Right Direction

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Right. Well, if you want a good idea, if you want a good idea of how people think about God, okay, man on the street, just how somebody thinks about God, it's a really good idea to look at Greek mythology, okay. Greek mythology, so I want you to think like Zeus, Aphrodite, Hercules, or Heracles, I forget which is which, but Greek mythology, because in Greek mythology, the premise is that gods are just powerful humans, okay. That's kind of the, that's kind of the understanding. Gods behave like humans with a lot more power, and so it would be like, so if a Greek, Greek mythology, if you're thinking about like, what would it be like to be a god, it's like, well, what would I do with the power to change the weather, okay. Well, then you've immediately got a Greek god, okay. What would I do, how would I, how would my life change if I were immortal, what would it be

like if I were immortal, how would I handle that as a human, well, then now you're kind of stepping into what Greek mythology is about, and so if you read the stories about Greek mythology, and their gods are basically humans with more power than they can handle. They don't handle it very well, they don't do kind of the right things, okay, and there's one in particular I want to tell you about, and this, I promise we're going to get to the god of the Bible, okay. I just need to talk about Greek mythology to get there, okay, trust me. One particular god that's not a real god, but in Greek mythology is a god, Themis. You might be not, you might be unfamiliar with Themis, Themis is a god of law and order and justice, and here's a picture of Themis in Bruges, Belgium, okay, you might recognize her a little bit more now, okay, also called Lady Justice Justinia, Justicia, Justilia, called a couple of different things, but in Greek mythology she is

called Themis, and you see the sword in her right hand and the scales in her left, and this is maintaining law and order and justice, right, if you're going to maintain justice, you need to bear the sword, okay, you need to be able to weigh things out, but I want you to notice that there is a blindfold. Themis is blindfolded. When we think about justice, we think about justice being impartial, blindfolded, right, and this, I would tell you that justice actually isn't blindfolded, but if we are going to think about the only way that we can conceptualize somebody handling all of the justice in the world, somebody bearing the sword, holding the scales, the only way that we could do that is that somebody would either have to be in part like blindfolded or just plain blind, right, that's the only way that we can think that somebody could hold this power,

wield this power of deciding who's wrong and right is if they're blindfolded, as if they're impartial. We've been in a series called Right Together, and in this series we're talking about reading Romans 9, 10, and 11 together, okay, that in other words we don't just pick out little verses from Romans 9, from Romans 10, from Romans 11 to kind of say what we want, we read it all together, and so it's taken a bit of time, but we're getting there, and a few weeks ago in Romans 9, we learned that God was in complete control over our spiritual journey, right, that God is completely

kind of orchestrating all of that, right, and there's a couple of questions that come up whenever you think about God being in complete control of things, like how is he able to account for my spiritual journey and everybody else's, how does he consider all those variables, right, there's so many things that could happen in a day, how does God kind of handle all that,

and if we're going to grasp that, sometimes the mistake that we make is thinking that God is just a really powerful human, right, that we think that God is either, either he's blindfolded or he's cruel, like when we look at, when we consider God handling everything, meeting out justice, right, understanding who's wrong, who's right, where people are going in their life, then God either has to be blindfolded, like he doesn't really know what's going on, he kind of maintains this impartiality, or he's cruel, but the reality is that we saw, and we'll kind of come back to that, the reality is that we saw is that God is actually orchestrating his good purposes, and to compound that, we weren't even done, we don't, it's only in Romans 9, we got into Romans 10, and we saw this, we saw that we choose our own spiritual journey, we choose the path to that spiritual journey, you and I live in a reality that has real choices and

real consequences, and we are held accountable for those choices, right, that's how we function, you function in that you chose the outfit you're going to wear this morning, you function in that like you chose your career, you chose to be married or not, you chose to have kids or not, you chose what to name those people, right, we have real choices, and so the question that becomes how is God orchestrating everything, and allowing me to make choices at the exact same time, and we get caught thinking that God is like a human, but just with a little bit more power, but what I tell you is that he is not blindfolded, and he is not cruel, and that just because we cannot imagine it doesn't mean it's impossible, that God is big enough, he's bigger than our imagination, he's bigger than our conception of him, and truly the best that we can do is to figure that he's like a human with a lot more power, but that's only the best

