The Word Works - 1 Thessalonians 2:13-14 - Waiting Well

All right, well hey guys. Welcome across all of our locations this weekend, man.

We're going to dive right back in. So if you have a copy of Scripture, you know where we're going to be. Turn to 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 for this weekend.

As you guys are finding 1 Thessalonians chapter 2, I just want to celebrate this as a church today. One of the things that we do at Mercy Hill, you guys know this, you're maybe sitting in one right now, is that we are a multi-site church. We're currently meeting in six different locations across the triad. And listen, there's a lot of reasons we do that. I mean, we want to tell the community we're trying to get to you. We're not just asking you to come to us. We need the space. You know, God has grown our church. But one of the primary reasons that we do this, honestly, is for leadership development.

Here's a good example of this. Just across this last weekend when I didn't preach, guys, we had seven different communicators communicating God's Word. Can you guys praise God with me for that? Think about this. You know, we have a true north at Mercy Hill in terms of organizational goal. I'm oriented that way.

It's the way we're thinking about. Guys, we want to send 500 missionaries by 2032. And that means, and I got clarity on this for our missions team today, okay, that means baptized believers that are leaving for two years or more. That's going to be almost everybody. Although, if we have a high school student that's going to do a gap year, we are going to count that as well if they're going international, okay?

But that's what we're talking about, 500. Now, when we're also talking about going for two years or more, many of those, maybe most of those are going to be going with church plants that we send out. All right, our church plant in Halifax, Nova Scotia on Labor Day just celebrated their highest attendance that they've ever had.

We have another one of our church plants that's celebrating their first birthday coming up next week. You guys know this is in our bloodstream. Hey, the only way we get from here to enough church plants to support 500 missionaries is that we got to raise up a lot of communicators. And the multi-site model really helps us do that. I was raised in a multi-site context in terms of my preaching ability. And we get a chance to raise these guys up.

And by the way, too, I don't know if you've heard them, because I mean, I'm talking to the crew right here at Regional. You guys at the campuses know this. But the church needs to hear different voices.

And that's what's so awesome about the chance to see these guys go out. I could get hit by a bus tomorrow and the movement honestly should not stop. I don't know why it's always a bus that has got to hit you, okay? But I'm just saying, right?

Like we're raising people up and the church needs to hear different voices. And so, man, I just love our model. I don't know that we'll do it forever. You know, it's like, I don't know. This is multi-sites 20-year-old phenomenon, okay?

I don't know if another 20 years they'll still be, I don't know. I'm very practical. But right now, I love this model and I love what it affords the opportunity for us to do in terms of sending and developing people. All right, let's dive in. We're going to be in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2 today. And I know that I just talked about everybody else preaching, but I'm really excited to be preaching this weekend, okay? And the reason is because, man, we're going to get in to talking about the Word of God's authority over our life today. Now, we're going to talk about that as part of a life that is, no surprise, waiting well.

1 Thessalonians is a book that we have said, hey, the book is all about this concept. Let us wait well. And waiting well is not wasting time. Waiting well is not twiddling our thumbs while we look up at the sky.

We're going to see some of this later, maybe in the year if we pick up 2 Thessalonians. But it's not quitting our job because we think Jesus is coming back tomorrow. It's the idea of investing heavily with the time that we have because we understand that the time is short. So we don't waste time. Instead, we're going to get after it. And part of a get-after-it life, we only have so much time. The time is short. Let's max out.

Let's go for it. Part of that life is understanding that the Word of God is changing the believer all the days of their life, that it is coming in and changing us. But listen to me. That will not happen if we do not have the attitude and posture that the Word of God is an authority or the authority in our life. We're going to see a group of people today who the Word of God came in and they took it, Paul's going to say, as the Word of God, not the Word of man. And what ended up happening when they took it as the Word of God, it changed everything about their life. And they were willing to walk through hard things and walk through salvation, imitation, proclamation.

And they were able to withstand persecution and suffering and it changed them. And we've got to figure out if we believe the same thing about the Word of God that they saw a couple thousand years ago because here's the deal. We live in a culture that wants to say, no, no, no, you are the authority.

You should change the Word rather than have the Word change you. That's where we live. We live, work, and play in the culture that says, no, no, no, no. If I get into a wrestling match with the Bible, I'm going to win instead of the Bible winning out because we don't trust God as the authority in our life. And what we think is we know best and what the Bible is trying to get us to see is that God is a loving Father who knows best. And when we come up against the Word and we're trying to push it around, the best thing for us is to let it push us around. That's not going to happen if we don't have a view of it that says, man, this is God's Word and it's going to move me and I submit myself to it and it stands over me. I don't stand over it.

