Who God Says He Is

Kylen Perry: All right, Porch. How are we doing tonight? Are we doing okay? It's great to see you. Welcome back to another Tuesday night. We're so grateful that you would choose to be here with us, not just those of you who are here in the room but everyone who is tuning in online. We have not forgotten about you.

This is the amazing thing, y'all. I was just thinking this sitting over in my seat. God is so very clearly doing something. He always is doing something, but he has his thumb on the young adult generation. Yes, he is working in our room, but he is working in rooms like ours all over the nation and, really, all over the world.

So, to gather together and to be with a group of people who are from the exact same generation (they're in their 20s, they're in their 30s, and they believe similarly about the things of God; there's a united hunger for more of God) is a great place to be, because God loves to satisfy his people.

So, if you're here, and you're wondering, "What the heck have I stepped into?" let me welcome you. We're really glad you would make time to be with us here on Tuesday night. If you've been rolling with us for a long time, welcome back. Special shout-out to our Porch.Live locations, particularly Porch.Live Dayton, Fort Worth, and Wheaton. Put your hands together for those guys.

Hey, I am so excited for tonight; yes, because it's Tuesday, but also because we have a very special guest joining us tonight. Whenever it comes to identifying people we want to preach in a guest speaking spot here at The Porch, we really do the hard work of praying through "God, who would you have come?" This person certainly feels like an answer to prayer.

When I was a young man, fresh in my relationship with God, learning what it looked like to walk with Jesus, it was his voice God used to teach me not just about what to do but particularly about who he was, who Jesus is. I would ride in my 2004 GMC Sierra from Longview, Texas, to College Station, Texas, and it would be his voice that would keep me company as he would teach me the things of Jesus.

I know that voice has timelessly tuned my faith even to this day. And it's not just true of me; I know it is true of so many of you. So, Porch, would you please do an amazing job of helping me welcome old-time friend, guest speaker tonight, elder, lead pastor at The Village, Matt Chandler?

Matt Chandler: Hey, Porch. It's good to be back. You guys look amazing. If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We're going to be in Exodus, chapter 3. If your Bible is on your phone and you trust yourself…you have self-control…then go ahead and do it that way. If not, just check on the screen behind me.

The worship set was just unbelievable. That was not only anointed but just Godward. We weren't singing about us. We weren't singing about our stuff. We were singing about God's "Godness." That has a shaping force over time. Like, when you get to be Pawpaw Chandler's age, you start to appreciate the shaping force of "Godwardness" in regard to your own joy and delight in life.

If you've listened to me preach or have followed anything I've done, written, or anything like that, you know I'm not prone to starting stuff with ancient pagan prayers, but tonight, I'm going to read an Assyrian prayer from around 668 to 633 BC. The title of the prayer is "A Prayer to Every God." Let me read it to you. It's longer than I would like, but they wrote it.

"May the fury of my lord's heart be quieted toward me. May the god who is not known be quieted toward me; may the goddess who is not known be quieted toward me. May the god whom I know or do not know be quieted toward me." Just brother covering his bases. "May the goddess whom I know or do not know be quieted toward me. […] My transgressions are many; great are my sins.

The transgression which I have committed, indeed I do not know; the sin which I have done, indeed I do not know. The forbidden thing which I have eaten, indeed I do not know; the prohibited place on which I have set foot, indeed I do not know. The lord in the anger of his heart looked at me; the god in the rage of his heart confronted me; when the goddess was angry with me, she made me become ill. The god whom I know or do not know has oppressed me; the goddess whom I know or do not know has placed suffering upon me. […]

How long, O my goddess, whom I know or do not know, ere your hostile heart will be quieted? Man is dumb; he knows nothing." This is very different than the Prayer of Jabez, if you remember that. "Mankind, everyone that exists-what does he know? Whether he is committing sin or doing good, he does not even know. O my lord, do not cast your servant down; he is plunged into the waters of a swamp; take him by the hand."

