The First Fruits of a New Humanity - 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17 - Waiting Well

All right. Well, hey, guys, welcome across all of our locations. The Thanksgiving weekend is fun because I've already gotten to see some people that have moved and come back or college students that get to come home just for this week.

So it's really cool. And if you're brand new with us, we're excited that you're here this weekend and we're going to be diving into our sermon series for the weekend. So if you have a copy of scripture, you can turn with me to Second Thessalonians chapter two. Today is where we're going to be spending our time together this weekend as you guys are finding Second Thessalonians chapter two is we're just kind of marching through that book.

I do want to just kind of piggyback on what our campus hosts have talked about here, because we are coming up on one of the most important weekends in terms of impact for us in the whole year. Guys, at Mercy Hill, we have this saying where we say we want to praise God. And then in the same breath, we want to pray for more. OK, so we want to pray for more. We want to see God do more.

But let's just praise him for what he did last year. Guys, last year we had 500 people serve at Christmas at Tanger, almost 400 brand new first time guests. And listen to this, over 5,000 people attended our services.

Can we praise God for that? And you guys remember, y'all have seen this. We've done this now. This is our third year doing it.

And you probably maybe already realized if you haven't come or you haven't invited, you need to do it now because next year we're probably not going to be at the Tanger. We're actually going to have a campus that can accommodate our whole church in terms of not having to do like 30 services, you know, when the Ridge campus launches. And so this, we may do it again in the future, but probably this is going to be the last time for a while. And so we really want to push our church to have a mission over the next month. Here is your mission. OK, I've given every single person that calls Mercy Hill home a mission over the next month. And here it is.

Ready? It's serve one and bring someone to one. OK, so serve one and bring to one.

Now we talk about this a lot, but guys, it really does start with serving. I mean, I've seen this a thousand times at our church. The amount of people that we have served will end up kind of be in the jars prepared for what God is going to do. In other words, I've never seen him really bring us a ton more people than we were ready for. We end up having our faith kind of put out there by saying, well, what do we think is going to happen?

What do we think God is going to do? I mean, we're praying that we'll see over 6,000 people this year, over 600 first time guests this year. It takes a lot of people to pull something like that off. And so we want to give you an opportunity for massive impact at the end of the year. Guys, in my life, I look for places where I can put in 10 and get back 100.

OK, this is one of those. You come and you serve for in two hours or whatever it is, but you know there are going to be dozens and over the whole weekend, hundreds of people who don't really know the gospel or just kind of checking things out. So let's make sure that we invest there. We need seating people, kids people, guest experience people. We need parking people. OK, there's a picture that we took last year in the parking lot.

OK, one of the parking guys sent me a picture of my own truck. OK, that was me. All right.

And I totally blame them. I told him that too. OK, that was there.

That was there. You know, but in all seriousness, we need the parking. You know, we need parking. See all the security team guys. I mean, what could be more important than our security team when we take the whole church downtown in Greensboro? So I just want to say, hey, let's make plans now to have the highest serving engagement we've ever had in a weekend. And obviously, and our campus host said this so well. Guys, we want to make sure that we're bringing to one.

OK, bring someone to one. So who's on your ball team? Who is somebody at the office?

Man, who is a friend of yours? Listen, what has God done in your life this year? Don't you want him to do that in their life next year? Right. We talked about being thankful.

I mean, don't you love them in that way? All right. So let's invite them to come in and maybe they'll get to hear the greatest story ever told about Jesus coming and what he came to do. So you guys can sign up for both. All right.

So you can jump in there. That was actually supposed to be that was supposed to be like the sign up. OK, so sorry. That's my that's totally my fault.

That's totally my fault. That's there you go. All right. You guys can jump in there and go to our there we go.

Mercy Hill Church dot com Christmas guys in the back. I'm really sorry for that. OK. All right. Let's dive in. We're going to be in Second Thessalonians Chapter two today.

All right. God called. Here's the big idea.

We're jumping right in. God calls us into a relationship with himself in one way. He does it through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, some people get all bent out of shape and they're like, well, how could there only be one way? We may need to get blown away that there is any way at all.

