praying for you, but I'm not praying to you.
SPEAKER_01: What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01: God has to reveal this to you.
SPEAKER_01: Because my brother's biggest fear is I'm gonna preach to him every time I see him.
SPEAKER_01: I say, I ain't gonna preach to him.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna apologize for what I believe to be the truth, but you're not a project, you're a person.
SPEAKER_01: And I pray that God, who's rich in mercy, reveals himself to you.
SPEAKER_01: But it informs how you pray.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the last thing we see in the text is this there's always room for progress in and towards what we believe.
SPEAKER_01: You still with me?
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 66.
SPEAKER_01: He says, After this man, his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, by the way, it it his disciples doesn't mean they were Christians, they were just following along.
SPEAKER_01: These are the people that ate the bread and fish and thought, hey, good, we're gonna get a politician, gonna give us welfare handouts the rest of our life.
SPEAKER_01: We ain't gotta get jobs, let's just ride Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: See how a lot of things don't change?
SPEAKER_01: I can make somebody else responsibility for the provision in my life by my appreciation?
SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't I do that?
SPEAKER_01: Because you're being deceived and sold a bill of goods, but beyond that, I don't know why you wouldn't.
SPEAKER_01: What am I saying?
SPEAKER_01: Look at this.
SPEAKER_01: After this, many of his disciples turned and back and walked no longer with him.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what I started to say.
SPEAKER_01: That just came out.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me.
SPEAKER_01: If they turned and walked away from Jesus, some of your friends are gonna turn and walk away from you.
SPEAKER_01: Some of the men that love you, some of the boys that like you right now, girls, ain't gonna like you when they figure out what you believe.
SPEAKER_01: There's an aloneness that comes with obedience.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta tell your kids that.
SPEAKER_01: So when it's time to be obedient and to look around, and everybody that was singing and crying at camp ain't there.
SPEAKER_01: They just kind of stand bolt upright, and you hear them honking out in their bedroom, and can't it be?
SPEAKER_01: And you're like, oh, the house is shaking.
SPEAKER_01: What's going on?
SPEAKER_01: This is what the Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 67.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus said to the twelve, Do you want to go away as well?
SPEAKER_01: Simon Peter answered him, I love that.
SPEAKER_01: Simon Peter, always the first one to speak up.
SPEAKER_01: I'm the spokesman.
SPEAKER_01: He got chicken falling out of his mouth.
SPEAKER_01: No, Jesus, here's the deal.
SPEAKER_01: He answered up, Lord, to whom shall we go?
SPEAKER_01: You have the words of eternal life, and we've believed and have come to know that you're the holy one of God.
SPEAKER_01: One of my favorite verses in the entire Bible.
SPEAKER_01: A, because of who says it, and B, because of what he says.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the part I want to draw your attention to in verse 69.
SPEAKER_01: We have believed and we have come to know.
SPEAKER_01: Hear it?
SPEAKER_01: We've believed and we've come to know.
SPEAKER_01: We've believed and we've come to understand the ramifications of the things that we believe.
SPEAKER_01: Keep in mind, remember, I said it's who's saying it, what he says?
SPEAKER_01: This is Peter.
SPEAKER_01: Remember Peter?
SPEAKER_01: Peter?
SPEAKER_01: That kind of eager Peter?
SPEAKER_01: Peter jumps up, cuts a guy's ear off, they come to arrest Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He just takes a sword and cuts it off, falls to the ground.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus picks it up, blow.
SPEAKER_01: Three-second rule, puts it back on.
SPEAKER_01: Hey man, I don't need your help.
SPEAKER_01: Put that sword up.
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get us killed in a knife fight.
SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
SPEAKER_01: This is Peter.
SPEAKER_01: Hey Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's like you talk about a drunk dial.
SPEAKER_01: He's talking to you, hey Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, these little guys and the man, they're gonna, they're gonna they're they're gonna turn their back, but not me.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna die with you in Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, here's what's gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01: Before the rooster crows, you're gonna deny me three times.
SPEAKER_01: No, never happened.
SPEAKER_01: That Peter said these words.
SPEAKER_01: Hear him again.
SPEAKER_01: We have believed and we've come to know.
SPEAKER_01: There's room.
SPEAKER_01: Let me say it again, and I'll be done.
SPEAKER_01: I'll answer a few questions.
SPEAKER_01: There's always room for progress in and towards what you believe.
SPEAKER_01: Ask yourself this question this morning.
