I was watching this, it was years ago, I don't know if it was America's Funniest Videos, some on YouTube, I can't remember where it was. But I saw this video of a man that was on the dock and he wanted to get into this boat so he had one foot on the dock, he put the other foot in the boat and then he got nervous and he kind of froze. And the boat is pulling away from the dock and he's doing this big split. And he's got to make a decision, either go back to the dock or jump into the boat, but you can't do an eternal split and make up your mind. Because if you don't make up your mind, two things are going to happen. Number one, you're going to look stupid.
You shouldn't laugh at people's misfortunes, but I just laugh, the guy looks ridiculous. You're going to look stupid or you're going to hurt yourself. And I feel God is telling me to tell somebody here today, it's time to make a choice. You're either going to follow Jesus or you're going to follow this world. Some of you all got one foot in the Jesus camp, one foot in the world camp, and they are getting farther and farther apart and you're going to have to make a decision or number one, you're going to look stupid. One thing that liberals, conservatives, Republicans, Democrats can all agree on is we don't like hypocrites. We don't like people who say, I believe this, I follow Jesus on Sunday, but I live like hell Monday through Saturday.
You look ridiculous. And secondly, you like that guy, you're going to hurt yourself. You got to make a decision one way or the other. And in Joshua chapter 24, Joshua is telling his people the same thing. It's time to make a decision. If you're going to follow God, follow God. If you're going to follow the other gods, little g of this world, follow them.
But you got to make a choice. Joshua 24, Joshua is an old man. He's about to die and he's speaking to the next generation. We had people, what, 40 something baptized, first service. We had several people who came to church not planning on getting saved, not planning on getting baptized, but the Spirit of God spoke to them and they made a choice today. There's somebody in this place today that needs to hear this.
You're not here by accident. God brought you here today to have me say to you, it's time to make a choice. Joshua 24, 14, Joshua says, Now fear Yahweh, fear the Lord and serve him in integrity and truth and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt and serve Yahweh. Now, if it is evil in your sight to serve Yahweh, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served which are beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. There's two choices to be made today. You either serve the gods, little g of this world, or you serve Jesus. But you've got to make a choice.
You can't keep doing a split. And the first choice Joshua gives the people of Israel is, look, you can follow other gods. Look at verse 15. Choose for yourselves today who you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.
And I want you to see this. I didn't realize this until a few years ago. Did you know the Israelites when they went back into idolatry?
Now, watch this. They did not abandon the true and living God. Did you know that? Here's what they would do. They would say, we're going to keep following Yahweh, the true and living God, but we're going to combine that with some worship of some other gods as well. We'll serve God and we'll follow God and. We're going to call ourselves the people of God, but we're also going to combine the worship of the true God with the worship of other gods.
That's what they did. And we're doing the same thing in the American church. We're going to say, I'm going to follow Jesus Christ. I'm going to call myself a Christian, but I'm going to follow some other gods as well. You know, we look back at Israel circa 4,000 years ago and we say how idolatrous they were. They worship other gods.
I want you to listen to me. We are as idolatrous in the American church as they were 4,000 years ago. And we follow gods like the God of sex. We try to get the true and living God. We're going to call ourselves a Christian, but we're also going to worship the God of sex. The God of sex is the God of this culture and it has infiltrated the church.
I want you to listen to me. Jesus says to his followers, sex is reserved within the marital relationship between a husband and wife of the opposite sex. That's what marriage is reserved for. Well, Chad, I like having same sex relationships.
That's fine. Have same sex relationships. You can have same sex relationships, but you can't follow Jesus. Chad, I like to have random hookups. Have all the weird kinky sex you want to have, but you can't follow Jesus Christ.
Chad, I like to get on Facebook and flirt with my high school boyfriend. Flirt all you want, but you can't do that and follow Jesus Christ. You're going to have to make a choice, but you can't combine the sex God with the real God. You're amening me on that. Let's see if you amen me on this. Our screens are another God we worship.
