What Does It Really Mean to Believe in Jesus? // Romans 10:16-21

Well, Pastor John Piper says the Christian life is a call to risk and that you will either live with risk or you waste your life. If you've been around over the last month or so, you've probably been reminded of the fact that here at Two Cities, we value risk and mission and adventure, and that's one of the reasons why every summer, we have the accident eight project for our college students. Now, every summer, I'll tell you what happens. Our college students go overseas, they finish the project, they come back and they say something like this, my entire view of the world has changed. They'll say, getting out of my comfort zone was one of the best things I've ever done. It was such a meaningful time, and whenever they say that to me, I always respond the same way. I say, I'm not surprised at all that you had such a meaningful time because you were created, not just to give your summer to the mission of God, you were created to give your entire life to the mission of God. And so if you're a college student, let me just say we want to invest in you. What we understand here is that many college students come to our city to leave it. We understand it, we embrace it, and we want so many things for our college students. If you're a college student, we want you to have more than just a good time in college where you're trying

to get a ring before spring, right? Although occasionally, we'll be able to help with the ring before spring part. It's been known to happen. We want so much more for you, and we think that we want to invest in you throughout the year, but especially during the accident eight project is when we do that. So here's what our challenge is to every college student. Would you prayerfully consider giving half of one of your summers to the accident eight project because we believe that it will be one of the most meaningful valuable things you do while you're in college. And speaking of the mission of God, if you've been here for the last month, you've noticed that it is a unique season in the life of our church as we are planning to plant three different churches in 2027. And let me just tell you that it is going to be a bittersweet gospel goodbye for my family and I as we move to Charlotte to plant a new church next year because I love this place. I love this church. I love this staff. I'm not going to know what to do with myself when I don't have Pastor Kyle keeping me on my toes week in and week out, right? I'm not going to know what to do with myself when I'm not scheduled to preach on Labor Day weekend Sunday. You're not going to believe this.

I looked it up this past week. I've been scheduled to preach every Labor Day weekend Sunday for seven years. [LAUGHTER] Thank you. Happy to be here. But every Labor Day weekend, I'm laboring, right? It's funny how that works. Two weeks from today-- here's what you need to know about our church plants-- two weeks from today. On Sunday, the 20th, shortly after our 11 AM service, we're going to have interest meetings for all three of our church plants. We're going to have childcare for both. We're going to have food for both. And we call these interest meetings for a reason. There's a reason these aren't called commitment meetings because these are just for anyone who's interested in hearing the vision, the values, the story, the timeline of these church plants. And I really believe that many of you will be very encouraged to hear about the stories of what the Lord is doing in each of these different church plants. And so let's take a moment to pray that we've got a lot to cover in Romans 10. Let's pray. Father, you tell us in your word that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. And I just want to thank you for how you have raised up so many workers

here in the life of this church over the last 10 years. And I pray that you would do so even more in the years to come. Specifically, Father, I want to pray that you would raise up more and more college students who are going to be laborers for you. Would you use the accident project to create in many of them a heart for local, national, and global ministry? Lord, I pray that you would help each of us have the courage to take our next steps, regardless of what you're calling us toward, knowing that the gospel goes forward one conversation, one relationship, one gospel risk at a time. We pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, information and transformation are not the same thing, right? There is a big gap between knowing what you should do and actually doing it, right? Think about the world that we live in. We have never lived in a time. Humans have never existed at a time where there is more access to immediate information as we do right now, right? But access to that information doesn't make transformation any easier, does it? I mean, think about it this way. ChatGPT, you can have chatGPT create for you an incredible diet and workout plan, personalized for you. But it doesn't make working out or going on a run any easier,

does it? It doesn't make eating very healthy easier, does it? Because when you go to Chick-fil-A, what are you ordering? You're not ordering the market salad. You're ordering the new chicken and waffle sandwich, right? Which has 700 calories. I looked it up. Can you believe it? Many of you, you've read the articles and you've seen the documentaries about the dangers of social media. for your health, but you're still scrolling, aren't ya? You're still watching all the mom reels on Instagram and all that stuff. You've seen the charts over the years of how investing in index funds, slowly but surely from the time you're in your 20s until you're in your 60s, is gonna lead to massive wealth, but spending is still a pretty big issue, isn't it? You see, your Amazon chart is, Amazon shopping cart is always full. It can be challenged. You see, here's the point, is that information and transformation are not the same thing. Knowing something is not the same thing as doing something. And so, if you got your buy, I was going to grab those. Flip two Romans, chapter 10. Up to this point in chapter 10, what Paul's been doing

