Worship that Cost Nothing Amounts to Nothing | Robby Gallaty | 1 Samuel 24

Really excited. It's called Even Greater. We believe God wants to do even greater things in the days ahead. And I want to start with a message entitled, Worship That Cost Nothing, Amounts to Nothing. Worship That Cost Us Nothing, Amounts to Nothing. Now, you and I live in a world today of free, right? We love free shipping from Amazon Prime. Can I get an amen on that one, right? We love free trials that we don't have to pay for upfront. We love free samples at Costco that some of you plan your lunch, right? I mean, seriously, you go and get those free samples. We want to buy it now and we want to pay later. Our entire economy, if you think about it, is built on that promise. You can have it now and it won't cost you anything. But the tragedy is this and as Christians look at me, we have to be very careful with this because we can start to believe that's how worship works. We show up here on Sunday. We sing some really neat songs. We hear a challenging message and we leave blessed all free of charge. Today I want to show you, introduce you to a man named David who was given probably the greatest free gift of worship on a silver platter. And David does the unthinkable when he is given everything free, doesn't cost him anything, he turns it down. And the reason, let me prepare you for this, the reason David turns it down is going to set the tone for the entire campaign initiative and the next, I believe, 50 years in the life of our church. This past Monday, we read a passage. Now, how many people, by the way, are still reading along with the F260 Reading Plan? If you're new to Long Hollow, we are doing something really neat as a church. We are reading as a church the same passages of the Old Testament together.

Every week or reading or every day, we're reading one passage off on the weekends called the F260. If you haven't started, you can text the word next and lock in with this. But on Monday, we read 2 Samuel chapter 24. And the beauty of this is every age and stage is on the same page. So it's not like coming to church on Sunday, open your Bibles to Obadiah, and you say, "Obe-hu." Right? I mean, that's normally what happens. Not here. Because on Monday, how many people read 2 Samuel 24? Let me give you the recap if you are just joining us. David goes and counts the people in a census, which is really surprising because David's done this before and you're probably wondering, why has God so mad with counting his army? Here's the major difference. David inventoried his own strength instead of trusting the God who gave him all of the army to begin with. David's like, "Hey, look at me. Look at Sean. Those guys are. Look how trained those guys are. Look at me." And in response, God judges the nation. 70,000 Israelites die because of that. And then God's about to come down. The angel of the Lord has his arm stretched out over Jerusalem, about to come down with the sword. Stop, withdraw your hand. The sword, if you caught this, the sword stopped above the land or the geographic position is above the threshing floor of Arunah, the Jebusite.

And why is that important? Because this location is the centerpiece of the text and it's actually the place where sacrifice takes place. That's what I want to talk about today. My goal today is by the time you leave this message when it comes to sacrifice or giving, not just finances, but part of it, time, talent, treasure. You're not asking, "God, what can I spare?" You're actually asking the Lord, "God, what is my part?" See the difference? What do I have to give moving to? What do I get to participate in? So if you have a Bible, turn with me to 2 Samuel 24. We like to say word at Long Hollow. We know the word changes our life, so we want to get into the Word and to the... We normally are more excited than this for the guests. I'm sorry. So the Word gets into... Ah, say a minute. So if you're there, you can say Word. Thank you. Verse 18. "The Word of the Lord, God who is a prophet came to David that day and said to Him, 'Go up and set up and alter to the Lord on the threshing floor of Arunah the Jebusite.'" Now right off the gate, that should catch you off guard. Circle that or underline Arunah the Jebusite who is a Gentile man. This is not part of the nation. just as the Lord had commanded. I wanna teach you three steps or three progressions of sacrifice. And the first one is this,

