3 (12m 37s): You are indeed the everlasting. God, God, you changed not your you're immutable. You're faithful. You're good Lord. Thank you for the opportunity to gather and worship your name, Lord, and that God has. We focus our attention on the word this morning. I pray that you would speak to us. Lord, you've got eternal truth that you want to communicate to us. It's it's eternal and yet pertinent to our lives today right now in this moment. So Lord, I pray that we would, that myself...
3 (12m 37s): You are indeed the everlasting. God, God, you changed not your you're immutable. You're faithful. You're good Lord. Thank you for the opportunity to gather and worship your name, Lord, and that God has. We focus our attention on the word this morning. I pray that you would speak to us. Lord, you've got eternal truth that you want to communicate to us. It's it's eternal and yet pertinent to our lives today right now in this moment. So Lord, I pray that we would, that myself included that we'd just be open and available to your truth, Lord God, that he would encourage us and build us up and challenge us where we need to be challenged. Lord God, that it would just be strong truth for us today. 3 (13m 19s): Encouraging and gracious truth for us today. We love you, Lord. We thank you for this time in Jesus name. Amen. All right, turn around and greet somebody that you've never ever met before. I appreciate you brother. Thanks, sir. I appreciate you buddy. See you next round. Thanks Jim. Let me buddy. I wasn't sure if I was ready. 2 (14m 19s): Alrighty. 3 (14m 23s): Hebrews chapter two, somebody told me that I should tell the Hebrews joke about how, you know, the Bible tells us that it's the man's job to make coffee because of the book of Hebrews. But I said, I'm not going to tell that Joe is not going to do it for this response right here, because it's just not as funny as it used to be. So I'm not going to tell you the Hebrews Joe, we're going to skip that all together. Amen. Hey, we are in Hebrews chapter two, though. Somebody even said, you should say Hebrews too much coffee because you're in Hebrews two. 3 (15m 4s): And I said, no, I'm not going to tell that joke. I'm not going to go to that. I'm not going to go down that road. So I'm not going to talk about coffee and that sort of thing today, we're going to be talking about. And in fact, we've titled the message, a warning against drifting away, a warning against drifting away. For thousands of years, it's been a temptation of the followers of God to drift in their faith, to drift in their conviction, to drift as followers and become more and more like the world. Instead of like saintification, it's supposed to do is supposed to, we're supposed to become more and more like Christ and less and less like our old man, less and less like the world I was in Hawaii, about 10, maybe 12 years ago, something like that and flew in for a pastors conference. 3 (15m 49s): And I knew it was just going to be a crazy busy week. And so if I was going to get into the water, I knew that I needed to get into the water right away. So I get to the hotel, unpack stuff, go down to the beach and rent a board. And I go out surfing and I'm out there for probably, I don't know, maybe a couple hours, something like that. And it's time to come in. And I, I come into the shore from the water. I'm like, where am I? I, I was looking for the place to return my board, but it was nowhere, nowhere in sight. And so I'm asking, Hey, where do I return my surf board? And they're looking at all the boards are kind of marked with stickers or colors or something like that. 3 (16m 30s): So they can, you can identify where you return. It. There's a lot of places to rent boards down there. So I, I finally find out and they said, Hey, you're about a mile up the beach. You got, you you've drifted and you didn't realize, but you gotta, you gotta take that board about a mile up the beach. And somebody recommended that I get back in the water and paddle over. But for whatever reason, I decided just to walk it over. And, but it's interesting. That's how life is. If we don't have a point of reference, like for me, I should've kept an eye on a point of reference so that I didn't drift, but I didn't do that. I just got out there and I just was having fun and I drifted and didn't even realize it. So the same is true for us as followers of the Lord, Jesus Christ. 3 (17m 12s): We actually have to have a point of reference so that we don't spiritually drift and get off target and forget who we are and forget what we believe and forget what God has called us to in this life. And so for us, the Bible is a reference point. It continually brings us back to truth. And so if you're struggling with something that you've heard about God or about the Bible, just go back to the Bible and read for yourself what the scripture says. And I, I find that to be extremely helpful, clear setup, a kind of misunderstandings or the false conclusions that that one might arrive at by just listening to someone else, teach or listening to the culture. 