All right. Let's give Christian and Karina a hand. Sienna, Luca. Man, what a wonderful moment in a family's life where you get to come before your church and display your beautiful children that the Lord has blessed you with.
And so I just wanted to clarify, like there's a few things that we're doing in this moment. The first one is that we are proclaiming that Luca is dedicated to Christ. That word dedicated means set apart. We see this all throughout scripture. This isn't a new concept. We see parents in scripture that the Lord has blessed with children. They are committing these children back to the Lord. They're saying, we're going to trust God with our children. That's ultimately what we're saying in this moment.
Because even though you may not feel this, God loves them more than you do. God loves your children. He loves your children more than you do. And we trust that he is a more faithful father than we will ever be. And so we are entrusting them back to the Lord. Parents in faith, surrendering their children to God's sovereign will and plan of salvation through Jesus.
The second thing we're doing this time. She could chill. She could run around. You got this, Sienna. You be you. Did you get the pictures at least? I mean, we got to get that one pic.
We're committing as parents and the church to represent the gospel to Luca and Sienna through our own personal relationship with Jesus. The way we can share the gospel most with our children is by falling more and more in love with Jesus. It's not teaching them a set of rules or a religion. It's about teaching them about a relationship with Jesus through our own personal relationship with Jesus.
So do you, Karina, Christian, commit to representing the gospel through your own personal relationship with Jesus? If so, say we do. Awesome. Church, this is also for you too. You get to represent the gospel to these children and to all the children in the church by living out the gospel in front of them by falling more in love with Jesus.
So church, will you commit to representing the gospel through your own personal relationship with Jesus? If so, say we do. Awesome.
And the last thing we're doing in this moment is we're receiving a picture of the new life we are given in Christ. We, as adults, in case you didn't know this, we are helpless and hopeless without Jesus. Just like an infant doesn't do a whole lot for you as parents, right? We get to serve and love our children. That's how God serves and loves us. He's given his life for us.
And in John 3, Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Unless we allow ourselves to be in the form of a baby, to understand that we are helpless and hopeless without Jesus, dependent on him alone.
So right now we are dedicating Luca, believing he was formed in his mother's womb for a purpose. And that purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. So he is God's workmanship created in Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that he should walk in relationship with Jesus.
So let's pray.
Father God, thank you for this family. Thank you for what a blessing they are to our whole church, how Christian serves and leads us into your presence through song, how Karina supports her husband and walks with him in this. And thank you for these two precious children. God, specifically for Luca, Lord, we pray that you would bless his life and that you continue to call him and give him repeated opportunities to see you again.
And we pray that he would see, hear, and respond to the beauty of your gospel, that he would come to know you as his Lord and his Savior, and that he would do mighty, mighty things for your name and your glory. We love you. It's in your name that we pray. Amen.
Amen. Love you guys. Awesome.
So at this time, the ushers are going to come forward. We're going to take our offering and we're going to have a giving moment. So if you would turn your attention to the screen.
All right. How's everybody doing?
Good.
Good. Well, whoever invented daylight savings time didn't have kids or pets, because no one informs them the fact that we get to sleep an extra hour. So we did not get that in my house. Around 6 a.m., little rumblings of voices started echoing out throughout the house, very similar to what would be called a ripple effect.
Do you ever take a rock and throw it into a crystal clear lake? You know what I'm talking about? So, like, you throw a rock in, and then all the ripples begin to affect all the other water around it. It just begins to ripple and go and move throughout the lake. And then maybe it'll hit the shoreline, but then it'll kind of come back, and the water's disturbed. It's affected.
And often in life, we have and make these decisions. And so we make decisions, and those decisions, both good and bad decisions, have a ripple effect that not only impact and affect our own lives, but then it also impacts and affects the lives of everybody else around them.
And so we're going to be jumping into Joshua chapter 7. And in Joshua chapter 7, we're going to see the ripple effect of one man's sin and how it impacted the community around him. So let me pray for us, and then we're just going to go ahead and dive right in. Sound good? All right, let's pray.
Jesus, I know that as we enter into your word, there are so many distractions and so many things that we could be thinking about in this moment. And God, I pray your protection over us. I pray that you would allow us to focus and that you'd begin to remove all of the things that the enemy wants to distract us with so that we can fix and focus our hearts and our minds on you.
God, you have something to speak to us. This is a morning that we get to come before you and really begin to deal with some of the deep-rooted issues that we have in our lives and lay them at your feet where we find mercy and grace.
God, I thank you for every other church in our community that stands firm on the goodness of your gospel, stands firm on Jesus alone, by faith alone, through grace alone. God, I think of our sending church, Summit Church, and how they've continually just poured into us and have helped and served us. God, thank you for Pastor Joe at Summit Gateway, that you are continuing to use them to impact that community. Thank you for their partner church, Gateway Church, with Pastor Zach and Pastor Sam, Lord, and how you're doing a mighty work in them.