Right. That might be where I mean, I know my sinful heart. I understand that, you know, the people that come to Mercy Hill and the people in the world, I mean, we might need to be in a posture of like, you know, there's a way at all.

And that's kind of a big deal, right? There is a way that we can come into relationship with God. Today is very much a continuation. This is how is just about every week at Mercy Hill when we're in a study like this.

It's of last week. OK, I didn't preach a sermon. Pastor Bobby preached a great sermon on the concept of the deceptions that are in the world. I mean, they're all around us.

We see them. Well, what we need to do is go to the very bottom of it and say, OK, the first thing, though, is that we need to get to the ultimate truth. We're not going to be able to see the deceptions for what they are until we see the ultimate truth, the reveal of truth, who actually is the truth.

All right. And so that's what that's what the story gets into today in Second Thessalonians. We move from there are going to be those who are deceived. We move from that to there are going to be those who are set aside by the spirit and believe in the truth. And they end up having a glorious fellowship with Jesus Christ, really, for all eternity. There's really two paths. One we saw last week, the other we get to see this week.

For some of us today, I pray that it's one of these moments where the wool is kind of removed from the eyes. You know, I've used illustration before, but I don't know if you guys have ever seen the movie The Matrix. It's old now. OK, it's old movie.

I get that. I was a teenager when The Matrix came out because that puts that it was in the 90s. So that dates me. I told you I told you just before I'm a I'm a millennial, but I am a geriatric millennial. OK, so I'm right on the I'm right on the border.

And I've actually noticed our church, our church sort of, you know, there's a lot of people that are in my life stage in our church right now. And so you're going to be with me on this. You remember you remember, you know, things like dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. OK, you remember that and the computer game.

And you remember reading books to go to personal pan pizza for Pizza Hut. You guys remember that you remember blowing on the Nintendo games to try to get them to work. One of these Gen Z people said, oh, that was just a myth.

That was not a myth. OK, and you guys know that was. But you guys remember all this. You remember that brief moment that Pepsi went clear. I don't know if you guys remember that.

OK, you know, so you have all this stuff, right? Well, if that's you, then you are a teenager in the 90s. Now, here's why I bring that up. The movie The Matrix was really revolutionary in its time. The whole concept was everything you think is reality is actually a computer program that is pulling the wool over your eyes. OK, now, if that's new to you and you didn't know the movie, that's your fault.

Not my fault. The movie is like 20 years old. OK, but I think about that that moment in the movie. I've shared this before where you have kind of the two players in the movie, one named Morpheus, one named Neo. And Morpheus understands the actual truth.

Everything you think is a computer program. Actually, you're being controlled by robots or whatever. And he wants to reveal that truth to Neo. And here's what he says. If you guys remember, he looks at Neo and he says, hey, you got a red pill and a blue pill. If you take this one, you just go believe whatever you want. You take this one and you're going to understand what the truth is. And this is what he says.

He says, this is your last chance. After this, there's no turning back. You take the blue pill.

I've thought about this a million times. The story ends, you wake up in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe. But you take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and you see how deep the rabbit hole really goes.

And if you've ever seen the movie, it's like he takes the red pill and all of a sudden. And why do I bring that up right now? Here's why. If the way you've constructed reality is a lie, would you even want to know? Because this is what the gospel does. The gospel comes in and engages us to say, man, the things that we live for, the way that we've tried to construct our own truth, if those things are wrong, do you actually want to know? If there is an ultimate truth, if there is a purpose, a destiny that God has for your life, do you want to know it? Well, you're here this weekend.

You're one of our campuses this weekend. And so what we're going to do today is just dive all the way to the bottom of that. I want to show you what the gospel is and give you an opportunity to respond.

All right. So we're going to take some time to get there. Let's just walk through this passage together. Second Thessalonians chapter two, starting in verse 13. Here's what it says. But we ought always to give thanks to God for you brothers, beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through sanctification by the spirit and belief in the truth. Okay, wait a minute. God chose you to be saved.

How? Through sanctification. What does sanctified mean? Actually in the Bible, there's a couple of different ways you can think about this. But here I'm telling you what it means. Sanctified means set aside. It means he has moved you, that the spirit of God has done something in your life. You know, there's everybody here and then there's people over here and the spirit has moved you, you could say. Okay.

