The Depth of the Gospel – Sermons – Matt Chandler – 8/29/21

hi guys pastor matt chandler here pray that this sermon this resource uh be used by god in conjunction with you belonging to a local church to grow you and sanctify you in your faith if these resources bless you would you consider giving back to us here at tbc you can do that either through the app or you can go online to tbc resources and give there again pray that this blesses you and grows you in your love for jesus christ [Music] good morning church my name is portia and i serve in connections on the welcome team and today i am going to read for you first corinthians chapter 15 verses 1 through 6. now i would remind you brothers of the gospel i preached to you which you received in which you stand and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word i preached to you unless you believed in vain for i delivered to you as of first importance what i also received that christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and that he appeared to cephas then to the twelve then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time most of whom are still alive though some have fallen asleep this is the word of the lord thanks be to god thanks portion well good morning how are we all right if you have your bibles i really would love for you to turn to this passage i'm just gonna pull on it for the next uh 40 minutes i want to this week and next uh just kind of go back and review uh some things that i think we know but i need to make sure we know uh before we roll into uh the fall series there i i don't know how your how you're ordered or put together but i i learn things slowly from the lord and what i mean by that is uh the lord will be trying to tell me something uh and it'll be hard for me to pick up on it and then all of a sudden there'll be this moment that catalyzes it and i'm like dang it anybody else anybody else wired that way okay if your hands didn't come up we were gonna switch spots so i'm glad uh your hands came up uh and so really i have this moment it occurred about 13 years ago a lot of you actually know about this moment it's not the brain cancer nice try uh but but it actually changed i think how i saw ministry how i understood ministry and how i understood how god uh was leading me uh to live my life and step into this space of vocational ministry uh as he was handing it to me uh and and i don't know why i couldn't see it coming uh but but i'm just grateful uh that the lord uh shown some light on it and so uh it started like first my my first memory uh where i'm like dang it i should have seen that uh is it back in the old hp building the the whole front if any of you have ever been over there it's all stairs uh and so right now like i'm up and you know there's a a moat and a couple of machine gun nests and we just learned over the years we need some kind of protection uh and but back then it was just like we were all on top of each other and i would sit on the front row and just kind of walk up and preach and when i was done preach i just walked down and and counsel and pray and um i met this man i can still see his face uh and this man was like his life was falling apart and his marriage was falling apart and uh to quote him jesus wasn't working um so so i started asking questions and the more he talked uh the more concerned i grew up because i started i started to hear in his answers that this man does not know the gospel and therefore cannot be a christian and so i shifted i pivoted in our conversation and started to ask him about uh when he surrendered his life to jesus what what was going on in that space when he understood what christ was calling him into uh and with not making a joke not trying to be funny he looked me dead in my eyes and said i was born in san antonio yeah so so i don't know if you've never been in it like you got to watch your face right i'm not trying to shame this brother so i'm like no i was like goo and then i i asked some more questions and this poor man who who had been in church for a long time thought because he was born in texas to believing parents that he was a christian and so i got to enter into this space with him where we got to make clear what the gospel was and wasn't as awesome as texas is i mean so awesome people are are moving here um be because god's just done a grace here now some people don't think that's true but that's not stopping them from moving and here hey just to encourage you because i see some of you meaning wrongly i want to help you mean correctly today before the nine i i met three families who have all moved here one from southern oregon one from california and one from seattle none of which moved here to change our state all right all of them moved here uh to breathe a little if you will all right so let's just be careful before we like keep an eye on them i'm not telling you not keep an eye on them i'm saying you welcome into the family you hug them we love you but watch yourself right and so uh so anyway um the number of people in those early days for me that had some sort of church background or some kind of kind of moral conservative bent and equated that to christianity it was just like this happening so frequently that that i i couldn't see it and i don't know why i couldn't see it but here was the moment uh some of you actually in the room i see a couple of you here i know are in the room that night it was a saturday night uh we were doing a celebration service uh i walked in to come sit uh in my normal seat uh and a young man i mean he's probably early mid-20s he comes up and he and he grabs me like to hug me now i'm not if i don't know you i ain't a chest to chest hugger i don't dude like i don't if you're a man we don't know each other i'm gonna and pull you in i'm gonna keep my arm between us because i don't know you all right now eventually if i know you i'm all in but but not until i know you but this dude i don't know if he played college ball or something but he like ripped