If you have a Bible, we're gonna be in Genesis chapter 35.
Israel's gonna come home,
and,
AKA Ya'aqab or Jacob.
And we saw the last time that when God tells you
to do something and you don't do it,
trouble isn't very far away, to say the least.
And the disaster with Dinah being raped
and then the response of Simeon and Levi going in
after the guys were circumcised and killing all of them,
pretty hideous.
The human heart is desperately wicked, okay?
We hear so many of our politicians and people in power
talk about the innate good of man.
It's not, it's a farce.
Man is not basically good.
Man is terribly, desperately wicked, right?
That's the issue.
That's why we need a law, right?
That's why we need truth.
That's why we need something much larger than ourselves
because of our depravity.
And I think that, well, we went into it in detail
on a Wednesday night, but mankind is depraved.
And last week we saw these two sons of Jacob
and what they did.
That was desperately wicked.
That was not an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth
or a bone for a bone, however it goes on, life for life.
So the law God gave us so that we would not act
on our wickedness, but according to His truth
and His word and His law.
So we're gonna be in Genesis 35.
Like I said, I'm gonna read these first seven verses.
Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your word.
That is, it's a light and a lamp.
It's mighty.
And Lord, we learn so much from it.
And it's something that we can put in our hearts.
And because it's alive, it brings life to us.
And so, and it's your life, Lord, it's not ours.
So we thank you for that.
We thank you that you're able to redeem.
We thank you that you're able to revive
and bring back to life those things in us
that we allow to die or we forsake.
And you're able to bring us back to that place of newness
and a new beginning.
And I think there are some here today,
maybe myself included, Lord, that just need a new beginning.
We thank you that your mercies are new every morning.
So would you speak to us this morning
as we look at your word in Jesus' name, amen.
Chapter 35, then God said to Jacob, okay,
this was after the, actually the last words of chapter 34 is,
but they said, should he treat our sister like a harlot
trying to justify their deed?
And then God said to Jacob, after all this disaster,
dysfunction junction to the max, right?
Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there
and make an altar there to God,
who appeared to you when you fled
from the face of Esau your brother.
And Jacob said to his household
and to all who were with him,
put away the foreign gods that are among you,
purify yourselves and change your garments.
Then let us arise and go up to Bethel
and I will make an altar there to God,
who answered me in the day of my distress
and has been with me in the way which I have gone.
And so they gave Jacob all the foreign gods
which were in their hands
and the earrings which were in their ears.
And Jacob hid them under the terebin tree,
which was by Shechem.
And they journeyed and the terror of God
was upon the cities that were all around them.
And they did not pursue the sons of Jacob.
And so Jacob came to Luz, that is Bethel,
which is in the land of Canaan.
He and all the people who were with him
and he built an altar there
and called the place El Bethel,
because there God appeared to him
when he fled from the face of his brother.
And so Jacob's going back.
He's finally getting it.
Hello, McFly, right?
He's been getting pounded on,
he's been in one pickle after another.
And the Lord just told him,
just go back to the house of God.
Some of you have maybe been away for a while.
It's good to see you, right?
If there's ever a time to be walking tight with Jesus,
folks, it's now, right?
The days are evil.
You and I need to be redeeming the time
and having the Lord direct our paths.
And the Lord tells him, he says,
so finally after this disaster,
and remember what he told his boys,
he says, you guys are gonna get me in trouble.
They're gonna wanna kill me, right?
There's just nothing good gonna happen to me.
He had meitis.
And God says, okay, Jake,
go back to where I told you to go in the first place, right?
Go back to where we met.
You remember that place there in Genesis chapter 28,
when we read about him running scared from Esau
and God had revealed himself to him there.
And verses 16 and 17 of the 28th chapter of Genesis,
then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said,
surely the Lord is in this place.
And I did not know it.
And he was afraid and said, how awesome is this place?
There is none other than the house of God.
And this is the gate of heaven.
Have you gone back in your mind and heart?
Do you go back to those times
when you know that the Lord has met with you
and he's touched your heart?
And I started contemplating and thinking about this,
about going back and I'm going, man, I started thinking.
I'm going, wow, God, you've been so good
to this crusty old wicked sinner.
He's been so good to me.
And I went back to Buell, Idaho back in the early 1970s.
I was nine years old.
