Why Most Christians Get Discipleship Wrong: It Starts Here | Boot Camp | Pastor Josh Howerton

Hey guys, thanks for checking out this Bible teaching. Every week, release a podcast that corresponds to the sermon. It's like a little bit of a deeper dive where we hit some things that didn't make it into the sermon, some theological concepts. We talk about things that are going on in our culture and how to think about them from a biblical perspective. We call that podcast Live Free, an episode releases every Monday that corresponds to the sermon. If you would like to check out Live Free, just go to the Lake Point YouTube channel and look for the Podcast tab there. We'll see you at Live Free. Now enjoy this Bible teaching. All right, man, welcome. Have a New Year Lake Point family. It's good to see y'all. Yellow grade or bell looks great. Hey, if you can do this, turn your neighbor and tell them have a New Year. Do it real quick. It's awesome, man. Now turn to the other one when you're trying to avoid. Tell them they look like they lost weight. Cheer them up. That's great. That's great, man. Okay. Hey, I want to do this. We are starting off in 2026. We're going right at it. You are beginning a series today. I've been planning for over a year. The title of the series is Boot Camp Training for Team Jesus. It's going to be awesome. It's going to be awesome. Here's what we're going to do. We are going to begin 2026 loving the Word of God. That's all this thing is about, man. We love the Word of God here at Lake Point. Sure. So you actually y'all are doing what I was getting ready to do. So let's practice loving, responding to the Word of God being truthfully preached. Let's hear good, amen. Let's practice. Amen. Let's get a preach pastor. Come on, man. Let's go applause like the glory of God was just, come on, man. That's it. So I know there are from Christmas services. I'm going to talk about this here in a second. There are tons and tons of you who are new. What you need to know about Lake Point, outset of 2026 is this is a Word of God church. What we are all about here is getting in here, opening this book, Word for Word, line by line, and just going, man, what does the Word of God say? So here's, I'm going to talk about that more here in a second. It's going to be great. So one other thing, before services, I'm at a dude out in the lobby. His name's Brian. I want to give him a shout out. I don't know where he is right now. Brian, listen to the pot. You've met him out in the lobby right before this. Brian, listen to the podcast. Start to get into the Word of God. Start to have his life change. Young dude, have his life change. For Christmas, because his life has been so changed by Jesus, lives in Indiana, for Christmas, asked his parents for plane tickets to fly with his Christian dad here to worship at Lake Point. He's here this weekend. Well, y'all helped me welcome Brian. What's up, Brian? Shout out, bud. Browdy you. Browdy you, bud. And here's a deal, man. Listen, when young dudes are opening the Word of God, having their lives changed, and want to fly with their Christian dad to worship at a church, something's going all right. And we want to lean into that, OK? OK, here's what we're doing. Y'all got to listen fast today. We are starting this week. This sermon's going to be a little different than usual. We're starting a series called, again, Boot Camp, Training for Team Jesus. I want to start by setting a tone for this series really quick. This story, as it was related to me, is an essentially true story from a college campus in the 1960s. Now, before I tell this story, do we have any marines in a house? We got any marines? All right, let's see it. I see you, bro. I see this guy. That's two of them right here. All right, give these guys a hand over here. Come on, let's say thank you. Thank y'all. Say it, man. OK. In every service, the marines have loved this story. So true story, college campus in 1960s. A bunch of students gather in an auditorium. Thousand students packed out auditorium and reps from four of the branches of the military came as recruiters. So first up, Guy from the Army gets up, and he gives a little pitch. He's like, hey, I'm from the United States Army. Join Army. You're going to get it on the GI Bill. Your college can be free. Uncle Sam's going to pay for it. It's going to be awesome. You should join the Army. Then, lady from the Navy gets up. She explains, hey, you should join the Navy. If you get in, you're going to learn job skills. You're going to have career advancement opportunities. The guy from the Air Force can tell you you're going to need to fly planes in the Air Force. Actually, you need to fly even more in the Navy. It's going to be awesome. You should join the Navy. Then, dude, from the Air Force gets up, and he's like, hey, you join the Air Force. You learn to fly, jets. You can work on engines. You can retire early. You can make a ton of money with the skills you learn from the Air Force. You should join the Air Force. It's going to be awesome. Then, as this store, OK, OK, Air