To the Uttermost - Hebrews 7:23-25 - The Heart of Jesus

You know, sometimes we can have fears that come up in our life because we wonder if God's love is going to eventually run out on us, all right? And I don't know if you've been a believer for very long, but if you have, you've probably experienced this at some point in your life where you know what's true in your mind, right? That man once saved, always saved, and we kind of understand that. But we wonder if the gas tank, so to speak, of God's love is actually something that may one day not quite have enough juice to get us there.

And that's what we're going to talk about this weekend. If you have a copy of Scripture, you can take it out and turn with me to Hebrews chapter 7. And as you guys are finding Hebrews chapter 7 at all of our campuses, I want to just go ahead and break the whole world down into two groups of people, okay? When it comes to driving, there are people in the world who understand what it's like to run out of gas, okay? You've been on the side of the road at some point in your life. Of course, the other group of people, and probably there's a good mix in here, are the people that cannot fathom in any universe how that could ever happen to somebody, okay?

And what's funny is those two usually end up marrying each other. So I can see in here right now, they're like, yeah, I don't understand it at all. I'm not going to throw rocks, okay? I'll go ahead and give you where I'm at. I've run out of gas more than once in my life, okay?

I know that's shocking. I am a very prepared individual, thinking about my home, all right? It's like, man, I've always got a gas tank, generator, food supply. Like, if the zombies come, we're ready, okay?

So I'm ready, but at the same time, I can get very distracted not thinking about it, and I'm kind of overplaying it, but it has happened to me before. If you've ever been in that situation, right, or even close, you know the exact feeling that I'm talking about. You are gripping the wheel, all right?

White knuckles, all right? You're looking at the E is just the lit up E. You're wondering, man, I got this many miles, and I'm trying to crunch numbers, and am I going to make it? You know, when you start going down a hill, you just go ahead and shift into neutral, okay? And you're trying to save every little, you know what I'm talking about, right? And that is not fun.

It's not joyful. And you're wondering, man, am I going to end up coasting and make it home on fumes, or am I going to end up even all the way out and just trying to roll right into the finish line? And sadly, there are going to be believers all across our campuses at Mercy Hill this very weekend that are thinking about their Christian life in that way. And what you're thinking right now is, man, is God's gas tank, does He got enough to cover it because I've been messing up, right? Does He have enough to get me there, or am I going to be coasting on fumes into that final kind of stretch where I'm barely making it in because of God's great love? I know, but man, I have messed up so much in my life, and I just don't know if I'm going to get there. Guys, this weekend, we want to engage the fact that here's the big idea. Listen, when Jesus saves you, He saves you all the way and for all time.

There is none of this idea about, man, is there enough gas in the tank? When He saved you before the foundation of the world, He knew this person is going to be one who I'm going to die for. And when He applied His blood in your life and you accepted Him by faith, when His grace came into your life, man, He saved you all the way and for all time.

We don't have to wonder if we are going to make it. And here's the deal, that is not a very fun way to live the Christian life, is wondering. A lot of us think, you know, and maybe you were raised this way, I don't know, we think the way to live the straight and narrow Christian life is to be very afraid that one day that gas tank is going to run out and God's going to kick me out, or I'm not going to quite make it. And that can produce short-term behavior modification, but lasting change in our life that fuels our Christian growth and maturity actually comes from the exact opposite. From understanding that God knows everything we were ever going to do, and yet His grace was greater still. And that's what we get into in Hebrews chapter 7 this weekend.

Here's what I want to do. I want to talk to you about the applied work of Jesus Christ 24-7, 365. What is He doing? How is He applying His work on the cross, His blood, His resurrection in your life? And I hope that we're going to see that as far as you can see on the whole horizon, that's about as far as the love of Christ goes deep in our life and going for all time in eternity, all right? Here's what we're going to do.

We're going to jump in. There's only a couple of verses that we're going to look at this weekend, okay? Hebrews 7 verses 23 through 25, but it's a very rich text, so we got to kind of break it all the way down, all right? So I'm going to spend most of my time just kind of verse by verse.