Pastor Jack Johnson preached a message on hell.
I'll never forget it.
At nine years old, I didn't want to go to hell.
Now I don't know how much evil I had done at nine,
but I had done enough, okay?
I had done enough.
And I didn't want to go to hell.
And the Lord touched my heart.
And I went and had him pray with me.
When I was in Twin Falls, I was 14.
My dad took me to a church service
and there was an altar call afterwards
and he kind of nudged me.
He said, you think you want to go up?
I didn't think I wanted to go up,
but before I got there, I was a mess.
The Lord touched my heart.
Just that little step of faith towards the altar,
God goes, hey, I can work with that, right?
Some people said, well, I'm not willing.
Well, the question I have for you who aren't willing
to come to the Lord, are you willing to be willing?
'Cause if you're willing to be willing,
God can work with that, right?
Then again in Abbeville, Kansas, 1983,
I'll never forget it, right?
I remember a scripture that just,
it was like an arrow that shot right into my heart.
Who, what manner of man is this?
That the wind and the sea obey him.
And I remember being 20, well, as I,
22 years old going, wow, that's true.
Jesus is big and he's done nothing but get bigger
ever since.
I seen this California when I was 23,
sitting in a trailer house all by myself
and the spirit of God showed up, overwhelmed me.
That's when I surrendered.
I literally threw my hands in the air and I said, okay,
I said, Lord, my life's yours.
My life's yours.
You know, I've never regretted that.
You will never regret that.
You will never regret coming to Jesus.
Actually, I've never regretted going to church.
Now I've regretted not going, right?
But I've never regretted just going as an act of faith
and bringing a sacrifice of praise.
Cottonwood, Idaho, back in 1986,
year before me and my wife got married,
I had a Holy Spirit experience.
The Lord met me.
I remember this man praying for me.
He was a friend of mine.
We went to jail together.
We were in jail in Cottonwood.
But I wasn't incarcerated, right?
I wasn't incarcerated.
We did the Chuck Colson prison invasion back in 1986
and we went in and me and this other dude that,
he was a rounder and got saved
and me and him went together
and we were in this motel room and he looks at me,
says, Scotty, we gotta pray.
And I said, okay.
We were both kind of thumbing through our Bibles
and he put his hand on me and prayed.
The only thing I remember in his prayer
was receive your gift.
It's the only thing I remember.
And the presence of the Lord was so thick,
all we could do is sit and worship the Lord.
The Lord met me there.
Maybe you've had some of those experiences.
Maybe you forgot.
I'm convinced the Lord gives us those things
to have something to remind us.
Do you remember when?
You were at the end of your rope
and you cried out to the Lord
and somehow he provided for you?
I think we can all go there.
We can go there and, you know, I was an old bull rider.
How many times I should have died?
I'm a terrible driver.
How many times I should have died?
(congregation laughing)
You gotta remember.
Israel, every time they got in trouble,
it's because they forgot the Lord.
They forgot, right?
You just get doing your own thing.
You get to collecting these little trinkets
and pretty soon you're worshiping idols
and you don't even realize it.
You've drifted so far from the Lord.
Revelation chapter two, verse five.
You remember when the Lord speaks to the church at Ephesus
and he says, "Remember therefore,
from where you have fallen,
repent and do the first works
or else I will come to you quickly
and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent."
They had left their first love.
They got sidetracked.
They allowed these idols
to kind of worm their way into their lives.
Are you aware of what an idol could be to you?
Anything that consumes more of your time
than what the Lord does?
Be careful.
Or should I say your attention?
Paul tells us to pray without ceasing.
How do you do that?
It's a lifestyle, folks.
It's a lifestyle.
You walk with, you talk with your God.
That's the lifestyle.
It's not that we sit in our living room on our knees
all day long and pray.
You pray while you work.
Nehemiah, we see Nehemiah praying
while he's conversing with the king and doing his service.
He's chucking up them prayers.
The Lord knows your heart
and he knows what you have need of before you even ask him.
So remember, it's interesting,
the three R's there, right?
Remember, repent and repeat.
Remember that fire that you had
when you first had that experience with the Lord, right?
And repent of drifting away,
turn back to the Lord,
and thirdly, repeat, do the first works.
Do what you used to do.
Are you in the Word?
Are you sharing it?
