I appreciate you being here.
On this Sunday, as we go through parts
of the book of Matthew, I titled this series Kingdom.
Now, and we're studying through the book of Matthew,
chapter by chapter, section by section.
And this morning
we're going to make it through chapter four.
We ended halfway through chapter four last week.
We're going to finish chapter four.
And I want to introduce you
to a couple of different passages, one in Matthew six and one in Matthew five.
So we're going to be on a little journey this morning together.
As we go through this.
One of the things that we'll see.
We'll see crowds around Jesus
and we'll see disciples of Jesus.
And my hope this morning is that we'll be able to identify
which of those two groups that we've chosen to belong to.
And, let me
get into the chapter four, verse 12.
We're going to be introduced to a well, introduced to it
to a, a a situation.
And not told a lot of details about it.
We'll study the details of it later.
But we're just kind of thrown into a statement
about about something that's happened in verse 12.
It says, now when he Jesus heard that John had been arrested,
he withdrew into Galilee.
That's all it really says about this event.
It doesn't tell us much about it.
Here in Matthew 14, Matthew will tell us with this story that happened,
like why, John, this is John the Baptist, why John the Baptist was arrested.
The result of that arrest.
He would actually be beheaded because of that.
Through that arrest.
And right now, Matthew just says, Jesus heard
John was arrested through withdrew into Galilee.
Doesn't tell us many details.
We're not going to look at those details this morning other than
to say those details are in Matthew four 2400 ahead.
We'll get to it whenever we get to Matthew chapter 14.
Maybe mid next year or so at this rate.
But I will say this,
that John the Baptist, as the forerunner of Jesus to eat,
was here to prepare the way for Jesus's public ministry.
He became the first New Testament martyr.
Now, he wasn't the first martyr of the church that Stephen,
but the church had been established yet.
And so Stephen be the first member of the church.
But John the Baptist is the first martyr in the New Testament.
And John was martyred.
He was he was beheaded not because he preached Christ
and the gospel, but simply because he confronted immorality.
And he
confronted the immorality of the king.
He called out sin for what sin was.
He spoke the truth about sin,
and he spoke the truth about immoral living.
And for that he was arrested and beheaded.
Friends, please understand
that in this day and day and age in our culture, just like then,
you can be canceled for many, many different reasons.
And if one chooses to speak out,
against sin and immorality,
this culture will revolt against you.
That's okay.
And it did against John.
He had been arrested.
He would eventually be beheaded.
And and I think, honestly,
I think John was okay with how things went down.
And here's why.
Because John said of himself in John 330,
he Jesus must increase, but I must decrease.
Now, I'm
sure John didn't have in mind when he said those words.
His own beheading,
but he was very comfortable
with the idea that Jesus,
must increase, and I have to get out of the way.
And so God took him out of the way.
He said, John, you've done your job.
I put you on earth
to prepare the way for my son
so that he could come into his public ministry.
You've done a great job of that.
But your mission and your purpose is complete.
And now I need to get you out of the way.
And so God did, by beheading.
And God said, John, I realize that,
by most people's accounts, your life is going to be cut short.
It's not.
You've done exactly as I asked you to do.
And now I'm going to take you to be with me and share in your master's happiness.
You don't have to get old. You don't have to get decrepit.
You don't have to get seen. I don't have to get sick.
I'm just going to take you right now because you've completed your task.
I love that.
It reminds me of what the Bible says in acts 1336.
David served God's purpose in his generation, and then he died.
What a glorious statement.
That's what I want on my gravestone.
Carl served God's purposes a generation, and then he died.
Who wants to be around here longer than we have to?
And so God said, okay, John, you're done.
Now you will decrease, and I'm going to take you to heaven so my son can increase.
And that's exactly how it went down.
Verse 13.
And leaving Nazareth, he, Jesus went and lived in Capernaum by the sea,
in the territory of Zebulun.
And Naphtali, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.
The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali,
the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles.
The people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light.
And for those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death
on them a light has dawned from that time Jesus began
to preach, saying, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Jesus moves now his home base,
into Galilee, in Capernaum by the sea.
Capernaum.
It's this whole area of Galilee, but especially Capernaum.
It's a great little place.
It's beautiful.
And it's the place where Jesus would make his home base.
And it's in this place, Capernaum,
that Jesus calls James and John,
Peter and Andrew and Matthew, because they all lived in Capernaum.
And so Jesus is in where he lives.