Force, I see you. All right. We're grateful for you, too. Then, dude, from the Marines gets up, and he was scary and scarred up and real, real, real ugly. OK. OK. All right. Got fun today. And as the story goes, he grabs a lectern, and he leans forward and doesn't say a word for over 60 seconds. He just makes eye contact with everybody in the room, real awkward, like I'm doing right now. Then, when he's done, he says something like this. Ladies and gentlemen, I was asked today to come recruit potential Marines. But from the looks of this audience, I think it is a waste of my time, and yours. I know that you expect me to tell you that if you join the Marines, you're going to love it, too. You expect me to tell you about career advancement opportunities, an early retirement, lots of job skills that you can put into practice in the private sector. But I'm not going to tell you any of that, because it's probably not going to be true if you join the Marines. If you join the Marines, you're going to hate it. If you join the Marines, you'll curse the day you were born. You'll be mad at God for making your mom, and you'll be mad at your mom for giving birth to you. You'll go to bed hungry and cold and thirsty. You will be shot at. Some of you will be hit by live ammunition. Some of you will be killed in the line of duty, because when you join the Marine Corps, you're the first ones in. You're the last ones out. But I'm wasting your time, and I'm wasting mine, because I've looked over this crowd. I've made eye contact with every single one of you. And from looks of you, I don't see a single person who has what it takes to be in the United States Marine Corps. Forgive me for wasting your time. Good day. And then he closes little book and walked off now. After a long silence, what this guy that told me that this story said happened, is there was a handful of people at all the tables to the other branches. But the line to sign up for the Marine Corps was out the door. Why? Because what people want more than an easy button for their life is they want a mission worth living for and dying for. That's what they want. And listen, when Jesus Christ came, listen man, when Jesus Christ came to the surface, what he did not do is he didn't lower the bar and dumb it down. And that's where it tells you if you want to grow a church, you got to lower the bar and you got to dumb it down. Jesus didn't do that. What he did is he came and he said things like this. If anyone would follow me, you must be willing to take up your cross, an instrument of death, deny yourself and follow me. His message was essentially, come die with me if you want to be one of my disciples. And what we want to do at Lake Point is we don't want to lower the bar and dumb it down. Is we want to raise the bar to the same place Jesus had it and say, come die with them. Let's be disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, actually. So what we're doing, heads up. What we're doing this year, I've planned the entire years preaching calendar from raising a high bar of discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ. 2025 was insane. We grew by like two and a half megashirks in 2025, but we are not in the crowd business. We are in the disciple business at Lake Point Church. That's what we're in. And so we're gonna be calling us as people to be disciples of Jesus Christ. So I need you to have two things for every week of the series, and I'm gonna shoot you really straight. I need you not to miss a single week of the series. So grab these two things. Number one, I need you to have this guy right here. Grab this little guy. So, top of the series is bootcamp training for Team Jesus. This dude, field guide. I want you to have this every week of the series. Write your name in it, write your number in it, single dude, you can sit next to some single girls. They're gonna leave behind. You got their number. Boom, you're welcome. That's it. We're trying to help you out. Grab this guy. And I wanna show you a few things before I cast Vision of the Future. So number one, you got this. There's another thing I want you to have. I wanna raise a bar a little bit of Lake Point, okay? At least every week of the series, I want you to bring a physical copy of the Word of God. A physical copy of the Word of God. Here's what I'm saying that. It's listen at Lake Point. If you're brand new, we are all about this book. We believe this book is inspired. It's an errant. Every single word of this thing came from the living God. It's the only perfect thing we got on earth. And you can lean your life and your family's life up against the promises in this book because every single one of these promises is yes and amen in the crucifixion of the reason Lord Jesus Christ. So this thing is worth it, man. And I need you every week to see, man, what that guy's saying up there is in this book. And what I'm saying is not in this book, ignore it and don't listen to anything I say. What matters is it comes from this book. So I need you to grab one of these. Now, what this field guy