I hope you're taking notes, write this down. Sacrifice is demonstrated through our obedience. Sacrifice is demonstrated through our obedience. The prophet, God goes to David and says, "Hey man, listen, God said there's a parcel of land he wants you to buy and it's owned by Arunad the Jebusite." And right away you're like, "What a Gentile man, a foreigner? Why is David buying the land from him?" And here's the little sidebar you miss if you don't see it from a big picture. Why would God use a Gentile to purchase land? God is showing us his heart right out the gate for the nations. Even before he gives a blueprint to build a temple, God is saying my heart is always for those who are not yet here. My heart is always for those who will one day come. Listen, Israel, you thought you were building a monument for yourself, no way. You're actually starting a movement for people who would come after you. I love this about God. God takes a piece of property owned by a foreigner and turns it into a sanctuary for his people. Isn't that mind-blowing? God's gonna take the place where judgment was stopped and turn it into a place where worship will start. That's what God does, right? And if you're honest with your own life,

that's what he did with you, right? I mean, if you're a Christian born again, that's our story, right? You and I lived a life before Christ where sin destroyed it. God took the ground that was destroyed and soiled by sin that we'd nearly destroyed and he flips it around and turns it into something holy. I like to say it this way. He takes a mess and he turns it into a message. Anybody got that testimony? Anybody raise your hand, right? Knucklehead University too, yeah, we went to that school. That's our life, right? That's what God does. And I want you to notice how God works. When God gives a plan, it's always specific. If you lead an organization or you lead a business or a sales team or lead a home of kids, I mean, we all lead with vision. Here's an insight about how we lead with vision. When God gives a vision, the vision is always concrete. Here's what I mean. God doesn't leave it up to David to figure, hey, go out and find a piece of land where we can worship. No, God says here is, watch this. Here's the place, here's the man, and here's the price you're gonna pay. Vision, that's it, write this down.

A vision that stays vague cost nothing. But a vision that is concrete always cost immediately. Because once you figure out what we're doing and how we're doing it and what it looks like, we step into that vision. Now why don't I say that? Because we're about to embark over the next few weeks and months, we're gonna embark on an initiative called the Even Greater Initiative at our church. And I'm gonna challenge you for anybody who calls Long Hollow Home, like you've been coming, you're a part of our church. I'm gonna challenge you to pray about what God would have you personally as a family contribute to the initiative. Now what I want you to give, you've been at church before with the pastor, hey, you gotta give this amount of that amount. I'm not gonna ever tell you what to give, why? Because if you pray to God and ask God what you should give, it's way more impactful than anything I could ever tell you. By the way, that's a dangerous prayer to pray, pray, by the way. God, how do you want me to participate? But that's what David does. I want you to notice David, when he hears the word of the prophet, God speaks to him, notice David's response.

Notice what it says. "When David heard from the prophet Gad, "he decided to wait and think about," is that what it says? "When David heard from the prophet Gad, "he formed a subcomm--" So I said, "David put together a focus group "to see what people thought about it," right? David put a poll together on his text group to see what the church-- No, that's not what he did. It doesn't say David looked at the Facebook comments, it doesn't say David went to hip Hendersonville to see-- No, he didn't care with all of his faith. He didn't care with those people thought. Why? Because he heard from God. And when he heard from God, the text says, "David went up in obedience just as the Lord "commanded him to." And so David climbs this hill, this mountain, to go up the hill, I want you to brace yourself, because David is about to receive the most generous offer in the entire Old Testament. He's gonna get an offer of a lifetime, and he's gonna teach us a print-- David is going to teach us this principle. I want you to get this. A sacrifice without sacrifice is not a sacrifice.

Say that again. A sacrifice without sacrifice is not a sacrifice. Look at verse 20. Aaron looked down and saw the king and his servants coming toward him. So he went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. Why has my Lord the king come to his servant? Aaron I said. David replied to buy the threshing floor from you in order to build and alter to the Lord so the plague on the people may be halted. Let me just pull over for a moment. Do you know what a threshing floor is? Thank you. I'm going to explain it. Okay, that was a great response. Most people don't. Okay, so the threshing floor is a place where they cut the wheat from the field and they put it in a room normally on top of a hill or a mountain so that the Eastern wind will blow it in order to separate the wheat from the chaff. And what they do is they put the wheat on the ground and they use equipment or animals or machinery back then, ancient machinery where they roll over it to separate the wheat from the chaff. Then they take these winnowing forks, these big like rakes, and when the wind blows they throw the wheat in the air and the chaff is lighter, it blows away and the heavier wheat falls to the ground. Now watch this. The picture here is, wheat is good, chaff is sin in the Bible, chaff is bad. So even at this place that was a place to separate the good from the bad, God is going to set up a place of worship, pretty interesting insight here. Aaron I said to David, "May the Lord the king take whatever he wants, you can have it all and offer it." Here are the oxen, by the way, for a burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the ox yolks for the wood, take all the equipment as well. Your majesty Aaronah gives everything here to the king. Oh, and by the way, the king said, "May the Lord your God accept you." Now David can't believe his good fortune, you have to realize here. I mean David is going to get the land from Aaronah for free. Oh, by the way, not just the land, but let me give you the animals. Let me give you the equipment. Let me give you the firewood for the offering. Everything.

