Gold Medal Church, Week Two

All right. It’s cool outside. So we should all have a smile on our face because of that. This summer we have been going through the book of Acts. We were studying some about the early church, and then we are gonna continue to talk about acts today, as we have kicked off last week, a brand new sermon series called Gold Metal Church. And, and really the, the heart or the idea behind that is that for the next handful of weeks, we’ll all be watching the Olympics, or at least I’ll be watching the Olympics. And we watch some of the greatest athletes from around the world competing in their event for a gold medal. And they have gone through a whole lot of sacrifice and time and energy and effort for this moment. And it begs the question, what, what does it look like if the church, if us individually as Christians, put that same energy and effort towards what God has called us to do?

If you were here last week, and we really asked this question, what is the goal? And that word goal, it simply means the object of a person’s ambition or effort, an aim or a desired result. What is your ambition? If you took a step back and looked at your life and said, this is the ambition that I have this month, the ambition that I have for this year, the ambition that I have for my lifetime, that when I’m looking back at all that I’ve accomplished, my goal, my ambition would be that I have accomplished blank. What is the ambition that we have individually? And then what’s the ambition that we have as a church? What is God calling us to do? Who is God calling us to be? And if we look at the early church, here’s what’s really clear about the early church. They had a goal, they had an ambition that Jesus gave them in Acts one, eight, to be his witnesses to Jerusalem, Judeas and Mary to the other most parts of the earth.

And then also the early church was willing to pay the price. It’s not just that they had a goal, they were also willing to pay the price in order to achieve that goal. One of the things that Jesus teaches about as he uses this phrase, count the cost, pause for a second and ask yourself, what does that mean to count the cost? I, I’ll put it into a, a very practical way of understanding it. I, I have with me a crumble cookie, which if you know, crumble, they’re not open on Sunday. So it’s rare to have a crumble cookie on a Sunday, which means that I bought it on Saturday. But if you’ve ever had a crumble cookie, they are giant, they are the size of your face. And I’m a fan of crumble cookie, partly because it’s about a five minute walk from here to get to that crumble cookie that is right across the street. But also because they have this brilliant marketing technique that every week they have a new cookie lineup. So the chocolate chip cookie, it’s there all the time, but every week on Sunday at six o’clock on their Instagram <laugh>.

So I’ve been told they post the cookie lineup for the week, and it’s something new, something you’ve never heard of, and there’s a part of you that’s like, man, I’ve never tried a cookie that tastes like a donut. And so maybe this week I gotta go try it out. I gotta go test it out. And, and their, their cookies are amazing. They taste phenomenal. Here is the chocolate chip cookie photo that is on their website, or if you pull up their app. But I wanna point out that, that down here in the bottom, it tells you how many calories this cookie is, and it says it’s 180 calories with an asterisk. Now, if you were to look at that, you would think, well, that’s not bad. So I can eat this whole cookie and it’s only 180 calories. And that’s what most people would think, but you’d be wrong because if you look at the detailed information, it tells you that it’s four serving size per cookie. And that one fourth of a cookie is 180 calories. That in fact, if you were to eat the entire cookie, it is 720 calories. Now, that’s just a chocolate chip cookie. Some of their iced cookies can be upwards of a thousand calories in a single cooking. And so if you have an ambition, let’s say that you have a goal in life, and that goal is to be healthy and to be fit, and to stay in shape, then when you look at a crumble cooking, you have a choice.

And that choice is, am I going to count the cost? One fourth of this cookie is 180 calories, which is a side note, never in my life have I ever looked at a cookie and thought to myself, I really would like to eat one fourth of that cookie. Not, not, not once has that ever. Sometimes I’ll break a cookie in half so that I can eat half now and then pretend like I’m not gonna eat that other half, but 10 minutes later, eat the other calf. Never have I done that with a fourth of a cookie. But if I looked at the whole thing is almost a thousand calories, I I would have to look at the math and say, well, well, how much energy and effort is it gonna take me to burn o burn off those calories? There’s a group of guys that I work out with at Southridge at five o’clock in the morning on most days during the week, which is really early, and it’s always really early.

