GREATEST OF ALL TIME | Week 8 | Sermon

and it's us who judges the church. Okay? Now here's how the delegation works. It's God's responsibility to judge the world, people outside of the family of God. It is our responsibility for those who have raised their hand and said, yes, I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus. We do have a responsibility

to judge each other. Now let me define judge, okay? Because you hear judge is like, okay, we sit back and we form negative opinions and we gossip about them. That's not what I'm saying at all. When I say judge, when the Bible is talking about judging each other, it's

defined a specific way. It means to hold them to an objective standard. Okay? Every single person at the end of your life, Christian or not, you will stand before God and you will give an account for what you did with this life.

There is an objective standard in the person of Jesus and the question will be, what did you do with him? What did you do with this life that you've been given?

It's an objective standard that God's gonna hold you to. That same objective standard that the scriptures teach us, we as fellow believers have a responsibility to hold each other to that standard as well. So you better believe there are moments where we are supposed to hold each other accountable and allow iron

to sharpen iron for us to make each other better. Matthew chapter seven, here's the verse that Hannah Brown butcher that we're going to look at this morning. Do not judge others and you will not be judged

for you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. Do not judge or you will be judged.

You could, if you only read two verses in the Bible, you could make a case that the Bible just said that you and I are not allowed to judge. So you can't judge me, I can't judge you. It's only God in heaven that's allowed to judge.

But the part that's funny with that is we don't actually believe there's never a moment where we're allowed to pass judgment on each other.

Right? It would be really difficult to be a teacher if that was actually true. Right? You your kid submits a paper and you give them a d and they're like, hey, miss Clarence, that d is pretty judgmental of you. All right. I think this paper identifies as an A and you're being real judgmental here. Okay. A police officer pulls you over doing 60 and a 40 and you're like, well, that's kind of judgmental that you think I'm speeding. I I don't think I was speeding and so I don't think you should give me a ticket. Like there are obvious things that we've agreed

to certain standards. Okay. And that we've given certain people in certain situations permission to hold people to that objective standard.

But when it comes to our moral compass, when it comes to our faith, we get really weird with this and we don't know how to navigate it. And truthfully, I think the world and the church have absolutely butchered this stuff. And here's what you have to do with any Bible verse like this. Okay, you read two verses and you go, is Jesus really saying in the sermon on the mount in Matthew seven verses one and two that we can never judge anybody for anything?

You have to ask the question, okay, what is the context in which that verse is written? Context with the Bible is everything.

Because if you take one or two verses and you pull them out and you make an entire theological framework around that, I promise you, you can get the Bible to say anything you want it to say. It's why it is important to remember this was not one sentence that was written. It's a chapter that's inside of an entire book that is a part of a larger collection

of books that in total make up 66 different books. And we have to ask the question, what's the context in which of those verses we just read or written? Well, you know what comes before Matthew chapter seven is Matthew chapter six.

Jesus is addressing the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of the time. The church was being led by people who were complete hypocrites. They would live one way. They would do something else. And Jesus is saying, stop being hypocrites. You're damaging

the church. You're not helping advance the cause of God on the universe. You are actually destroying it. You are butchering who God really is. Stop being such a hypocrite. And then out of that, he says, don't judge people or you will be judged. He's speaking primarily to religious leaders.

And then later, again in Matthew seven, he will say that you and I, as people inside of the church, we need to be on guard and look out for false teachers. Well, if we're gonna be on guard and look out for false teachers, it means we're going to have to make a judgment

on what it is that people are teaching. So what is Jesus saying? He's clearly not saying that you and I should never use discernment, that we should never actually begin to question and look at what people are doing. The context of Matthew chapter seven verse one and two

tells us that this verse is much more about hypocrisy than it is judgment.

Jesus is primarily dealing with the hypocrisy in the religious leaders more so than he's dealing with this idea of not judging people. So then we have to go to the second part of the Bible. And the second thing we do with scripture is we allow the Bible to interpret the Bible. You search the rest of the scripture and you're, okay, what is the rest of the biblical narrative have to say about this idea of judging? How do we navigate this thing as the body of Christ? And you will be shocked to see that the Bible says a lot about this idea of judging and holding each other to a standard and what our responsibility is to one another. To hold each other to a standard, to walk with people, to help people when they are in situations where they're struggling.