We're going to go through here and make sure we understand what's going on, but by the time we get to the end of this, I'm going to try to pull out three rocks that are like, hey man, this is what we need for this week. And hopefully, man, we're going to walk out of here with great assurance, man, and more in love with the Savior who is in love with us. Hebrews 7 starting in verse 23, the former priests were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, okay? That's a little odd way to say that, but basically when you die, you can't keep doing your job anymore, okay? And so because of death, they weren't able to continue being priests, got it?

Verse 24, but He, talking about Jesus, holds His priesthood permanently because He continues forever. Consequently, as a result of, because of, okay, consequently, He is able to save to the uttermost. That is such an important word, okay?

Not for the most part, but to the uttermost. He saves to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives, He always lives because He's not prevented by death from holding His office forever, you understand? He is always living, He always lives to make intercession for them.

Now let's work all the way through this, okay? All right, let's talk about the book of Hebrews for just one minute, all right? Hebrews is a book that is written, and here is the shortest kind of thesis I can give you on the whole book. This is not a study in the book of Hebrews.

We're looking at the heart of Christ, different passages, but if I was going to break down the book of Hebrews, I would say it like this. Hebrews, Jesus Christ is greater. Greater than what? Greater than it all. He's greater than angels.

Hey, this is if you just read through the whole book. He's greater than the priesthood, all right? He's greater than any type of Old Testament ceremony. He's a greater sacrifice. He's greater than any Old Testament institution.

He is greater. The book of Hebrews is written to a group of people who are suffering and persecuted to remember, do not move on from Christ, because He is greater than whatever else you're going to turn to for salvation. If you want to turn back to your works, Jesus is greater.

If you want to turn back to ceremony and doing a lot of religious things and practices, Jesus is greater. This is the whole book of Hebrews. Now, what he says is this. Look at verse 23 again. The former priests who were many in number because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever.

Now, this is, you know, this is pretty deep stuff. I'm going to try to break it down, but basically what the writer of Hebrews is doing is he is contrasting the many that came before Christ with the one that is going to be eternal, okay? So mortality produced many, but immortality and eternity has produced one, all right?

And produced one what? One priest. What is a priest? I'm not a priest, okay? What we call, we call me a preacher, all right?

Why? Because all I'm doing is expounding the word. I'm leading, you know, but I'm not a priest. What does a priest do? A priest represents the people to God and a priest represents God to the people. We see a priesthood in the Old Testament. These were a group of people who implemented a sacrificial system and the idea was, man, sin has always been a problem, all the way since the Garden, way back in Genesis, and the priesthood was what God instituted to say, listen, this is a group of people who will do a sacrificial system so that what we will have is a symbolic substitution that I will not be angry over sin because an animal stands in for the people's sin.

There's only one way to pay for sin and that is death, but this animal will stand in until I bring you the ultimate true sacrifice. It was a symbol in this priesthood that one day would get us to the greater priest and as we're going to see this weekend to the greater sacrifice as well, but that is what the priesthood was about and the writer of Hebrews now is saying, hey, there used to be a lot of priests because they, I love how I say they were prevented from all their office because, I mean, they died. They were mortal. Every time one of them died, you needed a new one. It's like, it's like this, the writer of Hebrews is trying to get us to see, and I'm going to talk about what priests do more in a minute, okay?

But let's just talk about how long they do it for, all right? The priests and their generation would represent the people to God and God to the people in their generation. You need many priests for many generations, but now something in Christ has switched. Something in Jesus has changed the game, and now the game is not many priests for many generations, but one priest for all generations. One priest for all eternity, and this is what Christ has done. Many of us know much of the Christian story, right?

I talked about this in the very intro of our sermon series on Easter. Many of us have the parts, but do we have the heart? We have the scenes, but do we have the whole story, okay? And the whole story tells us, when we kind of understand what God was doing, there's something He is doing in the life and the death and the resurrection of Christ that really matters for us. Jesus, the Son of God, takes on flesh. He lives a life that we didn't live.

