Reputation & Reward | Foundations | Josh Leake

And if you are newer here, maybe you're visiting, let me introduce myself. My name is Josh. I'm the lead pastor here at Allison Park Church. And we are getting into week number five of the series that we started called Foundations, where we are looking at Jesus' Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter five through seven. And at the end of this teaching, Jesus says anyone who puts these teachings into practice is like somebody who's built their house on a rock rather than on sand. So we are looking at all of the things that he taught leading up to that, and how do we put those things into practice in our lives and as a community. We wanna be a church and a community that's really putting into practice what Jesus taught. So to kick off today's message, there's two words that I want to unpack. Kind of complicated, or at least culturally complex words. The words are sacred and holy. Sacred and holy. So the ultra simple crude definition we'll start with is that these words mean special. Sacred or holy means special or unique. And you can think of this like growing up, you probably had things that were sacred to you or to your family. So my kids all have blankets or pillows that were,

they're sacred, I mean, they're falling apart, they're disgusting, because they've had them from a young age, but they're sacred to them. Your family may have had sacred traditions that you guys always did this thing in this way on this date, and it was very important to your family. Maybe you had sacred rules in your family. You never do this or you always do this. Growing up, I had a sacred rule in our family. And that rule was whenever you have sleepovers at our house, if you wake up mom and dad, it's death. It's punishment by death. Not really, I mean, but it was, you knew, if we wake up mom and dad when we're having our friends over for a sleepover, if we wake up mom and dad, we're probably not gonna do sleepovers anymore. We knew that that was a thing. So I remember in middle school, I had two of my friends over from church. We were the most obnoxiously loud kids that you will ever meet in your life. And so I had them over to stay the night at my house. And I remember my mom pulled me aside and she said, you know the rule, this is an important rule, if you wake up anybody in the house, but especially if you wake up mom or dad, we're not gonna do this anymore. So I took that very seriously. Like, I don't know why, but in middle school at that point,

I was like, this is life or death. Like, I will not let this happen. So we went to the basement where we slept. That was where my room was. And I told my friends, I was like, listen, we're a loud group. No one goes upstairs for the rest of the night. And they were like, well, there's no bathroom down here. And I was like, I don't care. We're staying down here. So five minutes later, everybody's asleep. My friends are like, I really have to go to the bathroom. And I was like, we're in lockdown, baby. This is it, no. Code red, we're not going upstairs. Again, why did I not let them go upstairs? I don't know, but my middle school brain was like locked in on this. I was like, I'm not threatening my sleepover ecosystem. So I told them, there is one place left in the house that you can go to the bathroom. And that is our garage drain, one room over. So you can imagine how mortified my friend's parents were and my parents were when they rolled up the next morning. And the first thing my friends said to their parents were, Josh made us pee in the drain. But that was so important to me. My mom still, by the way, I'm not sure if she would even like me telling this story right now in this moment, but she's not in the room.

That was a sacred rule. That was a sacred rule. Do not wake up mom and dad. Do not wake up mom and dad. Do not wake up people in the family. So sacred and holy are the words we're talking about. These words carry what I've noticed to be some cultural baggage, sacred and holy. There's two ways that I think these words carry baggage. The first is that holy really has just come to mean a lot of times slang for somebody who thinks they're better. You know, like if somebody would be like, this guy doesn't pirate movies, he's holy. You know what I'm saying? It's holy is just sort of used as, oh, they think they're so much better in a false way. The other way that I think holy, or sacred and holy have baggage is that it conjures up images for many people of stiff, stale, dusty religion. I think especially depending on the context that you were raised in, that's sort of the image that can come to mind. And media loves to play into this of things that are sacred and holy, an old chapel building with an uptight priest trying to appease a God who's always frustrated with you. I think the words sacred and holy instantly can make. make some people think of that.