SPEAKER_01: What do you believe that you need to make progress towards?
SPEAKER_01: What do I believe?
SPEAKER_01: That I just kind of let float out there and orbiting in the galaxy of my unexperienced beliefs.
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I believe that.
SPEAKER_01: I need to make progress.
SPEAKER_01: We believed and we have come to know.
SPEAKER_01: By the way, believe and know are both perfect tense in the Greek, which refers to this present, ongoing result of a completed action.
SPEAKER_01: We believed and we've come to know.
SPEAKER_01: There's always room for growth.
SPEAKER_01: What do you need to grow in, and what do you need to grow towards?
SPEAKER_01: And by the way, one of the ways we grow as Christians is by thinking.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, is by asking questions.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're visiting today, we've been going through John chapter 6 for three, four Sundays, and asking people, I said, hey, people kept asking great questions.
SPEAKER_01: I said, hey, just email me your questions.
SPEAKER_01: I'll answer them all.
SPEAKER_01: So let me answer a few questions and we'll be done this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Here's one.
SPEAKER_01: Do we have a free will?
SPEAKER_01: Can we say no to God once he's revealed himself?
SPEAKER_01: Adam and Eve first had revelation of God and even daily intimacy with him.
SPEAKER_01: Then they chose to eat of the tree.
SPEAKER_01: If we do not have free will after God's revelation, how did Adam and Eve have it?
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
SPEAKER_01: Very simple answer.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, we have a free will.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, people say no to God all the time after he's revealed himself to everybody in creation.
SPEAKER_01: But what you have to do is you have to distinguish between revelation and regeneration.
SPEAKER_01: Two different things.
SPEAKER_01: But when I say yes, we have a free will, uh absolutely, you have a free will.
SPEAKER_01: It's free in the exercise thereof.
SPEAKER_01: Like I can walk out here today and rob a bank.
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_01: And God couldn't, God could stop me, but if I robbed a bank, I couldn't say, oh, well, it must be God's will, because if God didn't want to do that, He would have stopped me, but He didn't stop me, so I got some money.
SPEAKER_01: See ya.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: Your will, look at me, is free in the exercise of it, but the nature of it is corrupted by sin.
SPEAKER_01: And so sometimes, because of that, sometimes you use your free will to do evil things that you know are wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: You can't say, oh, we're all robots.
SPEAKER_01: No, you you you you've got a free will.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and because God revealed himself not just to Adam and Eve, but by the way, look at me.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible teaches that God so revealed himself to everybody that people are without excuse.
SPEAKER_01: No one can say, I didn't know.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says it like this in Romans chapter 1, verse 19 and 20.
SPEAKER_01: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.
SPEAKER_01: For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived ever since the creation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: In the things that have been made, so that they are without excuse.
SPEAKER_01: And so God reveals himself to Adam and Eve.
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he's right there walking with them in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_01: But he reveals himself to us too.
SPEAKER_01: Now, when I said a minute ago, you have to distinguish between revelation and regeneration.
SPEAKER_01: Regeneration is what happens that allows us to repent of our sin and confess Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So once we're regenerated, no, we cannot say no.
SPEAKER_01: Because when the Bible, regeneration is, the Bible says that our heart is dead towards God.
SPEAKER_01: We're spiritually indifferent.
SPEAKER_01: We're dead in our trespasses and sins, Ephesians chapter 2 says.
SPEAKER_01: But what the Bible also teaches is regeneration.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, God takes out your heart of flesh, your heart of stone, gives you a heart of flesh.
SPEAKER_01: He changes your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Here's how you know that happens: you repent.
SPEAKER_01: You do not repent of your own volition or your own will or your own idea.
SPEAKER_01: It's evidence that your heart's been regenerated.
SPEAKER_01: So God does not regenerate your heart and then say, you decide.
SPEAKER_01: He regenerates your heart and you are compelled to confess Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
SPEAKER_01: Here's another question that someone asks.
SPEAKER_01: If God draws us to himself, why does he need us to proclaim him?
SPEAKER_01: Or put another way, what if we don't proclaim him to someone?
SPEAKER_01: Will that person lose heaven because we didn't do our job?
SPEAKER_01: I would point you back.
SPEAKER_01: I think it's verse 37 in John 6, where Jesus says, All those who the Father gives me will come to me.
SPEAKER_01: The simple short answer is no.
SPEAKER_01: You're not sending anybody to hell by your disobedience.