3 (17m 56s): I was listening to an interview by Oprah Winfrey recently, and she said that she was a Christian, but then she went on to define what it means for her to be a Christian. And she said, it means for me to be tolerant and loving and to be like a, a warm light or something like that, you know nothing about Jesus. So Oprah's Christianity has nothing to do with Jesus. And I'm afraid if we don't make the Bible, our reference point than our Christianity will become anything, but what Jesus defines it to be declares it to be. 3 (18m 36s): We need to make sure that the Bible, that the spirit of God through the word of God is defining our Christianity. She went on to say that I'm a Christian. If you want to be become a Christian, I can show you how to do that. But she said, I, I respect all religions. And again, just sending a totally confusing message to her audience about what Christianity is all about. There's a drift in the culture where we are redefining terms that we've always understood that to be the truth. What does it mean to be a Christian? When, what does it mean to be a follower of the Lord? Jesus Christ, culturally, what? 3 (19m 17s): There's a thousand things that we're trying to redefine in, in progressive Christianity, they're redefining Jesus. And the way to way to, to salvation there, they're saying now, progressive Christians are saying now that Jesus is not the only way to heaven, that he's not the way in spite of what the scripture says, that he's not the way the truth and the life and that no man comes to the father, except through him. They're saying that there's that in fact they would say progressive Christians would say that we're all little gods and you don't have to go far to find this type of teaching, that there are many ways to have in that we're all little gods. And that we're kind of the master of our own universe, sort of understanding of teaching. 3 (19m 59s): It's crazy because the, these, these are people who claim to be followers of the Lord, Jesus Christ, Christians, but their message about crisis completely convoluted and contrary to the truth of what the Bible says. So we have to be careful that we're returning to our source of reference the Bible, the turtle, living God breathed, word of God, to understand what we are, who we are in Christ and what we believe we have to keep coming back to this source in this resource, Hebrews two, one in the new living translation says, so we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard, or we may, or we may drift away from it. 3 (20m 55s): So that the author of Hebrews is writing to Jewish believers in the Lord, Jesus Christ, Jewish people who have trusted Jesus, believe that Jesus is the Messiah. And so he's challenging them to pay close attention, careful attention to the truth that they had heard. What was the truth that they heard that Jesus is the way the truth and the life no man comes to the father except through him. That was the gospel. The truth was, they heard, they heard that they were are sinners. And apart from God's grace, there is no hope for eternal life. There's no hope to go into the father and they heard it and they may, they believed it and they received it and they began to walk in it. 3 (21m 43s): But then something happened. Something began to cause their faith to wane and change and shift. And they began to drift and they didn't really even realize that they were drifting. But over time they had drifted much like on the, in the, in the water. I, I, I drifted a mile, had no idea, no idea, no point of reference, no idea that I had drifted. So if we don't have a point of reference in the word of God, then we will drift and we will become more and more like our culture. Thank you more and more like our culture believing more and more like our culture and reject the gospel truth. The truth of the word of God. 3 (22m 23s): So how do we avoid drifting spiritually? Number one, we must listen carefully to the truth. So this is, this is why we always say open up your Bible every day. Like read your Bible every day. If you don't, you will subtly drift in your perspectives. Your understandings, your convictions will change. Your life will no longer line up with the word of God. If you don't make it your effort and your goal to open up the scripture on a regular basis, I just finished up nine months in what we call the journey. It's a nine month discipleship process. We're about 10 of us went through this nine month journey. 3 (23m 6s): And we had our commencement yesterday. We didn't call it a graduation because the commencement is actually a declares that, Hey, I'm not done. I'm actually just finished with this, but I'm moving forward. I'm continuing on in my journey as a follower of the Lord, Jesus Christ. So we don't call it graduation because on this side of heaven, we're never done pursuing truth and opening up the scripture and praying for clarity and wisdom that we might serve. Jesus. If we don't do these things, we will subtly drift. I don't know about you, but when I'm struggling spiritually, the last thing I want to do is open up the Bible. It's like nothing in me wants to open the Bible. 