that we can do, that God is bigger even than that, that he is orchestrating everything, and we are choosing, and that this, those things are coming together for our spiritual journey. Last week we dove into that spiritual journey in particular, and so we gave you a little, there's a little like a little diagram that we showed you, and we talked about how on your spiritual journey that if you are, there's this first part, that light blue leg where you are, and it's really small, don't try to read it right now, but we have copies of it at the start table, but that first leg you're talking about being, growing in spiritual awareness, okay, so you are hearing the gospel, you're thinking about the gospel, but then you believe the gospel and respond to the gospel, so you are growing in spiritual awareness on that light blue, that outer one,

and then on that spiritual awareness, as you kind of grow in there, there's a point where you believe and you respond, you're like yes, I'm going to follow Jesus, okay, so yes, and then that red part where you begin to grow in people awareness, okay, so you're a minister or a leader and you recognize the need in other people, okay, you're growing in the awareness that people have needs and that you are equipped to meet those needs in specific ways, okay, and so on that people awareness, as you go further, you end up, you sacrifice for other people's benefits, right, this is how the Bible describes leadership, that you are self-sacrificing, that you, like Jesus does for us, you lay your life down for other people, for their benefit, for their growth, and then that's the red one, and then inside there's the dark blue one, it's really hard to see you on that screen, that's okay, you have a mission awareness, right, where you have,

you are growing in your awareness that our church or Christians are on a mission together, and that requires cooperation, collaboration, that requires training and sending people and leading churches to do that, okay, so we see on this spiritual journey, the reason that we lay it all out is not to give you a list of to-dos, okay, it's not to like, you know, well you've got a long way to go to get, no, it's to help you understand where you are, okay, and you might think, oh, well like, I need to be further, or I need, you know, I'm whatever, I'm, you know, I'm on this leg, and I need to be on this leg, it's not, that's not for you to do, that's not really what we're here for, what we want you to do though is find where you're at and figure out how you need help, how our church can kind of come and help you kind of figure out what those next steps are, okay,

and so today, today, we will look at what happens when people seem to go backward on this, you'll notice all the arrows are pointing the same direction, you know, kind of in this circular, clockwise fashion, but what happens whenever, whenever people's spiritual journeys go counter-clockwise, right, or at least they seem to, what happens there, what's happening? They go in the opposite way on their spiritual journey. We pick up this idea in Romans chapter 10 verse 18, okay, we're going to go Romans 10, 18, and we're actually going through the middle part of Romans 11, okay,

and what we've, what we've kind of talked about in verse 17, we've just, we've just read last week, it ends with that faith comes by hearing and that hearing by the word of Christ, and so if faith comes by hearing, what about the people that have heard that don't have faith? What about people who seem to have believed but now do not, and that's actually the question, that's actually the question that Romans 10, 18 through 21 actually picks up on, and for the sake of time, I'm just going to, to run through that in kind of an abbreviated fashion, you are more than welcome to like check my work on this, but we're just going to not spend a ton of time on those four verses, but I just want to tell you in an abbreviated fashion, there's a couple of things, so right after 10, 17 it says, it says faith comes by hearing, and then in 10, 18 it says, well have

they not heard? They being God's covenant people, right, the Israelites, Jews, okay, same group, have they not heard? Yeah, they've heard. Did they not understand? Did Israel not understand? No, no, Israel understood, and then it says Israel is quote, disobedient and contrary. So this thing that we're stepping into now, people that are going counterclockwise, this is God's covenant people that are rejecting God, even though they've heard and they've understood, and on top of that, people who were totally outside the covenant, these irreligious, outsider people, now they've become God's covenant people, and so in Romans chapter 11 verse 1, in the first part, it asks this question, okay, it says, I ask then, has God rejected his people? If God is calling people disobedient and contrary, then this central question to the text here, what we're looking at is, okay, well then what about covenant people who reject their

covenant God? Has God in turn rejected them? It's a great question. Romans 11, 1b kind of answers that, right, it says by no means, so the answer is no, God has not rejected his people. It says, for I myself, this is Paul, the apostle Paul writing, who is a Jew, for I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. So the answer is no, God has not rejected his people. It says he's not rejected his covenant people, who've rejected him. He goes, look at me, I'm Jewish, right? Paul says, look, I'm in the covenant, and I follow the Lord, and it begins to answer the question, maybe the bigger question in the next verse, Romans 11, too. It says, God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know that scripture, what the scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? So he reiterates the answers,