I found a person online who said, talked about their experience with church as a kid. Here's what they said. As a kid, church services were not enjoyable, maybe because God was always convicting your heart and reminding you of what a wicked, filthy, corrupt sinner you are, after which you would realize that you need to spend even more time on your knees in repentance, which in turn would make you a better Christian. Here's Christian's standard line to induce guilt. If you think the sermon is boring, then you must think that God is boring. So this person obviously had a lot of negative experiences with religious people and with churches, but I think that this represents a common feeling among a lot of people of what sacred or holy means, which is the feeling of God is always angry with you and always feels like you're not doing enough. And the only way to make that right is to spend as much time as possible in church and praying and reading the Bible, and then maybe God will be okay with you. I think that that is, for a lot of people, what these words can at least bring the feelings of. So I want to reclaim these concepts as we study Jesus's teaching today, because the words sacred and holy are of the utmost importance and they've gotten buried. So why are they important?

The Bible talks about surrounding the throne of heaven, there are angelic beings that all day and night are saying one word to describe God, and that word is holy, right? They're saying holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. His holiness is his purity, it's his moral perfection. God is completely other, completely different in a category of his own. This matters because everything good and beautiful and wonderful that we know about life comes from God, he's the source of it, it comes from his holiness. So beautiful sunsets and music that moves you to tears and parents selflessly loving their children and laughing with good friends over a meal, those are all good things that come from God. So God's holiness talks about his absolute purity, he is good through and through. God is the source of everything. If that's holiness, then the sacred is the connection points to the holy. So things that we value as sacred is places that we have recognized our connection points where God has made himself available, a holy God has made himself available and those connection points are sacred things because they connect us to a holy God. So for this week's passage, Jesus actually does something similar where he reclaims some sacred practices that had gotten buried under years of cultural baggage.

So we're gonna look at Matthew chapter six, verse one. If you wanna turn there in your Bibles, if you wanna pull it up on your phone, we'll put it on the screen as well but this starts with a frame verse. So Matthew chapter six, verse one starts with Jesus setting up the context of everything else after and then he gives several examples. So don't tune out for this first verse here. Matthew chapter six, verse one. It says, be careful, watch out, pay attention. Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your father in heaven. There's our frame verse and then he lists specific actions of ways that people had put baggage on these things to be seen by other people. He says, so when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing so that your giving may be in secret. Then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

There's verse five, he gives another example. When you pray, do not be like the hypocrites for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your father who is unseen. And then your father who sees what is done in secret will reward you. These are connection points to the heart of the father that had been twisted. So these practices that he's talking about, these are what we would call spiritual disciplines. Giving and prayer are the two we just looked at. We'll look at another one later. These are sacred practices, not because there's something magical about them, but because of what they connect us to. These practices are ways that God has allowed us to connect with his heart, these spiritual disciplines, these sacred pathways. And what had happened in Jesus's culture was that these sacred disciplines, these connection points to the all-powerful God of the universe, they looked impressive, but they had drifted in their purpose. People had begun using these connection points to God as avenues for competition. People had begun using these connection points, these sacred connections to an all-powerful God

that we get to know, they had begun using them to boost their own reputation. So it became a test to see who takes things the most seriously, who's the most spiritual, who's the most generous. And the way that these things were being practiced was about measuring spiritual maturity and depth by who was doing them the best or the most extravagant. So the question now, I think at this point, because we know that Jesus is addressing the religious leaders, and he's saying, check out the religious leaders, they're blowing trumpets as they give. They're standing up and praying these long, elaborate prayers because they want to impress people. The question I think comes up at this point is, why is Jesus inserting this in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount? Because this Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter five through seven, is all about how to be a community of people that are looking at common patterns of the heart so that we become the type of people that he wants us to be. Our tendency would be to say, there's a couple of corrupt, narcissistic religious people who do this, but this isn't for everybody. But really what Jesus is doing,

