Colossians, Part 4: I Can’t Go Back
Type: Wednesday Evening Service
Series: Colossians
Sermon: Part 4 - I Can’t Go Back
🗣️ Speaker: Pastor Scott Anderson
This message examines the reality of our broken condition apart from Christ and how we were once enemies of God in our minds and actions. Through the cross, Jesus didn't just overlook our sin but dealt with it completely by taking our place, reconciling us to God and presenting us as holy and blameless. The call is not just to receive this grace but to remain anchored in it, continuing in faith rather than drifting back into old patterns and identities that Christ already freed us from.
ℹ️ Tip: The video is set to start at the beginning of the sermon, but you can scrub the playhead to any part of the service. ℹ️
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I want you to lean in with me for just a moment.
What if for the next 60 seconds everything that went through your mind this past week was put up on the screens behind me and on for everyone in here and online to see right now?
You're thinking about all those thoughts, aren't you?
What did I think about this week?
Now listen, I'm not talking about just what you said on said out loud.
I'm talking about everything.
Not just the version of you that shows up on Sunday morning while you're wearing your Sunday best with your Sunday hat on the outside.
Not just the conversations you were careful to filter and think about before the words came out of your mouth.
I'm talking about everything.
The moments of pride, jealousy, anger, lust, comparison, offense, all displayed exactly as it was just in black and white on the screens for everyone to see.
How many of you would like to sign up for something like that tonight?
And do we have any takers?
How about online?
Why don't you put in the comments?
Are you willing to sign up for that?
I'm going to be honest with you I don't always like the person that I am.
Sometimes I mess up.
And here's the crazy part.
I have been saved for 20 years this summer and been heavily involved in ministry for about 15 of those years, and I'm still getting it wrong sometimes.
Can I tell you personally just how frustrating that is?
Does anyone else struggle with this or am I all alone in this tonight?
You're real quiet tonight.
If there's ever been a passage of Scripture that I can fully relate to, it's Romans 7.
15.
Here's what Paul says, for I do not understand my own actions.
For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
Drop down to verse 19.
For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want.
It is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
Here's what I know.
There is a part of everybody that nobody sees fully, but I can tell you one thing, it's not clean.
I'm not talking about the occasional slip-up.
It's not just a bad day.
It's not just a I lost my temper for a moment type of thing.
There is something deeper at work inside of each of us.
And this is where we have to stop. playing games with ourselves because we've gotten really good at managing our image while ignoring our condition.
We've learned how to look right on the outside while things are still off on the inside.
Let me help us out a little bit tonight.
You see, the word of God doesn't deal with appearances, it deals with reality.
And I want to show you what the Bible actually says about that reality because it's stronger than most of us are comfortable with.
I want you to hear this through the lens of what God says underline this was true about you and I.
Colossians 1, beginning at verse 23.
Once you were alienated from God, and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.
If you continue in your faith established and firm, and do not move from the hope spelled out in the gospel.
I'm just going to tell you, this passage has a lot of positivity in it there towards the end, but man, it also smacks me right in the face and says, you're welcome.
What am I talking about?
Well, how about this line?
You were enemies in your minds.
Let me break this down for us.
That's not a compliment.
That means you were opposed to God not just in your sinful actions but even in your private thoughts that no one else saw This is a reality of our brokenness outside of the cross.
This is how we were wired apart from Christ.
And hear me I know that's not comfortable, but I feel it is necessary for us to talk about tonight because if you don't understand how serious your condition was, how bad off you were, you will never say never.
You will never Fully understand how powerful your salvation and the cross really is.
Satan wants you to think That the cross was just a minor tune-up so that it will become just this casual thing that you wear around your neck, but you never allow it to become your everything.
Listen, Satan is all good with you hanging out around the cross as long as you are not transformed by it.
I've been asked a few times over the years why I think some of the younger generations, including mine, are not more engaged with the church and with the gospel.
And I'm gonna be honest with you.
Um I've changed my opinion on a lot of things over the past 20 years as I've been walking with God.
How many of you have changed your Thoughts and opinions and your theology and all of that.
This is one of those things that I really haven't changed on Why are we not seeing them?
Well, here's what I believe.
I believe wholeheartedly that young people are tired of the disconnect they have seen between the projected image and what is reality.
They've seen mom and dad talk one way and live another.