no, but now he says, look at Elijah, okay, verses three and four. Here's what Elijah is asking of the Lord. It says, Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone, and left, and they seek my life. But what is God's reply to him? God says, I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal, right? So God kept a remnant the whole time. There were people that were supposed to be devoted to him, they weren't devoted to him at all, and God says, okay, I've kept back 7,000 people that were devoted to a remnant, right? And we're gonna come back to this idea of a remnant. Look at the next two verses, Romans 11, 5, and 6. It says, so too at the present time, so he says, look, in Elijah, a thousand years ago, this happened, so too at the present time, there is a remnant chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no

longer be grace. So this is what we talked about a couple of weeks ago. God still chooses people by grace, and we saw this in Romans 9, 16, for example, it says that people are chosen not by human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. Okay, so God's people, God's covenant people, the people that have history with him, the Jews, okay, they seem 100% rejected, but there's a covenant, and somehow God is going to fold them back in. Okay, God's gonna bring them back to himself, not all of them, but a remnant, a part. And although most of you are not wondering, probably not, you probably not rolling here wondering, like, what's gonna happen to like ethnic Israel, okay? Like, I really gotta know that this morning, I hope there's preaching on that, I'm just, it's a burning question. I understand that that was not your burning question. It actually is a burning question in the text, because you had people that were,

that were in this situation. But I believe a version of that question that is closer to home is, what about people who seem like they are, I mean, totally committed to the Lord, totally. I mean, like, they're like, so you think of like celebrities like Rob Bell or Rhett and Link or Joshua Harris or Jen Hatmaker, people that, that once like, man, they preached Jesus Christ.

The Lord used them in mighty ways, and they claim to adore Jesus. They sung worship songs to Jesus, they preached Jesus, and they have turned away from Jesus. And look, not just celebrities, but people that you know personally, people you went to high school with, people that you grew up with, people, family, friends, you know people that at one point they were just like, I'm a committed, yes, glory to God. And then, I don't know, man, fast forward a couple years, and maybe a couple of really bad mistakes or a really, you know, really big tragedy or something, it's usually something. And they're, and they're completely walking away from the Lord.

What does God do with people who seem to walk away? What does God do with people who seem to walk away? This question and the other question where, you know, it's like, what about God's covenant people? They're related. I want to give you one illustration to kind of cover both of them, okay? I want you to imagine you have to imagine with me, okay? So if you do not have your imagination hat on, just take a second, pray, ask the Lord for imagination hat, and then we'll keep going, okay? Okay, all right. I want you to imagine, okay, imagine, you gotta have your imagination hat on. Imagine that you are the head of a big family. And when I say big family, I mean big, you got like 10 kids, grandkids, great grandkids, you got nieces, nephews, great nieces, great nephews. You got other people that have just kind of, you know, like you've just kind of swallowed them in. It's like, you know, just under your care, right? So it's you in a big room,

a lot like this, and I mean, it's a hundred plus people, and you're saying, and you're the head of that family, okay? What a great moment, right? And you look out and just all these people that are in your family, and you say to them, you kind of declare, maybe you're all sharing a meal or something, you declare to them, you say, look, you are a part of my family. I am yours, and you are mine. We are in this together. Now, some in that room, they adhere to that, right? Some people in that room that are just like, yes, we share more than a last name. We share more than a heritage. I trust you. I'm in this family. I'm here. It's not perfect, but they trust you as the head of their family, right? They are, they're like, with you heart and soul. You say, I'm yours, you're mine. They're like, yes. They agree. Two fingers up in the air. Others, some others are

going to reject that, right? Like I said, look, I don't want your name. I'm gonna go make my own. I don't want your heritage. I don't like it. Some things I don't like about it. Some family history I don't want to be a part of. I don't want to be associated with that. I don't like your leadership. I don't want you as my head. I don't want to show any fidelity toward you. I'm not loyal toward you. I'm not there. I'm in the room, but I am with you. What do you do with those people who reject you? What do you do with you, the head of the family? What do you do? How do you treat them? There's a thousand answers to this question, but maybe you kick them out. Maybe say, you know what? You want to be part of the family? See you later. We're going to keep this family pure. You're out. Everybody who's in, we're in. We're in the family. We're keeping it pure.

