Arms Wide Open

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Today I have a message of hope.

We're going to talk about repentance. See, repentance is there for us to be able to obtain and to give forgiveness, not only for the transgressions that we have had, our missteps, our sins, but also to absolve and allow other people to be free from the burden of the obligation that our sins require.

Sometimes we like to over complicate the Scripture. Sometimes we like to get in the nuances of it. We say, oh, well, if you compare the Hebrew word to the Greek word, and you look at the history books in the first century and the second century, and sometimes it's just very, very, very, very simple. In the end, no human being ever, except for one, could take away the sins of the world. No human being forever.

Billions of trillions of gazillions. I was in home school, so I don't know math. Out of all of those opportunities, out of all those times, no persons could live up to the requirements of the Scripture. We all are sinners. And yet one king in this season, in December, as anxiety runs, as the days are shorter, stop placing burdens upon yourself.

You were never created to be able to accomplish. You were never created to withstand. There was only one.

Repentance and forgiveness help us in so many ways. But I want to lay out a couple of key areas for us, because sometimes we approach the Scripture as just what we're learning, what we can know. And I want to be a church that's constantly talking about, what can we do with the Scripture, how do we apply it to our life, how do we make our marriages better, how do we make our homes better, how do we exude the fruit of the spirit? Because ultimately, it doesn't matter what we know, it doesn't matter what we do. If the fruit of the Spirit isn't there, then the Lord isn't there.

And that's important. It's given to us so that we can have spiritual growth. This is a growth that is ongoing. It is a growth that you don't arrive at. It is a growth that you continuously are doing over and over and over and over again until you meet your maker face to face.

And then you get perfected, but not because you perfected yourself, because he tears off everything else that you couldn't tear off yourself. It produces intimacy with God.

Intimacy is tough for some people. You know, we'll say, well, it's not my love language. Physical touch isn't my love language. And we'll walk in and out of these areas. But God desires and requires intimacy from you.

Now he gives you the option to choose whether you're gonna do it or not. He's not gonna beat you down and drag you back to the cave like the cavemen from the Geico commercial. He's going to give you an opportunity to make that choice. But he wants intimacy and he provides intimacy in the most healthy way. He requires and helps you obtain humility.

There's a book, I believe it's called the Journey to Humility or something like that, but by Andrew Murray. I talk about it in my new podcast in a couple of weeks from now. One of the best books I've ever read on prayer and humility out there really, really helps change your heart. It also gives you a perspective change in how you see others and how you see yourself. Love the Lord your God with all your heart.

Love your neighbor as yourself. I've said before in a previous sermon, I believe that we absolutely keep that commandment. I believe we love our neighbors as we love ourselves. Because one of the greatest issues in the 21st century in America is that our self esteem and self image is not great. We compare ourselves against everybody.

I wake up in the morning and I'm not looking in the mirror as if who God created me to be. I'm comparing myself to Jacob or to Tim or to other people. God didn't make me to be Jacob and Tim, he made me to be me. And he didn't make you to be me, he made you to be you and to produce healthy fruit. The wisest of the wise, the richest of the rich.

Scrooge might be right, you might need to hate Christmas, but if you produce bad fruit, you are a bad tree.

Doesn't matter how much Greek and how much Hebrew. I know there's some very basic principles for us to judge whether the Lord is present with us or not. Why are we over complicated? The first place we should look is, well, am I angry? If I have anger, that's not peace, that's not joy.

So why am I angry? Is the Lord with me? Is the Lord not with me? It's pretty simple when you boil it down.

Am I producing the fruit of the Lord or am I producing the fruit of the adversary? In the end, that's how you know whether the Lord is with you. Or you should evaluate what you're doing or how you're doing it and make an adjustment. I know this is going to be a shocker for some. Some of you are fairly new to the congregation.

Some of you are fairly new to watching Online. But I used to be a narcissist. I am in recovery. Shocker. I know in those times, I would think to myself, man, I am the greatest.

