Genesis | Week 4 | Full Service

because we're gonna look at a bible story that's kinda similar. It's where we act like kids. We act like we're gonna These people they decided to build something and build a society

and they thought it was gonna be epic and it was gonna be awesome, and God had to come down and say you got this all wrong. You gotta scatter and get back to my plan. This ain't gonna work. Anybody know the name of the story?

Tower Of Babel. Tower Of Babel. Maybe you've heard it before, where all the people in the world get together and they're gonna build this high tower and maybe you've heard it wrong, it's like they thought they were gonna build all the way to heaven and that's not what they were thinking. And what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at this story, it's in Genesis 11, which is a transitional part of this book of Genesis.

Because the book of Genesis I told you can be The most simple way to divide it is the beginning of the human race, the beginning of the Hebrew race. And and really the first 11 chapters is God creates the human race, and then it shows the interactions of what happens when Adam and Eve believed this lie from the devil, which is the same lie we all still believe. It's the source of all sin that you know what, I don't need to trust what God actually said, and if I'm really gonna be happy, I need to be like God and I need to do my own thing. Even if I worship God, I need to actually still do my own thing.

And that continues to be a problem. And then God keeps coming into this story. We looked at the Noah and the ark, and what God will do is he brings his judgment,

but in his judgment he also brings his grace. As we've seen, there was judgment, the flood, the ark is grace. He keeps bearing a judge, he's gonna judge sin, he's gonna answer it because he's really trying to slow it down to stop it as he's marching toward his answer for our redemption.

And now after chapter 11 with this Tower Of Babel, it's a transition that leads to the birth and the story of a guy named Abraham, the Hebrew race. And that's the beginning, a continuation of God's story towards this redemptive story which is found in Jesus.

It's God's passionate pursuit of his prodigal people and it reveals who he is and it reveals his love for us, and it reveals our responsibility to respond to him.

And that's really the story. Like I said, the first two chapters of Genesis, God says it is good. Chapter three and four, it falls apart. There's eleven eighty nine chapters in the bible, the other eleven eighty six are God marching towards his plan to make it good again.

And so these 11 chapters shows that every time God comes in, we keep falling back into the same problem, the same problem. The Tower Of Babel shows us the same problem. And what we're gonna see is we can relate to this. I think many of us have the same struggle that happened in this story.

So as we read it, there's a big idea I wanna kinda draw out of it that I'm gonna show in this. It's simply this, pride builds towers, humility takes up a cross. Pride builds towers, humility takes up a cross. What does that look like? All right, like I said, Genesis chapter 11

is this crazy story and I'm just gonna read through it and comment on it and make some connections as we go through. And then we're gonna jump in and look at some words of the Jesus, of what Jesus says and then sing a song and be done and go watch football. And hopefully the 49ers rock pretty wins.

Can't bear to say 49ers win, but here we go. At one time all the people of the world spoke the same language and used the same words as the people migrated to the East, they found a plane in the land of Babylonia and they settled there.

So it says at one time, all these people spoke the same language, they came to the same place. Right there, just a little bit of apologetics,

defense of the face. Somebody's like, these stories aren't they missed? This sounds kinda Everybody spoke the same language, they all were together. And you know what's weird is if you go back and look at the history of studying how we got so many languages and cultures,

at one time I think it was in The UK, was illegal because they just studied and they said it's of no use to study because if you go back far enough, they can't really figure out where all of these languages came from. They say it's as if there wasn't a bunch of languages and then all of a sudden there was.

We don't know how that happened. I seem to be recollecting a story here that tells us exactly how it happened. And so they said there was This is all of humanity a few generations after the flood,

God already rescued him. He told him in the beginning, be fruitful and multiply. Then he comes in, they rescue the Lord, he go be fruitful and multiply, spread out and cover the earth and do all that? And so now they're right back to ignoring God.

Because watch what happens. It says as the people migrated east, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and they settled there. The Plain Of Shinar. Babylonia. This is where the Babylonian Empire was founded. This is the source of Babylon. And just a little bit of a reference here is Babylon

is kind of an illustration. It's a real thing and it also illustrates a greater picture. There's a comparison all through the scripture of Babylon and the city of Babylon, the Empire Of Babylon. Babylon represents man's prideful attempts

to kind of like one world ruler, one world power, like political power that can control. It also represents false religion. It's a prideful man centered religion.

One power, one religion. All through scripture, Jerusalem in comparison is shown to be the city of God. And so they kinda use them illustratively as Jerusalem represents city of God, Babylon represents

If you notice Babylon is mentioned all Matter of fact, the Babylonian Empire actually comes back and runs over Israel. At one point God uses them to bring some correction on Israel.

But if you're really familiar with the bible and eventually we'll get there, the end of the year and the first part of next year, we're gonna be in the last book of the bible, the book of Revelation. And we're gonna look at the end of the story.

The end of the redemptive story. And Revelation like, you know, Genesis starts with the creation, ends with this destruction and chaos. The book of Revelation is reverse order. It starts with the chaos and it ends with the new creation.