Now, make some eye contact with me. By the grace of God, we never have to pray like that. You and I, as children of the creator God, are not left guessing what pleases God or displeases God. How would God behave? What does God love? What does God require of us? What's the meaning and purpose of our lives? What's this thing all about?

We don't have to pray this prayer at all, because God in his grace has revealed himself to us. He has let us know who he is, what he wants, what life is all about, and what our purpose is, and he has not left us groping in the dark, hoping we get it right when all is said and done. God has made himself known.

Now, what's interesting, not just in our generation but in all generations before us… Each generation has this bad habit of disregarding God's revelation of himself and, instead, creating a new god made in our image that we like. Here's the way it works. All of us, in this moment we're living in… All of the inputs are creating what sociologists would call plausibility structures. Here's all that means. There are things that just make sense to us. When we see them, when we hear them, when we watch them, it just makes sense to us.

So then, what we're prone to do is we're prone to make God in our own image. We're prone to make God submit to the current cultural plausibility structures. So, God obviously doesn't believe what he used to believe about sexuality, bro. It's so 2025. It just makes sense to us that God would think like us and not like God has actually revealed himself to be. But God refuses to play this game with us. God will not let you give him a makeover.

In fact, if I could be so bold, without trying to be offensive, it does not matter what you think about God. God is God. Your little opinion of how he should behave or what he should be like… He will not bend to your will. He will not become what we think he should become. He is what he is, and he's unapologetic. As we'll read in a second, he has no plans on changing his name. He has no plans on changing his character so we think he's more palatable. God is God, and there is no one else like him. Our opinion of him has no bearing on who he is. He is who he is.

So, what I want to emphasize tonight (and we sang it through the whole set) is I want to talk about the holiness of God and then some really good news around that holiness. God is ultimate reality. He's not a concept you and I get to shape. So, I want to read this Exodus passage. If you have a church background, here's the story all through Genesis and the early part of Exodus. You see God working. You see him moving. You see him working and doing things, but he never actually introduces himself. He's just at work. He's just God.

Then, what happens is the people of Israel are enslaved. God hears their crying. In fact, it's one of my favorite passages in the Bible. God heard them, saw them, and came down, which is good for you to dwell on and think on. God sees, he hears, and he has come down. So, we read that, and then God goes and finds a man who's going to be used by him in profound ways to deliver his people out of bondage. He comes to Moses.

Moses makes sense. Right? He's fluent in Egyptian. He knows the layout of the palace. He's the perfect guy for the job. So, God shows up, and Moses wants no part of this. He had already tried his own little rebellion back in the day. He had murdered a man with his hands and then did a really poor job of burying the body. They found the body, and then he had to flee and run when Pharaoh came after him. He has just lived out in Midian in total isolation. Like, he deleted the apps. No one knew what he was doing. No pictures of lamb and unleavened bread…none of that.

He's just out working the pasture, and he comes across this bush that was on fire and not being consumed. God begins to speak to him out of the bush to tell him, "Hey, you're my guy. I know your stutter. I know you're a murderer. I know you kind of rage. You still kind of freak out in traffic if somebody is in the left lane not quite going the way they should. I know you have some issues, but you're my guy. It's not going to be your Egyptian skills; it's not going to be your knowledge of the past; it's going to be my power that leads my people out of bondage."

Moses keeps deflecting and keeps deflecting. Then, finally, in desperation, he goes, "They're going to ask me who sent me. What do I say?" This is the first time in the Bible God introduces himself by giving his name to his people. So, let's look at this.

Exodus 3, starting in verse 14: "God replied to Moses, 'I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I am has sent me to you.' God also said to Moses, 'Say this to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.'" This is a huge sentence: "This is my name forever…" "I Am Who I Am. I am Jehovah, Yahweh. That is my name forever." "…this is how I am to be remembered in every generation."