through and then he was on me and and so i was awkward and then he just pushed me back really looked at me right in my face and said i was homeless six months ago but but christ has grabbed a hold of me we don't have any time for that i just want you to know i brought a witch with me tonight i didn't tell her where i was bringing her and she is i'll use the word because kids are in the room she is angry and i just thought you should know in case something happens and then he just went and sat down like i'm like what does that even mean so then i sit down on the front i gotta pray like we're prepared for a lot of kind of contingencies when we gather in a room like this we're not prepared for harry potter to break out in the room uh and so man i'm just praying on the front row lord i just ask you would you be merciful among us and then if you've been to the hv we're baptizing and uh the the screen kind of uh like lifted and there were two women in the water and the one that was sharing their testimony that morning just said hey i want you to know for the last 20 years i've been actively involved in witchcraft in the occult and i'm here to testify that jesus is better and his power is more legitimate yeah you can clap for that so so then i'm like then you got to apologize to the lord for not having any faith you're like lord i knew you had it this whole time thank you uh and so baptized and then that the next guy got in and he was like um man i'm a i'm an atheistic buddhist who struggled with alcoholism and then i that messed with me because the way my brain works i'm like can you this is legit can you be an atheistic buddhist because it's not a god right but it is an energy and a force and so i'm wrestling with that and then he he got baptized and then i started feeling like we're killing it like who knew in dallas witches atheistic buddhists who know i'm like man we're on that i love i like the grimy thank you god and then the next 15 baptisms were something like this grew up in church my whole life went to church camp i have never heard the gospel until the last year until the last couple of years and then get baptized and again i'm that stuff haunts me because i've got kids how in the world can you grow up in church your whole life and then in your mid-20s early 30s say i never heard the gospel so theologically here's how that hits your pastor they heard they couldn't hear remember when we talked about the holy spirit doing the work of illumination so i'm like oh okay sure you can't grow up in church your whole life and not hear the gospel and so man i just tracked down about 10 of them and we went and had cups of coffee and here's what i learned some of them actually had grown up in church their whole lives and have been told not to have sex before marriage not to get high or drunk not to be a part of the party scene some of them even um don't listen to secular music but if you like sec if you like dave matthews you're gonna love whoever right and and so a lot of them the testimony was what what's called moralistic deism right if you're good enough god will love you and god will bless you now some heard some could actually articulate to me what the gospel is and was and how they grew up knowing it but but just didn't hear it until recently but too many of them had all the kind of checklist of moral behavior down and no relationship with jesus christ no understanding of what was actually happening what the point of all this is and so here's what i want to do this week and next uh what i want to do today is i want to make clear the gospel as it relates to your relationship with god what is the gospel here's what i want to try to answer today are you a christian because i know right now you're like we're in church of course no i'm saying we're in church maybe right so i want to try to answer the question here's what i have a feeling that i might i don't i don't want to use the word unintentionally that i might be guilty of some offense today i am willing to offend with the cross alone if it provides clarity for you that brings about real life you and i look look okay you and i are in a day and age where deconstruction and the turning away from and leaving the faith has become some sort of sexy thing to do i contend that if you ever experience the grace and mercy of jesus christ actually that that's really impossible to deconstruct from but if all you ever understand christianity to be is a moral code then i totally get it and if you find yourself in that spot i'm telling you i love you right now and we'll sit down with you and you don't have to punt on this thing you might not have ever tried it to receive to receive the mercy of god in your soul is to forever be changed i'm not saying you don't struggle at times i'm not saying you don't get confused at times i'm not saying you don't get bothered at times i'm saying you can't walk away so so we've got to get the gospel right there's there's much at stake here and so that that's what we're going to do and then next week we're going to talk about the depth of the gospel and then next week i want to talk about the the breadth of the gospel because you get either one of those wrong things get really janky right so we're going depth today with next week so we already read the passage i learned last service that i that i this is too long of a sermon for the time getting so i i'm just go we read the passage if you've got your bibles look back first word now remind you brothers just gonna write out the gate why is he preaching the gospel to people who already believe the gospel isn't that something that's just meant to save us hmm of the gospel i preach you now let's look at this look at what he says about the gospel which you received that's past tense in which you stand that's present tense by which you are being saved if you hold fast that's future tense and then because he doesn't just want to rob us of what's going on he explains what the gospel is he doesn't leave it flat he dives in to what the