Explicando El Evangelio En Diez Palabras (O Menos)

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- Well, hey everybody, my name is Alli Patterson.

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It's great to be with you here tonight at Crossroads.

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I don't know about you, but I've really

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been enjoying the last couple of weeks

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when we've been talking about the mission

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that Jesus left His followers to go reach people.

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Whether that's neighbors next door

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or strangers around the world,

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that's the mission that He gave us.

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And we're going to talk about today and next week,

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once you reach them, what do you actually say?

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We asked you guys what was in the way

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of sharing your faith, and you told us

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that you're not sure what to say.

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You feel not knowledgeable,

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maybe a little bit underqualified

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to talk about whatever it is

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you're supposed to be talking about,

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and maybe a little afraid to be seen as pushy or preachy,

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or lose a friend over saying the wrong thing.

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I've been there. I feel that way too.

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So we decided to double down on two things

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that really go into sharing your faith

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and reaching your people.

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So this week we're going to be talking

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about how to share the gospel.

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And next week Chuck is going to talk

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about how to share your story.

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These are the two components that really go into

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whatever it means to share your faith with your people.

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And we're doing this because

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we want to be equipped as a community

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for the mission that Jesus has us on.

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So let me pray as we start.

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Lord, I just ask that you would be here

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and that you would stir something in us

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about the message of Your gospel.

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Help us to understand what is that

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and how do we share it in a way that sounds like good news.

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It's in Your Son's name that we pray. Amen.

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Well, I don't know how you first encountered the gospel,

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but I have been thinking about the first encounter

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with anything kind of shapes the way you think about it.

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And I saw a reel on Instagram lately

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that made me think about this idea.

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I'm not going to lie,

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I felt actually targeted by this.

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I was like, "Whoa, hold on a second here.

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Don't come after the stink face."

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I did not -- 30s before I saw this reel,

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do you know what I would have called this?

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Dancing. Just regular dancing.

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I didn't realize that this business,

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this business right here.

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This is hardcore Gen X vibes right here.

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Just absolutely Gen X dancing vibes.

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I saw this reel and I was like,

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"Ooh, ouch. Oh my goodness." You know?

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All I say to you 20 year olds

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that are laughing right now

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is twerking is not going to age well.

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You talk to me in 25 years about the reel

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about 45 year olds dancing.

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I just think however we first encounter something,

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the gospel included, it tends to shape

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how we think about that thing, how we do it,

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whether we want to do it or not,

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whether we think it's for us.

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And maybe you encountered someone

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who shared the gospel with you that

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made you feel judged or awkward.

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Or maybe it was somebody that rang your doorbell

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or yelled at you through a megaphone

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when you're just trying to get into the Reds game.

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I don't know how you encountered the gospel,

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but I know that when we walk in

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and we start talking about this topic,

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we bring our baggage with us. You know?

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We bring the things that make us feel awkward

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or afraid of actually going out

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and sharing the gospel with people in our life.

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And so I just want you to take a deep breath

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and consider with me as we talk about this topic

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that there might be a way that's actually real

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and kind and good and loving,

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even if that's maybe not how you first heard it.

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I think we can together talk about tonight

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what actually is the gospel,

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and how do we share it in a way that

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with the people that we love,

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where it sounds like what it is,

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which is literal good news?

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That's what a gospel is. A gospel is good news.

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And to put a finer point on that,

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the gospel is not just good news,

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it's good news that is life altering,

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that's history changing.

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That's why when gospels were shared by kings and kingdoms

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they would send people out to share the good news

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because it was a history changing,

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life altering announcement.

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And that's what the gospel of Jesus Christ is as well.

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When I first began to realize

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that God cared about all of His people

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knowing how to share our faith,

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or share the gospel,

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share His message of, you know, His Son, Jesus,

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I felt really insecure about it because

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I felt like all I knew was the general ballpark of ideas.

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Like, good Jesus ideas. It's got -- we got the Cross.

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We've got a lot of forgiveness.

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We've got something about our sins.

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And definitely the resurrection is in there somewhere.

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Like, how do I put that all together

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and understand what actually is it?

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And I was so bothered by this I went on a little journey.

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It was like a personal search for --

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I gave myself a challenge, honestly.

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I said, I am going to articulate the gospel

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in ten words or less.

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I want to be able to do that.

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I want to know it so well that

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I could put it so concisely,

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just so that I would know.