Remember a moment ago when I said God is not going to change his name to meet our cultural standards? There it is. "This is my name in every generation. I will not change who I am to fit your cultural norms. I sit at the center of reality enthroned on high. You will conform to me; I will not conform to you." That's the thrust of the passage.

Now, this "I Am Who I Am" is meant to blow up our categories. It's translated Yahweh or Jehovah. If you're reading in the Old Testament, you're going to see this as the Lord in all caps. Every time you see the Lord in all caps, you're reading this: I Am, Jehovah, Yahweh. This "I Am Who I Am" is there to kind of blow up our categories. Here's what I mean.

You are and I am something. I am. It's hard for me to explain to you who I am without giving you the something. "I am a pastor. I am a husband. I am a dad. I am a friend. I am a [fill in the blank]." I am these things. It could be my socioeconomic status. It could be my ethnicity. I am something. I have to use "I am," but God isn't that way. He isn't shaped by others. I have been shaped by others. God has never been shaped by anyone.

Like, you did not just spontaneously arrive here tonight with all of your compulsions, fears, hopes, and joys. No, that was shaped by your environment to some degree. God isn't built like that. He's not shaped by anyone. Then he goes on. Here's what's funny about "I Am Who I Am." In the Hebrew, a better translation would be "I Be Who I Be," which sounds cooler, but it's bad English, so they translate it "I Am Who I Am."

God is saying in this, "I have always been who I have always been." He is unchanging. You and I…we change. God, immutable, does not change. He is the unchanging God. "I Am Who I Am." I've been shaped by others. You've been shaped by others. God is not shaped by others. Then, "I will be who I will be." God will be what matters in the future. God is ultimate reality, past, present, and future.

Now, let me take my opening illustration and give you an example of what I mean by "plausibility structures" and how we tend to try to define God in our own cultural moment as opposed to letting God tell us who he is and heeding that. If you were to ask even your most unbelieving friend to tell you what God is like, 90 percent shot they're going to say, "God is love." "God is love. That's who God is. God is love, and love is love, and God is love." That's the refrain of our…

The problem with that is love is a junk-drawer word in English. It has no meaning. I know that for how we use it, because I will oftentimes talk about how much I love my wife, and I'll tell you how much I love a good rib eye. I'm not talking about the same thing when I use that. I love my dog, and I love my children, and I'm not saying the same thing. It's just a junk-drawer word, so it has been emptied of meaning.

Most of the time, when people say, "God is love," what they're saying is "God and I are cool." Like, "God doesn't have any problem with me." God doesn't have a problem with anyone. He's like Tinker Bell from Peter Pan. He just kind of flies around and sprinkles things on people, and they fly. He's always just cheering everybody on to their ideal self. This is what we've done, that "God is love." What we mean is "God is who I want him to be."

Here's what's hard: God is love. It's not something he has; he is it. He is love. In fact, we read that twice in the same passage in the New Testament. Yet, if we're just perusing the Canon, Genesis to Revelation, he is called something else 400 times in the Bible. Four hundred times in the Bible, compared to two, he is called holy. So, I think we can start teasing from this that the main thrust of God wanting us to get to know him is not that he is love but that his love has been informed by his holiness. It's not his love that informs his holiness; it's his holiness that informs his love.

Now, for that to make sense, we have to actually have a definition for what holiness is. Here would be my bet. I could be wrong. I don't know where you go to church. If I just stopped, and I was like, "Put an open mic out there," and I were to ask you, "Tell me what holiness is…" I'm curious. I mean, no smoke. This is a discipleship/Western evangelical issue. It's not yours.

We just sang, like, 30 songs that talked about his holiness. I was looking around, going, "Holy! Holy!" I'm just wondering… Do you even know what you're saying? This is such a sad thing. We have these Bible words, this kind of Christian nomenclature that has been emptied of its meaning, depth, and power.