is he's been building his case for how sending leads to preaching and preaching leads to hearing, which leads to believing, which leads to calling. And all of this up to this point has been pretty hopeful, but here's the thing, what he's gonna do in verse 16 is he's gonna present us with a pretty painful reality. And that's this, many people will still refuse the gospel. Many people have heard the information of the gospel, but it hasn't led to transformation, and this is a painful reality, isn't it? When I was in college, I had a good friend of mine who very much struggled with the fact that his dad was a Muslim, and he struggled for good reason, devout Muslim father, and so my friend, he would pray for his father, and we would talk about it, and I would try to encourage him, and he would share his faith with his father. Well, I found out a couple of years ago that unfortunately, my friend's dad died having never come to faith. And I learned after this that my friend walked away from the faith because of it. And so I know that this is a very painful reality that Paul's gonna be talking about, and so it's gonna be a little bit of a heavy text, but here's the big idea of the entire message. It really can be summarized in one question. I heard a pastor give this to his church

over 10 years ago, and it stuck with me. It's very simple, here's the question. Is your life marked by obedience rooted in faith? I'm not asking if you're perfect, 'cause none of us are perfect, obviously. I'm not asking if you struggle, because all of us at one point or another, pretty much daily, we struggle, right? But when you think about the last week of your life, is your life marked by obedience to God that is rooted in faith? We're gonna talk about why this is so important. We're gonna pick up in chapter 10, verse 16, what Paul's gonna do is he's going to reference four different Old Testament passages. And I'll just tell you, we've got to all put on our thinking caps together, because these passages are a little bit obscure, not the easiest to understand. But we're gonna read the whole passage. It starts here in verse 16. But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?" So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the word of Christ. But I ask, have they not heard? Indeed, they have. For their voice has gone out to all the earth and their words to the ends of the world.

But ask, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, "I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With the foolish nation, I will make you angry." Then Isaiah is so bold as to say, "I have been found by those who did not seek me. I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me." But of Israel, he says, "All day long, I've held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people." All right, we'll walk through this. The first thing Paul does is he addresses the painful reality that many Jewish people have refused the gospel. He says in verse 16, "But they have not all obeyed the gospel." What he's doing here is he's drawing a connection between faith in the gospel and obedience. Because the Greek word here for obeyed literally means to hear under. He's saying that they have not reoriented their lives around the gospel. They had information, but not transformation. They had heard, but they were not heating. So think about it this way, probably once per year, you'll get a notification on your weather app or on your phone somehow. And the notification will say this, "tornado watch." Which basically means there might be a tornado, right? Now, what do you do when you get that notification?

Well, you probably don't do anything, right? Now, what do you do when your phone buzzes and says tornado warning take shelter immediately? Well, I know what you do, because we all do the same things. We walk to our window, which is the worst place to walk, by the way. We walk to our window, we look out the window, and then we say, "I think it's gonna blow over," right? The point is that you clearly don't believe that a tornado is gonna be making its way to you or else you would take action. You would go to the basement. You would do the whole mattress thing. Well, here's what it says. You're watching their lives and you're confused and you're wondering are they actually, are they actually a believer? And then some of you, you're here and you're trying to decide whether or not you are a Christian and we are glad that you're here. But a very helpful question to consider is this, do I desire to obey God? Do I want to obey God? You see, part of my story is I came to faith at age nine, but once I got to college at UNC Chapel Hill, I grew so quickly. I grew so much so fast that I began to look back on my conversion at age nine and I wondered if I was actually saved throughout my childhood. And I know that this is many of your story. We hear this all the time. As I think back on nine-year-old me and 12-year-old me and 15-year-old me, I have the assurance that I was saved. Why? Because I wanted to obey God. I desired to obey. We say here often that the scriptures do a lot of things. They do more than this, but not less than this. The scriptures will comfort and commend, but they're also going to confront and challenge. And you see, when confronted and challenged with what the Bible says about sexuality or alcohol or money, the genuine Christian is going to at least desire to obey what God has said. There's going to be a desire for obedience. And what Paul is saying here is that where there is no obedience, where there is no desire for obedience, then this might suggest that there is no genuine faith. You see, genuine faith means that you are