gospel meant what does it mean to be a christian to believe these things he starts to unpack it this is of first importance so let me just paint it as clear as i can everything that exists was created by the triune god of the universe everything you see everything you know it was all created by god and the refrain of creation was it's good it's good it's good it's good because everything and all of creation was never meant to be the point but to point you to the point are you tracking with me right so the point of marriage is the glory of god the point of sex the glory of god the point of money the glory of god the point of rest the glory of god the point of play the glory of god the point of vacation the glory of god the boy you fill in the blank it all exists for the glory of god the way that works is as i step into the good gifts of god who created this world they are meant to in my experience point me to something greater it's why the christian should have more joy than the non-christian because our joy our worship doesn't terminate on the object but rolls past it like hey sex is a good gift from god it's a great gift from god if it terminates on itself it loses meaning it simply becomes physical pleasure alone which only lasts for that moment and then it's gone but if physical sex gives us some kind of picture of the goodness and grace of god if food like real food but if you were to taste that this is the illustration i've used for 20 years not like the lost man tastes a bite of steak and takes a good drink of cab and goes man in this steak good and this is my favorite i love me some opus one but the christian goes what kind of god in the universe infuses flavors like this for the joy of someone like me now that's a different kind of dinner you track it with me like like it's that like dinner's dinner that kind of dinner that that'll do something in you right so you got this creator guy who creates everything that is good and then he designs uh the whole thing to give us his presence as the fuel and vitality of life itself so so the energy by which you and i are to live as humans even if you're not a christian what you were built for what you were designed for was to be in the presence of god and have that presence fuel uh your vitality and energy and joy or the bible would call it pleasures forevermore or the path to life the way that the scriptures talk about this is like it paints this really beautiful picture of what it actually means to be alive and and then lastly um this creator god who created everything good for the glory of his name and the joy of his creation also in the middle of all of that authors the good perfect gifts in our lives so let's just stop that that's god that's good who's behind all this what's going on behind are all that exists in the cosmos this god creating these things for this purpose now so the second question we have to answer is that sounds awesome what's been our response so what's the response of humankind to a god who's built the universe in such a way well sin enters the cosmos in genesis 3 and here's what romans 1 says this is how we respond romans 1 says that we prefer creation to the creator do you hear me by the way the thing that makes this heavy is it lays on all of us what i mean by that is no one's like like if you were born uh in church like literally mom what do you go jesus first like you're guilty of this you're guilty i'm guilty you're guilty we're all under this our response has been ah i don't really want god but i like his stuff so so here's the creator of the universe saying i am what you most need i am life i am what you were designed for here i give these things to you to point to me so that you would grasp and know how kind i am and how loving i am towards you and our response was like i mean okay but can i just get the stuff can i do it so everyone in this room pastor included we have chosen creation to the creator and then the second thing we've done in response to this and nobody's gonna admit this but all of us are we think we're smarter than god romans 1 would say it this way you believe the lie over the truth of god so everywhere everything you can look at is testifying to you that this is true nature testifies that this is true wherever human beings flourish you see that this is true and so the bible's really clear that you will see that and yet harden your heart towards it you choose to say not for me and then unfortunately way too many of us approach the bible one like its suggestions to like there's some sort of asterisk there that if you flip in the back our picture would be there and say except for this guy like we just think if god knew if god knew what my life was like if god knew what my spouse was like if god knew what work was like if god knew then he certainly wouldn't ask these things to me because he knows what that means and i'm saying god knows exactly why that means what it means and that's why he's asking you to step into it right so we believe that we're smarter than god i don't need to approach sexuality like god says that i need it because of you listed out i don't need to approach marriage like he says i don't need to approach money like i don't you fill in the blank i don't need to do that because if god actually knew my individual world and what was going on he would totally reorder the scriptures and give me something that's more manageable it's great it's madness guys it's madness and then lastly we just fail to acknowledge him like everything good and perfect coming down from the father of lights given to his creation we give him no credit for the good and all the blame for anything bad i think one of the easiest ways to spot how depraved we are in our nature is to see how often we blame god for things and how little we give him credit for things that's an easy little check engine light right there right so this has been our response and then here's what's here's what's crazy in response to our response god doesn't just evaporate us but moves towards