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Not that I was going to tell you whenever we meet,

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although that might not be a bad idea/

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I just was bothered by the idea that

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I was just kind of in the ballpark of Jesus ideas,

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and I didn't really understand what the gospel actually was.

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So I went on a search, and I found this passage

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that is widely accepted to be

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not only the clearest articulation

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of the heart of the gospel message,

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but also the oldest witness to what was taught

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as the good news to the early church.

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It's found in 1 Corinthians 15, written by Paul,

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and this passage was penned probably

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in the neighborhood of 20 years or less

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after the death and resurrection of Jesus.

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So these words are some of the earliest words

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that were written about what was

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the early church actually teaching as the gospel?

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Here's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4,

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he answers my question what is the gospel?

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Now, brothers and sisters,

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I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you.

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Good start.

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Which you received and on which you have taken your stand.

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By this gospel you are saved

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if you hold firmly to the word that I preached to you,

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otherwise you have believed in vain.

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For what I received,

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I passed on to you as of first importance.

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And then there's a colon.

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So here we go, we're about to find out.

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That Christ died for our sins

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according to the scriptures,

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that He was buried,

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that He was raised on the third day

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according to the scriptures.

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There it is.

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That Christ died for our sins,

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that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day.

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And then this idea that gets repeated twice,

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that it was somehow according to the scriptures.

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So here's the ten words.

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You ready for my ten words?

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I took them straight from this passage

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and I thought, "Okay, if that's it.

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If that's the heart of the gospel message

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the early church was preaching,

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then my ten words are:

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Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead.

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Ten words. That's the gospel.

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When I put that on a piece of paper

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and looked at it, I thought, "Okay,

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I get it. I can see it right there in black and white."

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Now, did Paul say these are the only important ideas

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he was ever going to teach? Not at all.

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If you've read the New Testament,

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you know that he goes deeply into

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all kinds of implications of the life

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you live as a result of this, as the power.

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What power did this? How?

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What about what happened before it?

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Why did Jesus have to die anyway?

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There's all kinds of surrounding issues,

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and a lot of those are addressed

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all through the New Testament.

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But the heart of the gospel message

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is that Jesus died for our sins and rose from the dead.

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That's what Paul says is of first importance.

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And inside those ten words, there's four essential ideas.

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If we're going to share the gospel with somebody,

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or if we're even going to just be confident

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we understand it in and for ourselves,

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we need to get the four ideas

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that are baked into those ten little words.

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And the first one is super, super simple,

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but it trips us up every single time.

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Whenever we go to share the -- We talk about sharing our faith.

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And sometimes we mix up whose story we're actually telling.

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This is a story about Jesus.

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The gospel is a story about Jesus.

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Now, you might have a story about

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what the gospel did in your life

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and how you've changed as a result of knowing Jesus.

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And that's what Chuck's going to talk about next week.

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And it's great, crucial, critical to understand

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what's my story and how do I communicate

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what God has done in my life to someone?

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Awesome tool for sharing your faith.

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But that's not the gospel.

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The gospel is a story about Jesus,

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about what happened to Jesus,

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what happened in His story.

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And Paul says this, that Christ died,

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that He was buried, that He was raised.

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He seems to be coming after this over and over and over again.

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The gospel is a story about Jesus.

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And I think sometimes we're hesitant to say that name.

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All of these four little things

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that are baked into those ten words,

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we can hesitate because

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our culture has made it harder for us.

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And also there's some spiritual realities that

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just make sharing the gospel a little bit tough sometimes.

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And one of them is that the name of Jesus causes a reaction.

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My name doesn't cause a reaction.

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I mean, it might, maybe for some people.

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But the name of Jesus cuts through, spiritually speaking,

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a lot of other stuff, and it causes a reaction.

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And so sometimes I think we back off

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of actually saying the name of Jesus

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and telling the story of Jesus.

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And so sometimes we'll actually just, like,

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stick to our own story instead of telling His.

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But the gospel, if we want to share that

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as part of understanding what God wants us to do,

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the mission that He has us on in this world

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is to tell the story about Jesus.

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The second thing that we have to get

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about these ten little words is that they're about sin.

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And this starts to make us really uncomfortable, right?

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To share the gospel with someone, Paul says

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that Christ died for our sins.

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This is the, like, why should I care part.

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You know any good announcement answers two questions,

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like, what's going on and why should I care?

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This is the why should I care part.

