Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign church. We are thrilled you decided to listen to our teaching on your favorite podcast app. If you made a decision to follow Christ today, would you let us know by visiting? Yes.newlife gillette.com Here is this week's teaching.
[00:00:26] Hey, let me say welcome to those of you who are watching on church307.com to the guys over at the prison, to our friends at the jail who are watching today, and those of you who are here in the room, thank you to those of you who sat by somebody you don't know, that can be awkward. I noticed that the movie theater now, they crunch you in more closely. Like you end up sitting next to it, but you got an armor. Anyway, how many people here went to see the new Snow White movie?
[00:01:00] Disney fail. That was. None of you went to the Disney new Snow White movie. I'm the outlier. My family went and saw the new Snow White movie, and in hindsight, I kind of think we should not have gone to the movie because it wasn't that great. But the worst part about it was, while we're watching the movie, my youngest son, Titus, who's sitting beside me, has got a hold of my arm. And every time the Evil Queen comes into the movie, he is terrified. And every time she's on the screen, he leans over to me and he says, dad, can we leave? Like, he does not want to be there. And I said, no, I paid for this movie. We're going to watch the movie.
[00:01:41] So I'm a terrible dad. Not only did I take my kids to the movie, but I forced them to stay in the movie.
[00:01:48] It was. It was scary. There were some scary scenes in the movie, and Titus just wanted to leave. Well, you know the story of Snow White. The Evil Queen comes and offers the apple to Snow White, and Snow White eats the apple. And in the movie, they play it up like, Snow White just dies. Like she just dies on the spot, eating the apple. Well, Titus knows what's coming. He's seen the cartoon version of the movie, and he knows that the prince needs to come and kiss Snow White, right? To wake her up from her deep sleep. The problem is, in the live action movie, the prince is in jail in the queen's jail. And. Sorry, I'm totally spoiling this for you.
[00:02:30] None of you saw it. You're not going to. Anyway, the prince escapes from jail and he's riding to go save Snow White. And the climactic, like, everything's getting really intense and dark and scary. And Titus is, like, grabbing my arm as tight as he possibly can. And I hear him whisper under his breath, just kiss her already.
[00:02:58] Like he's just. He's ready for it to be done. Like he needs her to be kissed so then the happy ending can come. I'm tired of the fear. I'm tired of all of this, you know, in our lives, fear, even fear we can't identify, even fear we don't know is there, has a tendency to control us, doesn't it? I'm a fear. I'm afraid of some outcome. I'm afraid of failure. I'm afraid of not getting what I want or not getting what I need. Fear has a tendency of controlling us, of causing us to act in one way or another. And this is just the reality of what it looks like to live in a world where there are constantly forces coming against us. There are enemies, it seems, all around us, surrounding us.
[00:03:45] Today, I want to read a passage for you that was written by the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was one of the leaders of the church in the early, early years of the church. And he's writing this in a letter to one of his young disciples, one of his proteges, who he's trying to encourage in this. This young man's name is Timothy. And Timothy is experiencing some fear, some timidity, and he knows that God has called him to do some things, but stepping into that just seems a little SC his young age. He just doesn't feel like he can do it. And so this is what the Apostle Paul says to Timothy to give him courage. He says this at just the right time. Christ.
[00:04:29] I think it's important to note Paul did not say to Timothy, you can do it.
[00:04:35] Just try harder. You're strong. You can do it. No. What did he say? At just the right time, Christ will be revealed from heaven by the blessed and only Almighty God, the King of kings and the Lord of all Lords. He alone can never die. Jesus can never die. And he lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach Him. No human eye has ever seen him, nor ever will. All honor and power to him forever.
[00:05:06] Amen.
[00:05:09] You know, I've learned. I've been. I've been in leadership long enough to know that there are certain things that you can do in order to get people to respond in a certain way. Right? You can kind of control the behavior of people if you. If you learn the right tricks and the right tactics. If I gave in to temptation, I would paint a picture for you of a world that is falling apart.
[00:05:37] I would paint a picture of a world where everyone and everything is going to hell. I would paint a picture of a world where the stock market keeps plunging and never bounces back. I'd paint a picture of a world where the Satan is winning and God is in retreat. Why? Because if I can get you afraid, then maybe I can control you.
[00:06:02] I can get you to act in certain ways and behave in certain ways, because we have a tendency to act out of fear in usually unhealthy ways.