And this is one of those things that I think is the church we need to get right. And I think truthfully, I don't think we've done a great job at it. I think that we've taken things like this and we've applied it to the world out there. And instead of looking through

a lens that deals with our own issues and our own things, we instead projected on people out there and we wonder why. We wonder why people look at the church and think we're just a bunch of judgmental hypocrites. It's because we've completely butchered this whole thing.

So here's what I wanna do at the time we have left. I think there's four things if we're gonna do this correctly. If we're going to deal with this correctly, there's four things I want us to commit to. The first one that we will see in the Bible is that you and I must be people who make a commitment

to never judging people superficially. See, all of us have a natural tendency

to look at somebody and make an assumption and fill in all the gaps of who they are. And we can do this in silly ways, but we can do it in some really serious ways as well. I had a really good friend that was pretty successful in the business world and he was struggling with his weight. He was pretty overweight. And when he lost a bunch of weight, he said it was really surprising to me

how much more respect I got in the workplace when I was skinny compared to when I was fat. And he said it was almost an assumption because I was overweight that people assumed that I was lazy,

that I had stuff wrong with me. Like there's all these things that they just filled in the gap with. And the funny part for me, my wife always laughs at it. When we go to Disneyland as a family, we get ready to go through security.

If I'm wearing a long sleeve shirt, no issues. I fly right through security, never get pulled into secondary.

But I'm telling you, if I have a shirt on, a short sleeve shirt on and you can see my tattoos almost every single time I get pulled into secondary and I get searched. Why? Because people like this dude must have been in prison for a long time. Right? Like

and what all of us do that we just have to be honest with is again, we see things, right? We always say like, I don't see colors like that. That's a dumb thing to say because a stoplight would be a confusing thing for you, right? Like we all see color. We see things visually.

And what we have to do is we have to fight to not allow that to inform every single part of what we believe about somebody.

And this is one of those things that we don't do super great in church. We make we take one look at somebody, we fill in all the gaps and we assume that's who they are. And Jesus is saying, don't do that. Don't be those people. Look at what Jesus says in John chapter seven about this exact thing. He says, stop judging

by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly. He says stop judging by just mere appearances and instead judge correctly. If Jesus is saying that we can't ever judge somebody, why would he then in the book of John be recorded as saying, no, there is a way to judge. You just gotta judge correctly.

And it's not based on superficial things. See, the Bible says that man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

And what happens is when you look at somebody and you make a judgment, it can be really hurting to them, but it can also, I'm telling you, it can almost, it can also limit you. It can hold you back from experiencing all the blessings and things that God potentially has for you. You might be your own worst enemy by the judgments you make on the people from a distance superficially.

There's a story that happened in the late eighteen hundreds of a family who had a young boy who died tragically.

And the parents were just devastated. And so they were trying to figure out some way to honor the legacy of their son. And so they came to the conclusion what they wanted to do is they wanted to go to a prominent university

and they wanted their son to have a building with his name on it. So for hundreds of years, people would come to this school and they would see his name and their son's legacy could live on. It was a way that they could honor who he was. And so they went through and it's a true story. They went and met with the president of Harvard University

and they walked in. And as the legend goes, the president took one look at them and said they look like an ordinary,

pretty basic couple. And so when they sat with him and said, hey, look, we're trying to do something to honor our son. He said, why don't you guys start like a little scholarship fund or something and that'd be a great way to honor them. And they were like, no, we're thinking something a little bit more substantial.

And so he said, okay, what are you thinking? And he said, we're trying to potentially erect a building with our son's name on it, to which the president of Harvard essentially laughed them out of his office because he thought there was no way based on how they looked that they could have the means and the money

to do something like that. So this family famously went and took another meeting and they took the $29,000,000 they had had set aside in the late 1800s. And they instead of investing it at Harvard, they started what is now Stanford University because the middle name of their son was Stanford.

It's truly the story of how Stanford University started. The whole point of the story is that sometimes there are incredible blessings that God is trying to bring into your life.

