Choose This Day - Joshua 24:13-15 - Joshua: Be Strong and Courageous

All right, hey guys, welcome to all of our campuses. Man, before I do anything else, I just want to go back to that song that we just sang in all of our locations. Man, glory to God forever. Hey, in two weeks we're going to celebrate the resurrection and we are going to be able to praise God and give Him glory forever for one reason, and that reason is that Jesus Christ lives and we are found in Him. And as long as He is alive, then we have the hope of life for all eternity before God, and we're going to praise God together in a couple of weeks.

And here's what I want you guys to hear, all right? There is one weekend out of the year that is like no other. Now it's rivaled by Christmas, but it's not like Christmas, all right? And it is Easter weekend, and what I mean by that is that we are about two weeks away right now from the greatest opportunity that any of us are going to have to invite a co-worker, a family friend, a neighbor, a family member into one of our services for the whole year.

We don't get another one like this, okay? And is that anecdotal? Well, it is in terms of how churches swell every single, you know, that we've seen it every single year as churches swell.

There's also research that goes with this. In Tom Rainer's book, The Unchurch Next Door, he talked about how on any given weekend, this is sobering, okay? On any given weekend, the unchurched, about 35% of them say if somebody invited them personally, they would go, okay? Now that's any given weekend, but on Easter weekend, that number swells to over 80%. 80% of the unchurched that were asked said if somebody asked me to go on Easter weekend, I would go. And your church, your local church right here, our team, our elders, our staff, man, we try to leverage that, okay?

Because what's going to happen is this. Now we're going to come in at Easter, and if we are faithful to invite my family, your family, all of us together, it's going to be a lot of new people here that weekend, so what are we going to do? We start a brand new sermon series.

Maybe you've caught on to the scheme, okay? Every single year at Easter, we're going to start a brand new sermon series. Why? So that I can challenge and say, hey, stick with us through the series. We're going to do some special things for kids. Talk about Weekender. We're going to launch groups the very next week. Why do we set things up like that? We set it up like that because there's one weekend that is not like any other, okay? In terms of just the opportunity that we have to invite people in. So, guys, we've been putting these out, but I want to tell you, man, we want you to have these, be strategic with these.

If you need 100 of them, all you got to do is come to our office, and we will make that happen, all right? Every single year about this time, my family, we sit down, we've done big numbers in the past, small numbers in the past. I think that we are going to personally as a family try to invite 50 people this year. That's therapists for faith and that's people that are in our kids' sports and, you know, people that we know, our neighborhood, all that kind of stuff. You guys have people that you need to be inviting as well. Who is it that God is putting on your heart? And if I just said, hey, they would come if you invited them, and maybe God would change their life forever in the same way that He's changing you week by week, okay?

Who would we, you know, who would we want to invite? Let's pray together and, man, really get after it. I'm hoping that maybe in groups and our families, like, how can we strategize together?

Be creative, all right? Kids, coloring things for neighbors. Man, prayer walk in your neighborhood. College students.

High Point and Clifton. Dorm storm. Knocking on doors, okay?

In the dorms. I mean, what do we need to do to get creative? But we're in that window, okay? This weekend is the window, all right?

It's about a two-week window that we get for that and so I hope that you guys will take that and run with it as our family is definitely going to do, all right? Hey, let's dive in. We're going to be in Joshua, chapter 24 today and I'm super excited to be diving into this last one with you guys. I've loved this series. I hope that you have. If you are new this weekend, it is the last sermon in a series, but don't feel left out because this sermon can absolutely stand alone because today we see the most famous line, and maybe in some ways it's one of the most famous lines in all the Old Testament, certainly in the book of Joshua, and we're going to get into this idea of making a choice today.

Now, here's how I want to start, all right? I know every single one of us would raise our hands, so you don't have to, by me asking this question, but how many of us have ever wrestled with a question, struggled with a question, finally come to an answer to the question, only to realize later we were asking the wrong question, right? Haven't you been there before? Business people point this out. You know, the right answer to the wrong question is very destructive. Actually, the right answer to the wrong question can be worse in a business setting or a leadership setting or a team setting.