Look at what I was able to accomplish for this ministry. Look at what I was able to do. Look at what songs I was able to write. Whatever it is, I'm the greatest.

And then life happens. Kind of like you're the greatest baseball player ever until you strike out a key in a key moment of the game. And when you start to see your failures, it's amazing how quickly you can become humble, or it's amazing how quickly you can just blame somebody else. Humility helps us grow into a place where God can change our hearts, change our walks. Blaming somebody else is just kicking the ball down the field.

Because sooner or later, if the Lord wants to work with you, you're going to find yourself against growing opposition for him to teach you those lessons. It's no secret. A couple years ago, this church had a massive exodus moment. Had the opportunity to do what the Lord had already called us to do and asked us to do for many, many years. We just chose not to do it.

And it wasn't like he wasn't going to do it. Of course his plan was going to happen. He just chose who, when, how, and why he was going to turn up the heat. We're in chili season. You put the lid on, you turn up the heat, and what happens?

You boil. You see what comes out. You get a little bit of cinnamon and coriander in there. And friends smell it before they come to the front door.

If all that's in you is not of the Lord, they're going to smell it and see it and hear it before they get to the front door, too. Yet when humility comes to our life, what do we do? What do we do? Do we live in the moment of our life? Gracious that the Lord is working with us.

Gracious that the Lord is attempting to help us. Are we consistently looking back at what we had? I was joking with one of the deacon couples this week. I don't have great enough healthcare to do it, but I was joking. I was gonna.

As I was gonna talk through this line, I was gonna walk and walk and walk. And I've had some people come to me and say, do you really know how close you are to the front of the stage? And I was just gonna fall off the stage because I was looking backwards. I was gonna make a point. But at this point in time, I'm 6 foot 7.

And we don't fall gracefully. I don't even care if it's only three feet. So I'm gonna make my point in the sense that if you're looking backwards, then you're missing what God is doing in the present. Back in the sermon we talked about and I had the blackboard up here, and we were drawing. When Jesus steps in, he changes those moments.

If you continuously look into the past, you're missing what he's doing in the present. And what he's doing in the present is trying to change and move your future in a different trajectory. When we elevate ourselves to the seats of judgment, the seats of God, or to the seats of our own narcissism, we destroy, enslave, and pervert the very thing we were created to do.

This is the world that Jesus was born into. This is the world that we talked a little bit about last week when we talked about John the baptizer, Yochanan the immerser, John, John the Mikvah man. When we talked about him. This was a culture they were in. John was sent before Jesus under the spirit of Elijah, to go and to help ease what was becoming a very big cultural transition.

Anybody who's been in this church for any period of time know we have continuously been going through a transition. We have been pursuing Jesus with everything that we have. And as we pursue Jesus with everything that we have, sometimes that's not easy. Sometimes. Sometimes it's hard.

And sometimes we want to hold on to old wine, and sometimes people get sideways and they don't want to move, and all kinds of things happen. But in the end, if our eyes are all focused on Jesus, we end up in a very healthy place in the future. What would a world full of empires do to the king of all empires when he came? I spent a lot of time thinking about that this week. During this season of Christmas and Hanukkah, there's a lot of talk about what the world's doing.

Did you see what they did there? Did you see what they did there? Oh, my gosh. Every place is different, and there's a lot of focus on the world, yet. This is very similar to the time that Yeshua was alive.

This is very similar to the time that Yeshua's ministry was going on. Everybody was worried about Rome. Everybody was worried about the Greeks. Yet Jesus was confronted with many, many opportunities in his ministry. He was confronted with the opportunity to be consistently against Rome.

Well, we've read the Scriptures. We know that sometimes he has some things to say about Rome. But he wasn't consistently against Rome. He wasn't picking a fight with Rome in every place he went. Maybe it was the Greeks after all.

It wasn't that far long into the past where the Hasmoneans had defeated the Greeks and you had Assyria and you had all these other empires that were around trying to influence them. But he didn't spend a whole lot of time talking about the Greeks. He actually barely addresses any of those cultures. He came to cleanse his own house first. The Jewish believers were separated into two different kingdoms.