And it puts it all back together. But in there, it talks through this end time that there's this the Antichrist, the spirit of the Antichrist is there. It's always been there. It's that lie from the devil and the devil fell because he wanted to be God. He's a copycat, tries to copy God. If you go below the book of Revelation, he even has this false trinity.

He's trying to rule and he wants to develop the spirit of Antichrist. You end up with one world government and one world religion and it's really about control and all this stuff that's happening And it's called Babylon

as opposed to the story of Christ. So this really is an illustrative story that carries out over and over and over again. So it starts here. This the initial beginning of Babylon. And it's really about the false idea of a perfect society that has political power and control and one religion. So here we go.

It says, they began to say to other. Here's where you know it's a man focused religion even if they're trying to worship God. Watch what they say. They began to say each other, let's make bricks and harden them with fire. In this region, bricks were used instead of the stone and tar was used for mortar. Then they said, come, let's build a great city for ourselves

with a tower that reaches into the sky.

So now they're like, let us make, let us build this city and we're gonna build this tower that reaches into the sky. Now you're saying, okay, a great city, they're talking about let's stick together. Let's build this one society. It'll be great. They say this will make us famous and keep us from being scattered all over the world. Hold on there for minute. So we're gonna make a name for us. We'll be famous and we'll have this city, this will be a great society, it'll be this one government, it'll be cool, it'll be awesome, and we're gonna have this religion, we're gonna worship. This tower

is talking about worship. When it says it in the heavens, contrary to what you might have heard again, they didn't think they were gonna build all the way through the atmosphere and into another world. What they meant was it's gonna reach heaven. It was a religious idea. It's been common all over the world.

What they built was a ziggurat. We found these all over the planet. Some people, crazy people say, there's one on the moon. And then other people say, we don't know that. We've never been to the moon. And then other people say, it's the no, I won't I'll stop going down that trail. And anyways,

what's a ziggurat? I got a picture of one because I kept trying to explain it and I was surprised how many people didn't know what a ziggurat was. Pretty much every pyramid in the world is a version of a ziggurat. Even the ones in Egypt,

It's an optical illusion to think they're smooth on the side. They're not. They go And what a ziggurat was, it was built for two purposes. One, to declare the greatness of a city and a society,

and a religious purpose mainly, was to go into the heavens meant you would worship. You'd have an altar built up here and they felt like if we go way up in the sky, it's a gateway to meet God.

And God will come down, we go up to him, he comes down, and then you'll have some form of worship. It is a display of your political might and a dictator or ruler would want these because then I control the government, look at how great we are, we have the gods on our side, and then that's what they were doing.

They built this, a giant ziggurat, this tower under themselves. But the problem is they said this will make us famous and this will keep us from being scattered all over the world. There's the key part. Here's where the pride is. It's all us, we, make, great, awesome society and

we will build this tower, a worship thing, and then we won't have to scatter. Here's the problem, what had God told them to do? Be fruitful and multiply. They were supposed to spread out. They're not supposed to do this.

It doesn't mean cities today are bad. Means in this moment God had a purpose. I need you to move out and spread out. And that's why they kind of pridefully say, and when we do this, it'll keep us from being scattered all over the world. They're literally saying, and then we won't have to do what God said.

There's the pride. What they're basically saying is, I know God wants us to do that, that's hard, that's scary. If we stay together, we'll be better together. And typically right, and we'll have this great society, we can solve the problems, we'll be good, we'll have this great monument, we can worship God.

And you know if we stay together we'll be safer, our economy will be better, there'll be better stuff, we can produce goods, could be safer and more awesome and everything's better. And that all sounds great except for one thing, God said don't do it that way. Yet they built an altar to worship God.

Ain't that weird? They're gonna say we're gonna worship God, but we're not gonna listen to God. We're gonna worship him, well, we say worship him, but we're gonna worship God, but not listen to the word of God. And that's something we can apply to us today. Some of us are doing this right now.

You come into church here week after week and you say, I'm here to worship God, but I ignored the word of God.

I won't listen to the ways of God. I won't do what he says, like, hey, you're gonna follow me, here's what I'm asking you to do. If you know my love and you wanna love me back, Jesus said, if you love me you'll do what I say. So then you read his word and it says, here's what I should be doing with my time. Here's what I should be doing with my money. Here's the purpose of my life. Here's the goal of being a disciple is to go make disciples. And you could say, I'm gonna come worship God but I'm not gonna do any of that.

So if we do that we're doing exactly what they were doing. We're building towers. We're doing a religion without the relationship. And a religion without a relationship with God, which means loving, knowing his love, and following his love, a religion without a relationship is actually rebellion.

In other words, if you say you're gonna worship God without listening to the word of God, you're actually at war with God. So the little mini throat punch where we go, this is a nice throat punch. It involves a hug.

If you put your life down next to what the bible, maybe you just don't know but what the gospel says, what the bible says is as a part of a church, as a follower of Christ, Jesus saying, hey, follow me in this way. And you lay it down next to what you're doing with your life.