But sometimes you and I will be our own worst enemy because we'll take one look at somebody, we'll make all kinds of assumptions. And because of that, because we're convinced that's the reality of who they are and we're people who just judge people superficially, we will potentially miss out on some

this right, if we're going to do this well, and we're going to take serious the call that God has given us, we must make a commitment that we're never going to judge people superficially. The second thing we must commit to do is that we are never going to judge

hypocritically. See, this is the part of this whole story that I think Jesus was trying to get at. Right? Matthew seven, he says, don't judge others or that's how you will be judged. And we forget the next couple verses that are a part of the story. Go with me to Matthew seven verses three and four. It says, and why worry

about a speck in your friend's eye when you have a log in your own? How can you think of saying to your friend, let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye when you can't see past the log in your own eye? Hypocrite. First get rid of the log in your own eye,

then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend's eye. See, this is what Jesus was saying. He's saying, don't judge people hypocritically. He says, you have a two by four in your eye and all you're doing is talking about the speck of dust in their eye.

Now, again, this is where the gold of this whole thing comes, right? Because we then go, okay, so that means we just don't ever address the speck that's in our friend's eye. No, no, no, he doesn't say that. He says, as the church, we have a responsibility to one another. Some of the greatest work that will happen inside of our souls is because somebody loves you enough to tell you, hey, you're making some really poor decisions right now. Hey, that conversation,

that relationship that you're entertaining with that girl at work, I'm telling you, I know you think it's innocent, but I'm telling you, I think as a follower of Jesus, it's inappropriate. That drinking habit that you think isn't that big of a deal, I'm telling you as somebody who loves you,

as somebody who's watched you, I think you're slipping into something where this could be a really big deal. You and I have to be willing to have conversation in love with people that are in our circle of influence and tell them there's something in your eye that's making you not see correctly.

You're not seeing this situation right. But what we can't do is do it hypocritically. We have to. The platform that will give us something to stand on to have that conversation is the people in our life watch us deal with our own issues.

We deal with a two by four in our eyes. We deal with the things that we're struggling with. We we go, hey, I'm not perfect. I'm trying to figure this out. But your and I's natural tendency,

the natural disposition of our heart is to just look at other people's issues, talk about all their stuff because it keeps us from having to deal with our own stuff. And Jesus is saying, don't do that. Deal with your stuff.

Deal with what's going on in your heart and in your marriage and your home. And I promise you, as you do that, it will begin to give you a platform when you go to a friend and you say in love, I'm telling you, man, I've walked this road. I've been there. I told myself the same excuses.

I justified the same things you're justifying right now. And I'm telling you, if you don't deal with this, it's going to get bigger. It's gonna grow.

And we have to in love be willing to deal with the speck in our friend's eyes. We have to address it. If Jesus' whole point was we can never judge people, we can never actually hold them to a standard, He would have never even brought up the speck in somebody else's eye. We have to help each other. We have to in love be willing to have tough conversations, but we don't do it hypocritically.

You remember the story, John chapter eight, the woman caught in adultery? Just one of the most incredible stories in the Bible to understand the heart of God. This woman is literally caught in adultery.

These religious leaders, these men catch her in the act. They drag her out in the middle of her shame, in the middle of her mess. Point the

where

gonna be get the point we're woman and all of them supposed to gather and this is now a capital punishment. But the Bible point tells us that what Jesus does instead is he gets down into the sand and he just starts drawing. He starts writing something and nobody knows what he writes. It's pure conjecture.

But I think potentially what Jesus is writing in the sand there is he's just starting to write out names of all of the women that the religious leaders there are currently having affairs with. And then he looks at him and he says, hey, which one of you who's without sin, why you cast the first stone?

And it says one by one, they all walked away. And obviously, it's pure conjecture. But here's why I think that's potentially what Jesus was doing is because I think he understood that you and I, where we will often issue our harshest judgment, the thing where we will respond the most viscerally to, truthfully,

it reveals the things that we're most often struggling with. It reveals the things that we're most often affected by. The reason that we might respond so strongly when somebody in our life group has an affair is because we grew up in a home that was devastated by the reality of a parent who had an affair.

Or the truth is when somebody admits that they've been struggling with pornography and we don't meet them with grace and instead we meet them with judgment. The truth is most often in my experience, it's because that person's dealing with something in the secret.

And instead of dealing with their own issues and looking at what's going on in their heart, it's much easier to project the issue onto somebody else. See what we love to do, we love to accuse them and excuse ourselves. And Jesus is saying, don't do that.

Paul tells us specifically in the book of Romans that this is something we have to watch out for, this idea of being hypocritical. Romans chapter two, look at what Paul says. He says, You may think that you can condemn such people, but you are just as bad and you have no excuse.

