This is your majesty and all. Amen. Yeah. Only. Come on. Every enemy. We speak. Sing. God bless you. Thank you so much for being here today. If you're a guest, if you're a visitor, we're especially thankful that you're here today.

As we were preparing this morning, Tyler prayed with the tech team and everybody who's a part of this experience, this experience in this room, because there's a lot of people part of this experience that are all over our buildings. But, you know, he prayed for those of you who are here for the first time.

And we want you to know that that is an unbelievable privilege that God would trust us with your worship experience today. And I, in my 20 years here, I've learned that there are times when God will lead a person here just for one visit because He wants them to encounter Him in a different way, or they're just in a place where they need something, just a fresh dose of hope.

And if that's you, listen, thank you for the one opportunity that God may give us to be used by Him to impact you. It's just a beautiful gift, to be quite honest with you.

And if you've been here, because there's a whole other group of people that have been here some years and have never really reached the point where they're ready to say, "Hey, I'm here," we get that too, because we believe that you're allowed to worship anonymously before us because you can't possibly, possibly be anonymous before Him. Him knowing you're here is far more important than us knowing you're here.

And that's what's so powerful. And maybe you're the first-time person or you've been here for a couple years and it's time for you to say, you know what? I do want the Lord to know I'm here.

And if you reach down into that card holder underneath your seat—it's right or left of your knee—and you pull out a guest card, you'll never guess what it says on the front of it. "I'm here." You know, and it's a statement to us, surely. I mean, you're going to give us information. But I think more impactfully why we use that phrase is because it's a statement to God. "Hey, don't forget, I'm here." Maybe, just maybe, it's the statement you need to remind yourself, "I'm here. I'm in this room at this time, for this moment. I'm here."

And if you want to let us know you're here, we're not going to— we're never going to abuse that information. We're not going to email you, call you, text you, or show up unannounced on you ever. We will send you a letter and I sign every one of them and I get the honor of seeing your name. And I pray for you, I thank God for you. I ask Him. I'm jealous. I want you back, okay? But I just pray His favor over you.

So whether you do it by QR code—you can scan that. It's on our program. It's on the floor in front of every seat that's on the floor up there in the low seating. You'll have to catch that one. Or though there's one on the front page and the back page of the program that you were handed on your way in today. And just hit guest on that QR code and fill it out. Hit send.

And the great news is, if you do that or you fill it out physically, if you fill out a guest card, I would encourage you to just go out through these center doors and make a quick right, and there's our guest services table and present it to one of the volunteers there because then they're going to give you a bag that says thank you. Okay? It's not a bribe, it's a blessing to say thank you for being here. And you just, just know we care deeply.

And if you text it or if you scan it, when you go out the door, they'll already have your name and they'll have a bag with your name on it. Just go get it, okay?

In a moment when I pray for today's offering, you can give the same way that you can let us know you're a guest. You do it digitally or with an envelope. And if you don't want to meet anybody with the "I am here" card, that's fine. Just drop it off. There's mailboxes. There's three or four of them in this room. On your way out, there's one right outside the doors here. There's one on the sky bridge. There's three or four downstairs in the first lobby. Just drop it in there. They're all locked. No one will see it other than the one person with the key, and that's not me. And they'll open it up and they'll take your gift that you present to God or your guest card, and we'll respond to you.

Paul writes in Second Corinthians, Chapter 8, "I'm not commanding you, but I want to test the sincerity of your love by comparing it with the earnestness of others. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake, He became poor, so that you, through His poverty, might become rich."

And Paul isn't using this passage to say, "I'm going to compare your individual giving to everybody." He's talking to the church at Corinth. He's talking to them as a community and their generosity. And he says, "I need to compare it." And who he was going to compare it to was a community of people known as the Macedonians.

The Macedonians were, as you learn from reading in this text of Second Corinthians, suffering a terrible famine, and people were dying, literally dying left and right. And the poverty was unbelievably severe. And Paul, in his journeys, was raising money for Jerusalem, who was also in this era facing a terrible famine, and people were dying from hunger.

And he was going to places like Corinth because Corinth was like New York, an incredibly metropolitan and unbelievably rich city, and yet Macedonia was experiencing what Jerusalem was. But the Macedonians, he said, they begged us to give, and they gave way beyond their capacity.

And Paul wasn't certainly comparing the size of the gift because, honestly, they were so, if you will, dirt poor that the volume or the size or the quantity of the gift was never going to match the Corinthian gift. But what was exceeding Corinth was the willingness to do so.

And Paul says, "I don't really care about the size of your gift," neither does God. But what He's very interested in is the sincerity of your heart. And don't ever forget that Christ became poor, that we might become rich.

And the reason we receive your offering that you're giving to God is because we live in a world where there's a severe famine and they're spiritually dying every day because they don't have the nourishment that they need. They don't have the bread of life. Life.

So let's give as a community, knowing what God's going to do with it. He's going to feed starving souls.

Let's pray.

Father, we love you and thank you for the privilege of partnering with you. You need nothing that we have. Nothing. But you know, we need—we need to give it to you because it's evidence of a growing heart. It's evidence of a faithful heart. It's evidence that we realize what Christ went through so that we could come through to the other side.

So we give now to you, never to the church. The church is like Christ. We're broke. People give to you and you bless the church by anointing those gifts and allowing us to use them to advance the kingdom.

It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Tomorrow night is the call right here in this room. The call is our worship experience. Discipleship experience. Experience. For 18 through 30 somethings. It is a packed house. If you think it's loud now, come tomorrow night. My goodness gracious. It is a wild, wonderful time.