What you're doing with your time. What your focus of your life is at. How do they match up? Is your coming to church all about you? Let us go to church so I can have a better marriage. Let us go there where my kids will honor obey. Let us go because we just don't want God to be mad at us. Let us go there and do this. But

is worship just showing up at a meeting? Or is it living in a real relationship with God and trusting him? You see they didn't wanna trust God because what he asked them to do probably sounded scary to them.

And what they were gonna do sounded easier. And in their head they justified, we're still gonna worship God. We're just not gonna do it that. We're just not gonna do that. That's really close to home for many of us in this room. We're sitting here trying to worship God by ignoring the word of God.

And we always have a reason.

And that's called pride. You're like, but pride, like it says they wanted to be famous. I don't have pride, I'm not trying to be famous. Here's the thing, the source of most pride is fear. Most of the time when we act prideful, it's because of fear.

I'm gonna do it my way, I'm not gonna trust you God, and usually it's because what he wants us to do, we can't figure out how that's gonna work without it being hard for me.

And pride also means because the reason I wanna trust God because I go, I want God to give me what I want in life. See the pride, I think I know what I need better than God does. I think I know more than God knows. I think I do. It's like we have this argument with God. We act

two year olds. Actually three year olds. Three year olds are worse. They're like two year olds with a year of experience. You ever talk to your

three year old and they wanna do something but you know it's not right and you wanna do something else? That doesn't sound fun to them, it sounds hard. You know it's hard because that's what they need to do. And you tell them they go, but I don't wanna do that, I wanna do this. And they go, you know what you have to do and they go, why?

Why? Now nice parents try to explain it in a way they understand. I wasn't that nice. I would rather do experiments on my kids. Hence the way Jaden is now. No. No, I would actually just give them the honest answer. I'd give them the flat out adult answer.

Just to see what they would do. Well you know why? Because and I'd give some long explanations because when you go down the road and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and you watch a three year old and they're like, they don't understand it. So right

over the head. And you know it's gonna and then they look at you go, but I don't wanna do that. I wanna do this. And they go right back to being grumpy. And you realize if you just give them the real answer, they don't get it and they don't care.

Do you realize that the difference in maturity and wisdom

and power and ability and understanding between you, me and God is vastly further apart than you and a three year old. And we do the same exact thing. But we are old enough to think we're not kids and therefore pride. We question God

and we got to ask ourselves why would I do it that way? Why do It's the same line. Satan goes, did God really say that? God doesn't really want you to be truly happy. If if you just ignore him and do this anyways, you'll be like God. That's what they were doing. When they built these, were gonna be like God.

They were arrogantly saying we can go up to the heavens and be like God. And that's what we do when we come here and we say we're worshiping and we say, God is Jesus is our king,

but then we don't listen to him. You know what we're declaring? Every time you come in here and say I'm gonna worship God but ignore his word of what it means to be a disciple, what you're saying is Jesus, I want you to be king of England. And I'm the prime minister.

I want you to be the king of my life as the king of England is. And I'm the prime minister. Because if you know anything about English politics, the king has no real say. He's just there to be seen. It's like the majesty, the the coolness,

the historic you know, I want this the the tradition of God and knowing him. But when it comes to actually everyday life's decision, I'm prime minister. I'm the one that's gonna run my life. Not you, God.

That's what they were doing, that's what we do, and that's what the pride is, and I guarantee that pride mainly comes from fear. You're afraid of what it means to actually trust God. Because it is. He's gonna ask you to go away that's scarier and harder. You gotta trust him.

You gotta trust that he knows more. He knows the bigger story. He knows what needs to happen next. But yet we get prideful. And that pride in many of us is fear.

It's the same with animals. Have you ever noticed animals get That pride and that fear can turn into frustration. So when I keep preaching, hey, here's what God says to do. Here's what you should do. Here's what you do. We get frustrated with that and usually get frustrated with me. Why does he keep talking about that? Because we keep having a problem with that.

I'm kind of like a spiritual parent to us all. And yeah, I sound like a broken record. Because how many times do I have to tell you to clean up your room? And that's what happens. And that's what happens to the animal. You realize animals act the most aggressive when they're most afraid.

And you know what, what happens is when you run into certain animals, with guys. I mean you get two guys in a about to fight or something, something goes bad. I guarantee the guy that's being the loudest popping off the most and cocking the most smack is the guy that's the most afraid.

You gotta worry about the guy that's not saying nothing. That's how my dad was. You get in mess, he's like, hey, this is stupid. I'm gonna avoid the fight at all cost but if you keep yakking, he'll just look at you go, really? Sometimes he wouldn't say anything, he'd just stare at you.

I watched him stare a guy down that was just being so rude until the guy walked away. I'm like, how did you do that? And he goes, I've realized that most people like that, guys like that are like little kids that are throwing a temper tantrum. And if you just ignore them, they cry themselves out.

It's like we get the most loud when we're the most afraid. We get, as my mentor of mine once said, you throw a rock into a pack of dogs the one that Yelp got hit. And and and we get afraid.