The right answer to the wrong question can be worse than the wrong answer to the right question, because the wrong answer to the right question at least gives you an opportunity to go back and to try to get the answer right, but if you have the right answer and you keep going back to it and you're like, man, this is the right answer, but it was the wrong question, it's hard to decipher. Now, here's where we are today, and this is why I bring that out. We come to the very end of the book of Joshua, and there are going to be many in our church across all four locations, five different expressions campuses with Espanol, okay? And there's going to be people who come all the way to the end of this, maybe even here today, and what you're thinking is, okay, at the very end of this, I got to make a choice, all right? And that's what Joshua's going to say today. Choose ye this day, okay?

The old King James version, all right? And what you're going to think is that's the choice. The choice is will I serve? You think the question is will I worship?

But what you're going to realize I hope through this sermon today is that is the wrong question. The right question is who will you serve or what will you serve? Many of us think we have a choice in this life whether we're going to serve or not.

You do not have that choice. You will serve, you will worship. The question isn't will you? The question is who will you? You were created from the very beginning of time to be a worshiper and to be a server of something. And if it ain't God, it'll be money, it'll be a marriage, it'll be a promotion, it'll be your kids, it'll be something else.

We are built to serve. The question is not will I? The question is who will I or what will I? And we see that right here.

Here's the big idea. We all have a choice today, but some of us aren't realizing what choice it is. It's not a choice of will we worship or will we serve. The choice is who will we worship? What will we serve?

That's the choice that we need to see today. And what I want to try to convince you of is that if we are going to serve something anyway, which we are, we might as well serve that thing that will never fail us and never leave us and carry us for all eternity. We might as well serve the right thing that we were created to and experience what it means that the Scriptures tell us that in His presence is the fullness of joy and that His right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's what we ought to be thinking about when it comes to serving and worship. Let's dive in.

A little different today. I'm going to read two verses. That's all we're going into. And I'm just going to read them and talk about them and then read them again and talk about them some more, okay? So these are the two verses, Joshua chapter 24 verses 14 and 15. Now therefore fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods of your fathers, they served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, this is the big famous line, right? As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. When we get to the very end of the book of Joshua, which is where we are today, we come to a covenant ceremony, okay?

It is a treaty ceremony, a contract if you will. And what we end up seeing is that Joshua has recounted for the people all of the goodness of God. He's talking about where God has brought them from, the battles that he fought, the things that he did on their behalf that they really had nothing to do with and all this stuff.

You guys can go back and read that. But he finally comes to verse 14 and 15 and this is where things get really real, okay? This is the point in a contractual kind of discussion where somebody's slipping the page across and they're like, all right, this is where we're going to sign.

And that's what he gets into here. And what he says is this, hey, you need to choose this day who you are going to serve. Either it is going to be the God of Israel or it is going to be some type of other gods, meaning idols. It's going to be idols of old. We could talk about that going all the way back to Egypt, or it's going to be idols of maybe where they are now in the land of Canaan or whatever. But he's saying this very basic idea and it's the only idea that I want to get across in the entire sermon today.

And that is this. Joshua asks, who will we serve? Not if we will serve. Who are you going to serve? Not are you going to serve? Some of us don't have the question right. We think it's a question of will I serve, will I worship?

The reason that matters is because if that's how you have it in your mind, you think that you're giving up some massive autonomy to start serving God that you actually have. And what I want you to see is that that autonomy is already an illusion. You are mastered by something. Something is commanding you. You were created that way. Something is bossing you around. Whatever is the biggest thing in your life, whatever is that thing that you have reverential awe for, it's commanding your everyday. That autonomy is an illusion. Get the question right.

The right answer to the wrong question is worse than the wrong answer to the right question. Okay, I mentioned business earlier. Business, well one of the high-powered guys from the kind of the earlier generation of business in our country wrote a bunch of books, Peter Drucker. Man, he told a story about a famed president of GM named Alfred Sloan. And the story goes like this, that Alfred Sloan was the guy who everybody knew could ask the right question, and that mattered.