All right. Here's what it says. Sanctified by the spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now here's what it says.

So here's what he's getting at, right? Paul starts with this concept of I thank God. All right, verse 13. Thanksgiving, I'm giving thanks to God for what? Because God has moved mightily in the Thessalonicans life. He has saved them and Paul is excited and grateful to God over that.

That's what he says. I'm thankful for what God has done for you. I'm not thankful that your morality is really good. I'm not thankful that you have worked your way into God's good graces.

I am thankful that God has done something in your life to move you from where you were into where he wants you to be into his family. And here's what he says. I chose you. I set you, you know, he set you aside and you have chosen to believe the truth. One of the things, and listen, if you're brand new here, and I know we have people that are brand new every single weekend, you're trying to figure this out. You're like, man, okay, what is the church all about?

What is the Bible all about? Okay. If that's you, this may not, this may not mean a ton. Okay. But if you've been around churches a long time, let me address something in this. When we started talking about God choosing people, we get all bothered. And there all of a sudden starts to be debates and divisions and people start wanting to line up. Okay. And basically the two camps are this, wait a minute.

Does God choose you so that then you choose him or did God in his foreknowledge know that you would choose him so then he chose you. And you have both of these camps, right? And they've got names and all this stuff, but I mean, you got whole seminaries that are devoted to one side or the other. Okay.

You got whole movements that are devoted to one side or the other. And I guess what I want to look at this passage and say, well, wait a minute. I'm not sure that we need to be thinking about these divisions as much as we need to be thinking about being in that posture of being blown away that anybody gets saved at all. Right.

That's what I mean. That's really where I want our church to be where we are less in camps and more in I'm really blown away over what God has done in my life. Now there's some mystery here.

Okay. And there's some things that got, you know, Deuteronomy 29, 29 says the secret things belong to the Lord. And I need to trust in that at times like a weaned child with his mother, the Psalmist would say, there are times where I might just have to say, there are things that are too wonderful for me, but what I understand is some kind of way. And I think this is what Paul is giving thanks for. These people have come to the knowledge of God. They have come to that moment where they confess their sin. They believe that Christ has done everything necessary to save them and their spirit was revived.

And now their body will follow later. Many people want to divide over this. And what I want to call us to see is that there are things worth dividing over.

If the passage didn't look what it says in verse 13, God chose you as the first fruits to be saved through the sanctification of the Spirit by the Spirit and belief in the truth. Now he's going to talk about what that truth is. That truth is the gospel message.

Are there things worth dividing over? Absolutely. If I stood before you and preached the gospel, there was anything other than grace alone through faith alone. If I stood up and said, Jesus Christ is your way to heaven, as long as you're good, as long as you do the right works. If that was my message, then we're not talking about something that's great. We're not talking about something that's mysterious. That's played out so many times in the Scripture. What we're talking about here are things that a church body has got to be mature enough to understand. There are going to be people who see it this way, people who see it this way, but we can sit in the same small group because we're blown away that God did it at all. That's where we got to be. We got whole seminaries, entire camps, whole churches with these statements that it's like, if you don't believe that this is the exact way that Jesus is going to come back in this timeline with all this stuff, then you can't even be part of our fellowship and it's crazy. We got enough out there to fight against, okay?

I mean, think about the times that we live in. What we need to be is the people who say, hey, it's fine to have your conviction, and that's fine if this is what you study and all that, but the reality is there are ways that many people have thought about some of these things in times theology, the exact ordering in soteriology or salvation like I'm talking about here, and there is room for there to be unity without being, listen, here's what I would say. Unity doesn't necessitate uniformity on every single issue.

Unity does necessitate uniformity on some issues that are closed handed, I get that, but not on every single issue. So let's look at this and let's say, okay, wait a minute. Paul is saying, I am grateful that God has done something in your life. He chose you, he sets you apart, and you chose the truth, and because of that, you are his special possession. You know, a lot of people have seen allusions here to what God would say about Israel in Deuteronomy chapter 26, 18, that what God is saying is in a similar way that he has a possession and has chosen his people in the Old Testament, that the church of Jesus Christ in a similar way is experiencing some of that here, that he chose you. Now that brings up another good point. You know, there's a lot of people that might have a lot of different ways that they think about the church, Israel, Israel's place in the end times, has the church replaced Israel? There's all of these questions.