We're going to get into that, all right? He dies on the cross, but then three days later, He is raised from the dead. I would wonder in a room like this or at our campuses, even those of us that have been believers for a long time, how many of us right now, if I just said, hey, put you on the spot, why did Jesus have to die? We would say, well, He died for our sin.

Got it. Why did He have to raise from the dead? Some of us might be a little bit like, man, I'm pretty confident on the dying part for me.

I get that substitution, right? But I'm trying to, maybe I don't quite understand the resurrection part. Well, why did Jesus raise from the dead? There's a lot of answers to that.

There's a lot of good answers to that. There's a lot of good things that come from the resurrection. We could get into some of those, but one of the things that we have to understand is that in defeating death, we end up with an eternal priest. He is a priest who defeated death once, and he's not going to have to do it again. And that is important in the argument of Hebrews chapter 7, because in doing so, and man, I know this stuff is a little deep, but we got to just kind of try to make sure we're hanging on. In doing so, Jesus Christ ends up with what Hebrews 7 calls an indestructible life. It means that he defeated death once, he doesn't have to do it again. Whatever, this is my point, whatever it is that the priests do, Jesus is going to do it for all time, all the way through eternity.

He's not going to have a time where he has to go off the scene and a new one has to come on. And in so doing, maybe some of you guys have heard this name before, he steps in line in the order of a priest in the Old Testament and king named Melchizedek, all right. Melchizedek was a character in the Old Testament. He was a king and a priest.

We see him working with different people. We see him show up with Abraham. We see a few things that happen in his life, but the point is that in Psalm 110, all right, the Psalmist points to the fact that Melchizedek is one who doesn't have a genealogy and doesn't have a death. That there's something about Melchizedek that points to like this idea of an indestructible life. We don't know when he was born, don't know when he died, and that is the order of Melchizedek. The writer of Hebrews picks up on that and he says, hey, just like Melchizedek from the Old Testament, Jesus Christ has an indestructible life. He will be doing whatever it is that priests do, he will do that for all time because we're not looking for another one. Look with me at verse 15 in chapter 7.

It'll be on your on the screen if you don't have a copy right in front of you. This becomes even more evident when another priest arises in the likeness of Melchizedek. The likeness of Melchizedek. Well what was Melchizedek like? Who has become a priest not on the basis of legal requirement concerning bodily descent because Melchizedek wasn't a priest for that reason, but by the power of an indestructible life. For it was witnessed of him, you are, this is quoting from Psalm 110 now, okay, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Now I'm not getting into who Melchizedek is, there's a lot of different opinions on this, but the point of Melchizedek is an indestructible life and that is something that Jesus steps into in his resurrection.

The basic argument is simple. Through his resurrection, Jesus is a forever priest. All right, verse, that's what it's saying. Verse 24 actually called him one of, he called him permanent.

He called him forever, okay. Now some of you guys might be newer, I've got two boys and they're both growing the baseball mullet haircut, okay, you know what I'm talking about? I mean I'm so proud, okay, and I tell them, I'm like listen, they want it all flowing out of the back of the, you know, the back of the the ball cap when they're pitching and all and I love it, okay. But I've told them, guys, it ain't a real mullet until you get a perm on the back.

You got a permit. You know what I'm talking about, right? And one of them said, well what's a perm? And I said, well, you know, and I tried to start explaining it and they said, no, what does perm mean?

I was like, I don't know. So I asked Anna, I said, what is perm? And she said, well, perm is short for permanent. That's what the actual hair thing, you know, is called. It's called permanent.

I was like, you got to go get it done every six months. How I run, what do you mean permanent? It's the, it's the, it's literally the opposite of permanent, right? I mean that's, you know, but the idea of permanent actually should be, I don't got to go back and do it every six months, right? Permanent means like, it goes, and that's what he said in verse 24. It's permanent. It's forever.