Galilee, essentially, Jesus spends a lot of time in the northern portion of Israel. And in Galilee was basically almost a different kingdom. They had a different influence kind of happening up there than Jerusalem. And while the Jews were trying to work together as much as possible, and I say that very, very loosely, you had the remnants of the Hasmonean dynasty. The Hasmonean dynasty was around the time with the Maccabees, where the Maccabees had defeated the Greeks and they had cleansed the temple.

And then they went too far. So you had a little bit of that remnant still left, a little bit of that ideology that was there. You had the Pharisees, you had the Sadducees, and then the Essenes, who went full fledged pagan in the desert, hiding, waiting for the Lord.

Humans have a history of taking things too far. It's the same thing. We have to figure out now how much is too much of a good thing. Where's the line? How do we figure it out?

Humans as a whole have a history of taking things too far. Yet during this political climate, during this time, the king of the world was born. One who wouldn't align with any political or religious leadership. One who wouldn't join the empires of the world. One who grew up in the temple, followed in his father's business, and then followed John in the wilderness to be baptized.

Yet this one was about to shatter everything. Every single person and that culture knew about empires. While Jesus walked in the same towns, did similar training, even probably wore very similar garments. Make no mistake, this king wasn't like the rest. He came to gather his servant.

His servant who had chosen to whore after the empires in the world. Some of whom who chose to be scared of the world and hide away. And in that, in them being scared, they built their own narcissism to somehow feel they were holier than every other person that was out there. None of it was good, none of it was healthy. None of it was Yeshua.

And yet, even if we take the world out, if we take Greeks out, take all the Greece influence out of those human beings. Take all the Roman influence out of those human beings. Let's take all of the consumerism out of us in this room. Let's take all the paganism out of us in this room. That wasn't their biggest issue.

You say, what do you mean that wasn't their biggest issue? Commercialism is the root of all evil. Taxation is theft. Whatever end you end up on, whatever way you end up on it. But that was not their biggest issue.

They were their biggest issues. Why were they their biggest issue? Because even if you stripped out Greece, Rome, Assyria, anything from them, they had used the power of the human heart and the human mind to create a culture of proud, divisive rulers of empires. They built inside larger empires.

They didn't have to, but they did. Little mini empires. Follow me. I'm a Pharisee. I come from.

Hello, I come from Maya. It's the same argument we see when Paul talks in the New Testament. Humans have a history of taking things too far. And he says, who cares if you came from Apollos? Who cares if you came from this person?

Nowadays we're like, have you read John Bravier?

Have you read Joel Osteen?

Whoever it is, take your pick. It's the same thing. We look first and foremost to men to build empires inside empires. We don't allow those men and those women of those ministries to bring value to us the way that they're trying to. We do exactly what the Pharisees do.

We go too far and we create our own empires inside empires. Some of you say, well, I would never do that. Yeah, you would. Some of you are doing it right now. Some of you are so closed off your mindset that the Lord is not continuously working with you.

He's not continuously talking to you. And you've arrived. You've arrived at the top of the mountain. So you think because we did a YouTube search or because we read the Bible differently for one time, this is how the human heart goes too far. In the end, you will always be lacking in something.

Because we were never created to have everything until we repented and fell on our knees and worshiped Jesus. Apart from that, there is no perfection in you or me. There's none.

Sometimes we have good days and sometimes we have bad days.

They had created these empires in larger empires out of the desire of their heart to be wise, to be seen in the city gates. Ones that had raised themselves up as the prince and the kings of the Torah. Ones that exalted themselves in the halls of the political elite. It wasn't just one place. It wasn't like you had to come into the synagogue.

They, the Sadducees, were working collectively with Rome. They were the lobbyists, so to speak. There was backroom deals happening, there was pork in a bill, and nobody had X at that point in time. Nobody could blow the whistle on it until one who is superior than all humanity came in the most humble of form. How powerful is his mighty arm.

