I Have Decided To Fully Embrace the Good News of What Jesus Did for Me | Pastor Adam Peterson

But I'm grateful that all of you are here. Overflow, I'm grateful that you're here. Online, men and women in the correctional facilities, what a good day to be in the house of God. We are in week six of our series called I Have Decided. And this is a simple series that is just driving the direction of your life and my life when it comes to following Jesus. So here's what I'll say. You get to decide if you wanna listen to anything that I'm preaching today. You get to decide if you wanna receive it in your life so that it could possibly change you. Some of you decided to eat breakfast this morning. You're not hungry. Others of you decided, I'm not gonna eat breakfast. You're starving right now. You're thinking about where you're eating lunch. We all make daily decisions in our life. When it comes to following Jesus, what we're saying is this. We gotta decide some things in our heart because it will determine the direction our lives go. And so today's message is a simple one. It's probably my favorite message that I've ever preached at Rise Church. If you're a member of Rise Church, you've been around here for a little bit, you have seen me preach this, if not once, more than once. If you're brand new to Rise Church,

I'm talking about in the last year, you are about to see one of the most visually stimulating messages you've ever watched in your life. So I'm so glad that you're here. Today's message is simply this. I have decided to fully embrace the good news of what Jesus did for me. Yeah. And you're clapping and some of you are clapping because you think that's what you're supposed to do. Others of you are clapping because you think you know what I'm about to preach and the rest of you didn't clap at all because you don't have any clue about what I'm about to say. But here's what we're gonna do. I'm gonna invite our team. They're gonna bring some what I would call props out here on the stage just to kind of help me out. And I'm gonna preach a message to you that God used in my life when I was about 17, 18 years old that changed everything for me. You can put them down on the ground first right here. That's okay, y'all weren't here in the first service so perfect, that's fantastic. And normally I would hide these bins so that you wouldn't see what's going on but I ain't got time for that

and we got work to do so let's go. For this message, I pray that God speaks to your heart in a way that it transforms something. That if you did not know this truth, that I'm telling you light bulbs start clicking for you today and you go wow because that's what this message did for me and it changed everything in my life. And so for this message, this one right here is gonna represent you. You're looking pretty good, you're looking skinny, you're looking amazing. Have you been working out? I can tell. And this is what the Bible would say about you. Songs, surely I was sinful at birth and if you got issues with this, take it up with Adam and Eve because here's what happened. They were in the garden, everything was perfect, everything was going well. The devil came along, tempted them, they gave in to the temptation, they ate of the tree that God told them not to eat of and then sin entered the world. And the psalmist would say, hey, here's the issue. Every single one of us are sinful at birth. The illustration I always love to give for this is if I walked you down our preschool hallway

and showed you our two-year-old and three-year-old classrooms, you would see a bunch of adorable little sinners. And all the parents of the two and three-year-olds know exactly what I'm talking about. You're like, my kid is a sinner. Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me. And if you're like, I don't know, man, I don't know if I have sin in my life, 1 John would say it like this. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. So if you're here this morning, you're like, not me, man. I'm not a sinner, especially you. Matter of fact, the fact that you don't know that you're a sinner makes you an even worse sinner. And so I don't have time to give you all the verses, but the Bible would tell us very clearly that because of that, sin was born in us. That when we were born, we had a major problem called sin and it lives on the inside of us. And then verse after verse would tell us also this, not only was sin in us, but we had a major problem because we were trapped in sin. And before your relationship with Jesus, this is your identity. Maybe that's you here today. You're here and you say, I don't have a relationship with God.