Now you've got to be not thinking to turn down this free offering. I mean this is the deal of a lifetime, but David knows something interesting. David knows that nothing comes for free, and everything David needs is given to him for free, but David says, "I'm not going to offer to the Lord what, something for free." And not only that, he basically says, "I'm going to give you a blessing as well." If you think about it, that's what happens when you became a Christian. Think about to the moment you accepted Christ. Do you remember that moment? That's what the Christian life is, right? You came into a church, remember the first church you ever went to? Maybe it was your family's church, or maybe older like me, you accepted Christ in your 20s, and then you went to a church as an adult. Remember the first church you worshiped in? You got that church in mind? Remember the first student camp you ever went to? Anybody remember the student camp you went to as a kid, as a child? Or what about that first vacation Bible school? Anybody know? Or training union? You remember those things, right? Or choir tour. John, you remember choir tour back in the day? How many people remember that? Here's my question. Did it cost you anything to attend any of those? Did you have to pay to go? No, it was all free, right? It didn't cost you or me anything. The first church I went in, I didn't pay at the door to get in. Now, somebody, if you think about it, paid before me, but I didn't pay in the moment. I remember my first service at Edgewater Baptist Church, Paris Avenue in New Orleans.

It was a typical Southern Baptist Church, 180 people. Remember that church? It was about 150 people that went to this church, and I remember walking in. You've got to understand, when I went to this church, I was two weeks removed from drugs and alcohol. I mean, I was two weeks before I was addicted, $200 a day, heroin and cocaine addiction, two weeks later, I'm at the church. And here's the thing. I didn't know the dress code protocol. I didn't know what you were supposed to wear. So I'm still wearing clothes from the club, like sequence, iridescent, black shirts, type black pants, Kenneth Coles. I'm rolling. I didn't know. I didn't know. And I'll roll in from the club. And they're like, "Wow, look at this guy." And I was singing so loud, and I couldn't carry a tune for anything. I mean, I just sing at the top of my voice. I was that guy singing. Everybody's like, "That guy. That guy is there." But here's the thing. In the church of 150 people, I didn't care. And here's what I understood back then. I understood that I personally and you would know this, I didn't personally pay for the spiritual heart surgery that God performed in my life in my room two weeks before. I also know and knew back then I didn't pay for the band that was leading worship. It was free. I also didn't pay for the message that touched my heart today by Dr. Jim Shaddox. I didn't pay for the seat that I was sitting in. I didn't pay for the building I was worshiping in. I didn't pay for the staff that was leading the organization. I knew

even back then all of this was free basically because someone who had come before me paid for it. Now here's the cool thing. Little did those people know at Edgewater Baptist Church years before that they would pave the way for a young Christian man to have his life changed for a long time. I'm here to tell you that little church, like your little church you went to, made me into the Father I am today. Those people invested in me didn't even know to the husband, to the man of God, to the Christian man, to the pastor I am today. And can't we say the same about our church? Think of it this way. Anybody who comes to Long Hollow, if you're here today, you're our guest, you're our honor guest. Anybody who could come to Long Hollow and we don't charge cover charges at the door. Can I get amen? You just came in for free. You can attend for free, you can worship for free, you can go and learn in classes, the Bible, some of the best teachers, you can come on Wednesday night, be in a men's group for free, a women's group for free. You can go and drop your kids off. We don't charge for daycare. Can I get an amen? Jesus. Don't put that on love. It's free. The student ministry is free. And you could sit in here, leave encouraged by a message free forever. You never get a Venmo payment request in the mail. Like, hey, you need to pay for this childcare. Your kid, we don't do that. You don't get a PDF in the mail. You don't get a bill in the mail. Here's why I say that. How many of you think about this came to Long Hollow and what you think for a moment? How many of you came to Long Hollow prior to September 20th, which is next Sunday, 2015. Now, before you raise your hand, why is that date important? Because next Sunday will mark 11 years to the date that I stepped foot for the first time on this platform and preached my first sermon. Now, the reason I'm saying that is, I want you to think, like me, who came after I came or who came with me after that period. By show of hands, how many people have started coming to Long Hollow in person or Gallatin online? You could raise your hand since September 20th, 2015. Raise your hand high. I want everybody to look around and see this. Okay. Most over half of the people in here. Okay, here's why I tell you that. Most of us didn't pay for the seats we are sitting in this morning. Amen? Most of us didn't pay for the stays that I'm preaching on. Thank God for it, but I didn't pay for it. Most of us didn't pay for the building we're worshiping in. The reason I want you to see that is for 50 years prior to us being here, the arunaz of Long Hollow. Men and women, most of us will never know their names this side of eternity. Put everything on the table with their yes so that you and I could worship today and it cost us nothing. And this is the question,

