Well, what is up church? Hope that you guys are doing well. I wanna welcome you here today. I wanna welcome those of you online from wherever you're watching from. If you're out in Baghdad, welcome. If you're in Paulden, welcome. If you're with Cheryl out in Missouri with the watch party she has going there, welcome, welcome. We're so glad that you guys are here. Yeah, give it up for our online fam as well. Those of you in the building, welcome to you as well. Let me
ask you this. How many of you have ever needed correcting before? You need some correcting? Yeah. Okay, if your hand's not up, you're lying in church right now. I'm just telling you, right? We all need correcting. Man, I remember when I first got to this church, the way that it works when somebody says, hey, we wanna do a memorial or a wedding at Heights, those requests get distributed between different pastors. And so we get assigned these requests. And so I got assigned this request
for a memorial. And I don't know the gentleman that had passed away. I don't know if he went to Heights. I don't know if the family. had gone to heights, but I'd been on a phone call with the family, knowing a little bit about them, but not a lot of details. And so I get to the day of the memorial, and I was doing the memorial on this exact stage, and I'd read the obituary,
I'd given a message. I got about three fourths of the way through this and they had this wonderful slideshow prepared and they were showing this slideshow of all the pictures of this man's life and just his accomplishments and the things that he had done and I kind of stepped off to the side of the stage to let the slideshow play and I was in the back and someone came up to the front of the stage and they kind of motioned me over and I go over to the stage and I put
my head down and he goes, hey, I just want to let you know you've been pronouncing his name wrong the entire time. Listen, we all need correcting, right? We all need correcting. Most of the New Testament is letters written by Paul, and the reason that Paul is writing these letters is for the purpose of correction a lot of times
when it comes to these churches. Sometimes it's encouragement, sometimes it's correction, but the letter to the church in Galatia is a letter that is in response to some of the things that they're doing. This church is doing these things and because they're doing these things, they got some stuff going on. He wrote this letter to them and we're gonna look at this letter for
the next 10 weeks. We're gonna walk through every verse of this letter and we're gonna go through what Paul said to the church at Galatia and see what we as a church nowadays here in this culture can learn from what Paul told them. And I love this letter because Paul is direct in this letter. See, I think that how direct you are is correlated to how bothered you are. I think the more bothered you are, the more direct you are. You know what
I mean? Parents in here, if your house is getting messy and you're like kind of a little bothered at your children, you're like, hey, we should really pick this stuff up. But then it gets really messy and you're really bothered by it and you're like, hey, you pick this up now. You get a little bit more direct with how bothered you are. And Paul is writing this letter. And usually if you know Paul's letters, he starts it with like greetings. He's like, hey, what's good? How's your mom doing?
How's your friends? Greetings to this person. And there's some fluff there, but on this one, he goes straight into it because he's very bothered by what is going on in this church. And so we see Galatians chapter one, verse one, Paul says this, Paul an apostle sent not from men nor by a man. but by Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead. Paul is starting his letter to them with the authority with which he speaks. This is the authority with which I'm
speaking to you. You know why? Because you and I as human have this thing in us that go, wait, who are you to tell me what to do? Who the heck are you? Why am I gonna listen to you? And he's going, okay, listen, these are not my words. I'm telling you the authority with which I speak. In my house, this is how this works. If my daughters are in a room and one of my daughters goes in and says, hey, it's time for dinner, let's go eat. My other daughters are gonna look at her
and go, maybe. But if she goes in and goes, hey, hey, mom said it's time for dinner. That carries some weight. That carries some weight. What Paul is doing is he's writing this letter is he's saying, hey, this carries some weight. These are not my words, these are Jesus's words. Listen to me church, do not follow a pastor that only wants you to follow his words. Make sure he's following Jesus' words. Do not follow a church that wants you to follow anything but Jesus'
words. Okay, we at Heights, we have a thing that we say this is, we are putting a stake in the ground for and that is we are for Jesus. That is going to be our marker. We are going to say we are for Jesus. And if we drift from that, that will always be the things that we come back to. And listen to me, I have been at churches that have drifted away from having Jesus as the main thing. And if for you, if you find yourself in a church like that, that is your cue to leave.