on last monday night uh we had an elder meeting and just so you know what your elders are like we talked about this last week um we spent the evening we put up the the two pictures of who's running the taliban right now the the guy that's runs it and then the guy that kind of is the guy that takes what that guy says and executes it and we just ask the spirit of god to haunt and bother them and sow doubt and attack them in their dreams and to rot out from under them what they grew up learning and we just asked the spirit of god to go in right but because that that's let the government fight the way the government fights my allegiance to a higher kingdom and i'm asking the spirit of god to disrupt and disunify what demons hold together that's what we're asking for so anyway that's that's free in that meeting one of the things that the guys started to pray for was how patient god has been with us as a group of men we have failed repeatedly we have executed poorly on multiple occasions gosh in 18 years i've stood on this stage four times and ask you to forgive us like they we hurt you that we mismanage this that we and yet even in the middle of that god did not go starting over but that has said long-suffering love he lavishes it upon us even in our failures god moves towards this look i don't know what your story is i don't know your background some of you do i know some of you well but but listen in the midst of this evil response against god's goodness and and and mercy he moves towards i i love this passage first corinthians 6 9-11 or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of god do not be deceived neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who practice homosexuality nor thieves nor the greeting nor the drunkards nor the revilers nor the swindlers will inherit the kingdom of god let's stop look at it anybody see themselves on that list anybody on the list a couple of times can we raise our hands like we're not baptist i don't know okay now you see yourself if you see or someone let's get them up real quick all right look around the only people that don't have their hands up right now are liars which oh put them on the list put them on the list right now here's what's crazy so this says we're all guilty don't pull one of these out they're all there on purpose all of us sin and fall short of the glory of god all of us stuck unable to get out of our own mess only able to smear the mess across our lives as we try to kind of do some moral improvement but look at verse 11 because the thing's going to turn here and such were some of you praise god there's a way out and such were somebody because you were that's past tense right that's what that word word means past like it happened back then some were now this gets important the next part of this is huge for understanding the gospel because it didn't say you implemented some discipline and pulled yourself up by your bootstraps you figured life out as you got older your testosterone dripped and so you didn't give it to your compulsions as much it's not what's here it's not what's here look what is here but you were washed now don't fail me is that sentence are you the passive agent are you the active agent you're the passive agent right you were washed which means you didn't wash you you were washed you were sanctified you were justified by the spirit of god by the blood of jesus christ so that in our rebellion against god god moves towards us in christ and what did our primary passage say how did he accomplish it well in verse 3 we see clearly that christ died for our sins in accordance with scripture if you write in your bible i would highlight or underline in accordance with scripture this is free gonna give me an email let's go this is my problem with rigid dispensationalism jesus is not plan b he is plan a always has been right this isn't oh no it didn't go the way i wanted it let me rework a plan b no jesus is plan a he died in accordance with scriptures what does that death mean on the cross of jesus christ we say this all i'm trying to get in your guts on the cross of jesus christ all of your sins are paid for all of them passed i don't know what you came in here with paid for present painful you're screwing up lately paid for you're going to blow it in the next couple of months absolutely paid for that that's what how do we know that's true well because of verse 6 the resurrection if christ is still in the grave you and i are still guilty of sin if christ is not in the grave all of our sins past present and future have been fully freely and forever forgiven this is the gospel right this is what it means to believe in the gospel i don't care if you used to get high and now you don't or you used to do this and now you don't i'm saying okay but have you surrendered your life to jesus have you trusted in his finished work great you've figured out how to live a more moral life is that moral life the fruit of the indwelling power of the spirit because of christ's finished work because if it's not it's all going to burn up because god's not after moral conformity he's after internal transformation this is what the sermon in the mount is all about yeah how hard is the sermon on the mount you have heard it said do not commit adultery but i say if you lust in your heart wait what you have heard it said do not commit murder but i say do you have rage in your heart like what is that that's like i'm not after just shaping your external moral reality i'm after transforming you from the inside out this is the message of the gospel so what this passage is saying is that you heard this and you responded to it so i don't know your story i don't know when it was that that this made sense and you said yes to jesus but here here's where i want to move to the next phrase in our passage and i want to highlight that i think this is the problem in american evangelicalism right now look at the next phrase so um by which you were saved look at this in which you now stand most of us have been taught