So, let me throw up the definition of holiness. It means wholeness, entireness, perfection in a moral sense. So, when we say, "God is love," we're not wrong; we're just saying his love is different than our love in that his love is whole, his love is entire, and his love is perfect in a moral sense. We can't love like that. God can love like that. So, his love isn't indifference to our sin. His love isn't indifference to our rebellion. His love is holy. It's entire. It's morally perfect.

A good place to see this is in Revelation, chapter 4. In Revelation, chapter 4, what we see is Christ enthroned on high. He's on his throne, and there are these 12 thrones to his right and these 12 thrones to his left, symbolizing the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles. What they're standing for is the people of God across human history.

Then, in front of him, you have men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth. They're there, and they're worshiping him. You have a rainbow behind his throne, and you have crystal and topaz, and all of these things that are meant to communicate that all the beauty, all the power, and all the authority belong to Jesus.

Then, in the middle of the scene, there are these four freaky creatures. I mean, the stuff of nightmares. You can read it. Like, if you wake up and one of those is floating above your head, you're freaking out. You aren't worshiping all of a sudden; you're wetting yourself. So, you have these four freaky little creatures. They're made up of these different things. They're part ox. They're part eagle. They're covered in eyes. They have faces like men. They have these wings, and they're covering stuff with their wings, and they're fluttering.

The Bible says since the beginning until forever into eternity, they sing the same song: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come." Do you catch it? They're not around the throne singing "Mercy, mercy, mercy" or "Love, love, love" or [you fill in the blank with your favorite attribute of God]. No, they're saying, "He is holy. He is mighty. He is enthroned on high. His name will not change." Did you see the line I just drew?

So, he introduces himself as Yahweh. "I Am Who I Am. I will not change my name. I have always been this, I am this now, and I will always be this." Fast-forward to Revelation 4, and what are they saying? "This is my name in every generation." The same thing he said in Exodus 3. This is the God of the Bible: holy, perfect.

This is the giant, obvious idea in the Bible: God is holy. If I could say it more simply, Jesus might be your friend, but he is not your homeboy. Jesus might be your friend, but when you see him, you will not dap him up, 100 percent. People can't even see angels without falling on the ground like dead people. You think you're going to dap up the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? You will not. He might be your friend (John 15), but he is not your homeboy. He is holy.

Look right at me, because this is where things are going to get more difficult. God will not violate his holiness for any reason. He is not understanding like that, if you will. Now, what I've just done is created tension with the text. Here's what I mean. God is holy, but God is love. This is a problem, because God is holy and God loves you. Here's the problem: when the pure holiness of God manifests presently, it destroys anything that's not holy.

I don't know if you've ever thought about God's wrath this way, but let me frame it like this. God's wrath is not rage; it's priestly fire. I'm going to say that again. God's wrath is not rage; it's priestly fire. The very essence of who he is will obliterate anything that is sinful, twisted, dark, and broken…anything, even if it's a small little thing. It happens just because of the nature of his holiness.

When you read about the wrath of God in the Bible, it's not like God is freaking out like your mom or dad used to. That's not what it is. It's priestly fire. His holiness obliterates. So, now you have a God who wants to be near to us. He wants to love us, but all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. He loves us, and his holiness will destroy us if he comes near. How can that be fixed?

It can't be fixed by us, because the Bible says we were born in iniquity, that we were born with a bent, that we came out of the womb headed toward rebellion. If you've ever been around toddlers, this is true. I mean, my kids are older now, but I can tell you there were things I saw my kids do that they did not learn in our environment, if you will. Like, my mouth to God's ear, they never watched me shove down Lauren, snatch the remote out of her hand, and scream "Mine!" into her face. They did not learn that in my home. They had broken little hearts.

From the earliest ages, when they didn't get what they wanted, they acted violently. They acted in rebellion. This is how all of us come into the world: in iniquity, bent toward rebellion. So, God loves you. He wants to move toward you, and if he moves toward you in his holiness, you will be obliterated.