SPEAKER_01: Because look at me, and this is not a boast, this is a confession.
SPEAKER_01: I think I was disobedient yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: Yesterday.
SPEAKER_01: I went to Randall's right up here to get tags for my truck, restoration tags, and got them.
SPEAKER_01: Came back.
SPEAKER_01: I was sitting there watching the golf tournament, and the lady at Randall's called and said, Hey, you just came and got restoration tags.
SPEAKER_01: And and I uh forgot to tear off the bottom of it.
SPEAKER_01: Is there any way you could come back?
SPEAKER_01: I was like, You can't do your job, and I gotta drive back.
SPEAKER_01: What?
SPEAKER_01: How about you come to my house and get them?
SPEAKER_01: But I didn't say that.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, yeah, I'll be there in a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Sat there, watched a little bit of the tournament, tried to forget, couldn't forget, and I sensed this little thing in me, a spirit that kind of said, By the way, don't take anything for bringing these back.
SPEAKER_01: This is just the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, Oh yeah, this is the right thing to do.
SPEAKER_01: I get back there and I walk in the store and she's like, Oh, yeah, thank you so much.
SPEAKER_01: Would you like a free Starbucks?
SPEAKER_01: Like Scooby-Doo.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I'd love a free Starbucks.
SPEAKER_01: On the way there, I envision myself as she offers me something saying, No, I'm a Christian.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to pay me to do the right thing.
SPEAKER_01: She said, You want a free Starbucks?
SPEAKER_01: I call one of my kids and said, I don't want anything.
SPEAKER_01: You want anything?
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I want an ice caramel coconut milk latte.
SPEAKER_01: There's nine dollars wasted.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and the lady said, I thought she was getting it for free.
SPEAKER_01: She pulled out her check card and paid for it.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, In me, I was thinking, say something, say something.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing came out.
SPEAKER_01: I just stood there like a like a mute.
SPEAKER_01: I walked in my truck, kind of going, that was unsettling.
SPEAKER_01: Nothing would come out.
SPEAKER_01: I got home.
SPEAKER_01: We should probably pour this out as a drink offering to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me.
SPEAKER_01: No one went to hell because of that.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says in Acts 17 that God does not live in temples made by human hands, and he's not served by human hands as if he needed anything.
SPEAKER_01: He's not.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Here's the way.
SPEAKER_01: The short answer to this question is hey, did God draw the, does he need us to proclaim him?
SPEAKER_01: Or put it another way, if we don't proclaim him, here's the reality.
SPEAKER_01: All the commands of the Bible, and why should we share our faith?
SPEAKER_01: Why should we share the gospel?
SPEAKER_01: Because you're commanded to.
SPEAKER_01: And here's the thing I want you to hear.
SPEAKER_01: All the commands of the Bible are not intended by God to jam you up, to make you miserable, or say, oh, you're being too happy.
SPEAKER_01: Let me no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Our issue is not that we're too happy, our issues we're far too easily satisfied.
SPEAKER_01: We settle for these less wild lovers, these lesser gods.
SPEAKER_01: Uh all the commands of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Hear this are not God trying to keep you from anything, it's God bestowing upon humanity the dignity, the dignity of participation.
SPEAKER_01: What do you mean?
SPEAKER_01: It's God saying, You do these things, and you get to participate and experience the life I created you to live.
SPEAKER_01: That's why you should get tired of sinning, students.
SPEAKER_01: It's not because, oh, my parents might find out.
SPEAKER_01: No, you'll live your entire life and never taste the full life that Jesus came for you to have.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that what he says in John 10?
SPEAKER_01: I come to have life and have it more abundantly, or have it to the full.
SPEAKER_01: Next question.
SPEAKER_01: Great question, someone asks.
SPEAKER_01: On different occasions in this chapter, Jesus refers to the last day.
SPEAKER_01: Is that a reference to judgment day?
SPEAKER_01: The reference to us being raised up seems to imply we are somewhere different prior to being raised up than we were after being raised up.
SPEAKER_01: Can you clarify?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: When he talks about the last day, that is a reference to judgment day.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not just this foreboding sense of judgment day is coming.
SPEAKER_01: Get your act together, sinners.
SPEAKER_01: It's Jesus saying, Hey, what I initiate in you, I'm gonna be with you all the way through.
SPEAKER_01: All the way through.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I got to my house.
SPEAKER_01: I stood, I sat in the driveway and I was just like, Lord, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, I know, I know, I know.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, take your Starbucks to your kid.