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But to share this part of the gospel

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that Christ died for our sins,

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we have to accept the idea of sin.

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And we're living in a time and in a culture

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that's working overtime trying to erase

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this idea from our minds, trying to squash the idea

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that there's anything even called sin to begin with.

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That there's any kind of standard

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that we're accountable to any kind of God

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in front of Him, objectively before Him,

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that we will ever be called into account for.

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That's essential to the gospel.

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The gospel is a story about sin.

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The third one is that it's about resurrection.

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And now we're getting to the part

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where the rubber meets the road.

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Because the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ

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is that there was a dead guy that came back to life again.

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We can talk circles around theology all day long,

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and we can debate philosophical ideas

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and all of that stuff.

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But at the heart of the Christian gospel

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is a message about a dead man

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that got up and walked out of a grave.

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This is -- it's easy to understand

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why we would sort of trip over ourselves

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as we start to share this message

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with the people in our life going,

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like, what are -- what are they going to think

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when I tell them, like, He was dead

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and I believe He got up and three days later

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He walked out of the grave.

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Yes, that's the gospel message.

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And the last one is not a word

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that actually appears in that passage.

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It's my sort of summary word for this repetition

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of according to the scriptures.

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According to the scriptures.

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Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures.

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He rose on the third day, according to the scriptures.

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And I would say, according to the scriptures,

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tells me that this is a story about grace.

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Because if this happened according to the scriptures,

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that means that God had a plan from the very beginning.

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That means that He had a plan,

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He set it into motion,

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He executed it through the life of Jesus,

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and He finished it with the resurrection

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according to the scriptures.

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Which means He communicated it beforehand,

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and He wrote it down so that when it happened

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we would understand this is Him and this is His plan.

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What did Paul say? To save us.

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That's what he called it.

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He said, "By this gospel you are saved."

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This according to the scriptures place to me is about grace.

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It's that God had a plan

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because He decided He was going to save you.

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Now you want to share the gospel with someone in your life,

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we have to actually say,

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"Do you believe that you need saved?"

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That's a core conversation to the gospel,

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about the only requirement to to receive Jesus

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in your life is that you actually think you need Him.

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So one of the things that is essential in this

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is that we understand God had a plan,

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and it was a plan of grace to come and save us.

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So the gospel has these four components:

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Jesus, sin, resurrection, grace.

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They tend to make us hesitant to share this message with people,

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because maybe we're still wrestling

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with some of these things ourselves.

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Maybe you're like I was years ago when I went,

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"What? What actually is the gospel again?"

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And in that journey I ended up wrestling with

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do I -- do I believe that?

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Do I believe the prophecies

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that were written down that this fulfilled?

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Do I believe that this story about a guy named Jesus is real,

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that He died and that He was raised to life again?"

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And I had to wrestle with

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some of those questions all over again,

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because the gospel is not like any other story.

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The gospel according to Paul, anyway,

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is the message that saves.

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That saves. This is wild.

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Because as we share our faith,

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when we talk about our own story,

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which again, definitely do it.

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I've told my story lots of times,

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and it's a powerful tool to see

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when you believe what what begins to happen in your life.

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But the gospel is the message that saves someone.

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The gospel is the message about Jesus and what He did,

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not about you and what you did,

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as wonderful as that might be.

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And in every generation

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and in every geography around the world,

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from those first words that Paul wrote down

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in 1 Corinthians 15 until today,

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this is the same message

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that has always been communicated

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and that has always saved.

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We talk about revival here at Crossroads a lot.

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We're going to gather, you know, hopefully thousands,

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maybe even tens of thousands of people

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on our land in a few weeks.

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There's another event coming for college students

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into our city called Unite. It's coming.

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And just thousands of college students

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all over the country have met Jesus and been saved.

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I went to a Billy Graham crusade back in the day in 1993,

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in the Columbus Clippers stadium.

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It was the first time I'd ever been to anything like that.

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And I just looked around and I was like,

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"Why are all these people here?"

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And guess what I heard,

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that Jesus died for our sins and He rose from the dead.

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Because that's the gospel.

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That's the message that actually saves people.

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It's the message you'll hear at Unite.

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It's the message you'll hear at Revival.

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It's the message Billy Graham spent his whole life

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preaching in baseball stadiums and football stadiums.

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It's the one that you will hear in every church,

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in every community of faith,

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in every country of this world,

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because the gospel is the only message that saves people.