And we fight like and when we're afraid, we act we try to act bigger. Know, like like look in the in the in like the world of peacocks, man. The the it's the boy peacocks that have all the the pretty flowers and what they do is they try to their feathers

look all pretty like flowers. They do that to try to attract the mate and look all cool and then if there's another guy, they like put them up big and they try to act big like, I'm gonna intimidate you.

I've actually had three times in my life I've come face to face with a mountain lion. Which is crazy because I'm not that much of an outdoorsman. I've had friends that are hunters that have been outside. They're like grizzly Adams. They've never seen a mountain lion in the wild. I've been within 10 feet of a mountain lion three times.

And it is not a pleasant experience. And the only thing I'm thinking is I hope there's not one of its kids behind me because this thing is gonna act in absolute fear. But I've looked at them and I've learned that they're kinda scared, you're scared, the best thing you can do is act big. So I'm picking up my bike,

trying to scare him away and hope he leaves.

You know, then I realized the easiest way to scare him away is like, hey, I'm a pastor, you need to tithe, here's a tithing envelope. You should start giving, give online, give online and they run away. Or I'll say, we need help in the children's ministry, sign up for children's ministry. They're like, I'm

out of here. It's the easiest way to get rid of them. That part of the story is not true. Happens here all the time. I say something, you're offended. I go, hey, you wanna get Anyways, sorry I lost my point now because I started messing around instead of preaching. But pride,

it's usually generated from fear and that fear can turn into frustration. You're like I'm not fearful, I'm mad. Because when you're afraid of something and things aren't working right, it starts to become a frustration and anger or hurt and it can dig itself in.

And we're still back to this idea that am I building a tower? And I'm trying to avoid what God's asked me to do. This verse five says, but the Lord came down.

I love that, that emphasized that difference between us and God because he didn't really need to physically come down. He's already there. He's kinda emphasizing, we've built this massive tower into the heavens and made a name for ourself and God's like, what? Looking at your kid's little fort?

And he goes, he came down to look at the city and the tower the people were building. Look, he said, the people are united and they all speak the same language. After this, nothing they set out to do will be impossible for them.

So let's go down and confuse the people with different language, and then they won't be able to understand each other. So he says, wait, what is that part about nothing will be impossible? Well, it shows that he did create us with incredible potential.

And he knows that if they keep doing this, they're gonna build this society, they're gonna like have a better life, they're gonna love it, and then they're gonna get stuck. And and what is really is what he wants to do to confuse them is to actually save us.

Because the reality is what they're building here is they're building a one world government and and and a one world religion

way early on in the process. They're listening to this lie of Satan and the reason he wants to do that is he wants to be God. When he builds this up, he wants to be worshiped and what he really is trying to do is keep

Genesis three fifteen from happening where it says that God's gonna rescue us through the seed of the woman, and there's gonna come a savior that will crush Satan's head. He's like, if he can get us off center and mess us up, he thinks I can stop that from happening.

And so what God is saying is, if I let them keep going, they're gonna create the scenario where I have to absolutely do the end game judgment now, I have a plan to redeem them, and I can't do this now, so I need to force them to scatter to continue my plan and my will in order to save them. If they keep going, irredeemable.

So God brings confusion. He makes them not understand what's going on. Maybe you're in that confusion. Maybe you're like, I don't know what God's doing. I'm confused. I don't understand. It could be because he's trying to save you. He's trying to protect you.

He's trying to get you on the right road. But at the end, well, if I can't understand everything God's doing, then I don't need to follow him. What kind of God? You expect him to give you answers all the time. Once again, you're back to pride.

He was trying to make this endgame not happen. It was an act of grace. Once again, he comes in and brings judgment, but in a way that provides grace and opportunity. And we can have the ability to look back now, we understand a little bit of it. One of the famine, when they finally scatter,

one of the directions produces a man named Abraham. And here comes the Hebrew race, he calls Abraham out and here goes marching towards the redemptive story of Jesus. He needed them to do what he needed them to do to keep going towards his plan to actually bring us real life.

Even though it seems scary, even though it seemed hard, even though it didn't make sense.

So it says, in that way the Lord scattered them all over the world and they stopped building the city. That's why the city's called Babel because that is where the Lord confused the people with different languages. In this way he scattered them all over the world.

In other words, he said even though you're disobeying, you've been in this, in the end my plan is gonna happen. In the end my will will be done. And that's interesting because people go, if God's really in control, why does this happen? Why does that happen? And one of the real weird conversations

we might think in our head without saying it philosophically is, how does God give me free will and he stays sovereign? Now I don't have enough time to really dive into this all at a super deep, but I do have an illustration of how I see it. What is happening here, see I all over scripture.

What he's saying is you can fight God's will, you can do whatever you want, but his will, ultimately his plan is what's gonna happen. You can be part of it, you can enjoy the blessing of it, you can fight it, but it's gonna happen. And I think of it this way, well how can we have free will net? It's like

your timeline of life, time of life. Time is like a cruise ship. And we live on this, we're on the cruise ship. While you're on a cruise ship, you can make all kinds of decisions for yourself, can't you? I can choose to go eat too much and get a fat head like I did the last time I was on a cruise. And

you could could choose to go to the casino and lose all your money, you could choose to go to shows, you can hang out by the pool, you could even get in trouble and get sent to cruise ship jail. They actually have a jail on the cruise ships. Don't ask me how I know.