[00:06:12] But the bad news is fake news, the fearful news, the fearful message, is not the true message.
[00:06:22] The truth of the Easter message is that Satan is not winning, that God has already won. The truth of the Easter message is that Christianity is growing, that God is winning. And God is establishing his kingdom in this world because he has already defeated the Satan.
[00:06:43] The truth of Easter is that Jesus is the king.
[00:06:49] And when you look at him on the cross, it may seem like it, not seem like it. That crown of thorns might not seem like the crown that a king should wear.
[00:06:59] But the truth of Easter is that Jesus did not stay on the cross. Jesus did not stay in the tomb. Jesus rose from the dead and defeated death. The Easter message is a hopeful message of God's love and God's incomparable power.
[00:07:21] You know, all of us live lives where we try to be in control as much as we possibly can. Fear leads us to seek power, to seek control.
[00:07:30] I want to be the king. I want to be in control. I don't like to be out of control. I don't like the unknown. And so what do we do? We tend to bunker. We tend to, like, just surround ourselves with the people that we know are safe and avoid all those outsiders, avoid anybody who's different than us.
[00:07:51] And we just kind of try to find as many safe scenarios as we possibly can. And what we end up trying to do is we try to be the king of our own castles, try to be the king of our old own lives. So nobody tell me what I need to be doing, Nobody else try to infringe on my power, because I want to be all powerful.
[00:08:11] But if you are a Christian, what you have done is you say, lord, I'm not all powerful. I've come to the end of myself and I've recognized that I'm not enough.
[00:08:19] I've tried as hard as I possibly can, and I realize that I just fail time and time again. I've tried to remove weakness. I've tried to remove sin. I've tried to remove relationship issues from my life. But as long as I'm Trying to do it in my strength, I fall short. And as Christians, what we do is we surrender to his lordship and we say, God, when I am weak, you are strong.
[00:08:41] And we allow him to do in us what we could never do. Because Jesus is not just the king.
[00:08:48] The truth that Paul told to Timothy is that Jesus is the king of kings.
[00:08:55] Because if Jesus is only powerful enough to rule over your little bunker, to rule over your little huddle of people that are like you, then Jesus is not the king of kings. He's just a king of one of the kingdoms.
[00:09:08] Jesus is not only a king of one of the kingdoms. Jesus is the king over all kingdoms. What does this mean? Scripture tells us it means that someday you will bow to Jesus.
[00:09:22] You can choose to bow to him now.
[00:09:25] You can choose to make him the Lord of your life now, or you can wait till it's too late.
[00:09:32] Or you can wait till you have passed on past this life and you stand before him face to face and you recognize that everything that the Christians said was true.
[00:09:43] And in that moment, you will have to give an account for the life that you lived. And if in that moment, you try to point to all the good things that you did and how you were such a good person and you removed sin from your lives and Jesus, I did this for you. And God, I did this for you. And look how good I was. If in that moment you stand before God to be judged based on your behavior every single time, you will receive a guilty verdict.
[00:10:09] You can't be good enough. You can't try hard enough. You can't be strong enough. But if you stand before God and rather than pointing to your own goodness, you point to the goodness of Christ, then His grace will be given to you and you will be welcomed into his kingdom. You will be welcomed into heaven. Not because you were good, but because he was good. Not because you did what was right. Because he did what was right when he rose from the dead and defeated death and gave you life as a gift.
[00:10:41] That's the Christian message. Not try harder, not do better. The Christian message is receive his love, receive his gift. Because let. Let me remind you, Jesus has already been victorious. The battle has already been won. We're not waiting for this battle to be won. He has already won the battle.
[00:11:03] Hebrews. Here's the story in a nutshell. It goes like this. Because God's children are human beings. That's us, made of flesh and blood. The Son Jesus. God also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die. And only by die. If he just stayed a God alone, he could not have died. So he had to become a human so he could die on the cross. And only by dying could he break the power of the devil who had. Past tense. Who had the power of death.
[00:11:38] Only in this way could Jesus set free all who have lived their lives as slaves to the fear of dying.
[00:11:51] You now have no reason. If you are a child of God, you now have no reason to fear death. Why? Because life, eternal life has been given to you.
[00:12:07] Every leader in our world is trying to write a narrative.
[00:12:12] They want to get you believing what they believe so that you will buy what they are selling.
