Boy, it's a good day to be in the house of the Lord. He is
good and he is God. And I am just
reminded this morning that my failures, my mess
ups, my lack of faithfulness is not a prerequisite
to his goodness. He is always good. He
is always on time. He is always God. And guess what?
He knows your name and he knows my name. And he is
faithful, is he not? Has he been faithful to you?
He is so faithful. He's good. Welcome this morning. We're so glad that
you are in the house this morning. As we
continue our journey this morning in the Lord, I've got one
quick announcement for you. I want to invite you to something real special
that's taking place here on June 5th. And
that is an Instruments of Joy
benefit concert featuring Land of Color, Jeremy
Casala and Cole Burkitt.
And this is going to be a real
wonderful evening. Now, Springhouse has always
looked for opportunities prayerfully to sow into Global
Missions. And Instruments of Joy, led by our very own
Josh McLeod, has fingerprints all around
the globe. You're going to hear a little bit more about that next Sunday.
But this, this is a unique, wonderful way to participate
in Global Missions by attending this
concert. And you're going to be entertained. It's going to be a great
night. So I'm going to be here. My family's going to be here. I hope
that you will make plans to come and enjoy this concert together
as we sow into the kingdom. Amen. Amen. So mark your
calendars on June 5th. Okay.
Well, we are going to continue in our
series today. Abide, arise
in advance. We're in that arise section today. And we're
going to read one verse of scripture. So as we read
this today, my prayer would be that you would stand and read it
from the pit of your stomach as if you actually believe what
you're reading. Okay? Can we do that? All right, let's read together from
Galatians, chapter five. Here we go. It is for
freedom that Christ has spoken. Set us free.
Stand firm, then. And do not let yourselves
be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. You
know, that's so good. Let's read it one more time. Here we go.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us
free. Stand firm then. And do not let
yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of
slave. Father, I'm so grateful for the freedom that we have in you.
My prayer today is that our hearts would be open and our eyes would be
open to know and to see the things Lord, that
yout want to reveal to us, God, I pray, Lord, that there would
be change for eternity as we lean into youo precepts and principles
here. And, Lord, that yout would just speak through Me, anoint us to receive today
in Jesus name. And everybody said, amen.
Amen. Well, we're continuing
on our journey, as I said in the arise section. And I don't know, maybe
at the end of this, you guys can let me know if this was like
a sermon or not. But I was struggling a little bit this week
because what I felt like the Lord wanted me to do today was
not necessarily preach at you, but
instead illuminate our eyes to something that may
be right in front of us, that we may not realize. Have you ever been
looking for something and it's right in front of you, but you keep asking where
it is? Hey, where's my cell phone? Has anybody seen my
cell phone? I can't find my cell phone. And eventually somebody who's
got a keen eye looks and says, it's in your hand right now. If
they're kind, that's where the period happens. If they're not kind, they have a few
other words that they'll call you afterward. But have you ever been
looking for something that's right in front of you? I believe that there are
some things at times because we become creatures
of habit and we are products of
the culture with which we live. I believe that there are
sometimes that we are blinded to. And we're not necessarily
intentionally blind, but they're there, these blind spots. And
so as a pastor, this is not, Thus saith the Lord, what I'm about to
tell you. But as a pastor, as your pastor,
I believe that there are two very specific areas
where we as believers miss the mark. And
it's not that we aren't attempting to make the mark, but we
miss the mark because we believe we have actually
achieved the mark. And we're far away from the mark. We have
almost fooled ourselves to believing that. We can kind of check that off
the list because we've got that under control. Let us move
on to some other things. The first one of those two things is
this love.
We have a propensity to believe that we've got.
We just know how to do this. Like, we do this really well.
We understand what this is. We can move on to some other things.
In fact, in 2019, when,
when it was solidified that I was going to be in this role, the Lord
gave me three very specific things for our church. And that was this
that we would be a church that loves big lives truth and operates
as a healthy family. And right on the cuff, if you just
look at that and then turn your head away, you might look and say, well,
that's kind of a shallow vision. You know, love, big live truth. Okay?