He says, these are the guys basically in my huddle, and I'm going to go after them.
And so James and John, Peter and Andrew, Matthew, five of the disciples
of five of the 12 lived in Capernaum, where Jesus is making his home base,
and he calls them
this.
I love the fact that that that Jesus
makes his, his, his, his headquarters, Capernaum
in Galilee, because it's kind of a place that's forgotten about.
It was a nice place. It's beautiful.
I've been there.
But it's it's it's it's not along the beaten path.
It's the it's the little town that that where the hicks live.
It's the little country place.
It's the place between Fresno Madera that nobody stops and they all drive through.
And I love that.
I love that.
It's the hillbilly redneck place.
And, Jesus, like, I think I'll start there.
And what the Bible says about this
place, the Galilee of the Gentiles.
And it says, for those dwelling in the region of the shadow of death
on them a light has drawn the reputation of this area
was just, as Isaiah said, a region of the shadow of death.
And here's why.
Because when God's people were living in the Promised Land,
in an Old Testament times, Assyria from the north came down.
And this is the north of the land.
The galleries up in the north.
Assyria came down and invaded
the northern part of Israel,
and later years later, the Babylonians came down through Assyria
and invaded Israel again and took the ten
northern tribes back into captivity for 70 years into Babylon.
So this area had seen a lot of destruction,
a lot of war, a lot of death, a lot of difficulty.
And the by and so it was known as the region
of the shadow of death because it had just been decimated over and over and over.
And the Bible says on them a light has dawned.
Here's here's what I want us to glean from this.
Your life.
My life may have had many times in the past
when things have been destroyed,
when things have been brutalized,
when there's been destruction, when there's been difficulty and pain.
And even in those times when Jesus shows up,
light dawns.
And so, friends, please don't get so
frustrated, discouraged.
Don't lose hope so much that you say it's been this way for so long.
It will never get better when Jesus arrives.
Okay?
Light appears
no matter how dark it might be.
If God has you here, you're here for a reason, here
for a purpose.
The light will not.
And from that time on, verse 17,
Jesus says, what is repent?
For the kingdom of God is at hand.
When, when John the Baptist was preparing the way for Jesus
before Jesus started his public ministry, what was John's message that he preached
to remember?
We talked about it last week.
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
It's the exact same message.
John came preaching a message of repentance.
Get right with the Lord.
Change your life,
for the kingdom of heaven is here.
God said, John, you were right when you said,
you must decrease, you must increase.
So I'm going to get you out of the way now.
Jesus comes and preaches the exact same message repent!
The kingdom of heaven is at hand.
Repentance is the paramount message all through the New Testament.
It's the message John preach is the message Jesus preached.
It's the message the disciples preached.
It's the message Jesus gave the church to preach.
Once he has it, it's the message Paul preached.
Repent. Change your life.
To repent means to change direction.
Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
And so then
in verse 18, we see Jesus call his first disciples.
And I want to look at his call of the disciples.
What? What it entailed.
And then I want to look at the crowd that came to follow Jesus.
In verse 18, while walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers,
Simon, who was called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting
a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.
And he said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Immediately they left their nets and followed him, and going on from there
he saw two other brothers, James, a son of Zebedee, and John, his brother,
in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets.
And he called them immediately they left the boat and their father,
and followed him.
This is not the first
time Jesus met these guys.
This is just the first time he personally called them in Luke five three.
And in John 135 through 42, Jesus says,
the Bible tells us that Jesus has already met these guys,
but this is the first time Jesus calls them
to leave their possessions and they become disciples and follow him.
I want to talk about this idea of being a disciple
because
being a disciple of Jesus
means a change in our primary identity.
That's what being a disciple means.
The moment I say Jesus, I will follow you.
You're my leader.
What that entails is a change of primary identity.
Jesus says of these guys, the Bible says they were fishermen
and Jesus says, I will make you fishers of men.
I'm going to change your identity.
I'm to change who who you are at your core.
I'm going to change your purpose.
I'm going to change your title.
I'm going to change your life.
I'm going to change your primary identity.
I want you to notice two
that in changing their primary identity,
what was when Jesus said, come, follow me.
What was their response?
After they left their father, they left their boats.
They left their nets.
They left their employment.
They left the guarantee of a secure future financially.
They left everything. Why?
Because their primary identity had changed.
God, you've called me.
I'm going to leave everything behind.
I'm going to change everything about who I am.
I'm. I'm going to submit to your leadership.