is, is all this is is how we are trying to align our church and your life. This is for you, you're gonna see this. Our church and your life to the vision from this book. So let me get in and talk about how this gonna work. This term is gonna be a little different. First half is gonna feel like an infomercial, back half is gonna feel like nitrous oxide. It's gonna be great. Okay, so before I talk about what's going on in the future, let me stop and talk about what happened in 2025 in our church, it was insane. Okay, in 2025, you, and I'm using the word you on purpose. You planted 11 new churches in the hardest to reach cities in North America. You did that in 2025. If you didn't know this, we are all in, and listen, those aren't campuses of lake point. Those are independent autonomous churches led by other pastors and other elder teams in other cities. And that, so planted 11 of those. Every year we are channeling like $2 million to planting new autonomous churches in the least-reached cities in the United States of America. Why? Because Jesus said to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. So we're at, listen, it's kind of a marine thing. Wherever is the hardest place to go, we're going right at it. That's what we wanna do, okay? Now, that brings our total, the total number of churches planted by lake point now, by the end of January will be 90. You have now planted 90 churches in the hardest three cities in North America now. Here's what I love. Okay, here's what I love. That actually, there are more people every week attending churches planted by lake point than attend lake point on a given weekend. So let me put this in perspective. This is amazing to me. So at lake point Christmas services felt like the whole state of Texas came. It was awesome. It was awesome. Lake point Christmas services in person attendance at lake point Christmas services was a little over 55,000 people. That's amazing. Every single week, listen, every single week, 57,000 people are worshiping in churches you planted through lake point. Amen, amen, amen. That's amazing. That's amazing, okay? Now, some other things that happened in 2025, in 2025, 3,854 people completed, rooted, where's my rooted people at? Where you at, rooted people? Come on, ma'am. Now I'll talk about this later in the series. I need every single person to do rooted at least one time in your life. That's a 10 week discipleship experience. It is like legit boot camp. This is where we teach you the rhythms of being on team Jesus will get to that later. But 3800 people completed rooted in 2025 and the number that matters the most, by getting emotional, it's gonna be right here. The number that matters the most in 2025, 3,131 people surrendered their lives to the Lord, to Jesus Christ, and were baptized at Lake point. Come on, ma'am. 3,131 people in 2025. That's amazing, okay? Now, if you're new here, I need you to know how this works. Some of you here in this, you're like, well, is this guy just all about the numbers? Or you guys just all about the numbers? Okay, let me say two things. To that, I'm gonna respond. Number one, are you all about the numbers? Yes, I am, absolutely. I'm gonna say that for two reasons. Number one, we literally have a whole book of the Bible called numbers. Okay, God's all about the numbers. I'm gonna be into the numbers. Here's the other reason that I'm all about the numbers. If you say, Josh, are you all about the numbers? My response to that is always a very defiant, absolutely I am. Yep, I'm all about the numbers. I'm all about the number of people saved, of lives changed, of families fixed, of orphans adopted, of addicts freed, and eternities changed to the glory of God. Yep, we are all about those numbers. Yes, we are. And every number is a person, and every person matters to God. Okay, so yes, now, in 2025, we also added a brand new campus in 2025. Let me list all of our current campuses, because a lot of you are new, and you don't even know we got campuses all our DW. Right now, our campuses are Rockwall campus, the ski, that's the artist formerly known as Town East. We got the Firewheel campus, Forny campus, East Dallas, North Dallas. We got Lake Point in Espanyol, Gloria Adios. Come on, Lake Point in Espanyol. And then in 2025, we added, helped me welcome them again, our Sunnyvale campus, 2025. What's up, Sunnyvale? Come on, now. I hesitate to tell you the names, locations, and I'm not telling you timelines for the new stuff I'm about to say. I just need you to know how this works. So I'm gonna shoot you really straight. If you're new here, here's how, I got a leadership conviction. When you talk to people like adults, if you treat people like adults, they act like adults. So I'm gonna talk to you in a really straight, forward way, talk to you like an adult. The reason I'm not, I don't like telling you timelines and places, is because the speed at which our vision accomplished is determined by your generosity, by our generosity. So more generosity, we do stuff faster, less generosity, we got to slow it down, so we stay