hearing under. Let's go back. Verse 16, it says this, "But they have not all obeyed the gospel." For Isaiah says, "Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us? So faith comes from hearing and hearing through the Word of Christ." The last four weeks, if you've been here, we've been in Romans 9, we've been in Romans 10, and we've just been in the deepest of deep topics, haven't we? We've talked about election and divine sovereignty. We've talked about Israel's unbelief and how people reject the gospel and how people receive the gospel. And we've talked about global losses and all these things. Well, since Paul says that faith comes from hearing, that means that what Christians have to do is share words. And so I want to just make this super practical for us. If faith comes from hearing the words of the gospel, I want to practically share with you how you share the gospel. And so I was reminded of this, or the value of this rather, last week when our missionaries were here, because as we were spending time with them, we spent about two days with them over the course of the weekend, and they shared multiple times how a big part of what they would do would be train local believers how they can share the gospel themselves. Now, there's more ways to do this, right? You know, you can look up the three circles method online. There's the four spiritual laws. Sometimes people have bracelets that are conversation starters and they can explain the symbols. What I want to do is I want to give you four truths that you must share if you want to share the full gospel. And these are the same four truths that I have used for years with college students. And you need to know that each of these four truths are accompanied by a lie that our culture will say about the gospel. Okay, so the first truth is this. It is you must share the truth about God. So the truth about God is this. We believe that God is the creator of all things. He is perfectly righteous. God will punish sin. Now, this is different from what culture will tell you about God. Culture will say that God would never punish anybody. Culture will tell you that God is just a distant deity, that he is whoever you want him to be. Culture will tell you that God is what's the one word that culture will use to describe God. They will say God is love, which is true. God is love. He's infinitely loving. Everything that God does, of course, flows out of his love. But here's what's interesting. Throughout the scriptures, more so than being described as loved as love, God is described often as holy. In Isaiah chapter six, it does not say love, love, love is the Lord God Almighty. It says holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And so the first truth we have to share is that God is holy. The second truth is we have to share the truth about man. And this is where the bad

news comes in. The truth about man is that all of us are naturally sinful by nature and choice, right? Culture will say the opposite. Culture will say that everyone is basically a good person. Everybody's essentially a pretty good person. We all in some way will reject the creator instead we will worship the creation. You see and we believe that our sin it must be punished. And there's a big big gap between God's holiness and you and me, right? Okay, so truth number one is God. Truth number two is man. The third truth we have to share is the truth about Christ. What culture will tell you is that Jesus was a good man, but they won't tell you that Jesus was the God man. Culture will tell you that Jesus was just a good moral teacher and maybe we can learn a few things from him. What we believe, this is the good news of the gospel, is that Jesus Christ really lived a perfect life in full obedience to God. And then after living a perfect life that you couldn't live, he died on the cross in our place taking the wrath of God for us and then he rose from the dead showing that he could overcome sin and death. You see Jesus, we use this word often here, Jesus was our substitute. This is what theologians will call the great exchange. The great exchange is that our sin was paid for by Jesus on the cross, paid for fully. He absorbed the payment we owed and by faith his perfect righteousness can then be imputed to us. This is the gospel. And so that's the third truth about Jesus. But people often will get the fourth part of the gospel and that is that there must be a response. There must be a response. You see, culture will tell you that there are multiple ways to God. Just pick the way that works best for you and that'll be great. But what we believe is that the Bible teaches God calls everyone everywhere to repent of their sins and trust in Christ in order to be saved. We heard this last week, Romans 10-9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised from the dead, you will be saved. Any time that you can share any of these truths, you should be encouraged. You should celebrate, especially if you're able to share all these truths. Now, what Paul's going to do next is he's going to address some of the excuses that people might give you for why someone hasn't believed the gospel. The two excuses are this. Number one, I never heard Number two, I never understood. He's going to talk about both of these. Verse 18, "But I ask, have they not heard?" Paul gives us an answer in the same breath. "Indeed they have, for their voice has gone out to all the earth in their words to the ends of the world." But ask, did Israel not understand?