Everybody's trying to do those things, be a healthy family. No,
I believe that these are some of the most challenging and hardest
things that can be done. And apart from the
Holy Spirit, we can't achieve any of this.
Apart from the Holy Spirit, we can't achieve any of this. And I believe
that the most challenging things of these three is not the live
truth and not the healthy family part. It's the love, big part.
Love. As we find in the book of Galatians,
love is a fruit of the Spirit. It's the fruit of the
Spirit. And so in order for us to. We don't manufacture love. In order
for love to be evident in our lives, we have to be walking
with the Spirit of God. Over in First John, we
also see this in scripture. It says God is
love. Well, anybody who says I've got a handle on
love is kind of saying, I've got a handle on God. And
anybody who says they've got a handle on God, I'm going to step back a
few steps, right? No,
it takes a lifetime to even begin
to scratch the surface on something as enormous and extraordinary
as love. Jesus even said, no greater
love has anyone than this than to lay down one's
life for one's friends. Not family, not
spouse, friend. And
of course, Jesus was the embodiment of the truth that he rendered here when he
laid his life down for us. Now, this is not what we're going to talk
about today. That's the one of the two that I believe like
are glaring misses when it comes to believers in the kingdom. The
second of the two is freedom.
It's freedom. It's not that we don't understand
some of the concepts and principles of freedom, but
instead rather it's we parade around like we are free
while we live in bondage. We parade around and
masquerade as free agents, as free people in
the kingdom. Yet we have very little understanding
of what freedom in the kingdom of God looks like. It's so easy
to take the attributes of freedom as they're portrayed in
the world and assign those attributes to freedom
in the kingdom. I don't believe that those are the same things.
Over in Psalm 16:6 it says this. The boundary
lines have fallen for me in pleasant
places. This Is a life verse of
mine. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant
places. Now, some of us. Are anybody here a rebel?
You know, we tend to be creatures
where somebody says, don't do that. That's the one thing we wanna do.
And take that all the way back to the garden. God said, don't do this,
don't do that, don't do this. You can name this, you can name this, you
can eat this, you can do this, you can, you can, you can, you can,
you can. Don't do that. What's the one thing we
focus on? The one don't. Right? It's testing
the boundaries. It's testing the lines. But I have
found in my life that freedom is
found within the boundaries that the King of the
universe has set for my life. Freedom, true
freedom, is found when I obey his
principles, when I operate within those boundaries.
Jesus said, narrow, narrow is the road and
very few find it. But here's the thing that I've come to
believe. When you find the narrow road, you get to really
experience how broad it is. There's a lot that you can do
in the kingdom when you are free. When you are free.
And so there's this misunderstanding or
misattachment to freedom that I believe that
we wrestle with. And that's where I wanna camp today. This is
my daughter, Hadassah. And I had a better picture for this story,
but I couldn't find it this morning. And some of you have heard this story
before, but when she was two years old, you know that one and two
year olds, sometimes before they actually start forming words,
they actually can understand what you're saying. And
I came to realize that Hadassah could understand what I was saying
one day because we were at our house and we brought in groceries, and I
had asked Hadassah to pick up a can of beans and put it
in the pantry. And don't you know, she walked right over there and grabbed the
beans and put them in the pantry. And I thought, she can understand me.
So a little bit later, we had cooked a meal for dinner, and that
meal was spaghetti. And so she
had spaghetti on this tray, this high top of hers. And
just like all toddlers, she was sitting there priming proper and eating her meal
just the way that she should. No,
she was taking her spaghetti and she was playing with it and moving it all
around her tray, all across the way, and she took a handful
of the spaghetti and she did like this, and she threw it on
the floor. Now, I realize now that my toddler
Understands what I'm saying. And so I look at her and I
say, no, we do not throw
spaghetti on the floor. No, ma'. Am. And
do you know that she, without hesitation, looked
me eyeball to eyeball, grabbed a handful of
spaghetti, stretched her arm out over to the
side, and it was me against her
and threw that spaghetti against the wall.