You're seeing people get baptized this morning and you're like, what's that all about? You see people happy to be at church and you're like, why are you smiling to be here? Somebody forced me to be here, I'm not happy to be here this morning. Maybe you're here and you're like, I don't believe in God. That's cool that y'all do, but I don't. Well, then this is your identity. This is who you are. And for all of us who are followers. of Jesus, this was our identity before we called upon Jesus to come into our lives. We were trapped in here, we were stuck in here, we were enslaved to this. Meaning, you were really good at sinning. Anybody wanna raise your hand and say, I was actually a pretty good sinner? Okay, and if you weren't good at it, that just means you were doing it wrong, man. Now this is not a contest that we want anybody to win, but we got a lot of sinners in the room here today. Some of you did a lot more sin in your life than others, and that's okay, and here's the really good news. You ready for this? God looked at you and me, and he looked at us, and he thought, I'm still gonna love him. He looked at us in our sin, in our rebellion, in us saying, God, I'm gonna do my own thing, I don't have any regard to you,

I'm gonna do what I want when I want. He looked at us in this, and he goes, yeah, I'm still gonna love him. And I'm still gonna send my son to die for them. That's good news. That's a great God. And so let's walk through a lot of verses this morning, and if you're taking notes, you better write this stuff all down, just write the reference and come back to this later. The Bible says you were dead because of your sins. You weren't bad, oh, I just got a little bit of sin, you know, it's not that bad. No, you're dead, okay? You weren't bad and needed to be good, you were dead, and because of your sinful nature, it was not cut away, then God made you alive. So I'm not bad and need to be good, I'm dead and need to be made alive. I am dead, dead, dead. And here's the message. Jesus came so that you didn't have to stay in this, that he could set you free. Come on, let's go on to read. Then God made you alive with Christ. Here's the good news, he forgave all your sin, all of it. Woo, he canceled the record of the charges against us, meaning if there is like a log of every sin that you have ever committed written down, the devil would love to take that list and show it to God

and go, why would you ever love them because of, look at all this. And this is what Jesus does when you call upon him to be your savior, to forgive you of your sins. When the devil shows the list to God, Jesus steps in and goes, yeah, but I paid for all that. Like somebody, it's like somebody at a restaurant paying for your food, like the bill comes and like, hey, actually, that person paid for your meal, and you're like, what? Should have got the steak, right? That's what Jesus does. Devil goes, hey, look at this list of, you know, just everything that they've done, you should punish them. And Jesus goes, yeah, you should punish them, but because I paid for it, you don't have to punish, you punished me on the cross. Jesus took our place on the cross. Oh, this is good news. I should have just put the whole, see, whenever I do verses, I like to like, some of it's in white, some of it's in yellow. The stuff that's in yellow is the stuff I really want you to understand and get. I should have highlighted the whole verse in yellow because this is amazing. Come on, he canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away. What did he do? By nailing it to the cross.

So this is what happens. The moment that you realize that you're a sinner who needs a savior and you call upon that savior to come into your life and save you and forgive you of your sins, a rescue mission happens. Because you were stuck here. You could not get out of here, but Jesus is strong enough to come and bust you out of the sin in your life. Not only does he bust you out of sin, he busts the sin out of you. He sets you free. He cut it away, nailing it to the cross. That's good news, right? But the good news of Jesus is so good, it doesn't stop there. So let's read Colossians one. It says, for he has, what has he done? Rescued us from the dominion of darkness, from death, and he has brought us into the kingdom of the son he loves in whom we have redemption, which means we've been purchased by God, by Jesus, the forgiveness of sins. We've been forgiven of all of this. In the past, I would use this illustration. Think about a Jacksonville Jaguar player getting traded from the Jaguars to a better team. I would say they're going from the kingdom of darkness. Into the kingdom of light, right? But now the Jaguars are the kingdom of light.