How he scatters the proud and the haughty ones. He has torn princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has satisfied the hungry heart and sent the rich away with empty hands. And how he has helped his servant Israel. He has not forgotten his promise to be merciful.

For he promised our fathers Abraham and his children to be merciful forever. John's father gave this prophecy shortly after John had been born. There was a time where the angel had given John's father the revelation, and then he had sewed up his mouth, made him mute.

And then after John is born, there's this prophecy that he gives. He says, praise the Lord, the God of Israel, for he has come to visit his people and has redeemed them. He is sending us a mighty savior from the royal line of his servant David, just as he promised through his holy prophets long ago. Someone to save us from our enemies and from all who hate us. The expectations, predictions, the weight of what the Jews in the first century had placed upon Yeshua was great.

And yet none of us will ever know how great that weight is. Because all we can experience is the weight to put together a good sermon or to have good music or to dress nice or to not be angry or none of those meet the expectations of centuries of people who have been enslaved, centuries of people who have been killed and mocked, centuries of people who have been praying for a mashiach. They wanted a mighty warrior and what they got was a humble king.

Yet one was coming, one was preparing, who was prophesied about, one who would clarify centuries old traditions for the greatest social revolution of all time. And we're like, hey, we're going to do a social revolution that's like super popular right now. Like, we're going to be socially active and we're going to get involved in social justice and we're going to go, we're going to go shout and we're going to go do all that kind of stuff. We should just go ahead and just like start out, like, let's just make sure, we understand the greatest social revolution of all time was done by Jesus Christ. And so ours is like.

Ours is like a lemonade stand. Like, let's just be real about, like, it's just like a lemonade stand. Like, yeah, we affected change. This dude was about to utter words and actions that would destroy empires.

We only dream of being able to make that type of an influence in the United States of America or in other countries. Let's be real. The empire still exists today. And we have the same option as the religious leadership did in that time. But yet one who was prophesied was coming.

And pirates had come and gone, but a king was here. They ran to the village and they found their way to Mary and Joseph. And there was a baby lying in the manger. The shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherd's story expressed astonishment.

But Mary quietly treasured these things in her heart and often thought about them. Then the shepherds went back to their fields and their flocks, praising God for the visit of the angels and because they had seen the child just as the angel had told him.

And yet the law of the kingdom was not empire. The law he was bringing was not empire. Remember, John was preaching in the wilderness, you broad of snakes.

Okay, I like the ESV version most of the time, but I'm going to give you my version here, heathen.

He didn't have anything nice to say there. His. His adjectives were not great. He was at war with these people. He was sent on a specific mission to change the cultural influence for the king who was coming.

Empires and empires, they had risen, they had fallen. Hasmonean empires. There was Jewish empires, and this is what was coming. He didn't have time to mess around. And if you think Jesus was going to mess around, he wasn't either.

You brought up snakes. You were trying to escape hell without truly turning to God. I don't care how Torah observant you think you are.

Said it multiple times. I stop my work from 4pm on Friday to 4pm on Saturday and I do no work on that day. You will still go to hell if you do not have a relationship with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. You can be. You can be.

I gave all my money away. Do you know Jesus? Are you covered by the blood of the Lamb? By the way, this isn't even a gospel New Testament thing here. They didn't get out of Egypt unless they put the blood on the doorpost.

You can't save yourself. You can't save yourself. You can't save yourself. Ever infinite. No take backs and you never were intended to.

You're trying to escape hell without truly turning to God. That is why you want to be baptized. First go and prove by the way you live that you really have repented.

I don't care what you say with your lips. If your lifestyle doesn't match it, then I don't believe you. It doesn't even matter if we're talking about repentance. If you tell me you love Jesus and you're producing regular fruit that doesn't match the Holy Spirit, I don't believe you. Now I'm not judging you, I'm just taking you at your word.

I love Jesus, but I'm angry. I love Jesus, but I'm gonna go on sinning. I love Jesus, but I'm gonna look like a heathen. I love Jesus, but you have to establish everything with two witnesses. Testify with your lips and your walk goes some different way.