I had an out of body experience.
See, I had been an educator for 15 years. I wasn't used to
teens and kids telling me no, let alone my own.
I grabbed our kitchen table. She was in a high chair. I grabbed our kitchen
table. I'm telling you guys, I do not have muscles, but I could have picked
that table up at that moment and thrown it across the window. I. I
mean, I was. And I told Shari, come in here and take care of the.
I've gotta go process these feelings that I have going on
inside.
We discipline our kids because we love them.
And for some reason, we believe that
we operate in this realm of freedom with a king who's not
going to discipline us. The God of
the universe loves you. And so that means he is willing
to. To discipline you. Aren't you glad you came today?
You are free to be disciplined. This morning, God
wants us to become like him. Not just because
he's God, which he is. Boy, he saw. I was thinking, I was pacing and
praying down here yesterday, and I was like, lord, forgive us
because we have so diluted all the vocabulary words I could
come up with to give ump to describe your sovereignty,
your bigness, your greatness. How wonderful. Even
the word king we don't understand. We live in America, after all.
We. Boy, the
words go into my mind, I can't say out loud. We basically said no to
the king. And we came over here and we said, we're not going to come
under authority. Right. We just don't like coming under
authority. But true freedom in the kingdom is
a willingness to come under an authority that
knows what's best for us, knows what's better for us than we
do. And it doesn't look like the authority
that we find in the world. And so what happens? And this is here's where,
you know, I might step on some toes today.
I believe that there are some lukewarm Christians in this church,
lukewarm Christians in the big church, capital C.
There are seasons where those of us who have the best intentions
find ourselves in lukewarm waters.
And a lukewarm place is not a place that we want.
We want to find ourselves. And so
what we do is when we find ourselves in places where we may be
skirting the line of being lukewarm and being too
comfortable. What we think is the antidote
to being lukewarm is to shout louder
the biblical principles that we think we've got a handle on
to let other people know how they should live their life as
an excuse or a banner to say, I just want you to know that I'm
in my word. But the
antidote to being lukewarm is not volume.
The antidote to being lukewarm is dying
to yourself is a willingness to
die to yourself. We are celebrating, as I mentioned before, Memorial Day
tomorrow. And, guys, I can't tell you,
cannot express to you how
grateful I am that I can stand on this stage
and publicly proclaim the Gospel of
Jesus Christ without worrying about somebody coming through those
doors with an automatic weapon to take me out, because
it's illegal to stand here and do it. I
celebrate the liberty to freely proclaim
Christ. And there are men and women who gave their lives so that
we can have that privilege. And I'm so grateful for it.
But Scripture says in the book of Ephesians that our fight is
not against flesh and blood.
It is against rulers and authorities and
powers of this dark world.
Our world is not full of light. It is full of
darkness. It is our fight is against
the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of
evil. So the greater war that's going
on in our lives is the war against our souls.
It's the war against our souls. And so
I want to take us to John, chapter five today.
If you own a Bible, a Bible is a good
thing to bring to church. Bringing a Bible
to church is like bringing a fork to your spaghetti
dinner. It's a necessary part
of the experience.
If you don't bring a fork to a spaghetti dinner, all you get
is mess. If you don't bring your Bible
to your Christian walk, all you get is
mess. A Bible is important.
I can't afford a Bible. See Barbie, she will get you a
Bible today. Is that true? Today we will get you a Bible today.
It's a matter of life and death. This book, John,
chapter five. Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of
the Jewish festivals. Now there is in Jerusalem,
near the sheep gate, a pool which in Aramaic is
called Bethesda, which is surrounded by five covered
colonnades. Here a great number of disabled
people used to lie. The blind, the lame, the
paralyzed one who was there had been an invalid for
38 years. When Jesus saw him
lying there and learned that he had been in his condition
for a long time. He asked him a question, and the question
was, do you want to
get well, sir? The
invalid replied, I have no one to help me into the pool
when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in,
someone else goes down ahead of me. Then Jesus said to
him, poor baby,
I see you're having a hard time getting up.