He says the same thing to the church at Sardis
there in Revelation chapter three.
Remember therefore, how you have received and heard
what the Lord has spoken to you.
Hold fast and repent.
Therefore, if you will not watch,
I will come upon you as a thief
and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.
Jesus said, when you and I see these things
that we see happening in the earth right now,
lift up your head for your redemption draws nigh, right?
Lift up your head.
Pay attention to what is going on, right?
And then he calls us to occupy.
Occupy till I come.
And so that's why I'm comforted, right?
By people like Scott that's wanting to step up
and be salt and light in the political arena,
which is not fun 'cause you know, right?
You know as soon as you throw your little toe
across that line, here comes the darts
and the fiery arrows, right?
It's coming at you.
(congregation laughing)
Salt does a couple of things.
It preserves, but it also irritates, right?
And salt irritates those who are rotten, right?
So he encourages them.
You know, the Lord has a desire you guys
for us to be close to him, right?
How do you do that?
Well, it is really simple.
Draw near to the Lord.
You just, it's an act of your will.
It's something you choose to do.
It does not happen, right?
It does not happen unless you do it intentionally.
Well, I go to church.
Coming to church ain't enough.
You know, that's kind of like having
a spoonful of sweet cream once a week.
It doesn't do you that much good.
Unless you're pressing in and then you can sharpen
each other when you get here.
And hopefully I can share some of God's word with you
that you can take away.
And Saturday is it, this is when I sometimes,
a lot of times after a message,
they remembered none of the scripture that I share,
but some funny joke I told.
Well, I'm not even that funny, so.
Stick to the scripture, would you?
But the Lord has this desire for us to draw close to him.
John 4, 8, or excuse me, James 4, 8 says,
"Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.
"Cleanse your hands, you sinners,
"and purify your hearts, you double-minded."
Been double-minded?
I love Jesus, but.
Get your butt out of there.
(congregation laughing)
Hebrews 4, 16, "Let us then with confidence
"draw near to the throne of grace
"that we may receive mercy and find grace
"to help in time of need."
Drawing close to the Lord.
Psalm 145, 18 says, "The Lord is near all those
"who call upon him and all who call upon him
"in truth."
So you have to be truthful with God, right?
That's part of the whole being honest
and coming to a time of repentance.
It's time to repent is what he's telling Jacob here.
It's time to come back, change your direction,
go back to Bethel and to clean it up.
Notice he says there, put away, right?
Put away the foreign gods that are among you.
Purify yourselves and change your garments.
That's kind of what James was just saying.
He just has a little less tact, right?
I love what he says there, right?
"Cleanse your hands, you sinners."
Can't you just, I can just see James
pounding the pulpit, right?
"Or you're gonna burn in hell."
But put away, turn aside.
He's calling his family to repent.
Men, lead your families.
God has called us as men to lead our families, right?
And it says that he hid them out of their sight.
They hid them, he buried them, he discarded them,
he got rid of them.
We couldn't see him no more.
We're not gonna go there anymore.
We're not gonna play that game anymore.
We're not gonna do the porn anymore.
Not gonna do the endless shopping
and maxing out credit cards and being stupid, stupid, right?
They did a study with cell phones
'cause I'm convinced you guys, they're an idol.
It consumes people.
I mean, it consumes.
I've talked to people,
can you live without your cell phone?
No.
I still have one of these babies.
There's a reason for that, right?
Now I can get on the internet,
but it is exhausting to even try.
(congregation laughing)
So this thing stays in the house a lot.
Listen, I lived for over 30 years
talking on the telephone in the house.
That's the only place I talked on the telephone
was in the house, right?
The world will keep turning
if you do not have your cell phone.
Shut that baby off, man.
Put it on a counter somewhere.
Go be still before your God.
So they did this study.
I just had to share it with you.
It's just like, wow.
So they did this study
when people were trying to complete a task,
what was the most distracting?
Just with your phone, specifically with the phone,
what was most distracting?
When it was out of sight, in your pocket, or on your desk.
And this is what they found.
The results were striking.
Individuals who completed these tasks
while their phones were in another room performed the best.
Followed by those who left their phones in their pocket.
In last place were those whose phones were on their desks.
We saw similar results
when participants' phones were turned off.
People performed worse when their phones were nearby
and best when they were away in a separate room.
