Hidden Treasure | Part 4

I really really really missed you guys. I'm just privileged and lucky and I just love this church. I love being back. It's been awesome. But hey, why I was where I was gone is it wasn't just a vacation. One week of it was, but one week we ended up in England and Scotland because what we were doing is we were actually going there to meet with an organization that's trying to raise up a next generation of leaders to help kind of reignite the church in England. Don't know you know if you're familiar, but only about 2% of the population in England actually attends a Bible believing church on any given Sunday. And it used to be a very strong church culture over there. And so that's why we were there, kind of scouting out. As long as we were there, we stayed an extra week and got to have fun. But you know, I can win anyone, you know, if you grew up, you had that family member or that uncle that comes in and they went on a trip, and then they pull out the slide projector.

Well, they'll buckle up. Here we go. No. Now I have a few pictures I want to show because they have a they have a purpose behind. But I just want to show you couple pictures speaking of churches and stuff over there. We got to see some incredible church structures, you know, because because over there,

what we call new or old and what they call new is very different than what we call new. Matter of fact, in Edinburgh, Scotland, when you're up on the Royal Mile, the older parts, if you go to the castle and you look down below, they'll say, hey, you've got to go check out that part. That's Newtown.

And Newtown was built in the seventeen hundred's, if it gives you any perspective on age. But there was these churches that just the architecture started. This is just a simple church. This is inside Windsor Castle, inside the grounds of it. This is the church. If that looks familiar to you, if you watch

like the royal weddings, that's the steps that Meghan Markle and Prince Harry, they got married in that church. So you get to see that. But it's just this simple, the beautiful. Then I got another one. Another place that's famous. This is outside of Westminster Abbey. Not to be confused with Downton Abbey. But but,

you know, there's there's another that good looking couple keeps showing up in all of our pictures. So there you go. That's like, see the architecture and the beauty of it? They wouldn't let you take pictures inside. But and then I got another

one here, the next one. This is the one place we could take pictures inside. This is a cathedral. And this is in Liverpool. And it's this this is the third largest, fourth largest cathedral in all of Europe. And and look at the detail and the height and the scope. It's it's massive.

Now this one was a little bit of a trickster one for us. Cause they had us guess how old it was. And I was guessing like fourteen hundreds, whatever. Turns out that this cathedral is one year younger than me. So so it was built in the eighteen hundreds. So no, no, was built 1971

is when they finished it. But but you're looking, see all these people going in, taking pictures, looking around. That's kind of the problem. You have you have these churches that are just built so amazingly. They're they're built like and and it's really the structure themselves, especially in the cathedrals,

is supposed to show you the majesty and the greatness of God. And it kind of makes you feel small. And that's on purpose. Not small to be bad, but go, man, look at how little me, the God of this incredible majesty and power and strength, loves me. That's really the intent.

Well, I have one other picture to show you to really make my point. This is right across the street. Right right right next to Edinburgh Castle. This is a really, really, really old church structure. But if you notice the sign in there, it's called The Hub.

It's really just a community thing. Have nightclubs in there, pub, and they just they party. It does all kinds of meetings. Has all kinds of meetings. You know the one thing that doesn't meet in there? A church.

And what is so crazy about this, all these structures, they're beautiful. And if you go inside them, they have like scripture and biblical truth etched all over the walls. I mean, you can't walk in there and look at it without feeling the greatness of God, and if you read the stuff on the walls, reading true biblical truth on who God is and what it means, these churches are just

totally the structure is completely and utterly solid truth. But they're empty. They have the words. They have the look. But they don't have the heart of anybody actually obeying the authority of God or seeing God in them anymore. And that's that's that's sad. But if you can understand that,

you can understand the the the cultural moment that Jesus walked into with the parable we're going to look at today. The story he tells today. The moment he's in is he's a he's gonna be addressing a group of people

that their their lives have etched truth all around them. They have the temple. They have the acts. They had they have the structure that says I worship God. They have the right words that come out of their mouth that says they were They have all the scriptural truth. But Jesus knows that in their heart,

they're not really obedient to God. They don't really turn to God. They they they have this this this form of godliness that's rejecting Jesus.

And that's what we want to look at this morning in our hidden treasure here. We're gonna be in this parable that talks about something very deep. And and what we're gonna see, by the way of a big idea, what I want to package in here is, we're talking about what faith really is. And that's what Jesus is trying to get to the point we're gonna see in a minute. And and it's really this. Is is the big idea for today is this is real faith

is repentant faith. Real faith is repentant faith. That's what we're gonna see. Because you can have the look. You can have the external structure that says, hey, I go to church. I know Bible truth. I know this. But in your heart, if your heart is far from God, you need to repent.

And you've heard that word repent before. Right? And that just sounds like, oh, no, here comes a good old Baptist, you know, like, you better repent. If you don't turn, you're gonna burn and and and all these kind of things. And the truth is repent is shouldn't be as scary or a bad word as you think it is. The Greek word that's translated repent in the Bible literally means to turn around.