3 (23m 46s): I just want to kind of be in my own little pity party and feel sorry for myself and be angry or be whatever it is that I'm dealing, dealing with her going through. But as soon as I avail myself to the word of God, I soften, I get tender. I get broken. I get contract. I, I I'm reminded of God's faithfulness of his goodness and my heart is drawn back to him. And so this is why the enemy of our souls, his job is to steal, kill, and destroy. He's trying to distract us from the word of God, the truth of God, because he knows that it will build you up in your most holy faith. 3 (24m 26s): It will restore to you joy and peace, clarity, direction, vision, wisdom, all of those things. So how do we avoid drifting spiritually? We, we have to listen carefully to the truth. So if we go back thousands of years, this has always been the case with the followers of God. They've always had this temptation to drift to just slowly but surely drift away from the reality of the truth of the good news of the gospel. Listen carefully to the truth. Hebrews two, two says for the message God delivered through angels has always stood firm talking about when angels on Mount Sinai gave the 10 commandments to Moses. 3 (25m 12s): This is what he's referencing here. He's so we're going back thousands of years to 1500 BC when Moses received the commandments, he said for the message God delivered so that the 10 commandments through angels has always stood firm and every violation of the law and every act of disobedience was punished. So let me kind of give you some backstory here. As we listened to Stephen, who is about to get martyred in acts chapter seven, he's giving his defense to the Jewish council. He's talking about the history of the people of God and explaining to them what they've gone through and how they ended up here acts 7 38 through 43. 3 (25m 58s): It says Moses was with our ancestors, the assembly of God's people in the wilderness when the angel spoke to him and Mount Sinai. And there, there Moses received life giving words to pass on to us. So again, Mount Sinai is where the 10 commandments were given the angel of the Lord spoke. It communicated it. And this is what their response was, verse 39. But our ancestors refuse to listen to Moses. So they've been delivered they're on their way to the promised land and they're refusing to listen. They rejected him and wanted to return to Egypt, right? Egypt represents our old man, our old way of living our old life. 3 (26m 41s): And we're, we're tempted for everybody throughout history tent. We're tempted on some level to go back to our old way of living our Egypt. And that's exactly what was happening with the people of God. They wanted to return to Egypt. They told Aaron, make us some gods who can lead us for, we don't know what has become of this Moses who brought us out of Egypt. So they made an idle shaped like a calf and they sacrificed to it and celebrated over this thing they had made before. It's just a matter of things. We can erect something, something of our own design and worship it and allow it to be the focal point of our lives. 3 (27m 27s): And that's honestly what a lot of us do in this Western culture. We build a life for ourselves, erecting monuments, to the things that we accomplished in this life, removing Jesus from the throne of our lives and from the center, the central point of our hearts and lives. And we instead replace him with things that we declared by our actions are more important to us than Jesus. So they made an idle shaped like a calf and they sacrificed to it and celebrate it over this thing they had made. I'm sure none of you have made an idle shaped like a calf offered sacrifices to it. 3 (28m 10s): I'm sure none of you have done that, but what kind of idols have we created? Have we erected in our lives? What kind of idols, whether it be things or people or relationships, what kind of experiences? It can be a host of things. What have we erected as idols in our lives? We're, we're guilty often of the same things that people have been guilty of for thousands of years, verse 42, then God turned away from them and abandoned them to serve the stars of heaven as their gods in the book of the prophets it's written was it was it to me. 3 (28m 52s): You were bringing sacrifices and offerings during those 40 years in the wilderness. Israel was it to me that you were bringing those, no, you carried your pigging gods. The shrine of Molek, the star of your God and the images you made to worship them. So I will send you into exile as far as way as far away as Babylon. So we, we see that God judged the disobedience