Wow, can we praise God for that story? What a story. Man, I just, hey, I want to piggyback on that and encourage you.
We've got one week. This is very important to understand, y'all. Inviting impacts eternity. It's not the only thing Christians do with their witness. We share our testimony. We love to sit down with people and talk to them about the gospel and all of that. But if you are a believer, one of the easiest things is also one of the most impactful things, inviting impacts eternity. You guys have these invite cards in your seats.
Grab them. Make sure that you are passing those things out to people that you love and care about because you never know what God is going to do with a story just like this one. And John, for example, in that story, y'all, he was part of the first group, Boots on the Ground in western North Carolina from Helene.
And now there's some stuff in the works maybe about how he can be involved with disaster relief in the future and all that. And none of that would have happened if somebody didn't just say, hey, man, why don't you come with us? And so I just hope that you guys will do that as well. We also want to be ready for what God is going to do. So I'm telling you, don't just attend one, serve one, okay? But invite to one and serve one.
We want to be ready for what God is going to do. So make sure you go to mercyhillchurch.com slash Christmas and you can sign up to serve there. We need everybody off the sideline and on the front line, okay, on this thing.
It doesn't matter if you've been here for two months or two years or whatever. We really want to make sure that everybody is involved in this. So jump in. All right, we're going to be in 25 days of Christmas. We're going to be John chapter 10 today. So you guys take your copy of scripture if you have it. Turn with me to John chapter 10. Today's message is really awesome for me because it's a verse of scripture that I heard my entire life. This is my father's favorite verse in all of the entire Bible, okay? And so I would hear this a lot and it's been really fun for me to sort of unpack this and really dive into it this week.
Here's the big idea. Jesus came to bring us abundant life. Jesus came as a bundle of joy, little baby Jesus, to bring us the abundant life. And I don't know what that comes to your mind when I say the life of abundance today. I don't know what abundant means to you. John referenced that on the video that their abundance has come into their life since finding a relationship with the Lord. But whatever comes into your mind, I know that Mercy Hill is the type of place where we draw people who are attracted to that, attracted to the idea of abundance.
What I mean is, by and large, we attract a lot of people who are driven people. You're driven in your life. You got goals you want to crush for next year. You want to be in a different place financially. You want to be in a different place with your health. Man, you want the Lord to bring more into your life.
You want more for your kids and the relationship they have with the Lord. You want fullness. You want abundance over lack. When I say, do we want the abundant life, I kind of feel like in an environment like this and at our campuses today, people just kind of say, yeah, do fish swim. It's like, yeah, we are those people. We want abundance.
Here's the thing, if that's you. How do you, though, define it? What is abundance for you?
I just mentioned a bunch of things right offhand, and listen, I think they were all pretty good stuff. It's blessings, it's things that God does, and that's great, right? Like God blesses us. We want his blessing. I certainly preach that way. I want up and to the right in every area of my life, okay? We want blessing.
Got it. Is that the same as abundance? Is the abundant life the abundance of possessions and stuff? Is the abundant life the absence of those things?
We would actually at Mercy Hills say, no, it's neither. When we're talking about abundant life, we're talking about something different. We're talking about, is the center of your life that thing that you were created by God to chase? Because if it's something else, then you're going to end up in lack. But if the idea of the centerpiece of your life is in line with the way that God has created you, in other words, to have and enjoy a relationship with him and to glorify him with your life. If you have that, that's abundance.
If you have something else at the center, then it's not. We helped plant a church a few years ago, and I bring this illustration up pretty much every single Christmas because I think it's so good. We helped plant a church in Charlotte. It was called Mercy Church. The pastor, there's a great friend of mine, he was walking through his house one day, and he walked by their nativity scene.
A lot of us have this. You've got the angel, you've got all the animals, it looks like there's wise men and all that stuff. The next day he walks by and the thing has changed a little bit. This is Doc Hudson from the movie Cars, and now Doc Hudson has sort of joined the party. Then the next day he walks by and Doc Hudson has replaced Jesus.