Whatever priests do, Jesus has stepped into this order and he is going to be doing it for all time. There's this song on the radio right now that talks about how things give out. He's like, you know, Duracell batteries in a Maglite, an old pair of jeans, you know, they give out, a truck gives out after 300,000 miles, a song on the radio. The idea is nothing lasts forever. Well, Jesus lasts forever. Jesus is the, this is the point of Hebrews 7. Jesus is the priest forever. His energy for being the priest, I'm going to get into what priests do, okay, but his energy for being a priest is not the gas tank that's sputtering and spitting and not sure if we're going to make it. He will be doing this work for all time.

Well, what is the work, all right? Greater priest, but let's look at greater sacrifice. Look at verse 25. Consequently, not just, I mean, think about that, and or, you know, because of, you know, because we've seen that concert as a consequence of being a forever priest, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. He is a forever priest that lives to make intercession. He wants people to be able to draw near to God through him. That's the work of a priest. I represent people to God, God to people. There's something about the priest that mediates this relationship, and what he's saying is this, something about this priest allows people to actually draw near to God forever, and he lives for this. Man, at every service, at every single campus, man, there are folks who are just beginning to check Christianity out at Mercy Hill, okay?

And I know sometimes it can, it can feel like drinking out of a fire hose. Sometimes it can feel like, man, I'm trying to, I'm trying to find my way, but let me ask you a question. If you're one of those people this weekend, where do you go to draw near to God?

Because what Hebrew 7 says is there's one way to go. You got, you got to go through him, through the eternal priest, through Jesus, to get to God. Where do you go?

Man, do you go to your works? I'm going to be a better person. I'm going to stop being stingy. I'm going to start giving. I'm going to work at, you know, a local nonprofit.

I'm going to be a good person. Is that where you're going? Are you going to a religious ceremony? A lot of people in the South show up at church.

Man, I'll be there early and stay late. I want to make sure, you know, I want to make sure I get near to God. So I'm going to go, I'm going to do the church thing or whatever.

Man, maybe it's something like that. Maybe it's, you know, there's a guy at the gym that I go to and, man, I've been, you know, kind of praying halfway trying to engage and just look for spots. And I get into a conversation with him the other day, a theological things, church, God.

I've been looking for this opportunity with him. And he begins to talk about, man, I meet God out in nature. I meet God on walk. I don't need to go to a church. I meet God on walks. I meet God in nature and all that kind. Listen, all these things that I've mentioned are good.

They're all good things. The problem is they are not the prescribed path that God has called us to, right? Like, and this is what's funny. Leave it up to our generation to decide where and when we will meet the God of the universe who created us.

I mean, think about that. We have decided, well, God will just meet me where on my terms. God will just meet me wherever I decide to go.

Like if I decide this is the path, that'll be the path. But the Scripture is saying, no, no, no. We come to God through Christ.

We can only come to God by following his prescribed path. Doesn't this just make sense to us? How many of us in the world would invite someone over to our house? Maybe they need to pick a child up for sports or maybe it's a door dash kind of thing and people are bringing you dinner or whatever. And when the door dash person calls you, hey, what's your address? Oh, no, no, you don't need my address. You just go wherever you like and I'll be there. I'll magically just be there.

It's like, man, that makes absolutely no sense. If we are going to go, we go through the pathway that God has given us. His address, so to speak, if you want to say it like that, is right here in the Scripture and it is Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has already told us in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth and the life. If you want to go to God the Father, you come through me.

Not one way, the way. You know, Ephesians 2 says the same thing. Actually, these texts are very similar in what they say about drawing near to God. For by grace you have been saved through faith, that this is not of your doing.

It is a gift of God, not a result of work, so that no man can boast, okay? But then skip down to verse 13. But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near.

That's the same idea of drawing near. We have been brought near by the blood of Christ. This is what we need to see today, that Jesus, okay, Jesus is greater.

That's Hebrews, all right? Yes, he's the greater priest because he don't die. But he's also the greater priest because he himself has created the way.

You know what that way was? It was through him sacrificing, not an animal. The blood of bulls and rams is never sufficient for our actual salvation, but he was the sacrifice himself.