And Johnny and Iam and Casey, and most of the time it’s Johnny Iam that just comes up their workout. I call them my free trainer because they come up with some kind of a workout and, and they know that my least favorite activity in the world when it comes to working out is an exercise called the Burpee. So if you’ve ever done a burpee, it looks like this you basically go from a standing position, then you drop down and you do a pushup, and then you, you pull your feet back in, and then you, you jump up. And in theory, you’re supposed to clap. I never clap. I’m like, I have a line, like I’ll do the rest of the burpee, but I’m not, I’m not a cheerleader for somebody at five o’clock in the morning. And that is a burpee. It’s awful.

Everything about a burpee just feels painful and disastrous. And because they know that I hate burpees, they just add more and more burpee. Ev we don’t, we hardly work out without some amount of burpees being thrown into the mix. And if you were to ask me, well, how many calories does a single burpee burn? Here’s what I know that, that a burpee, actually, Bo burns more calories than any other single rep of any other exercise like it, it is the king. That’s why people made the burpee. I I would guess one burpee, what, 15 calories? Probably. I’ve gotta be something high, but, but here’s what one burpee burns. It’s half a calorie. It’s half a calories. So if, if you look at this cookie, the 720 calories of this cookie, it would require 1,440 burpees to burn the equivalent calories of a single crumble chocolate chip cookie.

That is a lot of burpees. I would literally die if I did that many burpees all at the same time. So it ultimately comes down to a question of ambition. Hey, what is the goal? Sometimes I work out in order so that I can eat crumble cookies or desserts or whatever I want. But, but if I have an ambition, I, I have to be able to say, if this is the goal, am I willing to pay the price to achieve that goal? The goal that we see Jesus give the early church was in Acts chapter one verse eight, that we read it a few months ago, that he said, but you’ll receive my power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And as a result of the Holy Spirit coming upon them, what’s the purpose of that? So that they will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria in the ends of the earth.

Now, in the first seven chapters of Acts, we really see the New Testament Church only in Jerusalem. Jesus had told ’em, I want you to go not just Jerusalem, the city that they were in, but also Judea. That’s the geographic region they’re in and Samaria further out and the other most parts of the earth. But in the first seven chapters, they haven’t left Jerusalem. And then an event happens that changes the course of the future of the early New Testament Church. That event is in Acts chapter seven, that Stephen, who’s a deacon, a follower of Jesus, he starts proclaiming and preaching the gospel. He’s doing exactly what Jesus told him to do in Acts one, eight. He’s being a witness to the world for Jesus, telling them what he’s seen and what he’s heard and what he knows, and the crowd doesn’t like it. And religious leaders come against him, and they take Stephen and they stone Stephen.

And then in the very next verse and Acts chapter eight, verse one, it starts by saying, and Saul approved of his execution. We talked about Saul last week, Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. And then it goes on to say this, and there are rows on that day, a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem. So as a result of Stephen being persecuted in stoned, it caused other people that were against Christianity. Other people that that agreed with that sentiment, they said, Hey, let, we’ve now got this boldness. We, we just stoned this guy. Let, let’s go persecute all the Christians in Jerusalem. And what happens as a result of that? It says, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of notice the order, Judea and Samarias, the exact same as Acts one, eight except the Apostles. That now that phrase at the end is an important phrase for context, because I think sometimes here’s what we think.

Sometimes we think the reason the church exploded and grew and the gospel spread to the whole earth was because you had these apostles that were so gifted and so dynamic and so incredible that as a result of them, that causes, but that’s not what scripture says. It actually says that the apostles stay in Jerusalem. And so who then is it that’s taking the teachings of Jesus to Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth? It’s, it’s just regular Christians, not, not professional Christians, not even leaders in the church. It is just people who are a part of the church who believe in Jesus. Now. Now pause for a moment and understand the context of what just happened. So imagine you’re in the first century and you’ve started going to a church and, and, and there wasn’t a small group of people. I mean, on day one there’s 5,000 people.

So, so lots of people are all hearing the teachings of Jesus, and they’re gathered together. And probably at first it’s pretty easy. Like it says that they’re breaking bread and they’re hanging out. There’s good music, they’re probably praying, and then all of a sudden, persecution comes against us. And as a result of the persecution, it says that they scatter. Now wouldn’t it be easy at that moment when you’re leaving Jerusalem to say, man, that was fun and that was great, but witnessing for Jesus, that’s, that’s kind of intense when people don’t like that. So I, I’m still gonna believe but as I, as I go and I scatter, I’m probably gonna not do as much witnessing. ’cause That led to some problems before, you know, or, or maybe a group of people that’s scattering together, they saw what just happened. And if they’re like me, my my natural reaction would be to pray against that, Hey, God, I we stop the persecution, stop the bad stuff. Sometimes we, we have this idea of, God, if you could just please make me happy.