SPEAKER_01: Just remember this feeling next time.
SPEAKER_01: I was like, ugh, yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible talks about that feeling.
SPEAKER_01: It's called grieving the spirit.
SPEAKER_01: I just, oh, I think I missed it.
SPEAKER_01: Why am I telling you that?
SPEAKER_01: I don't want you to come here on Sundays and think, that guy's got it all together.
SPEAKER_01: I could never be like him.
SPEAKER_01: You never want to be like me.
SPEAKER_01: Aim higher, as they say in the Navy or Air Force or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: Uh but towards this question, yes, this is a reference to judgment day, but it's also a reminder that Jesus says, hey, what I what I begin in you, I'm gonna continue it to the day of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's this, I'm gonna be intimately involved in every aspect of your life, and then I'm gonna raise you up on the last day.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the Bible says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.
SPEAKER_01: If only in this life we have hope in Christ, we're to be pitied above all men.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: And the other part of the question, uh uh, this this person says, hey, the reference to us being raised up seems to imply we are somewhere different prior to being raised up than we are after being raised up.
SPEAKER_01: Can you clarify?
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the Bible says that to be absent for the Christian, to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians chapter 5, Paul refers to death, and he's talking about death, and he says, we strike our earthly tent and we move into our heavenly dwelling, our permanent dwelling.
SPEAKER_01: The temporary is swallowed.
SPEAKER_01: He goes on to say the mortal is swallowed up by life.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so if you've ever been to a funeral that I've done, every once in a while I will point to the casket and say, This is the most alive person here.
SPEAKER_01: Not here.
SPEAKER_01: This is just his tent.
SPEAKER_01: This is her tent.
SPEAKER_01: Her body is just her tent.
SPEAKER_01: She has struck her tent, folded it up, and she is in her permanent heavenly dwelling right now.
SPEAKER_01: On that day, we talked about the last day, he'll raise them up for the Christian, their body will come out of the grave.
SPEAKER_01: And they'll get a new glorified body that's not prone to cancer, death, disease, decay, any of that.
SPEAKER_01: And they live forever in this glorified body.
SPEAKER_01: On the earth, back on the earth, is God created to be in the very beginning, in paradise.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, fourth question.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus talks about eating his body and drinking his blood, is this a reference to communion?
SPEAKER_01: Is there another metaphorical meaning?
SPEAKER_01: Uh no, it's not a reference to communion because uh communion as we know it, Jesus didn't fulfill Passover until the end of the gospels.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and some people say, oh, well, I think it's about communion, and that's why there's a thing that some churches believe, some denominations believe in what's called transubstantiation, which means that the elements, the bread and the wine, become the literal body and blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Here at Grand Park, we listen carefully.
SPEAKER_01: We respect other faiths.
SPEAKER_01: We do not believe that the Bible teaches that.
SPEAKER_01: We believe that they're symbols that remind us, that help us to do this in remembrance of Him.
SPEAKER_01: They do not become the literal body in the blood of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a reference to communion.
SPEAKER_01: Believe it's a reference to this intimate assimilation into all that Jesus is.
SPEAKER_01: Because remember, this context, they're talking about, oh, what are you gonna do?
SPEAKER_01: Because Moses gave us bread in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus is like, I'm the bread that came down from heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Feast on me.
SPEAKER_01: And they're like, nah, we'd rather have stuff to eat.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's not cannibalism, it's hey, this intimate.
SPEAKER_01: This happened, a young man in our church, he's like seven or eight years old.
SPEAKER_01: His dad said, My son wants to get baptized.
SPEAKER_01: I think he understands the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: I think he's given his life to Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Would you meet us for lunch and talk to him?
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01: So we're talking, having lunch at uh, what's the pub out here on 359?
unknown: Clancy's.
SPEAKER_01: Clancy's, yes.
SPEAKER_01: Y'all, some of y'all have a membership there.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so we're sitting at Clancy's and we're talking, and he's just kind of looked at me, and I said, Tell me what makes you want to get baptized.
SPEAKER_01: And he lays it out.
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Man, yeah, this is the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, You know what happened when you when you accepted Christ?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Jesus lives in my heart and I'm forgiving my dad.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Yeah, I was drinking a glass of tea.
SPEAKER_01: I picked up a sweet and low and shook it.
SPEAKER_01: I tore the lid off and I dumped it.