That's all it means. So when God says you must repent, what he's saying is is is not repent from your sins does not mean do the right thing or you're going to go to hell. Repent from your sins is realize I'm going the wrong way. By accepting the love and grace and forgiveness of Jesus, I now have the power

that I can turn from that way and get back on track with what God wanted for my life. Repent is a great thing. And what we're gonna see is repent isn't something you're just gonna do once. We live in a broken, fallen world, and we struggle.

And so that's why real faith is repentant faith. Because real faith is about a life of repentance. It's about when God reveals something to you and you realize

that I'm not going the right way. And if I really see His love, His grace, His mercy, His truth, His power, His majesty, and I trust Him in my life, I'm gonna choose to turn and repent. Because Jesus loves us enough that he always meets us where we're at. But have you ever noticed he never leaves you there?

There was this woman caught in adultery and they were going to kill her and stone her. And he says, okay, well, he who's without sin cast his first stone. Basically, don't judge. So they all walk away. And then Jesus says, well, they're not gonna judge you, neither am I. In today's culture, what you think that means is, Jesus, you're fine the way you are. Just go keep on having this adulterous relationship. I love you anyways. No. He rescued her and saved her first

because he loves and graced. But what his last words he said to her was this, go and do no more. That's repent. I've already saved you. Now I've given you the ability to turn from this life and return to the life I actually created you for.

That's really what should be going on. So we basically there's some things God wants us to walk in this world. There's a mission he wants us to be in. And I needed to set that up because the passage we're gonna look at, we're gonna get to this parable. And it's it's it's it's happens in Matthew 21, if you have your Bibles.

And it'll be on the screen if you if you didn't have one. But Matthew 21 starts with Jesus' triumphal entry. The book of Matthew is really the the the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. They all tell the story of Jesus, but they all have a little bit slightly different audience.

Matthew was written towards the Jews. And what he wanted the Jews to see is Jesus is the Messiah, but really he is the king of kings. So it's Jesus the king. You should respond to His authority in your life. Jesus is the authority. And that's what these religious leaders and the Jews who were God's promised children.

They were supposed to be on mission with them. Here they are doing the church thing, has the temple thing. But when Jesus showed up, they're like, who's this guy? So here they're doing the church thing, but they're rejecting the authority of God actually in their life.

And so that's really what this book deals with. Well, in Matthew 21, he's heading towards the cross. He knows he's going to die for for us. And he does this triumphal entry where they cheer for him on Palm Sunday. Then a few days later, they're all yelling, crucify him. You know the story.

Well, then after he gets there, one of the first things he does when he shows up to Jerusalem is he goes into the temple and he clears the temple.

How many of you have heard and understand the story of Jesus clearing the temple? Just kind of help me out here. I want to know how much Bible knowledge we have in the room. Good. Good. So I don't need to preach anymore. No.

Jesus shows up at the temple, and he already turns over the tables of the money changers and chases them all out. The one thing I want to tell you, you've heard that, you might have heard it taught in a way that says, He's mad that they're changing money and that they're selling the doves and the different animals for the sacrifice. And He's just mad that they're doing that. I've heard people yell at me if we sell a shirt out there. This is like the temple. It's like Jesus wasn't mad about the business transactions. You do know that, right?

What he was mad about was where they were doing them. See, what they were doing, the changing of money and the selling of the different amphetamines, that was actually necessary

for their worship. Because you had travelers come from far away to come to the temple. And they needed exchange money because they, a lot these animals, they couldn't bring them the whole way, so they purchased them when they got there to offer these sacrifices.

The issue was it used to happen outside of the Temple Mount, down the stairs. And so what he's mad at is what the Jews did. The leaders, they said, you know what? This is a pain to walk all the way down there. Let's bring it into the court, the temple. I've been up on the Temple Mount. And when God said, here's how to lay out the temple, it's interesting as if he was trying to make a point about what his plans were in the way he told them to lay out this temple.

You got the holy of holies. You got the court of the men. That's where the men would go in, and and they could have teaching and stuff. It's a little bit a court. Then the court of the women. And then the outer court is the court of the Gentiles. And the court is just a big courtyard. It's a big open space where you can meet.

Guess which one is the largest by far? The court of the Gentiles. Isn't it interesting that God called these people, Hebrews, the Israelites to be his people?

But then that when he had them build the temple, the Court Of The Gentiles was supposed to be a place where non Jews could come hear about this one true God and pray and learn. And God had them establish a temple that that's the biggest area. You know, you think he's trying to say something about his plan?