So now anybody that gets traded from another team and comes to the Jags, that's the upgrade. That's what Jesus did for us. He was like, you were in darkness. You were stuck. You were enslaved to this. It was owning you. And the moment you called on me, I came and rescued you out of this. But the good news of Jesus is he doesn't even just leave you like this. See, for the longest time, I thought this was how I was supposed to live. I'm freed of my sin, I'm forgiven of my sin, now go be a Christian. The problem is I don't have the power to do it. So here's the good news, you ready? This is the Bible, people, Colossians 1. For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles. That's anybody that is not Jewish. The Jewish people were God's chosen people, and God looked on at a certain point and goes, hey, this message is for everybody. The way we say it here on the West Side is, it's for all y'all. It's for all of us. And this is the secret, meaning this has kind of been kept hidden,

but we're gonna reveal it to you right now. Christ, he lives in you now. So you're not just forgiven of sin, you're not just cut away from the power of sin, there's actually an upgrade that's taken place. Christ now lives in you. That's a beautiful thing, meaning you're never alone. Christ in you, the power of God on the inside of you. Oh, that's good news. But somehow it just gets better. So we read here in Ephesians, it says this, but because of his great love for us, none of you clapped for the great love of God for you. You should have. No, no, no, no, it's too late now. We were writing it down. I don't care. Let out a woo, you know? Give me two claps and a Ric Flair. Woo! All right, you know what I'm saying? Here we go. Because of his great love for us, God, who is what? Rich in mercy. I mean, he is loaded with mercy. He's got mercy just coming out, he's just dripping with mercy, man.

New mercies every day. He made us what? Alive, where? In Christ. So not only is the secret this, that Christ is in you, he made you alive in Christ. Amen! Amen! Amen! Amen! Because you were dead. Now you're alive. Even when we were dead. Even when, amen. Even when we were stuck in our transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved. Meaning, you couldn't do this yourself. So your story this morning isn't, man, I just, you know, forgave myself of my own sins and busted myself out of sin and set myself free and put myself in Christ. No, no, no, no. This is a work of grace that Jesus did for you and Jesus alone. If you're with me, say yeah. All right, let's keep moving. Colossians 1, since you have been raised to new life, you were dead, this is new life with Christ. Set your sights on the realities of heaven.

Stop being consumed with the things of this world where Christ sits at the place of honor at God's right hand. Set your mind on God. Oh, come on. Let's read on. Think about the things of heaven. Stop worrying about everything that's going on in this world. Not the things of earth, for you died. You're dead to this life. And the real life is hidden with Christ, where? In God. So now we get the big mamma jamma coming along here. Not only is Christ in you and you're in Christ, but Christ himself is in God. This, this is the upgrade, baby. This is, this is, this is like God looking at you going, hey, this was bad. You have no idea what I have in store for you. And you look pretty good in here. You look pretty safe and secure in there. Matter of fact, you probably can't even see yourself in there anymore. Just see God. See Jesus Christ. Christ in, I don't know where God starts, where Jesus starts, and where I, like, because you're in there. Your life is hidden. And the devil would come along and go,

yeah, but you're a sinner. And you're like, but that's not what the word of God says. Ephesians would tell us this. You were also included where? In Christ, when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation, it's the good news, when you believe. How did it all happen? Just from believing. Just from choosing to put your faith in him. Not because of anything good that you did. Because of the good things that Jesus did, you were marked where? In him, with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. Meaning this, if we didn't have three services at our church, I would take a tape gun right now and just wrap this whole thing up. That's the power of the Holy Spirit that seals the whole thing together, meaning there ain't nothing that's gonna get you out of this. The devil would have to cut the Holy Spirit, bust open God the Father, bust open Jesus Christ the Son, bust open Jesus Christ out of you. The devil's looking around going, what happened? He is defeated. Nothing, Romans would say, can separate us from the love of God. How can it separate us?

Because I'm in him. Yes. This is your identity. Corinthians would tell us this. And this is what some of you were talking about this. This is what you were. But you were washed. That's what baptism is. You ready? Washed. Now, baptism doesn't save you, baptism doesn't forgive you, baptism doesn't get you to heaven. Can I tell you something right now that's not gonna shock you? This is West Side water. You probably got dirtier getting in here than you were before you got in here. You're gonna need to go take a shower after the baptism, okay? This water doesn't do anything for you. It represents what Jesus already did for you. This is why when we baptize people, we want you to have an understanding of what is taking place. So this is my life before Jesus. I'm in sin, but because of what he did for me, I'm washed. And when I come out of the water, I'm a brand new person.