Thus merely having their smartphones out on the desk
led to a small but statistically significant impairment
of individuals' cognitive capacity
on par with effects of lacking sleep.
And I don't know about you, when I lack sleep, I get weird.
And I've lacked a little sleep today.
So if I get a little off, please be merciful to me.
But Jacob said, "No, get them out of my sight, out of sight.
We're not gonna go there.
We're gonna worship God.
We're gonna go to the house of God."
And so he tells his family the things
that are distracting you, we're gonna put them away.
We're not gonna go there.
2 Corinthians 6, verse 17 says,
"Therefore, come out from among them.
Be separate, says the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you."
Right?
'Cause you can't serve both.
You can't serve idols and the Lord.
You gotta only serve one.
I mean, Bob Dylan's was spot on.
You gotta serve somebody.
He might be the devil or he might be the Lord.
You gotta serve somebody.
And you can't serve both.
Jesus, no servant can serve two masters, Luke chapter 16.
For he will either hate the one and love the other
or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon.
1 John 5 21, "Little children,
keep yourselves from idols, amen."
(congregation laughing)
Enough said, huh?
It's interesting.
First, God speaks to Jacob to saying,
"Go back to the house of God."
Right?
You gotta lead.
Dads, grandpas, men, you have to lead.
You have to.
It's not optional.
If your wife is leading you spiritually,
that's totally out of order.
God bless her.
But that's not what God has called her to do.
He's called you to do that.
So man up, get your big boy britches on, right?
Quit being a spiritual wimp, not praying with your wife,
not praying with your kids, and pray with them,
and lead them, and put God's word in your heart
so you'll know what to tell them when they need you.
If you're not putting God's word in your heart,
you're not gonna know what to tell them.
And so God says, "You're gonna lead, man.
You're gonna lead."
Jacob, secondly, Jacob is getting his house in order.
This is what we call patriarchal leadership, man.
That's what I'm talking about.
It's patriarchal leadership.
You lead by praying with your wife, praying with your kids,
praying with your grandkids.
You lead by reading your Bible.
You lead by worshiping the Lord.
How are your sons and daughters
gonna know how to worship God, man, if you don't?
How are they gonna know?
What, you sitting here like this?
Yeah, this sucks.
(congregation laughing)
Worshiping the Lord is sweet, soothes your soul, right?
Why are there 150 songs, songs?
And then that big one, the Song of Solomon.
Yeehaw, I've been reading that this week.
Love my wife.
(congregation laughing)
You lead by saying you're sorry.
You lead by righting wrongs.
You lead by working hard.
You lead by going the extra mile.
You lead by being a servant.
You esteem others more highly than yourself.
And the generation coming after us has got to see that.
They have to, or they're not gonna know how to do it.
I mean, the old saying is true, you guys.
It is 90% of ministry is just showing up,
but you gotta show up in your own homes first.
People will forsake that and show up at the church
and serve like crazy.
If your home isn't in order, what are you doing?
Trying to serve the Lord
and make a good impression on others?
Just be real.
God, I've screwed up.
God, I've been selfish.
Forgive me.
Help me to serve.
Help me to serve my wife and my kids and my family.
And eventually my church.
You remember how upset Jacob was, right?
And so God takes care of this
'cause he's worried about his own hide.
He's fearful because of what the boys did.
He is going to die, right?
And the Lord takes care of this in verse five.
Notice what it says.
It's quite interesting where it says,
and let's see, was I in the right place there?
Yeah.
I just lost it.
But it says that,
"And so Jacob gave all his foreign gods into their hands,"
or they gave all their gods into their hands
in their earrings.
"And they journeyed, and the terror," verse five,
"of God was upon the cities that were all around them,
and they did not pursue the sons of Jacob."
God brings this spirit of fear
upon the enemies of Israel, of Jacob.
Interesting, right?
I think we see that today.
I think that's why after October 7th,
we don't see any armies invading Israel.
They're all shooting from the outside.
'Cause God has his hand on these people.
He makes these people afraid of Israel.
And I think it's so today as well.
And he goes and he built an altar there,
and he worships, and they call the place El Bethel,
house, or excuse me, God, God's house of God.
God's house of God.
Good place to be is in the house of God.
Because there God appeared to him
when he fled from the face of his brother.