within the resources God has given us. So what we're doing in 2026, a couple of new things. We are adding a new campus, a permanent location, in 2026, please help me. Welcome home, Roy City campus coming out to 2026. What's up, Roy City? Come on, man. Amen, amen. Now, we purchased that property, it's opening up probably sometime closer to Easter or some time back then. We purchased property right next to the Bucky's on I-30. What's up, Bucky's? I'm gonna call it the Bucky's campus. I'm never calling it Roy City. I'm calling it the Bucky's campus. And I'm really excited about that campus because I'm gonna shoot you really straight. Here at the Rockwall campus, I need you all to look around at this room right now. Look at the people sitting on those stairs, look at the people sitting on those stairs. The reason I'm excited about the Roy City campus is we need 2,000 people from the Rockwall campus to leave and go there. I'm not joking. I'm not joking even a little. We need your seat, we need your parking space, we need all the things, okay? So, and I'm not above bribing you to go. So, at the Roy City campus, communion will be great juice and be vernuggish. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna be great, okay? See that kids excited. It's gonna be awesome. Okay, now, some of you hear that and you're brand new and you're like, man, why does the church have to be so big? Here's why the church gotta be so big. My question back to you if you're like, why's it gotta be so big is, we got two choices, which one do you want us to do? Either we can keep reaching one more person adding one more service or adding one more campus. Or we can stop doing it and tell everybody else, y'all can go to hell. I like doing the first one better than the second one because I got a Santa Fe in a Jesus someday. Are y'all in for that, okay? So, that's how it rolls. We're gonna roll on that, okay? Now, open up this guy, open up and feel guide and open up and find this page right here. You're gonna see at the very bottom, we printed this. I'm gonna shoot you kinda straight, printing enough for all you guys is really expensive. So, we did this, at the bottom of this thing, you're gonna see this one more card right here. We printed this so that thing is intentionally a tear off card is perforated. Here's what that is. Again, I am using this whole series to go, here's what it looks like to be on Team Jesus boot camp. That one more card, what Jesus said is with a measure you use, it will be measured back to you. What you're gonna notice is that the best way for you to grow in your relationship with Jesus is to help somebody discover their relationship with Jesus. So, check this out. We are not trying to be a big church. We've, listen, people don't believe me when I say this. We literally have never in my entire time leading Lake Point ever set a numeric goal. We have no growth goals at Lake Point. We literally make none of those goals. Here's what we are all about. We are about making disciple, making disciples. Every single disciple being somebody that reaches somebody else for Jesus and they can make that person into a disciple. So, here's what we're about. Not about being a big church, we're about reaching one more. Every single person reaching one more. Jesus left 99 to chase the one. What a lot of people say is 99, they're like 99 out of 100 is great, okay? Listen, 99 out of 100 is great until your kid is the one that's lost. And then all of a sudden, you want a church to move heaven, earth, and hell to do whatever it takes to chase after that one. So, what we wanna do is have 25, 26, 27,000 people who are spirit-filled and chasing after one more person for the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. So, here's what this is. I do this, I'm asking you to do this too. All I'm asking you to do is you ask who's the one person in my life that's closest to me, but farthest from God. You write their name on this little one more card and then you stick it somewhere, you're gonna see it every day. This is what I do. Mine is literally taped to my bathroom mirror so that twice a day when I brush my teeth, I see that name and I pray for my one more dude. And then when I get saved, that guy gets saved, I get a new one more card and I write it, I stick it there. And when you see it, pray every day that God would give you a chance to show that person the love of Christ and invite them to a Lake Point service where they hear the gospel clearly preached. Here's my commitment to you. I will make sure I work very, very hard to do this. I will make sure that the gospel is very clearly preached and they get a chance to respond to it when they come to Lake Point. Okay, now, heads up, I'm gonna give you a little pro tip. Don't put it where everybody in their mom can see that card. So don't put it on your computer screen and your cubicle at work. You write, Lee Roy's name on that sucker and then Lee Roy wanders into your cubicle and he's like, bro, why's my name on that card? And you're like, well, you're going to hell and I'm trying to