Holy.
In order to be a disciple, there has to be a change of primary identity.
And there has to be a leaving of things behind.
They could not be a disciple of Jesus.
They could not follow Jesus and say, I'm still going to dot, dot, dot.
There had to
be this moment in their lives where they say,
I am completely at your disposal
and whatever you deem appropriate,
I'm agreeable to.
That so vastly different. But.
Then what
we consider these days to be a Christian.
When we consider this day to be a Christian goes along these lines.
God, I have problems and I have trouble.
And I know you love me.
I don't want to add you to my life to make my problems better, to make them okay.
I need you to step into my life and make my life better.
God, I have my dreams. I have my goals.
I have my agenda.
I have my desires.
And I want to add you to them.
So you'll help me accomplish my dreams, accomplish my goals,
accomplish my desires. You understand?
That this is this is the
majority of our agenda.
And coming to God.
God, I have this plan for how I want my life to go,
my business to go, my finances to go, how I want you to work in my life
so I can get to the point of retiring so I can be comfortable.
And I and I want to add you to all of these things,
because I want you to make all these things come to fruition.
And that's not a disciple.
A disciple of Jesus says,
I'm going to follow you and all of these
other things I put on the chopping block,
all of these other things.
And if you want to do something different with them, I gladly leave them behind.
I am your slave.
You. I'm at your disposal.
You do with me whatever you want.
That's discipleship.
You understand the difference.
And when we look
at the disciples of Scripture,
it ought to stand in stark contrast.
To many Christians.
It's interesting to me when Jesus calls these guys,
he called these guys
who were already working and who were already industrious.
He doesn't call the idle.
He doesn't call the lazy.
When Jesus,
when God called Saul, Saul was out looking for his father's donkeys.
When he called David, David was tending his father's sheep
when he called the shepherds of the Christ Christmas story.
They were guarding their flocks at night when he called Amos the prophet.
He was busy farming.
Whether it was Matthew or Moses.
All through the pages of Scripture, God called those who are already working,
who were already busy, who were already industrious,
because
God calls those who have the propensity
and the character of work. Why?
Because that's what discipleship is.
Discipleship isn't just believing.
Discipleship means doing.
And if you want to add God to our lives
so we can relax and he'll make life easier so we can retire and be happy.
God says, you're barking up the wrong tree with the wrong person.
I have a task and a job, and you will not be done
until you die.
I revolt against the idea of retirement.
I'm sorry if some of you retire, but please hear me out
of pure retirement, as we think about in
our culture, is not a biblical concept.
It's fine to retire from tasks.
That's great, but you never retire from the call of God.
You never retire from ministry.
So God calls those who are industrious
because disciples are industrious.
Do you understand?
Neither.
You don't believe me or it's a little too much.
In this next section,
we're going to contrast disciples and crowds.
So the disciples are those who are busy working.
God calls them.
They change their identity.
They leave everything behind.
They sacrifice it all.
And they say, God, we are yours.
You do it.
This whatever we please, we are at your disposal.
That's disciples.
Look at verse 23.
And he, Jesus, went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues
and proclaiming the good the gospel of the kingdom
and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
So his fame spread throughout all Syria.
And they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases
and pains, those oppressed by demons, those having seizures and paralytic.
And he healed them.
And great crowds followed him from Galilee and the Decapolis,
and from Jerusalem and Judea, and from beyond the Jordan.
So Jesus
goes into, as was typical of the time in their synagogues, proclaiming
the gospel, preaching and teaching, and healing every disease and affliction,
so that as that word spread people from all over the region, and it mentions
this thing called the Decapolis, that's two Greek words deca and polis.
Ten cities, this area of ten cities, ten gentile cities,
they're coming from all over the area, up to 100 miles of traveling
just to be around Jesus. Why?
Because they're sick. They're possessed.
They're they're ill.
They need him to step in.
They need him to heal them.
And so they come.
And by God's mercy and grace, he does.
And when the Bible says that that he healed
all the sicknesses, he's his exerting his authority
over fallen humanity because of sin.
And then when it says that he cast out demons, he's
exerting his authority over all creation, physical and spiritual.
So he's showing them I have complete authority over all creation,
everything in heaven, on earth and under the earth.
I have authority over it all.
And these people who have great needs,
they hear about this and they're like, we need some of that in our life.
And they come to him and say, please, will you, please, will you step it, please?
We intervene, please will you change?