Here's the big idea this weekend. The Word works to change us. We don't work to change the Word. The Word works to change us. Guys, I'll never forget, many of you probably were there even pre-COVID.

It feels like a lifetime ago, right? But man, we had probably a thousand people that we mobilized from this church to go and pray at the abortion clinic in Greensboro. And we went with an organization called Love Life and we did a prayer time. It was very peaceful in terms of, you know, we weren't there to shout down and all that kind of stuff. Man, we were there to pray, to pray that God would end this scourge, to pray that God would heal these families that are being broken, to pray that God would open the eyes of these women that are walking through that think they've got no other opportunity and all of this, right?

And so we get there and here's what I found out. Now, I didn't go back and verify this with the church or whatever, but this is what I heard when we were there that day. There was a group of people that were there and this is crazy, okay?

I know this sounds crazy. The people had been mobilized from their church's type of serve week, okay? And they were there not to join us in prayer. They were there to hold massive umbrellas to shield people from seeing us praying. They were there to be really nasty.

They were there to crowd us out. So like I'm standing on this ledge and some of you guys remember this, I was standing on this ledge and I'm trying to, and we're singing Waymaker and we're a thousand people singing and I'm just basically going to give a small word and a prayer and I'm about to fall off of this ledge, you know, everybody's kind of crowded around because this is what, now I want you to imagine this. I want you to imagine that it's a church's serve week to come and assist in the unborn's lives being taken. How can you get there with a book that we read? We share the same book, right?

And how can you get there? I mean, the book that we read in Psalm 139 says it like this. David says, you formed me in my inward parts. You knitted me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. This is what the book says. David didn't become David later. He was David in the womb, right?

This is what the scripture says. Now, how do you get to the place where two churches, one could be going to pray to end and the other could be going to help and assist and they both feel like they're serving. I'm going to tell you how you get there. The word has to change. It's the only way you can get there. That you have to come up against the word and say, no, the cultural moment, the way that I see it, it has the authority to change the word. Now, this is why I use this example because I'm watching you guys.

I can't see the campuses, but I'm watching you right here, okay? Here's why I use this example. We're all thinking, man, I would never do that. Really.

Really. Now, I know you wouldn't do that when it comes to this issue that I brought up, but that's why I brought it up because what I want to say is, well, are we not doing the same thing if three years ago our generosity hasn't moved any at all in the last three years, right? Are we more compassionate now because we've been reading the word for the last year of our life? Are we more willing to forgive? Are we confessing sin at a higher clip because we've been reading the word? You see what I'm saying? What we want to say is the word has all this authority in my life and we want to pick out these big social issues.

Wait a minute. Does the word have the authority in my life when it comes to God's design of what He is telling me in all of these areas? And that's what we want to get into today. The word works to change us in terms of sanctification.

Big fancy word. All it means is becoming in practice what God has declared you to be in truth. That process is watered by the word of God. Is it changing us?

Is it moving? Are we different than we were a year ago, five years ago, believer? Here's what it says in 1 Thessalonians 2 verse 13. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea.

For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews. Now we're diving into 1 Thessalonians 2 and you can see it right here, verse 13, and we thank God constantly. This happens multiple times in the book of 1 Thessalonians. It's a rhetorical device. You see it in the ancient world.

You see it here. And basically what he's saying is he's thanking God, but drawing out some points about what he's thanking God for and affirming some things in them. And he's teaching.

He's doing something that I can pick up on a couple thousand years later and teach really the same thing. Now what he says here is this, right? We thank God because what we've seen in you. Now what did we see in you? All right, here's what we saw. We saw you hear the word, receive the word. He also says, accept the word. We saw you hear it, you received it, and accepted it. Now when he's talking about the word of God here, I think he's talking about the message of Christ. I think he's talking about, man, these guys are gonna know.

Many of them are Jews by background. They're gonna know a lot of God's word from the Old Testament. Same, you know, same stuff that you have, stories that we have, that we learned, all right? And now the New Testament is being formed in this moment by the word of Christ. So what Paul is saying is, what I spoke to you, you received as the word of God.