And again, I'm not saying don't have a conviction. I am saying you better be able to sit in the same small group, you know, because then there's some of that stuff that there's a little bit of latitude on. What I want to say here is though that the thankfulness that Paul has is because he as a Jew is thinking to himself, man, maybe even from Deuteronomy 26, unbelievable through Christ, there's other people that are coming in. There's other people that are being grafted in and you, the mostly Gentile church of Thessalonia, you guys have been brought in and I praise God for that.

Now, how did they come in? What was the truth that they believed? Well, this is what he says, to this he called you through our gospel so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, to what? Okay, to this he called you through our gospel. You have been chosen, set aside, you chose the truth.

How did it happen? There was a mechanism and that mechanism was someone preached the truth and someone accepted it. And that's how you get to sharing in the glory of what he says here about the Lord Jesus Christ. We're going to talk about that, but let's talk about the gospel first. The gospel here is the mechanism by which we are saved. What we see in the scripture is absolutely true, what Jesus said about himself, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me.

This is what he's saying here. You have come through our gospel. We have people that are brand new in our church.

Like I said, every single week, a weekend like this, I'm sure we will, with people bringing family and that kind of stuff. And here's what I would say. I would say, guys, very simple gospel here, gospel message. Jesus came to die for the sin of the world. And if you place your faith in him, your spirit that is dead because of sin becomes resurrected because of Christ. And your spirit gets a divine foretaste of what our bodies will follow later when we start talking about heaven and start talking about a little bit of what Pastor Bobby talked about last week with that great day of the Lord. As I mentioned earlier, guys, he's not saying I'm thankful for you Thessalonians because you're good, because you're moral, because you have cleaned yourself up. I am thankful that the mechanism of the gospel was something that was shared with you and that you responded to.

There is a truth, he says in verse 13, he calls that truth the gospel in verse 14, and by that gospel we can be reconciled to God. Now here's why this is so important, okay, because what Pastor Bobby said last week is so true. Man, we live with such deception everywhere we go. I mean, you can see, guys, it's everywhere. It's in such big kind of cultural things, and it's in smaller kind of personal theological things.

We live in a day right now where the spirit of lawlessness is absolutely at work, and it works in big cultural issues. Guys, we live in a day where people are convinced that a man can have a baby, and they call that, listen, they call that women's empowerment. Now I want you to think about this, God in His grace has graced women in our society to be able to do something that a man cannot do, and if they could not do that we would all be finished. So what that affords to them is a special place in society.

In God's kingdom it affords them an honoring that comes with the way that He has created them, but now a man can do anything that a woman can do, and we call that empowerment. We live in such a time of deception. Abortion is called compassion. You go do the study on where people put abortion clinics, and you tell me if the strategy is working for them to rise up, or is it further tearing down the family, because after all, if you can just go have an abortion, what is it my problem if I'm the man in the situation?

I'm off the hook. It's a further tearing at the very heartbeat of family, but it's called compassion. We live in a day in our society where greed sometimes in business is seen as a virtue.

We want to see that young guy that's got that look in his eye. Greedy as all get out, willing to stab somebody in the back. Why?

Because they're going to help us get ahead. This is deception. Y'all, we live in an era where deception is all around us.

The spirit of lawlessness is at work now, but it is not only in these big cultural things that we want to fight over. Y'all, it's also in the small. It's also in the personal. It's also in the theological, but it's deception. You know how you notice deception?

Look at what outs from it. Look at the truth from it. You tell generation after generation that there is no God and life comes through evolution. Survival of the fittest, they say.

Then why in the world do we get on to young men for bullying each other? I mean, it's just what the animal kingdom does, right? See, this stuff doesn't make sense. If you think about it and step back just for one more second, you know what we say all the time? I mean, we live in a society. Deception is everywhere. The biggest part of deception being everywhere, y'all, is that my truth is my truth and your truth is your truth. And now I have the ability to shape what is actually true outside of me.

I mean, we see this all the time. I've told you guys this story before. My kids were young. I remember we were getting ready.