SPEAKER_01: I said, This tea is Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And I dumped the sweet and low in there and stirred it up.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Now get the sweet and low out of the tea.
SPEAKER_01: He looked at his dad like, where do we get this moron?
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Go ahead, get it out.
SPEAKER_01: You can't.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, it's become one with the tea, right?
SPEAKER_01: It's flavored the tea, right?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: That's how sure your salvation is.
SPEAKER_01: You cannot be separated from him.
SPEAKER_01: You become one with him.
SPEAKER_01: You walk in him.
SPEAKER_01: You live in him.
SPEAKER_01: In him, we live and move and have our being.
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, whatever.
SPEAKER_01: You ain't getting that sweet and loathe out of that tea.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of intimate assimilation Jesus is talking about when he says, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood.
SPEAKER_01: Last question.
SPEAKER_01: This my question from John 6 is about the age of accountability idea that many churches teach.
SPEAKER_01: I think the teaching says basically that if a child dies before an age where they can accept Christ, they go to heaven anyway because God has mercy and the children are not accountable.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus says that God gives people to him and that we are unable to come otherwise.
SPEAKER_01: So, what about the young, the mentally incapable, the native person in the unreached people group that will never hear of Christ?
SPEAKER_01: Great question.
SPEAKER_01: The age of accountability, as that phrase is used, as it relates to salvation, is nowhere in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Nowhere does in the Bible does God say, hey, your children get a hall pass until they get to be, because I know some 30-year-olds that aren't very accountable.
SPEAKER_01: But the history of that is back in the Old Testament, they were taking a census and they said, hey, anybody under the age of 20 cannot be counted.
SPEAKER_01: And some people think, oh, that's where it comes from.
SPEAKER_01: That's not biblical.
SPEAKER_01: You can't say that.
SPEAKER_01: And so let me be clear.
SPEAKER_01: I'm saying that the age of accountability is not a biblical concept.
SPEAKER_01: Now, let me speak to those three things about babies, the mentally challenged, and the native, the guy in Africa that's never heard.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, babies.
SPEAKER_01: This is why I believe this.
SPEAKER_01: There's a guy in the Bible, in the Old Testament, named David.
SPEAKER_01: David was a king, was a good guy, was a man after God's own heart.
SPEAKER_01: David sinned.
SPEAKER_01: He had an affair with a woman named Bathsheba, and he had her husband murdered to cover it up.
SPEAKER_01: Then he sends for her, takes her and his wife.
SPEAKER_01: They have a baby out of this adulterous affair.
SPEAKER_01: The baby's born, lives seven days, and dies.
SPEAKER_01: David mourns.
SPEAKER_01: He falls on the ground and he tears his clothes.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't eat for seven days.
SPEAKER_01: When they tell him, hey, the baby died, he gets up, washes his face, and he eats.
SPEAKER_01: And his friends are like, hey, what's the deal?
SPEAKER_01: You're not sad anymore?
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, no, obviously I'm still sad and my kid's dead.
SPEAKER_01: But I will one day go to where the child is.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Samuel chapter 12, about verse 23, is where the Bible talks about this.
SPEAKER_01: And so when David, man after God's own heart, says, I will one day go to where the child is, he's talking about seeing the child again.
SPEAKER_01: I believe that because of that, uh, that it's not age of accountability.
SPEAKER_01: It's, hey, this is like my wife and I had a miscarriage.
SPEAKER_01: Uh so we talk about our glory baby.
SPEAKER_01: Uh and people are like, wow, uh, was the Bible talking about that?
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I believe the Bible speaks to it there.
SPEAKER_01: Uh the second one about people that are mentally challenged, I would say this.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and please hear this carefully.
SPEAKER_01: Salvation is not about your intellect.
SPEAKER_01: God saves the mentally challenged people the same way he saves me.
SPEAKER_01: He reveals himself to them.
SPEAKER_01: God does not need the human intellect to bring about conversion.
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not like can this person understand that two plus two equals four?
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: God reveals himself to people.
SPEAKER_01: That's how persons converted, regardless of their mental or emotional state.
SPEAKER_01: And the last one, the native person.
SPEAKER_01: It's just Romans 1 again.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible says we have a lady in our church, Sean Sickle, on a mission trip a couple weeks ago, went to uh up in the mountains of India in these villages and talked to people and said, Have you ever heard of the name Jesus?
SPEAKER_01: They're like, No.