that, that drift last week, last week, we talked about not giving up in our faith as followers of the Lord, Jesus Christ. This week, we're talking about not drifting, not fading away, following fall, falling away from the plans and purposes of God. 3 (29m 38s): So this has been going on from the beginning, from the, until today for thousands of years, people have been drifting. So we just read about Moses and the people in the wilderness and their idolatry. So 1500 years later back to Hebrews chapter two, it's interesting that we're, we just read about something that happened 1500 BC. And now we're talking about reading about something that happened in the, just after the time of Christ and, and we're, we're here now 2000 years after the death and resurrection of the Lord, Jesus Christ. And so human nature hasn't changed much in thousands of years back to Hebrews two. 3 (30m 20s): So verse three, what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself. So we're not talking about a message that was communicated from the angels to Moses, to the people. We're talking about a message now that was communicated through the son of God, but the second person of the Trinity God, in the flesh, he has come in the flesh to bring us the gospel message, the new covenant by which we are saved and, and understand God through this new covenant. So what makes us think if we can, that we can escape. If we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself, and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak. 3 (31m 8s): So the first, first disciples, the first followers, the first generation of believers heard the message directly from Jesus' lips. They watched his life in ministry. They watched him be crucified, buried in the resurrected. And now they're proclaiming that truth. Second generation to the next generation. They're proclaiming that truth. What makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the Lord Jesus himself, and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak. And God confirmed this message by giving signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the holy spirit whenever he chose. So you can just bring the message, but he confirmed. 3 (31m 49s): It was signs and miracles and wonders. He, he healed people, resurrected people from the dead. He ministered life in grace, causing people to be delivered from demonic, oppression and possession. He did wonderful and supernatural things. And the truth is that God continues to do those wonderful and super natural things. I was just talking to a gal this morning, who she was, she broke her pelvis about a year ago. She stepped off a train, broke her pelvis and she was in a deep, deep, just a bunch of pain. And she just, she has prayed one day. She just said, Lord, I need you to heal me. And she just felt this warmth over her pelvis. And it just, she was healed in a moment. 3 (32m 31s): God is still working supernaturally. So if God chooses to work supernaturally in your life to bring you to a place of healing, great. But if it's not just the fact that you have turned your attention to him and recognize your need for him is the greatest miracle of all. Salvation is the greatest miracle of all. And when God fills us with the readiness to receive him and walk after him, there's a miracle that is unfolding right before our eyes. And so Jesus preaches his message. People hear it. And then they proclaim that message to the next generation. They talk about the signs and wonders in them. Wonderful, miraculous things that happen as the spirit gave the ability they're saying, listen, this is not something we have made up. 3 (33m 14s): This is truth that you believe because you saw the miracle working hand of God in Jesus life. And God confirmed the message by giving signs and wonders and various miracles and gifts of the holy spirit whenever he chose. So how do we avoid drifting spiritually? Number one, we must listen carefully to the truth. Number two, don't ignore your great salvation. Don't ignore your great salvation. This is what these people were doing. They were ignoring what God had done for them, even though they had received it. At one point, they were now ignoring it going on as if nothing had happened living as if their lives had not experienced the living God going on as if they had never been forgiven of their sin. 3 (34m 10s): Don't ignore your great salvation. The writer saying this salvation was made possible through a great sacrifice. Jesus himself, God himself saw your need, your need. Every one of our need. He saw our need and made himself the sacrifice for your salvation. Yet many, many ignore it. We've lost our first love. Maybe we got saved a year ago or 10 years ago or 50 years ago. And we've lost. We've drifted where we don't feel convicted about sin any longer. We don't feel the, the call to share that gospel message with others. We don't feel the call and the responsibility to pray for people, encourage people and speak life and truth into people's lives. 