I’ll tell you what happens in the New Testament church. Like if you look from a spiritual sense, you’d say, well, what God is allowing to happen, the persecution, if the church would say, is this the happiest I can be? They’d probably say no. And yet God allows it anyway falsely inside the church. We have this idea sometimes that, that God’s ultimate desire for us as Christians, God’s ultimate desire for us as the church is to simply make us happy. And that’s not true as, that’s not to say that God doesn’t care about our happiness, but it is not his priority. It’s not the ultimate thing. And if you’re a parent, you get that because guess what? My job is not with my kids to make them happy. And here’s why. It’s not because if all I did every day was try and make my kids happy, I’d be the worst parent on the face of the planet.

My, my kids’ happiness changes from moment to moment to moment to moment. But oftentimes it revolves around them wanting to do something that in the long term is not the best thing for me, allowing them to do. If I just said, Hey, whatever makes you happy, to every request that my kids get, then most of the time it would be, sure you don’t have to eat vegetables. Sure, you can eat more sugar. Sure, you can have some ice cream. Sure, you can have some chocolate. But that’s not my calling as a parent. It’s not to make them happy. It’s to see who I want them to be someday and try and guide them that direction. And so, God, in the same way you see the early church, he allows persecution to happen. Why? Because he sees where he wants the early church to go. He sees how that persecution can be used for his kingdom and for his glory.

That doesn’t mean he causes it, but he does allow it. See what happens a few chapters later, and Acts chapter 11, verse 19, it says, now, those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Fania and Cyprus and Antioch speaking the word to no one except Jews. Now, now pause for a second. Get context. It just means that they’re not yet preaching to Gentiles. They’re going out and they are preaching, they are still witnessing telling people what they know about Jesus, but they’re, they’re doing it to their own ethnic group. They are Jews, and they see other Jews and they say, Hey, let me tell you what I know about Jesus. But it goes on to say there were some of them men of Cyprus and Cyrene who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Hellness. That’s the Greeks.

This would be Gentiles, non-Jews, also preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them and a great number who believed turned to the Lord. So, so look at what God has done in Acts chapter one, verse eight. Jesus says, you’re gonna be my witnesses in Jerusalem, the city that you’re in and in Judea and Samaria. And how does that come about? Well, they were witnessing in Jerusalem. God was expanding his kingdom in Jerusalem, and then they weren’t leaving. And so God uses persecution. He allows persecution in order for them to go out to those very same areas that God had told them to go and share the gospel in Judea and Samaria, despite the fact that they had just seen persecution, they recognized the cost and continue to be witnesses for Jesus in spite of that cost. I think oftentimes we struggle with paying the cost.

Sometimes we want the benefit, but we don’t necessarily want to pay the cost. This weekend, we, we’ve had a neighbor who’s two houses down and she’s been doing a garage sale. And so yesterday my kids figured out, they said, there’s a lot of traffic going to that garage sale. Why don’t we go sell lemonade right next to the garage sale? Now, fortunately, they did have a conversation with the neighbor first, and and she’s so sweet. She was like, yeah, of course. Go for it. So they set up a table with, with lemonade, the cheap stuff where you just mix the powder with the, the water. And they were selling it for a buck of glass, which was not a good deal. Can I just tell you, as someone who tasted their lemonade <laugh>. And so they were selling lemonade for a buck, and then they got this idea.

They said, what if we added some of our stuff and did our own garage sale right here, right next to her garage sale? She’s already gotten the traffic. We’ll just have more people buy more stuff. And so they, they start dragging stuff out from the house. And one by one they’re sitting there and they’re, of course, there’s always this debate of, do I wanna sell that? Do I not wanna sell that? What should I sell? What should I not sell? And one of my kids who I’ll not name, they made a deal where we, we have these two tricycles. One is red and one is blue. And a little boy from from around the corner, he, he came and said, I’d like to buy one of those tricycles. Now, they haven’t used the tricycles in years. And so as they’re negotiating, my kid said, well, why don’t I sell you the red one instead of the blue one?