the text, if you read it, is begging every person. This is the question we got to ask and answer ourselves. And everybody needs to give this answer. Will you and I stay beneficiaries of the past? Or will we say, and I feel like this is where we are. We're in the precipice of the future. We'll become builders of the future of Long Hollow tomorrow. Now, you could be a beneficiary. Praise God. But would you join us in building a future for people you may never meet who come years after we're gone? David is about to ascend this mountain and he receives the best free offer he's ever received in his life. And what does he do when he's given this free offer? Prepare yourself. He pulls out his wallet to pay for it. Which leads us to number three. A genuine, get this, a genuine sacrifice always pleases God. Key word there is genuine. A genuine sacrifice always pleases God. Look at verse 24. The king answered Aaronah. No, I insist. No, I'm not taking it for free. I insist on buying it from you for a price. Here's the line of the whole sermon. David's line sets the tone for everything. "For I will not offer to the Lord my God." Let me say it again, the word of the Lord. I will not offer to the Lord my God, burnt offerings that cost me nothing. David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for 20 ounces of silver. He bought or built an altar to the Lord there and offered burnt offerings and fellowship offerings then the Lord was receptive to the prayer for the land and the plague on Israel. What? Indeed. David, what are you doing, man? You're not thinking? I mean, who passes up a free offer? I was thinking this week. How many of us, when he said, hey, look, take the land, oh, by the way, take the ox, take the equipment, take it all? How many of us would have said, no, no, no, I insist, let me pay for it. Why in the world is David refusing a free gift? Now, in order to understand this, and I think most of us don't know this as Christians, but in order to understand this, you and I have to understand what an offering means

in the Bible. And I feel like a lot of us haven't been taught this. In the Bible, write this down, an offering is synonymous with the word measurement. You've got to get this, biblically. An offering is a measurement, but what is it measured? What is it measured? It measures what God is worth to the person bringing the offering. This is how God operates. I don't know what you heard on TV or from... This is how it works. So an offering, think about it this way, a free offering measures nothing. The person you give it to means nothing to you. That's what I said, without a sacrifice in the sacrifice, there's no sacrifice, biblically. Now, what does this mean? Don't misunderstand what I'm not saying. I'm not saying we have to buy our way into heaven or... But what I'm saying is grace is always free when it comes to salvation. Think about this. When you got saved, I got saved. I didn't pay. Thank God, huh? I didn't pay to be saved. I didn't work to be saved. I didn't do anything to be saved. Grace is the free gift of God for salvation apart from my works coming close. Salvation is free, worship is costly. No, what is worship? It's more than singing. It's part singing. You know, praise, raise a hand.

Worship in the Bible, it's not just what you say with your mouth, it's how you live your life. Worship is the way you act. Worship is the things you say. Worship is basically how you respond to the free gift that God has given us so freely in His Son, Jesus Christ. And David doesn't like scroun, like when they offer, oh, you know what, let me pay you a little something. He doesn't reach in his pocket and pull a change. You know, scroun, if you, you know, I grew up Catholic, you know that, but it was in a different religion. I remember as a kid vividly, they would pass the little plates around, you know, in the Catholic Church. And I remember my family, dad, an uncle family, this is how we would give to the Lord. When the plate would come last minute, my dad said, oh, okay, he'd pull out a five spot. He thought it was a big, big, pull out a five. Put that in the offer. Wow, big spender there, dad. He didn't know any better. That's what he thought, like, I'll just give that to the Lord. That's not David. David's going to buy this land, 1 Chronicles 21-25 says, for 15 pounds of gold, 600 shekels of gold. David says, listen, I'll take the whole mountain for the Lord. And David shows us right this down. This is the principle. You can't build God's house for a bargain. Here's what's sad. It's the reality of a lot of Christians, sadly.

