Passion 2020 - Levi Lusko

how we do in passion 2020 hey in just a moment I'll have you be seated but let's just appreciate for one quick second the magnitude of the moment that we are in this is outrageous this is beautiful this is supernatural these are a Holy Ghost strip drenched days that we're standing in and none of it would be possible without the visionary leadership of Louie and Shelley Giglio that God has raised up and 23 years ago they and their team following the call of God in their lives blazed an extraordinary difficult challenging rigorous journey and as a result we get to stand in this moment and I was thinking about how someone once said that nothing great has ever been accomplished with half of someone's heart and I think that's one of the really just distinctions about these two they don't know how to do anything with half their heart and I think we all need friends that stretch our imagination and stretched at the borders of possibility because when I was watching the Super Bowl I wasn't thinking that'd be a great place for church but thank God for Louie Shelley Giglio come on let's honor them as the Bible says we should and father we thank you for the fact that this moment is truly pregnant with possibility for it propels us into these days in which you're going to speak to us through your word you brought in so many different people from so many different places and you've assembled such a wonderful array of servants to minister but we are truly here because of the name that is salvation the name that is power the name of your son Jesus the only name we've been given and so I pray that even now as we prepare to leave one year behind and enter a new one as we prepared to leave a decade behind and enter a new one that you would stretch wide the runway so that you can land in our lives all that you desire to as you scan to and fro on the earth wanting to show yourself strong on our behalf we pray there would be a way made a way prepared a way cleared so you can land those blessings and strength and revelations that you want to so that on the other end of this the world could be different thank you for this moment speak to us thank you for every person here for every person watching on TV and on the internet do what only you can do Jesus we ask this in your name amen you can be seated and as you find your way to your seat if you have a Bible with you I want to turn our attention to Matthew chapter 7 a yay for Matthew 7 that's amazing and as you're turning there if you like to take notes down and jot down my title the heading of this message that kicks us off into this amazing time is bunnies lizards and bedrock and I promise that'll make sense in one minutes or you will not see me at passion 2021 Matthew seven Jesus speaking starting in verse 24 therefore whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock and the rain descended and the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it did not fall for it was founded on the rock but everyone who hears these sayings of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand and the rain descended the floods came and the winds blew and beat on that house and it fell and great was its fall and so it was when Jesus had ended these sayings that the people were astonished at his teaching for he taught them as one having Authority and not as the scribes in this passage Jesus leaves us with an inevitable inevitable question and the question is what are you building your life on and to do so he uses a common tactic in Scripture and that's a visual picture we can easily imagine these two men who both built houses who faced the same storm two men two houses one storm and the outcomes of what these two men experienced couldn't be any more different now you have to understand where we are in Matthew 7 is the tail end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is most famous sermon I mean there's some good stuff up in here city on a hill the Beatitudes The Lord's Prayer get a plank out of your eye before you go reaching for a speck in someone else's eye I mean the Lord's Prayer is in here it's a really good sermon but he chooses to end it with this picture he chooses to end this entire masterful message with this choice this fork in the road the same choice that begins in the garden God's way or our way the choice that's reiterated in Deuteronomy I've set before you a choice life and death blessing and cursing God pleads with us choose life that you and your descendants may live the same choice comes up in Psalm 1 the very first Psalm here's a tree that's branches are vibrant leaves are green fruit does not fade season by season oh and here's a tumbleweed blowing by which of these two would you like to be and not a single one of us go you know I'd love to be tumbleweed it's awesome love how they roll it's great rolling with my homies it's just what I'd like to feel my inner tumbleweed no one's like yay tumbleweed team template we earlier I want to be the tree one of the last to want to be strong won't want to be permanent I want the blessing I want to be on Team God team land not team go hello and so we hear these stories like hey this guy built a house looks pretty good totally got destroyed with him in it that's not great Obie this other guy over here also build a house identical setup identical floor plan whole chip and Joanna Gaines 5 going on up in here up in here and it lasted through the storm and we're all like I would love to be in that house I would love to be in that situation which is of course what Jesus wanted the audio to respond with the question of course is how think we all want our lives to be built on the right thing I think we want this new year to be built on the right thing and I think the answer to what's in front of us can be found by looking to what's behind us it was philosopher George Santayana who once quipped that those who don't learn from the past are condemned to repeat it so as I was praying about this new