And by his grace, he does.
But none of these are disciples.
They're crowds.
And I want us to think right now
about the difference between the crowd and the disciple.
The crowd realizes I have a need that I cannot solve.
I can't meet my need.
God, would you please.
Would you please step into my world?
And would you change that which I need?
Change.
That's the crowd.
And by God's mercy and grace, sometimes he does.
But that's the crowd.
That's not the disciple.
The disciple says, yes, God, I acknowledge that I have need,
but my agenda is secondary to your kingdom.
And so
I invite you in to change my identity.
I sacrifice my agenda, my plans, my desires.
I even sacrifice you, meeting my needs for whatever you discern.
That's what I'll submit to.
Do you see the difference between the crowd and the disciple?
And so you and I have a beautiful future here right now to decide
and to realize.
What have I been?
Have I been part of the crowd?
Or am I truly a disciple?
Jesus
didn't invite people to be a part of the crowd.
They became part of the crowd
because he knew they had a need that only he can meet,
and they wanted him to meet their need.
What he invited people into was a disciple.
And they're vastly different.
Later, the crowd would fall away.
Because they get too difficult.
The disciples remain.
And to this point of discipleship,
I want to talk about what it means
to be a disciple.
The call to be a disciple.
We're going to jump over to Matthew 633.
Okay, there's a difference
between being a part of the crowd and being a disciple and a disciple.
Jesus speaks about this in Matthew 630.
Most of you know this verse.
You might not know where it lives, but you know the verse.
Matthew 633
but seek first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things will be added to you.
There's a difference between being a part of the crowd and being a disciple.
And what Jesus says to disciples,
seek first what
you have.
Okay, well,
why is it that we stop after we see the kingdom of God?
That's not what Jesus said.
The kingdom of God
and his righteousness.
That's what Jesus said.
And when he says, seek first.
That word first is a Greek word, Protoss, and it means literally not first
in a series of events, not first and then second and third.
It means priority,
but seek as the only priority
the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
I'm I'm noticing,
that we don't talk about
righteousness very much.
And even church people don't.
We talk about being loving
and kind and merciful and gracious.
We don't talk about being righteous.
There are many of us that matter.
How many?
How many of us,
you know, woke up this morning thought, Lord, I just I just
would you just increase my righteousness?
Even when I ask what Jesus said,
we stop, seek first kingdom of God.
There's something about us that just pushes back on this whole idea
of righteous living.
Why is that?
What Jesus said here is that for the disciple,
the priority for the disciple
is to be a righteous man is to be a righteous woman.
The priority for the disciple is a life
of righteousness.
You follow,
you think you do.
Go back a chapter to chapter five.
This talk about righteousness.
Now just listen to this
without any prejudging of where it's going.
Matthew chapter five, verse 20
Jesus says, for I tell you,
unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Oh, disciple, your my primary
agenda item
is to be righteous
and dear friend, unless our righteousness
exceeds that of the Pharisees, we will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
That's what Jesus said.
That is in unless a
B doesn't happen.
That's what Jesus said.
Unless our righteousness exceeds that
of the righteous people. Now,
how many of you heard about how it's now,
how the bad rap that Pharisees get in the Bible anyway?
I mean, Jesus is always on them, right?
And so, I mean, how righteous can they really be?
Right?
Our problem is
we don't understand who the Pharisees were.
So just keep this in mind.
Just unless your righteousness
exceeds the Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of God.
It's your primary and sole
agenda item is to be a righteous man and a righteous woman
as a disciple, here's the Pharisees, the Pharisees.
You will not read about the Pharisees in the Old Testament
because they didn't exist in the Old Testament.
After the
Babylonian captivity, people come back.
God's people have been so intermixed
with the people of Babylon, with the with with the, the other,
gentile groups had kind of infiltrated the land that you really couldn't tell
the Hebrews, the Israelites,
you couldn't tell them as any different from the rest of the culture around them.
They looked exactly the same. They acted the same. They taught the same.
You can look any different.
They didn't behave any different.
And so this group of people in the second century BC says,
we have to call our people back
to righteous living.
We gotta call our people back to the study of Scripture.
We gotta call our people back to the worship of God Almighty.
We gotta call our people back to pure living.
A life of that is pure before God and pure before people.
We gotta call people back.
We gotta call people back to this.
And so this group was created.
They called the Pharisees.
The Pharisees means literally separated. Once
they were the separated ones, they're like, look,
we're looking just like the rest of the culture.