I I didn't go. I watched a guy get dragged off to it. Go, where are they taking them? Cruise ship jail. I go, what? They go, we have three cells down below and there's like a security force. And they're gonna hold him and then he's gonna sit in there until we get back and he's gonna be arrested.

Wow, cruise ship jail. They have a brig. They literally have brigs on cruise ships. And you could do all of those decisions, but you know the one that you can't decide? Is when you wake up in the morning, where's that ship docked? That's time. You can make any decision you want during time

and while you're in a part of time, but God decides where time ends up anchored.

And so Satan doesn't like that plan. So God does this to keep moving towards his plan. And God allows stuff in our lives to cause confusion on because he's gonna try to force you to move towards safety. But a lot of times what God considers safe is doesn't feel that way to us. And we have to choose to have humility

to trust God in that. So he ended up forcing them to be fruitful and multiply. That was the mission. But guess what? Jesus comes. We still as the church, the body of Christ, part of his plan unveiled.

We have a mission to be fruitful and multiply. Not with just having kids, but to literally to make disciples. Let's look at the words of Jesus here before we close-up shop here to tie this together. First of all, in Matthew

16 verse twenty four and twenty five. This is Jesus sharing what we need to be about. Then Jesus said to his disciples, if any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way.

See, you gotta give up your own way. You can't just say I'm gonna follow Jesus and do what I wanna do. You gotta give up your own way. In other words, I almost made this the big idea. You can have your way or you can have Yahweh. I almost made a dad joke out of the big idea. Your way or Yahweh.

And then he says, what does that look like? Take up your cross. That doesn't sound pleasant. Take up your cross and follow me.

If you try to hang onto your life, you'll lose it. So that what they were trying to do was hang on. Hey, we could build a better life and control things better. We could have this better society. We could do all that. But if you try to hang on to it, you'll actually lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you'll save it. If you're humble and you're willing to trust me and put down that tower and take up your cross, you'll find real life. There's something better on the other side of what looks harder.

And you know what, this is a reality even in our society when it comes to trusting God. We can't say we believe in a God, but not trust that God. And it's weird like a guy, Francis Schafer in 1972, he wrote a book, How Should We Then Live? Francis Schafer was a theologian,

pastor, and a philosopher that was way ahead of his time. And what he has noticed is our Western society, the way we were able to interact with each other and live okay is because we still had these shared biblical values. But as we got further and further away from that,

we decided to be like the Tower Of Babel. We can be good without God. We don't need God to be a good society. We don't need that. The problem with that disconnect is it doesn't work philosophically.

Because if you say I can be good without a God, there's no real God. We actually decide for ourselves, we find the power within. The problem is good becomes a moving target at that point.

Haven't you not seen it? Good is constantly moving now. Why do you think people like, well yeah society loves this guy then he says one dumb thing, you're canceled.

And then like, wait I was the poster child, why am I you're canceled. And we're canceling this and we're arguing about politics, we're arguing about everything. Because if you say I can be good without God, you need a moral absolute center. And in a world where we're all our own gods, who determines what's absolute?

It's impossible. And he saw this happening. And here's what he said about it. He had saw it happening. He recognized that America was departing from the foundation. We were surviving

without God at first because even though we were rejecting God, we still kinda had these Judeo Christian values we agreed with. But now we're rejecting those. And now good is moving all the time and it gets hard.

And he said he saw that happening in Europe, which has totally happened. He knew that America was headed down the same path. He said, we removed God from the public sphere and therefore lawlessness would follow. He wrote this, without a transcendent source for meaning and law, societies will move either into anarchy

or authoritarianism such as Marxism. In other words,

when you don't have that, when good starts moving all the time and you become God and no one can agree because everyone says my good is my good, my truth, not your truth, and you start doing that, there's no basis for which how to decide. And so what happens is people either go into chaos and anarchy, burn it all down. Anti government, this isn't gonna work, it's lame. I never trust government at all. It's terrible. We're just gonna do whatever or you move towards more authoritarian government, then you end up with society. In our culture, maybe not Marxist, but we end up moving towards a culture that says, hey, the

politicians need to be a nanny to us. They need to make a rule on everything and a law and everything. In other words, they're determining what's good and what's right.

And that's happening, isn't it? That's really what's happening. And it ends with this. He goes, in other words, what he was saying is, without a God centered moral foundation, society would crumble and revert to either anarchy or oppression. And that's what happens. Every dictatorship,

every society, every time they said we're gonna make a better world, it always ends up in an oppressive dictatorship where the power is in the few and you're controlling and manipulating. That's exactly the plan of Satan. That's his leadership style. But anarchy is not the answer.

I'm not trying to make a political point, I'm making a theological one. Because I don't think we do that just as a society, we do that individually. My call for everyone and if you sit here and say I'm gonna worship God, but I'm gonna ignore the obvious word of God. What Jesus said, take up your cross and follow me.