Now just logically make that jump. If Paul is saying what I spoke into your life you received as the word, then what he is writing to them, very similar to what he spoke to them, is something that we receive as the word of God. So it's the message of the gospel.

I think it's all wrapped up. We can really, I'm gonna do a little bit more work on this in a minute, but we can really be thinking about our Bibles here and the message that has been passed down to us since the days that Jesus walked the earth for a couple thousand years, all right? This is, this message, heard and received. You can say it like this, the word of God has to be heard and received.

You know, I mean, just think about it. If it's heard and it's not received, it doesn't matter. And if it's not heard, you can't receive it, right?

So it's got to be both. Now the Bible talks about this, and we've got to talk about this. Are we ones that are going forth with a message so that people can hear? I mean, you can't hear, you can't receive if you don't hear, but if you hear and you don't receive, it doesn't matter.

This is why Paul said in Romans 10, look, well, I'll read it to you real quick. How will they call upon them who they have not believed? And how are they to believe if they have not heard? And how will they hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?

You got to hear and you've got to receive. And that's not going to happen if people aren't sent out. Actually, that's one of the reasons why we unveiled this a couple weeks ago, right? Our church plant for this year is a group of people, a team from this church that are moving to South Asia. Man, we can't wait to get behind them. Here's my vision.

I don't know what you guys think about this. What if the largest attendance for any church plant interest meeting we ever had in the history of our church happened to be the one that was going all the way across the world to reach 10 unreached and unengaged people groups in the next 10 years? So better come on September 10th, okay? So you better be here, all right?

And you guys can put that up. All right, September 10th is that meeting. I'm telling you guys, I was thinking about this. Do you know why my kids are going to be in the front row of that meeting?

I'm going to tell you why. Because we have a huge vision of seeing 10 unreached, unengaged people groups come off the board in the next 10 years. That means a church planted in 10 different people groups that do not have churches. If we're going to do that, there's going to be a lot of people that are sent from this church that right now are playing Little League Baseball in 10 or 11 years old. And I want my kids to catch some of that vision even now at 11, 12. Well, I don't have an 11-year-old.

Okay, a 10-year-old, 12-year-old, 14. I want them to kind of see that, and so I pray that many of you guys will be here for that as well. Because they can't receive if they don't hear.

All right, so twofold. First question is this. Are we telling people about what God has done in our life? I mean that is just, are we telling people? Man, do people know what we would say about God changing our life?

Are we taking the opportunities that we are given? I saw a story this week on somebody DM'd my Instagram account. And if you're shocked that I have an Instagram account, I promise you, you're not more shocked than me.

Okay, I'll tell you that right now. All right, so anyway, and I remember Mercy Hill, and they had the chance to invite a family, local Mormon family, to church because their kid had a Kids' Week bracelet on. It's small, everyday intentionality. Are we sharing? Are we opening our life? Are we inviting people in? Most people in our context end up getting saved because somebody invited them to an event where an anointed person by the Spirit preached the Gospel to them. No, that's not everybody. It's not the way I was saved.

But most people, that's probably how it's going to happen. So are we sharing our life in this way? You know, I had a chance. I had a chance. I've met him once. I had a chance to hear his story.

There's a local legend here, okay? Many of you guys are probably going to know him. He's a guy named John Willett. He's been teaching the Bible in this area for decades, all right? And I never heard his story, but I got a chance to hear his story at a pastor event the other day. And you know how he became a believer? He's in the Navy and somebody just opens their life to him.

That's it. Man, they start talking to him about the Word. They start modeling their life before. They never sat down, did three rules or whatever. They just were sharing their life. When they had the opportunity, they shared Scripture, didn't get saved right there, came home from the Navy, you know, decides, man, I got to get my family into a church. Eight weeks later or whatever it was, boom, they give their life to Christ. And I mean, our community has been changed like forever because of some of the work that has been done.

And so I just, you know, I think about it's just the everyday kind of opening of our life, are we sharing with others? The second thing I would say though is this, man, how are we hearing the Word? Now admittedly, what he's talking about in here, it seems like he's talking about a salvific event. You know, they heard the Word and it produced life change in them and it continued that. That's fine.

All right. But my question for us is, okay, when you become a believer and you become a believer by hearing the Word and accepting it, but you understand that's the starting line for you hearing the Word. It's not the finish line.

