Keep Saying Yes to God By Jeremy Anderson

So if receiving God's grace in vain is receiving God's grace in such a way that it doesn't shape us, it doesn't change us, it doesn't bring about that proper maturity in Christ, then what Paul is saying before us today is we need to get rid of the impurities. We need to get rid of those partnerships that are getting in the way of that. Why? So that we can actually bring it to its proper fulfillment, so we can bring holiness to completion, that we will allow it to make us holy unto the Lord, that we would live into our identity. That's what Paul is saying. That's the pursuit that's set before us. [00:30:26] (37 seconds)  #ReceiveGraceFully

Say yes to him is say no to things that don't belong. No to things that aren't consistent with that yes. Because here's the danger. I don't think any of us just wake up one day and say, nah. I'm done with God. Do that happen slowly, happens quietly, subtly with one compromise at a time? One yes that should have been a no and then another one and another one. And suddenly, we look up, and we're like, I'm far from God. What happened? So the question before us this morning isn't just have you said yes to God, and that's an important and necessary question. [00:34:31] (40 seconds)  #SayYesChooseNo

So when we're talking about these sinful context that that Paul has in mind here, we're talking about those contexts where the price of participation is compromise. K. It means if you want to yoke yourself here with this commitment, with this person, with this business opportunity, whatever it is, to do so requires you or asks you to compromise on your purpose as a as an ambassador of Christ. It's gonna ask you to compromise on your identity in Christ. It's going to ask you to compromise on what God has set before you. [00:20:47] (42 seconds)  #AvoidUnequalYoking

Because if we go into this conversation at all about holiness and this pursuit of God and we leave the fear of God out, then, friends, holiness, all it it just becomes legalism. Without the fear of God, holiness is legalism. It's it's behavior modification. Holiness is a performance, and we can grade each other, and we'll move on. But that's not what that's not what we're called to. When we pursue holiness out of the fear of the Lord, now holiness becomes worship. [00:32:25] (39 seconds)  #FearLeadsToWorship

This isn't something that we need to be shaking in our boots about as Christians to talk about fearing the Lord. This is a healthy fear of God where we see God for who he is, and we see the world in which we live for what it is, and we see ourselves for what we are. And as a result, we we revere God because we know that he is a God who is gracious and merciful. We know that he is a God who's who has a love that is abounding for us. [00:31:10] (28 seconds)  #RevereGodWithGrace

Some of you right now, maybe you come from legalistic backgrounds, and you're just your skin's crawling. And I get it because sometimes we talk about this as if we're just trying to conjure up a righteousness and holiness of our own. But that's not what Paul's saying. I wanna show you in the text is because it's right here where he says, we cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit. What happens? He says, bringing holiness to completion. In other words, what Paul is articulating is that the holiness is there. [00:29:17] (36 seconds)  #CleansedNotLegalism

It's easy for us to to point to our phones and say, man, I'm spending too too much time on social media. It's social media's problem. We don't wanna deal with the fact that internally, we've made an idol out of something. We don't wanna be honest with ourselves that we've elevated something to a place that it doesn't belong, and so we wanna shift the blame. Sometimes when it comes to these conversations, we'll say, hey. You know what? I didn't blow up at that person. I didn't let my anger get the best of me. But if you're really honest inside, you are just seething. [00:26:26] (30 seconds)  #CheckYourIdols

So we don't do that. Right? And and what he is conveying then to go from there is, hey, we are the temple of the living God. So we need to take that kind of stuff into consideration. We need to recognize that there are sacred spaces. These sacred spaces, friends, are those places where where we worship God, where God dwells with us, where where we commune with him, where God gets to dictate what obedience and faithfulness looks like. And simply to put, the world doesn't get to define those terms. [00:16:15] (28 seconds)  #ProtectSacredSpaces