[00:12:20] And right now, what the world is selling to you is fear.
[00:12:27] You cannot turn on cable news without somebody selling to you. Fear.
[00:12:33] The whole time, all we do, bad news, thing after thing. Fear, dread. The other side, the other side of the aisle. Those people that are not like us, those people that don't look like us, those people that don't act like us, those people that don't vote for like us. You should fear them. Those bad people out there, just hunker down, just bunker in your basements.
[00:12:55] Separate yourself from that world because there's so much you have to be afraid of. And they try to sell to you their narrative of fear so that they control you.
[00:13:07] Scripture tells us that we cannot serve two masters.
[00:13:13] Only one person in your life is going to call the shots.
[00:13:18] Who will it be?
[00:13:21] There's a lot of people in our world who want to be your master.
[00:13:25] Politicians want to be your master.
[00:13:29] Celebrities want to be your master. The marketers, whatever they're selling, want to be your master. The banks would love to lend you more money so they can be your master.
[00:13:43] Everybody wants to be your master. Who will you allow to be your master? You get to decide.
[00:13:50] And most people, what they do is they just decide. Would respond to this question. I'll be my own master.
[00:13:56] I'll do it myself. The problem is life is too hard because at some point your life is going to fall apart.
[00:14:03] Pain is going to be inflicted upon you that you're going to have no control over. And you're going to realize no matter how hard you try, you are not strong enough. Too much of our lives are just completely out of our control. We can't do it. We're not strong enough.
[00:14:21] So rather than choosing myself as a master, God has given me the option of choosing him, the all powerful, the almighty king of kings.
[00:14:31] So that when I'm tempted to just think, well, God, I hope Our kingdom beats the other kingdoms.
[00:14:38] We'll just stay here in the church and us people here in the church will keep singing to you and hope that you protect us from all those other kingdoms out there.
[00:14:47] No, he's not just the king, he's the king of kings, of all kingdoms. No one can attack him, nobody can defeat him. Nobody has a chance. He's already won.
[00:15:00] So what does this mean for us?
[00:15:02] What does this mean for your day to day life? Like the real life life, the things that you experience every day, the pain that you're going through, the fear that you're feeling, what does this mean for you?
[00:15:15] It means that you have access to a life that goes beyond just the physical life you're experiencing right now.
[00:15:23] Because you're living in your body, but you are not your body. You are more than the body that you live in. Scripture tells us that someday we will receive new bodies. Why? Because we are eternal.
[00:15:35] We've been given eternal life from God.
[00:15:40] When Jesus rose from the dead, he gave you that life.
[00:15:44] Jesus accomplished everything necessary for you to have eternal life. Not you. You didn't do this. He did this.
[00:15:56] The Easter story is the story of Jesus purchasing a gift that he wants to give to you.
[00:16:03] A free gift for you.
[00:16:07] Do you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if you died today, you would spend eternity with God?
[00:16:16] If you put your faith in Jesus, you can know that. If your faith is in yourself, you can't know that. It's just a guessing game. If you're trying to be good enough to get to heaven, you will never know for sure.
[00:16:30] I hope so.
[00:16:32] And the truth is, if you're hoping so, it's not so. The only way that you can be confident of your eternity and your eternal life is if all of your faith, if you completely trust God to accomplish what you can never accomplish, allow him to give you the free gift of life.
[00:16:53] And what does that look like? It just means saying, yes, you receive the gift. The famous verse is John 3:16. For this is how God loved the world, loved us. He gave his one and only son Jesus, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish, but will have eternal life.
[00:17:16] So here's what I ask you to do. When you sat down today, there was a card on your chair. There's two different sides on it. One of the sides says, I want to say yes to Jesus today. Will you grab that card and fill it out and say yes to Jesus? Filling out that card is not what saves you. This is just a way, an action that you can take that just communicates to God, I'm ready to say yes in a way. That card is a prayer.
[00:17:40] Prayer is just a conversation with God. God, I want to say yes to you. We're going to sing a song. And while we, while we sing this song, I want to ask you to pray about filling out that card and leaving here today knowing that you are a child of God, that you've been adopted into his kingdom, that you are not just a citizen of a kingdom.
[00:18:01] There's only one way to heaven. There's only one path to the Father, and that's Jesus Christ.