fix it. Okay, I don't, you know, it's like, it's just, it's awkward. So don't do that, put it somewhere else. So, but tear that card off and then put it somewhere where you can begin doing that. Now, turn to this page of your field guide. Here's what this is. You guys have been asking this for this for years. This is the 2026 calendar of events what's going on at Lake Point. Now here's how this works. The dominant analogy for the church in the New Testament is a family. Here's what we are. We are one big dysfunctional family at Lake Point. Welcome aboard. You're going to fit right in. Okay, big dysfunctional family. Now, in the same way that, that personal families, they don't rise to the level of dad's intentions. They fall to the level of the parents habits. I'm going to say that one more time. That's really important. Families do not rise to the level of the dad's intentions. They fall to the level of the family's habits. Here's what this is. These are our family traditions at Lake Point. We, every service is important. I'm going to open up the word of God and we sing the songs and pray the prayers and people's lives get changed. But there's a few things that we do every year that are designed to be like family traditions that done over and over and over. It starts forming something in you. They're all right there. I need you to plan your entire years calendar around them. If you had a vacation during one of those things, move the vacation. If you were getting married during one of those things, get married in a prayer and worship night, whatever you got to do. Now the first one is you'll see it at the very top. The first one's coming up on January 21st. It's our prayer and worship night. Who has ever been to a Lake Point prayer and worship night? Who's been there? That's awesome. Now if you need to know it, in my opinion, that is literally the most important thing we do all year. We got a conviction at Lake Point. We have to win the war in the spiritual before we wage it in the physical. If you've never been there, it's insane. We're on pack however many 15, 17, 18,000 people in all of our campuses. Every single campus is going to be an overflow, overflow, overflow, overflow. And if you've never been there, people start showing up an hour early to pray over the seats, to pray for the prayer meeting. And then we get in here and we assault the throne of heaven for Jesus to stretch out his hand and pour out his spirit in a supernatural way, in the words of the Bible, to perform signs and wonders to exalt his name and do good for God's glory and people's good. We will see more miraculous outcomes from that one night than like everything we do all year. So mark your calendar, you need to be there. Number one, that's family rhythm. So that's coming up. Now, go to this next page. You're going to see this. That page says, know the word. My job, listen, I'm about, you cut me open, here's who I am. I'm just, I'm a dude that loves teaching the Bible. I love the Bible with my whole heart and I'm not trying to put the attention on me real quick. But what I do, I just want to be honest with you, like I work very, very, very, very hard to make sure that the Bible teaching at Lake Point is taught accurately, with depth, in a way that is actually going to change your life and family. I work really hard at that. Now, so if you're here, and you're like, well, I don't even know how to read the Bible, it's okay, I'm going to teach you this year. I'm going to teach you this year. So here's how we're going to do that. I want you to know how this works. We're going to do that in a few ways. Number one, we do this every week. You don't know what we do, we're going to do it today. You're going to see it in about two minutes. We open up this thing and I'm going to read it line by line and then I'll explain it and preach it and then read the next line and then preach what it says. So in services every week, all year, we're going to be preaching through books of the Bible, verse by verse by verse, it's going to be awesome. Number two, I need every single person to do rooted at least one time in your life, in rooted, we're going to teach you how to study the Bible. And then number three, you're going to see this little thing, look up here, so only about 30% of what I learn in sermon prep makes it into the sermon. I know that sounds crazy. You're like, they're really long though. Seriously, only 30% makes it in. So what we have is we have a podcast called Live Free that takes you on a deeper dive into the word. It's a bunch of stuff that didn't make it into the sermon goes a little deeper and we talk about what's going on in the world, okay? The purpose of that is to get 90 more minutes in an interesting way of Bible teaching into you. So here's what you can do. You're going to see QR codes all over this little field guide. You're going to see QR codes. Ask your grandkids how those work. And what you can do right there is you'll see this QR code right down here. You scan that thing, that's going to take you to a download spot for the