That's on you. That's not on me. First go and prove by the way you live that you really have repented. And don't think that you are safe because you are descendants of Abraham. Your bloodline matters nothing in salvation.

There is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ. Don't walk into the party and say, hey Jesus, I'm here because Abraham's my dad. Repent. Well, Moses is my second cousin. Repent.

In the end you need to know Jesus. In the end you need to know the king of kings. Not just about the land or the people or the prompts. God can produce the man.

Some of the commentary of how these people talked in conflict, I'm just going to put up on my wall in front of my desk. God can produce children from Abraham, from these stones.

We're the sons of Abraham. Look at us.

You know who our daddy is? He's like, I will take this speck of trash on the floor and I will turn it into sons of your father who worship Jesus. Better mind you think about this for a second.

The acts of his judgment is poised over you, ready to sever your roots and cut you down. There was no more Jewish roots, Hebrew roots. Anything that not time frame, it was ingrained in their culture. Guys, I need you to understand something. We live in America.

We are not more Jewish in our culture than Israel. We are not more Hebrew in our culture than Israel. It's not possible. This is ingrained in the arrogance. For us to think that somehow we're smarter.

We're wiser when they've literally grown up with it. Their entire life it's been passed down. And not all of it is good, don't get me wrong. But not all of it is bad.

And he says the acts of his judgment is poised over you ready to sever your roots and cut you down. Yes. Every tree that does not produce good fruit.

There it is, guys. What fruit are we producing? Will be chopped down and thrown into the fire. How do you know the Lord's with you? Good fruit right here.

It says, john's just easing the cultural transition. He says he's gonna chop down your tree, he's going to tear out your roots if you do not produce the fruit that the Holy Spirit says should be produced in your life.

The political temperature at this time was super high.

I would venture to believe. I know. Hopeful heretic. I would believe their political temperature at that point in time was much higher than some of America's elections over the last couple cycles. Don't shoot me.

They have gone through some atrocious things. Ours, you know, our eggs go up.

What do we do? We buy chickens. Ha ha. Got you. They were dying.

They were killing people on stakes. They were annihilating people. And they were doing it in the north, the south, the east, and the west. The human heart and the depravity of the heart had gone so far, we don't even understand that.

We got ring doorbells and Google nest doorbells and cameras all over the place. They had a tent that a spear sometimes could go through.

The political temperature was high, and John was calling the ones who had placed themselves higher than all other people. He was calling them whose pride and their roots of religious spirits and their orphan spirits had produced no good fruit. Notice how it doesn't. It doesn't go into, like, super nuances. It doesn't say, well, this practice you do was really, really good.

We should probably keep that one. No, he just whitewashes them. In that moment that you are hypocritical and you are arrogant in what you're doing.

God does not need to meet your expectations.

You are required to meet his.

If he is your king and you profess with your lips that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is not made in your image, and Jesus does not need to meet your expectations. You are required because of the confession of faith to meet his. Too often in that time frame and in our time frame, we're trying to make Jesus in our own image.

Each of the gospel accounts have a slightly different emphasis on the beginning of Jesus Ministry Mark says, at last the time has come. God's kingdom is here. Repent and act on this glorious news. Turn away, say you're sorry, make an adjustment and react on the glorious news. See, your Christian faith requires you to do something.

And yet sometimes we spend more time asking God to do it for us.

God is not our doordash.

God is not our instacart. We have to be busy with the Father's work. We can't keep asking him to do it for us. Matthew from then on, Jesus began to preach, repent and turn to God. For the kingdom of heaven is here.

That's glorious news. The kingdom of God is here. And the way to be able to act on it and to experience it and to be with Christ is to repent.

It's kind of like a get out of jail free card. He knows you're going to make a mistake and yet he's giving you an opportunity to repent. Change your actions, change your heart. And he says, I will clean the slate.