When you say that they are wicked and should be punished, you are actually condemning yourself. For you who judge others do these very same things. And we know

that God and his justice will punish anyone who does such things. Since you judge others for doing these things, why don't you why do you think you can avoid God's judgment when you do the same things?

Don't you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can't you see that his kindness is intended to turn you away from your sin? But what's Paul saying? Paul is saying that this is the thing we have to watch out for because often

the thing where we are issuing our harshest judgment, it reveals our greatest weakness. And he's saying, you've gotta be careful with this because you're gonna try to just project, you're gonna try to vilify them.

But the truth is, is it's revealing something that's going on in here. Some hurt that's left, some sin issue that's inside of you, deal with that. Walk through that. Don't just judge people hypocritically, deal with what's going on there so that you now have a platform to actually address these things.

And then here's the next thing. This is the thing that I think we as the church have to understand and I don't think we do a great job at this. I think the reason that we've misapplied this so often and the reason that the world looks at the church and they don't see this as a place that you can come when you're broken. This is a safe place to walk in the door. When the world thinks of the church, it breaks my heart as a pastor to understand what our reputation is. And it's because I think we have butchered this whole thing.

We have taken these standards, these rules that the Bible talks about, the things that do matter, they are incredibly important, but there are family values and we've tried to get the world to subscribe and follow our family values and it's ludicrous.

See, we as Christians must make a commitment that we are not going to ask non Christians to uphold Christian values. The job of a Christian is not to try to get the world to follow our practices and to do things our way. That's not our responsibility.

Our responsibility is to help people be able to walk in the doors of church and be met with a God of grace who loves them. And honestly, it's heartbreaking to know how the world sees us so often. We did a simple experiment this week on social media and we just asked, hey, what do you think people would say that the church is best known for? We literally asked the question, the world thinks Christians are fill in the blank. And honestly, I think we knew what the answers were already gonna be, but look at what all the answers were. They're the problem. They're the hypocrites. They're the hypocrites.

They're judgmental.

They're the hypocrites. One guy was like, they're boring. I'm like, alright, that's fair. Fridays are kind of boring as a Christian, right? They're judgmental. They're judgmental. They're hypocrites. They're hypocrites. They're old fashioned. They're not loving. They're not inclusive. They're hateful. They're restrictive. They're close minded. Judgmental

and hypocritical was the overwhelming answer that we got every single time. I think there's a lot of reasons why the world looks at us and sees us the way that they do. But the truth is, is we have to take some ownership in it.

We have to take some ownership and realize that sometimes what we've done is we've taken what we've agreed to, our family values, and we've tried to get the world to follow them, and it's crazy.

My wife and I, man, we have some standards for our family. We have some shows and some games and some applications that we don't let our kids use. We have family values that our family has to uphold, but it would be absolutely crazy for me to expect your kids to follow those rules. Why? They're not in my family.

They're not under my household. They don't understand my heart. They haven't had the conversations with me. And I think sometimes we have to remember friends. It is not our responsibility to hold non Christians to Christian standards. Please never hold non Christians to Christian standards.

It is not the way that we change the world. It is not the way that we introduce people to Jesus. I promise you anybody who's here who has given their life to Jesus, who's been transformed by him, it was not because somebody came and rubbed your nose in all of your mess and all of your sin.

See, the Bible says that it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance. Our job as Christians is to hold the door open and make sure people out there know that we are unapologetically

for people. This is not a place that you have to behave a certain way before you can come here. That you don't have to get your life together into a certain way. You don't have to stop certain behaviors before you walk in the doors here. You are welcome as you are. And yes,

we better believe and understand that the God of the universe,

as you spend time in his presence and you begin to hear his heart and his voice for you, here's what he's gonna do slowly. He's going to transform you from the inside out and he's going to actually begin to do heart surgery on you and he's gonna change who you are and you will eventually be born again. And what happens after you're born again is all of a sudden you don't desire what you used to desire,

but it's a heart transplant that leads to behavior change. It's not a bunch of Christians harping and yelling, Hey, here's the standard that we've agreed to live our lives to. Paul addresses this in first Corinthians

chapter five. He says it really simply. He said, it isn't my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning. Paul makes it really simple. It is not our job to hold to a standard the world out there that hasn't ascribed to our values.

But you better believe we do have a responsibility to one another who are in the family of God. He says, we will address sin that's in the house.