that the gospel is a doorway that we step through to become christians the bible doesn't talk about the gospel like that this is saying the gospel's the whole house by which you were saved in which you now stand so that if we are christians right now we are standing in the gospel and this is why paul won't stop preaching the gospel to people who already accepted and believed the gospel this is also this also gives us a hint that although positionally we are perfect in god's sight god knows you're going to keep blowing it like why do you got to keep preaching the gospel of people because people are going to need to keep hearing the gospel even after they've accepted it absolutely even after they accepted it i don't have time but romans 1 13-15 paul preaching the gospel to christians galatians 2 20 through 3 6 paul preaching the gospel to christians ephesians 1 and 2 preaching the gospel to christians philippians 1 12-17 preaching the gospel to christians in which you now stand so let me read this quote by bb warfield here's what he says there is nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are acceptable to god we must always be accepted for christ's sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all this is not true of us only when we believe it is just as true after we have believed it will continue to be true as long as we live our need of christ does not cease with our believing nor does the nature of our relation to him or to god through him ever alter no matter what our attainments and christian graces or our achievements and behavior may be it is always by his blood and his righteousness alone that we can rest okay that's great what does that mean right like that's great i'm like yeah yes amen so what does it if we just think about life if we're asking the word of god to bear its weight on us if we're serious about walking into the life that christ has purchased for us if we are to be distinctively christian in the day and age in which we live what does it mean to stand in the present in the gospel two things there's more it's a sermon two things here's number one what does it look like to stand in the gospel today standing in the gospel means believing that i've been set free from my sinful nature believing standing in the gospel means believing that i've been set free from my sinful nature uh the last couple of years i've started to kick up the rhetoric around this because i because i i think it's a problem like the way we identify with our struggles oftentimes is unbiblical let me show you romans 6 starting in verse 1 what shall we say then are we to continue in sin that grace may abound by no means that that's actually that's a nice way to translate what's going on in the greek um paul actually is saying you're damned if you do this i.e this is where the offense might happen look at me i love you you are not a christian paul's saying if your view of the christian life is since god's gonna forgive me let me do whatever i want and his grace can be made all the more visible by me doing whatever i want and knowing that god will forgive me paul's going no if you think that live that way you're not a christian i know that's hard because you grew you and i grew up in kind of revivalistic movement that wants everybody to get saved but calls nobody to radical following wants to baptize everybody but not call anybody to holiness wants to assimilate into churches but not release into battle are you tracking with me so the invitation to hey do you want to come to heaven with mom and dad or do you want to burn in hell forever to seven-year-olds the easy believism of hey you're forgiven of everything you don't even have to follow it just do your best it's not the gospel he's saying what shall we say shall we sin all the more so that grace may abound may it never be it's stronger than that you can't would be a better way to put that how can we who died to sin live in it do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into christ jesus were baptized into his death we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father we too might walk in the newness of life do you know what he's saying there hey look at me that sinful compulsion in you like that's not your primary identity anymore like that thing's dead you've been given a new one says so that what i primarily am is a son of god and this is for me the way that satan wants to attack me this is this gives me all the ammunition i need to be violent back again i don't know how you're wired uh the the the enemy loves to whisper things to me to kind of take me out of where god's placed me right i think he actually has the same scheme with most of us right so so the whisper is oh man you you're not there's a gap between what you're teaching what you're living you shouldn't say anything or man you say that man they're gonna they're gonna come for you you'll get canceled pastor bro i would not mention that one you just listen they're going to leave this church they're going to go to a happier one ain't putting up with that pastor right i mean that's what that's what i hear right or what would those what was that crew you partied with back in the day what would they think about you right now how hypocritical are you that that person you took advantage of that that wickedness behind you how could you say these things knowing you're guilty of that you still have these compulsions somebody with that compulsion shouldn't be shouldn't be doing what you're doing and you get you step out of what what you're supposed to be doing you'd be quiet right but what this says is although all of that might be true that matt chandler's dead like how crazy is that so what kind of ammunition does that give you to step into your victory i'm telling you please quit owning your struggle as though that that's that's your struggle to own that that is god has in a beautiful way given you the power to have victory over sin but you have got to step into it and not own it but make war against it i would make