This is the wise men, I guess, or whatever, they're bringing their gold frankincense and myrrh to now Doc Hudson. I bring that up every year because it is such a picture of what many of us do, and we all do it in some ways, but some of us are doing that in a cosmic way. The center of your life is not the Lord. It is not what God has created you to be in terms of a reflector of his glory. Instead, it's something else, even something good, a marriage, it's a possession, it's a promotion. That is by definition, you're not a believer, you're not a Christian.
We try to shoot it straight at Mercy Hill, let's just make sure we're using plain language here. If the centerpiece of your life is something else that you're chasing for abundance, that would be a good definition of being still one who is in the world. Of course, others of us, like myself, I became a believer at a very young age, but you know how many times in my life functionally that thing that's at the center ain't Jesus. That thing that's at the center is ministry success or it's something that we, a goal that we have for our home or whatever it is. So we can all kind of fall into this.
Here's what I want to do today. I want to talk about the definition of the abundant life and make sure we have a chance to join into that, everybody. And then we also want to tell the church, myself included, my family included, hey, let's trust that abundant life and not go looking for other things functionally to be that abundance for us.
Okay, so let's just break this down. We're going to be in John chapter 10, let's start in verse 7. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy. I came that they might have life and they might have life more abundantly. Jesus has come that we would have the abundant, full, go into the security of the barn and then go out to a beautiful pasture type of life in our soul. I'm not talking about health and wealth, prosperity gospel here, okay? God does bless. He loves to give blessings out, I get that. But I mean, you read the New Testament, look at the life of Paul, it wasn't exactly health and wealth and prosperity, okay?
But it is that for your soul. There is a piece of the abundant life that is a contentedness of soul. I do not have sheep at my house, all right? But we've had other animals, we have cows right now.
Like, if you have any kind of, you know, agricultural livestock, you know what you want for them? You want them to be, and this is actually this concept of fullness and abundance. The actual word for this means this. It means that image you get of an animal that's under care, that is fat and slick and happy and contented and they feel so safe they're almost drowsy. That's what we want for our soul. That's the abundant life. This is what Jesus has come to give us, that we would have that fat, slick, happy, secure, so safe, I'm almost drowsy soul, contented in Him. Now, what He does here, He does, so He's going to get us there by telling us this is the deal, that He is the gateway to those pastures. He is the gateway to that security and to that feeling of that fullness of soul. He is the door. This is the third of seven great I am statements in the book of John. I am the bread of life.
I am the light of the world. I am the gate. I am the door, my translation here says. Now, one of the things you got to understand about John chapter 10, though, and this is kind of an issue, is that Jesus does the classic thing that every eighth grade English teacher told you not to do and he's mixing up metaphors here, all right?
And there's an interpretive decision that has to be made. Verses 1 through 5 in this text talk about Jesus as the protector of the sheep like a shepherd. Verse 11 picks up shepherd as well, but 7 through 10, he says something else. He says, I am the doorway.
I am the gate. Now, some have interpreted that to be a different nuance of the same idea. You know, a shepherd would lay down at the door or something like that.
But I feel like honestly from reading this all week and from studying it, and there's a split on this, I don't take it that way. I take it to mean that you have Jesus looking at an agrarian sort of idea and it's an illustration and he's taking it in two different directions. The first direction is he's a shepherd. The second direction is that he is the door.
Now, here's the, let me try to, for all of us here, let's just try to make this really real. What the Bible is saying here, what Jesus is saying here, there is a doorway that stands between you and the abundant life. Now, what is that doorway?
What is the trigger? What do you got to walk through? See, here's the thing for many of us today, and this could be cosmic in your life, it could be functional, all right? But here's the deal, when I say what is the doorway for you to the abundant life, I fear, and I've been here too in my life, that many of us are like, well, yeah, there's a door to abundant life. It's called more money. It's called more respect at work. It's called a marriage. It's called having a child. It's called whatever. It's this promotion. It's this possession.
It's my kid doing well in their stuff, their school, their sports. We have all this stuff. And we're like, if I could just get through that door, then the abundant pasture, the safe, slick, fat soul is on the other side of that door. And here's what Jesus is trying to say to us today.