And he calls it sin, which again is not very politically correct. Right? He calls a spade a spade. And when we have people who are in our home groups, who are in our circle of influence that we know, hey, they've raised their hand. They've said that they're Christian and we see them stumbling and falling off the path. We have a responsibility to have a conversation with them because we love them and we know that this is not gonna lead to life. That's

who we spend time holding to a standard, not the world. We can love the world and impact the church. The last thing, the fourth thing, I think if we're going to do this really well,

we must develop a pattern in our heart that says no matter what, no matter what the people in our life are dealing with, no matter what craziness comes out in small group or what our friends tell us, we are going to develop a habit that says we will always, always restore fallen believers.

This is what the scriptures tell us, is we are supposed to be people who are just unapologetically for people. And when somebody inside the family stumbles and makes a mistake,

we are going to create a culture that says we're gonna love you back. We are going to love you until you are back in right standing. We are always going to restore fallen believers. Why? Because eventually, you and I will be there. Eventually, we're going to do something

that is going to put us in the category of fallen believers. And I think one of the most heartbreaking realities for me is watching all kinds of pastors that make these big mistakes. And there are definitely things where you've got to take a season and take a time out. But the heartbreaking reality for me is that forever what's attached to their name is disgraced

pastor, fallen pastor. And I look at that and I go, I don't understand why in the church world we do this thing where we shoot our wounded. And somebody has an issue that they're dealing with and instead of helping them lovingly,

we take them out back and we shoot them, we throw them out to the pastor and we move on. And what we do by doing that is we unintentionally

create a culture that says, this is a place, it's not okay to not be okay. You're not allowed to admit you have weaknesses. And so what we do is we create a culture where you hide stuff, you create a culture where you just push stuff down. And instead of stopping something that's at the infancy stages right now and dealing with it, going, this is a safe environment.

HomeGroup is the place that I go to when I need to confess things, when I need to address the reality of the mistakes that I've made. And instead, I think it's a place that I've got to just pretend to be perfect.

That thing that you could stop now in the progression of where it's at, if you keep hiding it, it's gonna grow, it's gonna get bigger and eventually, I promise you, the consequences of concealment will always be greater than the consequences of confession. If you just bring it out and deal with it now,

we can address it before it becomes too big and before it costs you your marriage, before it costs you your reputation.

But we as the church have a responsibility to go. The culture we're gonna create is we always restore people. It's who we are. We help people who are fallen. We help people who are struggling. We don't take them out back and shoot them because we know that I'm telling you, all of us at some point, we have the potential

to be there ourselves. Look at what Paul says that we have to watch out for as I begin to wrap up. Galatians chapter six,

he says, Dear brothers and sisters, this is insider family language. If another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. But be careful. Be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself.

Share each other's burdens and in this way, obey the law of Christ. If you think you're too important to help somebody, you're only fooling yourself. You're not that important.

He says, when a brother or a sister, somebody in the family is struggling, our responsibility is to gently and humbly come alongside of them and carry their burden with them, to put their arm around them and go, I will stand in the front row and worship with you, Cause I'm not ashamed to be your friend. I'm not ashamed to stand with you in the middle of your mess. I'm not ashamed to walk with you because you've made a mistake.

And he says, be careful because if your heart in that is you're just going and out of pride, you wanna try to rebuke them. Pride always comes before the fall and you would be shocked at how many people that are in that position going not to love them, but to judge them,

stumble into the exact same sin themselves. Paul says, watch out. Friends, who we're supposed to be is we're supposed to be the most incredibly for people in the whole world. We are for the restoration of all humans,

regardless of what happened last night or last week. There was a story that happened when I was a pastor in San Diego. We had a worship leader in the area and it was kind of a crazy story, but he came to our church

and he basically after service was over, he walked backstage, went into our green room and he stole two guitars that were probably worth $10,000, like really expensive fancy guitars.

And crazy enough is a couple days later, he actually went back to the church he came from and he led worship with them. Right? Well, the church community is really small and I'm sitting there like, bro, you are missing some dots. Like you're leading worship with stolen guitars, but you know, the church world's really small. If you don't know that I'm telling you, it's an incredibly small circle. And what happened was, is one of the worship leaders

saw this guitar and they were like, man, that's an incredible guitar. Where'd you get this? Couple days later, she heard in the community that these guitars were missing. He put two and two together and realized, I think this is the guy that stole the guitars.

