You don't need to see God to trust Him, just as you trust the invisible force of gravity every day. Take a step of faith today by surrendering your life to Jesus and choosing the life He offers you. Let go of trying to do it on your own and invite Him to lead your purpose.
And he's picking up a "washing machine" and putting it in the back of his truck. And so we we stop. We're gonna help him with that. But by the time that we stop, he already had the washing machine in the back of his truck. He's a strong, strong old guy.
You know? And so he walks over and he asked, you know, what what do you guys what do you guys, you know, doing? What do you need? And I said, well, we were gonna help you, sir, but but you got it taken care of. And so I just took the opportunity if I challenge you guys to invite people to church, and I gotta do it myself.
So I was like, hey. I told him about the asking for a friend series, and I invited him to come to church on Sunday. And he he shook his head no, and he stepped back, and and then he stepped forward again, and he said, I lost my wife a year ago. He said, every night, I prayed. My wife and I prayed together that if if God took 1 of us, he'd take us both at the same time.
And God took my wife a year ago, and he left me. He said, as far as I'm concerned, God is just some dictator up in the sky who's moving around pieces and laughing at us when we're in pain and suffering. I don't even know if I believe in God anymore. He teared up again, he said, God took my wife from me. Before we could even get out, I'm sorry.
You know, I'm sorry for what happened to your wife. He said, I don't even know if I believe in God anymore again, and he walked away. My wife is almost sobbing now, hurting, and she she says, he's why we're here. He's why we started this church. How many people feel the exact same way about God?
And I couldn't help but think. In John-17:3, Jesus prays, and he says eternal life. He prays that we would have eternal life. He says, now this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God. Life is eternal life is knowing God.
And I couldn't help but think that what if his wife knew God? Because based on his responses, he didn't know who God was because who he thought God was is not who God is. So what if his wife knew God? When she died, she spent she's spending eternity with him. If if God would've answered his wife's prayer and the man would've died, he would've spent eternity separated.
So it was not God's meanness and God's aggravation, but what if it was God's mercy that kept the man alive so that he could spend eternity in the same place as his wife? I couldn't help but think that as the man walked away hurting and me hurting for that guy. Eternal life is knowing God. What is the purpose of life? Revelations chapter 21.
And I heard a loud voice. Revelations, by the way, or Revelation, that is the last book in the Bible. It's talking about the future. It's talking about what happens in the end. And this is 1 of the last chapters in Revelation talking about, like, the purpose of it all.
And it says, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. Is there more? He will "wipe away every tear" from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away. God's plan, God's purpose, the purpose of life, his purpose for you is to know him personally to for him to be with you.
Eternal life is knowing God. It's not heaven in the sweet by and by way. No. It's now. Knowing him now in a way that impacts every aspect of your life now.
God's purpose and plan is not death, crying, suffering, and pain. No. His purpose is life and life for you now. That's the purpose of life, knowing God personally, intimately, in a real amazing wonderful way, and it yes. It is possible.
Well, brings up it's amazing how people ask these questions because they just kinda fall in line. That brings up the next question everybody may have on your mind right now after what we just said. Why then? Why is there suffering? Why do people suffer?
Better worded probably is. If god's so good, if he is who you say he is, then why does he make people suffer all over the place? Why do people have to die? Why is there sickness, and why is there death? Couldn't he step in?
Where was he when this happened? Where was he when my fill in the blank? Never thought that? It's a tough question. Right?
Let's dig in. 1 John-4:16 says, God is love. That is the basis for the answer that I'm about to give you, and we are about to go on a journey that will seem like I'm taking it way around, but we're gonna get to the answer, why is there suffering in the world? Remember, God is love. Therefore, everything that he does flows out of who he is.
God is love and God is life. K? We saw in Revelations 21 3 and 4 that it wasn't his plan because in the end, there's no death, suffering, pain, sickness, crying, or anything like that. He takes all of that away. So we saw in the end, that's what we're going toward.
That's that's his goal. That's his plan. So let's go back to the beginning. Genesis-1:31. God saw all that he had made, and it was "very good".
This is the end of his creation. So in day 6, after he created everything, it says, God saw all that he had made, everything, and it was very good. Right? If it's very good, then there is no bad. There's no evil.