First, Moses says, "I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation." "With a foolish nation," he's talking about the Gentiles, the outsiders. "With a foolish nation, I will make you angry." And so it says here that the Jewish people, they did hear the gospel. They did understand the gospel, but they still rejected God. And what Paul's doing here, it's a little bit confusing, because in verse 18, he is referencing Psalm chapter 19 as a way to communicate how broadly the gospel had been preached throughout the Jewish communities. And so the first question he asked is this, "Have they not heard?" And the answer you just heard it, is yes, they have heard. Here's the big idea of Psalm chapter 19. You don't have to turn there. It's this, "God has revealed Himself to us." God has revealed Himself to us. Carl Henry, he was a theologian. He said what God has done is He has forfeited His personal privacy by revealing Himself to us so that we could know Him. And I want to give you two helpful categories for how God reveals Himself to us. The first is God reveals Himself to, He reveals His glory to us in His world, and He reveals His grace to us in His Word. So we'll talk about these. So God reveals His glory through His world. The glory of God, what it is, it is when any of God's attributes go public. And what Psalm 19 says is it says that by looking up at God's creation, at God's design, all of us are able to see that there is a God and He is powerful. This is what theologians will call general revelation. The definition of general revelation is this. It's God's disclosure of Himself to all peoples in all places at all times. General revelation, it comes through creation, it comes through the conscience, it comes through a general knowledge that God exists. And so last week when Pastor Kyle talked about the so-called innocent man on the island, who's never heard about Jesus, and by the way, he basically said that doesn't exist. When he was talking about this man, what he said was that this man, of course, doesn't go to heaven. We need to be specific about why this man doesn't go to heaven. If you want to be specific, the man is not condemned because The man is condemned because he suppresses, distorts, and rejects the knowledge of God that he does have, which we see in Romans 1. So God's glory is revealed through his world, but God's grace is revealed through his word. This is why Paul says, "Faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of Christ."

God's grace through his word is what we call special revelation. Special or specific revelation is God's specific disclosure of himself through his word and through the life of Christ. Now here's the thing, you know this. Creation can tell you a lot about the glory of God, but creation can't tell you anything about the grace of God, or the judgment of God, or the forgiveness of God, right? These things have to come through special revelation. After last week's sermon, like many of you in your community groups, we talked about this in my group, and one of the things that came up is, as we were talking about the man on the island who never hears, it brought up a question that is actually a very common question that is related to what we're talking about right here, which is, what happens when babies pass away? What happens when those with significant mental disabilities pass away, the argument is this, or the question is this, if faith comes from hearing, what happens to those who don't have the capacity to hear? Which is a very real question. And I understand this is a very sensitive and real topic for many of you. I've had to wrestle with this question myself. I've never shared this publicly,

but when I was a student at UNC Chapel Hill, for about a year and a half, I worked about 20 hours a week as a caregiver. And the main individual that I took care of was a young man in his early 20s with severe cerebral palsy. So he couldn't see, he couldn't talk, he couldn't walk, he couldn't respond to commands. He was completely dependent for total care. Unfortunately, I heard within the last year that he passed away about a year ago. And so when I hear things like this, I have to ask myself the question, what happens to him? Does he go to heaven? And so think about this with me. The man on the island who never hears about Jesus is condemned because he suppresses the truth and he suppresses the knowledge of the glory of God that he does have. But listen to this, where there is no knowledge of the truth, there can be no suppression of it. And so babies and those with significant mental disabilities, they are not only unable to understand the grace of God, they are also unable to even understand the glory of God in creation. John Piper, he's spoken at length about this, he says this. The point for us is that even though we human beings are under the penalty of everlasting judgment and death,