And so he made a transaction where he sold the red one for $15 and decided he would keep the blue one. And so that night at dinner, we’re having a conversation and they proudly proclaimed to the table. I’m like, yeah, I sold the red tricycle. And I said, wait, pause. Time out for a second. You sold the red tricycle? He said, yeah. I said, you don’t own the red tricycle <laugh>, you own the blue tricycle? And he said, yeah, that’s why I didn’t sell the blue one. So I sold the red one instead, and I kept the blue one so that it’s win-win for me. I sold a tricycle and I kept a tricycle and it’s all great. And I said, you don’t get to keep the money for something you sold. That is not yours. That is not how this works. You don’t, you don’t get to just steal things and sell them to other people. <Laugh>,

I, I’m, I’m looking ahead to the future. I’m like, I have created a criminal mastermind. Like, no, let’s stop this right now. This is not how that works. You sold something that belongs to her. And so she gets the $15 and, and he was pretty cress ball. I gotta be honest. It’s like, that’s not fair. But, but here’s what we like when we have that moment of, okay, I can receive something, but this is what it costs me. What we really like to say is, well, I, I want to receive the benefits, but I don’t wanna pay any of the costs. If I could just figure out a way to receive but not give, that would be great. The Passion Conference started in 1997. Passion conference started out of a bible study in Houston that was a, a college, it was called Metros. It was a worship service that that met every week.

3000 college students met every week, and then Louis Giglio and some core people around him in 1997 said, what if we did a, a college conference for college students from all over the country? And so first passion, 97, 98, 99, and then in the year 2000, they decided to do something they called one day. And so for the entire year, they had college students that were on vans and buses that went from college campus to college campus to college campus, building up one day a passion is where Chris Tomlin really got famous, and David Crowder and Charlie Hall, and so on. May 20th, the year 2000, they had 40,000 college students show up to a field in the middle of Tennessee where they set up a stage and all day long they worshiped. And different people got up and preached the gospel. But the most famous message from that day was a message from John Piper.

John Piper at the time was, it was almost 60 years old. He’s probably not who you’d say, Hey, that’s who’s gonna relate the most to a bunch of 20-year-old college students. And yet his message is the message that resonated and has become more famous than any other message. And at the very beginning of the message, here’s what he started by saying, he says, if you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles, you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity. You don’t have to have a high IQ or a high eq. You don’t have to have good looks or riches. You don’t have to come from a fine family or a fine school. You just have to know a few great majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things and be set on fire by them.

And he would go on to preach from Galatians about Paul boasting in the cross that, that Paul said, all the things that I have in my life, all the things in this world I consider rubbish, I’ll put my pride in my boast in the cross Piper’s message would be, be go on to be known as the sea shell sermon, the sea shell sermon say that five times. And it was because of an illustration he used at the very beginning of his message. And this is that illustration he said three weeks ago, we got word at our church that Ruby Ellison and Laura Edwards had both been killed in Cameroon. Ruby was over 80 single all her life. She poured it out for one great thing to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor pushing 80 years old and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon.

The brakes gave way over the cliff. They went and they were gone, killed instantly. And I asked my people, was that a tragedy? Two lives driven by one great vision spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ. Two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on Trifles in Florida or or New Mexico. No, that is not a tragedy. That is glory. I’ll tell you what a tragedy is. I’ll read it to you from Reader’s Digest. What a tragedy is. It goes on to quote from Reader’s Digest. Bobby and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta, go to Florida where they cruise on their 30, 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. That is a tragedy.

And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get 40 minutes to plead with you. Don’t buy it with all my heart. I plead with you. Don’t buy that dream, the American dream, a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement collecting shell as the last chapter before you stand, before the creator of the universe to give an account of what you did. Here it is, Lord, my Shell collection. Now, let me pause for a second and, and give a little bit of context. Piper is not anti joy or anti happiness or anti lesure in life. He’s got plenty of sermons that he talks about joy and, and retirement and what those things look like. But, but here’s his point that he’s trying to make, he’s trying to say that if your goal, if your ambition is that the American dream more than anything else, and that’s what your life is all about, that that in itself is vanity and empty.