There's no sick. No. No. It's good. So something happened.
Genesis-1:26. Check this out. This is back in earlier in day 6, Genesis-1:26. Then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. Now if he made us in his image you might be wondering why it says our, our.
That's father, son, and Holy Spirit. Right? 1 God, 3 persons. It's pretty amazing. We'll talk about that more in-depth probably when somebody asks the question.
But so let us make man in our image. God is love. God is life. He made us to live, to know him, and to live a life of love because that's who he is. What is the outcome of love?
Galatians-5 are the results of God's nature. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, meekness, faithfulness, self control, something like that. Right? Love is patient. Love is kind.
That's that's our life. That's the life that we are created to live. Now check this out. Then God made man, made him in in his image. Right?
So he made us in his image. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth. Everybody say, over all the earth. Over some of the earth? All.
That's right. Over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Interesting. God gave man dominion. What does dominion mean?
Sovereignty or control. God gave man control of the world. But God God gave man control of the world. Said it right there, Genesis-1:26. Think about that for a minute.
So what happened? If God is love and he created us for a loving relationship with him, then in order to have a loving relationship with God, we must have a choice because you can't love without a choice. Right? It's obligation. It's control.
God gave mankind the choice, the opportunity to choose not him, to prove it's it's showing that we actually do love him. It's not the only choice. We because you can't make your wife love you. You can't make your husband love you. You can't obligate them.
If it's obligation, it is not love. So because of who God is, he is love and he created us for love, we must have the choice not to love, to "choose not God". Follow me? So God gave mankind a choice. He gave us rule.
He gave us control of the world, and he said, hey, subdue it. You know? Bring it into to into submission of the kingdom of heaven. We are ambassadors of of the king. And God gave us the choice.
Adam and Eve, they had the opportunity to Choose life, the tree of life, to choose relationship with God, to choose to be 1 with him, to to have dependency on him, to to know him, to choose God's good for the rest of their life, and they also had the opportunity to choose not God. Now if you if God is life and you choose not God, what are you choosing? Death. What is sin? Sin is choosing anything that's not God.
That's it. Right? So if you're choosing not God, you're choosing sin. If you're choosing not life, you're choosing death. The results of choosing not God is death, period.
And that works itself out in our life. We think it was the knowledge of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. That's what they chose. Right? So we think it gave them the ability the tree actually did.
It gave them the ability to choose for themself what is good and what is bad, to to be our own gods, if you will. Right? So so I can I can choose, hey? Money. I wanna give myself money's a great thing.
It's amazing. It's wonderful. It it does a lot of amazing things. But if I give myself to that which I think is good and I give myself over it, it might be a good thing. But if I give myself to that which is not God, it becomes death to me.
It wreaks havoc on my family. It wreaks havoc on on my life. There is no peace there. There's nothing there. Why?
Because I gave myself to something that is not God. And fill in the blank with anything that you think is good, you give yourself over to that thing and it becomes death to you. There's no peace there. Period. So God gave man control and he gave them the ability then to love God by choosing him or choosing not God and man chose not God.
So then we chose sin. Period. Now, anything that you obey, Romans-6, anything that you obey, you become a slave to. So the ruler of earth, mankind became a slave to sin and subjected earth to sin, to death, to pain, to sickness. Because look, if God is love and the result of who he is is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, meekness, faithfulness, self control.
If if that's the result of who he is, then the result of not God is the opposite of love. Fear, hate, the opposite of joy, despair, the opposite of peace, anxiety, the opposite of goodness, evilness, the opposite of faithfulness, faithlessness. Right? The result to an end of choosing your own good is the opposite of God, and it will result in all of those things. And that's what happened to the world.
It affected all of creation. It's it tainted God's good creation. Next question. So that's why suffering is in the world by the way. Because we chose not God and gave the world over to suffering.
Why did God make death the punishment for sin? He could have made it different. Right? He could have made it everything or anything. Why did God make death the punishment for sin?
What's the result of sin? Sin is choosing not God. And if God is life and we choose not God, we choose sin, we're choosing death. Right? So the natural result of sin is death.
What is payment? The payment for sin is death. Payment is is getting what you deserve. So that the punishment for sin had to be death because that's what we were choosing. That's it.