It's the starting line. You're going to continue to hear the Word. Here's what I'm asking you today, especially when it comes to the preaching event, to the preached Word of God. Man, are we having an attitude of preparing to hear the preaching of God's Word? Here's my question for you.

Right now, as we're sitting here right now at the campuses, okay, am I doing something right now or are we doing something right now? Does that make sense? Because every bit of energy that I pour out in preaching should be reciprocated by the receiving of the Word because it's not just heard. Verse 13 said it's heard and it's received.

That's what he said. We thank God you received the Word which you heard from us and you accepted it. How are we hearing? How are we receiving?

Man, I just think about some practical tips. These are straight from different pastors in our church, you know, on the age-based ministry team, different executive guys. We're all in a room. We're talking about this. Man, how can I communicate this?

And this is what came out. Andrew, tell the church, man, let's get here early and stay late, not the other way around when it comes to Sundays, you know? Tell them this. Hey, it's really practical if you've got young kids to get everything ready the night before, you know? Let's make sure kids, let's make sure clothes are ready and all that kind of stuff. And let's just be honest, man, we're going to some baseball tournament for three, you know, for two days and five games and everybody's got every duck, all the ducks are in a row. You know, the kids don't leave their cleats at home, you know? It's like, we got all that in a row and we can surely do it here.

Let's prepare for it. Man, I know a lot of people like to take notes on their phone and I'm not necessarily saying there's anything wrong with that, but man, it makes, it's hard. Can we not be distracted, you know, by our phones? And what about taking notes in general? You know, I, my wife loves to take notes. You know, she teaches people kind of, hey, take notes.

I'm not saying you have to do that. I'm just, hey, what about internalizing enough so that we can immediately, when we get in the car, if you've got a young family, man, ask the kids what they're learning on the way home. And don't just, don't just let that time go. Man, let's invest in it. Are we listening in a way where the whole time we're listening, we're like, man, I'm going to take this to group. I gotta, I gotta be ready to talk about this at group. Let's hear in a way and receive, so let's hear the Word, okay?

Let's hear it. Now it says this, let's get into the more of the receiving and the accepting. Look what it says, that when you receive the Word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the Word of men, but as what it really is, the Word of God. He says it was received.

It was accepted. It wasn't heard at a distance. One pastor said it like this, faith is not pronouncing the Word is true from a distance. It's embracing it.

It's working it into your life. They didn't just hear and receive. They received. Think about communion. We're going to do communion in two weeks.

All right, think about it. You receive the Word of God. You're receiving.

You're taking it in. Does that characterize the way we're talking about the Word in our life? One commentator said it like this, they didn't just hear the Word, they appropriated it. What does that mean? It means they took it into themselves. They took it into their culture as if it was theirs.

They brought the Word into their life. You know, most of you guys are going to know this. All you dads are going to know.

All you softball mamas are going to know. Okay, you know, you get a new glove for your kids, right? And what do you got to do? Man, that thing don't want to move, right? I mean, it's like, I mean, they try to catch it. It just bounces right out.

Then everybody's upset and all that, right? So what you got to do is, what do you do? Man, you take some oil. You take some flaxseed oil. You take some leather conditioner, right? And you begin.

And listen, here's what you don't do. I thought about demonstrating this, but then I thought this will get really messy. Okay, so you don't just pour oil on it, and then it's done, right?

What do you do? You pour oil on it a little bit at a time, and you've got to work the thing, right? You've got to work it in.

And that's kind of what I want to say about this concept here. They didn't just hear the Word. It hits them, it falls off. Oh no, it was working its way in. The Spirit was working it into them. They were receiving the Word of God in the way that that oil runs into the leather and begins to make it pliable.

This is kind of what I was getting into a little bit in the intro. It's the reception that comes from the attitude that we have when it comes to the Word of God. Is it the authority in my life? Now let me just say this, because I'm not going off on a whole thing here.

I recommend reading on this and all that. But if some of us today are like, well, okay, I'm brand new, and I don't accept the Word as any type of authority over my life. Well, I want you to know that we do at Mercy Hill, and I do, okay? And you can say it like this, we believe the Bible is God's Word. Now you say, well, okay, well, how do you get there?

Well, just very quickly, one minute on this, all right? I'm not going to get there the way you think I'm going to get there. Because the way you think I'm going to get there is I'm going to say, well, the Bible is God's Word, and the Bible tells me about Jesus, and it's basically just like you've assumed it, right? Now is that wrong?