That's why maybe he was the president, all right? And they tell the story of one day there was a bunch of guys kind of trying to figure out who was going to lead this next division of GM and in a real big, you know, kind of project that they had in this whole division of the company. And one guy's name kept rising up to the top, a Mr. Smith. And Mr. Smith's name kept coming up and Alfred, you know, Alfred Sloan's listening to all this. And here's what's being said about Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is good in a crisis. Mr. Smith is the guy that knows how to keep his head. Mr. Smith is the guy that can get us out of a bind the second we're in a bind.

And all the other people at the table start jumping in. And they say, man, I've seen him and I've seen that exact scenario where he was in over his head and he got out of it and he got us out of a tight spot and it was all this stuff that was going wrong. And man, this guy is the guy to lead us in crisis management situation to which Alfred Sloan, some of you guys are maybe ahead of me on this, to which Alfred Sloan said, hey, you guys have made a real good case here for Mr. Smith, but I've just got to ask the question, do explain to me how he gets into all these crises that he then brilliantly surmounts? Right?

Nobody brought up Mr. Smith's name after that. Why? What's the point? Wrong question. The question isn't, how good is he in a crisis?

The question should be, how good is it keeping us from getting in a crisis? Right? That should be the question. My question for you is, are you asking the right question? Do you have some illusion of autonomy in your life as if you're not being mastered? As if something is not commanding your every day? Because maybe if you do, then it's like, well, do I want to serve God? Do I want to worship? Do I even want to be a servant?

You're already a servant. That's what we're going to end up seeing today. Now, this whole thing is connected in two words. And the first one is fear.

Okay? Fear leads to serve. We're going to get to that. But this first one is fear. And I just want to kind of walk through this thing about what we fear ends up being kind of pushed downstream, ends up being sort of what we serve. Look at chapter 24, verse 14 again. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. If you've been with us in the series, this is the full circle, isn't it?

If you remember, what is the first sermon and how many times have we said this? The whole idea of the first part of this series is, don't be afraid. And the last part of this series is, be very afraid. Fear the right thing.

You see? The whole idea is, don't be afraid. And then we come in the very end of the book is, fear the right thing. See, fear is one of those words where you got to have a capital F or lowercase f. Okay? When we're talking lowercase f, we're talking about fleeting emotions. We're talking about the feeling of fear. When we're talking about capital F, we're talking about something that is very biblical and what we were created to do, and that is have a reverential deep awe, a seriousness around the God of the universe, the creator, our redeemer, that both kind of keeps us in a little bit of this position, but also makes us want to run and throw our arms around him much like a father. It's like nobody that I'm more afraid of, nobody I want to play baseball with more, right?

That's kind of the idea. I'm repelled and I'm drawn in. I'm serious, but there's affection there. And this is what the fear of the Lord is. The fear of the Lord is a reverential awe. This book starts by telling you, don't be afraid. And it ends by telling you, be in fear, the right kind of fear of the right God. The fear of God is an attitude over our maker, how we see him, that he's good, but he's serious. That he's, man, that he is emotional toward us and that he is tender toward us. And yet at the same time, he is not to be played with and messed with. It's a hard thing to kind of grasp, right?

I think C.S. Lewis does a really good job of trying to get us to see this, okay? And the dialogue that you have in the book, The Chronicles of Narnia. And you have this dialogue between Lucy, one of the characters, and Mr. and Miss Beaver, okay?

The other two characters. And they're talking about the character Aslan in the book. And Aslan stands in for God, all right? He's kind of the God character in this book.

He sings the world into existence and all this kind of stuff. And you end up seeing it all throughout the series. But there's this really cool kind of interplay between Lucy and Mr. and Miss Beaver where Lucy is saying, hey, okay, Aslan, she says to Mr. and Miss Beaver, I fear that if I stood in his presence the way you're describing him, I might be afraid. And they're like, yeah, nobody can stand in his presence without being afraid. But she's trying to understand it. And she says back to them, yes, but isn't he safe?