They've seen a version of Christianity that looks polished on the outside.
It looks really pretty. but doesn't deal honestly with what's really going on, and they're not buying it anymore.
And can I tell you something?
They shouldn't.
The church needs to get real.
Point one, the reality of our condition.
The gospel was never meant to be a cover-up.
It doesn't come to make you look better, it comes to tell you the truth about where you really are so that we can go where we've never been before How many of you know Satan likes to deal in the currency of deception?
Friends, that's his love language.
That is his strategy Jesus said in John 8 that he is a liar and the father of lies, which means he doesn't just tell lies, he produces them, and he wants you to build your life around these lies that he has speaking over your life.
And if he can get you to believe the wrong thing about your condition, make you think it's really not all that bad, then he can keep you from ever reaching for the right solution.
Let me give you a picture of this.
When bank ta banks train new tellers how to recognize counterfeit money, they do not waste time studying the fake Bills.
They spend the majority of their time studying what?
The real thing.
They learn what feels authentic Authentic so that when something fake shows up on their fingertips, they will recognize it immediately.
And church, here's the problem.
Many people don't know truth well enough to recognize deception Let me say that one more time.
Many people don't know truth well enough to recognize when they're being deceived.
So when the enemy creeps in and whispers you're fine, that little private sin you got that you got going on that only you and I and Well yeah, God knows about it too.
Yeah, that that's not a big thing.
We can keep that just between us.
That's not a big deal.
You don't need to deal with that.
They begin to believe it.
But Colossians 121 cuts through all of that deception Paul doesn't ask us how we feel about ourselves, what we think about ourselves.
He tells us what was actually true about us.
Paul says once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.
Let that sink in for a moment, because that's not how we just naturally describe ourselves.
We don't use words like alienated.
We don't say things like We tend to say things like, I'm not perfect, but I'm a good person.
We say I've made mistakes, but my heart is in the right place.
I had good intentions.
But Paul doesn't leave room for that kind of self-evaluation.
He says you were alienated.
That means we were completely disconnected from God.
Not close, not almost there, not even working our way towards him.
Not Facing him.
You were separated.
And then he takes it a step further and he says, We were you we were enemies in our minds, not just in our actions, but in our thinking, the way we process life, the way you justify your decisions, the way your desires are formed.
Your internal world is not towards God.
It is opposed to Him.
Can I be honest with you tonight?
There's not too many in here, so I'm not going to get in too bad a trouble, although my boss is here, so I could get in big trouble, and he's on the front row too.
I get a little tired.
Of hearing people, even in the church, I'm hearing this more and more, y'all, say things like follow your heart.
Trust your instincts.
Do what feels right.
Can I tell you, Katie and I have gotten hooked on a new TV show.
And I'm gonna tell you the truth, I don't really like it.
I just watch it because it's an absolute train wreck.
I don't know if you have those TV shows that you just you just have to watch.
You're not even really interested in what's going on, but but you just want to see how this thing turns out.
And um ChatGPT actually recommended it for us.
It said, you ought to watch this show.
And boy, I'm telling you what, it was the best recommendation.
This new show, because we know we need another one, is a show where people are trying to find their soulmate.
And I'm telling you, it's the craziest thing I've ever seen in my entire.
It is worse than Bachelor, Bachelorette.
Put that it's telling you.
These people date each other through a wall.
They can't see each other.
They don't know what the other person looks like.
Are you hearing me right now?
They're dating each other and all they hear is their other person's voice.
They don't know what they look like.
Okay?
And after about seven to ten days, the guy gets down on one knee and asks the question, Will you marry me?
Hear me, he's looking at a wall while he is proposing, not the person he's proposing to.
And I'm sitting here like, sir, you don't even know her last name.
And it gets better.
After the proposal, they finally meet face to face.
And let me just say, ladies and gentlemen.
It's not a bad thing to know what your future husband or wife looks like before you propose to them.
Because you're going to be waking up next to them for the rest of your life, hopefully.
Come on somebody, call me shallow, but I just think it's good information to have before you propose.
If I won't be able to recognize you in the grocery store later, we might have a problem.
They date for about three to four more weeks.
Now they're face to face.
They see each other.
They plan their wedding, and their families meet their significant, well, soon to be significant other.