Oh, well, let me sit by you and put my arm around
you. That's not what my Bible says.
Jesus said to him, get up.
Explanation point. Get up.
Sometimes we need someone in our life to say, get up,
pick up your mat and walk at once. The man
was cured. He picked up his mat
and walked.
So this man has been laying here for 38
years, lame and paralyzed,
and he wants to be healed. That seems to be what he needs.
He needs to be healed. And Jesus comes on the scene
and he asks him a very direct question, question.
And the question is, do you want to get well? I'm
going to ask another question today that can parallel that question, and it
is this, not this. Do you want
to be free? Do you want to
be free? And this is the question that I am
laying a foundation with in our church today,
this morning. Do you want to be free?
So Jesus walks up to this man and he says, do you want to get
well or do you want to be free? And the man
replies, and his reply is not an answer to
the question. This here is a yes or no question.
It is a yes or no question. And the man
who has the authority and the ability
to heal is the one asking the question.
And so we ask this question, and what we find
that the man gives is a bunch of
excuses. And what I
want to suggest to the church today is that
we may have believers who have found
themselves in a season of complacency.
And God is saying, do you want to be healed?
Do you want to be free? Free? And we say, well,
You see, there's not been anybody here that's been able to pick me
up and put me in the water.
Jesus is asking, do you want to be free? And we say, well,
God, you don't really understand how that
individual hurt me, what that person
did to me. God, do you want to be set free?
Says the Lord. And our response is, well,
God, in order for me to be set free, you're gonna have to expose some
things that I don't know if I want those people around me to see
those things. God, in order for me to
set free, be set free, it's gonna require me to
do something that I'm not quite ready to do.
And so what happens is, is we get very
comfortable and we set up residence in
the bondage that the blood of his salvation
saved us from. And our excuses.
Our excuses are the decorations we use for the
residence with which we live. And so we've got
a comfortable bed, We've got a comfortable couch. And
Jesus comes along. And here's the danger.
Jesus comes along and he says, do you want to be free?
And you know what our reply is? Free from what?
I don't even recognize that I need to be free because
I've spent more time in my bondage
than enjoying the freedom that's ready at my
hand from you, Lord. Do you
want to be set free? I'm asking you that question today.
And I believe the Holy Spirit of God is asking you today, do
you want. Want to be free? Are you sick and
tired of being sick and tired? Are you
ready to move on from that thing that you have
chosen to shackle yourself to?
Because God, his desire for your life is not
for you to be living your life beneath the
call, beneath the call of a
son and daughter of the most high God?
And so this interaction happens. He gives excuses and
Jesus says an imper. And actually it's an explanation point
in my Bible, but it's an imperative, too.
Get up, Barbie Kate, get up.
When it's time for my daughters to go to school and we're running out to
get up, it's not a negotiation. It's
not a conversation. It's not. No, it's a get up,
Rich. Get up, Val. Get up, Jonathan, get
up. And Jesus is saying, do you want to be free? And we're going,
wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. And he's saying, get up. Pick
up your mat. Pick up your mat and
leave this place. In other words, forget the
decorations. Forget all the stuff that you forget,
all of those things. Pick up your mat and move. In order to
be free, it requires you to do something.
Now it says immediately the guy's cured. He gets
up and he walks away. Amazing. Miracle of miracles. Wonder
of wonders. Isn't that a musical fiddler on the roof?
Look a little bit deeper into the chapter here, verse 14.
Later, Jesus finds this guy at the temple
and says to him, okay, where did he find him?
Where? Okay, so Jesus found him going to church.
He found him going to church. Hey, I got healed, so I'm at church.
That's where I'm supposed to be. I got the T shirt. I got
the. Hey, I got. I Got some Christian friends. I'm giving my
tithe check. I'm giving like I'm supposed to. I'm showing up at the church. I'm
at the church picnic. I'm at all of the things. And then Jesus says this.