If Jesus is not the main thing, if there's something else, if there's a different agenda or a different thing being spoken, they say, hey, follow me. Instead of follow Jesus, there's a big problem. And what Paul is saying to them is he's saying, these words are not mine, these are Jesus's words to you. Jesus is with the authority with which I am writing, however, it's not just Jesus behind me here. In verse two, he says, all the brothers and sisters with me to the churches in Galatia.
As if the authority from Jesus wasn't enough, Paul is saying, the homies, they all agree too. Everyone is with me, man. The homies agree with me. You guys got some issues and we're writing this to confront what is going on in the church. And he says this, verse three, grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace and peace. Listen, I don't know who this is for, but some of you came in today looking for peace in your life. Your life is
chaos. And you walked into this doors today going, man, I just need some peace in my life. But you have not clung to grace yet. And you need to understand that grace always precedes peace. Because without grace, it is not possible to experience true peace. And when you try to find peace without grace, what you end up doing is you end up in a cycle. Because it's not possible without grace. And this is where we get caught up with trying everything in search of the thing
that's only truly found in one thing. And we'll go, I'm gonna try this and I'm gonna try that. And if I just went with this person or if I just have this drink, I'm gonna have peace for a second. And we search for everything. And I'm telling you right now, if you don't find your peace out of grace, you will always be in search of peace. because the temporary peace you get will never stick because grace always precedes peace and as peace is found through the grace that we have
been given. It says in verse four, it says it comes through grace and peace from our Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen. All right, that's the thing. If you're in search of the thing, here's the thing, it's the gospel. It's the good news. That's what he's telling us right here is the
good news. But sometimes, you and I, sometimes this church in Galatian, we're like spiritual dogs and everything around us is a squirrel. You know what I'm saying? Right, you're like, I'm following Jesus, squirrel. Oh, this is good, I'm on the right path, squirrel. All right, and that's us when it comes to our spiritual life. Right, when I was growing up, I had this dog, this dog was named Star. And before you judge me, I was five years old when I named her, okay?
Chill out, all right? But Star was awesome and she loved to chase a ball, more than anything in the whole world, but only if you kicked it. You couldn't throw it. She would drop it, she'd like back up and stare at you. And if you like went to pick it up, she'd like, go grab it. She's like, nah, it's not how we play this, bro. And she'd drop it and she'd scoot back and then you kick it and she would run. She was trained on this thing and she's like, I'm gonna go get this.
And she would do it for hours and hours and hours. But sometimes if I kicked the ball and it were to cross the path of another ball that were sitting there, or if for somebody else were to throw a ball that were to cross that same path, man, she would be determined on one thing, but then all of a sudden she would abandon course and go to something completely different. See, sometimes as believers, what we do is we're following God and then all of a sudden we start diverting and
we start following something else. Our attention goes to something else. And the reason Paul is writing this letter is because the churches in Galatia were doing exactly that. And he follows this up by saying this in verse six, I'm astonished. This is blowing me away. I'm astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. See what is happening in the church in Galatia is that they had some
false teachers come in. Some people that were teaching in their church And they're saying that faith in Jesus was not enough. They had to do other things. Jesus is great. Yeah, we have faith in Jesus, but you gotta add something else to it. Listen to me, church, you need to understand this equation. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. All right, and if you get that mixed up and it's Jesus plus anything else, that's fake news. That's not real.