3 (34m 56s): As we're filled with the spirit of God, out of the overflow of who we are as followers of Jesus Christ, we have a hard enough time just making it a church on Sunday. I don't ask me to read my Bible everyday because I can't do it. I don't have time to do it. Don't ask me to serve somewhere because I don't have time to do it. I'm busy with everything else busy with everything else. And so we ignore essentially, we ignore what Jesus has done. We've said that it's like old news. It's like that happened last year or last decade, or that happened when I was a child and we ignore it. Like it never happened at all. We take it for granted. We live as though nothing happened. Imagine being saved from a drowning scenario. 3 (35m 39s): I remember when I was a kid, I was in the ocean and I paddled or not paddled out, but swam out or got pulled out. And I was cleaning to peer piling. I was cleaning for my life. I, the water, the waves were coming up over my head and they'd go back down. I'd yellow water would come back up, cover my head. Water would go back down. I'm yelling. I'm just this little kid out there and I'm going to die. If somebody doesn't rescue me and this lifeguard grabs me, throws me on his board and paddles me in, saved my life. 3 (36m 20s): Imagine hanging from a cliff and someone saves you by lifting you out of that. Predicament. Those stories. Aren't even good examples of what Jesus has done. They're just not good examples. They barely scratched the surface of what Jesus has done. No, no. Imagine what Jesus has saved you from by his grace, because he is good. Not because you are good. Imagine no light, complete darkness. Imagine no hope. Only desperation. 3 (37m 4s): Imagine intense heat and constant thirst. Imagine you have nothing at all to quench your thirst, nothing at all, to ease your suffering. No opportunity to make things better. No comfort, no joy, no companionship, no end to your agony. No end to your anguish. No end to your torments. Imagine weeping and gnashing of teeth. 3 (37m 48s): Imagine the eternal smell of sulfur burning, sulfur and dark thick smoke that barely allows you to take a breath. Imagine total devastation, complete fatigue throughout your whole body with no remedy, no help in sight. The penalty for sin, the wages of sin is death. It's separation from God. His separation from all that is pure and right, and holy it's separation from it. Every good and perfect gift that God has poured out upon us. 3 (38m 32s): The separation it's devastation, it's spiritual death, but, but thank God. The free free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Our Lord to save us from eternal destruction that the Bible talks about in the old Testament, the new Testament. Imagine Jesus. The only one with the power to save. The only one with the power to save is Jesus. And he sees our desperate need before the foundations of the world. 3 (39m 12s): He knows our desperate need. And his plan is to save us, to re deem us not from a temporal death like drowning or falling off a cliff, but from an eternal separation, spiritual death that offers only desperation and helplessness and loss and agony and devastation. The only one who was able and was willing to take your place and pay the penalty for your sin was Jesus. Now imagine your gratitude. 3 (39m 56s): Imagine now being refreshing your soul and your spirit and your mind and your hearts of what Jesus has accomplished. We, we drift and we forget what, what Jesus did for us. Accomplishing salvation, extending grace and love to us. We forget, and we minimize it and we forget about it. And we drift from that reality. This is why we've got to open up the scripture, the pages of scripture every day, every day, so that we don't drift and take for granted and forgets what he's done. Imagine your gratitude. Now, imagine yourself ignoring what Jesus has done and going about your life as though nothing has happened. 3 (40m 50s): It's hard to fathom the condition of a heart of someone who just flat refuses to be grateful and to live differently. He rose to five and furthermore, it's not angels who will control the future world. We're talking about four in one place the scriptures say, and this is a quote from Psalm eight, four through six. It says, what are mere mortals that you should think about them or a son of man that you should care for him yet for a little while you made them a little lower than the angels and crown them with glory and honor, you gave them authority over all things. 3 (41m 45s): So initially this almost was speaking of humans, humans in general, humans made in the image of God, the ideal human, but then sin in the world took over. And the writer of Hebrews applies this Psalm to Jesus as does the apostle Paul, the apostle Paul also applies this Psalm to Jesus in first Corinthians 1527, where it says, God has put all things under his authority. Now, when it says verse eight, Hebrews two, all things, it means it means nothing is left out, but we have not yet seen all things put under their authority. You, what we do see is Jesus, who for a little while, was given a position a little lower than the angels in the incarnation, Jesus humbled himself. 