I'm talking about adults and children and families who silently bow before that screen all the time. You give God this much attention and screens the rest of your attention. That has become a virtual God for you. We combine the true and living God with our social media gods. You see influencers and you say, I want to be like that influencer. You watch your friends post stuff and it gets you competitive.
I want to be just like that. You don't really worship God, but you worship these images that you scroll through time after time after time. There's a demon God that the people of Israel tried to combine with the worship of the living God in the Old Testament. This God was the God of Moloch. Moloch was a demon God that said, I want you children.
I want your babies. They'd give birth to babies so they'd have good crops that year. They would sacrifice their little infants to this demon God in some ways. I won't go into detail on how they would sacrifice those little baby infants to the God Moloch. Moloch is alive and well in America. When abortion becomes one of the biggest issues in the upcoming election, you know Moloch is alive and well.
When an entire political party has as their platform unrestricted abortion all nine months, up to full term babies being slaughtered in the womb, Moloch is alive and well. And I'm the bad guy because I point that out to you. We are combining the gods of this world with the true and living God. Verse 14, Joshua says something very interesting. He said, if you got to make a choice, the living true God, or do you say in verse 14, the gods, little g's, that your fathers served. Fathers means generations.
In other words, some of y'all have a generational stronghold. Watch this. My grandfather was a pervert. My father was a pervert.
And so now I'm wrestling with the same stuff. My great grandma divorced my great grandpa. And their kids divorced. And their kids divorced. And now all I know when conflict hits the family is divorce. There is a generational aspect to this mess when these gods work their ways into the families.
And at some point, that generational mess must be broken. And today, in the name of Jesus, some generational junk will be broken in this place today. And Jesus, Jesus, is very clear about what the gods of this world and their leader, who do you think their leader is? You know the Bible calls Satan the god of this world, little g? In other words, all these little gods, these demonic gods, they serve one god, and that's Satan. And Jesus said, all these gods who you are serving and their leader, they come to do one thing.
Look at John 10-10. They come to do three things. Steal, kill, and destroy.
Joshua is saying to the people what I'm saying to you today. Y'all can worship those gods if you want. But they want to kill you, they want to steal, and they want to destroy.
Let's look at those three things. First of all, they steal. They steal your joy. They steal your reason for living. The gods of this world steal your joy. We are living, social scientists tell us this, objectively, we are living in the most depressed society the world has ever seen. We have money, we have influence, we got the stuff, our 401Ks are going through the roof, and we're the most depressed people in the world.
Why? Because the gods are stealing our joy. Sir, the gods are after your family. They want to come in and steal your kids.
They are in the process of stealing your kids right out from underneath you, and you're so busy at work you don't even care. They've come to steal. They've come to kill. There's a spirit of death in serving these other gods.
A study was done by David Lester of Stockton University that shows a correlation with the decline in religion and the increase in suicide. Why? Because there is a spirit of death, and when you serve the gods, they come to kill. My heart was broken.
I got news a couple of days ago that a good friend of mine from college, I love this guy, great guy, good looking, I was jealous of the guy. He started following the gods of this world, and last week he pulled his car over on the side of the road and put a gun to his head and blew his brains out. Why? Because the gods of this world will kill you. And it's even in our music that gods infiltrate the music of this world. Researcher Mark Bellis of Liverpool John Moores University in Liverpool, England, collected statistics. Now listen, this blew me away. He collected statistics concerning 1,064 rock stars from the United States and Europe between 1956 and 2006. So he studied 1,064 rock stars between 1956 and 2006.
Listen to this. The average age at death for the American rock stars was 42 years of age. The average age of death for European rock stars were 35 years of age. The average in America is, what, 76 years?
How are the upper 70s? These people are dying at age 42 and 35. Why? Because the gods of this world want to kill. Satan comes to steal. He comes to kill. If you serve those gods, he's going to destroy.