And so they sat him down. And typically, and I've seen this play out a 100 times in church. This is the moment where we fire somebody, we get rid of them, they're basically scarred forever, we send an email out to the staff. We let everybody know the mistake that they made and forever, that's now their reputation.

Typically, go to a different church. Sometimes they even move out of state and they start over. But instead,

this church and this pastor told this guy, they said, look, man, you made a mistake and you have to repent from this. Right? You have to walk through a process. You need to go back to the church. You obviously need to return the guitars. You need to ask for forgiveness.

We're going to remove you for a season from the stage. You're not gonna be leading worship, but we'll give you a job. You'll have a role here at the church. He started in facilities. He did something else, but they never docked his pay. They said, if you are willing to submit to a process of restoration,

we will walk this journey with you. And for two or three years, he went through counseling, he did the classes, he did the stuff, he submitted to the process that the leaders over him asked him to submit to. And the incredible part was, I think it was three or four years after the date that he stole those guitars,

They announced him as the new worship pastor for the largest campus that they had. And I watched that play out and I said that, that's the Jesus kingdom. That's the Jesus culture.

That's how the kingdom of God is supposed to operate. We don't take people who've made mistakes and take them out back and shoot them. We give people margin to be human. We give people margin to make mistakes. Yes. We hold people to a standard and we say holiness matters,

but holiness only matters in that it drives us more and more into the person of Jesus, and that these are opportunities to experience grace, not judgment. And so my hope and my prayer

is that we as a people can go, you know what? That's who we're gonna commit to being. And we we might not be able to change the reputation for the church at large, but we can change it for the church here. We can change it for our small group. And we're gonna create a culture that's okay to not be okay. We're gonna walk with people through life. We're going to love them in spite of them. And are there times and are there situations where you have to ask people for a season to leave church totally?

But what we have to learn to do is to figure out how to embody what Jesus was the embodiment of grace and truth. We don't say there is no truth because truth matters. Even if you don't like it and even if you don't feel like it, truth does matter. And it's the truth of God that will set you free.

But it's the grace of God that will help you actually begin to hear the truth of God. Jesus came in both grace and truth. We need to learn to navigate the tension of being full of grace and truth. All of you on your way in, you got one of these communion cups.

The reason that we do communion is it's reminder for us that the barrier into the kingdom of God for all of us was not our perfection. It was not our doing. It was that Jesus, two thousand years ago, he stepped into our mess and he became

what we needed to be, the punishment for our sin. He actually became the sacrificial lamb and he died a death for us. And because of his death once and for all, you and I have an invitation to truly live.

And Jesus, the night before he was betrayed, he gathered his closest friends and he says, I want you to do this to remember me. To remember my body that will be broken for you. And so together we take and we eat remembering the body that was broken for us.

And then Jesus, with his closest friends told him, Guys, I want you to take this cup and I want you to do this in remembrance of me understanding that my blood will be poured out for you. My blood will be shed so that you can have forgiveness and grace extended to you. And so together we take and we drink.

Would you pray with me, Father? God, I'm so thankful that there are people that are here this morning, God that you've been drawing to you. Lord, I love that when we lift up the magnitude and the majesty of who Jesus is, that the power of the spirit of God begins to draw people to him.

And so father right now, we thank you for people who are be drawing to who are being drawn to you. And father I ask, God I ask that you would to the spirit of God give people conviction this week to go to somebody in their small group and talk about the reality of things that they're dealing with.

Understanding that we are people who are for people. That God, you would give us the courage to bring what's in the darkness into the light so that we can deal with it and we can walk with people together. That God, what grows in the darkness is killed in the light. And father in you, there's freedom. There's forgiveness.

And there is newness to be found. So father, would you give us the courage to do that this week? And father for others of us that are here. God, I think some of us have unintentionally settled into being pretty judgmental people. And father, we've done some harm to your kingdom. And so God, we repent of that.

We ask for your forgiveness. And we ask that you would begin to teach us what it means to walk into regard holiness as a big deal, but also to be people who lead with grace, who hold the door open for people,

reminding them that you can come in here as you are and that the God of the universe will meet you exactly where you are. But he loves you enough that he won't leave you that way.

But father, it's not our job to change people. It's our job to love them so that you can change them. It is in the mighty name of Jesus all God's people said, amen and amen.

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.