Jesus wasn't just a greater priest. He was the greater sacrifice himself. Jesus stood in for us on the cross. He took what we deserve. In our sin, we deserve to be alienated from God.

We deserve to be cast out forever. But Jesus Christ came and took on death so that we didn't have to experience eternal death. Now this is, it's interesting here, because the Bible a lot of times doesn't get into this.

And C.S. Lewis talked about this, okay, in mere Christianity. It's like sometimes the mechanics of the gospel, we want to line it all up linearly.

And it's like, man, I'm not, I got to get it all exactly right when sometimes we need to just accept it by faith, and when we do, we grow. But he does, in Hebrews 7, actually get in a tiny bit to the mechanics here. I'll give you another question. Why is it, have you ever thought about this? Why couldn't some altruistic priest from the Levitical priesthood in the Old Testament kind of read through the lines and decide, actually, you know what, guys? I'm just going to sacrifice myself. If it was just merely the blood of bulls and rams that won't do it, but human blood will do it, then what if I just sacrifice myself? Wouldn't that take away the sins of all the people?

Have you ever thought that before? The writer of Hebrews engages it. Look what he says. Skip down to verse 26. For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest. He's talking about Christ again. Listen, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. What he's getting at here, hang on, I know if you're hanging on by a thread, just grip it a little longer, okay? Just hang on.

What is he saying? Jesus was different than the other priests. He wasn't a sinner. He was separated from them. He was holy.

He was unstained. And that matters. Why? Listen, he has no need, like those high priests, to offer sacrifices daily, first for his own sins, and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. Man, some great priest wants to sacrifice himself. Well, buddy, your blood was what required for your sin anyway. You understand what I'm saying? It's like, man, I sacrificed myself for everybody.

No, no, no. Your blood was what required just for your sins. But what Jesus Christ has done in being the one that never sinned, he didn't have to sacrifice for himself and then for everyone else. His sacrifice was for us all for all time. The greatest priest, the greatest sacrifice, and now look at what he does, okay?

I love this. The question is so good. What is Jesus doing right now, okay? I mean, some of us are like, well, no, I know what he did in the Bible.

No, no, no. Like, this very second, right now, as we're here, as you guys are at the canvases, what is he doing? Look what it says in verse 25. He's able to say to the uttermost, remember, that doesn't mean for the most part, the uttermost, as far as the eye can see, both in us and in time, those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. This is a priest who sacrificed himself to save us to the uttermost. That is intentionally ambiguous language.

Does it mean depth or does it mean the length of time? And the answer is yes. He saved all of you for all time to the uttermost. But what is he doing right now in this very moment? He is making intercession for us. He is our advocate. He is our intercession. Intercessor. Intercession is what? That's a kind of a theological word.

Intercession is, it just means this, approaching someone on behalf of others, okay? Put yourself back in, like, elementary school, third or fourth grade. You get your buddy to take the note that says, do you like me? Check yes or no to your, you know, your girlfriend or whatever, right? And you're, you know, the kids do that.

It's your buddy going on behalf of you. I think about a better example. My kids, my older, you know, our youngest daughter, which I told you so many times, that song, Great Celebration Awaits, one of my favorite songs Mercille's ever done, because I just have a picture of her worshiping, you know, and using words and language, and it's just a beautiful picture that comes to my mind. We sing that song. But right now she doesn't talk. She's five years old. She doesn't really have a lot of words. And, man, that was our big prayer request for 2021, gonna be our big prayer request for 2022, okay?

Man, we're gonna keep praying and circling that thing. And, but what happens is she does signs and stuff like that. And so what happens is sometimes my kids, my other kids, have to act as an intercessor on her behalf, right? So if she's in a school setting or church stuff here, or sometimes with a babysitter or something like that, they have to say, hey, she's asking to go outside, or hey, she's asking to eat something, or hey, she wants to sit down, or hey, she wants to watch Cocomelon again, okay? So I know some of you Gen Z. I'm there. You guys are those young parents, all right?