And on the wedding day without fail, there's probably about six to eight couples that actually go through to the end.
We start out with probably about twenty and it gets nearer down.
It's about six to eight depending on the season.
There are like twelve seasons of this by the way.
This has been going on for a long time, this experiment And without fail, when their child is trying to decide if they want to marry this person that they've known for about a month.
Some well-meaning parent will pull them aside and say, just trust your heart, sweetie.
Y'all, I'm like they've known each other for about 30 days.
I've had Amazon packages take longer to arrive than this relationship, and you're gonna tell them to trust their heart?
You don't need to trust your heart, sweetie.
You need to ask some more questions like do you have a job?
Do you snore at night?
What kind of toilet paper do you use?
Do you chew with your mouth open?
These are important questions to ask before you marry someone.
Your heart may be ready to get married, but I'm telling you your brain is still trying to figure out their Wi-Fi password.
They don't need a wedding.
They need a background check and three references.
Come on somebody.
And we laugh at this, but this is exactly how a lot of people are living their spiritual life right now.
You're making lifelong decisions based on short-term feelings and trusting a heart that Scripture says Is broken, church.
It says it is diseased and it is dying.
The Bible says that your heart apart from Christ is not leading you towards God, it's leading you away from Him.
The Bible does not tell us that our heart is just a little bit off kilter.
It says in Jeremiah 17:9, I don't think we can get any clearer than this.
The heart is deceitful above all things.
Desperately wicked.
Who can understand it?
Y'all, I can't even understand my own heart.
Because one day it makes me think I want this and I desire this, and the next day it's something completely different.
But yet we're telling ourselves we need to listen to our own heart.
Listen to me, your heart does not need to be followed, your heart needs to be transformed.
Your heart doesn't need a microphone so you can listen to it.
It needs a savior who can fix it and repair what's broken.
Because if you follow your heart, your heart will have you chasing things that feel good in the moment, but leave you empty in the end.
How do I know it?
Because I've been there done that You see, your heart will say, do what makes you happy while God is saying, do what makes you holy.
Your heart will say, go your way, while Jesus is saying, I am the way.
So no, we don't follow our hearts, friend.
We lead our hearts.
We submit our heart.
We surrender our heart to Jesus because hear me, when you surrender your heart to him, it will finally start leading you in the direction that you were created. to go.
And if we're honest tonight, this isn't just about people outside the church.
This is also about us.
This is a struggle that we face as Christians.
There are areas in your life right now I'd be willing to say Where your heart is telling you one thing and you feel God's word is telling you something else.
And this tension that you're feeling, church, is it's it's not confusion, it's actually conviction.
And the reality is Paul is confronting apart from Christ, you cannot trust your internal compass because it's not Calibrated to the ultimate truth.
And if that's where the story ended, that would be absolutely devastating.
You're separated from God, then we would all be stuck with no way out and without hope.
But I love this.
Paul points us to our Savior He points us to the one that made it possible to get out of that desolate situation.
And in the middle of this heavy diagnosis that he's giving us, he's saying it was hopeless, you were desolate.
You were abandoned out of this desolate situation in the middle of this heavy diagnosis.
Two of the most powerful words in all of Scripture show up, and here's what it says.
But now.
Because when we couldn't get to God, God came down to us.
And that brings us to point number two, the work of our Savior.
Here's what only God could make possible, verse 22.
He is now reconciled in his body of flesh By his death, notice there's a lot of him in here.
There's no us in this part.
In order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him.
I want you to slow down and really see what just happened in that verse.
Because everything shifts right here in a way that should absolutely overwhelm us if we embrace it.
Hear me Everything that was true about you before Christ is no longer the final word over your life.
Because something has happened that you and I could have never accomplished on our own.
That word reconciled is not casual language.
It is deeply relational, deeply intentional and powerful because it literally means that what was broken has now been restored.
That that was distant has now been brought near, and that which was separated has now been brought back.
Together, which means that God did not overlook our sin.
He didn't just sweep it under the rug, and he certainly did not pretend it was not there.
Hear me, he dealt with it completely Fully and best of all in my opinion, he did it personally.
I take issue, and I'm sorry if If you're one of these, I'm sorry.
But I just take issue with those that think that my Jesus isn't a personable Savior.
Do you realize he didn't just die, but he chose how he would die?