Actually, I don't think it's wrong. And I'll tell you this, because anybody's logic at the very, very bottom of it, every single person's logic in the world is a circular argument at the very bottom. There is something at the bottom of your logic that there's not a why behind it.

There can't be. It's a first cause, okay? Now I happen to put the Bible at that bottom thing, all right?

So I actually don't have a problem with the circular reasoning of it, but some people do. And here's what I wanted to tell you. I actually learned this. I got a chance to sit in class, in person, with a guy named Norm Geisler when I was at seminary. It was unbelievable. It was like a one-week class.

It was all day long. You talk about drinking out of a fire hose, okay? And here's what he said, and I thought this really rocked me. Many people think that Christians believe Jesus because they believe the Bible. And actually, it's the opposite. They believe the Bible because they believe Jesus.

Then you say, well, that sounds like you're splitting hairs. Actually, it's not. Because if you start with believing Jesus, you don't have to make the assumption that the Bible is divine book. All you got to believe is that it's historically accurate. And if you believe that it's accurate, okay, and you don't have some bias against the miraculous, you got to, you know, but you just say, hey, is this Bible an accurate depiction? And it is, okay?

Man, you can get into this if you want to. I mean, the history of it is rock solid. The amount of, you know, is the Bible now what was then?

Yes, it is. I mean, the amount of transcripts are, you know, every ancient text you can think of combined is dwarfed by how many transcripts we have of the Scripture in terms of ancient documents and all of that. Man, there's not any big historical inaccuracies time and time again. Well, that never was. And then, oh, they find out.

Well, that never was. And then all the archaeologists find out. If you believe, wait a minute, I think the Bible is historically accurate, then it tells you the story of Jesus. And what does Jesus believe about the Bible?

What did he claim about himself? And see, now you have something that you got to decide if you believe or not. You know, because what Jesus believed was that the Old Testament was the Word of God. And the New Testament basically is the record that we have of the Word himself, Jesus. And so if we end up there, right, then we've got to start wrestling again with this question of, is this book an authority in my life?

I mean, think about it. If God Almighty, who spoke the world into existence, has given us this book to show us the path of life, then we've got to figure out if we trust that or not. Do we receive it as the Word of God or the Word of man?

See, here's what I want you to see today. That's really the question. Because it is only when the Bible, the Bible is only catalytic for life change, when we have decided that it is authoritative in my life, that I'm not going to stand over it, but it's going to stand over me. That when we have to wrestle, and we will, what relationship do you have that's real where there's not a wrestling match at times, right? Okay, there's going to be things. If you find that there's nothing in the Bible that ruffles you, I don't know, I don't know. You know, if you find that there's nothing in the way that you view God that ruffles you at all, it's like, man, you probably made that God up to be in your image. If he's a real God, there's going to be things.

But when we come up against that, do we say, I'm wrestling, but he's going to win? Because this, I'm submitting my life to him. You know, Thomas Jefferson famously, some people will know where I'm going with this, but you know, famously, Thomas Jefferson, you know, he cut a lot of the Bible out. He cut all the, you know, he had, and he didn't, he wasn't publishing it or something. It was his personal, it was his personal Bible. He was, you know, he had all the miraculous things got cut out and all that.

And it's viewed very negatively for obvious reasons. I mean, there's other things that, you know, it was some of his favorite parts of the Bible was what he was pulling out. But it is true that he wrestled with belief in God. And it is true that he cut a lot of, he cut all the miraculous things out because that wasn't going to be, he made himself a personal Bible. Y'all, you don't get a personal Bible. If you get it, well, it's my personal Bible.

No, it's just a thing, okay? It's not a, it's not a personal Bible. It's a personal book. It's something that you've created. If it's a Bible, it's not what you decide that it is, right? It's what has been passed down to us for thousands of years, from the Old Testament all the way to the recording of the New Testament, stamped by the councils who look back and said, man, this is the people that walked with Christ. This is their testimony. And so we don't just get to have a personal one. And, you know, this is a good historical example of whatever. But, man, this gets pretty sad. You know, because I've seen this. I remember a couple years in at Mercy Hill, we had a college student who was dearly loved at this church, incredibly involved.