It was a Sunday. I was going to preach that night over at Burmell Park, and I was telling them this story. We had a really cool encounter. Me and a couple of guys were out hiking out in western North Carolina, and we saw this black bear. Many of you guys in North Carolina probably have seen a black bear if you've been hiking or whatever. It's scary for a second.

I mean, I've definitely picked up a couple of rocks just in case something went down. But the thing ran off, and I was telling them this story. Big black bear, we saw a big black bear. And I told them the story 100 times. Tell me the story about the black bear.

Got it, right? And then next thing I know, I can't remember how old they were. They were young, like maybe two, four, or maybe three and five.

I don't know. They were really young. But AP was in my room, and he was telling me, hey, tell me about the black bear or whatever. I said, okay, well, I was out hiking in western North Carolina, and I saw the black bear, and one of us in the group had to stand up and be a man. So I grabbed these rocks, and then all the other guys, you know, all the other guys in the group ran away.

Okay, so, you know, and, you know, I'm just, you know, just embellishing a little bit. So I'm telling the story, and he says, no, Daddy, the bear was brown. I said, no, it wasn't. It was black. And he said, no, it was brown.

And I was like, bud, I was there. Okay, the bear was black. They know it was brown.

And then Hattie Jo comes in, and she's got to be like five or six years old. I can't remember. And she says, well, Daddy, the bear can be black for you and brown for him. I sat up and turned the light on, and I said, you will not bring that postmodern philosophy into my house. Okay.

The bear was black. Okay. Now we live in a day where you guys all understand, we laugh at that story.

Why? Because here's what we know, and this is how deception is. If you take one step back, oh, really, abortion is compassion. That's what we call it. Oh, really? Green is a virtue.

If you just step back, you look at it, and you kind of go, oh, wait a minute. Actually, we sort of know that no matter what I believe about that bear, it was either black or it was brown. We kind of know that. You know what the Bible does? The Bible gives us truth that combats deception. And here's the truth that we get from this passage.

The truth is, hey, there is a propositional truth. That means there is a set of things that we need to believe or not believe. It's not coming from me. It's coming from the scripture. It's coming from what our church would hold to be a divine book. And here's what it says. If you want to participate in the glory of Christ, which I'm going to explain in a minute, if you want to participate in that, you don't get there any kind of way you want to. It turns out that the coexist bumper sticker is not only a lie.

It's very arrogant. Because what it says is they're all the same, even though all of them say they're not. So you got it right, I guess. You see what everybody else don't see, whether you're Muslim or Jew or Christian. I mean, you see what we all miss, right?

But that's kind of the idea. And what the Bible's propositional truth is is that, wait a minute, there is a God who chose you, set you aside. You chose the truth. What was that truth?

Man, that I couldn't get back to him with my own works. That Jesus Christ had to come and live and die for me. God created, we rebelled. Jesus Christ came to take the penalty for that sin so that we could be restored into his family again. To this he called you through our gospel.

That's the mechanism. But listen, so that you may obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. Highly debated. You can go read 10 different commentaries.

They're going to say 10 different things, okay? I'm going to tell you what I think this means. And I think what it means actually is kind of evident when you cross reference it with a couple other scriptures. I think what he means when he's saying here, because what does the glory of Christ mean?

I mean, manifest presence. I mean, you could get into a lot of things of what the glory of God is. I think what he's getting at here is the concept of a glorification, a glorified body. That through the gospel, our spirit not only revives, but like Jesus Christ, we end up being ones who are given a glorified body that will take us into eternity forever and ever and ever.

Now, why do I say that? Well, there's a place in 1 Corinthians 15 that talks about how what our bodies really are is like a seed that is sown. And when it's sown, it comes back by resurrection. What was sown was perishable, but what is resurrected is imperishable.

This one's closer to it though. Okay, let me give you one more reference. Philippians 3, verse 20, but our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his what?

Glorious body. So let me try to just spell it out, put it on the bottom shelf. Okay, here's what I think he's saying. The gospel is the mechanism for you and I to enter into a glorious eternal life. Now, please catch what I said.