That is a lie. That there are not these other things that are going to take you to that place of a contented soul. Instead, what we've got to see is that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Yes, he is the shepherd that leads us to the door. But then through what he does in the gospel, he is the doorway himself.
You could say it like this. Jesus leads the way and Jesus is the way. He points us.
Hey, follow me. This is where we're going. But then at the end of the day, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is, you know, that Jesus has come in and lived a life of sinlessness and died on a cross.
That's the opposite of what we did. Y'all, we lived a life of sin, but he died on the cross in order to open up an opportunity for us to come back into relationship with the Father once again. If we go through him, this motif in the Bible, another place like this.
Okay, Matthew 7. Here's what it says. Ask and you will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it shall be opened to you. There is this doorway or gate motif. Church, what do you knock on, right? You knock on the door.
You knock on the gate. And Jesus is saying, I am that. Come and believe in me and you will go through me into the abundance. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep do not listen to them.
I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. Thieves and robbers come before Jesus.
Now, that word before is interesting to me, okay? Let me tell you exactly what I think Jesus is saying to them, but I also want to give you sort of a secondary idea here that is highly biblical in terms of just the rest of the text. I think what Jesus is saying to them quite literally is, hey, there have been other people who have claimed to be the Messiah that will take you to good pasture and they were wrong. Actually, what they try to actually do is lead you to isolation and slavery and prison and death even.
And that's just historically true. People that would rise up and maybe try to overthrow the Roman government or whatever. So Jesus is saying, there are thieves and robbers that have come. They've tried to take my people away through false teaching, through different things.
Got it, okay? But you know, when you think about what he says, look at verse 8, all who came before me, I also think about the idea of, you know, before me is timeline, but before me can also be priority. Think about it in our life. How many of us are like, are there things that come before Christ?
And here's what he's trying to get you to see. Those things are robbers of joy. They are killers and destroyers of our spiritual health and our spiritual life.
Those things that try to beckon to us to go through a different gate for a different abundance of life. You know, when I think about money, for example, okay, money is a gateway. If we think money is the gateway to abundant life or if we think money is the abundant life, you know what we'll be willing to do? We'll be willing to cheat and lie to get it. We will sacrifice our families on the altar of success to get it because we believe that that is going to be the contented soul. That is the abundant life.
And what does that do? It robs, it kills, it destroys. Jesus is saying anything else you chase, it's going to be a robber and a killer and a destroyer. The enemy who is the thief, who is the robber, wants to put these things in our life that we would chase after them. When marriage is that abundant life, we will lower our standards of godliness to get it.
We will compromise in sexual sin to get it when respect of others is that abundant life. When I think that is the big pasture that I want to get to, you know what? I'll step on other people to get there.
I'll lie to get there. It will be a robber of joy, a stealer, a killer, a destroyer of spiritual health. And Jesus is saying, that's not the way. The way is to come to me for abundance because I will give you the thing that you lack the most, which is a relationship with the Lord. Look what it says in verse 10.
The thief comes only to steal, to kill, and to destroy. I came that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly. Those church at our campuses are the two visions of what we're going to chase. That's it.
Those are the two. I'm going to chase the world and its idols and I'm going to believe that that is abundance. And in that, Jesus is saying, robbery, death, destruction. Or I'm going to say, God, you created me.
Jesus Christ through his life, death, burial, resurrection, sinning of the spirit is the gateway for me to get what I lost, which is a restored relationship with you, God. And I'm going to trust that that is abundance of life. This is a decision day, y'all. Which is it?
Which is it? Is it going to be run after the world as hard as we can? We're here for a short time, have as much fun as you can, whatever. Or is it going to be something more?
I'm going to trust, God, that you give me the abundant life, a restored relationship with you, a future that is secure and I don't have to live one more day of my entire life wondering what my purpose is supposed to be. That's abundance. It's really, it's two visions. Guys, I've told you before, but Frosty the snowman is the most sinister character of all Christmas characters.
And I know, I know people, you've got to go start playing through the song in your mind, which is very fresh to me because I sing it like every day to Faith Ann. But if you think about it, nothing's more sinister than Frosty encouraging tobacco use with the corn cob pipe, among miners. I mean, the way he's tearing things up running around that village, I'm wondering what's in the corn cob pipe, to be honest with you. What is he smoking? OK, they get down to the traffic cop and they don't obey him.