The plan is there's gonna be a lot more of non Jews that are gonna know me than the Jewish people. My plan was to use Israel to bring the world salvation. And so they were supposed to reach out, really. But they didn't. They so didn't that they said this is a waste of space. Let's put the stuff in here. And Jesus is mad

that you're not loving people. You're not doing the mission. You're doing church, and you're forgetting what's going on out there. Make sense? So in context of that, this is the what he has happened. So he has these leaders come to him and they're mad that he did that. So in verse 23,

it starts off with this. When Jesus returned to the temple, after he'd already done that, and began teaching,

the leading priests and the elders came up to him and they demanded, by what authority are you doing all these things? Who gave you the right? See, don't believe in the authority of Jesus in their life. They go, who gave you the right to do this? And then Jesus, who is brilliant,

does this. He goes, I'll tell you by what authority I do these things if you just answer one question. And then here's the question. Did John's authority to baptize come from heaven or was it merely human?

John the Baptist was the guy who came and he baptized people. Right? But he was a prophet. He came before Jesus and he says, I'm doing this to prepare the way for the Lord, for salvation, for Jesus to come. It's not the baptism we do today. It was a baptism of just a repentant heart, meaning I'm open to what God has. I know I've been walking the only way, because Israel, you know, they there's the people that realize, hey, I have not been following God. I'm not really listening, and I'm ready. I'm So gonna get baptized representing a purity thing as I'm ready to receive the Lord. It's a repentant baptism is what it was. I'm willing to turn to God. And here's the problem. The Jewish leaders, they didn't like this because he pointed them to Jesus. And now they don't trust Jesus. So he goes, hey, I'll answer your question. Here's where I get I'll tell you where I get my authority if you tell me this. Was John's baptism something that really was of God? Or is it just a made up thing from a man?

He put them in a weird conundrum. Because you can see, look what they say. They talked it over amongst themselves. They say if we say it's from heaven, he'll ask us, why didn't we believe John? If it was from heaven, why didn't we listen to him and why aren't we trusting Jesus' authority?

So they know. If we say yes, then we're in trouble. But here's their catch. But if we say it's merely human, we'll be mobbed because the people believe John was a prophet. So the crowds are on this. They all believe John was was from God. And if they say no, they're gonna get attacked and possibly killed by the crowd.

So they're like, either way, we're in trouble. And and so they would make great politicians today. So they finally replied, we don't know. They took the fifth. And then Jesus, I could almost see Him smile a little bit at this. He goes, well, then I won't tell you by what authority I do these things.

But then he goes, but I'm going to tell you a couple stories. So it's interesting. The rest of the passage, he goes into these three stories, three parables in a row. We only want to look at the first one. So he goes, you want answers?

I'm not going to give you actual answers, but I'm going tell you stories. That's where I got my preaching model from. I'm not going to give you any answers. I'm just going to tell you some stories. Okay? No. No. Just kidding. But but what he goes to, these stories don't answer the question about his authority. He already knows he's the authority.

These parables are about their attitude and how they're missing the boat.

They're being all spiritual. They're doing all these so called spiritual things, but they're actually missing what God has. So he tells three stories that kinda look at it from a different point of view. I just wanna look at this first one.

And this first one, it it it starts off with this verse 28. But what do you think about this? A man with two sons told the older boy, son, go out and work in the vineyard today.

So he's going to have two sons. And he goes to both of them, we're going to see in a second, tells them both, I need you to go work in my vineyard. Now before we go into what these two sons do, and look at it, I just want to stop and analyze this. Because in this story, the father is God.

So he's kind of representing. And everyone in this crowd he's talking to is one of these two sons. So in a minute, I'm going to walk through these two sons. And what I want you to start preparing your heart for is ask yourself, which son are you? This I don't have a lot of points. I just today is just hold up a mirror. And look in the mirror, and what do you see?

But the first thing is this story starts off with a father who's represented by God. He has a vineyard, and he tells his son, I need you to go out and work in the vineyard. What's the desire of the father? The desire of the father is I have a vineyard and I have a job for you. And I want you to work in my vineyard.

Now, if you think about it from deposit point of view, it's that vineyard is the son's inheritance according to this culture. So he's actually say, go work in something I built that is yours too. That's the first thing. He wants him to work. He has a mission for him to accomplish. And it's his mission in his field.

The second important thing to understand about the heart of the father in this story is when does he tell him to go do it? Today. Not tomorrow. Not when you get around to it. Not go figure some things out. I need you to listen to me and obey me right now.

You realize that we're about to see is what he's setting up is the stories to go after these religious leaders' attitude. And it's their attitude towards John and repentance and all of that. So to understand the father's heart, he's saying, I need you today to go be about my business.

And what we're gonna see is they weren't. But we're gonna see is and and the same thing that we have to respond to today is before we get to the end of this, if we put ourselves in this story, God still has a vineyard. He still has a field he wants us working. He still wants us to go work on producing a harvest of fruit.