That's the third thing he does. Ultimately, when Satan is done making your life hell on earth, he's going to take you to hell with him after you die. And I've wondered about this. You know, Satan can read the Bible as good as you can, better than you can.
Did you know that? Have you ever thought about this? When you're reading the Bible, Satan is obviously, God's going to send you to hell.
Why don't you kind of change what? Look, Satan knows he's going to hell. He knows that better than you do.
You understand that? Satan knows there's nothing anybody can do about it. Satan is going to hell. So do you know what Satan's going to do? He says, if I'm going to hell, I'm going to take as many people with me as I possibly can. Because I want to get to the heart of God. I'm going to hell, but I ain't going alone. I'm going to take as many people with me as possible.
That's what I mean by destroy. Do you know what I mean by near-death experiences? It's like where people will be clinically dead.
They flatline. And then the doctors bring them back and they're like, wow, I saw this, whatever. You know, we always hear the very positive near-death experiences. But I was reading a 1992 study published in a psychiatric journal. It was written by a professor from the University of Connecticut. And he says the negative near-death experiences are a lot more common than we realize.
Found another academic journal article from 2014. It describes some of these near-death experiences. Thought about an atheistic professor who was clinically dead.
He flatlined. When he came back, he said, I experienced being torn apart by hellish beings. The pain was unimaginable. Another one, a woman who hemorrhaged from a ruptured fallopian tube talked about horrific beings crawling at her.
And she said their stench and their guttural moaning still remained with her 41 years later. There was no benign being of life. There was no video. There was nothing pleasant or beautiful about that. Another woman who had attempted suicide felt her body sliding downward in a cold, dark, watery environment. Quote, when I reached the bottom, it resembled the entrance to a cave and I heard cries and wails and moans and gnashing of teeth. I experienced unimaginable pain. See, the thing about hell for me is I can conceptualize 100 years, can't you?
It's okay. You're tortured for 100 years. I can kind of conceptualize 1,000 years.
I cannot conceptualize eternity year after year after year after year of horror and pain and it never ends. I shouldn't watch this kind of stuff, but I was on YouTube and I found this video from a physiologist. It was very morbid.
Okay, so I got it. I was watching it and this physiologist taught me the most painful ways to die. He said there's a scale from one to 140. Here's the least painful way to die and 140 is the most painful way to die.
It's kind of interesting. The most painful way to die, he said, was the ancient execution of skinning, like skinning somebody alive. I won't give you all the details on that, but he talked about the horrific pain of that. I thought, can you imagine that kind of pain, but it never ends?
It's eternal. And you all are mad at God. How could a loving God send people to hell?
You realize it's Satan who's trying to drag you to hell down there with him. Joshua says to the people, you can serve these gods if you want, but they're here to kill you. They're here to steal.
They're here to destroy. But if you want to follow those gods, follow them. But then Joshua gives them choice number two. He said, or you can follow God. Verse 15, but as for me and my house, we're going to serve Yahweh. We're going to serve the true and living God. See, the moment you get saved, look, we are born in the kingdom of darkness.
The moment we get saved, we leave the kingdom of darkness and we are transferred into the kingdom of God. And where the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, according to the book of Romans, chapter 14, verse 17, the new kingdom that you're in, when you make a choice to follow Jesus and you're transferred into his kingdom, Romans 14 says it's marked by three things. For the kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
That's a choice right there, isn't it? Kill, steal, and destroy are righteousness, joy, and peace. What do you mean by righteousness?