There's nothing real about that. Jesus plus nothing equals everything. If it's plus anything else, that is not the gospel. What he's saying is you guys gotta understand this. This is not okay that these teachers are coming in and trying to add to this. You're believing something else. You're believing another gospel. Then he says in verse seven, which really is no gospel at all. It's not real. Evidently, some people are throwing you into confusion. and they're trying
to pervert the gospel of Christ. The culture around these Galatians is influencing them to believe something other than the real thing. You know what our culture does? Our culture influences. Our culture influences. You don't believe me? How many of you remember Saturday morning cartoons? Saturday morning cartoons, come on now, right? Right? Right? The kids nowadays, they don't understand. They're like, we got Disney Plus. We can watch it whenever I want. No, no, no. Saturday morning
cartoons, baby. That's when you'd have to get up, right? You'd get that comfortable spot. You'd settle and you'd go get your favorite bowl of sugar and milk. You know what I'm talking about, right? Right? Unless you were in my house, my parents lied to me and they told me that granola was cereal. I was like, that's not cereal. That's granola. Right? I had to go next door. My grandparents live next door. They were my dealers. I'd go over there and get the good stuff. Right? They'd
pour me a nice bowl of Frosted Flakes. I'm like, now we're talking. Let's go, baby. Right? And you settle in and you start watching the cartoons and the cartoons were awesome. They were good. And then in between the cartoons would come on these commercials and man, you wanted them. You remember this, right? You remember this, right? You remember those, right? Because if pillow fights aren't good enough, let's fill your hands with some air and just beat the snot out of each
other. It was awesome. And you're like, man, I want that. Right? What about these? What about these? This would come up and you're like, yeah, baby. I am literally going to walk on the moon. Like it is going to be incredible. I wanted them so bad. Some of you had those and you are lucky. All right, I'm just saying, I'm jealous still. Man, what about this one? What about this? You remember that? Skip it, skip it. Come on now, the song's already playing in your head. You
know what I'm talking about, right? I wanted one, they were so awesome. All right, then there were these. You remember these things? Trying to keep these things alive? You kidding me right now? All right, some of you that couldn't keep those alive, you grew up now and you kill every plant you have too. All right, you were training for now where you just kill all the plants. You know what I'm saying? Like these things, if you're on vacation, you're like, man, you gotta keep
this thing alive for me while you leave. I was never into this next one, but some of you were. You remember these? What child in their right mind would look, that thing will steal your soul. Like I'm nervous for that girl right now. Like somebody go save her. Look at that thing. That thing's creepy. Right? And then this last one, man, this was all of our retirement plan, if we're honest. All right, you know what I'm saying? Like, but only if you didn't remove the tag,
right? Cause if you remove the tag, it was worthless. Guess what? It's all worthless, right? You know, it's worthless. But listen, you wanted those so bad because when the commercial came up, the culture was saying, you need this. And it would influence you because what our culture does is our culture influences us and our culture influences our view of the gospel as well. We start hearing things in our culture and it starts influencing
the way that we think about the gospel. We hear things like this, people are just basically good. You and I were just basically good. But the Bible says that you and I are sinners separated from God forever. It says there's none righteous. No, not one. It said for all of sin and falling
short of the glory of God. It says that you and I are broken and apart from God and what it does is it removes the offense of sin in our life because what culture starts influencing us and going, yeah, yeah, you're just basically good. All right, we hear things like this and it starts influencing us. We hear things like, you know, Jesus, man, Jesus was just a good teacher. Jesus was not just a good teacher. Jesus was the savior
of the world. And when we reduce Jesus to just being a self -help Jesus instead of the savior of the world, what we've done is we've diverted from the gospel because the culture has influenced our way of thinking. We had this opportunity in our life to be around people, to be around a culture, to be around an influence, but it starts to influence us when we hear things like
this, just be a good person. And the problem is that when we allow ourselves to just be a good person, to earn God, instead of being a good person that flows out of already being purchased by God, we have a problem. Yes, be a good person. Don't hear me wrong. You're like, oh, pastor said I can go be a jerk. I didn't say that. But when we believe that our works have anything to do to get to God, we've missed it. We believe in our culture, the things that we hear, and
we hear things like this. Hey, just live your truth. Your truth is different than my truth. It's different than their truth. Just live your truth. And that's not true because there's only one truth. That's the definition of truth. There's only one. Jesus is truth. And we let our culture start to influence us. And the problem is this. It comes from allowing a voice other than God to have a louder voice of influence than God.
And when a voice other than God in our life has a louder influence on us than God, we find ourselves in a problem. For some of you. that loudest voice of influence is your news source of choice. It's a political talk show of choice. It's the thing that's always on and you're listening to all the time and that is the loudest voice in your life and you have it, but it's speaking truth to you. And you walk around and you don't know why, you're always anxious, you're always scared,
you're always dealing with this. Listen, when was the last time you heard news tell you, hey, a great, positive, amazing thing tonight at 10 p .m.? Yeah, right? Right? It's like 10 o 'clock tonight. Listen, we're all burning. The whole world's dying. And we walk around scared. We walk around with this anxiety. Well, the loudest voice that you're hearing is filling your life with things that are leading you away from God.