Many Christians don't give God what's best. They give God what's left if they give God anything at all. Friends, if you know your Bible, there's only one place in the entire Bible where God says, test me in this area. There's no other place. You can't find it. Like, try me. You don't believe me? Try me on that. This is what God says. Malachi 310. Watch this. Malachi 310 says, God says, bring the full tenth, or the tithe, 10% of your income into the storehouse. So there may be food in my house. Try me. Test me in this way, says the Lord of armies, and see if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a what? Say it like you want it. Thank you. Blessings for you without what? God said, I'm not going to hold back, without measure. And I'm a candy. I mean, I had a pass, you know, my pass with drugs and alcohol, and I met this girl. First time I met a Christian girl, again, I was only a believer for a year, less than a year, or a little over a year, but I met a girl who was not only in love with Jesus, but she was beautiful on the outside and kind and compassionate, and here I was, former drug addict and alcoholic, who was one year removed from addiction. To heighten the drama, and by making this up, her entire family was in law enforcement. I'm not making this up, this is Drew's lawyer.

Her mom was a criminal court reporter for 40 years. She retired criminal court, and if that's not enough, her dad was a Baton Rouge police officer who then, after retiring, went to be the warden of a prison. To say I didn't have the choir boy resume that her mom and dad were looking for is an understatement, and I just remember thinking, "Man, I'm going to lose it. This girl's going to hear my story. The wheels are going to come off. She's not going to want anything to do with me." And she's here, she'll tell you this. She was not interested in any of that. I mean, she, I mean, obviously she wanted to hear, but Candy had one question on her mind that she had to ask me, and the way I answered this question was going to determine where we went from here. She'll tell you this. I'm not making this up. And the question she had in mind. Now, let me just prepare you. It's going to sound weird. You're going to say, "Ladies, I'll say that." That's not the question, but she clarified after the service to me. This is why, but she had this question, "Are you a tither?" That's the question. Do you give consistently 10% of your income to the Lord? Now, why would she say that? Well, Candy, like a lot of us in here, we have family members who have not been fabled, Christians who are not faithful to the Lord financially, and like us, you have seen their lives and you've realized they've struggled their entire lives with money. And she deduced that when you put God first, you won't struggle as much as that. Now, she clarified to me, and she said, "The reason I wanted to ask you that question was young ladies listen to me, if you're dating in the world trying to find that Christian

man." Like I say, they're Christians, but they're not living. And she said, "I knew if you gave 10% to the Lord, you were serious with God. You weren't playing games. You weren't creasers." Right? You know what a creaser is. Christmas is the only guys? Yeah. You weren't a creaser. Now, thankfully, in my defense, thank God, I learned about, you've got to remember, I was only a Christian here. I don't know anything in the Christian life, but I had a mentor named David Platt who literally taught me this is what a Christian, remember, I'm not a pastor, I'm a Christian. This is what a Christian does. They give 10% off the top, everything that comes in 10% off the top to the Lord. And he literally said to me, "Robbie, I've never forgotten this." He said, "If you trust God with your finances early on, then you will never have to worry about finances the rest of your life. God will take care of you." My two boys will tell you, "Parents, the greatest thing you can do for your kids, you want to help them not struggle with money, teach them to tithe everything before they leave your home." Those two boys know 10%. Now, don't stay at 10%, you want to raise it, but that's what we taught them early on. After we got married, God said, "I'm going to test you to see if you trust me." Nine months after we were married, we were only married nine months as a new couple. We didn't have a lot of money. Candy brought a bank account and savings, I brought a bunch of debt and foolishness. But anyway, so we didn't have a lot, right?