So no no matter how hard we tried over and over and over throughout life, we tried over and over in order to to do our own good, to make our make it back to God, to have peace in our life, but there's a hole in our heart. Why? Because we need him. And no matter what we try apart from him, it will never satisfy us because we were created. It's our design to know him.
Period. Over and over and over, man tried to create this religion and tried to create that religion and tried to create, hey, I'm I'm gonna do this much good and I'm gonna do this much bad. I'm I'm if my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds, then I'll make it to heaven. If if I do this amount of sacrifices, if I just go to church, if I if I was born in the right family or all of these things. It's just man trying to make it back to God, but man can't do it on his own.
Why? Because from birth, we have a nature that was passed down from our great great great great great granddad Adam to choose self, to choose not God. I've said it over and over in this pulpit. You don't teach a 2 year old to lie. They naturally lie.
You don't teach a 2 year old to sin. I mean, to steal. They naturally steal. Mind. Why?
Because it's in the nature from birth. We can't save ourselves. We can't. The punishment for sin had to be death and man was destined to pay for his own sin because man couldn't make it back to God. Man couldn't live the perfect life.
And so God, this loving God, looked down and said, you know what? "I love you so much", you can't make it to me so I'm coming to you. So instead of man trying to make it to God, God came down to man. God became a man, Jesus Christ, the son of God. Born of a virgin.
Amazing. Lived a perfect life. He didn't deserve to pay the price for sin because he had never sinned, but he did it in our place. The punishment for sin had to be death because the result of sin is death. So Jesus was our substitute.
Think about that. All of the results of sin, pain, sickness, shame, guilt. All of the results of sin, Jesus took in your place so that you didn't have to. Jesus, in that day, was beaten with a cat of 9 tails. Like these 9 leather straps with glass and metal and all this stuff that just lit into his flesh and ripped it to pieces to where he didn't even look like a man anymore.
Why? Because sin disfigures us so much that we don't even look like what we're created to look like to him. Jesus took that for us. All of that pain as that was happening, it says, by his stripes, we are healed. So those lashes that he was taking in that moment, he was thinking about your sickness, about your pain, and he's saying, I'm doing this for you.
You don't have to you can you can trust in what I'm doing for you and and know that by my stripes you are healed. I'm taking all of that for you. What's another result of sin? Shame. After he got done there mocked by people, he's carrying his cross through the streets of Jerusalem on the way to Golgotha where his cross would ultimately be.
He's carrying it about a mile. And people are spitting on him, mocking him saying, you king of the Jews or are you you actually who you say you are? You claim to be God. You claim to be I am and here you are about to go and die and here he is naked bruised and bleeding taking this. What is he taking?
Shame. He's taking your shame. You don't have to feel a mount, an ounce of shame anymore. Why? Because Jesus took it in your place.
They put a crown of thorns on his head. He took your despair, your lack of peace to take all of that for you, your mental anguish, illness. I take that for you and I give you my peace. I give you my joy. As they nailed him to the cross, he's taking your guilt.
Yeah. You did it. I've did it. We've we've screwed up, but he took our guilt. God became a man so the sons of men became sons of God.
He took our guilt and our place so that we could live a free life. That's amazing. It's powerful. And then, at the end of it all, he looks up to heaven. And so as he's up there, the Bible says that he literally became your sin.
Truth became a lie in that moment. In that moment, light, because Jesus said he's the light of the world, became darkness. It was dark over the over the face of the earth for hours. In that moment, he said, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. Once again, truth became a lie.
In that moment, God said, Jesus Christ said, he looked up to the father and he said, my God, my God, why have thou forsaken me? Why have you first why did you turn your back on me? Why? So he didn't have to turn his back on you. Jesus Jesus was separated.
The payment for sin* is death*. Right? That's separation from God. Jesus was separated from God, from the Father, so that you didn't have to be anymore. That's amazing.
So then he died. What's the next question? "Who's going to heaven" and who's not? Guys, this is good news. Who's going to heaven and who's not?
That's a tough question, but it's very clear. Jesus did all of that. And then, so he he died in our place, but because he had never sinned, he rose again. Right? Because death didn't have a hold on him.