God, I thank you that we get to partner with these churches and lift up your name for your glory as all of us who profess faith in you will be worshiping you in heaven together. So God, we love you. God, I do pray that you prepare our hearts and that your spirit would stir something in us this morning.
In your name we pray. Amen.
So I want to give us some context, and the context kind of leading us into Joshua 7 starts in Joshua chapter 6. So over the last three months, we've been walking and journeying through Joshua, the book of Joshua. We're going chapter by chapter and verse by verse, and a lot of the stories, if you maybe grew up in the church, you would have recognized some of these stories because you saw them like on a felt board in Sunday school.
Anybody with me on that?
Anybody know what the felt board is? Raise your hand if you know what the felt board is. All right, I'm in good company. So a lot of these stories, so you have the Israelites in Egypt in captivity, and then the plagues coming, and we had that on the board. And then you have God freeing the Israelites out of slavery and moving them and parting the Red Sea. And then God allowed them to journey into the wilderness, and then he helps them with food from the sky and water from a rock, and protects them and preserves them as they are wandering in the wilderness because of their disobedience.
And then he eventually raises up a leader named Joshua, and that leader is going to lead them into the promised land. But there's a river in their way, and so what does God do? He stops the water from the flowing river so that the whole people of Israel can pass through on dry ground.
But when we talk about entering into the promised land and God conquering all of these big things, we would then think that the end result, promised land, would be like slavery. Like sitting in an all-inclusive, like on the beach with a piña colada in our hand, chilling. That's actually not their story.
Because now they're on the other side of the Jordan River, and they're about to go to battle. And so the command for them is that they have to wipe out the inheritance, or wipe out the people, the current people that are in that area, who are worshiping pagan gods. And so it is an unclean people, and the Israelites are being sent into this promised land. They're supposed to conquer all of these nations through war, through battle, and purge the land of its evil.
And so they enter, come up to the walls of Jericho. What does God do? He tears down the walls. Not just tears them down somewhat, but he flattens the walls of Jericho. And then they go in, and they take over the city.
And so at the end of Joshua chapter six, we see some commands from God. Now, here's what I want us to understand. These are clear commands. When God instructs his people, he gives clear commands. So this is what he says. This is Joshua chapter six, verse 17. Everything within the city shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction. What does that mean? Destroy it all. Destroy it all. Destroy everything in the city of Jericho.
Now, verse 19. God's instruction leaves no room for doubt. He gave them a clear instruction, clear commands, and this is what they were supposed to do. Destroy everything. Keep the gold. Keep the gold and the silver and bronze and iron and dedicate those things to the Lord. Put them in the Lord's treasury.
And I think similarly to their story, often we read God's commands, we hear God's commands, and if we were fully honest, we don't necessarily really care to pay attention. We know maybe what God says. We know what his word would say, but we don't really pay attention.
I mean, anybody take a test in high school or middle school where you were told to study, but then you didn't study? It's a multiple-choice test, right? So you feel like, oh, I listened enough in Sunday school. I don't really need to study. So you go into the test, and you're like, yeah, it's multiple choice. I'll just find the best answer. And then when you can't find the best answer, it's always D because it's all the above, right?
And so they're all kind of somewhat right, and then you choose D. But here's the deal. When we look at this, we think that maybe we're smart enough. Maybe I'm smart enough to filter through the multiple choice. Maybe I know enough, and I'm experienced enough, or I've lived enough life that I know what the right answer's gonna be, and I think too often we do that with God's word.
We treat it like a multiple-choice test. We don't read it. We don't open it. We don't study. Maybe we go to church every now and again. We listen to a podcast or something, and we think, yeah, we've got enough information that when the time comes, I'll probably make the right choice. When the time comes, there's a couple of options that are gonna be before me, and hopefully I'll just choose the best option out of the ones that are before me.
That's not how God's commands work for his people. You don't read the Bible and think, well, when the time comes, I'm just gonna do what's right. God always makes his plans, and he makes his desires known, but I think that we are just not listening. We don't care. We don't care, or honestly, we think we know better.
And I could already see your faces that maybe I'm stepping on some toes. So is that true? Like maybe we're journeying into this, and this seems a little heavy, so here's the good news. Buckle up. It's just starting.
For some reasons, we don't follow God's instruction, and I think that here's a few that came to my mind of why we don't follow God's instruction. Well, first, I think we're distracted. We're distracted and focused on so many other things. I mean, life is crazy, and so you're working, you're managing your house, you're dealing with all of this stuff. There's things like pandemics and elections, and so we get so distracted in life that we don't stop to actually listen to the word of God, and then maybe it's that we just disagree.