For some of you, it's social media. And your social media, man, is this first thing you go to. It's the last thing you go to. And you're always scrolling and you're going through it. And it's just for entertainment. There's nothing to it. But man, what are you filling yourself with? What are you filling yourself with? What are you comparing yourself to? Because man, every time we look at that, we go, man, but I wish
I was them. I wish I had that. And did you know that statistics show that increased social media use is directly correlated to a higher level of depression and anxiety, to a higher level of body image issues, to a higher level of even self harm and even suicide, are directly correlated to social media use. All right, for some of you, the loudest voice in your life is just the music that you listen to over and over. And you're like, I don't listen to the words, I just listen
to the beat. That's all it is. Just listen to the music. But what you're doing is you're allowing those words to influence you and becoming a voice of influence in your life. And you start living in a different way. You start acting in a different way. You start viewing things in a different way because of the influence that they have on you. All right, for a lot of you, the loudest voice in your life is your friends. All right, I just got my friends and they gotta talk to
me. I gotta listen to them. Listen, the problem is that you're taking advice from people that are dumber than you. You're like, how did I get in this place? Well, cause you listened to them. That's how you got there. And when we allow our friends to be the voice of authority in our life and we go, okay, yeah, I'm gonna do that. A lot of times what they're doing is just co -signing on your bad decisions. But we surround ourselves with these people and a lot of times they become
the loudest voice in our life. Now check it out, though. Here's the thing. It doesn't necessarily mean that we remove those things, but it means that we have to be anchored through those things. It doesn't mean we remove it. It means we're anchored through it. We have to be anchored. Think about a boat, man. If a boat is drifting— And a boat is in water. It is in its environment that is going to shift it. Sometimes if it is too dangerous, yes, it needs to be removed from
that water. It needs to be taken out. Just like if those things can become too dangerous in your life, they need to be removed. But for the most part, what it needs to happen is it needs to be anchored so that its environment around it does not affect it. We cannot remove ourselves from all environments. And since environments are influencing us, therefore we need to be anchored through it so then the environment moves and it shifts and the culture tries to persuade us.
We say, no, this is my anchor. If you're taking notes, write this down. We have to be anchored in our relationship with Jesus. Anchored in your relationship with Jesus. Because if when the world starts influencing, and the culture starts influencing, and you say, okay, yes, I see that, I feel that, but I'm anchored in a relationship with Jesus, you're not gonna move. It says in Romans 12, too, do not be conformed to the pattern
of this world. Do not be influenced by the things around you, but instead be transformed, how? By the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing, and perfect will. About a year ago, I realized that my routines were not allowing me to be anchored in my relationship with Jesus. And what I mean is that every morning when I woke up, the very first thing I'm doing is I'm checking social media. How many notifications
do I have? Do I have any new followers? What do I gotta check out? What changed in the world since I left? And that was the first thing I looked at. And it's not a bad thing, but I realized that it was the first thing, therefore it was the loudest voice of influence in my life, and I just had to switch this to where the first thing that I do every morning is that I get into God's word. I'm gonna get to it. Again, I'm not telling you it's bad. I'm gonna get to the social
media, but it's not the first thing. The first thing I'm doing is I'm saying this is the most important voice, and this is what I'm gonna listen to first. Then I'll get to the other things. All right, you gotta be in your word. If you wanna have a relationship with God that's actually anchoring you, then you gotta have a relationship that's active, which means you gotta read the word of God. Which means you got to pray and talk to God more than just before your meals
or before bed. What if you invited God into every place of your life and it was a continued conversation because you say, you're the voice that I care about most, therefore my relationship with you matters and it's not just a scheduled conversation, but it's an invitation to the rest of my life. We have to be anchored in our relationship with Jesus. Next is this, we have to be anchored in community. We need people around us. that are
going to push us towards Jesus. Let me ask you, what do the voices of your community sound like? Are they tearing you down and pulling you away from Jesus? Are they saying, hey, I'm gonna build you up, I want you to trust Jesus? Or are they saying, hey, you do you boo, you got this, it's all about you, I believe in you. That's the worst advice you can get. Don't believe in you, believe in Jesus because you're gonna lead yourself to destruction every time, but Jesus is gonna lead