If you're gonna be that person and you're gonna kinda kinda go that way, you're gonna fall into one of those two categories in your life personally. You're either gonna walk away and say, hey, why do I even need the meeting anymore?

I'm God. I disagree with that. I'm gonna say enough things. I'm gonna tell you to spend your time and your money in know, on the gospel things and you're gonna get sick of me telling you what to do with your time and money. You're gonna blame me when it's really God's word because it's easier to be mad at me because you're not gonna fight with God.

And you're gonna get frustrated and you're gonna say Christians only care about this. Some. But you say Christians, churches, all they care about is money and service and all that. That's the gospel issue. We care about doing what God said to do.

And you're gonna say I choose anarchy in my life. I'm just gonna go be God. I'm no authority over me. I'm an authority under myself. Or if you choose the other way, personally, you will turn in and become ultra ultra legalistic. You'll make it only about the rules.

And you'll do the things you're supposed to do, but you'll do it because you're doing this. See God, look what I did. We will make a name for yourself. I will do this. And then when you do it, you'll become very judgmental of everyone around you because when you try to control it yourself, not live from God's grace as we looked at last week, not live from that to choose to follow, but live and do it and just make it it's almost like a contractual relationship. Now I'm doing this and then God owes me something. And your view is it's still about you. I'm doing the rules so God will give me what I really want. Not that I'm gonna walk in his ways, it's that I want him to give me my way. So I will do the rules and then when you do that, no one's ever spiritual enough for you and you start judging everyone else and you become super super legalistic.

It's control or chaos. That's your choices and I'm calling my shot. If you don't surrender, humbly surrender to God, that's where you're gonna end up. I've seen it over and over and over for thirty years. And you're gonna miss out on what God really has for you.

Because look what Jesus says in Matthew 28. The last thing he said, the last thing he was teaching his disciples as he was ascending in heaven. I always imagine he's going, he's like, one more thing. Oh, wait. I'll just text you. No. He didn't do it that way.

Look at this. Then the 11 disciples left for Galilee. See 11 of them. They leave for Galilee going to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. So these 11 are gonna go see Jesus one more time. When they saw him, they worshiped him. Yay. But some of them doubted. Wait, wait, wait.

When they saw him, they worshiped him. But some of them We're talking about the original 11. Judas is gone. But out of these 11, they said they worshiped him, but some of them doubted. They watched Jesus die. He came back to life.

He already showed Thomas the scar. He says, stick your thing in here. And they've seen him. They've been able to see the wounds. They saw the miracle. They've talked to him. And now he's calling them one last time and they come. And some of them still doubt. Some of them don't trust. Still. Still I'm gonna worship you,

but I'm gonna doubt you. I'm gonna worship you, but I'm gonna doubt you. I said only one little throat punch, here's another little one.

Some of y'all need to print this and put this on your refrigerator or your mirror because this is your life verse right now. This is how you're living your faith right now.

You will not trust what God wants you to do to be a disciple making follower of him. Because it means picking up a cross, which is hard. So you come here to worship him but you doubt the way he wants you to live.

I don't think you want this as your life first. You know how Jesus responds to this? He knows they're doubting, but look what he says. Jesus came and told his disciples, I have been given all authority in heaven and earth. In other words, hey guys, you forgot something. I'm God and you're not. You need to listen to me.

I know more than you. I know what's good for you. I know what's ultimately gonna give you what you really seek. I know what I built you for. You need to stop doubting and you need to start trusting my love in your life.

And so then he says, if he's given authority, goes, therefore, because of that authority, here's what I'm asking you to do. Go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit.

Teach these new disciples to obey the parts that are easy and to ignore the parts that are uncomfortable or they just don't want to. No, wait, it doesn't say that. To obey all the commands I have given you. And that's my job too. I'm trying to teach you guys to listen to everything.

He says, and be sure of this. This is the loving part. I am with you always even to the end of the age. Obi Wan is not the one that said that, Jesus is. What he's saying is, I'm inviting you to go arrive just like last week with the ark. Come into the ark.

Where he's asking us to do is take up a cross because that's where he is. And you're always better off when you're next to Jesus. And what he's saying is, we still have the mission to be fruitful and multiply. We're still supposed to scatter and spread the gospel and make disciples.

It's done by Jesus' power and Jesus' love, but we have a part in it. We are supposed to be a part of it. We're not supposed to just gather to a great city of a church where I come and get my little personal, my needs met, and listen to an interesting sermon,

and have a philosophical discussion about what I think the Bible needs

means, and have more Bible knowledge, and gather under our tower here, and b, we are supposed to scatter and share the gospel and reach people and it's why we build another building, it's why we do that. The problem with the tower wasn't that they built a building. The problem is why they were doing it and what they were doing it for. They were doing it for themselves.