Maybe we disagree with God's word, maybe we look at it and we think, you know, that was for then, this is now. Maybe what God's word said 2,000 years ago doesn't apply as much today. Oh, that was speaking to their culture back then, but our culture's different, and so we just form these opinions that we just disagree. We're gonna listen to 90% of it, but the 10% that we disagree with, we're just not gonna listen to.
It's a very dangerous place to be, and maybe it's just distrust. Maybe your situation you feel like is different, and you're looking at God, and you're looking at your situation, and you're going, yeah, but God, I don't believe that you really do know what's best for me. I'm looking at my life, and I'm dealing with my life, and I just think that I know better.
Now, when I'm saying those things from here, I think you could probably be listening, thinking, oh, that sounds dumb, but we all do it every day. We kind of process through our lives through those things, and it doesn't make sense. We distrust, and we're distracted, and we disagree.
And then there's other things like exhaustion. You're just exhausted. And so when you're exhausted, you make bad choices. Maybe misunderstanding. Maybe you grew up and you were listening to the radio, or you went to a church that they taught bad theology. And so you just heard something said over and over again, and you heard something, you know, a phrase said on the radio, and then you started repeating it. And then you went out to the store, and you bought a little poster that, you know, you framed and put in your bathroom, and then you see it every day. But it's wrong. It's not the Word of God, but for some reason, we've made it out to be.
And so we think, oh, the Bible's all about us getting rich and having prosperity. And it's, no, that's not actually the context of what those verses mean. But we grew up in a church, or we grew up in a culture where that's what we were told, and so we just ended up believing it. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding of God's Word that we've been taught wrongly.
And then there's... There is a lack of intentionality. We just don't open the Bible. We don't make the time. You know, we often live by our calendars. We put special dates. If you have a doctor's appointment, you put that in your calendar. If some of you write it, some of you put it in your phones, but we do, right? If you have to wake up for a flight the next day, you set an alarm. But when we talk about intentionality with reading God's Word and spending time with prayer, we aren't intentional.
And so we have the thought, right, that I'm going to set my alarm 15 minutes early this, you know, for tomorrow morning so I can get up and read the Bible and pray. And that snooze button is so easy to hit, accidentally, sort of. We're just... We just lack intentionality.
And then we feel like maybe God has unreasonable expectations. But let me say this, that eternity hangs in the balance. And one day you are not going to stand before a holy God and say, I didn't know or I didn't care. And that's not going to cut it.
And so as we jump into Joshua chapter 7, I want us to know that whatever our excuses, wherever you sit today and wherever you're coming in here with, that God's commands are clear.
But here's what we enter into in Joshua 7 verse 1, is that the choices that we make are costly. We make costly choices. Look at verse 1. But the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things. Achan took a robe and took silver and took gold. Huh. Well, why would he do that? I mean, why did he choose to sin? I think the same reason. That's the reason that we choose to sin. We think we deserve it. We want it. It looks enticing.
Right? Adam and Eve, why did they, you know, go after the fruit? Well, it looked good. It looked good for food. It was going to bring them wisdom. And so they did it. But notice here that it says, but the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things. It's talking more than just Achan, even though he was the one who committed the sin.
You know what sin is very similar to? It's very similar to a fishing lure. Anybody, any fishermen, raise your hand if you fish, or if you have been fishing, or if you know what fishing is, raise your hand. Okay. So when you're fishing, sometimes you use live bait, but often you're using a fishing lure. The, the, when you're going to the store and you're buying one, your hope would be is to find one that looks like the real thing.
Why? Because as you're reeling your fishing rod and all that fishing line in, you want the fish, the real fish that are in the water to believe that that is a real fish. Why? So that they go after it, and then you could hook them. Sin is similar to that. The enemy wants sin to be enticing. The enemy wants you to believe that it's good for you, that it's good for food. The enemy wants you to believe that this is going to satisfy you in some way, shape, or form.
And just like a fishing lure, as you go after it and you grab on, you're hooked to whatever that sin may be. And the enemy will use that ultimately to lead to your slaughter. That's his intention with sin. And so our enemy, the devil, is a liar, is a manipulator.
Like I said, we saw this with Adam and Eve's story. We see this with David and Bathsheba. I mean, David, the king, a man after God's own heart, standing on his terrace overlooking the city, sees a woman that's not his wife. He's not his wife. He's not his wife. He's not his wife. He's not his wife. He's not bathing, but that he knew it was another man's wife. And he just thinks, you know what? I deserve this. This is going to satisfy whatever I think I need to satisfy. So I'm going to take what I think I should have.