He didn't deserve to die. So he died in our place, but death couldn't hold him back because he had never sinned. So he rose again 3 days later showing that when we trust in him, when we give our lives to him, he gives us his life. He takes our junk. He takes our pain.
He takes all of that. He gives us his joy. He gives us his peace. We can trust that God loves us and God is good. He stepped in when we couldn't do it on our own.
That's the gospel. That's the good news. That's what Jesus did. Who goes to heaven? John-3:16, for God so loved the world.
God loved the world so much that he gave his only son that whoever believed in him would not die, would not perish, would not be separated from God for eternity, but would have eternal life. Would know God in a real way here and now. That's pretty cool. God didn't Jesus didn't come to the world to condemn the world, John-3:17, but to save it. Bible says in Romans, if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart.
So you believe in your heart that Jesus died and he actually rose again. He did this for you, everything that I just said, but then you confess with your mouth, you say, you are Lord, I surrender. Doing it on my own didn't work for me. So I'm choosing to do it your way from now on. I'm giving you my life.
I don't really know what all that means, but I'm taking a step of faith because I know that what this guy is saying is true. There's something in my inside of me that's pulling me. That's God and he's saying, "I designed you for a purpose". I designed you to know me and you have a future. That's what that is.
That's conviction. Saying, hey, you really can't do it on your own. Stop trying. Let me do it. I did it for you already.
Trust in me. I have a future for you, and it's amazing. Who goes to heaven? Those who do that. Those who surrender to him.
And who doesn't go to heaven? Those who choose to reject it. Say, I I choose not God. If you choose not God in this life, when you die, you will get what you chose. The opposite of God, which is separation from him, which is the opposite of love, hate, which is the opposite of peace, despair, and and anxiety, and stress, and pain, and hell.
It's gonna suck. Choose God. Choose life. Choose Jesus. I wanna give you the opportunity right now just because close our eyes, bow our heads.
If as I'm preaching this word and it just stands out, you realize, man, I been playing church my whole life. I've been going to church and and thought I was good, but I've never really surrendered my life to Jesus. I just was banking on what all my friends were around saying. I was just banking on my my great grandma that she was a good person and a good Christian. No.
It's time for me to choose and right now, I choose life. I choose I'm giving my life to you. I know that I need this. If that is you, on the count of 3, want you to raise your hand. 1, 2, 3.
I see you. I see you. 4, there's 4 of you. Anybody else? 5.
Wow. That's cool. Let's pray this prayer. This prayer is a moment in time where you're saying I choose to surrender. I recognize that I'm a sinner, that I've chose my own way, and I'm stopping choosing my own way right now.
I'm giving my life to you. So let's pray this and say this with everything you have inside of you. Mean it with everything. God, I need you. Would you say it out loud?
God, I need you. I recognize this for the first time. Right now, would you forgive me? I've done wrong. I've chosen myself, but I choose you.
I believe you died for me. I believe you rose again, and I'm surrendering my life to you right now. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you for forgiving me. Thank you for giving me your life.
Teach me what it means to know you. By faith, I'm starting a new life with you. Thank you, Jesus. Would you guys stand out real quick? There's people in here that gave their life to Jesus, which is amazing.
But I think there's also people in here that need to experience healing, emotional healing, physical healing, healing from depression. There's people in here that are experiencing fear, and you shouldn't be experiencing fear if you're a son of God. There's doubt. There's people experiencing worry. And you just need a Christian brother or sister to remind you of who you are and to pray for you, because prayer is powerful and effective.
Would our prayer team come forward? Would you guys see. Here they come. If you need prayer, don't stop. Don't leave.
Come get prayer. It's important. If you gave your life to Jesus, tell someone. It's important. This is not a private thing.
It's so personal, your relationship with him, that it's gonna impact everyone around you. It's public. Don't be ashamed. You're a son and daughter of the most high king, and he loves you, and you're accepted into his kingdom. It's amazing.
So we're gonna sing this song, I'm No Longer a Slave to Fear. I encourage you guys to come get prayer. We'll be done here in just about 3 or 4 minutes.
Thanks for listening to the Real Church podcast. If you have questions, comments, or would like to get to know us, be sure to check us out on social media by searching real church clear water or visit us online at www.realchurch.us. If you'd like