He said, none of those things are evil or bad as long as those things are subservient to the call that Christ has placed us on each, every one of our lives as Christians, that ultimately my goal in life, my call in life is to make his name known to be a witness for the kingdom of God, to use my giftedness for God’s glory. And all these other things need to be subservient to that primary call on my life. That’s what Jesus talks about. And Luke chapter 14, why? Why when we see the early church, do we see them live in such a way that pays such a great cost? They’re being persecuted, but they still proclaim the gospel anyway, it’s because of the teachings of Jesus. Luke chapter 14 started in verse 25. It says, now, great crowds accompanied him. And he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own wife, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Now. Now, pause it. Imagine if you’re one of the disciples of Jesus, like, like you’re thinking to yourself, Hey, this is going pretty well, Jesus. Like you keep doing these miracles, you keep healing people, and we got more and more people that are coming after us, more and more crowds that are falling and they’re getting excited. And then Jesus turns to the crowd and he sees how big the crowd is getting, and he tells them that they’ve gotta hate their mother and father, and they’ve gotta deny themselves and take up their cross. And probably disciples are pulling Jesus aside and say, Hey, we love the miracle stuff. We love the feeding of of more and more people. That all of that’s great. If we could tone down this rhetoric. ’cause Man, it is not, that’s not what the crown wants to hear.

Jesus. That’s not gonna draw ’em in. That’s not gonna get a whole bunch of people to come and be your followers. And yet, here’s what we see throughout the gospels, that Jesus over and over again would turn to the crowds and he’d see them growing, and then he would give them the costs. He’d say, this is what it’s gonna cost you to follow me. And scripture tells us that people would turn and walk away because they weren’t willing to pay the price. He goes on in Luke 14 to say this, for which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, when he is laid down a foundation and is not able to finish it all, who see it begin to mock him saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish.

Or what King going out to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20,000. And if not, while the other is still a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he all that he has, cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall it saltiness be restored is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

Jesus says, there’s a cost now. Now make no misunderstanding. We don’t add anything to our salvation. So there’s no math in God’s equation that says, well, Jesus with what he did at the cross, plus what I add. And that’s what gives me salvation, that that’s not ever what scripture teaches. Our salvation is grace alone. I add nothing to that equation. It is what Jesus did for me on the cross. He died for my sins. It’s his redemptive work. Salvation has nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. But what he does add is that following Jesus has a cost. Our salvation was cost to God alone. But following Jesus has a cost, a cost that we have to be willing to pay to follow him. He uses that example at the end. He says, what happens to salt when it loses its saltiness?

Here’s an interesting thing about salt. It can’t lose its saltiness that, that from a molecular level, what salt is you, you can’t change it. It is salt. So how then does salt lose its saltiness when it’s watered down by other flavors and other ingredients? If you’re cooking a dish and you put in salt, but then you put in so many other ingredients that you can’t taste the salt, that’s how salt loses its salt. Is he, he’s giving this illustration for us. He’s saying that if you are a Christian, if you’re a follower after Jesus, he’s saying you have got to live a life that looks different, that you’re denying yourself. You’ve given all that you have to him love him more than anything else. That’s that example of, of hating my family. It’s not that I literally hate my family, it’s that my love for Jesus compared to my love for anything else, that love for anything else looks like hatred. So I, I have to passionately love Jesus at a cost. But the danger is, if someone looks at my life and says, well, your life looks exact same as everybody else’s life, like you’re following the American dream the same way that everybody else is following the American dream and you’re watching the same shows and you’re having the same conversations and you’re living the same life.

What, what’s different about your life? A Christian whose life looks the exact same as every other life in our country has lost its saltiness. It’s been watered down by the culture around it. Here’s what the early church knew, is that everything of great value has a cost. Everything of great value has a cost. As we watch the Olympics, here’s what we’ll learn. Winning a gold medal comes at a great cost, time, energy, effort, sacrifice. And it’s led me to ask myself this question this week, has my faith ever cost me anything? Was the cost of my faith? What is the cost of my witness? Is the way that I spend my time different as a result of my relationship with Jesus? Is the way that I spend my talent different as a result of my relationship with Jesus? Is the way that I spend my treasure different because of my relationship with Jesus? Is my ambition in this life changed my goals in this life changed because of my love for Jesus? Or does my life look the exact same as everybody else’s? I think we’ve created this false idea in the American church that says, well, hey, Christianity doesn’t cost you anything. And, and salvation doesn’t cost us anything, but being a witness for Jesus should cost us a lot. And if it’s not costing us anything, then we have to ask the question, am I being a witness? Am I witnessing to anybody what Jesus has called me to witness?