Nebuchadnezzar, after the Lord reveals himself in power to King Nebuchadnezzar, and he begins to have faith in God. Nebuchadnezzar, after the Lord reveals himself in power to King Nebuchadnezzar, and he begins to have faith in God. And he begins to have faith in God. And he begins to have faith in God. And he begins to have faith in God. He stands on top of his kingdom overlooking all that God had given him and then what does he say? Wow, look at what my hands have built. Pride, arrogance leading to his fall.
See, this is what the enemy wants to do. He wants to manipulate you, wants to make you think that what God has given you isn't enough. And so it's like a fishing lure trying to lure you in to your death. And disobedience has its consequences. When we fail to obey God, it is called sin. That's when we fail to obey God's commands, it's called sin.
And I think we need to stop sugarcoating our sin. We as God's people need to stop sugarcoating our sin. I mean, we use words like, oh, it was a misstep. I screwed up. It was an accident. I didn't mean to. I get that one from my kids all the time, right? Oh, I didn't mean to hit them. I didn't mean to take their stuff. But we do that as adults too. We kind of belittle it and try to push it away as if it wasn't that big of a deal.
Listen, you made a choice. Own it. The Bible invites you to come back and confess those things to the Lord, and it says he will forgive us. Here's some sins that I think we belittle in just our area, our culture today: substance abuse, pornography, cohabitation and sex outside of marriage, cursing, gossip, harboring bitterness. All of these things are disobedience and ultimately they're a distraction from what God calls us to.
That's why in Ephesians 6, when Paul is writing about the enemy, he says to take up your shield of faith in Jesus with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Well, that term flaming arrows is very important. We talked about this months ago, but when a city is surrounded by a wall and an army is coming in to capture that city, what they do is they take their army men and they'll put them on top of that wall to guard the city.
So what the incoming army will do is they'll take arrows with fire on them and they'll shoot them over the wall. Well, what's behind the wall? All their stuff. So their houses, their livestock, their fields, that's all being protected behind the wall. And so what the enemy does is shoot the arrows over the wall to hit the stuff behind it to do what? To take the person whose post is to guard the city and to remove them to go deal with the stuff that's going on in the city, all the fires that are going on inside the city.
And then that's when the enemy attacks to distract us. And that's what the enemy does with sin. So if you have professed faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior and you believe that you are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, then you are a child of God. You cannot lose your salvation. But what the enemy will do is try to render you useless.
Hear me on this. What the enemy wants to do is try to make you useless in this world. And so he will try to take all of these distractions and throw them at you, get you all these distractions and make you just keep your eyes fixed and focused on these things throughout the rest of your life so that you do not make an impact in this world for the kingdom of God. He just renders you useless.
That's how the enemy distracts us over and over and over again. And so often these choices have consequences and they have a cost to you and to those around you. Now this is what I was saying, like so it says, but the people of Israel broke faith in regard to the devoted things.
Well, if you kind of think through the whole context of what's going on here, Achan would have had to go into the city and then there would have been a place where all of this gold and silver and the robe was, and he would have had to take those things. That wasn't a small amount of stuff. That wasn't stuff that you're just shoving in your pocket. And then he would have had to take it outside the city back to where he was camped, and then he dug a hole underneath his tent and placed these things in that hole and then covered him over with his tent.
Other people would have seen him do this, mostly his family would have seen him do this because that's who would have been encamped around him. And so it wasn't just his own sin, but it was the sin of other people that would have seen him disobey the Lord and they said nothing.
And I think too often as the people of God, we turn a blind eye because we don't want to get into the mess that it has with dealing with sin, not only our sin but then others' sin. But our decisions have consequences. Our sin will hinder and hurt those around us, and these are community consequences.
So now look at me, look with me to verses 2 through 26. This is all right after a massive victory, by the way. Like God just tore the walls of Jericho down flat. So right after this amazing massive victory, the next city that God was calling them to go conquer was this tiny little city of Ai, A-I. And so they just had to go, and so they scouted out, and you know what they say? They're like, oh man, this is like a tiny little city. We don't have to send up our whole army. Let's just send a couple thousand people up there to, you know, take the city out.
Like, let's not waste our time with this. This is like the number one seeded team playing the last seeded team, right? Like, you don't even show up for the game. Maybe you play your third string, right? Like, let's get them some reps. Just let them go in and defeat these guys. And so what happens? Well, in verses 2 through 15, we see that the army of Ai wipe the floor with the Israelites. I mean, they just decimate them, and so they run like a dog with its tail between its legs, and they retreat, and Joshua is floored. He falls on the ground. He tears his clothes. He's weeping, and he's crying.
He's like, God, how can you let this happen to us? Do you understand what this is going to do? Like, he's saying, we came into this land with power. I mean, you parted a sea. Like, people know that Yahweh's our God. You tore down the walls of Jericho. Everybody in that area knew who the Israelites were, and they knew that the Israelites were coming for them.