They're in the midst of a series called Real lationships. So they're talking about the practical reality of relationships in your life between you and God and you and your fellow man.

Family picnic next Sunday, October 19, Sunday evening. There's information in the program. Don't miss it. Tremendous food lot, live worship, outdoor baptisms. It's going to be a powerful experience. Love to have you. Don't miss it.

Ladies. The pregnancy center here in Bowling Green needs your help. Women at their most vulnerable moment, whether they're still pregnant or just gave birth, who are alone in this experience, need your presence.

The pregnancy center prepares them and provides wonderful things. Things. But they need women to integrate with these ladies in that most vulnerable area of their life. And so please, it could be an hour, it could be once a month, whatever. Every hour counts. So look that up in the program.

And last but not least, Curbside is having their candy craze. It is our chance to have a holy ween instead of a Halloween with these kids at Lee Point and Parker Bennett Curry. And our goal is to get them so juked up on sugar that when we send them home, their parents have to call 911 and wonder what's happened to them. That's how much candy we want to give them. Okay? So make sure you bring some. Donate it so we can bless these children with a wonderful experience.

Let's prepare our heart and mind for week one of a series called Be Holy, written by a guy most everybody in this room is gonna know. His name's Peter.

Fit in, to bl, to compromise. But God calls us to something different. Something higher. Not perfect, not fake, but set apart. Because standing out in a crowd is—in a world out of control, God.

This is more than behavior. It's identity. It's worship. We weren't made to blend in. We were made to stand out. He's called us to be.

A reading from First Peter, chapter 1, verse 13 and following:

"Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed as God. Coming as obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all that you do. For it is written, 'Be holy because I am holy.'"

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word. And it couldn't be more clear in that verse that Peter uses from the book of Leviticus that your calling on our life is not to do holy so that we can be holy. It's to be holy so that we can then do holy.

And you have called each and every one of us to something that is extraordinary and beyond comprehension. And that is not to just obey the list. Although to do holy and not be holy, holy will not gain you entrance into heaven, nor would it make sense to be made holy and not do holy. That's blatantly inconsistent.

But those who are holy will do holy. And that is going to make a difference in our world.

We love you and thank you. In Jesus' name we pray to you. Amen.

The letter First Peter is obviously written by Peter and we're all familiar with Peter. And this letter is written to an audience of people who would have been living in what's now modern-day Turkey. You'll see some of the areas in a moment in the letter.

And Peter was writing at a time where there was so much incredible blatant inconsistency in the world. And Peter, who better to write about blatant inconsistency other than someone who knows the taste of blatant inconsistency? Peter himself.

And that even though the world is constantly shocking us with its capacities to do the worst possible and imaginable things, what Peter wanted us to know is that doesn't have to affect the way we live. That in a blatantly inconsistent world doesn't mean that God's people have to be continually inconsistent themselves.

But the good news of his letter is that he does address the fact and the reality that those who are saved will occasionally behave inconsistently, that their conduct won't match their confession. And he speaks to that very clearly today.

And what Peter wanted that audience to know in the moment that he was written is that we've all heard that if you don't study history, you're doomed to do what? Repeat it.

And while to some extent that's basically true, mostly that's utter nonsense, because we've been studying history for thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years, and we continue to do the same things over and over and over and over again.

Now, hopefully, in your life, you've learned from your past, and it's affecting your present. But Peter knew a guy who had a past, knew that his past was not that which was motivating him to live differently.

For Peter, it was the future. What Peter knew was the thing that can penetrate your present reality to redefine it is not the things that have happened in the past, although some of them you'll see are very important. But ultimately, what changes us, what changes our reality, what changes our perspective is the future.

The certainty and the guaranteed nature of our future can penetrate our current life living. And that, in my opinion, is the most transformative reality in the New Testament.

The nature of our guaranteed inheritance should penetrate your current living to alter the way that you see things and the way that you live.

Peter's writing in about AD 62, give or take a year, AD 62. He's in the city of Rome, a city of over 1 million people. City probably geographically larger than Nashville, but Nashville's about a million people. Think about that. 2,000 years ago. And he is in Rome.

And in short order, Peter, somewhere around 62 to 63, he's going to lose his life. He's going to be crucified, just like Christ, except before they crucified him, he said, "I am not worthy to die the way my Lord and Savior died. Crucify me upside down." And they did.

Peter was crucified upside down on a cross. But what's amazing about Peter's history is just before he was crucified, his wife was—we hear nothing of her in Scripture other than maybe she exists. But his wife was extremely faithful. She was in many ways the backbone of Peter. And her faithfulness caused her to refuse to deny Christ. And so they crucified her.

Her. And as Peter stood and witnessed and watched, he rejoiced. It's crazy, I know. And he kept yelling out to his wife, "Remember the Lord. Remember the Lord. Remember the Lord."

And in A.D. 62 or 3, the persecution in the city of Rome was tremendous, but still going to get even worse. It hadn't spread to the whole Roman Empire, just the city of Rome.

And by this point, Nero, who ultimately lost his reign on the Roman Empire because he was a sick human being. He was a pedophile. He was known to rape little boys. He was a sick and twisted human being who even the people of a godless nation finally realized that he's just sick and twisted. And it would cost him eventually his reign.

And he had already, because of his own paranoid, sick and twisted mind, begun to persecute Christians. And the persecution was pretty rough. It was just in Rome.

But even at that point, he was practicing horrible. One of his favorite was to impale a follower of Jesus Christ on a stick right up through their spine and dip them in oil and black tar and set their bodies on fire in order to light the streets of Rome.