new Lake Point app and this is new for us. We've been working on this for like six months. That Lake Point app is all about helping you learn the word of God. So you're going to be able to click and you'll see right there all in the same place. There's the sermon, there's the corresponding Live Free podcast that goes deeper into what Josh taught. And then this is new every single week in that app will have a daily Bible reading plan, one chapter per day that aligns with what I preach that week. So you can open that sucker up and it's right there for you. But our job is to get you into the Word of God. You can scan that QR code and download that sucker. It's going to be awesome. Now last thing, turn to the page. This got this little triangle there. Here's what this is. That is how we make disciples at Lake Point. The next six weeks of this series is me walking through how the Bible says somebody becomes a fully formed disciple of Jesus Christ. That's that sucker right there. Now what you're going to see in there, here's the question you need to be asking for the next six weeks. I'm going to shoot you really straight. I need you to ask the question, what is the one step of obedience that Jesus is telling me I need to take to follow him more faithfully? What's the one step? And then check this out. Whenever he tells you what that is, do it. Do it. We are faith people. God says to do it, you do it. If God tells you to run through a brick wall, you start running and you trust him for a whole. You just start running. Head first and let fast you can. So this whole series, I want you to ask that question now. Here's why I need you not to do. Let me let you off the hook. I also need you to chill out a little bit. Don't try to do everything at once. So what I don't want you to do is try to do in here what you're going to do at the gym this week. Whereas you have been to the gym since the Reagan administration. And then you walk in and it's like, I'm going to get it all done. And you do every single machine in the entire gym. And then you never go back because you can't get off the toilet, your hair sore. It's like everything's sore. So here's, I don't need you to do that. Here's all I need you to do. I just need you during this series to ask the question, what's the one step of obedience Jesus is asking me to take to follow him more closely. And then whatever he tells you, do it and your life will be blessed in the doing. You're going to watch it. That's how it works. Does that make sense? Okay, apparently not. Okay, that makes sense. It makes sense to me. It makes sense to me. Okay, now that's great. Now, emotional gear shift, I'm going to preach a mini sermon on the back half of this because it all begins right here. Here's why I'm going to preach the next few minutes. It all begins at the top of that triangle. A disciple is a person who believes it is finished. Now, would you please do this? Would you please do all of our campuses? Stand with me out of reverence for the reading of the Word of God. And let me read these three verses from John 19. Jesus is on the cross here. And it says later, knowing that everything had now been finished and so that scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, I am thirsty. Now, here's the question, how can the same guy who said he was living water now say he thirsts? Verse 29, a jar of wine vinegar was there. So they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of a hisop plant. That's interesting. And lifted it to Jesus lips when he had received the drink, he said, three greatest words in the Bible. It is finished. And with that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. And all God's people said, amen, y'all can have a seat. So let me preach this in just a few minutes. There's only a two point mini sermon. I'm going to do it like this. It is finished. What's finished? And then it is finished. It's finished for us right now. So let me start with this. It is finished. Discipleship to Jesus does not begin with trying. It begins with trusting. And if you get that order wrong, you're going to turn good news into good advice. You're going to turn Jesus from a savior into a life coach. Christianity's going to feel like bad news instead of good news to you and you'll end up in hell instead of heaven. And I mean that for real. Now let me set this stage for what Jesus says right here. Jesus here is on the cross. He has had his clothes stripped from his body. He's had the flesh stripped from his back. He's had nine inch nails slid through the bunches of nerve endings in his wrists and his ankles. After he had the flesh stripped from his back, he had a 90 pound roughshod cross beam full of splinters placed on the exposed nerve endings on the back of his ribcage. And then when we get here, you're going to notice this is a little Bible nerd fun fact. You probably didn't know this. In this passage it says, he cries out, I am thirsty. When he does this, somebody puts it says, a sponge on a stick with wine and they shove it in Jesus mouth. Interesting fact, who was putting