And so he's like, now they're going to hear of this story. They're going to hear that we got defeated. Now all of them are going to gang up against us, and then, God, what are you doing? Do you not know that we need to sound like we're at least an army to be trifled with?
And here's God's response in verse 10. The Lord said to Joshua, Get up. Why have you fallen on your face? Israel has sinned, and they have transgressed my covenant that I had commanded them. They have taken some of the devoted things. They have stolen and lied and put them among their own belongings.
Therefore, the people of Israel cannot stand before their enemies. They turn their backs before their enemies because they have become devoted to destruction. I will be with you no more unless you destroy the devoted things from among you. Get up, consecrate the people, and say, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, there are devoted things in your midst, O Israel. You cannot stand before your enemies until you take away the devoted things from among you.
Get up, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, they have taken some of the devoted things from among you. Our sin has community consequences.
And so this is what happens in verses 16 through 26, is that ultimately, Achan is found out. Now, this is different than repentance. So the way this goes down is that Joshua begins to bring the tribes before him, and they whittle it down to Achan's tribe, and then they whittle it down to Achan's family, and then all of a sudden he comes before them, and he's asked, What did you do?
See, there's a big difference between confession and being found out. And I think often we're quick to repent when we're caught. Not quick to repent because we really truly want God to forgive us. And so what we see here, he is caught. This is the great cover-up. His sin now has destroyed everyone.
And so what I want to do is I want to actually address some secret hidden sins that I have seen most over the last six months, because in verse 11, he talks about forbidden things or the things that are supposed to be put into the temple of God being taken, stolen, and then lied about.
But here are some things that when I meet with people, and when I'm counseling people, this is what comes up most often. Here's the first one, drinking. Over the last six months, I've met with a ton of men who really struggle with drinking. They do this in order to aid their sleep because they're dealing with anxiety and to truly numb their reality.
And the idea of I'm just going to drink until I'm numb or just going to drink until I'm buzzed is garbage. If you're going to be a man of God, then the Bible talks about you not having an altered mind. That's what alcohol does to you. So what we have to do is we have to stop it. But we live in hidden sin with this, and it's just a little bit. Just a little bit. But then after a while, that little bit doesn't work anymore. So then it's a little bit more and a little bit more. And then that little bit more doesn't work anymore. So then it's a little bit more and a little bit more. And it causes depression.
And then the hole that we're trying to come out of gets deeper and deeper and deeper. And so we just leave it hidden in the dark. Another one is pornography. I think a lot of people, they struggle with this idea of self-worth and authority. And again, trying to numb the reality, they give themselves to this stuff.
And this feeds their desire to be in control or be desired. But it's false. It's not real. And so it doesn't bring satisfaction, only for a split second. And then those feelings of lack of identity and desire and control come flooding back in. And so what does addiction do? It causes us to go back to those things, to find that temporary fulfillment. The whole industry is based off of that.
Causing a rewiring in our brains to make us think that that's what intimacy may look like. But it's not. It's not what God has intended. And then there's anger. Anger usually bred from discontentment, feeling misunderstood, not heard or cared for. And maybe it's a passion. It's a past hurt that you're dealing with and that's left unresolved.
The only visual I can think of here, which some of you may get and some of you may not, is the movie Alien. I wouldn't recommend it. Don't go see it. But in the movie, there's an alien that's like living inside of a person. And then it just like bursts out of their chest cavity. That's what anger does. It lives inside of us, hidden. You don't even know it's there. But then all of a sudden, at some point, in some way, shape, or form, it will burst out. I promise.
That's one of the things that I struggled with and still struggle with in my life is keeping this stuff deep down and then all of a sudden just this blow up and everybody's like, whoa, where did that come from? It's because we're not dealing with our stuff. So anger.
And then there's bitterness and resentment. And to be honest, often I've seen this over the last six months in a lot of women. I'm not saying that men don't deal with this. But a lot of women dealing with bitterness and resentment. Whether it's from childhood or current relationships or past relationships.
And what it has done is it's caused disconnect in their marriages with their kids and also against their parents. And then there's assumptions. Now, here's a big one because I don't even think that we would put assumptions on the sin list if there was one. For some reason, we're in a world and a place where we make a lot of assumptions about other people.
And those assumptions are not good assumptions. We're not assuming the best in people. Very often, we are making very bad assumptions about other people. And maybe it's based off of what someone else did to you in the past. Or how you experienced somebody in the past. Or maybe it's something that you've seen on TV or in the news.
And so automatically what you do is you project all of these thoughts, feelings, and emotions onto somebody else. And you're assuming that they're doing the same thing. Because it has a hint. It has a hint of what you've experienced before. So we make all of these assumptions. We do it in our marriages, with our friends, with our church family. We just assume, assume, assume. And it destroys relationships.