And so the Lord took him back and reminded him,
"Listen, I'm with you.
I told you back then I was gonna be with you.
No matter what, I'm gonna be with you.
No matter who comes against you, I'm gonna be with you,"
is what he tells him.
Then verse eight kinda shifts gears,
and it says, "Now Deborah," Rebecca's nerves,
"died and she was buried below Bethel
under the terebinth tree.
So the name of it was called Elan-Bekuth."
And so we don't even know who Deborah is.
We know that a nurse came with her
when the servant went and got Rebecca
and brought her to Isaac, and the nurse was with her.
So it must have been Deborah.
Deborah is, and it's interesting
'cause that means the tree or the oak of weeping,
that they took this very hard when this Rebecca died.
Maybe she's the one that gave Jacob the news
that his mother had died.
But,
they all seem to be affected,
and they all seem to be weeping.
I think that Deborah was kinda like Alice
off the Brady Bunch.
You remember Alice?
Everybody loved Alice, right?
And that's probably what Deborah is.
So we don't know a lot about her other than
she obviously had an impact.
You know, when you go and do funerals
and you see people that were faithful to the Lord
and how sweet, how sweet their memory is to those people.
I just did a funeral here a few days back,
and it was that way, just a sweet woman who loved the Lord,
and it just devastates you when you're gone.
All the tears are for ourselves, right?
Because we don't have them anymore.
And that's what was going on with Jacob and his family here
as they mourn the loss of Deborah.
Verse nine says, "Then God appeared to Jacob again
when he came from Paddan-arim, blessed him.
And God said to him, 'Your name is Jacob.
Your name shall not be called Jacob anymore,
but Israel shall be your name.'
And so he called his name Israel.
Also God said to him, 'I am God Almighty,
be fruitful and multiply.
A nation and a company of nations shall proceed from you,
and kings shall come from your body.
The land which I gave Abraham and Isaac I give to you,
and to your descendants after you I give this land.'
Then God went up from him in the place
where he talked with him.
And so Jacob set up a pillar in the place
where he talked with him, a pillar of stone,
and he poured a drink offering on it,
and he poured oil on it.
And Jacob called the name of the place
where God spoke with him, Bethel."
I don't know how many times we've seen this.
Last chapter, there was no mention of God at all
in the last chapter.
This chapter, God's mentioned 10 times,
and then Bethel and Israel's mentioned
another 10 or 11 times.
Amazing.
Can I just say, it goes a whole lot better
when the Lord's involved.
When the Lord is present,
life goes so much better.
Does it mean it's easier?
Not really.
It's just better.
Jesus said, "My yoke is easy and my burden is light."
And that is everything you go through in life.
His yoke is easy and his burden is light.
And it's interesting, you know,
from now on, he's gonna refer to him,
not as Jacob, the heel catcher, the supplanter,
the sneaky one, but Israel, the prince with God.
God confirms Israel the person,
and then he confirms Israel the nation, the land,
the same as Abraham and Isaac, from the river to the sea.
We've been hearing that a lot lately, haven't we?
From the river to the sea was promised to Abraham,
Isaac, and Israel.
Israel is not occupying all of the land that God gave them.
Right?
Right now, they're not.
And people have left this church
because of this flag right here.
They're, "Oh, these people,
they're supporting the occupiers."
No, we're not.
They own the land, second to God,
'cause God gave it to them.
God gave the land to them.
And it is a miracle.
Israel is a miracle.
I read this quote this morning.
Somebody's been seeing it, Amir Tsarfati,
I'm gonna share it with you.
Amir Tsarfati posted this this morning.
Listen to what he says here.
And this is about the Jewish people.
If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute
but one quarter of 1% of the human race,
one quarter of 1%.
It suggests the nebulous puff of stardust
lost in the blaze of the Milky Way.
Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of,
but he is heard of, has always been heard of.
He is as prominent on the planet as any other people,
and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion
to the smallness of his bulk.
His contribution to the world's list of great names
in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine,
and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion
to the weakness of his numbers.
He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages
and has done it with his hands tied behind him.
He could be vain of himself and be excused for it.
The Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Persians rose,
filled the planet with sound and splendor,
then faded to dream stuff and passed away.
The Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise,
and they were gone.