I think sometimes some of us think that God cleans the plates and the slates. Some like the great value dishwasher tabs where there's still a little remnant of that cookie right there. There's still a little remnant of that. Some things you pay extra for.

God cleans the slate crystal clear. The blood has been enough. The blood will always be enough. And yet Luke actually focuses on a completely different story. Luke actually talks about Jesus going into the synagogue to preach.

And at that time, that Parasha, that Parasha, that Torah cycle reading for the. It was Isaiah. And this is the one, one of the best lines Brent Avery has ever said from the pulpit at hff. And Jesus stood there and he read from the scroll of Isaiah and then he wrapped it up and he said, wrap it up boys, I'm here. Don't laugh, I need you to preach tomorrow morning.

But in that interaction, they immediately take him outside and they try to throw him off a cliff.

They saw it as blasphemous that he was showing them in their empires. I am the one Isaiah talked about and they wanted to kill him for it.

So we should understand that we are similar. We're going to have some hard, hard held onto things now. Please don't kill me. I'm not Jesus. Also, we don't have any cliffs in Oklahoma, so haha.

At least not where I go.

This is the political landscape. It's not great. Their faith was without scriptural works and their faith was dead. They knew they were dead. Don't tell Me, they didn't know they were dead.

The fact that they have to project out we're the righteous means that they're telling everybody we're not the righteous. I got issues with my mom, I got issues with my dad, but I'm righteous. No, they were wrestling internally. You know how I know? Recovering narcissist.

How do you know what a narcissist is doing? They tell you what somebody else is doing.

I'm righteous. Well, I mean, somebody else. Somebody else in the congregation was being righteous, but they weren't. They had followed in the footsteps of the Hasmoneans, of the Romans, of the Greeks, of the Babylonians. They had gone too far.

They believed that their knowledge, authority and wisdom was what God had desired. Their Torah observance was not in line with the heart of what God had asked of them. And Jesus will share his glory with no one. Ever.

A kingdom with two kings is in a civil war.

And the Jews at this time had more fractions than homeschool math. This is where our king was at the beginning of his ministry. This is where our king continued throughout his ministry. They had failed to repent. They had failed to turn away even their feet, let alone their hearts.

And yet the kings of Israel had then met face to face with the God of Israel. They were a culture who looked back at Moses more than they recognized God dwelling with them. Emmanuel, remember, if you're looking back at your past, you don't see what's in your present or your future. Sooner or later, it's going to cause you to stumble. Sooner or later, it's going to cause you harm.

Sooner or later, it's going to cause you issues.

I didn't turn back to Moses upon my salvation. I didn't turn back to David. I didn't turn back to Isaiah. I pressed forward and am continually pressing forward to Jesus. This is why the apostles were hated, is that they didn't immediately say, jesus is the Christ and turn around and do what the Pharisees had told them to do or what the Sadducees had told them to do, they adjusted their walk.

And because the religious leadership of that day, I think, had some buyer's remorse that they. That they had bought the blood of Mashiach. I think they knew.

I mean, this is my opinion, but I think the Temple leadership knew, and I think they knew personally that they screwed up. It's only my theory. Don't take it as anything other than that.

You will never heal, you will never grow, you will never sow or amount to Your potential in Christ if you continue to look backwards. They had become comfortable with fasting the way they wanted to fast, hoping the way they had wanted to hope, bringing their offerings continuously and causing trauma cycles for so many people. They had become comfortable with constantly telling others to abstain from idols while they had walked in the idolatry of their own self righteousness. They become comfortable in lying to the oppressed so that they could absolve themselves from feeling burdens and obligations. And rather than fall on their knees and extol Jesus for the gift that was in their present, they compared that gift against the expectations of their past and their observance worship team.

You can come back. They wanted a different Messiah. In church, we have to be very, very careful that we're not wanting a different Messiah too.

In the end, Jesus is Jesus. He's the King of kings. When we're wrestling with what the Word says about him, I think we should be in a place of humility. I think we should be in a place of repentance and obedience. And we should be very slow to try to say God.