And he still wants us to be about it, and he wants us to be about it today. And if you understand anything, if you've read the much of the New Testament, every time the New Testament talks about a harvest, guess what it's talking about? People. He wants us working in the field of loving people and pointing them to Jesus.

That's our mission.

That's what we should be about as believers. That's what they should have been. Remember the whole story? He's mad. They forgot the Gentiles. They forgot the outreach. They only cared about themselves. They cared about going to the temple and get their own thing done and leaving. And if you complain that today, still, how many of us come to church? And we care about our little walk. I want my kids to be good. I want my marriage to be better. And those aren't bad things. I just want to come to church, do my church thing, leave. But do I really care about the mission of the church? Do I want to just go to church or do I want to be the church?

And we're called to be on on point with this stuff. And he's about to make a point because what it is is they're also mad at him, he's going to say it that he keeps meeting with the outsiders.

He keeps meeting with with the prostitutes and the tax collectors. And they got mad at him because they're like, you're meeting with tainted people. And his attitude was, yeah, they're the ones at the court of judgement. You should have been meeting with these people. I don't want them to stay that way.

But I also don't push him away because I think you're you think you're better then, but you're not. We're all broken people. You should be reaching out to them instead of pushing them out and acting like they're evil and you're good. Understand? That's what's going on.

So the point is the father has a vineyard and he wants us working and he still does. God still has a field. He even says in the New Testament, another passage, the harvest is plentiful, but the what? The workers are few. That means there's a lot of us that refuse to go to the father's vineyard and work.

We've refused to serve. We've refused to use our gifts. We don't reach out. We don't give our time. We don't give our money. We just go to church. And there's a problem with that. So there. So now that we set that up, let's look at these two sons. And as I redo the rest, just ask yourself which son sounds like you maybe.

And here it goes. So he goes he says this to the first one. Go today. The son answered verses 29. Nope. I won't go.

But then it says, but later, he changed his mind and went anyways. So

he said no. He gave he gave God the the the Heisman at first and said, I'm not gonna go, but then he changes mine later. Now, if they you know what? I'm just gonna throw this in for free for you guys. Think about this. That shows you right there how patient and loving God the Father is. Because I don't know about the home you grow up with. But if I told my dad my dad says, need you to mow the lawn right now. And I said, no, there would be no later.

There would be no later. God is don't don't confuse God's patience with God agreeing with you. He's very patient. So he says, nope. But later he changed his mind and went away. Then the father told the other son, you go. And he said, yes, sir, I will. That's kind of the all respectful,

sir, I will. But it says, but then he didn't go. So then he asked these leaders that challenged his authority. He goes, which one of the two obeyed his father? This one they can answer. They're like, the first. Like, duh. The first one. Even though he said no, he actually ended up obeying.

Then Jesus explained his meaning. I tell you the truth. Corrupt tax collectors and prostitutes will get into the kingdom before you do. For John the Baptist came and showed you the right way to live, but you didn't believe him. And while tax collectors and prostitutes did. And even when you saw this happening,

you refused to believe him, and then what does it say at the end? And repent from your sins. Jesus in this story, think about it. Both of them are sons. He's not talking about repent.

Not sinning is not how you get God's love. What he's saying is, if you really see my love and the fact that I'd sacrifice for you, I'm gonna die for you. If you saw that, you would see your brokenness in a different light. And you would choose to trust me. And you would turn back to my way of living.

See, lot of times we get caught up in thinking sins is just doing a bad thing. But the Bible says very clearly, the good thing you're supposed to do and you don't do is just as much a sin as doing the bad thing. You do realize that. Sins of omission

are just as sinful as sins of commission. And what they got caught up in is listing all the rules, going to church, and doing that. So they thought they're great because they weren't doing the sins of commission. We weren't doing the things that God said don't do this. Don't do this. They were pretty good at doing, not doing the don'ts. But

they weren't doing the dos that he wants them to do.

And so in this story, which one are you? Are you the first son?

What's the first son? He he he That's the person that you know what you're not doing. You know what God's asked you to do and you're like, no. Some of you, you've never repented the first time. You come to church, but you're like, I refuse to put my faith in Jesus as my salvation and my only way. I just don't want to accept Jesus. I'm just, nope. I get it. But I don't want to do it. Some of you, you already know Jesus, but you're more like, I don't want to go into the field today. I'm saying, nope. I know exactly what I'm saying no to God about. Doesn't matter how many sermons I hear, does how many things, there's something. And in this exact context, I'm just giving you the example. Context of this example is, are you serving the kingdom of God in order to help other people come to know God?

In other words, the number one thing that he's talking about here is is is this focus on is your life you might come to church and do all the good things. But is your life focused on leading, you know, pointing people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus? I've heard that somewhere.

Is that what you're doing? That could be the thing you're like, nope.

I don't wanna give. I don't wanna serve. I don't matter of fact, we're gonna have a volunteer expo next week with all our ministries out there, and you have a chance to serve. Because the Bible says if you're Christian, you go to church, you should use your spiritual gift to serve in your church.