the appeal to you to be far more violent towards your sin than you are right listen if you struggle with anxiety i'm sorry but be violent against it you struggle with lust be violent again don't be passive when it comes to your sin like god's given you victory he's given you a way out this ain't name it claim it this is the spirit of god dwells in you so be violent this is crazy you struggle with anger be more violent towards it and that a weird paradox your guilty pose exploding you should look at me you should hate that about yourself and you should make war against it just make war again you don't have to be stuck like that you have to be stuck in anxiety you don't have to be uh drawn to pornography the rest of your life you don't have to be like on on a needle just always exploding you don't have to do that what it means to stand in the gospel is that i'm a son of the living god i'm a priest in the household of god and sin is not my master that's what it means for you that's what it means for me but gosh it's just become so tiny come here i'm so sorry just try harder no no listen i'm calling you to hate your sin and to be violent christianity is a religion of violence in so much as wherever the devil's at work we're looking to kill him in our lives and in the lives of others this is how you stand in the gospel what's your primary weapon you're going to hate this your primary weapon and the second way that you stand in the gospel presently is the ongoing ethic look at me of confession and repentance i'm sorry i'm sorry right because this has become such a kind of how you doing i'm fine great right i'm not asking you to play the victim in fact i just tried to call you out of it but i am saying one of the ways we just choke out the enemy is to take away all the darkness i'm gonna say this to you make eye contact to be 99 known is to be completely unknown look at me to be 99 known is to be completely unknown you hold on to that one percent because of the ramifications that might come if you come clean you've given the enemy all the space he needs to devour you all the space he needs to rack you with guilt and shame all the space he needs to take you out of your destiny your calling which is to make trouble for him in the world this is the great scheme of the enemy to convince you that you can't play you better just watch and leave this to the professionals gosh if you ever could comprehend that the seed of what's inside of you the the power of the kingdom that dwells inside of you how big of a problem you could be to darkness the enemy can't have you you just can't have you believing that so he's like oh man if you were to people think you're farther along than that if you let them know that you're still struggling you let them know that you don't know how to study the bible because you've just been faking it so long they're going to gosh you lead a small group oh man they think you're like that kind of nonsense guys that's the stuff that will murder you so you just put it to death and you practice the ongoing ethics of confession and repentance and ask for accountability ask for help ask serious men and women to come alongside of you like i said last week shield to shield and go to work i get like choke out the space in which he plays i want to live my life in such a way that i never have to worry about what you find out about me right wouldn't you love that anybody like watch this anybody have this i'm just telling i'm going to lay a scheme of the enemy right before you i got to go if you ever thought eventually they're going to find out i'm just a fake anybody go ahead and get that hand up eventually they're just going to find out i'm a fake let's make some eye contact why are we all thinking that this look at this is why you perpetually need the gospel because the gospel's there going you are but i'm not you are but i'm not yeah i know i paid for that already and and so i want to live my life in such a way that there's no one percent so i got this group of men my bride i don't have any secrets like listen i'll tell you how far i take it there are two guys on our staff um they get my tax returns do you have to do that no you don't have to do that i'm just saying this is how serious i am like i know he wants to destroy me so but i kind of want to destroy him so i want to give him any room to work i won't give many room to work what would it look like for you to stand in it to step into the light the ongoing ethics of confession and repentance and then the last phrase here by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word that i preached to you quickly this is future tense but look at what he talks about in regards to our future what he says is in which you will be saved if you what hold on to what you received at first what you walked in which was what that you were washed you were sanctified you were justified that this doesn't mean that i'm perfect all the days of my life but through all the days of my life i am relying on the perfection of the finished work of jesus christ let me let me i got to end this is what it means to be a christian if you don't believe this i want to go if let me if there is no hatred in your heart towards your sin i would just really question whether or not you're actually a christian listen i love you i know what that sound i know that's crazy this idea that you just say this prayer and there's never anything that springs up out of your soul from that surrender that is not biblical christianity the the invitation to follow jesus sounds a lot more like this hey come and die right remember that one it's not give your life to jesus everything's going to go your way no it's give your life to jesus i'll be with you through the thick and the thin and you'll find me to be enough in the darkest night of your soul and so what i find in the south in particular is this strange satanic unbiblical idea that with no hatred of our sin and with no desire to follow jesus we're still somehow christians now i'm not trying