inserting this in the middle, he's exposing another common pattern of the heart right here. For every person in the room, what's the pattern that he's exposing here? Here's what it is. Sacred things get easily hijacked by selfish motives. He included this section in his sermon for a reason. It's not something only for a handful of self-obsessed people. We're talking about a common trap for the human heart. And the trap is that we allow sacred connection points with the Father to become influenced by our desire to be seen or our desire to be respected. Often these things start with good motives. Our desire to pray or to give, our desire to be religious, come to church, whatever, any of these things start good and they drift because the human heart always desires validation. And we wanna know we're measuring up. We wanna be respected. We wanna be thought well of. But so often we can use our spirituality to prove something. So what was meant to be a sacred connection with an all-powerful God, a perfect, holy, loving God, where he's made himself available, it can start to creep in selfish motives that corrupt what may have started as a good thing. And what we think we are doing for God can adopt a different motive.

Because so often we want credit for what we do. I think this is a natural human thing, that when we do something good, we want credit for that thing. And it's frustrating when we don't get credit for what we feel like we did that was good. So something I discovered in my first year of marriage, when I got married to my wife, Alison, I learned two things. First of all, I learned that when she told me that she was a huge neat freak, that she wasn't lying. Like when she told me, she's not in the room in this service, I was just ripping on her for this. She told me when we were dating, she was like, I am a huge neat freak. I used to vacuum the house multiple times a day. And I thought that was an expression. Like I vacuumed a lot. She literally would vacuum multiple times a day. Like she just loved it. So I found out that really mattered to her. The other thing I found out was that she really received love through acts of service. This was terrible news for young Josh, because I was terrible at both of those things. I was not a clean human being. And I was not good at displaying love in a way that wasn't intuitive to me. So in my first year, I started to learn,

okay, I can score relational points if I clean. And if I clean, especially when she's not home. So I would strategically find. times to clean when she wasn't around, but what was frustrating in my young and mature days in the first year of marriage is sometimes she would come home and she wouldn't notice. So I didn't get the points. I was like, I'm not doing this because I care. I don't want a vacuumed house. I want the points. This is all about the scoreboard for me. So then I was like, well, I need to find a way to get the credit for this. So then I would just, you know, stretch by the trash can a little bit. There's a pretty empty trash can right there. That's pretty great, huh? Or when we're like eating dinner, like, wow, these cups are so clean, man. Somebody must have done the dishes today, right? Like, this is what I wanted the credit. Jesus is saying, this is what we have to be careful of is desiring credit for doing spiritual things. Be aware of your tendency to prove, to compete, to get credit, to display, because it ends up corrupting something that is sacred connection with our father. By the way, this is not about worshiping and praying together. So when we're together in this community, being expressive when you're worshiping and raising your hands or praying in a small group, those are good things. Jesus is warning about doing spiritual things for selfish motives. The pattern of the heart to allow selfish motives to hijack the spiritual and the sacred. So before we move into reclaiming and refocusing spiritual disciplines, let's just ask ourselves some questions here to kind of reflect. Where could we have allowed this to creep in? Because remember, the whole series that we're studying here is about paying attention to what Jesus taught and applying it. So Jesus didn't talk about this here for a few people. This is for his whole community, for everyone that calls themself a follower of Jesus to reflect on and say, Lord, have I allowed this in? So a couple of reflection questions here. First one is, Holy Spirit, who am I tempted to perform for spiritually? Might just be a person, might be a group of people. Whose approval makes me feel like my devotion counts? Who do I secretly want to notice how serious I am or how faithful I am? Who am I trying to compete with? Or do I tend to measure myself against? Or one more, what would obedience look like if no one ever knew about it but God? So before we move on, let's just take a minute. Would you just pray with me? Lord, we really want to learn to follow you with our entire being.