3 (42m 41s): And because he suffered death for us, he is now crowned with glory and honor, yes, by God's grace, Jesus tasted death for every one that we all might come to faith in Jesus. If you confess your, if you confess with your mouth, that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart, that God has raised him from the dead. You shall be safe. You confess and believe and are baptized. You will be saved. Yes. By God's grace. Jesus tasted death for everyone firsthand for God, for whom and through whom everything was made chose to bring many children into glory. 3 (43m 21s): And it was only right, that he should make Jesus through his suffering, a perfect leader, fit to bring them into their salvation. How can we ignore that? Great salvation? How do we keep from drifting? I mean, it's, it's, it's a common thing to all believers. It's easiest stepping off the stage. It's just something that happens unless we're intentionally stopping the drift. How do we avoid drifting spiritually? Number one, we've got to listen very carefully to the truth. Number two, don't ignore this great salvation. Number three. Remember your supernatural adoption. 3 (44m 4s): You have been supernaturally by God's grace. As righteousness has been imputed to us. That's a supernatural work of God that imputation, that righteousness has been given to us Jesus taking on the sin of the world so that righteousness might be imputed to us. So we might be adopted into his family. So now Jesus, and the ones he makes holy have the same father we've literally been adopted God. The heavenly father is our father. 3 (44m 44s): That's why Jesus is not ashamed to call them his brothers and sisters for. He said to God, I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters. I will praise you among your assembled people. He also said, I will put my trust in him. That is I and the children. God has given me verse 14 because God's children are human beings made of flesh and blood. The sun in the incarnation also became flesh and blood for only as a human being. Could he die being fully God becoming fully man taking on the sin of the world. The penalty of that sin dying on the cross, going into the tomb three days later, resurrecting from the dead. 3 (45m 24s): I mean, Jesus, his person that we celebrate coming up here in about five weeks, Christmas, it's, it's the we're celebrating the incarnation. All that Jesus did as he came in the form of a baby, a child for only as a human being, could he die? And only by dying, could he break the power of the devil who had the power of death all in this way? Could he set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying. And yet we want to go back to Egypt where we have been enslaved or we have suffered in slavery spiritually. And in other ways we've suffered. And yet there's something about the drift. 3 (46m 5s): Something about forgetting something about growing kind of cynical and cold in our heart. That makes us to want to go back to that old way of living. We didn't get saved out of Egypt because Egypt was worth staying. And we got saved because it was desperate and empty and there was no life there for 16. We also know that the sun did not come to help angels. He came to help the descendants of Abraham, you and me. Therefore it was necessary for him to be made in every aspect like us, his brothers and sisters, so that he could be our merciful and faithful high priest before God, then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people. 3 (46m 55s): Since he himself has gone through suffering a testing, he is able to help us when we are being tested, he's able to help us. When we are being tested, we will be tested. I talked to a handful of people this week and every one of them are going through some form of testing, difficult times in their businesses and their family lives spiritually speaking difficult. In desperate times, I had a conversation with a friend in between services and just Monday, he lost his father on Tuesday. 3 (47m 38s): He lost his uncle. They two years ago, he lost his mother. There's just been blow after blow hit after hits difficulty after difficulty testing, after testing. And we can all tell our story about the difficulties of the last couple of years. We can all talk about how difficult and hard our lives have been. But we need to understand that it's not God who's abandoned by banning us in our time. It's but it's God. Who's reaching out to us in our time of need because he is able to help us into strengthen us and to give us courage in our time of testing. Listen, things are not going to get easier. 