Or, or do you kick them out and you, so that they miss it, right? You start playing head games with them. You kick them out, so they'll miss it. Seems like a good plan, right? I mean, it could backfire on you, but what have you lost? They're already leaving anyway. Maybe, maybe you pull them in closer, right? Maybe you're just like, oh yes, okay. I'm going to change their minds. I'm the head of this family. I'm going to pull them in closer, and they're totally, we're going to be, we're going to be all together. We're going to be even tighter, right? What do you do? What do you do? That's a tough one, right? I mean, it's not, we're not talking like a bunch of clear-cut answers here. We're not like, well, clearly the answer is, you know, D, I have to do, you know, like, no, it's not, it's not like that. And really, some very small version of that question is what a lot

of families go through on a regular basis, right? What do we do when people don't meet our expectations? What do we do whenever people seem to reject us? And we're kind of associated, what do we do? To understand what God does with his covenant people who walk away, with people who say, yes, I'm in, but they seem to walk away. What does God do with those people? So what we're going to look at in Romans is what God does with his covenant people, but it's, you can really, you can really switch that out with just people who claim Christ, right? And then walk away. We need to see it in two parts, though, and we need to see both parts together. If you just see one part, you're going to form this sort of weird camp, and you're going to be breaking off from this church in like a month and a half because, you know, like we're not pure enough. Okay, so don't do that.

Listen to both parts. Okay, it's very important that you listen to both parts. Okay. Romans 11, 7. Romans 11, 7. It says, what then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. So this is righteousness by works. This is like, I'm going to, I'm going to perform well enough. Israel, God's covenant people, they failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect, those that are chosen, those God chose for salvation, the elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened.

We see later in chapter 11, next week, we're going to talk about it, that it was a partial hardening and that, but, but I don't want to take any of the edge off here because verses eight, nine, and 10 all give Old Testament references to God hardening people. Ooh, God hardening people. We don't like, we don't like talking about hardening because when God hardens people, he seems cruel, right? And this is like, this is like Themis with her sword and her scales. We want to put the blindfold on God because at least he doesn't seem cruel. At least he can kind of have some plausible deniability like, nah, I don't know. I'm just blindfolded. I'm just, I'm just condemning people, you know, without really knowing about it, but there's, there's no blindfold. It's God's in full control here. He's hardening people. What's going on? Let's look at this. Let's look at the question

in verse 11, first part of verse 11. It says, so I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? Right? And that's the cruelty question. Did God just want to condemn them? Is that why they stumbled and fell? Just so they're, just so God would be right at the end of the day? Just so God could just point and laugh and say, I told you so? Is that, is that why they were hardened? Is that why God condemned them? Is God really cruel? Did, did my friend reject God? Did my parent reject God? Did my coworker reject God just so God would harden them? This is why we need to have both parts, right? Because I swear to you, some people are going to camp right there.

And, and they, they worship a cruel God and they say to themselves, I worship, I worship a hard, hard-nosed, hard-driving God who expects this of me. And I tell you what, I'm going to meet that. I'm going to be religious enough. I'm going to be spiritual enough. I'm going to perform enough. I'm going to remove myself from the world enough and I'm going to meet that. God may be cruel, but I can meet it. I can do it. I'm religious enough. We should not stop that. It's a really toxic place to be. You shouldn't do that. You will find in the end that, that is a, a really terrible way to live your life. It is cruel, but it's not God being cruel. It's just you being cruel to you and many other people probably in that process. Does God just try to harden people for, for kicks? The answer is no. And we need to see it in the second part.

Answer the question. Rome is 11, 11, chapter 11, verse 11 in the second part. It says, by no means, God just doesn't condemn people so that they would fall. Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel jealous. So God takes their rejection. Remember, okay, so we're back in the room, right? Back in the room. God's ahead of the table. I'm yours, you're mine.