Other people have sprung up and held their torch high
for a time, but it burned out,
and they sit in twilight now and have vanished,
and I fear for the United States of America.
I love this country, folks, but we have lost our way.
We have allowed insanity to govern us.
The Jews saw them all, survived them all,
and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence,
no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts,
no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert
but aggressive mind.
All things are mortal but the Jews.
All other forces pass, but he remains.
What is the secret to his immortality?
This is Mark Twain said this in 1897.
And all you have to do is look at history, and it's true.
It is the truth.
And people don't want to hear the truth.
They want to jump on a bandwagon and ignorantly fly
a green, black, white, and red flag, right?
Ignorantly.
They have no idea why they're doing it.
Oh, it sounds cool, man.
You know, I remember my brother going
to a scorpion concert one time,
and his buddy said, "Hey, do this, man, do this."
He goes, "What's it mean?"
He goes, "I don't know, but it's cool."
Well, that's not the satanic brotherhood sign, right?
That was just like, "I don't know, it's cool."
We probably ought to check things out, right,
before we say anything or do anything.
The Lord told Moses in Exodus chapter 25, verse two,
"When you come into the land that I give you,"
God gave it to him.
Now listen, the Palestinians, right?
God bless them, I pray that they come to know Jesus, right?
They just need Jesus.
They're just like any other person.
They just, but to claim a residence
in the land of Israel is a farce, right?
They call it Palestinians.
Well, the word comes from Philistia,
and that's where the Philistines dwell.
You remember Goliath, he was a Philistine, right?
And they lived in that Gaza Strip there.
Ashdod was one of their cities.
Ziklag was one of their cities.
But the Philistines were wiped out in 605 BC.
Nebuchadnezzar wiped them out,
and they were not Arab people.
They were Japhethites.
They were from the Northern Greece,
up above the Aegean Sea right there.
And they're all gone.
So when these people have come and settled
in this land and say it's theirs, no, it's not.
It's not theirs.
And they're all Arab.
In fact, the Palestinian flag was a flag
symbolizing the Arab revolt back in the '20s.
That's what the Palestinian flag was for.
And now they established it,
the PLO established it as the Palestinian flag in 1964.
So that's how long of history they've got there.
The Jews have been there for 4,000 years.
It is their land.
And so they really don't have an argument,
but they sugar out everybody convinced that it's true.
It's not true.
So we love the Palestinians.
We love the Jews.
We want them all to come to know Christ, right?
But the truth of the matter is that part of the country
belongs to none other
than the people that God promised it to.
Verse 13 through 15, and I'll close this up.
And then God went up from this land,
then God from him, from the place where he talked with him.
And so Jacob set a pillar in the place
where he talked with him, a pillar of stone,
and he poured a drink offering on it and poured oil on it.
And Jacob called the name of the place
where God spoke with him, Bethel.
Oil and wine.
In the scripture, oil is usually typified.
It's a sign of joy,
but it's also a picture of the Holy Spirit.
God has called you and me to a life, right,
that is directed and guided and empowered
by the Holy Spirit.
You cannot live this Christian life apart from it, right?
Wine is a type of joy.
You know, Jesus, when he had communion with the apostles
there before he passed away,
he said, "This is the blood of the new covenant, right?
My blood, symbolic of my blood that was shed for you."
Wine was always a type of joy.
Isn't it a joy that you could be saved, right?
It is truly a joy that we could be saved.
And he dedicated this place
and he poured the drink offering out.
Like Paul talks about being poured out
in Philippians 2.17, he says, "Yes,
and if I am being poured out as a drink offering
on the sacrifice and service of your faith,
I am glad and rejoice with you all."
Paul had resigned to the fact,
every one of us, as we surrender our life to Christ,
we are to be poured out.
We're to be that drink offering.
Being willing to be poured out.
I was just talking to a dad about teaching his boy.
You gotta learn to be poured out.
Life's not about you, right?
It's not about you.
It's about you giving your life for what's right.
Whether that's walking with Jesus for 90 years,
whether that's going and laying down your life,
maybe for your countrymen or your friends,
greater love has no one than this.
Jacob is revived.
He is experiencing a personal revival.
This is the first revival that we see in the scripture.
Do you need to be revived today?
Maybe you do.
I know he'll meet you right where you're at.