you to the right place. What if we have a community around us that says, listen, I love you and I care about you. That's why I'm not gonna say just believe in yourself. I'm gonna say, listen, I'm gonna walk with you as we believe in Jesus together. That's why we believe in life groups here. That's why we believe in joining a serve team so that you can be around other believers and other Christians that are gonna point you towards Jesus. They're gonna say, man, I want
you to come alongside of you. I wanna help you. We have to be anchored in a community that helps us to not drift. and be influenced by our culture. Next is this, is we have to be anchored in your identity. Is your identity in Christ or is your identity in everything else? Because if your identity is in what you do, if it's in your job, if it's in your finances, if it's in your marriage, if it's in your kids, if it's in anything like that, what happens is all those things can change,
but Jesus can never. And we have this problem a lot of times where even those of us who are Christians or believers, if someone asks you, hey, who are you? You start by telling them what you do, not who you are. Who are you? Well, I do this for a job. That's not who you are. It's not what you do. You need to realize who you are and who you are. If you are in Christ, your identity is in Christ. But if your identity is in Christ and you say, this is who I am, it first
comes by realizing whose you are. Who you are comes out of whose you are. And when you know that you are bought with a price by Jesus, and you go, listen, I am his, therefore I know my identity is in him. And when that is your anchor, when you are anchored in that, man, you are gonna be influenced by the culture, but it's not gonna pull you away because you know who you are. And we have to be anchored in that. Because here's the thing, the devil, the devil wants to pull
you away and the devil has no new tactics. We got the end of the story. I'm gonna tell you right now, guess what? I've read the end of the book. Jesus wins. He wins. We got the end of the story. And you know what? The devil does too. He knows it. And he's got no new tactics. He knows that Jesus wins. But what if he can just get you a little bit off course? What if he can get you just a little bit off course? I coach baseball and I've done that for many,
many years. And one time, just one time, I lined a baseball field. And what that means is you start at home plate and you do a line all the way to the foul pole on either side. And those are the lines that determine whether a ball is foul or fair. And I started off and man, I thought I was doing a great job, just saying. I thought I was just crushing it. And I was like one degree off. And I was like, no, I'm fine, I'm fine. By the time I got 325 feet away, I'd missed the
foul pole by 15 feet. All right, I'm saying it was brutal. They had to paint the grass green over my white line so they could repaint the white line. See, what happens in our life is if you're just, if the devil can just get you one degree off, if the devil can just get you two degrees off and say, yes, you're following Jesus, what if I just turn you a little bit?
And what if just these few things are okay? And what if you could just add a little bit to the gospel, then by the time you get to the end, you've missed it completely. And he said, I just wanna pervert it a little bit. And what he's doing is this Galatian church, he's got in there and he started saying, hey, what if I could just turn you a little bit? 99 % of the time, it is not a denial. of Jesus is needed for salvation. It's a denial that he is all that is needed for
salvation. We start adding things to it, just like this church in Galatia is adding things to it that are not necessary and going, okay, listen, it's Jesus plus something else, but Jesus plus anything equals fake news. That's not real. Remember my very first youth pastor job, I got hired my very first full -time job and I went into the church and. When I got there, they had five students and within two weeks I made them all mad and they left. So I went from five students
to zero. It was an incredible ministry model. It's wonderful. But the reason I made them mad is that these five students, they really loved just sitting down and digging deep into the word of God. And it was amazing that they did that, but they thought that it was just for them, those five. And that's it, just to dig deep. And I said, okay, no, no, no guys, we're gonna be welcoming to everyone. This isn't just for you, it's for other people too. We're gonna allow everyone
into this. And they didn't like that. So they left and a couple of weeks later they said, hey, can I have a meeting with you? We got some questions for you. And I said, yeah, sure. So they sat down with me and they started asking me questions. They said, hey, listen, we need to know what translation of the Bible do you use? And I told them and they said, that's not the right one. Only this one is the right one. And I was like, well, I disagree. I can show you manuscript evidence