God could have chosen any method, but he chose the most brutal public and painful form of death known to man.
He chose that.
He chose the cross, not because it was convenient, but because it was costly.
Not because it was a quick thing, but because it was the complete Thing because he wasn't just trying to save you, he was trying to show you how far he was willing to go in order to get to you.
I don't know who you serve and who you call God, but my God is personal.
He walks with me, He talks with me he empowers me he strengthens me and though I can't quite comprehend why my God loves me My God, and I'm sorry this is the way that you refer to him, I don't mean any offense, but my God is not just some man upstairs.
He is with me here and now.
My God is not looking down on us like we are his slaves and we are his ants looking at us saying, Well, I hope they figure it out.
I don't know what your God in your mind, what he does, but I'm telling you, my God walks with me throughout my day.
Whenever I get to an intersection and I don't know what to do, and I pray and I say I say Holy Spirit, I don't know whether to turn left or to turn right.
I see a mine ahead of me.
And God, I don't I know I can't go through that.
You know what my God says My God says, Scott, there's a path right over here that's not not normally taken, and I'm gonna walk you right down here.
I'm gonna hold your hand.
I'm gonna guide you through this, and I'm gonna get you on the other side.
That's my God.
Now I don't know what kind of God you serve, but that's the kind of God that I I serve.
He is a personable God.
I heard a story about a firefighter who ran into a burning home while everyone was running out of it.
Because he knew there was a child still inside that burning house.
That smoke was thick, the fumes were spreading, and everything about that situation in the natural was screaming out: stay Away.
It's dangerous.
But he chose to go inside because the value of the person inside outweighed the cost he would have to pay. to pay and when he came out he did not just walk away untouched he was burned scarred and marred by what it took to rescue that child inside of that house Church, hear me, that's just a slight glimpse of what Jesus did for you.
Except he didn't risk his life.
He gave it completely.
And it's because of that sacrifice that Paul says you are now presented before God in a completely different way.
How many of you are thankful that we can stand before God Because of the blood of Jesus Christ, and know that we can stand in his presence.
He says, you are holy.
Come on, somebody.
He says you are holy, which means you have been set apart.
He says we are blameless, which means there is no charge that can stick to us anymore.
Satan will try with those post-it notes and try to stick things with gorilla glue all over us and I'm telling you it's not going to stick.
And he says you are above reproach, which means nothing can be brought against you and stand up in court.
And you need to understand something.
If you are saved You are not who you were.
You might get uncomfortable and think it's arrogant to think of yourself as holy, but if you don't, You're not being humble, friend.
You're actually minimizing the price that Jesus paid for your salvation.
Have you thought about it like that?
Now I need to get real with you Some of you have accepted what Jesus did for you on the cross, but you're not living in it.
You're not acting like it.
What am I talking about?
You've been forgiven, but you're still carrying guilt.
You've been set free, but you still live like you're bound and chained up.
You've been made clean, but you still see yours see yourself and you see your past.
And listen to me You don't get to redefine what God has already declared over your life.
He says you're forgiven, then you're forgiven.
If he says you're clean, then you're clean.
If he says you're free, then you' Free and you need to start celebrating and rejoicing In that freedom.
Let me give you a picture that I believe will help bring this into focus for us.
In the Gospels, there is a man named Barabbas.
And the Bible makes it very clear that he was not misunderstood.
He was not just some wrongly accused man.
He was one Hundred percent guilty as charged.
He was a known criminal and he deserved the punishment that was coming to him.
And on that day that Jesus is about to be crucified Pilate stands before the crowd and gives him a choice, saying, Do you want me to release Jesus who is innocent?
or Barabbas who is guilty.
And the crowd without hesitation cried out, give us Barabbas, crucify Jesus.
You see, and in that moment, something incredible and sobering happens at the exact same time because Barabbas, the guilty man, walks free.
While Jesus, the innocent Son of God, takes his place on the cross that was intended for Barabbas, that had his name on it, that had his blood on it, I should have had his blood on it.
Can you imagine what that must have felt like for Barabbas standing there with chains on his wrists, fully aware of what he deserved, and then hearing his name called not for punishment, but to be released Can you imagine watching someone else carry the cross that was meant for you?
Knowing the only reason you are free is because someone else is taking your place and not even because they deserve it Church, don't miss this because this is not just Barabbas' story.