And Mr. Beaver says, have you heard nothing that we have said? Nobody said anything about safe. Of course he isn't safe.

But he is good. And he is the king. And that's the idea of the fear of God.

You know, quick, this is just a, listen, this is a quick drive by here, trying to connect this book. But we want to get into fear, the biggest thing in our life. That's what Reverential all over and it commands our worship, it commands our service. But quickly here, I would just say this, y'all, the key to not having capital, the key to not having fears in the world is having the right fear of God, okay? And I would say it like this, capital F, lowercase f. When we have the capital F, Reverential all seriousness, deep fear of God, it will help us to combat the lowercase f fears that come with this world. We are not just called to pin our hopes and dreams on God. We're not just called to anchor our joy in God. We are also called to fear Him and nothing else. Now, I want you to see the connection though, as we get into more of the idea today about we are servants, okay? We are mastered and we're going to get into this more. But look, our fear flows right into our service.

And that's what he gets into. Let me read both verses again together. And I hope this is, it's one big idea today, okay?

I hope it'll kind of wash over you again. Let me read it again. Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve the Lord. And if it is evil in your eyes to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve.

Don't you understand? You will serve. You do get to make a choice of who or what, but you will serve. Whether the gods your father served in the region beyond the river and the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

Here's what he's asking. Who do you have fear of? Reverential awe is the biggest thing in the world. It's the biggest thing in your life.

What is the biggest thing in your life? That's getting at the idea of the fear of the Lord. When you have that in your mind, you got to understand this. We will serve what we fear, capital F fear. We will serve what we have deep awe over. We will serve what we have reverential feelings over. We will serve when we find that thing that we feel like we were created for and we chase it. That's service. That's worship. Listen, it all comes down to this. You will serve what you fear. If your kid's success is the biggest thing in your life, then you will have absolutely no problem draining every bit of your time, talent, treasure on their social life, school, and sports.

That's what I'm getting at. Church, God, Bible, shelf. If my kid's success is the biggest thing, we think we're autonomous, we're not. Something is commanding us. What is the biggest thing in our life? We're created to chase, we're created to worship, we're created to serve. If that's the thing that we're after, it will command our behavior. If a lavish lifestyle is the biggest thing to us, then we will absolutely go into debt and overwork.

If how I am perceived by others is the biggest thing in my life, I will absolutely lie and cut others down to build up my reputation, and I could go on and on and on. Whatever that thing is that is the biggest to us. See, sometimes pastors, and I'm guilty of this, we can break the passage apart so many times. I mean, this passage is begging to have three points, okay? Serve, you know, fear, serve, and choose.

But that breaks it apart too much. What we need to do is hang it all together and realize, no, no, no, there's only one choice in this passage, and it isn't will I worship or will I serve. The choice in this passage is who or what will you serve because you have a reverential fear over. And that's where I want us to start applying this today, all right?

It's very simple. Guys, choose to serve God faithfully. I want to call you to make this choice today.

You come to the end of a book and you can't, you can't see it up any better than the lead character of the book saying, I'm taking my stand, okay? And that's what I want to call us to do today. I want to call you to take your stand, just like Joshua. Joshua says, for me in my house, he says, this ain't a vote, okay? Like, this is where we're going. We will serve the Lord. You need to make your own choice.

Draw a line in the sand, put a stake in the ground. What will I fear? Capital F. Reverential awe. Biggest thing in my life. That thing I feel like I was created for.

What am I going to say that that is because it will downstream end up dictating how I serve. What is it going to be for you today? Some of us in here today might say, hey, you know what? I want to serve God faithfully and in sincerity. I mean, both, both of those words mean a wholehearted devotion.

It means my whole life is given over, okay? I don't know if any of you guys have ever seen this movie. It came out in 2006.

