Churches in Powell

“And then so in on the cross, Jesus conquered sin. And then three days later, we just celebrated Easter seven weeks ago. In the grave, he rose again and he conquered death in that moment. And so you and I, as followers of Jesus, if you know Jesus, if you've given your life to Jesus, we have hope that yet death is not natural. It's a byproduct of sin. It should make us sad. We should mourn it. It should be something that we never get used to because it was never a part of God's plan, but we can have hope because death has been conquered.”

“And yet again, this is why I believe it's so hard for us to to wrap our minds around this because we live in a world that that's very finite, but yet we make our whole we we make our whole lives around this world. We build our whole lives around accumulating more in this world. And as I was studying for this this this sermon and as I was reading different commentaries, saw an example that I really, really loved. And and the author of the commentary said, hey. Fill in the blank. For to me to live is blank, but to die is blank. So I began to think about that. And I think for a lot of us, we we would say, hey, for to me to live is money, to die would be to lose it all.”

“That that promise that I talked about God making earlier, in this moment, what is taking place is that he's helping us the the the writer of Hebrews helping us understand that, hey. Jesus became that ultimate sacrifice, that this is the gospel, that God loved us so much. He loved you so much. He loved you so much. He loved me so much. That God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son. And when it says gave, it means he he he offered him as a sacrifice.”

“But in his mercy, when you read it, it you you may read it as this this god being this evil god telling them they couldn't go back to Eden, but the reason why is because there was a tree of of everlasting life that they could eat from. And god in his sovereignty and his goodness did not want Adam and Eve to live forever in their sinful state, so he blocks them from being able to go back in. And the reason why I know this comes from a loving place is because he also chooses to clothe them. He doesn't make them know how to find clothing. God scripture says that God provided clothing for them from the animals. So God is a loving God who cares deeply.”

“"If you really want to follow Jesus, you've got to count differently. How do you do that? You give up your own way. Give up your own interest. Stop pursuing what you think is best for you. Stop trying to do what you think is right for you. And instead, take up your cross. It's a burden to carry. It's a willingness to die. Die to my old self."”

“"But Jesus actually said the opposite. And what we're looking at over the course of this series is a lot of Jesus words to find out that there's something that is lost. And all we do is keep count. And today we're specifically going to see kind of the key verse. This is the memory verse for the series there on your handout. That really is going to teach us that if we correct what we count, that's really how we find out what winning really is all about."”