So when people were going out to dinner or going to market at night, the streets were lit by the burning bodies of followers of Jesus Christ.

He was also the one who, he thought, "You know what, the gladiator games, our people, we need to pump them up a little bit. We need to have an opening act." And the opening act became bathing followers of Christ in the terrible blood of animals that were slaughtered. And then he threw them out into the middle of the Coliseum and let the lions out, and the lions would devour them and it would get the crowd in this bloodthirsty, maniacal mood. Now for the gladiators to come out and kill one another.

That's Nero.

And that was just basically in Rome until AD 64, when Nero sensed that he was losing his authority, he was losing his favor with the people. The cry of Rome was always Pax Romana. Pax Romana. Which means the peace of Rome, that we're here to bring peace. And they never brought peace, except at the end of a story.

And the citizens of Rome weren't experiencing the prosperity, they weren't experiencing the benefit. And they began to question early Nero's leadership.

And so Nero got a crazy idea because he's a crazy man. I know what I'll do. I'll have some of my men set the city on fire in one district and then I'll rush in and I'll go from zero to hero by putting the fire out.

The problem is that fire didn't get put out and they lost almost two-thirds of the city burnt to the ground. Imagine losing two-thirds of Nashville.

Nero feeling the heat of everybody being like, "I think we know what happened." Guess who he blamed? He blamed Christians.

And that's when the widespread persecution began, the great diaspora out of Rome, and the hatred and the animosity of Nero began to spread throughout the entire Roman Empire.

And Peter is writing to an audience of people who probably are going to receive this letter right just before or just after the fire, but it doesn't matter when they got it. It's speaking to the reality of an experience that they were going to be very familiar with either now or shortly thereafter.

A world of blatant inconsistency and horror and chaos and violence. Sound familiar?

And Peter, the one man who knows better than anyone about what it's like to be a faithful follower, to have a terrible failure. But that failure wasn't final. And Christ called him back to himself. And he got to live consistently, faithfully in an unbelievably crazy way.

He was more faithful at his death than he was before a teenage girl the night of Christ's death. Because that's the work that Christ does in us. And it is us who can feel the impact of hope, Peter would say, in the present.

Because yes, there is an undeniable past, you'll see a little bit of that today. But it's ultimately because of this untouchable, unconquerable future that that which is going to be is so certain, so guaranteed that in the blatant inconsistencies of this ever crazy world you can live consistently.

Because your hope is not in your hands. It's in the Lord and it's in heaven and it's guarded and shielded for you. And that truth, Peter thinks, will make the greatest difference in your everyday living.

First, Peter starts out by telling us who wrote it. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. We know Peter. We know Peter's life. We know what Peter has seen. We know what Peter has done.

He has seen the best of what it means to be a follower of Christ: get out of a boat and walk on water. He has seen Christ raise people from the dead. He has seen Christ heal lepers. He has seen Christ cast out demons.

He was there when Jesus spit on the ground and made mud patties and put them on the eyes of blind Bartimaeus so that he could see. He was there when Jesus stuck his finger in his mouth and plugged it into a guy's ear. Why? I don't know. But that's what he did. And the guy went from deaf to able to hear.

Peter has literally seen it all. Peter has seen Christ on a cross. He has seen Christ out of the tomb. That's Peter.

But Peter's also the fool who denounced Christ, said, "I don't know the man. I don't know the man." And then the last time, with the most vulgar language imaginable, "I don't know the bleeping, bleeping, bleeping man." And then the rooster crowed.

'Cause Christ said, before the rooster crows tonight, brother, you're gonna deny me three times. He said, "That ain't happening, Jesus. If I have to die with you, I'll never deny you." And Jesus, like, "Mm, bubby, you don't know this, but the devil's in heaven right now asking God if he can have you and sift you and his wheat," which obviously God didn't let him do it.

But Peter was prideful. But he's also an apostle, okay? And this means ambassador. He's an ambassador of Jesus Christ.

There's 13 apostles, not 12. There's 13. Of course, we lose Judas because he was the hypocrite. Peter was inconsistent, but not a hypocrite. He was truly saved. He just wasn't living like it.

Judas lived as though he was saved, but he really wasn't. Judas would eventually take his own life, and we'd be down to a little 11. Matthias was elected before Pentecost to replace Judas. We have 12. And then Paul becomes the 13th apostle of Jesus. He's an ambassador.

Now the office of apostle has closed, okay? Because there is a requirement. The only way you could be an apostle—the Bible very clearly teaches this—is you had to see Christ in His resurrected state, which Paul did on the road to Damascus.

But we're still ambassadors for Christ. We're still representatives. We're just not in that specific type of office.

And who's he writing to? He's writing to God's elect, exiles scattered throughout the province of Pontus, Galatia, capital Asia, and Bithynia. This is Turkey. And this is what he's trying to describe and define to us.

And many have over the last 300, 400 years taken some of the language that's in this, in the next verse, I'll show you, and created all kinds of doctrinal theological positions and stances that have taken individual words and tried to create mind-blowing doctrinal theological stances that I tend to think are nonsensical.

These are some of the favorite passages, if you will, of a Calvinist to talk about God's choosing some and not others, talking about predestination, which isn't in this passage.

And what happens when you pull each of these words apart and create a theology alone is that you deny the context with which they are written.

Each of these words alone is meaningful. But the power, Peter would say, is when they're all together, that the ultimate power in these passages comes from the totality of their use, not their individual meanings, although individual meanings do lead into it.