This is what this must mean. If God isn't saying Chris, Mark, Matthew, this is what this means. Because when we start projecting onto the Scripture, we run the risk that we want a different Messiah and we're making a different Messiah. Well, we were told that we were made in the image of God and we were supposed to be reconditioned by the power and the presence of God. It's a little bit easier for us to justify when we're trying to make God in our image consistently as to why things are the way they are.

This is a spiritual attack. No, maybe it was a stupid choice.

Balance.

Jesus message was clear that we needed to repent, that we had the opportunity to repent. Repent from your sins, repent from your idolatry, repent from your pride, your hard heartedness. Let go of your burdens, let go of your ego, let go of your arrogance. Let it go and I will give you life. That means that if he doesn't give you the life and you refuse to let go of it, he's not giving you life, you're giving yourself life.

Truly, he taught us to love one another. His law is love and his gospel is peace. Change shall he break. For the slave is our brother and in his name all oppression shall cease. Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we let all within us Praise his holy name Christ is the Lord Praise his name forever.

The empires of the Pharisees, the Sadducees the Essenes, the Romans, the Greeks, Assyria, America.

They're all similar. They're all similar. And yet Jesus brought and called us to a different type of empire. Almost the polar opposite of what our culture and our world believes. You think this is cool?

He says this is cool. You think this is right? He says this is right. You think this is joy? He says this is joy.

He came to turn the world upside down.

It was an empire that led with only one king. It will only be one king, past, present, and future. And that's Jesus Christ. Yeshua of Nazareth. There is no David and Moses and Chris's and Tom's, and no Jesus was king.

Jesus is king forevermore. Jesus will be king. There is no other king of that empire. That's unheard of. Obviously.

We're human beings. We can only reign for what, like 100 years at max, in the history of time? Yeah, he's outside time.

Embrace our humility before the Lord. Acknowledge our shortcomings. And he has invited us to be reconditioned with the new wine of God. For it's through God we are empowered to build his empire.

He doesn't want you to build your own. He's asked you not to build your own. But you have to choose which one you're building. You can never be too close to the king. You can never be too close to your calling.

You can never be too close to your Savior. The first thing Jesus modeled on this earth was humility.

Through repentance, we're reminded of what humility is.

We're reminded that that's how we're required to approach God. You don't approach God like, Jesus is your homeboy. Cool shirt, cool graphics, but he's king.

You're not. I'm not. It needs to be a little bit more fallen on your knees and a little bit less of, this is how you need to do it. God repentance helps us approach him in humility.

A kingdom with two kings is in a civil war.

Through our repentance, we're reminded that we never were king and we never can be king. Through our repentance, we remember that we couldn't offer somebody to be absolved from their sins. We couldn't offer the blood of the lamb on a doorpost. We weren't smart enough to do that. If they would have known that, they would have just been like, all right, hey, guess what?

They would have been out of Egypt years ago. If I slaughter a lamb and I put it on the doorpost, then God will come in and God will kill off the firstborn and then we're free. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's the difference between our kingdom and his. Our kingdom has no power.

Our kingdom has an end. His never will end. No matter what you think, you don't get to dictate to the king. So in this time, as we celebrate Christmas, as we celebrate Hanukkah, whether you do it on the 25th or you wait till January 6th, or you do it all in between, we are in a place in time where the world has empires all around and they're all saber rattling. If you do this, I'm.

We will all be fine. You know, I will be fine. Because if we put ourselves lower and we put him higher on his throne and we don't try to take him off and we don't try to climb up there, you can never be too close to your king. You can never be too much peace with your king. You can never have enough joy with your king.

King.

And we have to remove the things from our heart that keep us from having those intimacies with him. But everybody has the same choice. I want you to understand that.

Choose this day. Who you're you're going to serve? Are you going to serve kings or you who have an end? You have an expiration date. You are going to get moldy.

Or are you going to lower your kingship down, elevate the only one who was the king up and just crawl up in his lap and say, I can't wait till I get to do this face to face for eternity. Stand with me. Let's respond.