Sin. And so these things have community consequences. They impact and destroy everyone around us. And these hidden sins, which are not so hidden, by the way. I think we think that we're better at masking these things than we are. But we're not. Like people know.
But then we end up living our lives like people know. And so we're constantly like putting up this huge wall that we don't let people in. We have these hidden sins. It's very similar to this. It's in our lives we have these sins that we end up. It's going to be loud, by the way.
We have these sins that we deal with day in, day out. We're not actually bringing these things to God. They're just building. And the Bible invites us and calls us to repent. To bring these things to God. But what we do is we just keep them in. We stuff them in. We continue to just go with life and think that we're going to manage. And it's okay. And nothing bad is going to happen.
And then what happens is, at some point, something comes along. I don't know what that something is for you. But it's some kind of a hurt, a pain, addiction, a broken relationship. And that thing comes along. And what does it do? It destroys our life.
And apparently me. And it's going to be all over me for the rest of this talk. And it makes an absolute mess. Here's the problem, though. What we end up doing is we end up looking at that one thing that ended up being the straw that broke the camel's back.
And we spend our time focused on trying to deal with the thing. So maybe it's the addiction or the affair or the anger problem. And we deal with that one thing, but we've never gone back and actually looked at all of the stuff that has led up into that point.
We're all one mistake away from ruining the rest of our lives and messing up everything, but that one mistake comes on the back end of a whole lot of little mistakes that we've made along the way that have grown and grown and grown and has destroyed us from the inside out.
And the beauty of this story and the beauty of the whole Bible is that there is another way. There is another way. Well, just like the ripple effect of disobedience, there is a ripple effect of obedience. The ripple effect of obedience is the positive side of the ripple effect. Biblical obedience ripples just like disobedience, and the ripple effect of obedience, and you know what it does? It causes revival within God's church.
You know, when we listen to the word of God and we listen to his clear commands and we do what God says, that actually ripples forth throughout our lives and impacts everyone around us, just like our sin. Our obedience has a positive effect on those around us.
There's a book by David Platt called Radical. If you've never read it, I'd highly encourage you to read it. But in that book, David Platt was hanging out with two teenagers. Where are my teenagers? Teenagers, there you are. Right, so he's hanging out with two teenagers.
And this is, those two teenagers were about to head out to the mission field to go share the gospel in unreached places. And here's what they said. Link said, this is one of the teenagers, I have told my family that I will likely never come back home. I'm going to hard places to make the gospel known. And it is possible that I will lose my life in the process.
This is a teenager saying this. Headed to the mission field, knowing pretty much that they were gonna lose their life. And then another teenager, Shan, added, but our families understand. Our moms and dads have been in prison for their faith. And they have taught us that Jesus is worthy of all our devotion.
And after David Platt heard that, this was his response. He said, I could not help but think, I could not help but think that somewhere along the way, we had missed what was radical about our faith and replaced it with what is comfortable.
I know I'm guilty of this with my kids. So it's so often that I am pursuing comfort, for me and those around me that I have missed out on actually looking at God's word and calling and challenging everyone around me to pursue God's will and God's desire and God's heart and follow God's commands over being comfortable.
But there's beauty in this. The beauty in this is the beauty of repentance. Repentance is one of the most amazing things that you will ever read and see and talk about in scripture. See, Achan's sin was caught. His choice was rippled and affected everyone. In fact, the end of his story for Achan, he and his family, they're stoned. Killed for this sin.
And your sin affects everyone around you. Even when you think you're really good at hiding it, you're not. And it affects the people. And it affects the people around you. And you may not have been caught yet, but you have it and I have it.
But here's what God says. Because of Jesus' life, his death, and his resurrection, in 1 John 1:9, it says, if we confess our sins, he, God, is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
When God is speaking about sin in scripture, he uses it in the singular sense. Because sin is sin is sin. You want to write that down? Sin is sin. And so we can't belittle some sins and then just look at the top 10 list and be like, oh, those are the big ones. So we're just gonna stay away from those, but all these little ones we're just gonna dabble with.
I was talking to someone between the services and we were talking about how often, it's like we have this little pet tiger, this little baby tiger following us around and we think, oh, if we just make friends with it and we just keep it at bay, then we're gonna be fine. That pet tiger one day is gonna grow up and it's gonna grow into an adult and it's gonna kill us.
We can't make a bed for our sin and put it next to our beds and just think, oh, it's gonna be fine. It's cute now. It's fine now. It's not that big of a deal now. It will destroy us as the sin grows and grows and grows. It happens to all people.
And we don't bring our goodness before the Lord and say, but God, look at all these things that I've done well. No, no, no. What God invites us to do is take all of that, all the mess, all of this stuff. He invites us to take all of it and bring it to him. And what does he say? That he is faithful and just. Faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He takes it all from us.