So when you hear "God's elect," people think election. And I get all of that. But ultimately what Peter's talking about here is the elect are people who have been saved. You join a category of people known as the elect, and that the Israelites were the elect of God, okay?

When you accepted God, you became a part of the elect. And when you get saved, you become a part of this category of people, okay? And you'll see in a second something that's really beautiful, but that's all that is, is you're now in a category.

It isn't as though God elected some and didn't elect others. That's just biblically not true.

And so we're, if you will, a saved group of people who are now exiles. And this isn't like an illegal alien, someone who snuck across a border living in a foreign land. It's more like a political exile, someone who's exiled to another land because it's not safe where they come from.

They're not in their homeland anymore. More, and that's us, because our homeland is heaven and we're now exiles here. We're living in a land that we don't belong in, that our rights are now different, our citizenship is in heaven.

And so if you're ever wondering as a follower why you feel like you don't fit in anymore, it's because you don't fit in anymore, okay? You're not a citizen here anymore, okay? Your citizenship is in heaven, okay? And we live as if you would exiled ambassadors of Jesus Christ.

And that's part of the reason we gotta live differently. And we're scattered. And scattering has always been God's heart. He's always wanted His people to cover every inch of this world.

And this word is literally the word that's used for a farmer who sticks his hand into a bag of seed and starts to throw it into the field. Well, we're not farmers per se, but every one of us has a bag of seed.

And what we learned from Peter is the way your seed generally gets spread all around the world is each of us has a little hole in the bottom of our bag, don't we? And everywhere we go, we scatter seed.

So everywhere you live, everywhere you go, you scatter the seed of God's grace. So as you go, you sow. And we're not doing it in Turkey. We're doing it wherever we're living.

And then he goes on and says, these people, those of you who have been chosen. Okay, and who has God chosen? For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.

The Bible says in Ephesians, chapter 2, that before the foundation of the world, God knew you and chose you. You are the chosen. Every human being is the chosen of God. And that choosing happened before the foundation of the world.

Revelation 13:9 says, the Lamb of God who was slain before the foundation of the world. God chose you before you ever chose to sin. God chose you before you were ever conceived. God chose you before He ever created anything.

That in the distant, eternal past, God had an intentional, eternal choosing of you.

Now the key is you've got to reach the point where you choose Him because this is a relationship. It can't just be that He loves you. That's undeniable. You got to show that you love Him through faith.

And in Jesus Christ, everybody is chosen, but not everybody chooses Him. No one goes to hell because their sins aren't forgiven. That's not true. Because He died for the sins of the world.

Jesus said, "You stand condemned because you don't believe, not because you misbehave."

Hell will be littered, populated with forgiven people who never chose the reality that God chose them.

According to His foreknowledge, long before anything was created, He chose you. And since that choosing and your conception and birth, He's been drawing you unto Himself through the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

The sanctifying work of the Spirit is to quicken your spirit. Because the problem is not that you're dead or not that you're bad. It's that you're dead.

If He was bad and you need to be good, I'd give you a list. But it's not about the list. It's not about the law. It's that you're not alive.

And when you're dead, in your trespasses, Christ Jesus died for the ungodly. You were born dead. I don't mean to sound graphic, but you are. Spiritually, you were dead.

Man, all humanity's been dead since Adam and Eve. When they're born, their spirit is gone. Your body and soul, beautiful, wonderful human being. Your soul is unique. There's never been another one like you. There'll never be another one like you.

But that's not gonna keep you from going to hell. Because if you don't have a spirit, you can't connect and relate with God. That's why they had to leave the garden.

But as Christ raised Himself from the dead, He raises your spirit from the dead. At the moment of your salvation, the Spirit of God is now able to work in your life because you have a spirit in your body.

And then the Holy Spirit comes and He joins you. And this is all the eternal plan and work of God. Eternally, intentionally. He's done everything to save you, and He wants to change you from the inside out.

Christ didn't come to make bad people good. He came to make dead people alive.

And the truth is, you're going to be blatantly inconsistent at times, just as Peter is. But that blatant inconsistency has no effect upon your eternal relationship with God Almighty.

And that truth, Peter believes, should be the most transformative reality in your life.

We live differently because we know we're different. We don't live different to become it. Because, again, it's not your behavior. If it was a list, I'd give it to you. I'd pound it down your throat every Sunday. It's not a list. It's love.

And God did this according to what? His foreknowledge. He knows everything from beginning to end and beyond beginning and end.

Ephesians 2 and Colossians is so clear: before the foundation of the world, He knew you and He chose you to conform you into the likeness of His Son.

That's the entire purpose for which Christ Jesus came. And He does it through the sanctifying work of Jesus Christ so that you and I can do what then? Be obedient.

See the order? He chose you, you choose Him. The sanctifying work of the Spirit brings your spirit back to life, preparing you to live the life for which He saved you.

And what is that? To be obedient to Jesus Christ, sprinkled with His blood.

And this is not the moment of salvation. In the Old Testament, you see this scene with Moses and the Israelites at the base of Mount Sinai when they finally choose to embrace that beautiful covenant of God.

"I, the Lord your God, who took you out of Egypt, you shall have no other God but me."

It's a marriage proposal. The Ten Commandments. The first four are a marriage proposal.

Look what I've done. All I'm asking you to do is when you enter into a covenant, don't have any other God but me.

Is it unreasonable for a husband or a wife to look at their spouse and say, "Listen, when we enter into this covenant, I don't want you to be with another man. In fact, second command: I don't even want you to imagine what it might be like with another man. I certainly don't want you to begin to fashion a life where all of a sudden that man becomes more important to you in your life."

That's Command 3. Don't do that.