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And so as we look at what do we do?

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How do we handle this sharing our faith business?

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We have to get this.

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We have to understand these ten little words

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that Jesus died for our sins,

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and He rose from the dead, and figure out,

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how do we actually talk to people about that?

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The first time I heard this message,

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I was actually sitting on the living room floor

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of a couple named Pat and Jody.

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I went to their house on a pretty regular basis

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because they were hosting some youth stuff.

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I had some friends in high school that

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they all went to this one church,

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and Pat and Jody hosted

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some of their high school stuff at their house.

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So I would go along sometimes.

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And I was sitting on the hardwood floor

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in Pat and Jody's home,

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and Jody used to cook us lunch every Thursday

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of my senior year in high school.

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That's when they, like, trusted you

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to get in your car and return on time

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for your next bell 42 minutes later.

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We used to drive to lunch all the time.

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What happened to that? Anyway, that was great.

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And she cooked us a home cooked lunch.

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I didn't really understand why they were interested in me

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until the night that

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I was sitting on their living room floor,

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and I heard the gospel.

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And enough games, enough fun, enough, like,

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you know, building relationship at some point,

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somebody needs to actually say,

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"Do you know there's a guy named Jesus

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who died for your sins and rose from the dead?"

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And when I heard that message on their living room floor,

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when I left that night, I was different.

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I actually believed them.

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And yes, it was important that it was coming from

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someone that I had relationship with

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and that they knew me and I knew,

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all of that was important.

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But somebody had to explain that

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and actually say those words.

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And when I walked to my car that night,

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I could feel it in my belly.

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I could feel it in my insides, like,

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there was something alive in me that wasn't there before.

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And I didn't have the language for it at the time

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because I didn't understand what had happened.

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But Galatians 2:20 says that

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the life of Christ begins to live in me.

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That's why we want to share this message,

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because we want our people to live.

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We want them to be alive right now,

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like, more alive than they are today.

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And we want to be more alive than we were yesterday.

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And we want to not only be alive today

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and our people that we love today,

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but we want them to stay alive forever

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and ever and ever and ever.

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And when you believe this message, that's what happens.

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That's the message of Jesus that actually begins to give life.

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And this is why He left us the mission

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to share this message with our people,

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but we don't have to make a four point sermon.

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I like to break it down

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so that we can have this conversation.

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But the truth is, when you share this message with people,

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it can be lots of different ways.

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Even the Bible itself, scripture itself

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tells this story of Jesus and the gospel message itself.

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You can find in the New Testament

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multiple different ways,

00:19:52

in many different angles.

00:19:54

And so I want to talk about three of those

00:19:56

for the rest of our time, because I think

00:19:58

these are the most common three ways

00:20:00

that you can share the gospel with actual people in your life.

00:20:04

And I was thinking about how do you know it's the moment, right?

00:20:09

Like, it's not like we're hanging out with somebody

00:20:12

and we're just watching the clock, waiting for the moment.

00:20:16

Like at 10:00, I'm going to share the gospel.

00:20:18

You know, that's not what we do.

00:20:20

So how do you know?

00:20:21

How do you know that there's a right opening for the gospel?

00:20:24

And I had learned over time that you can listen

00:20:27

to what your friends are saying,

00:20:29

and they will actually tell you

00:20:32

the good news they need to hear.

00:20:36

In the natural course of relationship,

00:20:38

we share things with each other

00:20:39

and I have three quotes and I think

00:20:41

you're probably going to hear one of them this week.

00:20:44

And I'm not making this up.

00:20:45

Someone called me yesterday and literally

00:20:47

said one of these things to me on the phone.

00:20:49

And I was like, "Thank you, Jesus, for the confirmation."

00:20:52

You know what I mean?

00:20:53

But I think these are normal things that

00:20:55

your regular people will say to you in your everyday life,

00:20:59

and I want you to go, 'That's an opening for the gospel."

00:21:03

Okay? Are you with me?

00:21:04

Number one, "I feel so bad about that.

00:21:11

I feel so bad."

00:21:13

How many times have we had that conversation

00:21:15

with someone where you're carrying the weight of guilt,

00:21:19

where you're carrying around something with you

00:21:21

that you feel really bad about?

00:21:23

You did wrong and you know it,

00:21:25

or you're just not right and you know it.

00:21:28

You know there's something weighing you down.