There. Just told you. Flat out in scripture. So if you come to church all the time, I don't care how much you love your family, how much if you won't do that, you are absolutely disobeying the authority of God. You're flat out saying no. You're being the first son.

Now that's a little bit easy to determine if you're that one. You know when you know you're not doing something.

And they're clear. And he's he's actually saying this was the tax collectors and the prostitutes. These were the people I called that at first said, no, I don't even want to walk with God. I'm not going to go to the temple. I'm not going to live that way at all. But then John comes along,

and all of sudden they changed their mind. They turned to Jesus. They're the ones that are trusting Jesus' authority. And now these guys are mad at him for doing that. I often say, you know, what made them change their mind? What made the son changes in the story? Was it regret? Was it remorse?

Was it he he he really understood my dad loves me and this is my inheritance? Did he see the love? Or was it all of those? Because in scripture, that's it says it's all of those that really help us change our mind and repent. But you know what a better question about this first son is?

Is what made him say no in the first place? What makes you say no to something that God says to do? Like, I'll throw one out there obvious. You know how many Christians in the church don't give money? You're disobeying what God says to do. There's no other way I can say it. Sorry. Throw punch. There it is. Ask yourself,

why? Why do you say no? That's a better question. Why do I why do I willfully say no to God? I can only tell you my two struggles on why. I think they're pretty common. For me, it's one of two things when I start getting freaked out and saying no to what God wants me to do. It's either fear or distraction.

It's usually either fear, and that's why the money one is always such a fear. Because we live in a world where need money to live. And it's tight in the economy, and you know whatever, and you're worried, and you gotta feed your kids, you gotta take care of your family. So the problem is if God says give financially,

and I feel like I don't have enough,

I can't I'm afraid of what it means to actually do what God says. Right? I'm afraid of that. That's one of the biggest ones for me. I'm with you guys. I'm totally with you on this. Whether it be that, it could be something else. Take money out of it. Could be serving. If I get my time there, what if it's, you know, it takes some drain. I have all these other things I'm supposed to get done. I'm gonna be so tired. Or or what if it's love your spouse like Christ loved you. And it's like, if I choose to love or respect first, but they're not loving or respecting me back, there's fear. Like what if I do that and they never love me back? And God says, but you go first. Especially men, go first. You're a leader. That's what it means. And you're afraid. What are you afraid of? I'm afraid of what if I do it

and it doesn't work? So some of you are here with me. You're you're There's something you know God wants you to do, and it's just fear. Why do you think God asked you to do it?

He asked us to give money, not because he needs our money. It's because we need to understand that we can absolutely trust God for life and everything. And when you experience it, all of a sudden, you're not afraid of a lot of other things.

Whatever you're most afraid of trusting God with is the thing that's holding you back from seeing the power of God the most. The other one is distraction. I think sometimes we don't want to serve and get really involved in the gospel and what's going on in the church. We don't want to get into God's field. You know why?

Because we're too busy tilling our own field.

We have a field out here. It's my success. It's this. I have this and then we pseudo spiritualize it. We go in our own field and say, God bless this field. Bless this field. And we keep wondering, why won't he bless this crop? Because I don't want you in this field in the first place. I want you over here. Does that make sense? I do the same. I I can do the same thing. And you know what? Don't just think because I'm in ministry, I don't have that struggle with my job. It is really easy. You've seen it out there. It's why a lot of people get mad at church. They use the the the messenger as the reason to reject God. There's a lot of guys that get into ministry. It's easier to be bored about, I'm building a church, I'm building my kingdom. Matter of fact, get attacked there. Hey, he's building a building over there. He just wants that for his own glory. If you were in the headache of the meetings I had to be in, and the fact that I'd say, guys, please give so we can build this building. I don't like doing that.

I hate doing that. I didn't want to build this building.

I was hoping it would last longer. The only reason is because Jesus said go make disciples And we seem to keep doing that. So we need bigger room.

So what'll usually make us say no for me, and I think it's probably the top two answers for most of us, fear or distraction. Which one are you? Is that you? What would happen if you repented today? Like the first son did.

Or maybe you're the second son. I gotta hurry because this is the this is the most complicated one to share. The problem with the second son, it's a hard one to see if you are, and it's even harder to admit it if you are. The second son is who he's describing these these fair these leaders to be.

You're doing the churchy things, but you're still not obeying me. And that's difficult. It's hard to admit it. Matter of fact, they get mad at the end of these parables. Cause they realize, wait, he's talking about us. Uh-huh.

And and and then they're like, but that's not us. Why is he calling us that? See, they're confused. They're like, I don't understand this story. I'm not the first son or the second son. They think they're the third son. You know what the third son is? We don't need to repent because we have honored you. We did listen to you. We are doing the right thing. And we're not sitting. We don't have anything to repent from. We've always had it right.