year for all of us this new decade for all of us and surely God has something for us in this new year that he would gather so many from so many colleges from so many countries to be here in this iconic moment and there's just I think all of us sent something about 2020 that's different let's get my hair cut the other day and I said what are you doing for New Year's Eve she goes I never go out but I'm going out this news she goes I just feel like there's something different 20/20 vision and it just seems like there is a buzz about this new decade there is a buzz about this time that we're living in and what God wants to do in the earth that why he would have us here and I think we mustn't just say what about 2020 we we should be saying what about this new decade what about this new ten years but maybe even bigger than that we should be saying what about a hundred years from now what what could we do today that could impact a century from now the Bible says that God is faithful to a thousand generations I think sometimes in this fashion that's cyclical so quickly everything in and out disposable we can just think to short term and not think long term not think marble not think big picture so we should be asking what about a hundred years from now what could wring out into eternity from our life here on this earth in this next year and the answer forward as George foot it is looking backwards and so as I spent some time preparing for this message and pondering Jesus is teaching here I couldn't help but wonder what was happening one hundred years ago if we want to impact a hundred years from now perhaps we should say what's a century behind us and the answer is that a hundred years ago this nation anyhow was preparing for something called the Dust Bowl and as I was looking into it and reading about it I was reminded that Louie had given me a little gift a couple years ago we had done a tour around the country and to celebrate it he gave me a little gift and in it was a book that was all about the Dust Bowl now I'm horrified to admit to you that when I looked at I thought oh great something about college football you know there's just so many bowls it's really hard to keep track of it's like this one's brought to you by Tostitos and it's the Cotton Bowl brought to you by chick-fil-a before the Rose Bowl and not being a big college football guy I assumed the Dust Bowl was something that happened at some point in the SCC so as I set it to the side I when I came across it I remember that I have a book about this so I pulled this book out and I started maybe you know all about the Dust Bowl I didn't know very much about it I wasn't paying attention during school for much of it and so I started googling it it was like oh my gosh the Dust Bowl which was all throughout the 30s in this country was unbelievable you see was an 8-year stretch an eight year period that has been referred to as the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States of America where basically these massive black blizzards that's what they call them we have a photo on the screen these black blizzards showed up and basically just would descend on a city descend on a town they were a storm that in some cases would be 200 miles wide 2,000 feet tall moving 65 miles an hour with enough grit in them to take the paint job off your car and they would just descend on cities and swallowed them up if you got caught in them alive you can literally become blind from dirt getting ground into your eyelids it was you couldn't stay standing you couldn't see it would become night instantly chickens said only roost at evening hours when the black blizzards would hit would just instantly start roosting these black blizzards would hit sometimes days on end days on end days on end in many regions we have a map on the screen Colorado Texas New Mexico Kansas Nebraska the Dakotas and they would be localized in this area in the middle that's the worst is the yellow the panhandle of Texas and Oklahoma that were its yellow it was the worst this was called no man's land and basically was where it was centered and it was just devastating as for eight years these black blizzards just ran wild over these cities destroying everything leaving I think we have a photograph of some of the drifts as the sand would pile up above the fences and then the cattle would be able to get out which was of course how you made a living people had it of everything invested in the livestock market in this area and so the cows were veal just go across the fences and then they would end up with so much sand plugged up in their nose that they would start dying it was devastating for everybody kids had to go to school wearing masks across their faces to just even go outside this went on for almost a decade almost 7,000 people in this area died of what's called dust pneumonia which is having just so much dust that you're breathing because it would get to the cracks in the home they would put wet sheets up every night they would tape every crack they could find in these little homes but the dust found its way in in the morning every day they would scoop the dusts out of their houses and so many people couldn't handle it they just decided to leave seeking out work that didn't exist for them because oh by the way the nation and the world was in the great depression at this time so as two and a half million people fled this region trying to go to places like California as seen in the Grapes of Wrath or read about in The Grapes of Wrath they would go and get treated terribly there would be signs outside movie theaters that would say no dogs and no Okies a slur anybody from this region affected by the dustbowl these black blizzards and so eventually they would end up in what were referred to as shantytowns or Hoovervilles where they would live in these horrible conditions and boxcars anything they could hobble together families had nothing had no way to provide for their kids no work they could get no hope of a