because of the fall of our race into sin and the sinful nature that we all have, nevertheless, look at this, God only executes this judgment on those who have the natural capacity to see his glory and understand his will and refuse to embrace it as their treasure. Infants, I believe, do not yet have that capacity and therefore, in God's inscrutable way, he brings them under the forgiving blood of his son. You see, in a way that's hard for us to understand, we believe that babies, when they do pass away, they are saved, they go to heaven, somehow because of Jesus. Jesus, in his blood of righteousness, is what is part of the equation that leads to them being in heaven. Now, I was talking with someone in my community about this exact topic earlier this week and he brought up a question that many of you are asking or thinking to yourself right now, which is when exactly does that change? So if babies go to heaven, in adults, if they don't hear the gospel and repent and believe they don't go to heaven, where does that change in the spectrum of a child's upbringing? And the answer is that we don't know, we don't know. It's hard to know. People love to use the word age of accountability. We don't know when that is, but here's what we do know.

This is where we have to trust, especially as parents. We have to trust, number one, that God is perfectly just and loving and he can be trusted. However he handles all things, he can be trusted. Number two, we ought to have a sense of urgency to share the gospel with everyone we have a relationship with, including our children. Jesus says, faith comes or Paul says, faith comes from hearing. All right, I wanna reread verse 19 but I ask, but ask, did Israel not understand? First, Moses says, I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation. With a foolish nation, I will make you angry. His question is this, have they not understood? And his answer is a roundabout way of saying, yes, they have understood. You see, the Gentiles, they were unfamiliar with the laws of God, but many of them ended up coming to faith. Whereas the Jewish people, they were very familiar with God's commandments, but many of them didn't believe. Why? It's because they had religion, they had understanding, but that understanding was without surrender. They had understanding, but they weren't standing under the scriptures in a posture of submission. Something that I've encountered a lot on the college campus over the years

is that college students will say that they have doubts about the Christian faith. And many people do have genuine real doubts, and we love to talk about those. We love to answer as many questions that we have. We love to come alongside each other and encourage each other through our doubts, but from my experience over the years, someone who says they have doubts about what the Bible says, usually just has an unwillingness to surrender. Having doubts about what the Bible says is often just an excuse someone will say, or someone will give you when they don't want to change the way they live. The right answer is I have doubts. The real answer is I don't wanna change the way I live, or maybe an even deeper reason is I don't wanna change the way I think. I'm not willing to change my worldview. But you see, the Christian understanding is that we are in full submission to what God has revealed to us in his word. The problem is not that we have a hearing problem, that we have a heart problem. We are all naturally very resistant to being told what to do. We see this in the lives of our kids, right? You don't have to teach your child to not wanna be told what to do, do you? This happens in our house pretty much every day.

You go to your kids and you very graciously and lovingly say, children, would you please clean up the playroom, right? And then they'll say, I don't want to. And they'll say, well, I don't remember asking if you want to, right? We naturally don't like being told what to do in this hinders our ability to surrender to Jesus. You see, this is a fear that I have for our church. This is a fear that I have for pretty much anyone who grew up in church or grew up in the South in general. Because if that's you, you have tons of access to the scriptures, you know the songs, you might even go to a community group, you might serve from time to time. You are very familiar with the Christian faith, but it is possible to do all of those things and still never surrender to Jesus. What Paul's saying here is he's saying that they had understanding but they didn't believe. And so he's saying, don't mistake familiarity with faith. Familiarity with Jesus and faith in Jesus are not the same thing. This might come as a surprise to some of you, but I am just not a fan of Taylor Swift. I know, surprise, surprise. I'm much more of a Alan Jackson, George Strait, Brooks and Dunn kind of guy, that's more my thing. I personally don't really understand the craze because there are friends that I have