to crush you because i'm not saying that you're going to be perfect in fact why you keep meaning the gospel is because you're not going to be you're going to blow it again and again and again and what's great about this is we stand in the gospel we confess and we repent we get back and we keep going so here's my question as i land the plane here if you if you look at your life uh like a vine is there any fruit on that vine at all i'm not saying like you're napa valley some of you are that new wine y'all crazy i'm saying is there is there like a tiny little green tomato came fry yeah right he's like ah it's something there's there's some i hate this sin in my life and i don't hate it just because there's consequences i hate it because it's an offense against god and it's not who i am is there any of that in you is there is there any just this little red blackberry too tart to eat that you might look at and say man i want to know jesus better than i do i want to follow him more seriously than i do i want to these are not means of salvation look at me they are evidences that the spirit dwells inside of you are you a christian that that's that's my question that's what this whole story is do you understand the gospel that you have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god and god's response to that is to ransom you and rescue you with the perfect life and death and resurrection of his son that he will pull you out of sin and death and then empower you to walk in the newness of life do you believe that and are you walking in it any other testimony is not the gospel and does not make you a christian it doesn't matter what your parents believed it doesn't matter if you've been baptized before it doesn't matter if you were confirmed as a kid doesn't matter do you believe it and are you following after him this is the depth of the gospel it walks us into the kingdom and sustains us all the days of our lives through the ongoing ethics of confession and repentance he reorients our hearts back to him over and over and over and over again and i'm pleading with you today to consider whether you got caught up in some weird cultural we go to church on sundays but don't have any real evidence of following jesus in your life you don't hate sin you don't try to please the lord those aren't categories you operate by at all except when you come here but more and more and more in fact next week this is the whole sermon i'm going to tell you that the force of the kingdom happens outside this room not inside this room that you leave this and become this kind of man or this is just to remind you who you are so you can go back out there and do it and be it but that's next week once you bow your heads and close your eyes i want to encourage you this way if you're not a christian maybe the spirit just made that evident to you maybe you're here today and your guess is the first time you ever heard or understood the gospel i would just encourage you in this way god is moving towards you in mercy right now he is moving towards you in grace you're here today to hear the invitation that no one can out sin the cross of jesus christ i don't need to know your past the bible is filled with men that have surpassed your sin filled with women that have surpassed need to know your past i don't even know what you're presently struggling with my question is have you surrendered to jesus have you received the salvation that he purchased for you if you have not and today you long to now i want to encourage you as we transition into this song to pray a simple prayer of belief i want to finally surrender my life to you i have either thought i was but never actually did or i just have never really um done it i want to say yes to you gee i want to lay my yes down and then i want to encourage you man that as we sing the song you head to the back and you grab the hand of some of the men and women that will be in the back and go i just said yes to jesus they'll ask you a couple of questions we'd love to baptize you and celebrate that this morning and then come alongside of you as we figure out what it looks like to follow jesus together in this day and age and then christian let me lay this before you if you spot in your life this morning you you know you're a christian there is evidence but you are seeing that you are not behaving violently towards sin and you have stopped the ongoing ethic of confession and repentance and right now you find yourself 99 known or 95 percent known or not whatever you find yourself in that space i want to appeal to you today you're in a very dangerous space now i encourage you there'll be men and women up front to come and be prayed for if you don't have a circle of guys or gals to be honest with to come and let us be that for you we've got recovery on wednesday nights it's a beautiful place for you to come in and go man i i got some one percent nonsense i need to talk with somebody about but don't let the enemy hold you captive he's defeated he's lost let's live that way someone pray for us we're going to stand and then listen you want to say yes to jesus we've got people in the back do business with god in this space that we might move all the more towards what he has for us and what he purchased for us by his blood father i bless these men and women thank you for the gospel we praise you that there is no sin in our past our current or our future that has more power than your finished work for us on the cross and in the resurrection we bless your name we lift you high god give us the courage to walk in victory give us the courage to put sin to death in our life give us the the grace to confess and to repent and to humble ourselves before you and step into all that you have for us it's for your beautiful name i pray amen

Channel: The Village Church Resources

Views: 21,856

Rating: 4.9105692 out of 5

Keywords: Matt Chandler, The Village Church

Id: X_r8IMU647g

Length: 47min 55sec (2875 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 30 2021