Here's what I mean by righteousness. When you surrender your life to Jesus, you choose Jesus, here's what happens. All those sins that you've done, the abortion, the affair, the porn, God goes back in time and he puts that mess on Jesus, and Jesus Christ dies in your place for those sins. And God takes your filth and puts it on Jesus, and he takes the righteousness of Jesus and he puts it on you. And now there's no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. We now have the righteousness of Jesus Christ, which means you don't have to live in guilt and shame anymore. God says, I know what you did, I know who you did it with, I know how many times you did it, but I don't care, that thing has passed away, you're a new creation in Jesus Christ. And listen, some of y'all are serving these gods of guilt right now, and it's killing you. In fact, I read years ago a quote from a prominent psychiatrist who said this, quote, I could release half of my patients if I could release them from a sense of guilt.
It's messing y'all up. There's righteousness. There's peace.
Romans 5.1 says we have peace with God through Christ Jesus. See, some of y'all are afraid that there's this big being called God who hates you and he's out to get you. Hey, when he's saved, he ain't out to get you, he's got you. You belong to him, he becomes your father, and God says, I am now taking personal responsibility for your destiny. From this moment into eternity, listen to me, your salvation is no longer your responsibility, it is your response to my ability. You are now right with me, I want to take care of everything. And if you die, you die.
You come home to be with me. Can you imagine that kind of peace? Not worrying about what's going to happen to you when you die.
You belong to God and nothing can change that. There's righteousness. There's peace. There's joy.
That's the third thing. Look, not there's happiness. Happiness is dependent upon circumstances. When things are good, I'm good.
When things are bad, I ain't good. That's happiness. God doesn't give you happiness. There is joy, which means on my best day, God loves me, everything's going to be all right. On my worst day, God loves me, everything's going to be all right.
There is righteousness, peace, and joy in Christ Jesus. And Joshua says something very interesting as well. He says, you said this, as for me and my house. Now listen to me. God has no grandchildren. Every one of us have got to make a personal choice to follow Jesus Christ.
You understand me? Okay, so, well, my grandpa, I'm okay with God. My grandpa was a Methodist preacher, so I'm all right with God. God doesn't care if your grandpa's a Methodist preacher. You got to make a choice to follow Jesus Christ. I'm going to say this, as for me and my house, that is when you get right with Jesus, something happens to the rest of the house.
Spirit of God begins to move in and things begin to happen. It impacts your kids. Your choice to follow Jesus Christ is impacting your kids and their kids and their kids. When a man gets right with God, it impacts their family.
When a woman gets right with God, it impacts their family. As for me and my house, Joshua, he stands before them the way I'm standing before you right now and saying, you got a choice. You can follow the gods of this world who are going to kill, steal, and destroy. Well, you can choose to follow Jesus. He's going to give you righteousness, joy, and peace. That's your choice.
And it's very interesting. Joshua gives them a visible symbol of that choice. Joshua doesn't say, now, just make a choice.
With every head bowed and every eye closed, slip up your hand. Yes, I see that hand. I see that's what Joshua does. Joshua says to them, there's got to be a visible sign of that choice. In verse 26, it says, and Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God. He took a large stone. Incidentally, archaeologists may have actually found this very stone. He took a large stone and set it up there under the oak that was by the sanctuary of Yahweh. And Joshua said to all the people, behold, this stone shall be a witness against us, for it has heard all the words of Yahweh, which he spoke to us. Thus, it shall be a witness against you, lest you deny your God.
Then Joshua dismissed the people, each to his own inheritance. Joshua said, I not only want you to make a choice, we're going to raise up a stone to symbolize that choice. So every time you look at that stone, you're reminded, oh, wait, that's right. I've chosen to follow God. Every time you're tempted to go back to the other gods, you look at that stone and say, no, no, I made a choice. Did you know that the Bible says in Romans chapter 6, verses 3 through 4, baptism is really like your stone? This is a visible symbol that you have made a choice to follow Jesus Christ. Every time you're tempted to go back to those gods, you go back to June 9, 2024, and you remember this stone that you raised up, and you said, no, on this day, I said, I'm going to follow Jesus.
I'm going to follow Jesus. This water doesn't wash anybody's sins away. You do understand that, right? We don't have like, you know, sin, scum, remover to clean things out when the water's drained.