to why both of them. And they go, no, no, no. Let me ask you this. When you were baptized, you were baptized, right? I said, yeah, were you baptized in the name of Jesus? I said, yeah, I was baptized in the name of. God, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I got all of them, man. I nailed all of them. Like, well, if you weren't baptized in the name of Jesus, then it's not real. It doesn't count. I was like, oh, well, I disagree again. And they're like, okay, well,
let me ask you this. Are you out doing street witnessing? Because if you're not out street witnessing at least once a week, you're ashamed of the gospel. And I was like, well, I don't think I'm ashamed of the gospel, actually. I don't quite think that's true. And they go, hey, listen, we don't think that you're a Christian. We don't think that you're gonna go to heaven. And I said, guys, you missed it. You started
adding things to the gospel. You started taking things and going, yes, Jesus is good plus this. Jesus is great plus this. It's not plus anything. Jesus is all that matters. Jesus is the only thing that matters. Jesus is what we have to get back to because the gospel is already perfect. The gospel is this, is that Jesus came to this earth for a purpose. You and I have separated
ourself from God because of our sin. and Jesus came to this earth and lived the perfect life that you and I cannot live because in order to satisfy the payment for sin, the payment has to be perfect. Therefore, it requires a perfect person and Jesus coming as the perfect person stood in your place on a cross and he willingly went to a cross and paid the price that you were supposed to pay. but he did not stay on the cross. He went in a tomb and he beat sin and he beat
death by raising from that tomb. And if we put our faith and our trust in him and say, I trust what you did for me, that right there is what it takes for us to have a relationship with God. That's it. That's the gospel. That's the good news. We do not have to add anything to that. And that's good news for us. That's good news for us. The gospel is already perfect. And what this church at Galatia is doing here is they're saying, no, no, no, we gotta add some other things.
And Paul's saying you don't need to add anything. Don't get distracted by the culture that's trying to tell you these things. In fact, if anyone tells you that, don't believe it. He says this in verse eight. But even if we or an angel from heaven even should preach a gospel other than the one we preach to you, let them be under God's curse. Okay, now this is weird. An angel from heaven? Why would an angel from heaven preach something other than God? Why would they try
to add to the gospel? And this might be touchy for some people, but here's some examples of that. One of the biggest cults in the United States was a man who said that the angel Moroni came to him and told him to write a second testament, something else to add to the gospel known as the Book of Mormon. Another example of this is the religion called Islam, where Muhammad said that the angel Gabriel came to him and said,
hey, I need you to write the Quran. And you're gonna write this and this is gonna be a second part that is added to the gospel. And this is where this came from. All right, now listen, I'm not here to ruffle feathers, I'm not here to get you angry about this, but you need to understand that there is one way and the one way is Jesus. And so these are adding to that. And I'm not saying that we hate Mormons or we hate people that are Muslim, we don't do that.
Listen, we love them and we want them to know Jesus more than anything because that is the way, that is the one way. And even if an angel from heaven were to come and preach to you, and you need to understand, if an angel from heaven says something contrary to what the word of God says, they're not an angel from heaven. They're not working for Him if they're saying something different than Him. And you need to identify
and understand this is it. And what Paul is saying to this church, he's saying, you guys are being influenced by something else. And even if an angel from heaven were to say something else, you need to understand we do not add to this. This is it. This is the one. And what he's saying here is he's saying, hey listen, this is what matters. Verse nine, as we've already said, so I'll say it again. He's like, if you didn't get
it the first time, you gotta get this. If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God's curse. See, God creates, but Satan counterfeits. God creates and he creates beautiful and he creates perfect and Satan, all he can do is counterfeit it. I don't know if you noticed this about me. I hope you have actually, but your boy likes shoes. I'm just saying. Like I got some fresh kicks on right now. I know you've noticed that,
I'm just saying. But something that you might know, or might not know, I'm on a pastor's budget. And what that means is I gotta save up birthday money, I gotta save up Christmas money, I gotta save up all the money to be able to buy these. A couple years ago that I was in Israel, and we were on Israel, we were touring Israel, and it felt like, if I'm honest, it felt like we were touring all of Israel's bathrooms. All right, that's pretty much all we did. Like we just kept