00:21:30

And you say to your friend,

00:21:32

"I feel really bad about that."

00:21:34

Now, some of us carry this a little heavier than others.

00:21:37

I learned that I live with someone

00:21:38

who does not carry the weight of this very heavy.

00:21:43

I walked into -- my boys when they were younger,

00:21:46

like, let's say, I don't know, seven and nine,

00:21:48

eight and ten, somewhere in that neighborhood.

00:21:49

They used to share a big room in our house.

00:21:52

And so I walked down with some laundry.

00:21:54

And I go to put it away in my boys' room.

00:21:57

And I walk in and one of my boys is, like,

00:22:02

log rolling naked on one of the beds.

00:22:05

And I was like, "What are we doing here?

00:22:09

What is happening right now?"

00:22:10

And I walk closer and I realize he's soaking wet.

00:22:14

Soaking wet.

00:22:15

Now, every mom in here that has a boy is, like,

00:22:17

"Yeah, I don't know what's going on,

00:22:19

but probably my kid did something like that too."

00:22:21

So I walk in and he's log rolling wet.

00:22:24

And I stop with the laundry and I'm like,

00:22:26

"Can you explain yourself right now to me?

00:22:29

What is happening?"

00:22:30

And he goes, "Oh, hey, mom.

00:22:32

I just got out of the shower. I didn't have a towel."

00:22:38

Oh, why didn't I think about rolling around on the bed?

00:22:41

I mean, what?

00:22:43

And to make matters even worse.

00:22:45

I go one step further and I'm like,

00:22:47

"But wait, that's not your bed."

00:22:53

And he's like, "I'm not going to get my own bed all wet."

00:22:58

He's like, "Duh. Obviously."

00:23:02

I'm going to say he doesn't carry the weight

00:23:04

of guilt and shame like your average Joe.

00:23:07

But some of us walk around with this

00:23:09

weighing us down, like, for decades.

00:23:13

I would venture a guess in a community like ours

00:23:16

on a regular weekend, you would have

00:23:19

maybe thousands of people that walk through the door

00:23:22

going, "I feel so bad about that."

00:23:27

There's something that's just weighing on us.

00:23:29

And in the passage that we read in 1 Corinthians 15

00:23:32

says something very, very specific to that person.

00:23:36

It says that Jesus died for our sins.

00:23:39

The good news, if you're being weighed down

00:23:41

by that kind of guilt or that kind of shame,

00:23:44

is that you can be set free for free right now, right now.

00:23:48

Romans 3 is the place that I would go to give that good news.

00:23:53

So you're going to hear the gospel in these words

00:23:55

again from a totally different angle.

00:23:56

Here's what it says.

00:23:58

But now, apart from the law

00:24:02

the righteousness of God has been made known,

00:24:04

to which the law and the prophets testify.

00:24:06

This righteousness is given

00:24:08

through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

00:24:12

There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,

00:24:14

for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

00:24:18

and all are justified freely by His grace.

00:24:23

You got someone in your life that says,

00:24:24

"Man, I can't get over this thing.

00:24:26

I'm still guilty about it.

00:24:28

I'm still weighed down by it."

00:24:29

You can say, "You know what?

00:24:31

There is a way that you can get rid of that

00:24:33

right now because there is a righteousness.

00:24:35

There's a way to be set right before God.

00:24:39

And you can have that weight lifted off of you

00:24:42

in this moment.

00:24:43

It says freely to all who believe, freely by His grace

00:24:48

through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe."

00:24:50

That is really good news if you are weighed down

00:24:54

by the guilt of your own sin,

00:24:56

you can be set free for free right now.

00:24:59

The place where I shared the gospel,

00:25:01

where I most understood this kind of idea

00:25:05

is when I went into a prison.

00:25:07

I've gone a number of times to the women's prison.

00:25:09

It's about an hour from where my feet are right now.

00:25:12

And so I go up there sometimes.

00:25:13

And I was sharing the gospel and part of a message,

00:25:16

and I -- something hit me as I was meeting the women

00:25:19

and learning their stories.

00:25:21

That I met moms and daughters and sisters and wives

00:25:24

and all kinds of people who, you know,

00:25:26

played the same role in their lives

00:25:28

before they came on the inside that I play in mine.

00:25:31

And some of them had all kinds of different stories.

00:25:34

Some just chose bad, just did wrong, did evil,

00:25:38

and some of them were very hurt, very abused,

00:25:41

very confused, very betrayed by people in their life

00:25:44

that landed them in that place.