I'm on the Cocomelon thing too with a young kid at home. But they have to go in on her behalf is the point, all right? It's a third party entering in so that we can broker the thing, okay? That's what Jesus is doing for us. He is intercessing. What is he intercessing?

What is he doing? He is intercessing for us saying, my blood covers that sin. My blood covers you. You are mine. You know, I said at the beginning of this sermon series, I said, man, I don't envision Jesus pointing a finger at you, and that's true. He's not pointing a finger at you with a scow face, but he definitely is pointing a finger at you sometimes saying, that one is mine. That's my child.

That's my child. That sin is covered. I went to the cross for them. The blood atoned for that sin.

He's doing it 24-7, 365, and will never stop for all eternity. He is the intercessor. Intercession applies what the atonement accomplished. One pastor said it that way. Man, they sinned again.

He's the intercessor. They sinned again. My blood covers them. That's great news for us today.

It's a glorious truth to know this. You know, Kirk Franklin has a song that is called Intercessor and Intercession. I love it.

Here's what it says. It sets up this picture, and he says in the song, God sees me, but he hears him. He sees me, but he hears Jesus saying, that one's mine, that one's mine, that one's mine, that one's mine. If we have put our faith in Christ, we are saved all the way and for all time. Now, three takeaways that I take from this passage that I want to give to our church this weekend by way of application. Number one is a little more just super practical. How do we read the Bible?

How do we read books like Hebrews? Let me just say this, okay? Number one, read the whole Bible with Jesus' salvation for us in view, okay?

I want to take long on this, but just give me a minute here. This is important for Mercy Hill, especially in a time of fast growth. We have a lot of new people coming around. A lot of people maybe haven't been exposed to what we call gospel centered preaching. I don't know if your church background, I don't know anything about where you're coming in from or all that, but at Mercy Hill, I want you to understand that we deeply believe in the very core of who we are, that the Bible is not a collection of moral tales with a gospel twist at the end.

That's not what it is. Instead, what the Bible is, is a story of a bride and groom coming together who will live for all eternity. You know the Bible starts with a wedding and ends with a wedding, right? And what ends up happening is that we are to be the ones who are presented to God and live with Him for all time, forever. And the earliest stories of the Bible point us to this, and they point to Christ, and the whole Bible is this way where it's pointing to what God will do.

It is a gospel book from cover to cover. It's important that we understand it that way. So for example, okay, David and Goliath is not a story about a young kid's courage, okay? I mean, can we take some things from that?

Yeah, I suppose. But what it is, it's a story about a servant king who faces certain deaths so that he can win the hand of the king's daughter. I mean, this is what the story is about.

Daniel and the lion's den is not a story that is primarily about the courage, you know, of Daniel and even the faith to trust God. Are those good moral lessons? Yes. Should we say them when we're telling the stories?

Absolutely. But at its core, y'all, this story is about God's servant who goes down into the grave into the darkness of certain death and is sealed with a rock. But one day that rock is rolled away and he emerges. This is what we're supposed to get. We got to go a little deeper is what I'm getting at. The Old Testament stories of sacrifice are not just kind of rote stories of a system that helped out a little bit with our sin. Actually, it shows us the reality of our sin and it points us to the perfect lamb who would have to come to die to take our sin away.

Now, my question is, man, are we reading the Bible like that or are we only going an inch deep, you know? Man, let's push. Let's think about the kids of our church. Guys, the last three weeks, this is awesome, across all of our campuses, man, we've seen this kind of stuff happening.

The last three weeks have been the highest three weeks of attendance with kids that we have ever had in 10 years at Mercy Hill. And I praise God for that, okay? I mean, we can lift it up at the campus as well. We praise God for that.

Why? Man, they're all little arrows, all right? We're going to help shape them, help parents shape them. One thing I will say about this, man, if you've got children that are here in these campuses, one of the things that I would tell you over and over and over, if you listen to nothing else in parenting, lock them in to a group of friends in these ministries and let them ride for about 10 years. And their life will be forever changed, all right? But, along the way, what are we going to do?