They're missing the whole thing.

And that's easy to get trapped. If we're the second son if you're a second son, you're probably like, I don't know. When is this guy gonna stop talking? This message doesn't mean anything to me. I wish he would exegete a passage deeper and teach me some Greek so I can get some real information and meat of the scripture when and you're missing the whole point of the message.

A second son is someone that doesn't see. And here's the problem. Here here's the problem with being a second son. Here's why you miss out on the grace of God when we act like that. When we come to church enough and we think we're doing less of the bad, but we're really ignoring all the good and we don't see it,

we miss out. And then we don't really appreciate the grace of Jesus as much. If we don't find the failure, we'll never feel the forgiveness. If you don't find the failure in your life, the parts where you're just not honoring God, if you don't see that brokenness, if you don't find that failure,

you're never gonna truly feel the forgiveness of what the grace of God is relayed. Those who know how much they've been forgiven and bought with a price are much more emotionally attached to the mission that God wants for them, aren't they? And that's the problem with being the second son.

And we still do that a lot. We get especially in America. We have so many of us that we say we're Christians. We put our faith in Jesus. You show up here. We kind of do the thing, but then it's give, serve, goo, share the it's here's how do you know if you're the second son?

Here's a good indicator. Look at your life. Even if you're coming to church all the time. Have you as we say, no, girl, go. Have you do you go and intentionally wrap your life? My time, my talents, my treasure, my money, my calendar is one of the heart's desires. The main drive of my life

is the gospel of Jesus being propagated to make disciples. Is my life really centered around pointing people to Jesus by loving them like Jesus? Is that really a drive? And if your answer is not really,

I just want to be a good Christian. I want to be a good person. I want my kids to know Jesus. I like to worship. I like to know the Bible. If the drive isn't God's mission, then I hate to say you're probably a second son, and you're missing out.

We're the ones that say yes to Jesus. We act respectful. We sing the songs. But in our everyday life, we actually disobey what he's called us to do. We're just not bad people in ignoring God. We're very respectful. We're like the kid that says, yes, dad. And then does what we want to do anyways.

How do we get stuck in that? You know I think know how I think we get stuck being the second son and we don't even realize it? Is we we turn repentance into tolerance. I've talked about this a few weeks ago. We start tolerating.

Like, I know I don't serve, but and we have a reason. And but I'm gonna hope. I'm gonna get there someday. I'm not gonna do today, but then I'll get to And and we tolerate it. And we tolerate it. And the longer you tolerate them. You ever notice long you tolerate? You stop noticing it. You ever notice that? Like, I

moved into a house, and when we moved into this house we live in now, we

had some money saved up and we bought a good deal. But the master bathroom was a disaster in the house. We knew it. That's why we got a good deal. We gutted it and to save money, I was kind of worked with all the subs because I didn't know how to do it. But the guy that was the contractor for me says, I'll do this for you, but you got to do all the coordinating if subs don't show up. Now I know why he had them to be that job.

Because it was hard. And you know? And so it took us all, like, seven weeks to get this little bathroom done. Eight weeks, it was like, we had no bathroom for, eight weeks. Got it all done. We did all and then we did everything else in the house. The other carpets painted everything. You know how when you move an house, you just wanna get it right. You want to get everything right. Well, we got all the way down to the point. And then the last thing, it's all done. We're happy. Finally get to rest. And we go into the bathroom that had been painted in the little toilet room in our bathroom. And it was either me or my wife hit the the toilet panel because then it went it broke off. They painted around. But whoever had put this on originally, it's not screwed into any it was just screwed into drywall.

And it literally broke. So we had to go get the patch up and patch the well, I say we, my wife did it. I didn't know how to do the patch. She patched it, and then we putty it, and get it all ready to go.

And then we realized we gotta paint it. But we're like, I don't know where that paint is. I don't even think we have any of this paint left. We probably have to go get some more. No. We're not gonna do that today. We're just tired. We'll do it later. That was four years ago. Guess what it still looks like.

And you know why? We put it off, put it off. We don't even notice it. The only reason I noticed it, I was thinking about how can I illustrate this point? And I went in my bathroom and I go, wow. How long has that been like that?

You know what I'm talking about? You know, you go to your friend's house and you see something and you're like, how do they not notice that?

There's like a gaping right there. Like, you know, there's like and if you're like, no, never noticed that. Then you're the one that people notice at your house in there something. You know, it's like you just tolerate it long enough, you don't see it anymore.

But when you're gonna go buy a new house, you notice everything. We just tolerate so long till it just becomes normal. What is it that you've tolerated disobedience to what God desperately wants for your life?