And lastly, please, can we, like, can we just spend a day a week alone together? Sabbath rest?

It's a marriage proposal.

And at the end, Moses said to him, "Every one of you that wants to connect covenantally with God, come on over here."

And a lot of them didn't. And the earth opened up and swallowed those who didn't want anything to do with it.

And once they were over there, Moses took a hyssop branch and stuck it into the blood of the sacrificed animals and began to sprinkle it over all the people to show that they're now a part of the covenant.

Did that with Aaron, when the Aaronic priesthood began, was created by God. Sprinkled blood.

And what this is saying is that you're now a part of the covenant. You're part of the people of God. You've accepted the marriage proposal and God on Mount Sinai.

It's literally like He takes it. He's got to come all the way down from heaven. What's He doing? Just taking a knee? "I'm the Lord your God. I took you out of Egypt already. Now you want in? Then I'll give you the list."

Don't worry about the list. We'll get to honor your father and mother, that it might go well with you and you live long and prosper into the land in which I'm leading you. We'll get there. We'll get to the "thou shalt not kill." You shouldn't steal. You shouldn't lie.

But here's the bottom line: Are you prepared to have no other God but me? How much further do I got to descend? Right.

This is the glory of entering into the covenant with God. And when this begins to sink in, it's amazing.

Just imagine Peter finally reaching a point where he had to get his head around, "I cannot fail my way out of the faith that I've expressed in Christ."

Exactly.

And I know, I know there's a lot of people out there. GregFarrell.me.com. Just go ahead and send the email.

Really? You can't tell people they can't lose their salvation.

I'm not telling them that. The Bible is. Quit arguing with me. Open up the book and read it.

Like people will just go out and be crazy. They're crazy anyway.

Look at Peter.

But when you trust the work of the Holy Spirit, you realize that He is going to sanctify you.

I'll tell you this whether you like it or not, okay?

And here's what I want you to have.

In a crazy world that knows nothing of these two things: grace and peace and abundance. This is distinctive.

Can you imagine walking this earth even in your own failures? Or in the foolishness and the futility of the way people live in this world? And you walk with grace and peace, in abundance, you're gonna be pretty fragrant. I promise you that.

So Peter starts this letter by saying, "Listen, you can feel the impact of hope."

You're gonna see it in a second because of God's eternal and intentional work in your life, not just on the planet, not just looking at history.

What about how'd you get to this moment? Your past matters, but not nearly as much as—

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Memorize that. Let that be your prayer in the morning.

"In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade."

This is pure power.

All right?

And I put it on here twice because I want to show you a little bit about each one of these words. Because this is what transforms your living. This is what inspires you to live differently.

Okay?

"In His great mercy"—God's mercy is always evident, always present. Because the Bible declares His mercies are new every morning.

And mercy isn't God feeling pity. It's God feeling badly. Not about you, but for you.

He's not disappointed in you because He knows everything. You didn't surprise Him.

He's disappointed for you because He knows you got to live in this broken, terrible, painful, tragic, jacked up world.

And that moves Him with compassion, with deep concern.

So if you're not in Christ today, you haven't been yet saved, I want you to know what the Bible says is God's not mad at you, He's mad for you.

Because this life is not what He's created you for. He's created you for heaven.

And He's so deeply moved by your plight.

Because, see, if it was a list, He could give you a list and you could change your life, but you can't follow the list.

But He knows what your plight is. You're dead in your trespasses.

And the only way for you to be made alive is for the author of life to raise your spirit from the dead.

And that moves Him. He knows there's nothing you can do about your condition. And He's bothered by that.

And in that great emotion He has given us, He didn't earn it. It's given. It's a gift of God because of the compassion that God has for the plight of humanity.

And what He's given us is new birth into a living hope.

You've been, as Jesus told Nicodemus, born again.

And the power of being born again is so substantial because you go from a person who God is now your Father, not just your creator, that you're no longer a creature, you're actually His child.

You're no longer a sinner, you're actually a saint.

And that as you walk this earth, nothing could ever change one fact about you. You.

And that is whoever your biological father is, you could be a wretched, good-for-nothing scumbag. And at the end of the day, your father's still your father. You can't change that genetically.

That is the power of Jesus Christ saying, "Unless you be born again, you will not see the kingdom of God."

But the glory of being born again is such that when God's your Father, you can't be wretched enough to change that spiritual, genetic reality that once you're born again and your spirit is raised from the dead, He is your Father.

And nothing can change that physically and nothing can change that spiritually.

And all of God's people said, Amen.

And what you've been born into is not a dead hope, it's a living hope.

It's not a list, it's a hope.

And this hope is alive for one reason, because it's through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the fact that He has conquered death.

He'll never know it, see it, or taste it. He's overcome it. Its sting has been removed.

If He were to die, your hope would die.

But He's now alive and forevermore.

And so is your hope.

There's no way your hope can die.

Your hope is everlasting life.

Why do you believe that, Greg Farrell?

Because Christ will never die again.

He has died once and for all through one sacrifice to forever make holy those who are being saved.

Hebrews, chapter four.

In a constantly tragic and ever-changing world, you get to walk with a reality that can't touch my eternity.

And the power of that guaranteed eternity should penetrate your present living to give you not only hope, but inspiration to be different because you are different.

That you're now able to do holy because it's coming from a place of you've already been made holy.

And the good news is, you've been given an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fail.

Never.

On the count of three, with everything you've got, so that they hear you all over south central Kentucky say this word.

One, two, three.

Never.

And I've got a doctorate in hermeneutics, which is the science of interpretation.