And we know that this section is not just for a handful of people, it's for all of us. And so we pray, Lord, any place where we have allowed selfish motives to hijack our relationship with you, our prayer life, our giving, our Bible reading, our coming to church, whatever it is, any place, Lord, where we've desired credit or to perform or anything like that, Lord, reveal it to us so that we can look more like you in Jesus' name. Everybody said amen. Okay, so now let's talk about how to reclaim these things for their original purpose. So the ultimate value of sacred things is understanding that God reveals himself to us through these things, that he's chosen to make himself available to us. And the most important thing that you or I will ever do is pursue knowing the God of the universe. When we understand God's heart and how he feels about us and his desire to use us in the world around him, we become more like him. So God's not after performing mechanical routines or habits or impressive religious displays. What is God after? God is after your heart. It's why he spends the whole Sermon on the Mount talking about this idea, beware of not your external behaviors, beware of your heart, because it's the source of everything. This is also why when we talk about these three disciplines, we're going to talk about giving, prayer, and fasting, we're remembering that it's a pathway of our heart to connect with God's. So here's the main point that'll kind of frame the rest of it. The kind of devotion that pleases God is simple, hidden, and genuine. Simple, hidden, genuine. God is not after extravagant displays or the most impressive prayers. He's not most impressed with those who have performed the biggest miracles or preached on the biggest stages or drawn the biggest crowds, because God is not impressed by what man is impressed by. What is God wants your heart in simple, hidden, genuine devotion. And the beautiful reminder that we get through this, yes, we get the warning to say, be careful of how selfish motives can corrupt, but the beautiful positive reminder we get here is that the God of the universe who is all powerful, who crafted everything, is making himself available to you. And not based on performance,

not based on trying to be spiritual or trying to prove it, God crafted you and he loves you and he wants to make himself available to you. So what we can do is we could only see the warning and be like, Jesus is frustrated. No, we have to be careful of the selfish, but we should celebrate this. The sacred is something to celebrate because of what it connects us to. So when we looked here at some of these spiritual disciplines is what we'll call them, remember what we talked about, we're remembering that it's God wanting to connect with us. 1 John 14 says this, so we have come now to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love and whoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in him. So sometimes we get distracted or discouraged about our relationship with God because it's not happening on our terms. He's not speaking in the way that we think he should be speaking. He's not acting in the way that we think he should be acting or responding. So sometimes we perform to try to get on better terms or to try to get an answer. But the reminder that we need is a relationship with God through the sacred is not on our terms. He doesn't speak when we want, how we want.

He doesn't act how we want or when we want. Sometimes those things line up, but we have to remember that the sacred is connecting us with an extra dimensional being that is far beyond what we could ever understand. But it's a privilege, it's an opportunity and when you practice simple, hidden, genuine devotion, you will find him. So let's talk now about these three sacred pathways that Jesus outlines here, spiritual disciplines that Jesus is reclaiming. The first one, his first spiritual discipline is giving. So this is the one where he said, the religious leaders were blowing a trumpet, every time they would give. Imagine this, imagine how wild that was. I mean, it's so different from our culture, but this is where Jesus is bringing it back to the sacred pathway of the heart connection with God. So we talked about this idea two weeks ago in our message. The theme verse was where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. Giving and generosity is sacred because of the heart connection with God. It's less about the flow of the money and it's more about the flow of our heart and how that leans into our money. So giving and generosity, why is that sacred? Why is that a connection point? Because we are showing God

that he is what matters to us most. And we're showing God that what he cares about matters to us. So those who are struggling, needy, broken, hurting, when we are paying attention to allow the spirit to speak to us, to see who's around us and we give towards them, it's like the flow of our heart. So it's sacred because of that heart connection there and we do it quietly and covertly. Okay, that's the first one. Here's number two, spiritual discipline is prayer. So Jesus actually gives a model for this right here in Matthew chapter six. We didn't read it, but Matthew chapter six contains what's called the Lord's Prayer. Okay, many of you probably memorized this growing up. How many of you in the room you had to memorize this for something growing up? Okay, yeah. What has happened with the Lord's Prayer is that I think it has over time carried a different kind of baggage where what is sacred about it has been twisted into being a mystical ritual based on repetition, where the power of it is mostly in the sequence of the words or it's in the repetition of the words. But Jesus was not looking to give an exact, a chant that you say that unlocks something. He was giving a model for what? For simple, hidden, genuine devotion.