Actually, if you're at Clifton, Pastor Nico said this is his favorite movie, okay? I was like, man, I thought you were probably 12 years old when it came out, okay? But, but, you know, it's in high school at least, but it was, it's called The Prestige. Maybe some of you have seen it, all right? I don't know if any of you guys have seen it. It's Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale before it, so it was like a prequel to some kind of Batman versus Wolverine thing, okay? So anyway, anyway, there's this movie about these magicians and the whole point of this movie is, the whole point of the movie is total devotion. That's the point. And what you find out at the very end, okay, the very end, and if you haven't seen it, I'm about to spoil it for you, but it's 20 years old.

Your fault, not my fault, okay? So at the very end, you realize that the big magic trick wasn't magic. The big magic trick was that nobody knew that the main character had a double. He had a twin. And so they were able to do this magic thing on stage where he walks out of one door and walks into another, and it was a twin.

And you say, well, that seems like it'd be real easy, right? Like, why couldn't people figure that out? Well, I'll tell you why. Because in the movie, one of the guys had two of his fingers shot off. But to make it where everybody thought it was the same person, the other guy cut his own two off. Okay, yeah, ooh, right? Okay, so, but here's the deal. The whole thing is about total devotion to the craft.

Some of us, and the reason I bring that up, man, people do crazy things even for acting or for, you know, making money for a little bit of fame or whatever. This idea of serving and faithfulness and sincerity is that idea of a whole devotion, you know, one life given over to one idea, Jesus Christ and Him magnified. It's full devotion. Now, we talk about full devotion. Some of us in here today might be thinking to ourselves, man, I would love to be fully devoted, but I feel like I'm not. Man, listen, every one of us fall into that at some point in our life. Some of us are in that, like, in major ways.

Some of us maybe are grappling with it. You might say today, man, I'm chasing possessions more than God. I'm chasing relationships more than God. I'm chasing money more than God. God is not really sitting on the throne of my heart. He's not the thing that I fear the most. He's not the reverential awe thing that I see as biggest in my life right now.

If that is where you are, we've all been there, but you do need to have it kind of right between the eyes in terms of a little bit of a holy two by four here. If you got something that you would say is bigger than God in your life right now, that is an idol. We are idolaters at that point. Now, that's hard for us to understand because we're like, where's the statue and I don't burn incense or whatever.

But you know what? Even in places where they do that, people understand the concept that I'm talking about. You have moved God out of number one and put something else in. One of our missionaries in South Asia, he told a story one time about when he first got there. He asked his driver, because it's a very polytheistic culture where he is, and they do the whole deal.

I mean, the statues and all that stuff. But he asked his driver, hey, who is your God that you follow? And here's what the driver said. The driver said, you know what? I've thought about that question and I've decided that my God is this car, unconventional.

Like, okay, even in a polytheistic culture, the car is your God. Yeah. He said this.

He said, you know, I thought about it and here's the deal. I take care of it all day. I think about it all day. I wash it. I maintain it. You know, I'm in it. I've spent so much time with it.

And then he said this, and then, you know what? It takes care of me. Like, it pays the bills. It is my job. Man, it puts food on the table for my family. Man, I take care of it and spend all my time with it and think about it all day long. And it takes care of me. And I think this car is my God.

As sad as that story is, it is crystal clear, isn't it? It's like, yeah, man, that's exactly what that car is to you. Now, it ain't actually God, but to you and what you have made it. That actually is exactly what we're talking about. It is an idol.

We are no different. If there is something in our life that is bigger to us than God, and what Joshua is saying today is, hey, you gotta choose. You're gonna serve something. Are you gonna choose God? Now, if you have a desire, just like I do in my life, to say, man, I wanna live my life with God being the biggest thing in my life, the thing that I fear the most in a capital F fear way. Man, I want that thing to be what commands me. I want God to be the one that I serve.

If that's where you are today, then you gotta hear this. Man, for us to get the idols out of our life, they cannot just be removed. Idols you don't just remove. Idols gotta be replaced. And here's why. Because if you remove an idol, what's gonna happen? Another idol pops right back up.

You know why? Because you were created from the very beginning of time to serve and worship. Actually, Joshua is saying the same thing to us today that God said to Adam in the garden.