Here's what's crazy about God's holiness. For all his incommunicable attributes, all of the things he is and we can never be, this is the one he's offering to make us. God doesn't say, "I'm going to make you transcendent. I'm going to make you omnipresent. I'm going to make you omnipotent. I'm going to make you omniscient." He's not saying, "I'm going to make you immutable." No. Those are God's and God's alone.

But God, who is holy, solves the problem of holiness and love by offering holiness to those who will believe by faith in the grace made available. He does this namely through the blood of Jesus Christ. I don't know if you've ever thought about this. When we talk about blood in church, if you're not a Christian, it probably sounds weird. Like, the only two kinds of people who sing about blood are heavy metal bands and Christians. There's Pantera and Chris Tomlin. That's who's singing about blood.

But there's a reason we're singing about blood. The Bible has been really clear about the effects of sin. It talks about the scope of sin, that sin fractures everything. It fractures everything at a macro level and a micro level. When sin entered the cosmos, it fractured everything down to the cellular level. He talks a lot about the damages, causes along the horizontal plane, the damage it does to us and the damage it does to others.

The Scriptures are clear about this, that sin leads to death, that sin wreaks havoc, that bitterness, strife, anger, and lust rot out the soul, and then he gives God's solution for it. When the Bible talks about blood… When we see blood, we think death. That's just what we think. We see blood and we think death. The ancient Near East saw blood and thought life. It's opposite. When the ancient Near East saw a sacrifice, saw blood flowing out of a temple, they thought life. "Life is there."

So, when the Bible is talking about the blood, namely the blood of Jesus, here are the things it says about his blood. It establishes a new covenant. God enters into a covenant with you, a covenant that he will not break. In fact, make some eye contact so I can say this to you. I don't care how you came in tonight. Jesus knew what he was buying on the cross. I don't care what's in your past. Jesus knew what he was buying on the cross. He didn't die on the cross, and now that he sees you in 3D, he's full of regret. That's not the way this works.

The cross is so grotesque and so heinous so that you'd be able to look to it and believe that he paid your price in full. This is the new covenant. The writer of Hebrews says God has sworn by his own name to keep this covenant, because there wasn't anything else he could swear by that had more power. You and I can swear to the Lord. We can swear by our moms. God can't swear by anything other than himself. So, he swears to himself that he'll keep his covenant promise to us.

The blood atones for our sins…all of them…past, present, and future. Here's what I know is in the room. There are some of you that when you became a Christian, it was euphoric. You felt free, and you couldn't believe God loved you. You were on it, man. Then, a year later, six months later, two years later, you stumbled and fell and screwed up, and now you just can't believe he loves you.

He loved you when you were at your worst, but now that you're a son or a daughter, you screwed up and he hates you? This starts the kind of bondage and enslavement that I experience with so many of God's people, because you refuse to believe the gospel that you believed when you first believed. The gospel is…what? That all of your sins, past, present, and future, are fully, freely, and forever forgiven.

This is Paul's point in Romans, chapter 5. He's saying, "If he loved you when you were at your worst, when you were his enemy, how much more, then, does he love you now that you're his son or daughter?" The blood of Jesus covers us from all unrighteousness. It provides this salvation. It redeems those who would believe. It cleanses our consciences. How does it cleanse our conscience? Let me tell this story.

Years ago, I was preaching down… I graduated from Texas City High School down by Galveston Island. I had been gone a long time. Man, I did some scandalous stuff when I was there before I became a Christian. I was preaching in Clear Creek, which is right north, so I thought, "You know what would be cool? I'm going to go down, and I'm going to take pictures of my old houses, and all this stuff, so I can show my kids when I get home."

I had that experience where… You know when you thought you were climbing some giant oak, because you were 7, 8, 9, or 10, and then you get there, and it's like a bush? It wasn't even a tree. You didn't even climb a tree. It was like a bush. So, as I'm driving into town to take pictures of these homes, I passed this field. In this field, I'd gotten in a fight with a kid named Sean. I sucker punched him, and there was nobody there to pull me off. I just shamed and embarrassed him in front of everyone.