stopping. Like people wouldn't have to go, and then they'd announce, they're like, hey, there's a restroom coming up, and everyone's like, I gotta go so bad. It happened every time. But every time we stopped, I didn't have to go because I was 30 years younger than most of the people on the trip. So I'm just kidding, I love you guys. Okay, that was a joke. But man, we would stop at these bathrooms and I remember one time we stopped there and across the way there was
a market. And I went over to this market and right away I saw this fresh pair of Jordans sitting there and I was like, man, I want those. All right, they looked good. And right under it, the price said $20. And I was like, those look real good. Those are in a pastor's budget. You know what I'm saying? Like that's where we're at. And so they looked good. And I go over until I picked them up and I actually saw them and I realized that they were absolutely garbage
quality. They looked good from the outside, but man, when you saw them, they were garbage quality. Here's the thing. When we look at the things that Satan counterfeits, we look at those things and they're enticing, but they will always let you down. They will always let you down because God creates and Satan counterfeits. And a lot of times we start chasing a counterfeit instead of realizing that the real thing is only in Jesus. It's nothing else. It's Jesus alone. Paul finishes
this section by saying this in verse 10. Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings or of God? Am I trying to please people if I were? Still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. He said, I'm gonna shoot you straight with the truth. I'm gonna give you the truth. I'm gonna give you the real thing right now. Because I could just cosign on what you're saying and yeah, you're good with
that. But it's not real. I had a man last night that came up to me after the service and he was extremely upset that I would say anything about the Quran. Extremely upset that it wasn't true, that I would say that it's not true. And I just told him, sir, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And I will stand on that truth. There is not all different roads that lead to the top of the mountain. I'm not here to please
people. That should not be our goal to just be like, no, no, no, we're gonna tiptoe and make sure we please people. We're gonna love people. We're gonna care for people. But man, we're gonna stand on the truth. Just like Paul said to the Galatians, man, I could just let you keep going, but I'm not living for you. I'm living for God. Let me ask you, who? are you living for? Who are you living for? Because religiosity, doing all the religious things, you know what that's
for? That's for other people. It's for you to prove to them how good you are. It's not for God because he's saying, listen, it's not about adding anything. It's about Jesus. Who are you living for? Jesus plus nothing equals everything. Listen to me, come back to Jesus. Get back to Jesus, make Him the only thing. Some of you in here, you've never heard the good news, you've never heard the gospel. You never accepted the
fact that Jesus died in your place. And today needs to be the day that you go and, hey, listen, I understand that it is all about Jesus and I'm willing to surrender my life to say I give up and I put my faith and trust in Jesus. Some of you have done that, you've put your faith and trust in Jesus, but man, the world, your life, the culture, the influences, just got you one degree off. Maybe just one little smidge off. And we have an opportunity to refocus, to get
back to what matters. When you came in today, you were given this cup. And what communion is, is communion is an opportunity. to reflect, to remember, and to focus on what God has done for you. But it's also a time for us to reflect on what place Jesus has in our life. Is he the loudest voice of influence in your life? Are you allowing culture to move you off one degree or is Jesus remaining in the place he needs to be? I want
you to take a few minutes and just reflect. as Jesus was in the upper room with the disciples before he went to the cross, before he went to pay the price for all of humanity. He took some bread and he broke it and he passed it to his disciples and he said, hey, this represents my body that is broken for you. He says, eat this in remembrance of me. It says that in the same way, Jesus took the cup and as he passed it around, he said, this is my blood that is poured out
on your behalf. Drink this in remembrance of me. God, we come before you with gratitude, with gratitude that you are the only way, God, that it does not rest on our shoulders because that is way too heavy of a burden. We cannot handle it, Lord, we need you. God, we thank you that
you sent your son, Jesus, for us. God, I pray that we would live in a way that shines the light of you, Jesus, that does not place burdens on ourself or on other people that don't need to be there, God, that we would eliminate anything that is plus, that is Jesus plus nothing in our life, God. God, I pray for each one of us in here that need to refocus, that need to refocus on what matters, that need to allow your voice to be the loudest voice of influence in our life.
I pray for those in here that need to give their life to you, that need to surrender to you for the first time. God, we praise you. We thank you. We're so grateful for you. And we pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.