This is your story.
You were the one who was guilty.
You were the one who was separated.
You were the one who stood condemned in your sin in Jesus' in and took your place so that you could walk free and walk in holiness.
Do not water down what he did on that cross, church.
I want you to dec To declare what Satan already knows is true about you, but he doesn't want to say it.
I was guilty, but now I've been forgiven.
I was bound, but now I've been set free.
Free.
I was far but from God, but now I feel Him standing next to me.
I was condemned, but now I stand justified.
If you're struggling to understand how your past and yet your present can be true all at the same time, Timothy Keller says it like this.
We are more sinful and flawed.
Than we ever dared believe, yet more loved and accepted in Christ than we ever dared hope.
On one hand, you were guilty completely, undeniably.
But on the other hand, because of Jesus, you are now fully loved.
Fully accepted and fully restored before God.
That's what Paul is saying in this verse, to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before Him.
Do you understand what that means?
This means you are not just barely making it into heaven.
So many people want to say I'm making it to heaven on my skirt tails By my coattails.
That's how I'm gonna make it into heaven.
Listen, you are being presented before a holy God as clean, as pure, and as righteous because of what Jesus has done for you.
Jesus didn't just take your place.
He gave up his for you.
Church, that ought to change the way you see yourself.
That ought to change the way that you fight sin.
That ought to change the way that you live every single day because you're not fighting for victory.
You are living from the victory that Jesus has already gained for you.
Don't go back To the chains that Jesus already broke.
Don't go back to the identity that Jesus already crucified.
And don't you dare let the enemy convince you that you are still who you used to be.
You can do what you want, but I'm gonna tell you something.
And I do this every day.
I would tell the devil that between the two of us, the only person that is still the same is him.
His character, his mission, his destiny has not and will never change.
I am heaven-bound.
He's not heaven-bound and never has been, never will be.
He has been a liar from the very beginning and his character has not changed.
But praise God, God is transforming me and making me a new creation.
So between the two of us, you're the one that has not changed.
Point three, the result of his grace.
I don't miss this.
Paul is about to shift from what Jesus has done for you to what is now required from you Here's what he says.
If indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel.
In other words, if this is real It won't just change what you believe to be true.
It should change how you live.
Because grace is not just something that we receive.
Grace is something that roots you it anchors you and holds you steady when everything around you including your own deceitful heart is trying to pull you away I read about a massive cargo ship that got caught in a violent storm off the coast, and waves were crashing over the decks.
Uh winds were pushing it further and further off course and deeper at waters, and everything about that moment screamed absolute instability and chaos.
But what most people don't realize about ships is this You see, ships like that don't survive storms because of how strong they are above the water.
They survive because of what's holding them beneath the water.
That anchor drops down.
It locks into the seabed, and when everything above is chaotic, what's below keeps it from drifting.
Church, hear me.
Your problem is not the storm around you.
It's whether or not you're anchored. beneath you because if you are not anchored in the gospel it will not take much to throw you off course Paul says continue Be stable, be steadfast, don't drift.
Why is he using these words?
Because everything in this world, including your deceitful heart, is trying to get you to drift off course drift back into old habits drift into your old mindset drift into an old identity and listen you don't have to choose to drift the only thing that you have to do is stop anchoring and it will happen all on its own Nobody wakes up one day and says, you know, today feels like a great day to wreck my life.
Nobody puts that on their calendar.
Have you ever found that on someone's calendar?
Drifting is a very subtle thing.
That's why Paul doesn't say feel the faith.
He says continue in the faith.
Because your feelings will fluctuate, your circumstances will change, your emotions will rise and fall.
But the call call of God is not meant to be emotional.
It's meant to be anchored in the one that gave it to you in the first place.
The same gospel that saved you is the same gospel that will sustain you.
Listen, we, I feel like a lot of people in our church need to hear this.
I know many of us, like I said, I'm young, I've been saved for 20 years, and I know there's many of you that have been saved much longer than that, but there's something that we need to realize, and I have to remind myself of this.
We don't graduate from the cross.
We grow deeper into it.
I don't care if you've been saved for 60 years.
You still got some more growth that needs to take place.
I think sometimes we treat salvation like it's the finish line, when in reality it's the starting line, friends.
Here's what it looks like.