God takes their rejection, hardens them, and then God uses their rejection for salvation in two ways. How? How does he do that? How does he use their rejection for salvation? The first, first way that you have to see it's, you know, I'm not, I'm not assuming that you, you have a ton of Bible knowledge this morning, but there is a famous parable called the Parable of the Wedding Feast. It's in Luke 14, 15 and following. Luke chapter 14, verse 15 and following where, and it's a simple parable, right? The king, there's a king and, and his son is getting married and he has this huge wedding feast. And in that day, when the king threw a wedding feast, you went, okay? I mean, that was kind of a big deal for you to go. And they prepared all the, the feast and it's all ready and the king says, okay, it's ready. Go and call the people that have been invited. And what happens? All the people that have been

invited, they've got excuses. Oh, I can't go. I just bought a field and I haven't seen it yet. I just, I just bought this oxen. I haven't seen it. Oh, I, my, you know, this thing happened over here. I got a family commitment. I don't, you know, I don't know, I don't know what's going on, but I can't go there. And the king says, fine. You can't come. Fine. What he tells his servants, he says, go to the outcasts, go to the blind, the lame, a bunch of people that, that wouldn't normally even be invited into this thing and go ask them and bring them in. And so they do, they bring them in and the servants come back to the king and says, king, there's still more room. And he's like, Oh, okay, more room than go to the outsiders. Go to the, go to the outlying villages. Okay. If, if this were happening in the heart of Dallas, they'd say, go to Burleson. Just kidding. Say go out to, go out to Tyler, Longview,

right? Nothing's happening out there anyway. Go, go, I'm just picking, go to the out, go to the outskirts, right? Go to the outsiders, go to the people that don't belong here at all and bring them in just so we have people at this banquet. The rejection of God's covenant people created wider moments of salvation so that more people could be brought in so that people who were outside the covenant could be brought in. And so if you're at the head of the table and people are saying, look, I'm, I'm rejecting that, right? I'm, I'm rejecting your, your leadership. Then, then they're, they're leaving seats open for more people to come in, right? In that analogy. That's the first way that salvation happens. It's not the only way. So their creation, their rejection creates wider moments of salvation. And you see that in verse 12 and in verse 15, it says, verse 12, it says, now, if their trespass, meaning Israel, if their trespass means

riches for the world and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Now that's talking about where we're going for just a second, but then look in verse 15, it says, for if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? So what he's, the point he's making is when Israel rejected God, God hardened them and then in that process, God used that to open up the doors, even wider, so that more people could find salvation. So God acts redemptively toward people who reject him in a way that opens salvation wider. Now some of us, we're not happy with that answer. We want God to undo that decision. We want God as the head of the table, as the all-powerful being in the universe. We want him to say, look, you say that you're not part of my family,

but I don't care. I'm going to make you part of my family, whether you want it or not. That's not how this works. That's not how love works. That's not how choice and consequences work. God wants people who want to be a part of this family. And if somebody's saying, I don't want to be part of this family, in some sense, he's going to respect that decision.

God's not going to remove choice. He's going to bless many other people with it. But those who reject God, so then there's kind of this other kind of ditch you can fall in. So people that reject God, are they just the carpet that other people walk on to come in? What are they? Are they just fodder? Are they just lying there? Does God make a bridge out of their lifeless bodies? How cruel can this be? What's the cruelest picture we can paint? They're not just carpet to walk on. Because if you notice back in 11b, it says, rather, through their trespasses, salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel jealous. So God is doing that, but he is doing that in part to make his covenant people jealous. And so we see it here in verses 13 and 14 of Romans 11. It says, now I am speaking to you Gentiles. So Gentiles will be outsiders, people who are not Jews.

Speaking to Gentiles, inasmuch as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous and thus save some of them. Once upon a time, I had a kid who kept sleeping late. I know that's so rare, you cannot imagine what that's like, but you're just going to have to go with me on this. I had a teenager who did not want to wake up on time. Okay, it's a rare case. I think it's the only one in the US, but the teenager did not want to wake up on time, kept sleeping late. And they were, I believe, like a junior in high school. They were driving, so they were a junior in high school, at least maybe a senior. And I mean, every morning or every morning for school, my wife would be just kind of, she'd be in a bad mood, right? I mean, it's annoying when your kids don't wake up and you're like, you know, going upstairs, like, Jed, it's time to get up, you know, and you know,