I have to believe, unless God did some kind of gracious work in his life, wherever he is right now, he hates me. The thought of me, the thought of my name, the thought of that moment… That's the kind of crap that'll follow a man the rest of his life. So, I was like, "Oh gah!" and then I kept driving. I was going to the first house, and I passed by this other house, Holly's house, that was a party. There were some grotesque, wicked, sinful things that happened in that house that I was a part of. I was like, "Oh my gosh."

Then I rounded out this other house, as I went to the second house we lived in in that area, and another house where there was another party. Wherever I went in that town, I started feeling immense shame. Then, I'm driving up to preach the gospel to a room full of pastors, and there's this little voice in my head about what those people would think about me if they knew I was preaching the gospel and how shameful my life had been and how gross my life had been.

I'm telling you…maybe you're freer than I am…I felt physically nauseous driving back up. Then I remembered. I remembered that the book of Galatians says, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

That moment for me was a cleansing of my conscience, because that Matt Chandler was a piece of crap and that Matt Chandler is dead. That Matt Chandler went to the cross with Christ. Part of the brutality of the cross was old Matt Chandler, for all his scandalous wickedness, not being able to condemn me anymore. That's how the blood of Jesus cleanses our consciences.

So, if we think about this, along the biblical arc, here's what's happening. The blood of Jesus covers us in such a way, gives us righteousness in such a way, takes our sin away in such a way, so completely, that when God looks upon us… The Bible uses this kind of language. We are spotless. I haven't been spotless today, but do you know who calls me spotless? God.

How, in his holiness, can he call me spotless? Because of the blood of Jesus. The blood of Jesus has cleansed me from all unrighteousness in my past, in my present, and all that I have waiting for me tomorrow. So, that frees me up to go…where? To run to him, not from him; to cling to that grace, not run from that grace.

In fact, I've tried to say at The Village for 20 years, "I'll know what you actually believe about the gospel not by how you act when everything is going your way; I'll know by how you act when you blow it." If you blow it, and you go farther than you ever thought you would, and you feel that rod of shame in your chest, and you run to him, then you get the gospel. If you run from him, you're still stuck in some sort of moral-based theism. You might as well pray that prayer we read at the beginning.

The grace of God covers our unrighteousness through the blood of Jesus. It's why we sing about it. It's why we talk about it. It's why we and the heavy metalers get together and write melodic scream songs about the blood of Jesus, because it covers us from righteousness. The perfection of the law had to be dealt with or God is not just. In his holiness, if God just went, "Hey, that rebellion? Don't worry about that," it would mean God is not just.

So, to satisfy the just requirements of the law, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, condescended, put on flesh and blood, dwelt among us, was tempted in every way we would be tempted, yet stayed true to Christ. Then he imputes that righteousness to us after he takes on all of our sin on the cross and resurrects to reveal that the bill has been paid in full. If he's still in the ground, I'm still in debt. Because he was risen, death and sin have been defeated for all who put their faith in him.

Now, the invitation, then, to you and me is to receive from God this holiness that he wishes to lavish upon us. It's to receive from him what we can never earn through our striving; to be given by his grace something that all our moral improvement could never bring about; to be reconciled to God through Christ in a way that we're transformed from the inside out, not white-knuckled, navel gazing, trying to get morally pure more and more and more.

What I have found, if that's your thing, is you're going to run out of gas. You're going to punt, and you're going to say stupid stuff, like, "This Jesus stuff doesn't work." I'd like to say, "That's stupid. You never tried Jesus. You tried you really hard." The Bible is pretty clear that you really hard doesn't work. So, if your answer to your life's problems is to "me" even harder, friend, you're on a treadmill. You're running, but you're not going anywhere. The way out is the way in, to receive from God his holiness, to accept from God the free gift of grace that was poured out on the cross at Calvary.