We say thank you, Jesus, for saving me, and then we try to live the rest of our life in our own strength.
But can I tell you something?
The same grace that reached you on the day that you got saved is the same grace that will sustain you and keep you.
And if you stay anchored in the world.
In it.
Let me give you another picture.
Aaron Ralston was hiking alone in Utah with a boulder shifted and pinned his arm against the canyon wall.
He was completely trapped for five whole days.
No one was around, no one was in sight, no one was coming to help.
He had no self-service.
There was no way anyone was going to find him And after days of trying everything that he could possibly think of to break himself free, he realized something.
If he was going to live, something had to be cut off.
So with a dull blade, he made the unthinkable decision to amputate his own arm in order to survive.
Now, listen to me, this is intense.
But here's why I told you this story.
Some of you are stuck, not because God has not freed you.
But because you're still holding on to something that's keeping yourself bound.
And you keep asking God to deliver you while you are refusing to let go of the very thing that is trapping you.
Here's the cold hard truth.
Sometimes continuing in the faith means cutting off what is killing you, and it will be painful.
Here's how Jesus put it in Matthew 5.
If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
Now hear me.
He is not talking literally.
But he is talking very seriously because grace is not permission to stay the same.
It is power for us to be transformed.
Paul uses that word continue because if you don't, you will drift back into the very thing that Jesus died to set you free from.
And I need to say this very clearly because I love you.
Drifting doesn't just affect you.
It affects your family.
And it's something we don't talk about enough in the church.
It affects your future.
The enemy doesn't need you to completely walk away.
All he needs you to do is to slowly make compromises day by day.
What does it look like to continue in the faith?
It means you stay connected to Jesus when you feel like it and even when you don't.
I'm going to level with you tonight.
You see me time and time again get up on this stage whenever I preach, and I would venture that most of you probably have in your minds that I never have any doubts.
And I'm sorry to bust your bubble, but I do.
Katie and I have been walking through a season for the past four and a half years that has been That hasn't been all cupcakes and rainbows and unicorns.
And I struggle some days to truly stay connected to Jesus because some days it's hard watching God do miracle.
After miracle for others while you're waiting on yours.
Am I being too transparent tonight?
Do you still want me?
Because this is the real me.
I'm just telling you, I believe we need more church leaders that are willing to talk Like this, because if we don't, our young people are going to think something is wrong with them or they're doing something wrong when their relationship with Jesus starts to get a little dicey and difficult.
It's not easy.
I can't speak for you, but giving my life to Jesus was the easy part for me to do.
Please take my baggage I'll give it to you.
You want to take it and give me new life, please take it.
But for me, it's the continuing aspect that is the challenging part.
Let's get practical.
What does it mean to continue in the faith?
It means you open His Word not just when you need something, but even when you don't.
Because one day you're gonna need to pull from that bank account.
It means you open his word not just when you need something, but when you don't.
It means you pray not as a last resort, but as your first response.
Well, another thing that I cannot stand is that people say the least I can do is pray.
No, that is the most you can do for anyone It means you stay planted in the house of God surrounded by people who will speak truth into your life even when your feelings try to lie to you.
It means when conviction shows up, you don't run from it, but you decide to respond to it and alter course if you need to.
Let me say it like this.
If the cross was enough to save you, I've said this in different ways throughout this sermon because I really want us to get this.
If the cross was enough to save you, it's enough to keep you.
If his grace was strong enough to reach you at your worst, it's strong enough to sustain you at your weakest.
If he was faithful to bring you out, he will be faithful to carry you through.
So let me ask a very personal question.
Are you anchored or have you drifted?
You can be in church and you can still be drifting.
We're good at faking it.
You can sing the songs and still be drifting.
You can say the right things and still be drifting.
But deep down, you know You know if you're anchored or if you're pulling away.
I believe tonight God is calling some people back to the anchor.
Not to start over, but to simply come back to what's already true.
To come back to the cross, to come back to his presence, to come back to the truth of who you are, not in and of yourself, but in him.
I heard of a little boy that was flying a kite on a cloudy day.
The kite had gone so high that it disappeared into the clouds, and it was impossible to see where it was.
And someone walked up and asked him, son, how do you know it's still up there?
And he said, because I can feel the pull Church, even when you can't see everything clearly, if you stay anchored, you'll still feel the pull of his presence, his truth, and his spirit that will keep you steady.