There's no difference between us.
Let's get back to Scripture.
Let's get back to worship.
Let's get back to devotion.
That's not a bad scenario, right?
When we say the same thing about us today,
Yes, this is who the Pharisees were.
Such great, impure motives.
A call to return
to God and return to Scripture.
So how righteous were they?
Unless our righteousness exceeds that of Pharisees,
we will never enter the kingdom of God.
Let's talk about how righteous they were.
They were a group of people that diligently studied,
memorized, and read Scripture.
Jesus will say of them,
you study the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life.
So they studied diligently the Word of God.
They read it, they memorized it.
It was their focus.
Unless your righteousness exceeds theirs.
It's last verse you memorized.
But what's the last in-depth study
you've done on your own?
The righteousness the Pharisees.
Let's talk about. They're righteous.
They were.
They were a group of people that had a very disciplined
and orderly prayer life
consistently, regularly,
and practiced deep and abiding spiritual disciplines.
Jesus talks about in Matthew six said, you all love to pray.
Good for you, but you do it in a way that you get attention to yourself like.
But, but you have that desire to pray
this incredibly deep
spiritual discipline life.
Pretty righteous right?
Unless your righteous exceeds that of them.
How are we doing?
The righteousness.
They were men who had an incredible evangelistic zeal,
incredible evangelistic zeal.
We talk about reaching a huddle all the time.
They actually did.
Matthew 2315
Jesus says, you will seal the seas
to make one convert.
How's your evangelistic zeal
compared to theirs?
Whose last personality Jesus.
You want to leave your home
to go tell people about Christ?
See, the Pharisees get a bad rap,
but apparently they're pretty righteous.
And Jesus says, unless your righteousness exceeds theirs,
you don't get into heaven.
How righteous were these people?
Well, they were so righteous
they tithed 10% off the top of everything.
So righteous were they that if they walked outside their house
and found a mint leaf, a mint plant, they would pick the plant
and take a 10th of that mint and give it to the offering,
because that was the Old Testament command.
If they found a dollar on the street,
they would go cash in ten dimes and give one dime to the offering.
They were so righteous at 10th
or right off the top of everything.
Unless your righteousness
exceeds that of them.
So how are you doing, disciple?
Does your righteousness
exceeds that of the Pharisees?
And Jesus said,
this is the primary agenda
item, not for the crowd
before the disciple.
The righteousness of God
that exceeds that of the Pharisees.
How are you and I doing?
Do we get a pass?
Do you want me to relieve
the pressure for you?
Yeah.
I can't,
there should be some pressure.
But let me let me put it.
Let me introduce the gospel.
Our righteousness,
in other words, are works of righteousness cannot surpass theirs.
And what
Jesus says, it has to surpass it in kind,
not in degree.
The kind of righteousness
has to surpass that of the Pharisees,
because the Pharisees were doing these acts of righteousness
as their way of being made right with God.
Disciples do these acts of righteousness
in response to being made right with God.
In other words, Philippians three.
The apostle Paul says this
for his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish
in order that I'm a gain Christ and be found in him here it is
not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law.
That's where the Pharisees made the mistake.
They thought that by their righteousness they were made right with God.
And Paul says, my righteousness.
It doesn't come from the law, but my righteousness comes through faith
in Christ.
The righteousness from God that depends on faith.
So my righteousness does exceed that of the Pharisees,
not in degree, but in kind,
because it's through faith in what Jesus did on the cross that I am
made right with God, not that I have earned rightness with him.
Do you understand that?
Now I hope
that relieves the pressure a little bit.
But let me push the pressure on you again, because
we cannot separate
the righteousness of God
from being right with him
and showing that right the rightness in our lifestyle.
You can't separate the two.
James 218
someone will say, you have faith.
I have works fine.
Show me your faith apart from your works, and I'll show you my faith by my works.
See, so many of us want
want an excuse to not.
And we
gravitate to the truth that I am made right by God, by faith.
Absolutely. And be. And here's the here's our problem.
Because we know that we're made right by God, by faith.
Now, I have an excuse to not.
I don't have to study my Bible every day and memorize scripture,
because I'm already made right with God by faith.
I don't have to evangelize and tell people in my head about Christ,
because I'm already made right by God, by faith.
I don't have to tithe because I'm already made right by God, by faith.
And we use the truth of being made right by God, by faith and his excuse
to be unrighteous in our living.
And James says, you can't do that.