So let's go through this together here. In Matthew chapter six, he says, this then is how you should pray. He actually goes before this and says, don't babble on like everybody else. That's how he starts it. Everybody else, the pagans, the religious leaders, they're standing up and they're doing these long extravagant prayers. They think that the length of their prayer is gonna get them heard. How should you pray? He says this, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. We'll pause after each section here. So the first model for it is worship. It's not repeating the exact words, it's saying, my God, my Father in heaven, I recognize that you are holy. That's what this word means. Holy, you are perfect, you are pure. Every single thing that is good about life originates with you. You are everything that is good. So the first way to pray is just posturing yourself in worship. Then he continues on, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. What this is, is an opportunity to be used by God to change the world around us through prayer.

Again, it's been so often twisted into repetition when what this is really supposed to be is recognizing a sacred avenue to shape the world around us through connection with the God of the universe. It's a beautiful thing when we recognize that it's more than something stiff and stale and boring to try to get on God's good side. No, it's a father and his child and saying, God, I recognize that you want to use me as an avenue to shape the world around me. Think about the difference this would make if when we observed things that are going wrong, we started to pray this way. Because so often what can happen for us, even for Christians, we see things that are going wrong in our nation, in our world, in our family, in our workplace, and we get worked up and we get bitter and we stew on it. We get frustrated and we talk about it with other people. Can you imagine the difference that it would make if instead of staying in that place, we started to say, God, I recognize that you have created me as a channel for your power to be able to pray. Your kingdom come in my family and in my world, in my house, in my country, as it is in heaven. That's the privilege of partnering with an all-powerful God. Here's the thing that's difficult about this. You and I don't get to control the speed.

We don't get immediate feedback. We prefer things that are productive. I put an X, I get Y. I do this thing and then this happens. In prayer, we release control. We say, I don't ever have enough power to fix anything, but I know who does. Jesus, I pray that your kingdom would come and begin to shape this church, this city, my family, exactly like it is in heaven. So my challenge for us in this room is that we really begin to lean into that part of the prayer especially. Okay, that's the second part. Let's just continue on and go through the next quickly. Give us today our daily bread. So many of us neglect asking God for things because we think maybe I haven't performed well enough. Maybe he is unhappy with me. He's not gonna answer anyway that we don't even ask. But I really think God would begin to answer a lot more prayers if we would ask. I believe God is a good father who wants to answer the prayers of his children. Now, we don't always know what's best. So we get no or wait sometimes, and we don't always understand that. But so often, we just neglect asking. The next one is forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors

and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. So this is to say, Lord, help me to realize places that I've drifted. This, by the way, should be home base for all of us, especially as a church. Yes, for individuals, but when we come together, we're recognizing I am not perfect. There are ways that I will drift that I need to come back to. Lord, if there's anything in my heart that's displeasing to you, search me, convict me, show me. Help me to stay out of anything that the enemy's gonna try to trap me with. That's prayer. It's a model for simple, hidden, genuine devotion. Okay, last one, number three, the discipline of fasting. So in verse 16, he outlines the baggage that this has. He says, when you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Meaning when they were not eating, they were somehow putting makeup on. I don't know what they were doing, but they wanted people to know that they were doing something spiritually difficult. If you've fasted before, you know it's difficult.

It's brutal. Because when you are denying yourself food for a period of time, your body is screaming at you. When it screams at you, it's saying, if you don't feed me, I'm gonna die. You need to feed me something right now, or I'm gonna die. The voice of our flesh is loud. It's always telling us you need what you want, and you need it now. So when you deny that voice, it's very difficult. But also, you start to hear God's voice clearer. Some of the times that I have heard God's voice the clearest have been during times of fasting, when I felt most alive, when I felt the most connected to God, because you're separating the voice of your flesh of what it wants, and you're able to hear the voice of God clearer. There's a pastor, I love how he summed up the practice of fasting. He said, in fasting, you are literally praying with your body, offering all that you are to God in worship. And as you yield your body to God, you are breaking the power of the flesh to control you, and opening up to the power of the spirit in its place. You are learning to be joyful, even when you don't get what you want. You are practicing suffering,