That's not how it works. These baptistries are stones that we're setting up, and when people come today to get baptized, here's what they're saying to you all. Choose ye this day. I've made a choice. I ain't going to follow those gods anymore. I'm going to follow Jesus, and the old me is dead. The abortion, the affairs, the junk, the mess, it dies right now, and it's buried in this water, and I'm a new person in Jesus Christ. I heard this story years ago about a little eight-year-old boy who gave his life to Jesus in Sunday school class, and after the class, the teacher told him, look, praise God, you're giving your life to Jesus.
That's great. Now, here's what you've got to do. When you get through church today, you've got to go tell the pastor, I've been saved, and now I want to be baptized. That little kid was so nervous about meeting the pastor, but he knew I had to tell him, I've been saved, and now I've got to be baptized. And so he went up to the pastor, and so nervous after church, he said, pastor, I just want you to know, I've been saved, and now I want to be advertised.
But in a sense, he's right. Because when you're getting baptized, you're advertising to your mom, your dad, your friends, this church, the forces of hell. I'm not following demons and the gods of this world anymore. I'm following Jesus Christ.
That's what's happening today. You know, John Newton was exhibit A of what we were talking about. John Newton's mom raised him, and she told him about Jesus and God's love and the word of God, and John Newton said, I'm making a choice.
I'm following the gods of this world. And the gods ruined his life. John became rough, wicked, atheist, alcoholic, sexual deviant. I'm not sure of all the sexual deviancy that he was involved in, although Winston Churchill once said that the British navy was built on rum and sodomy. I don't know what all he got into, but I do know that John Newton said this when he wrote about his testimony. He said, quote, I sinned as openly as I could, and I made it my goal in life to tempt and seduce as many people as possible.
It's a messed up life. And the demons came. They killed, and they stole, and they tried to destroy. Long story short, he became a slave himself. He was a racist, hated black people. He was involved in the slave trade industry. He was brought down so low, became a prisoner. He was starved by his master, and he said the other slaves actually felt sorry for me.
That's how low I had gotten, and they tried to slip food to me. He's a mess, because he made the wrong choice. He was released from prison, went back to this wicked life at sea on the ship. One day a storm struck at sea, and he just felt fear. One writer said not only did he feel fear, John felt guilty, guilty for the wild things he had done, guilty for the drinking and the fighting, and guilty about his part in the trade in human beings. He remembered that his mother had told him that God was a God of grace, a loving God who forgives the most wicked sinner, who truly repents. And at that point, John Newton realized, I've got to make a choice. And John Newton chose ye that day to follow the true and living God.
And God saved him and forgave him and called him later on to be a pastor. It's interesting, reading his testimony at the battle didn't stop. Even as a Christian, he had to fight the fight of faith. I want you to understand, you give life to Jesus, it's not sugarplums and cherries falling off trees.
It's going to still be a fight. But now this man had made a choice, and he was changed. And one day he sat down with a pad of paper and a pen, and he tried to articulate what this choice had done to him. That changed his life. And the best he could come up with is, he wrote down these words, Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, and now I'm found.
I was blind, and now I see. Because he chose to follow Jesus. And when he died, he had this inscribed on his tombstone, John Newton, once an infidel, but by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long labored to destroy. He made the right choice.
Stay in this place. We've got some people who've made a choice and decided to follow Jesus. I want you to listen to me. And in just a moment, I'm going to pray a prayer, and I'm going to say, in Jesus' name, amen. And when I say, in Jesus' name, amen, those of you who have been signed up to be baptized, when I say that, I want you to come forward.
I believe this as well. I believe there's a man or woman or men and women in this place. You didn't come to get saved and baptized. But God is speaking to you right now. You've got to make a choice today. Follow the gods of this world. Let them kill, steal, and destroy you. Follow my son, Jesus Christ, and have righteousness, peace, and joy.