Man, we're equipping them. I mean, every single week in our kids' ministries, what are we doing? Bible, Bible, Bible. Story, story, stories.

Why? It is not just to teach them to be good little citizens. It's not to teach them to be good little boys and girls. Man, it's to teach them to see that the Scripture is a love note for them. It's dripping with gospel truth from cover to cover.

And if we can get all that stuff in, one day they will begin to see it that way for themselves. Number two, all right? Number two, three rocks. Number two, trust Jesus for salvation. Look, some of you guys might be doing a mercy hill. And, again, I have no idea what type of preaching, or if any, you have ever heard. But maybe you're coming in and you have been taught or have always thought that sin is a dysfunction that needs a therapeutic solution. That might be where you're at this weekend. And I don't want to be too confrontational, but I do want to confront you with the truth.

And I just want to say, man, it's not a dysfunction that needs a therapeutic situation. Instead, what the Bible says is that our sin was so great that the Son of God needed to come and die a brutal death on the cross in your place to remove the old you and allow a new one to be reborn. And then for all time and forever intercede for you, so that every time we sin, He says, that one's mine. He's mine.

She's mine. The blood covers that. Not bigger than the cross. My grace is sufficient.

And He does this for all time. My question for you this weekend, maybe, if you're not a believer, and I already said it once, but let me put it on the screen. Where are you going to draw near to God?

Man, are you deciding where you will meet Him? Don't we understand if we just decide exactly who God is going to be, and we just decide out of our own mind exactly what we're going to do to meet Him? We have fallen into what I said last week, SGS, Small God Syndrome, okay? Because a small God, yes, maybe you get to dictate to Him exactly how you come and exactly what He's going to think about this issue and that issue. But if there's an actual God in heaven that created us, and His image, not the other way around, then maybe we ought to perk up when we think about the idea of His prescribed path. We've got to realize we are the products, and Gen Z, you guys are the products of sort of a post-modern generation, a people that really bought wholeheartedly into the idea that truth is yours or it's mine, and it can be both of ours, and it's not real.

It's like, man, it emanates from us. You get into all the philosophy that produced this, but this is maybe where we are sometimes, and we've got to see if there is a true God in heaven. Maybe there is a truth that is outside of us.

Maybe if there is a God, there is actually what Francis Schaeffer called a true truth that is outside of us that we don't dictate. You know, I remember one time, very early on at Mercy Hill, very early on, like the first year or something, we went, me and Pastor Bobby and a guy that was a college student then that ended up coming on our staff later, Clay, we went out to the mountains, and we were hiking up around some of the rural western North Carolina mountains. And y'all, we saw a bear, okay? And man, it was, it was, you know, looking back on it, it was kind of cool, but it was kind of scary in the moment. If you've been, you know, if you hike much, you know, you've probably been there in North Carolina, but dude, this bear just shows up, all right?

This, this big black bear. And, you know, Bobby just kind of froze. He, I guess he kind of knows what to do. It's like, man, I'm going to see if he'll just go on.

You know, Clay was like whipping out, fiddling him, trying to get a pocket knife out. I'm like, I don't know what that's going to do, but so, you know, I actually grabbed two rocks. I was like, I don't know, it makes me feel better. I don't know.

So anyway, the bear mosey on. My kids ended up loving that story, okay? They, you know, they were little at the time. I mean, AP was probably two years old. Hattie Joe was like, you know, four years old or something like that.

I mean, they were, they were really young. They loved that story. I would tell them about the bear and all that. One day, AP jumps up in my bed early in the morning and comes up and he said, daddy, tell me the story about the brown bear.

And Hattie Joe was in there too. And I said, well, I'll tell you a story. I said, but you know, the bear was black. And he said, nuh-uh, it was brown. And I said, no, it was black actually, you know?

And he's like, no, it was brown. I said, but I was there. You weren't there, okay?

I was there. It was a black bear. And Hattie Joe, four years old, she steps in and she says, daddy, the bear can be black for you and it can be brown for him.