and through it, increasing your capacity for joy in all circumstances. And you are amplifying your prayers, increasing your capacity to both hear and be heard by God. There's a pastor named John Mark Comer that said that. I love that summary of it, that we are learning to not give ourselves what we want. We're learning to sit in suffering a little bit, and become more like Jesus through that. So as we wrap up this teaching here today, my encouragement for all of us in the room is, let's take one step with each one of those things. So forgiving, it might just be that you've never taken that step before. You've never really done anything with your money, except what you want. And the idea of opening up to God to say, God, what would you like me to do? Is there somebody you want me to be generous with? How would you like me to be obedient? Taking a step in that way, recognizing that's a sacred connection point to your Father. Or with prayer, I think so many of us struggle to get off the ground because we have all or nothing thinking. So we think, I'm gonna try to spend this long in prayer, this many days a week, and then when we struggle with that, we go to nothing. Or maybe we do five seconds, and it never gets beyond that. But my encouragement would be take a step.

Maybe you use the Lord's Prayer as a model of things that you begin to pray through. Maybe you've been praying for five minutes a day, and you need to just carve out 15, you need to carve out 20, because you're recognized, not to earn something with God, but because you're recognizing, this is a sacred connection with the most important thing in my life. For fasting, we fast every January, every September. So in September, we're gonna do some revival night services, which will be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and we fast as a church leading up to this. So if you've never done this practice before of denying yourself food for a period of time, this will be incredibly difficult, but also it's so important. Maybe you've done it for two days or three days, but you've never done a week of no food. Taking that step might be one of the most important things you ever do. I'm serious when I say that. It gets easier as you do it. It doesn't make it easy, but as you deny yourself and you take a step forward, you start to sense the connection with God a little clearer. So again, my encouragement would be with each one of these disciplines that we've talked about, take one step, not to earn something. It starts because God has made himself available.

God made himself available through Jesus Christ. You and I could never, ever, ever do anything to earn connection with God. This is the whole reason that Jesus came, is that we were trapped in our sin. We're corrupted by our own selfish desires. The reason we have murder and abuse and selfishness and greed, division, all of that is a result of our selfish desires. Jesus saw that we were lost in this. So God himself loved us so much, saw how broken we were, that he limited himself and he came to earth to live a perfect and sinless life. And he knew we couldn't pay the price for our brokenness and our sin, so he died on that cross to take our place and to absorb the cost of our sin. This is what being alive is all about. This is what building your life on the foundation of Jesus is all about. It's about building on something more than just the temporary of your finances, your career, your family, relationships. All of that is temporary. But there's something placed deep within every single one of us that says, this is not all there is. You're not an accident. You're not a collection of molecules that happen to be.

You are a crafted work of art human being, but you also need forgiveness for sin. You need a savior. You need to build your life on something more than the temporary. So let's close our eyes, bow our heads together. If you're in the room and you've never given your life to Jesus, you've never asked for forgiveness, the Bible says that we're saved by faith through grace. Meaning it's a gift you receive, not by works so that you can boast about it. It's a gift that you're given by putting your faith in Jesus Christ. How do you get to heaven and spend eternity with him? How do you build your life on the foundation of Jesus Christ? You put your faith in him. Some of you, you believe in Jesus. You believe that there is a God, but you have not surrendered to him. There is a huge difference. The Bible actually says there are gonna be people that get to heaven's gaze and say they believed in God and they did things for God, but they never asked Jesus for forgiveness and they never surrendered to him and made him their king. If you're in the room and you say, I know I've never made that decision before to surrender my life to Jesus and to ask for forgiveness.