We have a lot of college students here this weekend, I know that. And, man, she was on fire and all of that. And then she began to wrestle with some things when it comes to sexuality. And then she began to question if there was a way to get around some of the things that the Word says. And then she began to take in some things that might help her figure out how this word doesn't actually mean that, and this word doesn't actually mean that. And I remember sitting in a meeting with her, and I'm saying, don't you understand what you're doing? You're trying to go out and find a church that will match what you already are believing about this. Like, you're not letting the Word change you. What you're saying is, I want it to be this way, and so I'm going to go find someone who will tell me that.

And that's what she was trying to do. And I just remember thinking, you know, how sad that was, where I'm like, you know, the bottom of this question really is, do I believe that God has His best intentions for me or not? Because if I really believe that, then I would have to say, man, when I come up, then I'm going to submit. When I wrestle, I want to lose when it comes to the Word of God, because it's good for me, because He is a good God.

I know some of us are saying, well, you know, I don't, well, okay, like I said earlier, how can we hear the Word and its teaching about the immeasurable riches that we have been given in Christ and not give? I bet you anything there are people in our church right now that have already decided, I'm getting a divorce. I know God hates divorce.

I know that He has not created marriage to be something that gets broken apart like this. I know that, but I'm going to do it anyway. What are you doing?

You're changing the Word, rather than having the Word change you. Some of us are thinking here today, man, I know I'm a Christian, but I will stay private. I will stay isolated.

I will not share my life. And it's just a question of, man, who's the authority? You're looking at the Bible saying, man, I change you. It's not that you're going to change me, I'm going to change you.

I'm wired this way. Well, I mean, a lot of us are kind of wired different ways, but the idea is who is the authority in my life? That's why I push you guys so hard, the things like regroup and all that. Now here's what it says in verse 14, for you brothers became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you suffer the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews. Remember, salvation, imitation, proclamation. I mean, that's what a disciple is, a saved person imitating Jesus Christ and proclaiming Him to the world. And so what these guys are doing is, and I think Paul does a good job of linking them to a worldwide movement here, he doesn't just say you're imitating Christ, he says you're imitating the Judean churches, and here's what he's getting at, guys. The Judean churches, we're getting it from all sides. The government's persecuting them, okay? You got guys like Saul before he was Paul persecuting him, you got the governmental left and the religious right all coming at him at the same time. And what he says is he says, hey, just like the Judean churches, you've heard the word and you are standing.

What is he saying? This is one of the beauties, let me just say this, this is one of the beauties of teaching through a series, okay? Because I'm staying a little bit high.

Why? Because we've already talked a little bit about persecution specifically. I want to go one rung up, and I just want to use persecution as more of an example of life change, which happens when the word comes into our life. Receiving the word results in a changed life.

Whether you're talking about persecution and suffering, or whether you're talking about sexual purity, practicing generosity, forgiving others, confessing sin, let me ask you something. You've been reading the Bible, you've been hearing preaching for the last two or three years, if you're hearing it well and receiving it well, are you more durable than you were three years ago? You see?

This is what I'm getting at. If we're hearing it and receiving it, it's gonna change things in our life. You know, are you more contented even though there's chaos going on? You know, the Bible tells us in the book of Proverbs, the righteous man stands even in the midst of the whirlwind.

Is that you? Is the word producing this in your life? It hinges on us hearing and accepting. Now somebody here might say, well, you know, why would I want to hear and accept?

Well, I'm gonna tell you something. We're talking a lot about sanctification here, but just think about it. You know, the Word of God came into our life to save us. Why wouldn't we trust the Word of God coming into our life to sanctify us? I mean, the Word himself. I mean, Jesus is the Word of God, right? And you and I and our sin, we're so separated from him, but he has come into us.

This is the word that the Thessalonians heard. He has come to us and given us a pathway back to God as our Father, God as the one who's the author of our future. You know, God has given us a purpose. He has given us this opportunity to come back into relationship with him by the blood of his cross. He has made peace, right? And so this is that we trust him for salvation.

Are there areas of our life that we're trusting God for salvation, but we're pushing and resisting when it comes to sanctification? That the Word is coming in, right, man? Not the authority here, not in that area of my life. And so here's what I want to call us to do.

Listen, saturate your life with the Word and be changed. Man, this is the moment of, it's, you know, it's almost like I want to turn into the football coach here. Coach Prime, baby. Okay, neon, neon, neon.

I can't get enough of it, all right? But I want to turn in to like a football coach and be like, man, do we want to see life change? You know, do we want to go for it in our life? Some people are like, man, I'm stuck. Well, we need to get unstuck today. And the way that we're going to get there is by the Word of God coming into our life, hearing it well, receiving it well, accepting it well. And when that happens, we will change. It's why we say at Mercy Hill, you cannot get in the stream of discipleship without moving in the current. If you are hearing and receiving, it will not come back void.