And we were married for nine months in a storm named Hurricane Katrina, came through New Orleans and decimated our family and our home. We had, when Katrina came through, $1,500 to our name. That was retirement, that was savings, that was everything. And we left New Orleans, went to Spartanburg, South Carolina after that, with two pairs of clothes and one suitcase. That's all we had. We lost my car, we lost everything. And when we went to Spartanburg, Dr. Don Wilton took me on staff and graciously, there was a person in the church that let us stay at their trailer. And it was everything to us and we were so grateful for the trailer. And I remember right after we got there, we started to pray to the Lord. And I'm just going to tell you something, as a nine-month-old couple, I'm not a pastor, I'm a Christian man, I'm working at my dad's body shop at the time. I remember saying, it would have been very easy for us to say to the Lord, "God, listen, you know our situation, is it okay? We're going to need everything until we get back on our feet. We're going to hold back giving to you just until we get back on our feet." And it would have been very easy for us to do that. Right? God, you know where we are, we lost everything. Instead, I still remember where we were. We were in that trailer. We got our knees one night before bed. We were a family, that's who we had, right? And we pray to prayer like this. God, you know our situation better than we do. And we lost everything. Put yourself in our shoes. We lost everything.

But God, we know you're in control of everything. And we're going to continue whatever comes in. And offering a speaking event, we're going to give 10%. Back to you and trust you. Now, I know what you're thinking. We're a pastor. You should be, no, I'm a Christian man. You know what I work? My job was working up to Katrina. I was working at my dad's collision center, laying Bondo and sanding fenders, right? But I knew the Christian principle. And boy, over the next few months, that God show up and show up and show out and gave us a masterclass and how to trust him with our finances. I'm not making this up. The local news when we got to town at Spartanburg, we were live eyewitness pictures of Katrina. So we in Spartanburg, they did one news story where they put our pictures and the news. They did one paper article and then the church did this little printout magazine with our picture on the cover. The following week, not making this up, I'm walking into the Barnes and Noble. I know no one in Spartanburg. We just moved there a week or two before. I'm walking in the Barnes and Noble. Guy walks out and he says, "Hey, are you Robbie from Louisiana?" I said, "Yes, I am." He said, "Don't move.

I'll be right back." He walks in the parking lot, opens his glove box, pulls out the checkbook, walks back in and says, "Hey, God told me to give you this." He wrote me a check for $1,500. God bless you, brother. That couple online watches me some kind of way say something at the church. They watch us. We've never met this couple. We talked about this couple of weeks ago. We wonder who they are. If you're watching, we'd love to hear from you. This couple said God told them they didn't have a lot of money of South Carolina. They didn't have a lot of money. They said God put on their heart to help us get back on our feet. That couple sent us a small check for the next three years every month. But the one that got us, we went to a revival. Dr. Wilton was preaching. You know how these old tent revivals worked? There's 6,000,000 people at this event. At the end of the revival they passed the plate and they say, "Hey, we're going to take up an offering for the preacher." The pastor there, unprompted by anyone, said, "Hey, while Don, you were preaching, is it okay?" But the Holy Spirit told me that the entire offering tonight is going to bless this couple right here who lost everything. And Don said, "Of course," and they passed the plate.

And at the end, I still remember where it was with Candy. We went back to the house and you have to remember we had nothing. And we opened that cardboard box and inside that box was $7,000. And that was everything to us. And that's when I realized we got to live out Matthew 633. Seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness. And God says, "I'll add everything to you." Yeah, praise the Lord. Here's my point to tell you that. God may not do that for you, but here's what I want you to see. You and I have no idea what one simple step of obedience will do today to change our future tomorrow, our family's future, our church's future with one simple step of obedience. See, what you may not know about this text is the threshing floor of Arunah is on a geographical location that's significant. The threshing floor of Arunah is on a mountain called Moriah. David is buying Mount Moriah. Now, why is Mount Moriah important? You may remember from the Old Testament that's the exact place that Abraham goes up the mountain to offer up his son Isaac, same mountain, same place. God is leading his people to construct a temple at the same spot that Abraham took his son, not long before, up for a sacrifice, and God would direct his people to start making sacrifices at the spot he provided the innocent ram in its place. And unbeknownst to these people at the time, one thousand years later, don't miss this, a day would come when God would offer up his son as a sacrifice for the sin of the world at the same exact spot. Friends don't miss this. Jesus is going to die on the same mountain, but there's one difference. When God steps in and provides us