00:25:46

And no matter what their story,

00:25:47

I walked away understanding the truth that

00:25:50

if somebody walked through these doors and said,

00:25:53

"I'll take your sentence, you can go on home now,"

00:25:57

every one of them would have said yes.

00:26:00

Every one of them would have said yes

00:26:03

and gladly returned to their place in their family,

00:26:06

gladly taking their place at the table again,

00:26:09

gladly gone home to see their loved ones.

00:26:11

And that's exactly what I walked out the door thinking,

00:26:14

that's what happens here.

00:26:16

Because we're responsible for our sin in front of God.

00:26:19

We are serving a literal sentence.

00:26:22

And Jesus walks in and He says, "Guess what?

00:26:24

You can go on home. I'll take your place here.

00:26:28

I'll take your place."

00:26:29

He literally takes your place on the Cross.

00:26:32

He becomes the criminal on the Cross

00:26:34

and He says, "You go on and take your place

00:26:36

as the honored son in the Kingdom of God."

00:26:40

That is a crazy trade. That is a crazy trade.

00:26:44

And I knew when I walked out the door of that prison

00:26:47

that there's not one woman who would have looked

00:26:49

a trade like that in the face and said no.

00:26:53

And so if you, your friend, your people

00:26:57

are weighed down by that kind of sin,

00:26:59

how is that not good news?

00:27:01

How is that not a loving thing to communicate?

00:27:05

Okay. Number two, you ready for number two?

00:27:08

Nothing is ever going to change.

00:27:13

When you're in a conversation with someone

00:27:14

and you confront their hopelessness about something,

00:27:18

their powerlessness to change something you and I know,

00:27:20

you lived much more than 15 years on this planet,

00:27:23

and you understand the power of positive thinking

00:27:25

does not always solve your problems.

00:27:28

That you just come straight up against a wall

00:27:30

and you come to the end of yourselves

00:27:32

and the end of what you can do.

00:27:33

And no matter where you look inside yourself,

00:27:35

it's not going to happen.

00:27:39

I had an object lesson in this recently

00:27:41

because I have, one of my kids,

00:27:42

one of my daughters who's in high school.

00:27:44

She runs cross country.

00:27:46

And they run and run and run some more.

00:27:49

I mean, a lot of running.

00:27:50

She started off her freshman year,

00:27:52

she had an amazing season and she was like,

00:27:54

"Whoa, wait, maybe this is my deal."

00:27:56

And so she's a sophomore this year

00:27:58

and she started racing and her times

00:28:01

were getting worse and worse and worse.

00:28:04

And she was like, "I can't. I can't get my breath.

00:28:07

I don't understand what's happening to me."

00:28:09

She would say things like,

00:28:10

"I literally can't make my legs go any faster.

00:28:13

I don't know what's wrong with me."

00:28:15

And one of her coaches suggested,

00:28:17

like, it was all in her head.

00:28:19

You know? And she was like, "Maybe it is.

00:28:21

Maybe I'm just bad."

00:28:24

And then someone suggested that we get her iron checked.

00:28:30

And we learned that she had crazy low levels of iron.

00:28:35

And the reality was that her muscles

00:28:41

weren't getting the power they needed

00:28:42

to actually run as fast as her body was capable of.

00:28:46

And it was this missing power that was invisible

00:28:49

and way, way deep down.

00:28:51

And, you all, she could have kept running

00:28:53

for another year and kept sliding backwards.

00:28:57

And that's how we feel when we tell each other this, right?

00:29:00

When we say, like, nothing's ever going to be any different.

00:29:04

I've tried this. I've done all the bullet points.

00:29:07

And we just keep hitting the same wall just over and over.

00:29:10

And as a matter of fact, it's getting worse.

00:29:12

Every time I try to do something good, it's getting worse.

00:29:16

And so we say these things to each other.

00:29:17

And if you're in this place or your friend's in this place,

00:29:20

you need to hear the good news

00:29:22

that focuses on the resurrection.

00:29:24

Because the resurrection tells us that

00:29:27

no matter what stage something is in,

00:29:29

no matter how much it lacks power,

00:29:32

all the way down to death itself,

00:29:34

that there can be life in that place again,

00:29:37

there can be life there.

00:29:38

1 Corinthians 15, the original passage says

00:29:42

that the resurrection is core to the gospel.