They're being led to disobey traffic laws. I mean, it's terrible. Who knows what's going on with the broom? I don't know. All right. Here's the thing. Frosty.
All right. And then when it's all over, what does he do? The Terminator Arnold Schwarzenegger got his line from Frosty. What does Frosty do at the very end? He vows, I'll be back. OK, it's like, but here's the problem with Frosty with our kids. OK, you don't want your kids to be influenced by Frosty.
Here's here's the reason. What does he say? I'm being funny. What does he say? He says, hey, Frosty knows the sun is hot that day. Let's run and have some fun before I melt away.
Sadly, that's the entire book of Ecclesiastes. And sadly, there's people under the sound of my voice right now. That is your life's mantra. You're following Frosty. The sun's out. It's hot.
One day I'm going to melt away. Let's just get as much fun as we can in. Let's chase the idols of the world to see if that is abundance. What Jesus is trying to get you to see is no, no, no, that's not abundance.
That is lack. And Jesus is the one who brings the abundant life. Now, we've got to talk about what that is. What is the abundant life?
OK, this is very important. If you're new or if you're one of our campuses, you haven't been around, you've got to understand something about Christianity. Christianity is a movement that has done nothing but grow and push forward worldwide for the last 2000 years. It is the fastest growing and most diverse human movement that has ever been in the history of the world. And there are places right now that you think, man, is the gospel China, Iran? It's exploding all over the world. OK, why?
I'm gonna tell you why. Because Jesus came to bring abundance specifically where humans lack. It is not general.
It is incredibly specific. You and I have lost the abundant life and Jesus has come to bring it back. They say, what does that mean, though? Like, what do you mean, abundant life?
OK, this is what I mean. In the Garden of Eden, what would you call the life that Adam and Eve lived? I would call it the abundant life. I mean, they are they are living in God's paradise that has been specifically created for them. Every breath, every second of the day, they are clothed. Why do you think they had no clothes on? They were clothed in the love and acceptance of God.
There was not a concept in the world of shame or guilt. They are living every second before the Lord as they're working, as they're functioning as a human. And then he comes and walks with them in the cool of the day. They're relating to God. They're reflecting his glory. They're enjoying one another.
It is paradise. And then what happens? As soon as they sin, what do they do? They go looking for cover. They realize shame and guilt have entered the world. What do they got to do? They got to cover up.
They got to grab clothes and get covered up as fast as they can. You know why? Because they had lost the abundant life. You realize in every single human the Bible would teach there is a God sized void in our heart. Where did we lose it? We lost it in the garden. You say it wasn't there.
No, it was Adam to all of us and Eve to everyone. It's been transferred generation to generation that we have lost this abundance, this cover that we had. And now we look for it in other ways. We try to fill that void.
We try to cover up ourselves and feel OK before God. We try to do it in many destructive ways. It might be sexual immorality. It might be abusing food or something like substance abuse and alcoholism and all this kind of stuff.
And we're chasing after that. Or maybe things that are not bad. Might be things like dating relationship or money or greater levels of success. These things aren't bad. Good relationships with families and friends.
Those things are not bad. But when we try to make them listen, when those things become Doc Hudson has replaced Jesus. When that's when that's what we're chasing with our life, it will end up only ending in lack. See, because the abundant life is lived with God's approval and the abundant life that is lived with God's approval only comes one way. It only comes through the gospel. It doesn't come from our work. It doesn't come from finally attaining that one possession that I feel like my soul will be slick, fat, happy, secure, so safe I feel like I'm drowsy. If I can just get that, it will never happen. It won't be there.
Why? Because that's not actually what was lost. What was lost was that abundant life of feeling the approval and acceptance of God. And Jesus has come to give us that back.
And it's very simple, actually, you know? It's like, well, how does he give it back to us? He lived the life that we didn't live so that he could become the perfect, you know, the perfect Lamb of God, the sacrificial lamb.