[00:18:08] And today you can decide, I'm going to become a citizen of the of heaven.
[00:18:12] And here's the good news. Citizenship has perks.
[00:18:19] Jesus is the King of kings, so everybody's under his authority. But if you want the perks of citizenship in his kingdom, then you surrender to him as your king.
[00:18:33] You can commit to make him the king of your life. And along with citizenship in his kingdom, he says, comes things like hope and peace and freedom and joy and eternal life.
[00:18:50] Peace that passes understanding. This is more than anybody in this world can offer to you. Because when you reach the end of yourself or when you are experiencing tremendous pain and you go to the world and you say, what do you got to help me?
[00:19:05] What solutions do you have?
[00:19:08] This world says, well, it's going to end. You're going to rot in the ground someday. That's the only solution we got.
[00:19:13] But here's some drugs. You can numb the, numb the pain a little bit. We'll just try to cover it up. Don't. World's got nothing for you.
[00:19:22] You're a citizen of God, of His kingdom.
[00:19:26] He can give you peace that goes beyond this life, beyond just numbing the pain, beyond just getting through it.
[00:19:35] If you're watching online today, I know you don't have a card with you, but you can fill out that same card by going to yes.newlife gillette.com and say yes to Jesus.
[00:19:44] It's not about trying to be a good person. It's not about trying to be more moral. It's not about trying to cuss less.
[00:19:50] Saying yes to Jesus is about receiving his gift of life.
[00:19:56] Because you'll never be good enough. But he was good enough for you and he wants to give you his goodness. So make him your king today. Surrender to him.
[00:20:07] One day, Jesus was walking along with his disciples who are experiencing some of this fear. And this is what Jesus says to his disciples.
[00:20:17] He says, I will give you the Keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven. And whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven. He's saying you're not just going to be a part of God's kingdom, you're going to reign in God's kingdom. You can rule with Jesus. Jesus wants to give you the keys to his kingdom. We do not fear death because Jesus gave us the keys to life. We do not fear the enemy because the enemy has been defeated. That means that faith, not our strength. Faith is the antidote to fear.
[00:20:59] If you have a relationship with Jesus Christ, you have a relationship with the King over all kings.
[00:21:07] Put your faith in him one time, one of Jesus friends John said this. He says, perfect love expels all fear.
[00:21:18] Whose love is perfect?
[00:21:22] Not my love, not your love.
[00:21:26] We can love like my love for my wife should give her some confidence.
[00:21:32] It should expel some fear, but not all fear. I'm not that strong.
[00:21:38] I can't protect. I can't do that good of a job of protecting her.
[00:21:42] Only God's love is perfect. And only God's power is perfect. Only his love can expel all fear.
[00:21:51] So here's what I want to ask you to do today. I want to ask you to do something a little bit fearless, to be brave.
[00:21:58] I ask you to fill out that card to say yes to Jesus. I want to ask you to take a next step and come down to the front here today. Or there's some people up in the balcony with buckets or people down here and give them the card that you filled out. And when you do, they're going to give you a keychain. Looks like that.
[00:22:18] And you take this keychain to remind you that the keys to the kingdom of heaven have been given to you. We do not fear death because Jesus gave us the keys to life.
[00:22:32] And then when you put that key on your home keychain, let it be a reminder that you didn't only receive a gift, you also surrendered to the king. You made him the king of your life over every part of your life.
[00:22:49] So there's no hidden closets. There's not a part of your life that you're keeping to yourself. You'll let God have the rest. No, you're surrendering to His Lordship. You're making him your king. That means he calls the shots and you follow him. You surrender to him and you say, God, I am yours. Whatever you have for me, I trust you. If you're going to die for me, then I can trust you. Because Jesus rose from the grave to defeat death for you as a gift for you live confidently in his kingdom knowing that your life is secured by him, that your life is hidden in him and you can reign with him, you can rule with him in his kingdom. I'm going to pray for you and if you're making a decision today, I'd ask that you'd have a conversation with God similar to this one today where we say, God, thank you for dying on the cross for me. Thank you for raising and defeating death. God, I ask that you'll forgive me for the sinning that I've done, the sins that I've committed and God today would you have me in your family Right now he's welcoming us into his kingdom and we look forward with hope and with peace to the day when we will live with you for eternity and heaven we love you and we thank you in Jesus name.
[00:24:17] Amen.