better tomorrow one woman she had to bury her grandmother and her only child on the same day April 14 1935 and in one moment she's standing there they both died of dust pneumonia she sees this impossibly small casket the slightly larger one and in one fell swoop she has lost her connection to the past and her hope for the future fortunately that day was blue skies in Oklahoma until it wasn't for the worst black blizzard that ever showed up appeared at that exact moment as the burial was taking place it was so powerful so devastating it began in the South Dakota Montana area it swept its way across the plains and ended up in New York City where it made the Empire State Building impossible to see it shut down Commerce for five hours dust ended up in the White House and 2 and a 2 and 550 miles off the eastern seaboard dust was landing on ships here's the worst part of it all all the dust all the death all the chaos not to mention the static electricity apparently static would build up in these dust storms so badly that barbed wire fences would glow blue and men would not shake each other's hand on the street because they could be knocked to their butts if they did so all the vehicles had to drag chains behind them to ground them lest it short out the entire vehicle just trying to do something crazy like driving to get provisions if anything was possible but the worst part about this was not the static it was not the pneumonia it wasn't even the Jackrabbits because the freak behaviors of nature during this time wiped out coyotes and other predators Jackrabbits proliferated like well rabbits and they would descend on cities that had no food that barely had gardens that they would protect and wipe the dust off every day and these Jackrabbits would come four thousand seven thousand fifteen thousand the greatest count was at one time thirty five thousand Jackrabbit showed up in one city like a biblical plague people thought the world was ending and they would just eat everything they would eat the bark off a fence post they would eat everything but the doorknob on your home but the worst part of the Dust Bowl wasn't the storms wasn't the bunnies wasn't the blizzards wasn't the static it was that all of it was man-made none of it needed to happen and it was 100 percent preventable you have to understand that coming out of the Civil War the Homestead Act that was enlarged in 1909 made it possible for anybody who so desired to go west young man and get for free land that you could develop pretty quickly all the good choices were snatched up and coming out of the Great War all that was left basically was the Great Plains in this area no one thought it was possible to farm because the only thing that would grow there was the prairie grass that the Buffalo would eat but there weren't any Buffalo left they were all killed all the Native Americans had been brutally savagely and cruelly moved off their native land into reservations and so now you had the Great Plains and it was an enigma all there was was grass but just at that time technology showed up John Deere made widely available the tractor and the combine that were both powered by gasoline and everybody with the money coming from the cattle boom and a soon to be wheat bubble had the ability to take out loans to buy them and so using the Homestead Act provisions and gripped by manifest destiny farmers who were farmers began plowing up acres after acres after acres in all 100 million acres were ploughed up they got rid of all the prairie grass exposing what was under it soil and they planted wheat and began printing money that was coming in throughout the 1920s what they didn't know was that the rain that was falling and the conditions that were basically making life so wonderful were a very finite thing on the Great Plains as drought comes in cycles comes in waves and this rainy cycle was about to come to an end and just as the 30s began the 20s gave way to the driest time in the history of the United States a drought so bad it seized 46 of the 48 states back then Alaska and Hawaii weren't a thing y'all and the 46 of the 48 states many of the states had day after day after day of temperature in the hundreds and you know what does not do well in hundred degree heat wheat all this new wheat that they had been so excited about began to be impossible to grow because of the drought the drought got so bad and the winds swept in as they always do in the plains which would have been normal the only problem is the wheat did not have deep roots but turns out the prairie grass which had no value did roots that went deep down some as much as five feet and in times of drought the the prairie grass up above the ground would die turn brown big deal but its roots would stay rooted that's what roots do and they would hold basically the soil together and the reason there had not been significant erosion over the thousands of years that had played out is because the prairie grass which was native to this area held the dirt down even in times of drought but since they had ripped up a hundred million acres of the stuff now when the normal winds came now in the normal storm showed up now when it got hot and difficult days showed up there was nothing to hold the dirt down and so it began all almost a billion tons of it to be swept up in the air creating the conditions under which the foolishness and the hubris and the pride of these people who were rushing in to get something rushing in to take something was all of a sudden exposed and just like the man in the story Jesus told the difficulty of the weather showing up showed that they had nothing routing them to the earth at all and this has been called the worst environmental disaster in our country's history ever caused by man that didn't need to happen and I think it's important we take this to heart because as a country we basically spent the 20s preparing for the Dust Bowl of the 30s and we didn't even know it and so I bring to you this takeaway