God will change your life, but none of it happens if we are not in the right situation of being saturated with the Word. I want to show you guys a picture of Death Valley, California. Now this is a crazy situation, right? These, you know, if you've got pictures, have you ever seen Death Valley? I mean, it looks like the moon. Nothing can grow, massive amount of heat, and there's no water and all of that. And it's called Death Valley, right? Because there's nothing that can possibly grow there until about every 20 years or whatever it is. For some reason, the weather patterns change. And when a bunch of rain gets dropped on Death Valley, you know what happens? This is what happens, a super bloom is what happens. We actually had another picture where you could see the green all the way through the mountains and all of this. And here's what I'm trying to get you to see, and I heard this illustration from another pastor, he grabbed me, okay?

Here's the idea. We think Death Valley is dead. It wasn't dead, it was dormant.

All it needed was the right environment to come and to saturate the seeds that were there. Now some of you right now, you do not have the Spirit residing in you because you're not a believer. You've never stepped over that line.

Some people on our campuses are that way. You've never confessed your sin. You've never trusted Jesus as your Savior.

And the Scripture says, you my friend are dead in your trespasses and sins. It's not like, man, there needs to be this or needs to be that. What needs to happen is there needs to be a resurrection. There needs to be life that comes in. And you can do that by praying to receive Christ this very weekend, right?

You're actually gonna see that. Man, this is so cool. We got baptisms in every campus, including Espanol, this weekend, and we're gonna get to see going down in the water and coming out of the water, it signifies what? I'm dead to that old life and I have become new, but...

Okay, so that's some of you. You need to get saved. I don't know how to say it. Cross over the line, ask Jesus into your heart, whatever you want to say. You're dead and you need to get not dead. You need to become new, not better, okay? That's how it is. And we'd love to talk to you about that, but for those of you that are believers, the seeds in your life are there. The Spirit is there, and what is needed is the saturating of the Word of God in your life. And I want to give this to you in two ways, and then we're gonna be done, all right?

The two ways are this, that what are the primary components? And I'm going in order. I know I'm gonna get pushed back on this, but that's fine. Hearing the preached Word in community and applying it to your life is more important than individual Bible reading. I know I know that ruffles people, that's fine.

You know how I know that? Because the Church of Jesus Christ got along for 1,500 years without having the opportunity to personally read their Bible. I mean, when you think about the...when you think about the...even these letters that we're reading, they weren't people individually by themselves, you know, reading this stuff.

It was happening in community. Now does that downplay Bible reading at all? No, that's gonna be my second point. You should read the Bible every single day, okay? But what I'm saying is some kind of way in our individualistic culture, we've got this backwards. Well, we're like, oh, my individual Bible reading is more important than hearing the Word of God taught in community.

No, it's not. All right? So the first thing that I want you guys to hear is, man, how are we thinking about gathering and grouping? Because gathering and group, you know, gather, group, give, go, right?

Gathering and grouping, this is where we hear the Word. Guys, this is the moment where you just have to say, man, don't be normal, because you know what normal is? Normal in a Christian environment these days is here about one out of every four or five weeks.

And now you're like, well, that doesn't really...yeah, it does. When you start adding it all up, summertime, all this, you know, when you start...I mean, that...normal in a Christian church right now, you know, this is kind of what we're talking about. It's like, man, we're not going to be normal. We're going to hear the Word. We're going to plan our life. We're going to make sure our kids are hearing the Word of God.

We're going to go into the group situation so that we can take what we learn in the lecture and move it into the lab. And that's what we're going to do, because we understand that we need the watering to come into our life. And then secondly, of course I'm going to say this, man, are we reading the Bible? Are we reading it for ourselves? We live in an age where we have it at our fingertips. Can you imagine this? We can read the Word of God for ourselves.

Are we doing it? And I've heard people say this before, and I bet you under the sound of my voice there's somebody who's thinking this right now. You're thinking, well, I've never been taught how to read the Bible. You've got to make a decision whether you are an active agent in this world or a passive participant. You've got to make the choice, because you can have excuses or you can have progress, but you cannot have both.

And so we've got to decide. I've never had anybody teach me the Bible. What do you think I'm doing every week? I know you're like, well, I could never.