Again, the water didn't do it. Jesus did. It's just you publicly declaring to everybody what he did for you. So Corinthians says this is what you were. It's not what you are. The devil would love to tell you, oh, this is who you are. It's not who you are. It's what you were. But you were washed. You were sanctified, which means you're getting made more like Jesus. You were justified, which means you were made right with God. In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. I'm gonna give you another verse. We're just rocking and rolling here. Second Corinthians, anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person, meaning this isn't who you are. This is who you are. You're new now. The old life is gone. The new life has begun. This is why when you get baptized at our church, we give you a t-shirt that says Jesus changes everything because that's what we believe. Meaning if you started following Jesus

when you were 20 or 25 and now you're 45 and somebody runs into you, they don't even recognize you. They go, you're not the same person. You look at them and go, let me get my Tupperware. And you tell them, this is who I was. I met a guy named Jesus. I knew I was a sinner. I called on him to be my savior and this is what he has done for me. I'm not the same person. I am change. Pastor Jay, come on up. Best illustration I can do. It's the same one I do every time I teach it. So if you've heard it 100 times, 101, here it comes. But if this is the first time you've ever heard it, let this burn into your brain and in your heart. God is such a creative God. My favorite animal on the planet is the giraffe. Just like God got so creative when he made the giraffe. You know, whatever. Second most creative thing God did is the caterpillar. I want you to picture this. You ready? Picture a caterpillar. Nailing it, right? That's their entire life. I wanna get from that wall to that wall. See you in a couple years.

And then one day, the caterpillar gets so tired. Just exhausted from, take a nap. Curls up, falls asleep. Suddenly wakes up. Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! What? What? Can you imagine what is going through the mind of that caterpillar? A whole new creation. Just flying now. Just, this is wild, you ready? It's such a crazy transformation, we give it a new name. We don't call, that's a flying caterpillar. Right? It's a butterfly. Imagine that butterfly just waking up going, what happened? Just, his whole life. And now just like, what's up bro? Flying by other caterpillars going, your time's coming, it's happening. Take some NyQuil and you'll be all right. New creation. You ain't never seen a butterfly just walking in the dirt. They're flying, man.

Because the old's gone. News here. That's what Jesus does. Hey, that's what he did for you. You just have to decide, are you gonna walk in who he called you to be? Are you gonna let the devil tell you that's who you are? Or are you gonna listen to the truth of God's word? You gotta decide. Some of you are here today, and let's be real. You're tired of living this life. You're tired of it. Maybe those aren't the words you would use, maybe the words you would use would be, not satisfied. You're searching for something more. This is it. Cancel the search party. This is it, there is a transformation that the Lord wants to bring into your life. After the first service, we had a young man come up here at the front. He goes, today's my day. I'm ready. And I just have to believe, I just have to believe in a room this size, watching online, sitting in overflow, I just have to believe that there's somebody in here today

that today is your day. And you're tired, you're tired of that. It was fun for a season, but you are empty, and you're looking for something new. It's Jesus. And it's not an accident that you were here in our church today. God brought you here. Well, actually, I was brought by my aunt. No, God got you here. He just used her. He used him, he used your friend. I just came to see a baptism. That was a setup. And today God wants to change your life. So here's what it's gonna look like in our church. When everybody else is leaving today, we're gonna have a team down here up front. And all I want you to do is walk up to them and say, today's my day. I'm tired of crawling in the dirt. I'm ready to fly. I want forgiveness. I wanna be in Christ. I want purpose for my life. I want hope. I want joy. I want all the things that God brings. It's available to you today.

Prayer team, go ahead and get in place. We love you so much. I hope that you were encouraged being in the house today. I hope that you weren't offended by anything that was said. And if you were, let's have a conversation. Rush Church, enjoy the Superbowl, eat some good food, go Jags, you are dismissed.