00:29:44

There was a physical, literal human life

00:29:46

that stood back up out of a grave.

00:29:49

So if your friend talks to you about powerless,

00:29:51

hopeless, don't know which way to go again,

00:29:54

I want you to think Romans 6.

00:29:56

Just as Christ was raised from the dead

00:29:58

through the glory of the Father,

00:30:00

we too get to live a new life.

00:30:02

For if we've been united with Him in a death like His,

00:30:05

we will certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.

00:30:09

No matter how you are facing hopelessness or powerlessness,

00:30:13

you get to live a new life.

00:30:15

You get to have a power inside you that's so deep down

00:30:19

in the invisible places that there is literally

00:30:21

nothing in your life that you could not overcome.

00:30:24

Do you believe that?

00:30:26

That's the gospel, right?

00:30:28

That's the power of the resurrection.

00:30:30

And if you hear, if you know what to listen for

00:30:34

in the regular life of your normal people,

00:30:37

you're going to hear the entry point, right?

00:30:39

"I've hit a wall. I can't go any further.

00:30:40

There's nothing more I can do."

00:30:42

And you can say, "You know what? You're right.

00:30:43

There's nothing more you can do.

00:30:47

But I know a power that goes all the way down to death itself.

00:30:51

And it can raise anything back up to life again."

00:30:54

How is that not good news?

00:30:57

Okay. Last one. Third.

00:31:00

This is the one someone called me two days ago

00:31:03

and said to me on the phone, literally, word for word,

00:31:08

"I'm just completely in the dark.

00:31:12

I'm so in the dark. I'm so lost.

00:31:15

I don't know where to go."

00:31:16

I heard these words from a woman a couple of years ago

00:31:18

when I was sitting in a hair salon.

00:31:20

I was processing.

00:31:23

All you men out there may not know what that is.

00:31:26

You sit with foils in your hair.

00:31:27

See these highlights? It's not the sun.

00:31:31

The sun didn't do it.

00:31:33

So I'm sitting there with the foils in my hair.

00:31:35

You just got to wait it out 25 minutes or so.

00:31:37

And I start talking to the woman next to me,

00:31:40

and she shares the loss

00:31:41

of somebody super close to her in her life.

00:31:44

I saw tears in her eyes,

00:31:45

and she started to talk about this person

00:31:47

and how lost she felt without them

00:31:49

and how she she didn't know.

00:31:51

She didn't even know

00:31:52

what her life was supposed to look like anymore.

00:31:54

And the more we talked, the more she started using this language,

00:31:57

"I'm lost. I don't know what way to go.

00:32:00

I'm completely in the dark."

00:32:01

And she was even searching for supernatural clues

00:32:04

that this person was still around.

00:32:06

She was just completely overwhelmed with the darkness

00:32:10

that had surrounded her.

00:32:11

And the good news in this space is that

00:32:13

there's a God with a plan who comes and finds you in the dark.

00:32:19

Remember what 1 Corinthians 15 said,

00:32:21

according to the scriptures, according to the scriptures,

00:32:25

God had a plan to go into the deepest darkness

00:32:28

and to come and pull you out of it.

00:32:30

And I said to her, "Um, you know, I actually know

00:32:33

what it feels like to be in the dark,

00:32:35

completely understand what it feels like to be in the dark.

00:32:38

And when I was in the dark, I called out

00:32:40

to somebody named Jesus, whose specialty it is

00:32:44

to come track people down who are lost in the dark

00:32:47

and to bring them into a totally different life."

00:32:50

Colossians 1 says that exactly,

00:32:52

another articulation of the gospel.

00:32:55

For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness

00:32:58

and brought us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves,

00:33:01

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

00:33:05

He takes us from one kingdom where it's dark,

00:33:08

where we have no future, where we don't see our way.

00:33:11

And He pulls us into the Kingdom of the Son He loves,

00:33:14

the Kingdom that the Bible repeatedly calls light,

00:33:17

over and over and over again.

00:33:19

Do you know what it means to be redeemed?

00:33:21

It means that you were bought back at a price.

00:33:23

You know what happens when you pay for something?

00:33:25

You can just walk right out with it.

00:33:27

You just get to take it wherever you want.

00:33:28

And guess where He wants to take you?