You don't even need a second grade education to know what never means.

Never means never.

Never.

It'll never perish. It'll never spoil. It'll never fade.

What won't? Your inheritance.

Like, never means never.

And that security will not unleash disobedience.

That'll unleash freedom to go live the life God saved you for.

And the reason it won't is because this inheritance, it's not in your hands, it's in heaven.

You can't lose something you're not holding.

It's kept in heaven for you.

In essence, your future is deposited in Christ.

FDIC.

And some of us have more faith in the federal government protecting our bank deposits than we do in Jesus Christ protecting our inheritance.

Up to 200. To 200. I think it's 200. It might be 250.

You know this, right?

If you have $8,000 in the bank and that bank goes belly up, you get a check from the federal government, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

If you got 200 grand, you get 200 grand.

Now here's what I would say to you if you got more than 200.

You want multiple banks, you want multiple checking accounts. Accounts.

Because it's 200 grand per account.

And all God's people said, "Well, thank you, Greg, for that accounting tip."

Spread it out right so they can give you all.

See you.

Why did we do that?

Because of the Great Depression and the banks went belly up and there was no security.

Now your money is safe.

And some of you literally have more faith, if you think about it, in the money you have in the bank than the inheritance you have in heaven.

And here's the good news.

It's kept in heaven for you.

Who?

For now, the who is you.

We're not talking about your inheritance anymore.

Peter's talking about you.

Okay.

And it's kept in heaven for you, who through faith, are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that's ready to be revealed in these last days.

And that's the second coming of Christ.

And it isn't just your inheritance that's being shielded.

It's you.

And this word means security guard.

And someone is protecting you.

Someone's between you and anything in this world that might think it can touch or take your inheritance.

And that security guard who is demonstrating this unbelievable, almighty, untouchable, unconquerable power.

Power is God Almighty Himself.

And He is shielding you.

Don't worry.

No, you ain't losing that.

I got you.

Don't worry.

Nope, I got you.

You really think there's something in this world that's going to get through your God and get to you?

I don't.

He is shielding you till the second coming.

Why are we not living in light of that security?

We can feel the impact of hope because of what God has given us.

Us can never be taken from us.

It can't be taken from you, nor can you give it away, because it's not in your hands.

It's in heaven being kept for you.

That should impact the way you see this.

Your future should penetrate your present reality and cause you and me to live very differently.

But in all this, you greatly rejoice.

Though now for a little while, you may have had to suffer grief and all kinds of trouble, trials.

And that is true, right, that life is still filled with all kinds of trials.

Some of them you produce yourself because of your Peter choices.

You just do things you weren't supposed to do and you do it.

But then Christ comes to you and He reveals your choices.

Then He restores you, like He did to Peter on that beachhead.

And Peter was still living in his failure.

And Jesus wanted him to know, "Your failure's not final. Come here, Peter."

Next to a fire where Peter had stood next to a fire.

When he failed.

And Jesus asked him three times the same question.

Just like Peter was asked three times the same question when he failed on that Thursday night.

"I think you were with the man."

"I don't know him."

"I think you were with the man."

"I don't know."

"I think you were with the man."

"I don't know the bleeping, bleeping man."

And Jesus says to Peter, "Peter, do you love me?"

"Yes, Lord, I love you."

"Then feed my sheep."

"Peter, do you love me?"

"Yes, Lord. You know I love you."

"Take care of my lambs."

"Hey, Peter, do you love me?"

And you know how Peter's back to life?

He gets argumentative again.

"Lord, you know all things."

"Knock it off."

"You know I love you."

Peter's back.

He said, "Okay, okay, buddy. Feed my sheep."

Why did He do it three times?

To remind him of his failure?

No, to remind him of his future.

That even in our failure, it doesn't touch our future.

Some of the grief is just from living in a broken, jacked up, painful world.

And that's the truth.

It really is.

But we're weird people, people.

You'll see it next week.

We're peculiar people.

We're almost spiritually schizophrenic.

Because we do something in all this grief that the world never does.

We greatly rejoice.

We don't just rejoice.

We greatly rejoice.

It's not like we're sadistic and we want pain.

It's that we know pain never has the final word.

And pain can't touch my future inheritance.

And pain has no effect on my God, whose shield.

Exactly.

These have come to prove.

To prove the genuineness of your faith.

That your faith is real.

And often, what are we told by the name-at-claimant faith people?

That, oh, the only reason you're sick is because you have inadequate faith.

I have enough West Philly still in me to say to you, if you say that to me, duck, I punch you right in the mouth.

Spiritually, at least.

That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

You've got genuine faith.

It's worth more than all the gold of the world.

Now, sometimes the quality of it isn't as great as it should be.

That's why we gotta have the refining fire.

Peter, his faith got him out of the boat, and his fear caused him to sink.

I get that.

But faith is faith, right?

And these trials are used by God, as you'll see next week or the third week.

It's like the refining fire.

It takes the things out of your life.

Bad attitudes, bad thoughts.

It clears things up.

It makes you even more valuable than you already were.

And your faith, of greater worth than gold.

Your faith is worth more on this earth than Fort Knox.

Think about it this way.

You're going to spend your eternal eternity walking on top of the thing most people spend their life chasing after.

Gold.

Because you'll be walking on streets of gold and you ain't gonna be out there with a shovel trying to dig it up because the blessings of heaven will make gold look like asphalt.

You're gonna walk all over the thing we spend so much time chasing after.

And all of God's people said, "You got to be kidding me."

No, I'm not kidding you.

And that's how powerful your faith is.

It's of greater worth than gold, which does perish even though refined by fire.