I see that you are well again. Stop
sinning or something worse may happen to you.
What? I mean, he was
strolling up on Jesus like he was the home dog. He's like, hey, what's up,
man? Thank you for healing me. I'm so glad. I'm so glad to be
here. And you know what Jesus says? Stop sinning
or something worse may happen to you. You know what this
tells me, guys? It tells me that Jesus was far
more concerned with his spiritual sin condition than he
was with the ailment that he healed him from.
See, our excuses have everything to do with the ailment that he's
already set us free from. Why are we being set
free? We're being liberated so that we don't have to be entangled
in the sin that wants to kept us in bondage.
But yet there's something attractive about that sin.
There's something that just lures us right back
that way. Do you want to be
free? And
so I want to show you this morning what I believe this looks like.
This here is the pool of Truth.
And it is God's desire for
us to be far more than
just well acquainted with his truth. And so we get
into the pool of Truth,
and it starts with a wading of the water.
But the ultimate goal is not that we would be wading in this water.
The ultimate goal is that there would be full immersion into
the truth of God's word. Now, I don't know about you, but when I go
swimming, I don't wear a blazer.
When I go swimming, I mean, who
jumps in the pool with a blazer? I don't wear jeans
when I go swimming. You know what I'm saying? I mean.
I mean.
And see, here's the thing.
Now I'm not gonna take this sweater off because I don't want you to stumble,
okay? But I
sure enough don't wear socks in a pool.
When I'm around the pool, I wear flip
flops,
right? And so here I am
enjoying the benefit of freedom for being
in the truth of God's word.
The truth changes things. When the truth comes
into our life, we have to shed those outer garments, those
outer. That filth that we've been in, so that he can
get in and do a work on the inside of Us. Us.
But here's what happens in American
Christianity and in the church, in our culture and
civilization. We get. We get here and we get in the pool and we get
about knee deep, and we feel like we've got a
handle on the truth of God's word. And so what happens
is we begin
to exchange what we can see with
some other things. And we end up stepping out of the pool
and setting up camp
in the bondage with which
we once lived.
And so we find ourselves in this place
and we say to ourselves, you know what?
I'm just fine being in proximity to the Word but not immersed in it.
Now, here's the thing. When I got out of the pool. When I get out
of the pool, I'm wet. So I've
got residue of truth on my body.
True. So I've got this residue of
truth on my body, okay? Now, when I took off my jeans.
This is the scripture, okay? Foolishness.
The world calls it foolishness. What it looks like when
you're in. You're in the pool.
But what we have to understand is that proximity
to truth is not the same as surrender to truth.
And so I've got this residue on me that is truth.
And for a little bit of time, I can get by with that. But
there comes a point when that water dries
because the water hits the elements of what's on the
outside. Are you with me? And so all of
a sudden, I've got the truth mixed with all of this
other stuff out here. And all of a sudden I just become
damp. Got a damp short. And I become
dried up. And so
here I am in proximity to. But
I'm not fully surrendered. And so with that, I want
to take us to John chapter 8.
In John chapter 8, Jesus has spent a
discourse with the Jews trying to convince them of who he
is. And so he does this by
explaining who he is. And they're going back and
forth. And then we land on verse 31.
And it says this to the Jews
who had believed him. Jesus said,
now let's look at the word Jews there for a moment.
Is Jews singular or plural? What
is it? Plural. That means there's more than one
Jew. There's multiple people here.
Okay, so it's to the Jews who had what
they did. What? Okay, so he's talking to
multiple believers. That is a very important
point as we move forward in this passage. Jesus is
talking to Jews who believe. Are you
with me? So he says this to the
Jews, multiple Jews who believe. He says this.