conclusion from this sad story and it's this it's really profound I want you to write it down ready 30 comes after 20 didn't paint stitching to school but I got that much 30 comes after 20 what do I mean by that I mean this most of you and this is a really cool thing who are at passion 2020 as college students were born roughly in the year 0 2000 or so right raise your hand and born 2,000 how crazy is it that you're gonna turn 20 in the 20s but what I think you need to open your eyes - is that quickly on the heels of your 20s it's coming your 30s it's coming your 40s it's coming the 50s and I think we can live so right here so in the moment we can forget sometimes listen to me that perhaps we are today some of us moving slowly towards a future that we won't like when we get there the nickname for the 30s in this country because of the Dust Bowl crisis was the dirty 30s but what I came to tell you is that you don't ever have to have dirty 30s if you live purely in your 20s here we live in a day when it's possible to do things that we can do without any thought to whether we should do them GK Chesterton once said never take down a fence until you know the reason it was put up and the Bible has so many things that at a time can feel like fences at times can feel like borders walking with God there are many things you're gonna bump into that you're gonna feel like why is that fence there cultures changed my friends say this I see this on TV that's what my feelings tell me and we're gonna feel at times like we would take down fences just like those homesteaders just like those suitcase farmers who are rushing in powered by John Deere tractors and combines going we can rip up the plains what good do they do for us but just because you can doesn't mean you should and it's possible that today you're making decisions in your life that are gonna move you towards the 30s that you won't like when you get there but you have the power now to do what God's called you to do regardless of how it feels relationally and spiritually and financially what I want you to understand is that now yells louder but later lasts longer so protect your future by living carefully right now and what that means is asking ourselves what fences are we in a hurry to tear down because of technology perhaps I think about how easy it is to gratify our sexual impulses with pornography 1 out of 4 google searches are porn or pornographic in nature the data transmitted by porn every this country exceeds that of Amazon Netflix and Twitter put together it's so easy because of these devices that we have in our pocket to make decisions and to do things to swipe left swipe right to live our lives right about 1.6 billion swipes on tinder every single day in our country and culture will tell you now you just do what you want to do you feel good that's when you're single you have a good time you put that all behind you but what the Bible says is that there's more to sex than skin on skin what you do now is gonna load up in your heart you don't get anything out of your system by doing it you get it into your system come on your 30s are coming hot let's live our 20s to honor God listen most of our 20s to seek out God I think about how in our day it's possible and many are doing it to curate a sort of spiritual existence I can pull up this podcast and listen to this preacher and I can listen to this worship artist and I don't really even need to go to a local church because I don't like the options in my town I can sort of just listen to this message and until they say something that convicts me that I can listen to this message and although I got to ask you is this what's going to happen when you're 40 and you got kids and yours over you watch Church online as a family that really means they're playing Legos and you're watching the messages that you like here's my question it could it be possible that we blink and lose a generation could it be possible that we lose out on being under authority that we lose out on the power of community that we lose out on the chance to have difficult conversations come our way you know the devil doesn't mind that you're here because he knows what you need to know hearing is different than doing that's our second takeaway truth hearing is the whole lot different than doing the Bible doesn't say that the man whose house fell didn't hear the Bible he heard it he just didn't do anything about it the devil doesn't care that you're a passion 2020 a bit in fact I think he kind of likes it the epicness of it the lights the power and Wow of it all that it's easy to get swept up in this all and deep down the devil wants you to go back home to your church where there's no Hillsong UNITED and where Tim Tebow's biceps aren't going to be not jealous I'm just saying and he's hoping then you'll go oh well it's not the excitement then and you'll you'll not do anything about these messages CS Lewis said that God delights most in prayers we pray in times of dryness and what God wants you to do is to go home and put these things into practice and live differently as a result of our time here that's where the power comes from not just from hearing but from doing that's what set Jesus apart from the Sadducees and the teachers of the law they put heavy burdens on people they themselves didn't keep but Jesus did everything he told us to do embodying the gospel and that's where the power came from in his message and in his life hearing is different different than doing the third takeaway truth you need to know is that there's more than one way to build your life on sand you see I think when we think about a man building a house on sand we think about he's probably going to Mardi Gras he's probably on spring break in Cancun he's probably like living it up for sin now to be clear to live for money to live for sex that is to build your life on sand I mean think about this if I need to hang something I could take a nail and drive it in and if I'm living my life for