What did he say? I'm putting you here to tend this, to keep it, to serve me. We will serve something. If it's not God, it'll be something else. Idols can't just be removed. They've gotta be replaced.

All right? Something can't just go off the throne of our heart. God's gotta be put back on the throne of our heart. And to do that, y'all, we need to see God's great love for us.

We need to see how great he is, how powerful he is. And we see that in the gospel. You know, you think about in the gospel, we have a second Joshua. You know, our Joshua tells us the same thing today. Jesus Christ comes today saying very much the same thing that Joshua said.

Man, love me with all your heart. Man, be a God oriented person. But the way that he's gonna get us there is a little bit different than Joshua. You know, Joshua was a great example for his people.

And I love this. And he was an example. We need to learn from his example. Okay? But here's the deal. And you go read the book of Judges. It's very depressing.

All right? When Joshua died, and the elders of his generation died, what did the people do? They turned on God in a snap. While Joshua was there for his great example, they could follow him.

You and I need more than an example. We need a Savior. And Jesus Christ, the actual Joshua, the actual one that comes to save his people, he wasn't just an example for us. He was also our Savior. Jesus Christ died for every single time that you and I dethrone God and put something else in that position in our heart.

Jesus Christ was the one who lived a fully devoted life every single second of his life. And yet, at the end of his life, he went to a cross to die for all the times that we didn't. And here's the great thing. Here's the beautiful thing.

Philippians 3 tells us, you know what? Man, Jesus is holding on to us. We think we're holding on to him. He's got us. He has made us his own.

Here's why that's so beautiful. Because in Joshua's era, if all you have is an example, when that dude dies, everybody leaves. But Jesus Christ is the risen Savior. We are found in him and he will never die. And we will live with him in eternity, having known that he made us his own. And as long as he is alive, he intercedes for us forever. You and I were created to be an outlet of his love and benevolence for all time.

And it's a beautiful truth. We have a greater Savior, a truer and better Joshua. Jesus is the Savior.

He's not just an example to us. A God that loves us that much. A God that has gone to those lengths to save us. A God who can resurrect Jesus Christ and allow him to have us, you know, allow us to be united in him and live forever. This is a God that we can trust.

This is a God that deserves the number one position in our lives and in our hearts. So, so, all right, let me apply this two ways and we're done. Number one, I got to talk to the believer. Number two, I got to do a serious call to those of us who have not stepped over that line yet, all right? This is serious stuff. Number one, to the believer, I would just say very simply, is the fear of God spilling over into service in your life?

And to what ways is it? You know, is the fear, is the reverential awe of God and his kingdom and my place in it, is it spilling over in your life? Y'all, you know, I think about Joshua here. We don't live in a patriarchal society.

I understand that. But what Joshua says here when he says, for me and my house, you know, in a lot of ways that's still very true. The way dad goes a lot of times the way a family goes. We got a lot of young dads in this church right now and a lot of young guys that are getting married and maybe thinking about that. Listen, what is the biggest thing in your life and how is that spilling out of your life in a cascading effect and shaping and molding those that are in your household? I know that we don't have all, you know, families here that are all intact.

Man, sadly we have single parents, both men and women, that are raising kids. And God never intended that, but that's the situation that you are in. Man, lean into every single ministry that we have in this church. If you're in that situation, we have a heart so big for you, you probably can't even fathom it. Especially if you're a single mom, we want you to have a place to lean in where there are godly men to help jump in through groups and through student ministry and through kids ministry and all that kind of stuff here. How is your heart spilling over into your service? You know, another way to do this, listen guys, I've talked about inviting at Easter time, but I want to talk to you about serving for just a minute.

Will our reverential awe and love for God spill over into our service in two weeks? Okay, let me give you the numbers of where we're at, all right? These are big round numbers.

They're not exact. Okay, but I'm just saying this helps us. It really helps me. I want you to think about this. Right now on the weekend, okay, and just a given weekend, this is very round numbers, let's, let's, we'll see about 2,500 people come on the weekend for, for just a normal weekend service, okay?