I hope you're picking up what's being put out here. We all enter into eternal life, but there is some that enter into the glory of Christ, eternal life. And again, we can get in this thing like, oh, I can't believe that God would save some, not save some.

How could he save any of us? Think about your sin. Think about your pride. Think about the things that you have done, the things you should have done that you didn't do. Think about the ways you could have helped people.

Think about the things that you've said out loud. What about what has been said in your heart? I mean, God would be just to wipe us all away.

And instead he is providing an opportunity for us to come in. And that glory is ours to be had if we would accept the gospel story. But the glory of Christ does not wait. The unbeliever, you got to think about it like this through the acceptance of the gospel comes the glorious transformation. And if you're, if you're still a little bit like, man, I'm trying to catch what you're saying in terms of gospel.

Let me try to break it down as clearly as I can. There is a God in heaven who wants to bring you into his family. You aren't in his family just because you're breathing. He wants you to bring you.

He wants to bring you into his family. Here's the problem in our sin that cannot happen. So what's got to happen is something has got to remove our sin so that we can be in the presence of God and in his family. Once again, every single one of us has sinned. The Bible tells us that, that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, our temper, our pride, our greed, our sexual sin. Then we could just go on and on and on the things we've done, the things that we didn't do, but God being rich and mercy and grace sent Jesus Christ to make it right to make a way.

And he did that through his life, death and resurrection in our sin. What you and I deserve is death like the death on a cross and hell for all eternity. And yet what Jesus has done is said, hey, listen, I will take what you deserve so that I will give you what I deserve.

You could say it like this. We deserve death and hell. Jesus took both so that we would have neither.

If you're taking notes, you could say this. Jesus took what we deserve so that we could receive what he deserved. And that's what the cross is. That's what the cross is.

Man, it's Jesus doing the work that we then believe in order to be grafted into the family of God. We needed someone to be a sacrificial lamb for us, and that's what he has done. Guys, maybe some of you all have ever read about Teddy Roosevelt. He was a proponent of what he called the strenuous life. He wanted to fight against nature, and he wanted to build himself up, and he had asthma, so he boxed in. I mean, just all this stuff about his life, the bull moose kind of thing, right?

And when he was, after he lost the presidential election, 1914, 13, I actually lost in 12, okay, but as a consolation of all that, he ended up taking a lecture series in South America. And so he was going to go down there. He was going to do a couple of river kind of adventures or whatever, but they were kind of pedestrian. I mean, other people had done them, and they weren't really that hard, and they were going to have people cooking for them, and you know, okay?

And so he gets down there. There's a very famous Brazilian explorer named Canando Rondon, okay? A bunch of stuff in Brazil is named after him in the Amazon, all this kind of stuff to this day. And Rondon knew about Roosevelt's kind of proclivity toward, and he wasn't going to back down from a challenge, and Rondon was trying to get a bunch of funding for what he wanted to do, which was to descend the river doubt. Nobody had done this before.

It's actually only been done a couple times since. And so Rondon kind of, you know, jabs a little bit at Teddy Roosevelt. He brings out that character in him, and next thing you know, Roosevelt has thrown all the weight of the whole mission into now we're going to descend the river doubt. It's a crazy story.

You can go read about it, or you can look it up online or whatever. You know, thousands of miles, and Teddy Roosevelt got so sick from it, people think he probably ended up dying from the trip years later. So it's a crazy story. But part of that story is this. Man, when they would go through these tributaries in the Amazon, the problem with these tributaries is, I mean, you're talking about the most remote place in the whole world. I mean, people had never even gone, other than indigenous people that lived there, that kind of idea. There were these tributaries that were so infested with piranhas that if you were to try to get in and go across, you would just get eaten alive, really.

And so, you know, this seems like a problem, right? And so what they did, but here's what these guys would do that knew what they were doing, these explorers. You know what they would do? They would take one of the oxen or one of the animals, and they would goat it out into the water.

Didn't want to go. These things are smart. They would goat it and make it go out into the water. And maybe they would cut it.

Maybe it had a little bit of a bleed or whatever it is. Next thing you know, here comes a piranha. Next thing you know, the whole river is in an absolute bloody fury. And you know what the rest of the camp does? With all their horses, with all their dogs, with everybody walking, with everything on the pack, while that poor ox is getting devoured, they walk away. They walk right through the water 10 feet away.