Here's how God puts it somewhere else. I've put life and death in front of you today. Which one are you going to choose?
Life or death? And so if that's you, when I say, in Jesus' name, amen, I want you to come forward as well. You say, well, Chad, I don't have clothes to be baptized in. We've got clothes to put over the top of your clothes. Well, I have a towel. We've got towels. But, Chad, but these are expensive clothes.
And I've said this before. If you're more concerned about the price of your clothes than getting right with Jesus, you're not ready to get saved, okay? But if you're like, I'm tired of following these other gods. I'm ready to follow Jesus. When I say, in Jesus' name, amen, I want you to come. And you know how you know God's calling you? When you feel this tug to just stay right there, don't get up, don't come forward, that's the devil in a panic, feeling that one more is about to slip away from him.
And he's going to fight you hard. But if this thing has touched your heart, you say, I'm ready to make a choice to follow Jesus. When I say, in Jesus' name, amen, I want you to come forward as well.
Just stand with me. Father, speak through these lips right now. Say the same thing that you said to Israel thousands of years ago. If you want to follow the gods of this world, follow them.
They're going to kill you. Steal and destroy, they're going to follow. Or follow the true and living God and have righteousness, joy, and peace. Father, right now you have set that choice before your people. By the power of your Holy Spirit, draw people, even people who weren't planning on getting saved today, draw them to your son Jesus right now. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. You come right now. Team, lead us. Amen.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me I once was lost, but now I find Was blind, but now I see My chains are gone, I've been set free My God, my Savior has ransomed me And like a flood, His mercy breaks An empty love, amazing grace Gang, can we come in right now? I want you all to do something for me. The best you can, forget about everybody else who's in this place.
Just forget about them. Right now I want you to imagine it's just you and Jesus in this place. And I want you to say this to Jesus. I want you to mean it with all your heart. Don't just repeat words.
I want you to mean this. Just close your eyes and say this to the Lord. Jesus, I'm a sinner. I don't deserve to go to heaven. But Jesus, I believe you died for my sins. Say this to Him. You paid the price for my sin.
Now tell them this. Jesus, you're not dead. You were buried and God raised you from the dead. Lord, I believe you're alive right now. You're in this place. Now this is so important. Say to Him, Jesus, I choose to follow you. From this day forward, I want to follow you for the rest of my life. You say, yeah, that's it. Yeah, that's it.
The Bible says all who simply call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, they'll be saved. Why don't you all look at me? I don't care what you've done. I don't care what's in your past. It's done away with. Some of you all might be like me when I was young.
I used to stay awake late at night. What's going to happen to me when I die? What's going to happen? You don't have to worry about that anymore. You now belong to Jesus. Spiritually, Jesus has just now taken you by the hand.
And He says, I'm going to guide you from here into eternity. You're going to have good days. You're going to have bad days.
You're going to mess up. That's my word of encouragement. There are going to be times you're going to mess up again. But in the past where you felt this sense of condemnation, now you've got somebody when you mess up to pick you back up. And dust you off and say, let's keep doing this thing together. Jesus is with you.
He's for you. And if God be for you, who can be against you? So now, you all get in this water. You're saying to the whole world, I now choose to follow Jesus. And the old me dies, and the new me comes to life today.
And I've said this before. Jesus said that when people give their life to Him, angels just go crazy in heaven. They start having this party. They start shouting.
I want to do something today. Can we compete with the angels? And when these people come out of the water, can you all just go crazy celebrating these lives that have been changed by Jesus? Can you all do that?
All right. So gang, if you'll do this, you all go right out there. I think somebody's going to be there to lead you.
Chris, maybe somebody can lead them out. And then we're going to watch these folks get baptized. You all ready to celebrate Jesus? You ready to get a shout out to the Lord? Lift your hands, lift your voices, and praise the name of the Lord Jesus.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-08-08 07:22:51 / 2024-08-08 07:36:50 / 14