I need to write a little bigger here so we can see on the screen. All right. Hey, here's what we do. We have about 500 people that serve, which ends up allowing us to have a pretty good experience and service for the 2,500 that come. This is kids ministry.

This is, you know, you know, serving on first, you know, the guest experiences, production, worship, all that kind of stuff. Well, here's what happens at Easter. 2019 Easter, we saw about a 65% jump before the week before and the week of Easter, okay? 2021, we saw about 130% jump.

All right, so I don't, I don't, I have no idea. I don't have a crystal ball, but I will say generally, I think 80% is a pretty good number. So if we saw 80%, that means that we would probably see about 4,500 people come on Easter weekend. I'm just trying to give you a little bit behind the curtain here so you understand how serious some of this stuff is when we stand up and we say, hey, we need you to serve. Do you see the gap here? Like if 500 people are enough to create a good, decent experience for the lost people that will come in, if you know of another place where there will be more than 1,000 lost or unchurched people that show up in one place asking to hear the gospel, if you've got another spot like that, I want to be there, okay? So that's what I'm getting at. That's what's going to happen to the glory of God here in about two weeks.

Man, this is going to give us this type of experience. If you just cross multiply and do the numbers, we actually need about this to serve, which means that we're short, a little bit of math, okay, that we're short about that. And so I would just call you guys today and I would say, hey, you know, it's not served for the point of serving. It's reverential awe that spills over into I want to serve in every area of my life and I want to make an impact. And can we do that maybe even through our Easter services? Guys, you can sign up on our Easter page.

If you just go to mercyhillchurch.com, there is a page that just says Easter, all right? And one side of this is for those I'm talking to right now, the Serve With Us, and the other side of that page is for the I Pray Dozens that are about to get saved in our services and you need to be baptized, all right? So let me close the service by talking to those now and making that transition.

Listen, as I close, I feel like I need to specifically address those of you who are on the fence. You're thinking, am I going to step over and serve? Am I going to step over and worship?

And what I've tried to say is that Joshua is saying to us, you need to make a choice. You will serve. You will worship. But who will it be? What is the biggest thing in your life?

And is it worthy of being that in your life? I think about Joshua here, and listen, this may not even go over that well. I think if he was here, he would say this, guys, you need to make a choice. Either God's going to be the biggest thing and you're going to serve Him, or your job, or that relationship, or your kids, or money is going to be the biggest thing. So go on and get about serving that.

Get about serving that. But why stay in the middle? Why kind of play one foot in both worlds? I think that's what he would say today. I'm going to say the same thing to you.

Make a choice. We live in a culture filled with ambiguity. Have you noticed this? People refuse to RSVP for anything anymore. Everything is an open-ended thing.

I mean, that's just where we live, okay? What I'm calling you today is to be like, no man, let's be clear in an ambiguous culture. What's it going to be? And I'm going to tell you this, and you can't ever say in eternity that you weren't warned. If it is that you choose today, and it always comes down to the big three, St. Augustine talked about this, you know, 500 years ago, it's always sex, money, or power in some form, feels like.

Okay, so if you go ahead and choose one of those and say that's going to be the biggest thing in my life, then go after it and run after it as hard as you can. But you can't say you weren't warned. One day that thing will fail or leave you, and when it does, you will be terrified. Because people were not built to have their God leave them. These things are not God. They mimic God.

They're not God. And I want to call you today to make a choice to draw a line in the sand. Man, for some of you guys, I just, I don't know why it's been on my heart this week, but it's been on my heart. I feel like there are some young families, and I know I already mentioned this once, I feel like there are some young families in our church where it is the young father that needs to stand up and needs to say, this is the type of family we're going to be. And it's not going to be chasing this and that and this and that, and yeah, we sort of do a little bit, it's going to be like, nope, we made a decision today. The dude preached on Joshua for two months, we heard it all, and we made a choice.

Maybe it's somebody at Northeast, maybe it's somebody at Clifton, maybe it's somebody at High Point today. Somebody needs to stand up and say, just like Martin Luther did when he was facing his own death, here I stand, I can do no other, help me God. Amen. Some of y'all need to accept Christ today, you need to just absolutely get saved.