And they never have a problem. They needed a sacrifice if they were going to cross. I know that many of us don't want to think about it this way, but you know what Jesus was on the cross for you? He was being devoured so that you could go free.

He was going down so that you could go across. And this is the idea of what the gospel is, that Jesus stood in our place. And I implore you today, man, don't put this off. If the Spirit of God is moving in your life today, today is the day to admit your sin and believe what he has done and confess him as the Lord of your life. Let me finish this passage. So then brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. Now don't lift your eyes up just yet, okay?

Because I'm running out of time and I got to make a point here, okay? Look what verse 15 says. Stand firm and hold to what?

The traditions. Now this is talking to save people. All right, you've already been, you're already a gospel person, okay? So he's saying hold fast to that.

Why? He moves into a prayer in verse 16. Hang with me. He moves into this prayer in verse 16. Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us, gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace. Okay, Jesus has done something in our life. He's giving us comfort. He's giving us hope. It's not in our work. It's in his grace.

Why? Comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. Now here's what I want you to see. Once you become chosen, set aside, believe the truth through the gospel, right? Glory of Christ.

This is who you are. If you are a Christian, if you are a believer, I want you to see this, man. God saved you as a starting line to make a brand new life. And that life is filled with holding on to traditions that fuel your heart about the grace of God, that bring you hope and comfort so that why? So that you can be, what does he say? Good works and the word or testimony, okay? So that you will walk well and you will have good, hold on to traditions that fuel your hope, comfort, point you back to Christ so that what? So that you will have good works and a word. In other words, you could say it like this, guys, you were saved to be sent to make an impact in this world.

You were saved to be sent to make an impact in this world. Now, what does this mean, traditions? I mean, this guys, we're in the perfect time of year to bring this up, right? I bet you all got traditions, right? What's your tradition around holidays, Christmas tree. We have a sermon planning meeting every week where I bring what we're going to talk about.

And we have four or five or seven, sometimes people we speak in and we try to speak on behalf of the church and what do we need to hear and that kind of thing. And we were doing that this week. And one of our guys said, well, I have, we have a tradition. And the tradition is every Friday after Thanksgiving, we go up to Boone or wherever and we cut a Christmas tree down. But he said, every single year, my wife wants to start the party early, like two weeks early.

And she wants to get the tree and she wants to start listening to music. And I'm pushing against it so hard because she's trying to kill our family tradition. Here's what he said. He said, she's standing on the throat of our family tradition. If you need their names for marriage counseling, I'll tell you. Okay. They were pastors in our church.

No, he was joking. But I thought about, well, here's the point. We all have traditions, right? What's the point of a tradition? Now some of them are silly, but in all seriousness, what's the point of a tradition? Why do humans do traditions? They do traditions to ingrain value in younger generation and in themselves. That's why we do it. I mean, just from a sociological standpoint.

Okay. I know we got funny traditions or whatever. Why does he want to go the same day every year? He wants his kids to remember that we were all together. The family matters.

It means, right? I mean, this is why we do traditions. Guys, what are the traditions that he's talking about here? Because the tradition, you know, tradition is just like in our day. That can have a positive or negative connotation in the scripture and in our day. He's using it positively here to say the traditions that we gave you. This is what I want to tell you. You know what the traditions are?

You ever heard of the Acts 2 flywheel at Mercy Hill that we get straight out of these guys, right? Gather groups, give, go? These are our traditions.

This is what he means. The things that point us back to Christ and His grace. The danger is, see, this is what we talk about. Gather groups, give, go.

The danger is that humans want to move on to something novel. It's like a football game. We love the reverse pass, hail Mary, oop dee oop.

Okay, that makes SportsCenter when what you really need is a good run game up the middle. And gather groups, give, go? Traditions are not novel. Many times in church life, and what you see in a church like Mercy Hill as we're doing this, we're putting new language, we're kind of updating things, but here's the deal.

We have a deep belief. You don't grow because of something new. You grow because you get back in touch with stuff that's really old.

Really old in the church. Like gathering and making the weekend a priority and serving and attending. You don't come to service just to come to one, right? To service twice the impact.