We wanna build a bigger children's building because we have so many kids coming and we're reaching people. Most of us are actually doing this. You guys are going and you're sharing and you're bringing your friends and your family and neighbors and we need more room. And that means if you wanna help be a part of making disciples,

I need you to start making room for that in your checkbook and in your calendar. And you're like, why do you keep talking about time and money, time and money? Why does it always have to be that? Why does it always have be You know why? Because guess what you call life.

What do we experience as life in this world? What we do with our time and what we do with our money. And Jesus is saying, I need you to invest your life in making disciples. Not going to church, worship me means following me and following me means be fruitful and multiply. So I ask you, have you made a disciple?

I think it's funny when someone has never led someone to Christ tries to tell me how I should lead a church. I'm not bragging. By the grace of God, I have been able to personally lead thousands of people to Jesus in my life. What makes you who have never done anything with the gospel

think you know how I should lead this church? Pride.

And then when you don't like what I say, you'll go find another church where you think they'll do it the way you want them to do it. You'll go find your tower.

Ask yourself, has my time ever been used to make disciples? Has my money ever been invested in making disciples? Has my voice and my story ever been used in making disciples? Because that is the mission we've been given.

And many of us are doing the same thing they were doing on the plains of Babylon. We gather together in our great city to talk about God and feel like we're doing something and then ignore what God actually asked us to do.

And then people like to say, well, why do we have to keep getting bigger? All you care about is also, you just care about numbers. You just care You know why you care about numbers? Seats. Because every seat has a person sitting in it. And every person has a story. And God gave us the mission to go reach

and baptize and teach people of all nations. It's a pretty big call. And that's the purpose of our life. But you know what? We wanna make a name for ourselves.

You know what that really means? We say make a name like, I'm not trying to be famous. I'm like, the better way what that's really saying when they said we will go make be famous, in other translations make a name for ourself. You know a better way to say it to mean the same thing what we would say today is,

I'm gonna go find myself. I'm gonna figure out my identity. I'm gonna go discover my purpose in life. Why? God already told us.

He already told us what our identity is. He told us where to find it. He already told us our purpose. He told us everything it's about. Now we might find what we're interested in, what kind of jobs do I wanna do. We might go find a spouse and have kids which are incredible gifts and responsibilities.

But realize you will never find your identity in being a husband. You're never gonna find your identity being a wife. You're never gonna find your identity in having kids as a parent. That's not your identity. That's just a blessing and a calling that we get to do. But it's not who we are. It's not.

We don't find our identity in the towers.

You don't find your identity in the things you own. That's why many of us are afraid. I don't wanna give my money because I find my identity in the way, the things I have, the security I have from the house I live in, the things I can spend money on, I feel secure in that. I feel I am. So I can't give money because if I give that, it's taken away who I am.

And I'm afraid that I won't be okay, I won't be secure. I can't give my time because I'm spending my time on all these other things that I think are building my brand and who I am. The big one too

the biggest lie and the pit of hell in our culture right now is finding your identity and your sexuality and your gender. That is a lie. And if you are struggling with it, you're gonna think I'm an idiot and what I'm about say, there's some countries that I would be arrested for this. Because I'm such such a

What's it called? Bigot. There you go, good call. I'm a bigot by saying that that's not God's plan. That God said, I created sexuality. I created man, woman, and marriage is for man and woman and that's it.

That's the way it is and you can go study it. He has a whole purpose in it. There's a theological purpose. You distort that, you've distorted the very image of God that he built in us. So why are we mad at that? Why are we sitting in church and some all young people are like getting really frustrated with me right now?

Because you've listened to a lie. And here's the lie, it's not that that's okay. The lie that makes us uncomfortable with that is that somewhere along the line we started believing that that's who we are. If you make that an identity,

if that really is your identity and then you say God says that's not what you're gonna find, that's not the way to live, that's not the truth, It sounds like God and really me is saying your identity is wrong and God hates you and he made you in an identity that's false. Sexuality gets distorted And not just by

my non heterosexuality and gender issues, heterosexuals have been distorting sexuality since the beginning of time. We've been getting caught up in pornography,

experimental fairs, sleeping around, living with, I bet there's more people in this room that are living with their boyfriend or girlfriend or sleeping with somebody they're not married to than are struggling with their sexuality. And that's the same thing. It is a distortion of the image and plan of God.

And if we can see it for that and not see it as an identity, I hope if you've struggled with this gender and identity yourself and if you're someone who knows people so you really feel sensitive to this, you have got to know I'm saying this because I actually do love you. And you are trapped in a lie

that you can't be you and you'll never be happy unless you pursue that road. And the bible over and over says, there is a way that seems right to man makes sense, but in the end, it leads to death. Meaning you're not gonna find what you're looking for down there. You never will.

But to choose God's way as opposed to any distortion, I get it. It's hard. It's difficult. It's difficult to trust God with your time, your money, your sexuality, your relationships, your needs, your desires. It is very, very hard. And that's why Jesus said, I am with you always.

We have him and the power of the spirit to be humble. Pride says, no God, you don't know. I feel this way, therefore I must go this way. Pride.