who note every detail you could imagine about Taylor Swift. They can sing all the songs, they know all the album names, they can tell you about all of our ex-boyfriends, they can tell you Travis Kelsey's shoe size. I mean, all these things, right? Now the point of course is that they don't know any, they don't know Taylor Swift personally, they just know a lot about her in Paul's saying, knowing about someone and knowing someone are not the same thing, the same is true with Jesus. Let's keep going, verse 20. It says this, then Isaiah is so bold as to say, I've been found by those who did not seek me, we'll talk about that. I've shown myself to those who did not ask for me. Let's talk about seekers. You see scripture tells us that God reveals himself to those who do not seek us. And here in verse 20 is essentially the same thing that Jesus tells us in Luke chapter 19, when he says, I came to do what? I came to seek and to save the lost. It is not that we are looking for God, but that God is looking for us. But in the Christian world, we'll use these terms often, seekers and skeptics. But what's interesting is it's helpful to know that the person who seems to be seeking is often just seeking the benefits that God provides without actually seeking God himself.

Something that's true of both the rebellious person and the religious person is that they often won't God's stuff, but they don't want God. They want the peace of God, but they don't want God. They want God's forgiveness, but they don't want God. remind us of is that we are going to have no idea who, across time, the Lord is going to reveal Himself to. If God is the one who seeks, that means He is going to draw a variety of people to Himself. You see what Christians love to debate and discuss is who's a Christian and who's not, right? We all love to debate. Paul Peterson, a Christian, is Joe Rogan, or Justin Bieber, or Donald Trump, a Christian? It's like, well, those are all questions we can talk about them. But here's what I know. When we get to heaven, you and I, we are going to be surprised, and we're going to be surprised on both sides of the spectrum, right? We'll get to heaven and we're going to look in the distance and see, is that Uncle Bill? That's Uncle Bill. I can't believe it. Praise the Lord that Uncle Bill made it, right? But on the other side of things, we're going to be looking around and be like, "I've been here a while. Where's my small group leader from college?" It's like, "I don't know where they are." You see, we are going to be surprised at who the Lord reveals Himself to. Jesus came to seek and save the lost. All right, I love how Romans 10 ends. I love this, verse 21. Instead of Israel, He, which is God, He says, "All day long, I've held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people."

Do you notice what it doesn't say here? It doesn't say that God is standing there with His arms crossed. It doesn't say that He's standing there with His back turned. It doesn't say that God is standing there telling you all the things you need to get right in your life before you come. He's not saying, "Clean yourself up and come." What it says is God is standing there holding out His hands. You see, what this is a picture of, is this is a picture of forgiveness. You see, the Christian faith revolves around forgiveness. Everything in the Christian faith flows from forgiveness. The New Testament would describe forgiveness as canceling a debt that someone owes to you. And the way that Romans 10 ends is it ends with a hopeful truth, which is this. God gives forgiveness to us. God gives forgiveness to us. God is persistent and He is patient. And so some of you, you may need to be encouraged this morning because you have someone in your life there in a season of rebellion. You love this person. They're in rebellion or they're religiously lost. And it's just really tough. But you need to be encouraged by the fact that God is persistent and patient. And that as long as there is breath in their lungs, there is hope for their soul. God is persistent, He's patient, some of you. What you might need to do is you might need to receive God's forgiveness personally. You see, Romans 10, the way it ends is it ends with an invitation. The end of Romans 10 is actually very similar to how the parable of the prodigal son ends. So if you don't know this story in Luke chapter 15, there's a parable of the prodigal son that actually should be called the parable of the compassionate father. Or the parable of the two lost sons. And what happens is the story is the younger brother.

He comes to the father and he basically says to the father, dad, I don't want you, I want your stuff. And what the father does is he gives the son what he's asking for and then the son takes it, goes off to a far land and he rebels. He just completely disobeys everything his father has taught him his entire life. He hits rock bottom, he comes back to his father and he's ready to earn his way back into the family. But what happens is that the father runs to him and he embraces his son. He offers him forgiveness and then he throws a party for his son. And it's in the moment when he throws the party for his son that we start to hear about the older brother in the story. You see, the older brother is very similar to the Jewish people that we're reading about in Romans chapter 10. The older brother is upset that the younger brother is being welcomed in. He says this in Luke 15, 28, it says, "But he, the older brother, the one who is self-righteous, he was angry and refused to go in." Then look at this, his father came out, the father leaves the house and entreated him. You see, entreated means that he came out begging for his son to come in. He's pleading with his son to come into the house. You see, the father doesn't just go out to the younger brother who's rebellious. He also goes toward the self-righteous older brother and he says, "Weren't you come inside?" Look at this in verse 29. He answered his father, the older brother, "Look, these many years I have served you and I never disobeyed your command, yet you never gave me a young goat." You see, religious people think God owes them. That I might celebrate with my friends, but when the son of yours came who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fat and calf for him. Now, I want you to listen here to the heart of the father. It says this in verse 31, "And he said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.'"