And that's what he did. He came into manger, but he was destined for a cross. He lived a perfect life before God. At the end of his life, instead of reaping all the rewards of that approval, he laid down on a cross and died for our sin, canceled that sin debt. And then as he raises to new life, he says, hey, why don't you come with me and come and enter the newness of life? And then we get a chance to live the abundant life. You know, the abundant life, I think one is, one way to say it, Psalm 16 and 11, the abundant life is this. God, in your presence is the fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You can't get fuller than full. You can't go farther, right, than forevermore. And that's what God has come to give us.
I want to push you today, all right? Think about, if you're not a Christian, I want you to think about what you're chasing as the abundant life. If you are a Christian, I want you to think about in what ways can we trust God for that abundant life in practical ways even greater. All right, so let's apply this and we'll be done.
Here's the application point for this weekend. Trust Christ for the abundant life. Trust him for the abundant life. First, for some of us, it is trusting for the first time.
It's a gut check moment for us to figure out. Man, am I a believer and what do I think about the abundant life and is God the most important thing in my life? I love the blessings. Man, I want blessing. I've got so many goals for 2025 for my life personally, for this church. You can't imagine it, okay? And God's going to do some of them, I pray. He probably won't do some of them.
I don't know what will happen with that. I'm not saying the absence of things or blessing is something we should be striving for. What I'm saying is they're not the first thing. The first thing is the main thing. It is the restored relationship with God. And once we have that, we can enjoy blessings and all of that. But if God took all those things away, what would we still have?
We'd still have everything we need because we would have that abundant life that God has bestowed upon us by reconciling us to himself. And my question for you is, man, is that true? If you're trying to figure out where you stand spiritually, let me ask you this question. Do you want to follow Jesus because you want your life to be better? Or do you want to follow Jesus because you think he is better than life?
That really is it. Man, I'm kind of coming to church. I'm kind of doing the thing. I kind of want my kids to be a little more, you know, a little more moral and obedient. I want to be, you know, I like having a little spiritual supercharge every Sunday or what.
I don't know what. But honestly, honestly what it's about is I kind of got my things set up in life. And I'm hoping God can just sort of help me get there.
Or is it the other way? No, no, no. I'm not trying to get my life better. He is better than life. And I have decided that is the thing that I'm chasing, that I'm trusting him for abundance.
See, here's my fear today for some of us if you're not a believer. You're experiencing the blessings of God, but you're void of the relationship with God. And what you don't realize is it's actually in the relationship with God. That's where the abundance is.
It's not in all the stuff. I thought about this the other day. My son, you know, raising, this is funny, raising, when you're raising boys and girls in the same house, it's so funny because like my teenage daughter looks at me and my sons and she just thinks we're just like, she's like, what is wrong with y'all? I mean so many times, okay? And so one such time was just this past week, my little nine-year-old, he walks in and we had a tower heater, like one of those space heaters, like a tower heater. And he sees, and it's all set to the side. It's probably 10 years old or something. I mean it's just finally quit working or whatever.
And he's like, what's that? I said, oh, it's a tower heater. It quit working, you know, and I don't know. Is it going to get back fixed again? No, it's broke, man. We're just going to throw it out. The next thought out of his mind, and he verbalized this, was, Dad, can I shoot it with my shotgun? I was like, yeah, if I can watch. So here we go.
We're walking out with a shotgun and blasting the tower heater to who knows where. And my daughter's just like, what is wrong with y'all? She thinks it's so funny. But I think about that, and we have a life like that with all of them, but especially with my boys. I think about their, you know, they just, we just have that kind of lifestyle. So there's guns, there's machetes, there's knives, they love four-wheelers.
We're just fishing and stuff. They're just doing all that, right? Now here's what I want to tell you, okay? All the stuff that they have that we do all that, and we enjoy relationship with, I'm doing it right with them, and it's really fun.
We connect over that stuff. All of the stuff they have is stuff that I either gave them or I bought, or it's mine. All the stuff, right? Now here's what I'm telling you.
This is what I want you to see today, okay? Wouldn't we hope, and I hope this would be true, that if you said, hey, you guys can have all the stuff. I mean, all those, you got the gun, you got the machete, you got the BB gun, you got the four-wheeler, you got whatever, okay?