And maybe you need to hear the harsh truth, and that is, it's not harsh, it's hard though. Maybe you need to hear the hard truth, and that is if God has been calling you through this series, there is no guarantee that you will even be alive tomorrow or that He will call you tomorrow, but is He calling you today? You know, I heard this story one time about a guy on the coast of Scotland, the wave-beaten coast, you see these on TV, you know, the waves are crashing and it's just a flat rock, and these guys would tie up and they would grab a rope and they will crawl down the side of that rock face and they'll collect eggs from the gulls, and then they'll put them in a bag and they'll crawl right back up. The waves are crashing, and if you fell down, you're sucked to immediate death, and these guys are hanging on by one rope, and this guy, he crawls down and he's gathering eggs, and in a fleeting moment of losing kind of his mental, where he was at for just a minute, he lets go of the rope and it swings out.

And the way the rope is positioned, like, man, as it's swinging, he realizes, man, it's going to swing back, but once it misses and goes back, it's going to settle out there, and he's on the side of this rock cliff with no hope, and as he's looking at that rope, he sees it swing out, and as it's coming back out and he realizes, I've got one shot. If I jump with everything that is in me and grab on with both hands, and I want to tell you today that that rope of salvation is swinging towards you right now. And we don't really, we don't think about this, we don't like this, but this is what the Scripture says. What the Scripture says, what our God says in places like Zechariah chapter 7, verse 13, is, when I called, they didn't listen, so when they called, I didn't listen. Proverbs 1 says, they will they will seek me and not find. Is he calling you today? Because if he's calling you today, there's no guarantee that he will call you tomorrow. I pray across all of our campuses, will you bow your heads with me for just a minute?

Man, just close up journals, all that kind of stuff. I know we did this last week, we're doing it again today. Man, I just want to give you the space to make a decision, to draw a line in the sand, to drive a stake in the ground, to make a choice clearly for God. I don't know the chaos going on in your life, I don't know the idols you're chasing, I don't know what is so big to you right now that is commanding your every single moment.

And I know believers, listen, we struggle with idolatry, we know that Jesus has us if we have put our faith in Him, but for some of you, you have never put your faith in Him. And today is the day. I know that Satan doesn't want this moment, he wants to convince you, man, you ain't got to pray this prayer with him, you can do this any other time. Of course he does. Of course he wants to convince you of that.

Make a choice. If you want to accept Christ today, if you want Him to be declared as the biggest thing in your life, for Jesus Christ have come and not just been an example that saved you from all the times that you chase idolatry, I want you to pray after me today. Just pray this in your heart. Pray, God, I know that I'm a sinner separated from You, but I believe that Jesus Christ went to the cross, paid for my sin through His death, and I believe that three days later He rose from the dead. I admit my sin and I believe what Christ has done on the cross and in His resurrection. God, and I confess Him as the Lord of my life.

Save me. Father, I come before You right now, Lord, and I just ask and I pray, Lord, that we will see the folks in our church that are praying this prayer right now. God, take that next step. God, I pray they wouldn't rob You of the glory that You deserve for what You have done in their life, snatching them from death to life. God, I pray that we get in the baptismal waters. In Christ's name we pray.

Amen. Hey, you got a card that's on your seat, all of our campuses. You got a card right here, all of our campuses.

And man, I just want to point this out. Guys, yes, you can text baptize 81411 at any time. You can get on our website. We showed it, and you can do that. But for some of you today, when Joshua said make a choice, choose you this day, what you need to do is say, hey, I pray to receive Christ, and I'm going to make that public. And I pray that we'll see dozens of you do that. We're going to baptize in two weeks. Man, you just fill this out.

No matter what campus you guys are at, there's going to be somebody in the lobby there receiving these today. Man, don't just walk out and say you're going to do it later. The Spirit is moving. Don't rob God of the glory for what He's done in your life. Man, let's get in the water publicly, all right?