And then you've turned repentance and turning it into a big fear thing or a distraction thing. And then when I talk about it, you're like, oh, he just wants and then the enemy uses these tactics to go, they just want something from you. No. We want something for you. God wants something the father asking his sons to work in the field was something he wanted for his sons,

not from his sons. He goes, I want you to live out the life that I gave you. Jesus dies on the cross so we can repent, so we can turn back, so by his grace and love and power, we can go with him. But if we use fear or distraction or tolerance where we just don't see it anymore and then we think we're doing it right,

we're gonna miss out. What is it that you need to repent from? That you need to turn from the way you're going and just turn back into God's plan? What do you need to do? And we can can you do that today? Because you know when I was when I was in high school,

my my friend came to me and he tried to get me to he says, need you to come to the Key Club meeting and get yourself elected president. Key Club was a community service club, and he was over he was lieutenant governor, so he'd gotten elected over. He was like the president over five schools, but the school he came from, once he left, the club just went. And

it wasn't doing any good. And he goes, I need you to come because you, Bill, you can rally people. Just come on. Come with me and do this thing because I'm embarrassed that my club, my home school looks so bad. And I'm like, why would I want to do that? Why do I want to go to community service? I'm busy. I got sports. I got this. And he started to win me over with not the right reason. Not because you should. Community service is a good thing. He said, because it'll look good on your college resume.

I was trying to go to a good school. And there's a lot of cool things we get to do. We'll get to hang out. And the Kiwanis, which is the parent organization,

they host all these awesome breakfasts and they'll occasionally have these steak and sometimes steak and lobster lunches that they invite the presidents and the key club lieutenant governors to. So we'll get to get out of class because our teacher adviser will sign us out for these things, and we can go get this free food. And I'm like, wait, you had me at steak.

Alright, I'll do it. And he goes, well, just come. And but the only thing you got to do is we're going have an election for the new leader. You just got to get yourself elected. I said, okay. So I show up and I got elected. My first meeting, I got elected president. I won the election. I was I won the vote. Seven votes to six.

I brought six friends with me. So me and my six friends got me elected. Which means the six people that were currently in the club, not one of them voted for me. But I took over. I

am now president of Key Club. And you know what? As I led this thing, I didn't want to be in there for the right reason, but I knew I should. And I was there for the good things I got out of it. I did do some good things. We did some fundraisers. We did some things. We did some community service projects. We did some good things. But my heart wasn't really about that. I was I would do the minimum of the good.

The minimum I needed to do in order to get what I really wanted.

And one day we went to one of these breakfasts that was delicious. And one of the guys says, you're going to the really big lunch today. Right? It's steak and lobster and it's a full spread and you guys are invited. And we're like, no, we didn't know about it. And we wanted to go. But we only had permission to miss our first class for the breakfast. And all of sudden, in two hours there's this lunch, we wanted to go. So we said we should really go. And we rationalized in our head. It'd be a good thing. We can represent all that. We'll get steak. It'll be you know, we can talk about things. They'll see us there. We'll get lobster. We'll be you know, it's like but we knew that we didn't get permission from our faculty advisors. So we hatched a plan that we'll go to him later and say, hey, we forgot to have you sign this thing. Here's where you were. And because we knew we didn't have time to get it done the right way. So we decided that we're going to call ourselves in out of school. So my friend David called for himself because he was old enough. And then he called and acted like he was my dad. And then we were waiting at his house for a few minutes till we left. All of a sudden his phone rings, answering machine picks up. It's my mom.

Hey, David. Is Billy there? The school called. And apparently somebody called him out of school and it wasn't me. So he really needs to come home. His dad and I are waiting for him. As we thought, how did they find out? We narrowed it down to one of two things. It was either one,

the lady who you talked to on the attendance line, it wasn't automated back then,

was the same lady that answered the phone my entire life in school and knew only one person ever called me out, and that was my mom. It was either that or she figured out that my dad probably didn't sound like a Jewish teenager from the Bronx. Don't it's a mystery. Don't know which one it was. So

we're driving home to my house, Dave's like, do we do? I go, we we can get this. We we had to keep our story straight. But I said, but here's what you gotta understand. We better really have our story straight. I go, why? Because I know what my mom and dad are gonna do. So we walk in, they're gonna split us up and interrogate us, Law and Order style.

And then they're gonna compare the notes. So our story better be clear. And here's what we did. We decided right away, we'd own right away we shouldn't have called ourselves in. We'll own the obvious. We'll own the little so we can hide the lot.

We'll own the little problem. We'll own the thing that was obviously a problem. Yeah, we shouldn't have done that. But it was really because and we had this whole plan that was a little bit of truth, a lot of lie, all mixed in to make us look better, to justify

what we had just done, to make us look like we did the right thing. But we really weren't about the right thing. And so we went, we did it, and it worked.

My parents bought it. They sent us back. So we went to the faculty advisor and said, here's one mistake we made. Whatever. And he's like, so you just forgot to ask me? Oh, yeah. We had it down. We even wrote up the list after. He'd sign off the one. Forgot to have you sign off this. We made it look like we just forgot to have him sign something.