You see what the father is essentially saying is he's saying, "All day long I have held out my hands." The father's looking to the self-righteous older brother and he's saying, "Don't you want to come into the party? My hands are outstretched. Don't you want to come in?" All of you, you've heard this story and you're thinking to yourself, "I am the self-righteous person." For whatever reason, you've been in church for a long time and you know the scriptures and you know the songs, but the knowledge about God has not made its way from your head down to your heart. And the invitation of this passage is to surrender. It's to come home to the heart of the father. You see, God gives forgiveness to us, but he also gives forgiveness through us. And God gives forgiveness through us in two ways. The first way is that we, as believers, are quick to forgive those who have sinned against us. Some of you here, you, for whatever reason, have a very difficult time forgiving those who have sinned against you. Even those who have apologized and repented and asked for forgiveness, you just have the hardest time. And how do you know if that is you? Well, I know how. It's your bitter. You're just low-level bitter all the time and unfortunately you're bringing your bitterness with you everywhere you go. It's coming into all of your relationships. You're thinking about it all the time, you're talking about it all the time, and I have some good news for you. You don't have to carry that bitterness forever.

You see, forgiven people, forgive people. It's been said that to forgive is to set the prisoner free and to realize that prisoner was you. Who do you need to forgive? The second way that God gives forgiveness through us is that he uses us to share his forgiveness with other people. Many of you were here last week when our missionaries were here. The guy missionary, his name, let's call him Jay. He was here with us and he was telling the story about when he was imprisoned for over a month in South Asia. He told us that the day they got arrested, they were taken into an interrogation room with a police chief who was just this massive 6'4" 280" guy and he said the police chief was just interrogating him and his friend. As the chief was interrogating his friend, the friend gave him a response that he didn't like. The police chief just rares back and just slaps his friend in the face. The friend's face is swollen, he's blue, he can't sleep that night. Well, Jay told us that over a month later, right before they were released, for some reason, they had to meet with the police chief again. And Jay told us that in that moment, he felt like God was clearly calling him to share the gospel with that police chief, to share about God's forgiveness with him and he just thought to himself, "I do not want to do this." But he told us that what he did is he used his friend who was slapped to translate as he shared the gospel with the police chief. And he told us he said, "You know, the police chief didn't come to faith, but I was grateful that I had the opportunity to share about God's forgiveness with this man." You see, God gives forgiveness to us, but he also gives it through us. Would you bow your heads with me? With your heads bowed across all of our campuses, I just want to ask or re-ask one question. Is your life marked by obedience rooted in faith?

God tells us all day long, "I have held out my hands." You see, God has done his part. God has removed every obstacle. So for some of you, your life is marked by knowledge, but not surrender. And so I'll ask you right now, what area of your life is the Lord asking you to obey and surrender? Maybe it's related to your future, maybe it's something with money, maybe it's your family, maybe it's some big decision you need to make and just a moment, I'm going to ask you to come forward and pray about it. Some of you, you need to be freed from bitterness and unforgiveness. You're just tired of feeling bitter, I know it. And I want to encourage you to cancel the debt in just a moment, I'm going to invite you to come forward and to bring this before the Lord. And then some of you, you are burdened by an unbeliever in your life. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a family member, and your next step of obedience is to share the Lord's forgiveness with them. In just a moment, I'm gonna invite you to come forward. Father, I thank You that You are persistent and patient. Father, we need Your help in all these things. Would You help us to surrender all aspects of our lives to You, Lord, I thank You for the fact that You have made forgiveness free to us. You have made it available to us through the person of Jesus. I pray that we would receive it by faith and pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]