Community, all that kind of stuff. Man, don't teach our kids to receive without giving. All right, so when we come, we come for two. We gather in our groups during the week.

Why? Because discipleship happens in relationship and has for 2,000 years. Go back and look at Acts 2, this is what they did. We give of our time and our talent and our treasure, not only because it makes a great impact, but because of what it does in our hearts. Why do you think Jesus looked at the rich young ruler and says, okay, one more thing, go give it all away.

Why? Because there's something in our life that happens when we begin to give, and when we start to go and realize there is a mission that is bigger than ourself, then what happens in our life? The church grows and we grow.

These are the traditions. Man, I'm out of time, all right? Here's what I want to call you to do. Respond to the gospel today. For Christians, it's very simple, right? Will you respond today, if you're a believer, all right, I want to talk to believers and then young believers and then we're done, okay? Believers, if you're a believer, what about what I'm talking about right here at the end?

How is this hitting you? What are the traditional things that you need to get back to to continue to have God fuel your growth in order, what does it say in verse 17? To make an impact through your works and to keep your word, your testimony, pure.

What does those think? What about gather groups give go? You were saved and sent. You know, I wanted to say this earlier. Guys, at the very beginning of this passage, this is what he said, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved. I think he said that in verse 13, all right? Because of the first, yeah, verse 13, the first fruits. What does first fruits mean? First fruits doesn't mean only fruit.

First fruits means first fruits. You guys know, you guys saw this two weeks ago. Man, our our mission team, our sent ones that are in Africa right now. I mean, you guys know their story.

We played it out on the video a couple weeks ago. Man, you know, they're getting a chance because of the global city that they're in to engage these, you know, unreached, unengaged type people and they see one of them come to Christ and then months later now there's 30 something of them that are being discipled and all that, right? What's going on there?

That first one that got saved, first fruit, not only fruit, the first fruit then is able to pour into the second generation, third generation, fourth generation. Man, what is God doing in your life? Would you jump in?

Man, serve at Tangled. Make sure to make a decision to be in community next year with our community groups kicking back off in January, whatever it is, right? Hey, but the last thing, and this is how we want to close, but for us today that need to take a step of salvation, man, this is what we want to do. We want to give you the opportunity to do that.

So here's what I want to do. If you don't mind closing notes, closing Bible, man, just get comfortable for a minute. We're going to, I'm going to ask you to bow your head and close your eyes for just a minute.

If you're so new to church and that freaks you out, then just don't do it. Okay. Um, but then that's fine. All right. But we're just going to, the reason we do this is to get away from distractions, get away from phone, man. Just, just kind of close your eyes and state, you know, kind of meditate kind of state for a minute. Just, just breathe a minute.

Just call them. Okay. If you're here today and you need to accept Christ, this is the thing you're thinking to yourself, man. I don't know if I, I don't know if I want that to be true, but are you starting to believe that it is? Is God drawing your heart? Is this a red pill moment?

Promise you're going to see how deep the rabbit hole really goes. God has a life for you, a purpose of mission. He's got a calling and a destiny. He's got gifts that he wants to give you so that you will use them for his kingdom. And he wants to enjoy fellowship with you for ever. Then would you take that step today?

Here's how it happens. Then we take that step by admitting our sin and believing in what Christ has done and confessing him as the Lord of our life. If you want to take that step with me today, I'm going to call upon you to pray this prayer in your heart as I pray it. God, we know that we are sinners. God, I know you pray this personally for yourself. I know that I'm a sinner and I pray right now, Lord, that in my sin, I, I know that I admit that, but I pray to you because I believe in what Christ has done for me, not my works, but what he has done on the cross. I accept that sacrifice as an atonement for my sin. I accept that sacrifice to make my sin right before you to take it away, to wash it away.

God, I believe in his resurrection. I want to join him in his resurrection. I want to walk with him. I want to confess him as the Lord of my life. Are you praying that prayer with me right now? Is God saving some people in this room and across our five campuses? Lord, we thank you for this opportunity to come and God, I pray that you'll move mightily today. God, move mightily this weekend in our church. Father, I pray for those that have prayed this prayer, give them the boldness to take this next step. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.