You can't separate these two.
Yes, we're made right by God, by faith,
and we're called to righteous living. Now,
let me put this, James two way
in, in, in, in clear, understanding.
Let me let me just rework the words a little bit.
Someone will say,
you have faith.
I have works fine.
Show me your faith by not tithing,
and I'll show you my faith by tithing.
Do you understand?
How can you prove your faith by not doing?
It's like saying.
I'll show you how fast I am by not running.
Does that make any sense?
Yet that's what we do with faith.
And Jesus says righteousness
is the primary agenda for the disciple.
Not so. You'll be right with God.
You're made right with God, but because you're made right with God.
Now your agenda is the righteousness of God.
That's discipleship.
Second
Corinthians 521 I didn't put it up here, but I want you to write it down.
I want you to memorize this.
So Corinthians 521 so says he who knew no sin became sin for us,
so that we might become the righteousness of God.
So Jesus took all of my sin
and imputed to me all of his righteousness.
So I am right with God, not because of what I've done,
but because of the righteousness that's been imputed to me.
I'm made righteous before God by faith in Jesus, and it's work on the cross.
So now, because I've been made righteous, now I choose get this.
Now I choose to live righteously.
It's not an excuse
to not live righteously.
Now that's my primary agenda.
We cannot accept the righteousness of Christ and live righteously.
Can't do it.
See, my dear friends, faith that doesn't obey shows
that it was a faith that never believed.
And faith
that won't follow is a faith that will not last.
Please understand
that obedience and righteousness is not the proof of salvation, or is not the.
It is not the price of salvation.
It's the proof of it.
And what Jesus is going to do in these next three chapters,
chapter five, six and seven, is give us a model of the kingdom
of of a life lived in the kingdom, and it will be unattainable.
Everything that he says in Matthew five six and seven, like there's no way
we can't live up to this.
It's a great standard.
It's the high watermark,
but we're going to fall far short.
We just can't live up to it.
And in response
to what we're called to and the realize realization
of what we're capable of, we say, God, I can't,
I can't,
and so do for me what I can't do for myself.
I accept the work of Jesus on the cross,
and I, by faith,
I stand before you declared righteous.
And because of that grace,
I will spend the rest of my life
sacrificing my agenda for your kingdom
and living a lifestyle of righteousness.
I will study scripture and memorize it,
and I will evangelize those around me who don't know Jesus.
And I will tithe,
and I will practice spiritual discernment
not so that I'll be right with you, but because you've declared me right with you.
And this is my response as a disciple.
You understand?
To understand.
And so, dear friends, we get to choose now, crowd
or disciple.
I invite you to pray with me, father.
Thank you.
The standard you have is
is unattainable for us in ourselves. God.
And I thank you that we don't have to try to get to
you based on our own ability and behavior in obedience.
Thank you. You knew we couldn't.
So, father, I thank you that in the midst of that sin,
you loved us so much that you sent your son.
To be our way.
To be made right with you.
Friends, if you've never given your life to Jesus yet, if you've tried
to be righteous of your own doing and you realize you just can't,
would you just sacrifice that right now
and come to God based on his terms, not yours?
I invite you in this moment to say, God, I'm sorry for my sin.
I can't be good enough.
I've tried. I just keep failing.
Jesus, I accept what you did
on the cross to make me right.
I accept your death for me.
I believe in your resurrection
and I give myself to you.
Friends, if you've prayed that prayer, would you go a step further?
Maybe this morning.
And say, God, God, because you've made me right with you through your son.
I want to live a righteous life
not because I have to, but because you've done so much for me.
It's my natural response.
Would you give me a desire to live righteously
as an expression of my love for you?
Thank you for your mercy.
Thank you for your grace.
When I'm unrighteous,
that you've given me your righteousness.
But in response to that, father,
oh, God.
Would you increase my desire
to live righteously?
Your agenda above mine.
You must increase.
I must decrease.
Father, thank you for your love.
Help us to love you more.
In your name I pray.
Amen.
I love you.
Good job.
Hang in with me through that one.
This week.
Read Matthew five.
There's enough there.
You could just stay in Matthew five this whole week.
It's lofty.
It's difficult.
And we'll try to unpack some of it next week.
Deal I love you if you have people in your world
in your huddle that don't have a church home, invite them next week.
You understand that?
It's pretty clear you understand that.
Yes. Okay, listen, I'm not
afraid to start this all over again.
Let's sing.