In the church, man, we just cave in and say, well, we want people to put butts in the seats. So we'll just tell them what they wanna hear because we don't wanna get offend get them offended. My job is not to just put butts in these seats. My job is for us to see Jesus and to know the real answer.

And that's hard.

It's hard to pick up a cross. But guess what? Jesus climbed on a cross so we can pick up a cross. Him climbing on the cross was harder. So what I want us to do rather than just, okay, I'm gonna force myself to do the right thing. I think we should sit in this for a moment. If you're struggling with anything I said,

if you're dealing with any of this and you're like, I just don't wanna do that. I don't wanna trust that. I'm not I'm not gonna do it. I'm just and you're wrestling with it. I think we should you should be honest with that and sit in it for a moment. Wife told me the other day when I was talking about what I was gonna talk about, she goes, you know I learned something very powerful from your mom. I go, my mom? Yeah, your mom.

And I go, what is that? And she goes, I saw her do this several times throughout the time I knew her where she faced a tough moment. Something that made her sad or frustrated and

she knew what the right thing to do was but she didn't like what was about to happen. She didn't really wanna face it. She didn't want to do it.

And I watched her get upset, she would start to get teary eyed and she'd be like, I don't like this, I don't wanna do this or I'm sad and I know what I gotta do. And she would just go, you know what, I'm just gonna take a moment. I'm gonna let myself be sad. I'm gonna let myself be frustrated

and then I'm gonna get on with it. Like she was okay with it. She would admit

she didn't act prideful. See a lot of times we hear this kind of talk and like that's what the men do. I was talking about a few weeks ago, men like, yeah, we're gonna be men again. Yeah, and we think that we're just gonna bulldoze through and act all prideful. If you try to be humble in a prideful way, you're gonna fail.

We gotta be humble in a humble way.

I know I need to go this way, but I know I don't have the power. I don't even have the want to. I don't even have the desire to. I can't see why I think it's gonna be too hard. It's gonna be too much sacrifice. I can't see how it'll work. I'm frustrated by it now and I wanna get defensive.

I have to admit that. I could be humble enough to just sit in that. And my wife said that my mom would do that. She'd go in her room for about twenty minutes, come out, you could tell she'd been crying. She'd be like, hey, you want a sandwich? And then she went on with it. And she would do what she needed to do. And my wife actually said, how do you do that? And she goes, well, what the heck else am I gonna do? She didn't say heck, but the last time I said what she said, I got letters.

What else are you gonna do? Sit at war with God the rest of your life? Sit going down a false road that'll make you feel good temporary, but in the end will lead to death and lead to nothing? What my mom realizes, even though this moment will be hard, she knew that the other side of hard was something way more beautiful.

She had the Gethsemane moment. See, Jesus even did this.

The night before he's crucified, he went to to into the garden to pray and he knew what was coming. He brought his closest friends and they kept falling asleep. His own community let him down. He's pretty stressed. Matter of fact, a little side note, maybe you should go to find your circle tomorrow

and find community because maybe your struggle is you're doing it alone and you need help. But Jesus was there and his friends are letting him down. And as he's God, he knew what was coming and he knew he was gonna do it, but he was also a man. And he went through the physiological

stress like no stress. Imagine God knowing exactly what's coming and how terrible it's gonna be, yet you're still got that human part. And it says he sweat blood which is actually a real

thing that can happen. But you have to be so much under psychological and physiological stress that capillary is breaking your forehead and you literally sweat blood. It's a very rare thing. If someone is so intensely crushed under stress and pain that that happens. And as he sat there in that moment,

he's prayed to God, Lord, if it's possible, this cup pass it from me. You catch what he said? He said, I would prefer to not have to do what I'm about to do. I know this is gonna be horrible and not just the physical pain, but the pain of carrying all the sin. He as God was willing to be honest, humble.

Jesus showed us the humility of the way to say, I even know that this doesn't sound pleasant. It doesn't sound fun. It sounds difficult to the point that I would almost prefer not to do it. But as he sat in that moment, he then finished his prayer with not my will, thy will be done.

I'm gonna go I'm gonna go King James honest. I beseech thee. Some of you need to stop right now and have the humility to have that moment like my mom, that like Jesus, that Gethsemane moment. And stop building towers and playing this stupid game of false self centered worship.

And embrace the love that Christ has for you because he did that because you know on the other side what was beautiful is our ability to be saved. And he's given us the opportunity to do the same thing. We could take up our crosses and be a part of what he's doing. Take this moment, have the Gethsemane moment. Be honest.

Be honest if you're frustrated. Be honest if you're terrified. Be honest if you're just being belligerent and you just want what you want. But you say God, but I know you're real. And take the courage to just take that next step. So we're gonna sing a song. As we sing this song, may this be your prayer. Nothing else.

Just nothing else. Trust God's love and trust his ways.

Jesus, you are all we want. You are all we need. There is nothing else that matters. God, this world is gonna fade away and all that's gonna be left is us before you. So father, we fix our eyes on you right now. We lay down anything we're putting above you. Father, thank you for your love and your grace and your mercy.

It's your holy and precious name we all said, amen. Amen, church. Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.