Listen, this is the most important decision you'll ever make. Everything else is temporary. This affects your eternity. But you have a loving father who cares about you, who knows you, who wants to forgive you and heal you and give you purpose. And the step one is to say, Jesus, I put my faith in you. I surrender to you. I wanna live your way and I need to be forgiven. So if that's you in the room and you're saying, I've been only living for the temporary. I've never surrendered to Jesus. I've never asked for forgiveness. And you know it's you. Deep down, you can sort of feel the Holy Spirit tugging on you to say, this is your moment. Listen, if that's you, when I count to three, I want you to raise your hand to say, yes, today I'm making that choice. Why do I have to raise your hand? When you're making a decision about the eternal, especially one where it's a God who bled and died on a cross for you, it's important for it not to just be a quiet thought and then you leave, to act on it, right? So if that's you, be bold now, ready? One, two, three, say, yeah, that's me. Today, I wanna give my life to Jesus. I need his forgiveness.

That's beautiful. Just hold it up for a second and feel it stretch towards God as you say, Jesus, I need you today. Yeah, you could put your hands down. And together, let's pray a prayer of commitment together as a church, everybody in the room. Say, dear Jesus, thank you for dying on that cross. Thank you for taking my place. Lord, I need forgiveness. I need you to cleanse me. I need you to make me new. Forgive me, Lord. Now I surrender to you. Be the leader of my life. Be the king of my life. I'm yours now. In Jesus' name, everybody said, amen, amen. Come on, give it up for those that made that decision. Let's go. That's awesome. After service, if you raised your hand, we have an area right in this back area right outside these doors called our Salvation Center where we have a Bible and a journal and some other things to help you take some next steps. If you raised your hand this week or in the past couple of weeks, stop by there before you leave today, okay? Here's what we're gonna do now to close.

We are gonna do another sacred connection point. We're gonna take communion together. So this is where we remember Jesus' death and resurrection. We remember the covenant that he established with his people. So if you, the only requirement to take part in this part of the service is that you have given your life to Jesus. You don't need to be a member of this church or a member of any church. You just have to be somebody who said, I want to be forgiven and I've made Jesus the king of my life. If you have, you're welcome to take part in this. If not, you can just let the tray pass you by. So they're gonna come forward now and begin to distribute the elements. And I've asked the team to sing this older song. Some people last service were giving me a hard time because they're like, older? It's only 30 years old. It's old for some of us. But this is a song that I grew up with. It's called Heart of Worship. And it sort of represents this whole idea of what this message is about. Getting rid of the baggage and the distractions and anything else that can influence our connection with God. So let's sing this song and then I'll come out to lead us in communion.

So I'm coming back to the heart of worship and it's all about you. It's all about you, Jesus. I'm sorry, Lord, for the thing I made it when it's all about you. Oh, it's all about you, Jesus. I'm coming back to the heart of worship. ♪ And it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it ♪ ♪ When it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it ♪ ♪ When it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ Always been about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ When the music fades and all is stripped away ♪ ♪ And I simply come ♪ ♪ Longing just to bring something that's of worth ♪ ♪ That will bless your heart ♪ ♪ Sing I'll bring you, I'll bring you more than a song ♪ ♪ For a song itself is not what you have required ♪ ♪ You search much deeper within ♪ ♪ Through the way things appear ♪ ♪ You're looking into my heart ♪ Come on, let's make this our prayer today. ♪ So I'm coming back to the heart of worship ♪ ♪ And it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it ♪ ♪ When it's all about you, yes it's all about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm coming back to the heart of worship ♪ ♪ And it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it ♪

♪ When it's all about you, yes it's all about you, Jesus ♪ One more time. ♪ I'm coming back to the heart of worship ♪ ♪ And it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus ♪ ♪ I'm sorry Lord for the thing I've made it ♪ ♪ When it's all about you, it's all about you, Jesus ♪ Just join me now. Tilt your face up like this as if you're giving your attention towards God. Now just before we take communion, just picture Jesus on that cross. God himself, who gave himself for us so that you and I could be made right, so that you and I have a hope. Lord, as we approach this sacred moment together, we remember how it connects us to you because we remember how you loved your people so much that you gave your own life. So we say thank you, Jesus, that we get to take part in this. Thank you, Lord. So as we prepare to do this, let me just talk about a couple things. This moment, the reason that we say it's sacred is because it ties us back to the night that Jesus established the new covenant with his people. At the last supper, he was seated around the table with his disciples and he said, this is the new covenant. He talked about establishing it