And this faith is going to result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

The price you pay to live this life is what God's going to use to praise Jesus Christ when He returns.

It's not pointless that the things you go through to become the person God saved you to be is what when this earth.

The Bible says that at that time every knee will bow and every tongue confess to the glory of the Father, that Jesus Christ is Lord.

You know what?

They're going to be shown you and they're going to know it was possible that I should have taken a knee to Christ like you did.

Because now I'm being forced to my knee and I see who's standing with the Lord.

The people I mocked.

Because when He comes again, He's coming with His people and we shall be clothed in white.

We're not going to mock the lost.

We're going to mourn the lost.

But we shall be with Him when He appears.

And we become evidence that it was real, that it was a real faith.

And it was the best decision we could ever make.

And we won't mock them, we will mourn them.

But we shall be with Him where He is and we become the source.

We become the source of His praise and glory and honor.

It's powerful.

It's mind blowing.

Though you've not seen Him, you love Him.

Because Peter's thinking about the people right now that are like, "I'm having a hard time with this, Greg. You're talking about things that I can't even imagine."

And I would say to you, of course you can't imagine.

Because no eye has seen, no ear has heard.

No mind can know what God has in store for those who love Him.

Of course.

You can't imagine it.

There's so little about heaven in the Bible.

It tells us more about what's not there than what is there.

But why?

Because there's nothing more compelling in heaven than Jesus.

You're not going to be overwhelmed by a temple.

You're going to be overwhelmed by the Lord of that temple.

And Peter's like, "I get it, I get it."

But listen, you haven't seen Him yet.

You love Him.

And think about who that's coming from.

The guy that did see Him.

The guy not only saw Him, saw everything about Him.

He saw the transfiguration when Jesus took him and James and John up on the mountain and pulled open His chest, and the glory of who He was was fully revealed.

They were the ones that went with Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemane.

Once again, every miracle He ever performed, Peter was present and evident.

So for Peter to look at you and me and his original audience and say, "Listen, you got real faith."

I saw Him and believed.

You never saw Him.

And you love Him.

And what you love is the best thing about heaven.

Jesus.

You've already, like, you got the best part of all.

And even though you don't see Him, you believe in Him.

Like, I saw Him.

No wonder I believe in Him, right?

I mean, whoa, look what I saw.

I saw Him when He raised Himself from the dead.

You've never seen Him in your life.

Him.

You haven't seen Him and you believe in Him, right?

Quit wearing yourself out.

Peter's like, "What you've done is far more compelling than what I did."

I was with Him and denied Him.

You never saw Him and you love Him.

This is powerful faith.

You believe in Him and you're filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

Greg, tell me what this joy's like.

I can't.

It's inexpressible.

But you can experience it.

Like, when you've had a taste of that joy, you're like, somebody says, "Tell me what it's like."

I don't know.

How do you define your first kiss?

Seriously, think about that.

Like, how do you say, "Well, you know, I twisted my head one way. She twisted her head one way. Her lips and my lips came together."

Like, you're like, dude, you're killing it.

No, no.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Right.

Some things just can't be defined, but that doesn't mean they can't be experienced.

Right?

Right.

And let's just be honest.

You are.

Are already.

And this is in what's called a present tense, which is the kind of verb that means it's happened, happening, and will never cease to happen.

It's an ongoing event that will never stop.

Perfect tense is a moment that happens in your life at the moment of your salvation.

You only get saved once.

It's a perfect moment and that will never change.

But a present reality is this ongoing, vibrant, never-ending experience.

And you are already, presently, currently, and ongoingly receiving the end result of your faith.

The salvation of what we talked about for five weeks.

Your very soul, the very best of you.

The seed of your mind, your will, your emotions, your personality, your quirkiness, your funny spirit, the things that make you happy and the things that make you sad.

The reason you love chocolate and cake, coconut, it's you and it's already been saved.

Salvation isn't a future tense, it's a present reality.

Right?

And it's ongoing.

The tense of the word alone declares that salvation never ends.

And here's the thing, most of the time, people save the best for last.

With Christ, you get the best first.

You get the ultimate goal of your faith immediately.

You've got the end result, the teleo, the completed reason, and that's the salvation of your marriage.

We feel the impact of hope because the trials are preparing us to live our forever life.

Now you don't have to wait.

But the truth of the gospel that you have clearly heard today through your proclamation of God's word is you must express faith in it.

Only you.

I can't believe for you.

No one can believe for you.

You have to believe.

And Jesus very clearly said that you stand condemned already.

That's not a future reality either, that's a present reality.

You stand currently condemned.

You don't have to worry about the end time judgment.

You're already condemned because you don't believe.

Your spirit's dead.

Just like Adam and Eve.

You were born dead, but Christ came to make you alive.

He came to pay the penalty you could never pay.

He came to live the perfect life that was required that you and I could never live.

He experienced the death that was meant for us.

But He raised Himself from the dead on the third day.

And then 40 days later, He ascended into heaven.

And now He's seated at the right hand of the Father.

And the Bible says He's coming again to judge the living and the dead, not the good and the bad.

You're either alive or you're still dead.

And what is alive or dead is your spirit.

Because right now, no matter what your body and soul, every human being is born body and soul.

What's missing is the spirit.

Spirit.

And that's why Adam and Eve were kicked out of the garden, because they could no longer relate intimately to God.

Because at that moment, God said, "If you sin, you die."

They died spiritually.

They went from being creatures that were made in God's image.

He's a trinitarian being.

He's God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

And Adam and Eve were body, soul, and spirit.