There’s a paradox that Jesus gives us in Matthew chapter 16, verse 25. He says, for whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life, for my sake, will find it. He’s saying, from a worldly standpoint, someone might think I’ve saved my life. Look at all I’ve accomplished, look at all the stuff that I’ve got. And he says that that person, although from a worldly perspective, highly successful, has lost their life from an eternal perspective. But, but then he says, whoever loses his life, whoever’s willing to give their life to Jesus, for my sake will find it. The greatest trade we can possibly ever make is to say, I’m willing to pay the costs in order to achieve all that God would want me to achieve. I’ll put it like, this is an example. My kids, they’re in all the year, but especially during the summer, they have chores that they do Monday through Friday, but then Saturday for us is chore day.

So there’s some big chore that every kid gets assigned. And on Saturday, they have to achieve that chore before they can watch screens, before they can play video games, before all the other things happen. Hey, chore first, that’s your priority. And I’m sure just like your kids, they wake up on a Saturday morning and and they come and they say, Hey, can I just tell you mom and dad, I’m so grateful that you’ve given me chores. We just love it. I I I see that you care about my future and who I’m becoming as a, as a long-term human being. And so you’re trying to instill discipline into my life, and I’m just, I’m grateful for the opportunity to serve in this way. And so I’m gonna go do my tour right now. That is not what conversations look like on Saturday morning at my household every week.

No one’s surprised by the fact that, Hey, it’s Saturday, you got a big chore to do. And every week it’s the same phrases over and over. It’s not fair. The 45 minutes they spend flinging themselves on the couch to the chair telling us how unfair life is they could have done and done the chore and been been over with. Go, go on, move on to the next say. But, but sometimes for hours, they will just mope around about how it’s so unfair. And then they’ll even use phrase like this, I just can’t. I just can’t do it. I’m just so tired.

And here’s the perspective that I have that I want to tell my kids. Yesterday I had a really long conversation with one of ’em about exactly this, this exchange. And, and I try say, Hey, do you understand what you get outta the deal? Like, here’s what I’m at. Here’s the part that you have to, to put in. You gotta mow and it takes you, I mean, we don’t live on a farm. We’re talking about, we’re talking about 20, maybe 30 minutes to mow and weeding. So that’s your exchange. That’s what you have to do. By the way, they get paid for the Saturday chores, so it’s not even a free labor of love. So that’s what you give to the equation. Now, let me explain to you what I give to the equation. What you get out a result of it. One, you’re allowed to live in this house. Two, every food that you have ever consumed in the history of your life you have never paid for. You had nothing to do with that. It’s a free gift from the benevolence that exists in my heart

That every time you do an activity,

Whether it’s watching a screen, a screen that I have paid for, using a subscription that I also have paid for using the internet, that also I have paid for. Or

Anytime we take you to an activity, you’re using our car and our gas and our time to take you to that activity our whole life. Me and your mom revolves around you.

And

What you add to the equation is 20 minutes of mowing the lawn on Saturday. It’s a pretty good deal. But,

But the eternal exchange that we make with Jesus is like that, but infinitely greater that Jesus is saying, Hey, I want it all. I want it all if you’re gonna follow after me. But what we get in return, and I’m not just talking about getting heaven in the eternal side. I’m talking about what we get on this life, the joy, the benefits, the eternal significance we get by chasing after Jesus is far greater than what we give in exchange. Why do I require my kids to pay a cost? Why do I require ’em to do chores? It’s not because I care about the chore that they’re doing on that Saturday. It’s because I care about 20 years in the future. I don’t want my kids to, to grow up and be entitled and lazy. And so I’m gonna make them work every step of the way. And in that same way, the cost that we give, why does God require it of us? He requires it of us because he sees the future and he sees what he can do in us and through us when we’re willing to be sold out and on fire and say, God, I give you everything. Heavenly Father, help us to not skip past so much of scripture that tells us over and over and over again to count the cause.

God help us to fight against that tendency inside of American Christianity to think that, well, my life looks the exact same and I just get Jesus on top of it. And help us as individuals, as followers of you, help us as a church and to realize that you are asking us to deny ourself. You’re asking us to lose ourself for your sake and for your glory. And so God, help us to surrender it all. God help the, the words that we sing when we sing these worship songs, to not just be words that we sing, but words that are true inscribed in our hearts, proclamations to you, that we will boast in nothing except the cross. What Help us to be a church, God, that we boldly are your witnesses to the world around us, and we chase after it wholeheartedly and help us to be willing to pay the costs to do it. It’s the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. A few.