through the cup and the bread. Now what we believe is not that what we're holding is magical. It's a commemorative piece to connect us to something spiritual. So something spiritual is happening in the room when we do this as we remember Jesus's sacrifice. It's like we're seated at the table together like the disciples. We're all together seated at the table, but it's not the actual elements themselves. It's our heart connecting with Jesus's heart to say, Lord, we remember this represents your commitment to your people. So do this with me. Hold out the bread in your hand. Hold the bread in your hand. And before we take it, let's just pray. So hold it up like this. Lord, we remember that the bread represents your body that was broken, that was beaten, that was bruised. We remember how much You suffered for your people, how much you loved us. Thank you, Jesus, for your sacrifice. Thank you, Jesus, that you endured unimaginable pain because of your great love for your people. So we don't take this moment lightly. Lord, we believe that as we prepare to take the bread, we are remembering your commitment to your people,

and we use it as a moment to say, Lord, we are yours as well. We surrender our hearts to you. In Jesus' name, amen. Let's take the bread together. Now just hold up the cup like this. And before we pray, an important part of the cup is we're remembering it represents Jesus' blood, which is forgiveness for sins. So in the Old Testament, they would offer sacrifices, and the blood that was spilled from the animals was the only way that could cover over wrongdoing. Jesus was the once and for all final sacrifice. So when we approach a moment like this, first of all, we remember that because of the blood of Jesus you do not perform to earn forgiveness. There is nothing that you can do or say to earn forgiveness from Jesus Christ. When you put your faith in him, his blood covers over your mistakes. But also, before we take this cup, we remember that any area of our life that is not aligned with him, where we have been living in sin, we want him to speak to us. It's a reflective moment. So just close, as you hold up the cup, just close your eyes and just sort of whisper a prayer to God now to say, Lord, forgive me.

Any place that I have not been pleasing to you, my words, my thoughts, my actions, my habits, Lord, any place where I've allowed sin to creep in, whether I know about it or I don't, Lord, show me, I need your forgiveness. We wanna look more like you. So now let's pray before we take it. Lord, we thank you that your blood represents forgiveness. Your blood is forgiveness for our sins. So we don't stand redeemed by anything that we have to offer. It's your blood. So I pray, Lord, for those of us in this room that have been carrying the weight of guilt, carrying the weight of shame, of feeling like we'll never be good enough. We remember today that your blood is enough. The cross has the final word to say, you are a child of God, not by your performance, but because God has chosen you. And when you put your faith in him, his blood covers over every sin. So we say, thank you, Lord, that we are children of God by your blood. In Jesus' name, everybody said, amen. Let's take the cup. Yeah, now just stretch forth your hand. Let me pray a prayer of blessing over you. I pray this week that you would sense a deep closeness with God,

especially as you start to take steps in these spiritual disciplines and pathways to pray or to study the word of God. I pray you would sense God's closeness. And I pray that there would be a hunger placed within you for the things of God more than ever before, that the things of earth that have been leaving you temporarily fulfilled and then empty, that God would begin to show you how empty those things are, and that you would have a hunger for spiritual things, for heavenly things like never before. I pray that God's grace would rest upon you and your family in Jesus' name. Everybody said, amen, amen. Awesome. Guys, thanks for being here. Hey, two things before you leave. One, every time we do communion, we're recognizing its connection with God, but it's also connection with each other as a church family. That's a really important part of communion. So we have food out in the concourse. Stay for five minutes. Okay, don't rush out the doors. Talk to some people. We're really not a church family unless we take a few minutes to be together. That's what this is about. So hang out there.

Also, we have next steps happening in the lounge. So if you're not really connected to anything, you kind of rush in and out, we would love to help you explore some different options. Guys, thanks for coming. We'll see you next weekend.