They, like God, were trichotomists.

But when they sinned, they were no longer like God.

Christ came to unleash a power called the resurrection, to not only raise Himself from the dead, but to raise your spirit from the dead.

And then once again, you become what God's always wanted you to be.

Body, soul, spirit.

And the Bible says.

And then the Spirit of God descends, as He always does, into the matter that doesn't yet fully matter until He descends into it like He did at creation, like He did at Pentecost, He does in your life.

And He enters you and He indwells you until Christ comes to claim you.

So it's no longer God with you.

It's God.

God in you.

The Bible says that He is the guaranteed seal.

He's the escrow payment.

He is the signet ring in the hot wax of your new heart that is sealed by Almighty God.

And nobody can break that seal but God Himself.

And He won't.

And all of this is available to you.

But Paul said in Romans, you have to believe in your heart that God raised His Son from the dead.

And you then have to speak, confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord.

You will be saved here now, forevermore.

The faith is a confident expression in the context, content of the Gospel.

It's both things.

It's content and confidence.

And if you've been here a while, you know what I'm about to say, because it's my favorite example.

It's what you're doing in those chairs right now.

You had more than enough content all your life about what chairs are and what chairs do.

When you came in this room.

You didn't ask a single question about these chairs because you already knew enough.

And when I said, "Take a seat," you took a seat with faith.

You sat down and took your body, your weight off of everything.

You're relying solely on a chair that you don't know where it came from.

You don't know who made it.

You don't know what it's made of.

You don't know what it cost and you don't care.

You got enough confidence in seats and chairs to hold you up, right?

That's the content of the gospel.

But now you got to rest in it.

You got to take your weight off your own feet.

You rest in Christ knowing that chair will never let you down.

Nor shall Christ, because your security is in Him, not you.

It's in His hands and He's in heaven, and you ain't losing it.

And Jesus said, "Listen, let me be clear with you."

In John, chapter 10, "Anyone the Father gives me will never be snatched from my hand."

Best of luck.

Nothing's going to snatch you from His hand.

But salvation's a transaction, not an emotional experience.

It's a transaction that you must participate in.

Let's pray together.

With every eye closed and every head bowed.

Father, I know you are moving mightily in this moment.

And not because I spoke, but because your Spirit is here.

And He's doing what He has been doing since Pentecost.

As He descended into this world, He has tugged on every human heart that will listen so that you can draw them unto Yourself.

So, Father, in this moment, draw them unto Yourself.

Some of you, you're right there.

It's time.

And to respond is that you don't have to come forward.

All you got to do is respond.

Some of you, right now, I'm going to ask you, but with every eye closed and every head bowed where you are, raise your hand.

Just raise your hand towards heaven.

An empty hand towards the Father is all the evidence that He needs that it's time for you to receive Christ.

You might be driving to work this week, listening to it.

Take that hand off the steering wheel, put the other one on it and just raise your hand to the Lord.

Declare to Him that you know you're a sinner, but you know Jesus is the same Savior and you're now declaring Him with your mouth as Lord.

Just quietly whisper, "Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Lord."

For those of you who have your hands up, you can place them down because I know how uncomfortable it is still for some of you.

You're sitting right next to somebody and you don't want them to feel you move.

And that's okay.

All you got to do is lift your head up and look.

Look this direction.

You're not looking at me.

I bring nothing to the table but my faith in Christ.

But in opening your eyes and looking forward, you're acknowledging God Almighty is in this room.

And He has spoken to you today.

Just look and whisper, "Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord."

You will be saved now and forevermore.

Father, we thank you for making it so easy to be saved.

We as human beings want to complicate it, but it's not.

Life is complicated.

Salvation isn't.

Being saved is not complicated for us because it was so horrible for Him.

So in this moment, Father, whether they're at our Morgantown campus, our Glasgow campus, they're in this room.

Or maybe you're listening to this a year from now.

It's just so, you know, if you're watching today's October 12, 2025, maybe it's April 2026 to you, and you're like, "Are you kidding me?"

No.

God's timeless because it was foreknowledge.

He knew when you would be listening to this, and today's your moment.

Whatever this day is, make it your moment.

Father, we love you and thank you.

In Jesus' name we pray.

And all of God's people said, Amen.

God's good, isn't He?

Give Him a hand, hand clap of praise in this house today.

Hey, if you just accepted Christ, the next step is baptism.

Because faith saves your soul, but baptism changes your life.

And baptism is the catalyst of transformation.

Get in those waters because Christ is already in you.

And you'll be amazed at the difference.

May the God of heaven richly bless you.

Go have a great day.

It there's.

Subject: Embracing Our Identity: Living in God's Grace

Dear Crossland Community Church,

I hope you are feeling the impact of hope that comes from knowing our future is secure in Christ.

Last Sunday, we explored the powerful truth from First Peter that though we live in a world full of blatant inconsistency and trials, our identity as God’s elect and exiles gives us a living hope that cannot perish, spoil, or fade. We saw how Peter’s own failures didn’t define his future because Christ’s resurrection guarantees our inheritance and shields us until His return. This hope isn’t about a list of rules but about being set apart by God’s mercy and grace, living as faithful ambassadors in a broken world. Our salvation is a present reality, an ongoing experience of joy and transformation, not just a one-time event.

So I want to challenge you this week: don’t let the chaos or your own failures shake your confidence in what God has done for you. Remember, your future is not in your hands but safely kept in heaven, guarded by the power of God Himself. Live boldly as one who is already holy, already chosen, and already loved, because that truth changes everything about how you walk today.

Blessings,
Crossland Community Church Team