If you hold to My teaching. You are
really my disciples, then you
will know the truth and the truth will set
you free. So in other words, he's saying this. He's saying,
if you hold on to my teaching, then you
will be my followers. And if you'll hold onto
my teaching, if you'll be immersed into my teaching,
then you will know the truth and the truth will
set you free. Free. Now, they respond
to this, and they say this. We are
Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves
of anyone. How can you say that we
shall be set free? Now, I don't know about you, but I have
read the Bible, okay? There are
multiple occasions where I see the Jews in
slavery. And their response, not
one. Multiple Jews. Are you listening to me?
Multiple Jews who say they believe what Jesus is
saying. They are saying back to Jesus, we ain't never
been slaves. Follow me.
Multiple Christians in today's church
looking at the truth and saying nonsense
and not no one stopping the nonsense.
Because everyone, everyone has been
succumbed to the bondage
that each is in. And the whole community has
been deceived. God does
not want his bride to be deceived.
In other words, what should have happened is one of the Jews should have said,
hey. Could have said, hey, Jesus, we ain't never been slaves. Somebody else should'
said, wait a second, that's not true. That's not true.
Didn't nobody say a thing. We ain't never been
slaves. Let me ask you a question. How do you know that
you're not being deceived this morning?
How do you know the words coming out of my mouth
are truth?
Listen, I'm asking a question that we
need to ponder and consider and think about
because we could very well be a group saying,
we ain't never been slaves. And I'm
connected to 300, 400 people. We ain't never been slaves.
So he's having this. They're having this interaction. And Jesus
responds. He says this
very truly. I tell you, everyone who sins is a
slave to sin. Now, a slave has no
permanent place in the family, but a son belongs
to it forever. So if the Son sets you
free, you will be free indeed.
I know that you're Abraham's descendants,
yet listen to this. Yet you are looking for
a way to kill me. Listen to this,
because you have no room for my word.
Selah,
We literally could be believers
wearing the shirt, attending church, paying
the tithes, serving in the ministry, but at the same
time killing the truth because we don't have room
for the word.
I am telling you What I have seen in the father's presence. And you are
doing what you have heard from your father. Abraham
is our father, they answered. If you were Abraham's children, said
Jesus, then you would do what Abraham did. As it is, you are looking for
a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth. That I
heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. You are doing the works of
your own father. To which they respond,
we are not illegitimate children. Now,
let's camp there for one second. This discourse is
taken between the Jews and Jesus. In human
reasoning, which of the two parties might be an illegitimate
child? In human reasoning, which of the two parties?
Jesus. Remember his story. Mary's
pregnant. Wait, y' all aren't married? What?
And so think about this.
We're not illegitimate children. We're not
illegitimate children. We are descendants of Abraham. And I
laugh at this next line. It says this. Where is it? They
protested. The only father we have is God
himself. They're talking to Jesus Christ.
Somebody say stupid.
But here's the thing.
When we don't know the word of God,
we say the most idiotic things.
We execute what we believe the truth to say in
the most idiotic, destructive ways.
They're talking to Jesus. He said,
if God were your father, you would love me. For I have come
here from God. I have not come from my own. God sent
me. Why is my language not clear to you?
Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong. Listen to this.
You belong to your father, the devil,
and you want to carry your father's desires. He was a
murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth. For the truth was
not in him. He speaks lies. He speaks his
native language. For he is a liar and the father of
lies. Here's the thing. When you are immersed in the truth,
if this was water in here and I was immersed in here, I can't
hear anything. But when I'm out here,
and I'm only in proximity to the truth, I can hear the
Father of Lies all day long, combating and
challenging the very truth that I say I believe in.
Do you want to be set free?
That's the question on the table this morning.
Here's what this looks like. We are
to be immersed in the
truth. When we are immersed in the truth,
you can no longer see me.
All you see is Jesus. When you
are immersed in the truth, he
becomes bigger and you become less than
when you are immersed in the truth. All of a sudden,
your words and your actions evolve and
change and look like the Savior who
saved your life. All of a sudden you begin to
love people in a way that. That you've never loved them before.
All of a sudden you are generous in a way that you have
never been generous before. Turn the other cheek.