I promise you, I sat up, I turned the light on and I put both of them right here, eyes right here. And I said, that is postmodern relativistic philosophy. And we're not having it in this house, okay? And I told AP, I said, but the bear was black.

And that's all I want to hear about it, all right? We love the idea of constructing our own truth, don't we? Do you know that a coexist bumper sticker is the most prideful thing I've ever seen in my life?

Prideful. To look and to say, all these religions basically say the same thing when every single one of them tells you explicitly, we are not saying the same thing. What is true truth? What it's trying to do is construct a truth. Think about this with me, if you're not a believer, and I'll quit harping on it, if you're not, if there is a God, wouldn't you need to come to him through his prescribed path? Then we can play around with creating our own truth and all, but when it actually push comes to shove and we start talking about life and death and we start talking about why we're in the universe and we start talking about is there a God or is there God? Then what we've got to realize is there probably is a true truth and we might need to conform to it rather than continually conforming it to us. What the Bible says here is that Jesus Christ is the way. Man, that there is a way at all is mind-blowing. Thinking about our sin and his holiness, right?

But there is a way. We come through Christ, would you put your faith in him today? Would you admit that you're a sinner? Believe what he's done on the cross and confess him as the Lord of your life. He is gracious and merciful and ready to forgive sin today. At all of our campuses there's a prayer team.

We'd love for you to come forward and jump into that thoroughly and finally as I close, all right? Christian, hey, would you take joy in your salvation? What did David say in Psalm 51? Restore to me, not my salvation, the joy, right, of my salvation. Man, restore to me something that I have lost.

If you've got it in your mind that the gas tank is sputtering. I don't know if I'm going to be able to make it. I don't know if God's love is going to make it. I've sinned again. I've messed up again. There's this thing in my life.

I keep going back to it. Maybe his love is not going to cover me this time. But I think what you need to do is to go back to this passage and realize greater peace, greater sacrifice, making an intercession for you for all time.

All time. This is what he does. He lives to make intercession for you.

Man, would you see his heart of Christ, would you see his heart for you in that? Well, I don't know. Hey, in the last six months, what's the one or two hour episode you wish you could erase? You know what I mean? I shared this once before.

I'll share it again. When brother Sam James was coming, I looked forward to that weekend for 10 years. He was getting here on a Thursday. On Wednesday, I had not been feeling good for three days.

The brother is 90 something years old. I wasn't going to have that on me. I had to go get tested, okay?

Pop positive for COVID. And I was like, man, I'm going to miss the whole weekend with Sam James, the founder of the church that founded us, legendary missionary. And for about two hours, man, it was not good. It was ugly. It was mad. It was just fuming. It didn't want to come in the house sitting outside in the barn, just fuming, just walking, pacing. It was an episode, man. I mean, it was like a preteen who just had their birthday party canceled.

It was just, it was just, it was just ugly, you know? Do you know that Jesus Christ was interceding for me in that moment? In that moment?

I don't know what it is in your life you wish you could erase over the last couple of years. If you're a believer now, if you're not a believer, you need to trust Christ. This is applied to you and you put your faith in Him. But if you are a believer, man, He lives to make intercession in your life. What is Jesus Christ doing right now?

What do you see in your mind? Man, is He hitting the streets of gold on a heavenly Harley? Okay, what is He doing? Is He eating? Is He bowling? Is He doing wordle?

Okay, I don't know. What is He doing right now? Man, He is interceding for you, believer. Let's take joy in that. I mean, I think about it like this good quote to close from another pastor. Here's what he says, our eternal salvation depends on His eternal intercession.

And church, we have that. Let's pray. Father, we come before You this weekend and God, we just ask that You would give us joy in our salvation knowing that You are interceding. God, that Your Son Christ, every single, every single one of our sins, He is intercessing for us.

He's saying, that one's on me. My blood covers that. It restores our relationship to You, Father. We thank You for this Trinitarian work in our life. God, and I pray the Spirit would draw us to You. I pray we would see the heart of Christ for us gushing. Let us pray we'd see repentance and faith and joy in our church this weekend in Christ's name. Amen.