No matter what your trouble is,
no matter what your addiction is,
no matter where you're at in this journey of yours,
the Lord will meet you right where you're at.
He will give you all that you need to live this life.
This life that is filled with love, joy, and peace.
That's what Jesus came to do,
was to give us that new birth.
Remember what he told Nicodemus?
All right, and that's what I wanna close with today,
is that conversation with Nicodemus.
You must be born again.
If I ask you that question, how would you answer it today?
If I ask you the question,
so when did you become born again?
And you get all kinds of answers.
Well, let's see.
When I drank my first beer?
Right, when I had my first baby?
I don't know.
No, when did you become born again?
Born spiritually.
And that's what Jesus is talking about.
And it confused Nicodemus,
who was a very religious individual, right?
He knew all the psalms and the proverbs
and the yeses and the amens,
but he was out to lunch
when it came to answering the question,
when did you become born again?
Well, I've always believed.
No, I think there is a moment.
There is a moment when you say, okay, it's yours.
I'm done with this thing.
John chapter three says,
"Jesus answered and said to him,
"Most assuredly I say to you, Nicodemus,
"unless one is born again,
"he cannot see the kingdom of God."
And Nicodemus said to him,
"How can a man be born when he is old?
"Can he enter a second time
"into his mother's womb and be born?"
Jesus answered, "Most assuredly I say to you,
"unless one is born of water and the Spirit,
"he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
"That which is born of flesh is flesh.
"That which is born of Spirit is Spirit.
"Do not marvel that I said to you,
"you must be born again.
"The wind blows where it wishes
"and you hear the sound of it,
"but cannot tell from where it comes from and where it goes.
"And so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."
Is the Lord knocking on the door of your heart right now,
thinking I need that.
I need that life in me
because I don't have it.
How do I receive it?
You ask for it.
Right, you ask.
It's so simple.
And yet for so many, it's not easy
because sometimes we've got all these hang-ups in our brain
thinking, well, I gotta do this and this and this
before I get right with God, surely, right?
That's kind of like taking a shower
before you get in the bathtub, right?
It's just ridiculous.
No, you come to Him just like you are
and He starts cleaning your life up.
I was shocked at how fast I quit saying the F word
when I got saved.
My mom was shocked too.
She said, "Man, son, you speak differently."
I just said, "Jesus is cleaning my life up."
I was born again.
I was sitting in that trailer house
and threw my hands in the air
and I surrendered.
I said, "Lord Jesus, my life is yours.
Forgive me all the wicked stuff
and do something with this thing
'cause I've just made a mess of it for 23 years."
And He did.
And so it is with you.
Call on the name of the Lord.
You'll be saved.
He'll fill you with His Spirit
'cause He's faithful.
And He loves it when a sinner humbles themselves
and say, "Oh God, I need you."
Maybe you need to do that today.
Let's pray.
Lord, thank you for this man, this country,
this light shining on a hill like you said.
Lord, may we never forsake this nation of Israel.
Thank you for reviving Jacob and changing him
just like you desire to change each one of us.
And yet you let us come to you just like we are.
Lord, all of our baggage, all of our sin,
all of our failure, all of our hurt and our pain,
and you tell us to come to you.
And your yoke is easy and your burden is light.
And if you've never cried out
or confessed with your mouth the Lord Jesus,
I'm gonna give you an opportunity to do that now
as we're in an attitude of prayer right now and that's you.
And you wanna be born again.
You wanna be filled with the Spirit of God
and be cleansed from your sin.
Say these words with me.
Lord Jesus, forgive me.
I've sinned against you.
I've sinned against others.
Wash me with your precious blood.
I believe that you died for me,
that you went into the grave and that you rose again.
And I put my faith and trust in you.
Give me the new life that comes from knowing you
and lead me in all my ways.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Father, I just thank you for those
who have prayed this prayer.
Lord, may you fill them with your Holy Spirit
and direct them, direct them to the right people
that can encourage them in the faith.
And Lord, that you would be glorified in us.
Lord, this week, we don't know if we got tomorrow,
but we know that we got today.
So may your name be on our lips
and may we never be ashamed of it.
In your name we pray, amen.
Amen, hey, this guy's gonna do another song,
but you can go over here and pray.
If you receive the Lord,
please come up and let somebody know.
And let's close with some worship.
[ Silence ]