00:33:30

He wants to take you into a Kingdom

00:33:32

where God Himself is your light,

00:33:34

where it says in the Word that

00:33:36

His Word is a lamp for your feet and a light to your path,

00:33:39

where you are called a child of light

00:33:41

and told to walk with Him in the light.

00:33:43

And even if you're not in the light now,

00:33:45

there's a promise in the scriptures for you

00:33:47

that says that the path of the righteous

00:33:49

is like the morning sun that will shine ever brighter

00:33:51

until the full light of day.

00:33:53

Your friend who's lost in the dark,

00:33:55

there's a message of hope because

00:34:00

there was a God of grace that had a plan

00:34:02

to go and get you in the dark

00:34:04

and to pull you into the Kingdom of the Son that he loves.

00:34:08

How is this not good news?

00:34:11

How is this not exactly what your people need to hear?

00:34:14

How is this not what we need somebody to come

00:34:16

and remind us of when we're the ones who are lost

00:34:19

or hopeless or in the dark just yet again?

00:34:23

You know, we've talked about three ways here

00:34:25

that the Bible articulates the gospel.

00:34:26

There's got to be at least 5 or 6 more.

00:34:30

As you're reading the scriptures you're going

00:34:32

to come across things

00:34:33

that articulate the gospel from different angles.

00:34:36

And if you're listening to your people,

00:34:38

they're going to tell you

00:34:40

what kind of good news do I need to hear?

00:34:45

And I hope you'll remember the ones that we talked about today.

00:34:48

But more to the point, I hope that you go back

00:34:52

to the one that started all of them, the earliest message,

00:34:56

my ten words, that Jesus died for our sins

00:35:00

and He rose from the dead.

00:35:02

If we want to fulfill the mission

00:35:03

that He's given us on this earth,

00:35:05

we've got to tell people that

00:35:08

because that's the message that saves people.

00:35:11

And so, even for us, even right here today,

00:35:14

I know there's probably people who walked in the door

00:35:17

and who are a part of our community

00:35:18

who are exactly like I was when I was like,

00:35:21

"I think I'm kind of in the ballpark here.

00:35:23

I'm pretty sure I got most of this right."

00:35:25

What about you? Do you believe it?

00:35:29

Do you believe the message about Jesus,

00:35:31

about sin, about resurrection,

00:35:33

about the God of grace

00:35:35

who planned your salvation from the very beginning?

00:35:38

And have you said yes to that?

00:35:40

Have you actually said yes to that?

00:35:43

Do you know the promise of Romans 6 says

00:35:46

if you say yes to that, then today,

00:35:48

this day is the beginning of an entirely new life.

00:35:53

We are going to repeat together just a couple of lyrics

00:35:57

really quick before we end our time,

00:36:01

because they articulate the gospel in yet another way.

00:36:05

It's inside the song that we sang earlier.

00:36:07

And here's the lyrics that we're about to sing together.

00:36:10

Again, I would encourage you, if you have never

00:36:13

actually understood and received the gospel for yourself,

00:36:17

then you could make these lyrics your yes to Jesus right now.

00:36:22

This wild exchange you offer us:

00:36:26

I gave my worst and You gave Your blood.

00:36:31

It seems hard to believe, You're telling me You chose the Cross.

00:36:36

You're telling me I'm worth that much.

00:36:40

Yes, that's what I'm telling you

00:36:42

and that's not just what I'm telling you,

00:36:44

that's what God is telling you.

00:36:46

He sent His Son Jesus so that by faith in Him

00:36:49

you too can live a new life.

00:36:51

So would you just stand with me right now

00:36:52

and we're going to repeat these lyrics

00:36:55

as our yes to Jesus in one final Moment.

00:37:07

[music]

00:38:38

- If this really is the first day

00:38:40

that you have ever received the gospel

00:38:42

as the truth for your life

00:38:44

and completely surrendered your life to Jesus,

00:38:47

we have a prayer team who would absolutely love

00:38:50

to pray for you personally and individually right now.

00:38:53

But let me pray for all of us

00:38:55

and then we will see you next week

00:38:57

where Chuck's going to double down on how to share your story.

00:39:01

Lord, thank You for Your gospel.

00:39:04

Thank You for Your Son. Thank You for Your grace.

00:39:07

Help us to be people of conviction and courage

00:39:11

who share the one saving message that

00:39:15


00:39:18

Lord, help us to sell out completely for that.

00:39:24

It's in His Name that we pray. Amen. Amen.

00:39:28

Okay, see you next week.

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