He's about to come down. Guys, oh, stop. There's a ram in the thicket. The ram is replaced as the offering. When the nation of Israel is sacrificing on this mountain, when the angel of the Lord is about to come down, Erenna, down on the people. God says, oh, I'm gonna provide a place as a substitute for the people. But notice the difference. When God the Father, on the day of the hill of Calvary, has his hand perverbably, in the air, about to come down on his son on the cross, no one stops the hand of God from killing the son. The judgment of God comes down on the son and Jesus dies on the mountain that day. Don't miss this. Jesus gave us everything that day. Jesus sacrificed all of it that day. Jesus died on that day so you and I would never have to give our life in his place. Here's what I tell you that. Everything in the kingdom of God starts, don't miss this, with a costly yes. It always does. And 50 years ago, a small group of people gathered around a vision, this is a picture of the leadership of our church 50 years ago. And I want you to look at these men. We don't know many if any of these people.

But God put a vision on their heart that would pave the way for everything that we would see today. Now, here's what's crazy. Imagine if we could go back in time and tell them, "Hey, you have no idea what's coming." They could never have imagined a thriving congregation at Hendersonville where people call Long Hollow Home. They couldn't even fathom a campus of men and women worshiping and gallatin with 500 plus people and 50 people who gave their life to Christ over the last year. They could never even fathom thousands of people worshiping online. Not to mention the hundreds and hundreds in campuses in nine different places in prisons all over Tennessee and not to mention the hundreds of thousands of those who are watching right now on apps and tablets in prisons all over the country. All they did, don't miss this. All they did was put their yes on the table and God hasn't wasted any of it. You know, if you think about it, don't miss this. That is exactly what King David did. Did you catch this as we close, don't miss this. David is going to pay for a piece of property to build a worship temple that he will never visit or worship in his entire life. Did you catch this? You understand, when Solomon builds the temple,

David is dead, he's long gone. David is going, I love this. David is going to fund and pay forward a blessing to a group of people he'll never meet that will outlive him. Long Hollow, that's where we're standing today. We're standing on the ground, other people paid for. Looking to our future, God wants to build through us. And the question, all of us have to answer. Whether you worship online and you benefit from the service weekend and week out, whether you're in the room, whether you're a Gallatin, whether you're incarcerated, all of us have to answer this question. Will we remain beneficiaries of the past? That's okay, you could do that. Or will you say no, I want to become a builder of the future. God, count me in. Not a have to give, no God, I get to give and be a part of this. So from now till November, I'm asking everybody who calls Long Hollow home to pray, pray with us these three prayers, write these prayers down. I want all of us to pray these three prayers. Number one is this. Selflessly, I'm asking, pray for me, pray for our leadership team, pray for our Mac, that we would follow the Lord and have the wisdom of God in this. We don't want to be one step behind the Lord. We don't want to be one step ahead of the Lord. We want to be in step with the spirit of God.

I wanna follow the Lord's leading. Number two is pray with us as a group, Lord individually, as a family, pray, our boys are gonna pray, I'm gonna pray, God, what is my part in this initiative? Not what's convenient, not like what did I give last time? No, God, what do I get to contribute? How can I be a blessing in this process? Because if you hear from God, it's way more impactful than anybody can tell you what to give. And then number three, this is the big one. I want you to pray that every person participates in the initiative, why? Because when every person at Long Hollow participates on the front end, then we all get to celebrate together on the back end. And you're probably saying, well, I can only give 10 bucks, well, give 10 bucks. Some of you can give 10,000, Lord, we pray right now that you would speak to us very clearly. We don't want to hear what the person next to us has given or even what we gave last time. God, you know what we have better than we do. You know what's coming better than we can even predict. And everything we have is from you anyway, God. So we're just giving back a portion of what you have been so generous to give us. And so I'm praying right now. God, speak to us personally and give us the courage to obey and follow you. God, we believe the best days are not just ahead at long hollow but they are here at long hollow and you have us here for a season. God, we don't know the names of every person that has come before us but we do know they are men or women just like we are today. Ordinary men and women who came before us, who did extraordinary things because they put their faith in an extraordinary God. Speak to us now. Thank you for Jesus. We pray. In His name, and everyone said.