Now, how do you respond to this? How should you respond? Well, let me read one more passage to you, and I want to talk about that. There's this great passage that Christians, in particular, know and sometimes quote. They haven't really read the rest of the chapter, but it's fine. That's not my point tonight. Isaiah, in the year that King Uzziah died… It was a big year. Uzziah had brought all sorts of reform. He kind of flamed out at the end, but he had done a lot of good stuff for Israel.

He ends up becoming strong in his own heart, rebels against God, gets leprosy, and dies. God is holy. In the year he dies, Isaiah, our boy, a good man, an upright man… This is what we know about him. He goes into the temple to worship, so he certainly is a God-fearer. When he goes in there, he has this vision of the Lord. What's funny is it looks very similar to what I described in Revelation 4. It was God enthroned in his temple, and his robe filled the temple.

When Isaiah sees him, he says this: "Then I said: Woe is me for I am ruined because I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips, and because my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Armies." Now, here's something I've always wondered: Did Isaiah know when he walked in there that he was a man of unclean lips and that he lived among a people of unclean lips or did seeing God rightly for who he is, enthroned in his holiness, expose in Isaiah his lack of holiness that cut him to the quick and led him to repent?

Personal experience. When God shows up, you see things rightly, and that rarely gives you swagger and most frequently gives you tears. Now, they can be tears of joy, because conviction is a sweet gift of God's grace. Conviction is always an invitation into greater intimacy with God. You should never despise it. God is not in the guilt business, but he is in the conviction business, because the conviction is reminding you that he has filled that gap. "Why are you trying to create it again? Step into the intimacy that I purchased by my blood."

So, what should be our response if God is holy and God doesn't care about your opinion of him and how you think he should behave or not behave, how you think he should act or not act? Even God's love is informed by his moral perfection, so all of the commands of God in the Bible, every "Thou shalt" and "Thou shalt not," are woven into the fabric of creation for human flourishing. To try to step outside of that tapestry is great rebellion against the holiness of God. It's willingly putting yourself in the position to be obliterated by his holiness when all is said and done.

This is why the Bible says that at the second coming of Christ, the mountains flee before him. I'm guessing if the mountains are trembling at his coming, you're not going to be standing with your chest out. I'm guessing you're going to want to try to catch up to those mountains. In fact, the Bible says people cry out for the mountains to fall on them to try to hide from the coming of the Lord. For those of us in Christ, those of us who are covered in his blood, spotless, blameless, delighted in, rejoiced over, sung over sons and daughters… We don't run on that day. The Bible says we get caught up. I love that. Everybody else is running; we're caught up. I'll take that.

Caught up to…what? Caught up to reward and ever-increasing life for eternity, ruling and reigning alongside King Jesus in a remade heaven and earth. Not some spiritual, ethereal plane where we're playing harps and hanging out in some ghosty space. No, no, no. Physical, literal place and physical, literal bodies, reigning and ruling alongside Christ forever. All of that, purchased by his blood, given to his children, invited in to participate in the very life of the Trinity forevermore.

So, what should be our response? Well, here's the first thing. If you've never said yes to Jesus, I would just say Christ has made a way for you. It doesn't matter. I know this script, guys. I remember it. You've just done some things. So, when you hear somebody talk like I talked, the way your brain starts to talk to you… I don't think it's just your brain talking to you, but you're talking yourself out of this being true for you because of this thing back here.

We witness this at The Village all the time. We baptized a girl last year who had had an abortion in college. Every time we preached the gospel, in her head she was like, "This is so awesome, but it can't be for me because I killed that baby." I'm just saying there is no sin with more power than the cross of Jesus Christ.

Guys, are you reading your Bible? I say this a lot. No one in the Bible could get hired at The Village. Their background check is going to show up some shady stuff, and we're not going to hire them. We already mentioned Moses. The dude had a deep rage issue even after he had face-to-face encounters with Christ. The dude would just freak out and smash stuff with his staff.