And so no matter what you're dealing with today, no matter how big or small, you have made it in your mind. And guess what? There's no one in this room that's exempt from this. No one in this room that is sitting here and they're like, well, I'm perfect. Pastor, you've given a lot of examples today. None of that applies to me.
No, all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. And that's why all of us need Jesus. And so the beauty of the gospel is that we are fully forgiven in Jesus. The end of Achan's story is that he and his family was stoned. The end of our story is that Jesus went to the cross for us.
Achan and his family was put to death. Jesus was put to death for us. That's just a foreshadowing of the forgiveness that we have received in Christ so that we aren't the ones that are being stoned. But Jesus took that punishment and that penalty for us. That's the beauty of the gospel.
And the beauty of repentance is we get to go to our father and say, I'm sorry. And with loving open arms, he embraces us and says, I forgive you. I forgive you. I forgive you. No matter how big you've made it in your mind, no matter what you're dealing with, I forgive you.
And so that's the beauty of communion. When we come up and we take the bread, it represents God's body that was broken for us. And so we do that in remembrance of him. And then we take, we dip it in the juice and the juice is his blood poured out for us.
And so this is what the communion process looks like, is that you would take some time right now in your chairs. I would encourage you to close your eyes and it's not, it doesn't make you more holy than everybody around you, but it just stops you from being distracted from the people around you. You close your eyes and you confess to the Lord, whatever the things are in your life, in your heart, you begin to ask the Lord for forgiveness.
And then when you get up and there's tables in the back, in the front, you are walking into his forgiveness. You're remembering and reminding yourself that Jesus has paid it all for you. And so you take the bread and you dip it in the cup and you receive it, knowing that you have been fully forgiven, not partially, like all the mess and all the stuff, like fully forgiven.
And then if you're dealing with stuff that you want to work through, we have amazing biblical counselors that we would love to give to you and allow you to start walking with in the journey. Cause they're, they're often, and I would say for most of us, we have amazing biblical counselors that we would love to give to you.
And so we get to rally around each other and be the church and walk with each other through these things. And so there's, there's a biblical counselors. We have people within the church that would love to meet you. And even at the end, there's going to be some prayer team up here and the prayer team is going to be on either side and there's going to be some in the back. And then you can come and just pray with them. They would love to pray over you and with you.
In this moment, there is a ripple effect that we see here in the story of Achan. And that ripple effect did have consequences that impacted the whole community and the whole nation. The beauty is, is when we confess, it causes revival within God's church.
Does anybody here want to see revival?
Okay. Half of you. Does anybody here want to see revival?
So if we want to see revival happen in our country, in our nation, in our world, we need to confess our sins and know that God has covered it all. And we need to start walking in the beauty of the gospel everywhere we live, everywhere we work, everywhere we play. Amen.
Can I pray over us?
Father, thank you for your mercy and your grace that you give freely to us through the beautiful, amazing savior that we have in Jesus, the perfect lamb of God, who has come to take away the sins of the world.
God, if there's anybody here that has not professed faith in you, God, I pray that today would be the day of salvation for them, that you would stir in their hearts and awaken their spirit into the newness of life. If anybody here, which is everybody, is dealing with hidden sin, I pray today would be the day that they find freedom from that sin.
I pray that today would be the day where they open up their hearts and they open up their minds to the beauty of your gospel and they repent and they receive the fullness of your forgiveness and they find freedom and family in Jesus.
And I thank you for communion. I thank you for the opportunity we have to partake and remember. I pray that this would be a moment in our lives where we come and we partake of this and remember the beauty of the gospel, that we are fully forgiven in you.
We love you. We thank you. It's in your name we pray. Amen.
Please take a moment, sit before the Lord, confess, repent, and then come receive what God has for us in communion. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Amen. Amen. Amen.
Let's pray.
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.
You guys want to have a quick seat?
I hurt my back in the last service, so I apologize. If we have any chiropractors in the place, I'd love to see you after. Getting old, I got a laugh last time.
You guys just... So I do believe it's my role as your shepherd to come to you when things in our world are crazy. And I know that this next week's going to be pretty heavy. I know that a lot of us are dealing with different types of fears and anxieties. There's a lot going on in our culture, in our society.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, I'd like to know the rock that you're under. But there is an election this week, by the way. And Tuesday's going to be a big day. And so whatever, wherever you land, whatever you come into this place for, I want to, as your pastor, to make sure that our eyes are fixed and focused on Jesus as our king.
I think too often we can look at the people in our world and even the people in leadership as a savior. And they are not. We have one king, and we keep our eyes fixed and focused on him. This world is not our home, and there is no promise that things are going to ever get any better.
But we do know that as we move towards Jesus coming back, the things actually will progressively get worse. But our hope is not in our world. It's not in our politics. It's not in the things around us. It's in Jesus.