he's just our oldest, you know, just moaning. And I mean, I'll get up and he has all these excuses, like, all I need, all I need is like 10 minutes to like literally roll out of bed, throw clothes on and go to school, right? That's all I need. Why are you hassling me to be up 20 minutes before school starts? And so every morning this went on for months, you know, and I'm sick of it. I'm not even the one waking him up. And I'm sick of it. I'm sick of my wife being in a bad mood every morning. And so every school morning, so I'm just going, oh, what? So finally I said, babe, let's just not wake him up. Let's tell him, let's tell him, but let's just not wake him up. And just, I said, because you know what hurts worse than you nagging him, which doesn't hurt that much, but you know what hurts worse than that? Being late for school. Right? Like, let's just, and look, my wife, bless her, she just wants to be that safety net, right?

Like she just does. Man, love you moms out there. You are suckers for this every time. But I finally convinced her. I said, look, just let him, just let him do it. And sure enough, one fateful morning, he was, he was oversleeping severely. Had a late night because he didn't have bedtime. So he's just severely oversleeping and Christie, I, she, we're both downstairs and she starts to take one step and I'm like, babe, don't do it. Don't wake him up. We talked about this. Don't, she goes, you know, she just, she really wanted to wake him up, right? She did. She totally did. Cause she loves him and she wants to have that safety net and I'm holding her back and I'm just like, no, they don't. We talked about, look, remember, like I had to kind of bring her back to sanity, you know, just like, Hey, don't do it. You know, this is going to be good for him. And sure enough, he woke up and the whole house was empty and he was like, what's

happening? So he was, I think 45 minutes late for school or something like that. And it was, he was late. He was full on late and I was talking with him that morning and I was like, I had that, you know, he had that go and he goes, well, I just, when I realized I was late, I was like, dang. And then I thought, okay, I guess I'll take my time getting ready since I'm already late. Right? Like I'm just kind of meander through the morning routine at that point. He goes, I took a shower in the morning. It was actually kind of nice, you know, and, and you don't happen after that. I mean, I'm not saying this happens every time with every kid, but he was not late after that, or he might've been late another time or something. Yeah. Okay. He was like, my kids are looking at me like he was totally late another time. He wasn't late like that another time. But he knew from that point on, safety nets gone and it's really gone.

It took him waking up and realizing that safety nets gone. Sometimes, sometimes people really only appreciate something when you take it away for real, for real. Right? When you really don't have, when you really don't have what you thought you had and really what you thought you were getting because you're pretty great. You thought, I mean, my son was like, I mean, my mom's going to wake me up. She's my mom. I'm her son. Like, you know, like, come on, come on, man. I'm her son. Of course. And, and what we had to do, what we, what we had to do is just strip him of that notion that he was going to get by on just, you know, being a son of it always going that way. Right?

Sometimes people, people only appreciate their salvation after they've spurned it. I want you to, I want you to go back to that big family gathering one last time. And I want you to just, just, it's you in that position, right? Like, what are you going to do with these people that are going to walk away? And what does God do? Well, let me just, let me just kind of be super clear. God doesn't just do one thing because he's God. He's not a human with a lot of power. He's God. He doesn't just do one thing, but what he does, he does, he does layers and layers and layers of things that help people see what they've left behind, that help people understand that the safety net is gone, or at least what they thought was a safe net is gone. That the Lord God in heaven stops short of deciding for them, but rolls out all the stops to say, listen, this is a bad idea. Don't do it. It's going to be so painful for all of us.

Don't do it. He calls out to them. This is what we see in scripture, right? We see, we see God calling out to his people saying, look, don't do that. It's going to hurt you. It's going to be death and destruction and peril. And all his people can do in that moment is just be like, well, look, I mean, we're giving you the sacrifices you asked for, you know, we should be fine.

And just like Jed sleeping late, they just presumed upon God's kindness. But God's kindness, as we see in other places in Romans, God's kindness is meant to lead us to repentance. It's not there so that we think it's going to be there every time. So what does this mean for us? How does this translate? What does this mean for us kind of in our every day? How should we invest in people's spiritual journeys whenever they seemingly are running counterclockwise, especially when they are seeming to run counterclockwise? How has God treated us when we've gone astray, whenever we've gone counterclockwise? Well, I just want to give you three things. I want you to think about them.