sex or for money or for pleasure well guess what this which represents my soul is not going to be supported very well by that that can't handle the weight of a soul but this message that Jesus gave wasn't about outright sexuality or the sins that we would think of as the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and I can tell you that because he said two men built houses and he said that to a Jewish audience who got the religion thing nailed and if you looked at these houses they both look the same they both looked identical and as you read the Sermon on the Mount you realize he wasn't doing this to applaud the religiousness of his listeners he was doing this to expose the deadness of their hearts he said you've heard it said don't lust or don't commit adultery but I tell you if you look at a woman with lust in your heart you've committed it he basically was saying none of you have kept the law he was saying you all live in a house of religious achievement and you applaud yourself because you're not like the young prodigal son off in Vegas thinking everything's going to stay there but you're basically building on your own accomplishments you're living and standing on what you do for God and how pleased God is with you at your perfect church attendance and how you keep the law you think Moses is your best friend the purpose of this parable was to tell them the people living in the house of sand we're trying to hang their soul on religion and neither religion nor irreligion or secularism to handle your soul and that's why in our day there's such anxiety and there's such fear even connected like we are Yael says that 60% of college students at Yale say they're lonely socially isolated which is as bad for your health as smoking 15 cigarettes per day we're trying to hang our souls on things that can't handle them what we need is something sturdy what we need is something robust what we need is a bigger hammer baby [Applause] this is so much work what we need is something that can handle the weight of our soul what we need is what the wheat did not have and that is a foundation we need to be rooted because then not only can it handle our soul but it can handle the weight of all the things that our king wants us to do in this world doing the great and mighty things God's called us to do we need to be into the stud which is what this still has that the others did not a root built on not bunnies and blizzards but built on bedrock now that's all in well you say for those who are hearing this you have squeaky clean past which fYI none of us do that's out of the bag but you say I'm already man I'm already up to my eyeballs in what is going to bring on dust you would say to me I'm already doing some of those things that I know will bring about consequences I'm living outside of God's will is there hope for me to which I would say to you yes in the Bible there's a passage called Isaiah 60:1 that's headline is good news for the oppressed and here's what it says in Isaiah chapter 61 verse 3 speaking perhaps to you to all who mourn in Israel he will give a crown of beauty for Ashes a joyous blessing instead of mourning festive praise instead of despair in their righteousness they will be like great Oh that the Lord has planted for his own glory one of the things that brought the Great Plains out of the Dust Bowl was an idea that FDR had President Roosevelt had of planning 200 million trees from Canada all the way to Texas a hundred miles wide he called this idea the shelter belt he thought if we just plant trees the trees could block the wind if we just plant trees the trees could create Kahn's innate condensation and perhaps rain that could be lungs for the land 200 million trees they planted a shelter belt running from Canada to Texas the answer was in trees this is saying even if you feel like your life is in dust and morning and it's self-inflicted there can be in your story a beautiful restoration that can come from God planting trees oak trees in your life new beginnings for you God can make a way even with it where there is no way and the proof has been here for the whole time the reason this works is because of studs the reason this works is because God planted a tree for us to hang our lives on hang our souls on and hang our sin on our shame on God before President Roosevelt planted a tree and a nail went through that tree here and here and here and on it hangs your sin and my sin God can do a new thing today we can build our lives on the rock today and even if we don't believe it even if we don't feel it even if we don't see it we are walking in ground zero of a brand new beginning not just for us but everybody God wants to touch through us if you believe it say Amen [Music] and father we bring to this moment our mistakes and our regrets and our guilt we bring to this moment of painful awareness that we're not enough we can't fix ourselves we can't just try harder and do better we're broken we're lost and we need you but thanks be to God as we end one year thanks be to God as we end a decade thanks be to God as we enter into 20/20 as we step into the future we can believe that from the cross Springs hope eternal [Music] thank you for what you're doing in this moment to restore us to save us to heal us thank you that because of Jesus it will be different this year and it'll be different a hundred years from now and moving forward thousands of years ten thousand years we will sing the song of the redeemed for Christ has died and Christ is risen in Christ you are coming again we pray this in Jesus name Amen you

Channel: passionconferences

Views: 103,125

Rating: 4.877049 out of 5

Keywords: Passion, Passion 2020, John Piper, Isaiah 26:8, Desires, Desiring God, Jesus, Sermons, Passion Sermons, Passion Messages, Sadie Robertson, Louie Giglio, Shelley Giglio, Levi Lusko, Tim Tebow, Mercedes-Benz, Atlanta, Ravi Zacharias

Id: D0KtTTRu5mo

Length: 37min 37sec (2257 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2020