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: But the Bible says that person is accountable to God.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because what can be known about God is obvious because God's made it obvious in creation.
SPEAKER_01: Creation builds a case against humanity such that everybody in the world is without excuse.
SPEAKER_01: They can't say, I don't know that there's a there's something out there, there's there's a being out there.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: They're morally culpable, is the word that the Bible would use, or the truth that the Bible teaches when it comes to that.
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
SPEAKER_01: By the way, we like to teach the Bible because the Bible makes you think.
SPEAKER_01: And so we always welcome questions here.
SPEAKER_01: One of our older men stopped me after the first service.
SPEAKER_01: She goes, I wish you'd do that every three or four months.
SPEAKER_01: I said, Gladly, Ed.
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing.
SPEAKER_01: Look at me and I'll shut up.
SPEAKER_01: Uh but seriously, look at me.
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to be smart to understand the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: You just have to be willing to think.
SPEAKER_01: And some of you excuse yourself from understanding this because I don't know if somebody told you, oh, you're never a mountain.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Just be willing to think.
SPEAKER_01: Just find you a church that teaches the Bible and is not afraid of your questions, and you'll be the better for it, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I just want to voice a prayer of thanks.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for these people.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks that it's thought-provoking, it's me shaping.
SPEAKER_01: It sends us to the world.
SPEAKER_01: It turns us into the bread and the fish that are blessed and broken and passed out so the people can be nourished to provoke to think rightly about the things of God.
SPEAKER_01: And when we miss it, when we just miss it, we're kind of like sense, hey, something's happening here.
SPEAKER_01: And ah, we don't have to beat ourselves up.
SPEAKER_01: We can just acknowledge, hey, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: I think I missed that one.
SPEAKER_01: You don't put us on the sideline.
SPEAKER_01: So I pray for anybody in this room this morning, God, that feels like, man, I've been sidelined by God.
SPEAKER_01: That they would just kind of just kind of sense, feel your hand on their shoulder, and hear your voice in their heart kind of saying, get back in the game.
SPEAKER_01: Get back in the okay, you fumbled.
SPEAKER_01: You threw an interception.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I got it.
SPEAKER_01: I was there.
SPEAKER_01: I saw it.
SPEAKER_01: I know all about it.
SPEAKER_01: Get yourself back in the game.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not done using you.
SPEAKER_01: God, whatever we need to make progress in and towards today, let us make progress towards that.
SPEAKER_01: We pray all this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_01: And all God's people said.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a different service today.
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for your presence.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just make you aware of two things by way of announcement, and I'll get you out of here, and you can begin your Mother's Day brunch.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: First of all, men's breakfast, the last one of the semester is this Tuesday, 6 o'clock, from 6 to 7 in the warehouse, which is our student ministry building at the back of our property.
SPEAKER_01: Each one standalone.
SPEAKER_01: If you've never been, you're welcome to come, okay?
SPEAKER_01: We teach for about 20 minutes, and then we just answer questions around the table.
SPEAKER_01: Great opportunity to meet men, fellowship with men.
SPEAKER_01: Breakfast is free.
SPEAKER_01: It's from Whataburger.
SPEAKER_01: We'd love you to be a part of that.
SPEAKER_01: Second thing I'll remind you of is our student ministry is going to beach camp this summer, Orange Beach, Alabama.
SPEAKER_01: The speaker is a friend of mine.
SPEAKER_01: His name is Chris Brooks.
SPEAKER_01: Highly recommend that you put your kids in an environment where they set under a gifted anointed man like this in a beautiful context.
SPEAKER_01: Talk about God's creation.
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
SPEAKER_01: Kids, you should go home and tell your parents, I need to go to camp so I can witness God in creation.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: If you have any information, go to the website.
SPEAKER_01: You can see Jeff, our student pastor.
SPEAKER_01: If you have any questions, okay?
SPEAKER_01: Stand to your feet.
SPEAKER_01: Hold your hands out.
SPEAKER_01: We'd like to conclude our service with a blessing.
SPEAKER_01: He knows you.
SPEAKER_01: And he accepts you.
SPEAKER_01: He knows everything you've ever done, every thought you've ever had, every word you've ever spoken.
SPEAKER_01: And he remains unchangeable in his desire to know and bless and provide for you.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't just care about your spiritual life, he cares about the whole of your life.
SPEAKER_01: Depart now and live in this beautiful, welcoming reality.
SPEAKER_01: In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Bless you.