David? Do you think I'm hiring David? I mean, the best worship leader ever. The Bible says he'd play his harp and demons would flee. I'd love some of that at The Village, but my wife is an attractive woman. That brother might have me killed. I can't bring him on. Right? Who else? Who else do you have? You aren't going to find them. You have Daniel and Jesus. Everybody else is scandalous.

So, you're the guy or gal who's out-sinning the grace of God, not Saul of Tarsus? Seriously. Get over yourself. I know what happens. So, maybe today is the day you say yes to Jesus. That's why I'm here. I'm not here to shame you. I'm here to tell you the best news in the universe, that the one who sits at the center of reality has made a way for you to be whole, has made a way to reconcile you to God, has made a way to free you from all your striving and into the rest of being a son or daughter of God.

Another way we respond… Christian, where are you all locked up with him right now? Where are you delaying obedience? Where is it clear to you that you know God is asking this of you, and you are either saying no or doing that delayed obedience thing, which is just disobedient? What is it like to fear the Lord rightly as the Bible commands us? If it's the beginning of all wisdom, then repentance is the ongoing ethic of his people.

So, I just want to be straight. Where are you treating Jesus like he's your homeboy? Where are the commands of Scripture crashing against what you actually want to do in your life? Where is God refusing to be used by you as a genie in a bottle and you're growing in resentment toward him? Where have you decided that he just has to be cool with your sexual compulsions or your addiction or whatever? Where are you trying to sin all the more so that grace may abound? Don't forget the next sentence in Romans 6: "May it never be."

What does it look like for you to lay that down tonight, to confess it tonight, to step into obedience tonight? The holiness of God demands it. The sacrifice of Christ covers us in and through repentance, through faith in the grace made available to us through the blood. You know what? Don't bow your heads. Don't close your eyes. I think if you won't do it in this room, you won't do it anywhere.

If you're here tonight, and you're like, "Man, I've got some repenting I need to do; I have lived, behaved, and navigated this thing not like God is holy but like I'm free to do whatever and Christ is just cool with me despite these areas of my life that I refuse to surrender to him…" Is that anybody in the room? Is anybody stuck in some serious sin, some besetting sins? Yeah, it should be all over the room or I need to preach my next sermon on lying. Okay. Hey, great news. Thank you. That's courageous. The invitation for you is to come lay it down, and maybe lay it down again, and then keep laying it down until it's dead.

I'm going to pray for us, and then we're just going to respond to the Lord. I don't know what you need to do, but you know. There will be prayer team people up here if you need to pray. Here's what I would tell you. If God is convicting your heart, tell someone. Move some way. You're not going to make it out of the parking lot with just your inner conviction, which is why the command is always "Repent and confess" or "Confess and repent." It's not just internally saying, "Okay, I won't do it ever again." Yeah, okay. I'll give you three weeks, depending on your discipline level. If you let it out, darkness loses its power.

So, what if we kind of do some damage against darkness tonight? You're allowed to boldly approach the throne of grace with confidence. I'm going to pray for us. Prayer team members will be up here. We're just going to respond. We're going to sing a little bit, I think, and there will be people here if you need somebody to pray with or somebody to confess to. I'm just encouraging you. Don't harden your heart against the holiness of God and the work he's doing in your spirit right now. This will cost more 10 years from now.

Father, I bless these young men and women in the name of Jesus. I thank you for how you love us. I thank you that you solved the problem in our lives that we cannot solve. Thank you that you call us holy. It's crazy. It's hard for me to get my mind around that despite me, despite my past, despite my present compulsions and all of the screwups that are coming for me tomorrow and moving forward, you have made a way, and you will not grow weary in moving toward me in love.

So, I pray, even as you do that tonight, that we would not create space from you but that we would move toward you and receive from you this grace, that we would receive from you this love, that you are love. You want to give us that. So, would you overpower our stubbornness tonight for the fame of Jesus? We need you. We love you. Thank you. It's for your beautiful name I pray, amen.