Yes, you can. Anyway, I'm not talking about preaching. This, you know, it's like, oh man, people can, you know, hey man, great sermon. You know what? You know what? A sermon, all it is is that this is all it is. You ready? What did it mean?

What was it like? And what does it change? That's a sermon, because all a sermon is is the way that you should be reading your Bible. Just voiced, you know?

It's just out loud. I'm reading the scripture. You're like, man, I don't know where to start. Okay, then one chapter in the New Testament, going through a book. One chapter in the Old Testament, going through a book. And then read something from the wisdom literature. Maybe the corresponding proverb every single day, all right?

There's your plan. What did it mean? What is it like? And what does it change in my life? And now you know how to read your Bible, okay? And so I want to call you to be reading the scripture, and getting it in, and you're like, man, now listen, if you don't have a Bible, I want to tell you this, you know, it's like again, active agent thing.

Man, there's a lot of stores, and there's a thing called Amazon, all right? But our church says, my point is, it's not an excuse. But my point, but I do want you to understand, our church wants this for you so bad that we want to send you one, okay? If you text Bible to 336-967-6604, we will send you a Bible this week, all right? And I want to make sure that you get a chance to get that, and we want you to be able to get off on the right foot with that. All right, let me close things down, okay? As we close, here's what I want to tell you to do. Man, let's ask the Spirit to point out where we need to move in our life, all right? Where does the Word, I know, I mean, I've been preparing for this. I'm like, I know there's some things, all right?

Where do we need the Spirit to move in our life upon the watering of the reading of his Word? That's the authority, not me. We want to have a posture of willingness. This was funny, guys, I'm going to introduce you. One of our dogs is named, well, you're gonna see him, so throw the picture up there. All right, some of you guys are gonna get this. His name is Sirius Black, okay? Some of you guys know that, all right? If you don't know it, I'm not gonna give you the reference, okay? But this is one of our dogs, two years old, German Shepherd.

Now, some people text me about this when I said it last time. I believe that my dogs have the greatest life of any dog in the world, okay? And the reason is because they probably live the exact opposite of most of your dogs, all right? They're just free, man. They're just free. They just run around, you know, they got all this land. If they decide to go take a wall or in the creek, they just run down there, okay? So they just, that's what they do, all right? So they're free, they run, all this stuff.

No fences or none of that. Now, what was funny was, Sirius turned two years old, and we were gonna load him up somewhere to take him somewhere or whatever, and I got the collar out, and I put a collar on this dog, and I realized, y'all, he's never had a collar on in his life in two years, because he don't. I mean, he just runs around and chases the four-wheeler, and he walks around anywhere I go on the property, he goes on the property, and he's free, but he's never been on a leash his whole life.

And I put this collar on him, and it was the funniest thing you've ever seen, okay? I mean, he's cutting backflips. I mean, he's rolling on the ground, you know? He's just never been, he's never had, listen, he's never had in his whole life anyone say, no, you're coming with me this way, right?

Like, everything in his life is his own idea. Like, it's like, man, I'm going where I want to go, and I'll come when you call me, but I've never been in a situation where somebody could, and I put that, and you guys have probably, if you have a dog, you've been, I put that leash on him, and he locks all fours, right? And you're kind of having to come on, come on, you know what I mean?

And I thought, I thought about that story, because I thought, man, there are some of us right here under the sound of my voice, and you know what? You got your arms straight out, and your heels are dug in as bad as you can get them. And it's just like, man, I'm not going. I'm not going.

I've made my decision about this divorce. You can talk all day about generosity. I'm not giving to the church. I'm not, I'm not doing it, you know? Man, I'm not going to evaluate the way that I speak to my kids. I, man, I'm doing better than my parents did, right? So I'm not, I'm not going to get into that. There is no way I will forgive them for what they did to me.

And you got them arms out, and you're locked in. Who's the authority in your life? And can we pray today that God would break that heart of rebellion into pieces, and move us where he wants to take us today? Let's pray. Father God, we are asking you right now, Lord, that you would bring repentance into our church, and God, that in every single one of us, Lord, we would, we would be the type of people who, who come up against your word, and want to submit to it, because we believe that you proved yourself to be good to us in the gospel, and you proved it over and over again in the way that you continue to woo us, and move in our life, and in our heart. And so God, whatever it is that you bring up in our life today, God, I pray that you would give us what we need.