3 (48m 19s): As we move toward the second coming of Christ. Things are just not going to get easier. The days will get darker. Temptation will become worse. The culture will become more sinful, more dark, more antichrist. We will have to fight harder than we've ever fought. Be more focused than we've ever been. Stay in love with Jesus, through the thick and thin and not allow anything to cause us to give up or to drift from our faith. Because if we're drifting now, we're when things get worse, we'll never have the stamina to endure and to continue to trust God. 3 (49m 2s): And so we're called to listen carefully to the truth of the word of God. Do not ignore our great salvation. This life is temporal it's it's it's temporal. I shared last week that I keep hearing about friends of mine, people my age, younger, and even older and younger who have passed away. I just found out earlier this week that a friend of mine, 53 years old, passed away from a heart attack. So I asked my brother, did he know Jesus? 3 (49m 42s): And he said, no, he didn't know Jesus. So people are dying and we have to tell him about Jesus. We have to tell him about Jesus. We have to live, not forgetting truth, not forgetting what God has done for us, but remembering that we've been adopted. Save for such a time as this to stand firm. As followers of the Lord, Jesus tries to not give up when things get difficult, because things will continue to be difficult. As we try to stand for Jesus tried to be salt and light in this life. 3 (50m 24s): And in this earth, he will continue to be difficult. Listen to this story yesterday about a Muslim Muslim young man who grew up his whole life Muslim, but he heard something about Jesus. And he was interested in Jesus in the Muslim faith. Jesus is a prophet. He's nothing more than a prophet, but he, he was intrigued about this. Jesus and his friend invited him to a, a meeting called the crusade and Muslims said, you're, you're inviting me to something that is called a crusade. 3 (51m 4s): You know your history, you know, that's not a good thing. You said, oh, well, there's going to be free peace. I said, okay, I like free pizza. So he went and got free pizza and he heard the message about the Lord Jesus Christ and went home and read all through. He found a Bible. He had a Bible at the bottom of his closet somewhere, pull it out, read the gospel of Matthew, start to finish in one sitting. And he heard the gospel. He read the gospel. He responded to the gospel and he went to his dad and he said, Hey dad, I I'm a Christian. His dad said, no, you're not. You're a Muslim. You were born a Muslim. You'll always be a Muslim. 3 (51m 45s): You'll die a Muslim. He said, no, dad, I'm a Christian Bible says that if I believe on Christ, that I'll be saved. And I've done that. I've given my life to Jesus. And he said, if you choose Jesus, I reject you as my son. And in that moment he was rejected. He said, dad, if I've got to choose between you and Jesus, I have to choose Jesus. And he's been rejected from his family ever since there's a cost to following Jesus. It's not all kumbaya and rainbows and butterflies. It's theirs. There's a cost to it. 3 (52m 27s): No, there's plenty of wonderful things that happen as we follow Jesus, but there's a cost. And that cost is going to increase over time. A warning against drifting away, listen carefully to the truth of the word of God. Don't ignore your great salvation. Remember your supernatural adoption with that. I'm gonna invite the team back up and we're gonna pray and worship. And so let's go ahead and stand up and I'm just gonna lead us in prayer as the team comes forward. Lord, thank you for the challenge that you've issued to us. And it's, it's the same challenge that you've been communicating to your people from the beginning. 3 (53m 14s): God, I pray that we would never give up that we would not allow ourselves to drift in Jesus name. God. I pray that we would stand firm when we're being tested. And when difficult times are upon us, Lord God, financial, relational. When there's death, when there's disappointment, Lord God, I pray that we would draw close to you. God, that we'd find our greatest strength when we've got nothing left in the natural, but have to rely completely on the supernatural goodness and power and presence of the living. God that in our weakness, your strength would be made. 3 (53m 56s): Perfect. And when there is no reason for joy, we'd be filled with joy. When there's no reason in the natural to have confidence in you, God, that we would be loaded with confidence, believing faith. Faith-filled godly. People who decide no matter what the culture throws at us, no matter what life experiences we're walking through. God, we have this cited to follow you. Whatever that means for us, Lord, help us to be willing to walk through that. Gotcha. Thank you for truth. 3 (54m 36s): Thank you for salvation. Thank you for adoption. We love you in Jesus name. Amen. Let's worship
Harvest Church 11-21-21