Jesus says you turn the other cheek. Forgive. 70
times 7. Not a problem. You are
immersed in truth. And because of your immersion
in the truth, the ripples of your life
speak so much louder than the person who's sitting
outside of the truth yelling out what they believe. They
the Bible says on how to live. Are you with me today?
We are supposed to be immersed in
the word of God. It changes our lives.
It causes us to not see anything or hear
anything outside of the truth. And we feel
and know and recognize his presence. We learn
about ourselves. Do you know that God, the breather of
stars, has so many incredible, wonderful things
to say about you? The Father of lies
also has some things to say. But when you are immersed into the
truth, all you hear is truth.
May we be a church who is immersed in the church,
immersed in the truth. May we be a church who's immersed in the truth. So
that when people look at our church, all they see is
Jesus Christ.
All they see is Jesus Christ.
Here's the thing. Some people say, if I'm immersed in the church and I can't
be seen, who's going to do the fighting?
Who's going to do the preaching? If I'm immersed, I mean, who's going to stand
up and tell them what they need to hear? Do you know,
when I look in Scripture and I look at the people with the loudest voices,
before they start their. Started their ministry, they
metaphorically signed the dotted line and said, they can take me out and kill me
for this. They were crucified,
they were speared, they were beheaded, some of them.
So before I take on the idea that I need
to be in the position of a platform to give my voice, I
also need to be in a position that says, listen, I'm willing to give my
life for this. I
believe that those who are immersed in truth speak so
much louder, have more extraordinary voices than anybody
who's ever been given a platform with a voice. It's not to say the
platform isn't important. God uses the platform. But there are
some silent warriors and ninjas in the kingdom that
go farther. I believe that they are going to be recognized before the King
in extravagant ways, more so than those
who are on the platform.
We are supposed to be people who are
immersed in truth. Why
is this important?
The World is confused
about how we are supposed to live our lives.
And if we are not careful, we too, as
believers in the house of God, will become confused
about how we are supposed to live our lives.
There is no confusion in the kingdom of God.
The truth of God's word can stand alone. It
is a firm foundation. The
answer to the problems that you have are not found
on TV or in the world. They're found in the word of God.
There are principles in here. Some of you have been laid up for
38 years and God is saying, do you wanna
be free? Do you wanna be free? He's got
an answer for that question. He's got a peace that
passes understanding. He's got every. He owns the cattle on the
hill. He's got every provision that you've been asking for. He has that
hope that he's instilled inside you. He gives you the ability to be
faithful. He is a God above all other gods. He is a
suprem. The world cannot take him down.
The Father of lies must bow to the truth
of God. And so my question
this morning to you all, to this church, is, do
you want to be free? And guess what? I'm not gonna leave it on
an abstract note today. Would you stand with me, worship team? You can come
out. The question that we have
to deal with is, do we want to be free?
And I believe that there are people in here who want to be free.
Guys, an immersed life is not a passive life.
The Word tells us that when the Son of Man is lifted up, he will
draw all men unto himself. He can
do the bidding for his work. Here's the deal. Does
our life look like the Master to
whom we say we serve? Does our lives look
like that? Do you even know what's required of you
when you encounter something in the world that is confusing?
When the world adopts a philosophy,
when the world adopts all types of things and tries to
indoctrinate the next generation, are you prepared
not only how to answer that with the truth of God's word by
what it says, but how to
encounter and how to interact with those who are rendering the
lie. All of this has to
do with the immersion of the truth of God's word.
So here's my real question. My question that the broad question we're
answering is this. Do you want to be free?
But I'm going to pare that down a little bit more to make this
concrete. Here's the word, here's the question.
Are you immersed in God's Word?
Do you know the truth of God's word.
Now, I'm not talking about. I'm not talking about
quantity. I'm not saying, well, you know, I read 10 chapters
a day. Check that off the list.