You can have all that, but you don't have dad. What would they say? I hope, I hope that they would say, right?
I hope what they would say is, well, actually, the stuff is really fun. That's cool, but kind of the fun of it is that we all sort of do it together, and no, I would know the bigger blessing is not all this stuff, the bigger blessing, right? Some of us right now are living a life where we think the abundance is knives and fishing poles, and we don't have a relationship with dad. And the abundance is in that relationship with our Father God, and I want to call you to that today.
Man, jump into the abundant life. He is the gateway that takes us to that soul that is contented, and you can enter that today. Hey, admit your sin, believe in what he has done on the cross, commit your life to him. We'll go through that here in just a minute as well, but lastly, I'll say this. Man, for some of us here today, guys, we got to just wrestle with this.
If you are a believer, like me, I told you, I got saved as a young age. Some of us are believers. It's not this kind of cosmic thing where Doc Hudson is now taking the place of Jesus, but functionally it can happen. It can be like, man, what have I thought about all week long? I've thought about something for Christmas. I've thought about a possession. I've thought about my kids, and maybe it's the good stuff, reconciled relationship with them as they get older or their safety or whatever, but what we've got to see today is, man, we can trust the abundance God has given us, and it will free us from these other small false god idol things that we end up chasing. We may have a Christian in here right now, and you know what they're doing? Man, they are chasing sexual sin.
They're living a promiscuous lifestyle, and here's what I want you to see. You know what you're actually doing in that? You're chasing radical acceptance, and if you would go back to the abundant life, you would remember actually acceptance.
You already have the acceptance, approval, and love of the God who created you. What are you still looking for? You know, we might have someone here that is dealing with substance abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, that kind of stuff, and here's what I've run into time and time again. You know what a lot of people are running to that stuff for?
They're running to that stuff to try to forget something in their past, and what you're trying to do is, listen, you're trying to drown a memory of something, maybe that you did, maybe it wasn't, maybe it was something that was done to you, and in that case, man, you've got to realize there's still a loving Father who's going to work all that together for your good, but some people might be trying to drown memories of things that they did wrong. You're trying to forget something that God has already forgiven you of. See, if we will go back to the abundance, it will flow down and flow out into all these areas of functional idolatry, and it will be the first step in freeing us from those things. And so I pray today that we will go back to the abundance that God has given us.
He is the gateway. Man, let's trust him for that, and let's see these functional idols fall away from our life. Would you bow your heads with me for just a minute? Hey, if you're not a believer here today or one of our campuses, man, I'm really going to give you an opportunity to just kind of clear your mind, a little bit of space here in your mind, and I just want to say a couple things to you guys. We are about to take communion, which is going to just be an awesome time. This doesn't happen every week, so it's really special when we do it. And if you're not a believer, if you're not a Christian, if you're sort of in the orbit but have not landed, you've never stepped over that line, then we very clearly at Mercy Hill say, hey, don't take communion with us.
And the reason is not that we're trying to be jerks or something. The reason is because communion proclaims that you are a believer, and if you're not, we don't want to put you in a position to be inauthentic and proclaim something about your life that's not true. But for some of you today, you could pray to receive Christ right now and take communion for the first time today and be baptized next weekend at Mercy Hill Christmas Services. I pray that will happen for many people in here today. If you're ready to step over that line here at our campuses as well, would you please just pray this prayer with me in your heart? You don't have to say it out loud, but you pray to receive Christ. Admit, believe, confess, right?
Let's pray. Father, I know that I'm a sinner, and I know that I've lost the abundant life, but I believe Jesus Christ has come to bring that abundance back into my life through his life, death, and resurrection. I don't trust my works. I trust his work on the cross. And I know that in his resurrection, he gives me the opportunity for the fullness of life.
I trust him for that, and I commit my life to him. Father, for those that have prayed that prayer, God, I pray that they would take communion for the very first time today and be baptized next week. I pray there would be dozens, if not hundreds, of people in our church that come forward and text baptize into our number. Let us counsel them. God, let them take the next step of their faith. We thank you for what you're doing. In Christ's name, amen.