And he goes, alright, you know what? I'm proud of you two for just owning this. Good job. Signed it. Take it to the office and tell them we should have done it this way. So we go to office and hey, we messed up. We did this, but the teacher understood. So he signed up. They go, you know what? Good job, guys. You owned this. I'm proud of you. More students need to have character like you and just own what they're doing. You are an example

to this student body. We not only got away with it, we got praised for it.

But you know the bad thing about this all, the worst thing in all of it? That's the only time in my life I ever stood toe to toe with my father, looked him right in the face, and flat out lied and tried to manipulate him.

And I got away with it. Or so I thought.

That kind of stuck with me. And eventually, had to go tell my dad. It was like ten years later. Was married. I had kids. I had protection. I knew that he wouldn't want to orphan his grandkids.

Like, you know, make them be fatherless. So I go, I got it good. I got some protection to back me. I think I was even holding one of my kids at the time just to keep me safe. But I told him. I said, dad, I'm so sorry. I lied to you and you believed it. He goes, no, I didn't. He goes, I knew you were lying.

I just couldn't prove it. So I figured, I'll let that sit on his conscious the rest of his life and see what happens. He was right. So I apologize. He goes, you should have just told me. You carried this your whole life. And if you just told me, I would have forgiven you.

I actually would have been proud of you for just owning it all. But isn't that what we do when we we think we're repenting? If we're like that second son, what we tend to do is is is we tolerate till we forget. Or we'll own the little so we can hide the lot. We'll own like we'll talk about the obvious mistakes.

But the things like trusting God with our time, our money, our mission, and all these things that we won't do, we we we hide that by owning this. Repentance is all the way. Turn your whole life around and face Jesus. Because you know what? There is no third son. Actually, though, there is. There's one third son.

One that got it right. One that doesn't need to repent. One that was perfect. One that came and lived out God's laws. That lived out that perfect life. There was one third son, and he climbed on a cross, and he died for you and me. The only third son is the son of God. It's Jesus himself.

And if you think you're the third son, you won't look to the real third son. And you'll miss out on the life he has for you. So what do you need to repent from? It's a simple question. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna close. We're gonna sing a song. It's called Come to the Altar.

And I'm gonna give you an opportunity to do today what the father asked us to do. Today, repent.

So as we sing this song, we cleared some space up here. If and whatever you need to repent from, whatever God reveals to you, as we sing, if you wanna repent, you wanna just turn, you wanna do business with God, just walk up here. Then we're gonna hand you a mic. You're gonna tell everybody everything you did. No.

No. This is between you and your father. Just come have a moment with God. Just come stand up here. In in in your heart to him, reveal the lot, not just the little. Repent. Turn back to God's way and experience. Find that failure. Feel the forgiveness. Because real faith is repentant faith. Come.

He's calling you. Don't let anything stand in your way. But come to him. There's time. Will you come?

Real faith is a repentant faith. Because when we repent and turn to God, you know what you experience? Not a God who's ready to judge or to punish, but when you turn to God, you experience a heavenly father that is greeting you with arms open wide. So don't be afraid of it. I

wanna just pray, but I wanna pray some of you in this room, you're standing here or you're standing out there, you've never done what's called the first act of repentance. It's to turn to Jesus in the first place, to become a Christian,

to be born again as the Bible says, to put your faith in Christ is the way to have a relationship with God, to have eternal life. It's through his death, burial, and resurrection, and putting my faith in what he did for me, not what I do for him that saves me and gives me a relationship with my heavenly father. I just have to own my sin,

accept the forgiveness, and put my faith in Jesus.

And if you've never done that, today's your chance. I just wanna close and pray with you. So if you're someone that you're like, I've been holding God's love back. I've never put my faith in Jesus. And you're willing to do that now. Just pray with me as I close this in prayer. But make this prayer your own words in your heart.

Just make it between you and God. But just pray something like this with me. Dear Father, I thank you that you are the one who wants us desperately to repent. Because when we turn to you is when we really find forgiveness, grace, love, power, truth, life as it's supposed to be. So

Lord, right now, I confess that I have sinned. I've gone my own way. I've been working in my own field and ignored you. I'm broken by that. But Lord, right now, I turn to you. And I put my faith in what Jesus did on the cross for me. And how he rose from the dead, defeating death to bring life to me.

So right now, in the best way I know how, I put my faith in Jesus and Jesus alone. Thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for your love. Thank you for giving me the ability to turn to you in this thing called repentance. Now help me to go from here and live each and every day trying to have real faith.

A faith that when I see what's wrong, I turn and feel the forgiveness of repentant faith. And Lord, help me to grow that I I learn each and every day that maybe I'm still gonna fall, but I'll turn and repent faster next time than I did before. I thank you, Lord. And I pray this all in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.