What I'm saying is, is this book alive
in your life? Does it hold the
authority of your opinions, your beliefs, how you
interact with people? Do you actually know
what this word says? Because to know the word of God is to know
Jesus Christ.
There's this scary scripture, and this isn't meant to scare
or manipulate. It's meant to convict. It is meant to convict.
In Matthew, Jesus says there are going to be
people that show up on that day and say to him,
Lord, Lord,
I cast out demons in your name.
Did you see that extra zero I put on that tie? Check.
Jesus. Jesus,
I preached in your name. I served in that ministry in your name.
You know what he says? He looks right at those people and
says, I do not know you.
The only way for you to know him and for him
to know you is to be immersed in the truth.
Do you have a relationship with this word? I
promise you, there's a lot of things that we're going to talk about on this
stage, over this series and this year or whatever. There is nothing more important than
what I'm telling you right now. Because the answers, everything that
we're preaching here should come from this book. Get in relationship. Do you
see what God could do? Do you know the freedom that people could experience? If
we had a bunch of people immersed in the truth
he would be bringing. There would be growth. It would be unstoppable. We would not
have room to put all the people. Why? Because when he is lifted up,
he draws all men to himself. He does not need you to lift him
up. He needs you to die to yourself so that he will
be lifted up. So will
those who are gonna pray with people come forward. I have a very specific call
this morning, and it's not even if you have a need.
Some of you have come with needs this morning. And if your need is outside
of this, I'll be down here. Pastor Barbee, we'll meet with you after the service.
Be happy to pray with you. That's not what this call is for. Come on
down here. I'm gonna need a lot of leaders. We had a salvation in first
service. That should be a Praise the Lord. We had a salvation,
and I mean, eternity was changed. Okay, listen.
It's literally a matter of life and death.
My daughters are being raised in this house
and they are being Taught by people who are sitting in these seats.
Guys, do you know this word.
The other day, My diet. I don't remember what day Justin's gonna
punch me in the face for this, but my diet the other day, mozzarella
sticks, popcorn, and a slushie.
It's really what it was. Let me tell you
who felt it the next morning.
My kids don't need cookies, popcorn,
candy, all of that stuff that the world gives out. They need
some meat and vegetables that are found in the Word of God.
I want my kids and their kids and their kids to
have a fighting chance in a world that seems to be taking over.
But I know who has the victory in the end. I
don't want my kids to get trampled on because we got a bunch of
complacent, lukewarm people in their lives.
And the way that we combat that is by getting into the Word of God.
And so this morning, I am asking you, I am beseeching you, I am
begging you, if your life is one that you would say, I'm not
in the Word of God. I'm not immersed in the Word of God.
I read sometimes, but I'm not really necessarily applying what
I'm learning. My calendar is such that I don't. I'm not able. I just
don't get into it. I struggle having time in the Word.
You need a dose of hunger from the Holy Spirit. Spirit in your
life that makes you attracted to this, that this becomes the priority
in your life. And today, what I'm going to ask you to do is
to come with one of these believers down here and confess
and just say, you know what? Listen, here's the thing. We don't need to make
this long down here because I think there's going to be multiple people. There's one
question to answer. Do you want to be free? We don't need to. We don't
need to. Hey, yes. My life has been. I got a
calendar issue. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's what the lame man did. Jesus said,
get up. Some of us need to get up, walk down here and just say,
I want to be free. That's all it needs. And these people will know how
to pray with you at that moment. You want to be free? Get into the
Word of God. Get immersed in the Word of God. Know the Word of God.
Live and breathe the Word of God. Jesus Christ
wants to change your life radically. He wants you to be free. Does
anybody here want to be free? Am I the only one? Am I crazy? Guys,
let's go swimming. Come on.
If that is you today, I want you to make your way down here. We
may have lines here because these prayers aren't going to be hellfire, brimstone,
long prayers. We're going to literally just agree that the Lord is going to open
up capacity and birth a hunger in your life. Come on down right now as
we worship. If you want to ask the Lord to help you have a
hunger for his word and to be immersed, come now, let's pray.