But hear me, feeling the pull is not the same thing as following it.
You can sense God drawing you and still not choose to move And that's where this becomes personal because now it comes down to your response.
Point number four, the response of our faith.
Pastor Jeff, you can come back.
Paul doesn't just tell us what Jesus has done, and he doesn't just tell us what it produces.
He tells us how we are to respond to it.
Here's what he says.
He says, If indeed you continue in the faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.
In other words, this is not something that is passive.
This is an intentional choice that we have to make.
You decide whether or not to be faithful.
Let me say it like this.
There's a difference between believing in Jesus and being anchored in Jesus.
Here's how Jesus put it in Matthew 7.
He tells us that there were two men who built houses.
If you've grown up in church, you've heard this story.
One built his house on the sand, the other built his house on the rock.
And when the storm came, and notice here, he didn't say if it comes, he said when it comes The house on the sand fell, but the one on the rock stood.
And here's what Jesus said that makes the difference.
It wasn't who heard the word.
It was who did something with it.
We can hear the word all day.
You can come in here and you can hear sermon after sermon after sermon after sermon.
It's not gonna make a hill of beans if you don't do anything about it and apply it to your life.
Hear me, what you do with what you've heard tonight matters because the gospel is not just information for us to admire, it is truth that we need to respond to.
So, what does our response look like?
Well, it starts with surrender.
That's not easy.
And not a partial surrender.
Not God, you can have this, but I want to keep this little thing over here that I've got.
It continues with consistency, choosing him when you feel it and when you don't.
Choosing truth when your emotions are loud, choosing obedience when it's convenient.
And it's sustained by trust.
Trusting what he says is better than trusting what your heart is telling you or what you feel in a moment.
I want to close with this story.
I read a story about a tightrope walker.
His name was Charles Blondin.
In the 1800s, he stretched a rope across Niagara Falls and walked across it.
And the crowds gathered and they watched him.
And he walked across and then back again, pushing a wheelbarrow in front of him.
And the crowd was cheering him on.
And then he asked them this question.
He said, Do you believe I can push someone across in this wheelbarrow?
And they all shouted, Yes, we believe you can.
Then he asked, Alright, so who's going to get in first?
And suddenly it got real quiet.
Because it's one thing to say you believe, it's another to trust him with your life.
And that's where I believe some of us are tonight.
We believe in Jesus, but you're not fully trusting him.
You've been standing on the edge, you've been clapping in your seat, you're watching, you're agreeing, maybe even you're nodding your head in agreement with what the pastor is preaching, but you have not gotten into the wheelbarrow.
And I'll tell you this, Jesus didn't die just so you could admire him from a distance.
He died so you could trust him with your life.
The same Jesus who reconciled you, the same Jesus who died for you, the same Jesus who called you.
He's here tonight.
And he's inviting you to come a little bit closer.
So before we leave tonight, we're not just going to hear about what Jesus did for us.
I want us to declare it.
Because something powerful happens when what you believe in your heart comes out of your mouth.
Sometimes your heart needs to be reminded of what it knows is true, but it needs to hear it in order for it to continue to sink in.
We're going to close tonight by declaring what Jesus did for us on the cross.
Now, I don't think Satan is hard of hearing, but I want us to be like the who's and who-bill on Christmas Eve.
Singing so loud, so full of faith, that the Grinch, namely, we're calling this case, Satan, can hear it.
I want it to echo beyond this room in the spirit realm.
I don't know where the enemy is tonight, but I want him to stop in his tracks and realize that Oxford Assembly is not drifting.
We're not backing up, we're not going back.
We are anchored in the finished work of Jesus Christ.
So as we begin to sing this tonight, I don't want you just to sing it.
I want you to declare it.
I want you to listen to the words, and I want you to hear it in your ears, and I want it to sink deep within your spirit.
If Jesus has changed you, I want you to declare it.
He's bought you, brought you out, I want you to declare it.
If he's set you free, I want you to declare it.
Let this be your moment to say, I have come too far to turn around.
I'm not who I used to be, and I absolutely am not going back.
So prayer partners, I want to invite you to come.
If you need prayer, the altar is open.
If you need to come back to the anchor, this altar is open.
And I want us to begin to start declaring and make the enemy hear us tonight.