And so as your pastor, I want you to have your eyes focused on who Jesus is and what he's done for you. But I also think that going into this next week, there's been a lot of just fear about what to do, what not to do, that the decisions seem very heavy.
And I got to have a meeting with about 200 pastors this week. And there was a pastor on, Pastor Joby. Tim Tebow was on the call. And we got to hear kind of their hearts. And Pastor Joby put some things into perspective for me personally, and I just wanted to share them with you.
But often we can look at voting like we would look at Valentine in grade school. This election, going into this election, this is not a Valentine. In grade school, you would look for the person who's going to be the person that you like the most and that gave you the warm and fuzzies. That's not what this is. You're not voting for your Valentine.
The options before us aren't grand. But we do have to steward what God has given and the responsibility that God has given us. The second thing that this election is not, it's not a mailbox. And what I mean by that is that often we don't vote because we're trying to send a message. If I put a letter in my mail and nobody read it, the mailbox would be useless.
So not voting doesn't send a message. In fact, we actually have a lot of arenas within our world today. I think too many, and I think too many people are saying too much on those avenues. But we have avenues to voice our thoughts and our opinions, and we can talk to people. But not voting doesn't send a message.
And so I just want to share that. So it's not a Valentine. It's not a mailbox. And then the last thing, it's not a sacrament. Communion is a beautiful sacrament where we get to worship and remember something holy. Baptism is a beautiful sacrament where we get to see that we are buried with Christ and risen into the newness of life because that's holy.
Presidential candidates and all the other offices and all the things that we have to fill out, they're not holy. So unless Jesus comes back in the flesh and runs for the president of the United States of America, we are not voting for a sacrament.
We're always like, as your pastor, if Billy Graham were still alive, if he ran for president, no presidential candidate would be a holy candidate. And so I just want to share with that because I want us to understand that we're not voting for a sacrament. This isn't a Valentine where we're going to get the warm and fuzzies. And it's not a mailbox where by not voting, you're sending a message.
But what I do believe is that we live in a country where we have the ability to vote. We have the ability to go. And I do believe that we have the ability to vote. And I do believe that we have the ability to go. And I do believe that we have the ability to vote.
And so I want us to just go into this next week, knowing that Jesus is our king, that he is in control of all things. Please hear me on that. He is in control of all things. So whether your person gets in or not, whether what you want passed gets passed or not, he is in control of all things.
And we can put our faith and our trust and our hope in him and him alone. But I do think we have the responsibility in our country and where we live to go and be faithful stewards of that.
The one thing that's going to be in this election that I do believe is a gospel issue and is a God biblical theological issue is the craftiness that is worded in Amendment 4. The enemy has allowed there to be this crafty amendment. And as your pastor, I do want to just educate you. I'm not going to tell you which way to vote, but I'm going to tell you what you are voting for when you vote for it.
And so in Amendment 4, the language is so crafty that you can maybe vote against your personal conviction because it sounds so good. And here's what it means. The first term is before viability. What that allows is it allows for abortion up until birth. So right now in our state, you can actually get an abortion up until six weeks.
This amendment would allow for us to be the most radical abortion state in the country. And we would become an abortion destination state where people would come because it would be up until viability. I think that's important for you to know going into this.
The second thing is that it talks about the patient's health, and that would change the laws to also include emotional, physical, and mental health. And then it says healthcare provider. And the healthcare provider would include 15 categories with 45 subcategories, which would include a dentist, a physician's assistant, and different ones like that.
So not a doctor would have to give written consent, but any healthcare provider could now give written consent. The current law is that two doctors sign off on an abortion. Also, the current law is that parents have to give written consent before an abortion happens with a minor. This would remove parents' written consent, and it would just allow for them to be notified.
So they require notification, but they don't have to give written consent. And so what they believe and the states believe, and this was part of the meeting this week, was that over 40,000 children, unborn children, would lose their lives if this passed over the next couple of years.
And so we desire to be a voice for the voiceless and know that if you vote yes, you're voting for these things to take place. And if you vote no, you're voting for this amendment not to pass and that the current laws would stay in place.
And so I want you to know these things as you're going into this week so that you don't vote against your conviction because of the craftiness. We know they're already crafty when they're writing these things, but this one is very specific because it actually tugs at your heart the way it's written. It makes you think that you're voting one way even if it's saying something else.
So just please be educated on these things. And ultimately, more than anything, go to the Word of God and know that as a believer in Christ, your job, your responsibility is to uphold His Word. And so we put this before anything else. Read it, know it, and then let the Holy Spirit guide you in this next coming week.
Don't let your anxiety get the best of you. God's in control and He is for you and not against you. So Lewis is going to come and do our benediction. Would you stand with us?
on Nov 03, 2024