And as you're thinking about these, I want you to, I want to challenge you like, maybe this is something that you can do like today. Maybe it's something you can do this week. Maybe the Lord's going to put somebody on your heart. The first thing that you can do is have a bias toward hope that somebody rejecting Jesus, if somebody's just like walking away or having serious doubts or serious frustrations or serious whatever, that they're walking away from Jesus, it's not the end of their journey. Okay, our spiritual journey doesn't really end until this life ends, right? So there's always kind of hope there. Dan Hay tells the story of his dad, who spent a lot of years, didn't even seem like he was growing in spiritual awareness even, right? Just years, decades, right? And then at the, like near the end of his life, like last five years, right? Just started reading the Bible, became encouraged by some

believers, joined a church, was baptized within five years of his life being over. And I guarantee you, look, that's not like, I'm not saying let's all wait until five years before we die. I'm not saying that, I'm just saying there's hope, right? I'm saying there's hope. And we have, we can have, as we work with people, we can have a bias toward hope. There are people who seem hopeless, but we can always hope because God is always in control. God is always orchestrating. God is always doing everything he can to throw out as many stops as he can to woo people, to call to them, to reveal himself to them, whether they choose or not, that's not up to us. And God has left it up to them. But we can still act toward hope. We can always, always hope. Second thing, we can invest in the moment, invest in the moment. Look, you're going to get moments with people that are at various parts in their spiritual journey.

You, whenever we are at, whenever we're at National Night Out, you are going to be bumping into people who are going to be at maybe some pretty weird places in their spiritual journey. Okay. Maybe they don't know what's going on. Maybe you can't even decide what is happening with them. But I will just tell you, you cannot anticipate everything. You can't know where it's going. You can't know where people are coming from, but you do have that moment right there. How can you invest in that moment? People need you to listen. People need you to pray for them. Do you have an opportunity to talk about Jesus? Do it. Do you have an opportunity to serve somebody quietly? Do it. Look, just because you give somebody a hamburger doesn't mean they need the whole plan of salvation. Sometimes they just need a hamburger. And for you to just ask them a few questions about their life, right? That on that journey of growing in

spiritual awareness, sometimes people aren't at the moment where they're going to believe and respond. You might even have an opportunity to pray over somebody. I was meeting with a guy this week. He's not a believer at all. Kind of rejects God. He's in his early 50s. And we were talking and he asked me questions about his life. He has a major decision to make it work, right? He's like eight years away from retirement. Major decision at work. And so I'm just kind of asking him questions. I'm helping him think through. And at the end, I'm like, hey, can I pray for you for this big decision? He's like, I guess.

So I prayed for him. Whether I don't know what that did, I don't have to, right? I'm just investing in that moment. That's my encouragement to you. Okay. Lastly, you need to trust God for the whole journey. Maybe that's a bit redundant, but I think it's helpful. For yours and for theirs, you need to understand that the Lord's in control of that. That it's their spiritual journey. You can't control theirs.

And some of us, look, some of us, if you rewind our spiritual journey five, ten years ago, we might look severely off track, right? We might look like we are. We're not even on that map, okay? Like we're really far off. But the Lord is faithful. We serve a God that is wiser and tougher and calmer than all of us. And I'm going to invite the worship team back up. And I just want to say, I just want to encourage you, just as we sing this last song, and we're just going to sing it all the way through. And we're just going to stand as we sing here in just a second. But what I want to encourage you is that if you are in a position where you need to respond, you need to do something that the Lord is calling you to do, okay?

First of all, you can talk to a lot of people here, but I'll be up here at the front, just sitting right there. You're more than welcome to come up during the last song. You're more than welcome to come up after the service when people are just kind of milling around. And I just want to encourage you to do that as you're kind of trying to respond to what the Lord is doing. I want you to do it in full effect. Don't go halfway, but just lean into that moment. Whatever the Lord is calling you to do, let me pray over us. Jesus, we ask for your grace. We ask for bravery. We ask that you would help us to be obedient to what you're calling us to do. Lord, give us a vision for what we can be in you, for what you are, maybe that life that you're calling us to that maybe we don't think we deserve or we don't think we can achieve. You're not concerned with that. You're not concerned with what we think we deserve.

You're not concerned with what we think we can achieve, that you have a purpose and a plan that is beyond anything that we can imagine. So just give us the courage to trust you. Would you stand?