that sponge in Jesus mouth was a Roman soldier. It is almost certain that what that was was something called a Tersorium. A Tersorium was part of a Roman soldier's field kit. And this is gross, but it's gross on purpose. And what that Roman soldier did is he heard Jesus say, I'm thirsty. The Tersorium was a sponge on a stick that a Roman soldier would use to wipe themselves after going the bathroom. And so Jesus cries out, I'm thirsty. Roman soldier in order to mock our Lord Jesus Christ, pulls out his used toilet paper, dips it in disgusting wine vinegar, shoves it into the mouth of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then Jesus had just finished praying. Father forgive them for they know not what they do. And with the taste of a Roman soldier's bowel movement on his lips, he answered his own prayer by dying for the sins of humanity. And just before he did that, the gospel of John doesn't record this, but the gospel of Luke does. It says that he quote, cried out in a loud voice, pushed up on his nail pierced hands. And he cried out these three words in English. It is finished. Now in English, it's three words, but in Greek, it's only one word. It's this word, it's the word to tell a sti. Best word in the Bible, to tell a sti. Now, I was gonna get tattoo of to tell a sti, but Janice said my body's already perfect, so I did. But here's what this is, to tell a sti, what's interesting is to tell a sti, it wasn't like a theological or spiritual word. To tell a sti, it was just like a normal word that people would use. It was used, some Bible scholars would say, in three contexts. To tell a sti was used in a business context. So if this guy was owed money by this guy, then this guy to whom the debt was owed, he would draw up a receipt of the debt, and he would keep it on a file. And as long as this guy owed the debt to this guy, he'd keep that receipt there. But whenever this guy finished paying off his debt, watch this, in full. When the debt was paid in full, this business owner, he would take out the receipt of the debt, and when the debt had been fully paid, he would write a word over the top of the receipt to record the debt had been fully paid, and the word he would write on the receipt would be to tell a sti. It is finished, debt is paid in full. Now, it wasn't just used in a business context, it was also used in a judicial context. So in Roman courts, if somebody was convicted of a crime, then the Roman judicial system would keep essentially a document that was a record of the penalty that this guy had to pay for his transgressions to be on file. But whenever this guy's sentence had been fully served, he'd fully served his sentence, then they would come back, pull the file, and they would write a word over the record of the sentence on there to record that the sentence had been fully served, and the word they would write on the sheet of paper was the word to tell a sti. It is finished. Now, was it just used in a judicial context, it was used in a business context, it was used in a military context. Now check this out, just let's go a little deeper, stay with me, we're gonna bubble nerd out for a second. When you read in your English Bible, the word gospel, it means good news. The Greek word that gets translated gospel is the Greek word, evangelion. Now, again, that word, evangelion, not a spiritual word, it was a military term. No, no, check this out, you gotta stay with me. Now, here's how this word would get used. If a city in the Roman Empire heard that an enemy was coming, an enemy wanted to come and watch this, steal, kill, and destroy everything that city had. What the city would do is they would gather all the fighting men of the city. Sometimes it was called federal headship. Sometimes instead of gathering a bunch of dudes for a unit, they would each, they would choose one guy, their best warrior, and they would send him forward as a champion to fight on behalf of the city, and it's like, you pick your champion, we'll pick our champion, fight to the death, and then watch this. The outcome of that battle would be watch imputed back to the city who did none of the fighting. So if the champion or the unit went and they won the battle, it would mean abundant life for the city. But if the champion or the unit went and they lost the battle, then their defeat would be imputed back to the city, and it would mean steal, kill, destroy for the city. So they would send them all out, and then they would go and they would fight the battle. Now, if they won the battle, watch, on behalf of the city, they'd pick one dude from the unit, the fastest guy, and they would send him back to watch, to Harold the good news that victory had been won on behalf of the city. Guess what they called that one guy? They called him an evangelist, an evangelist, and they would send him back to Harold the good news that the victory had been won. So think about this, you're the city down in this little valley. Everybody, everybody wakes up, and their eyes are on the horizon, waiting to see, did we win or did we lose? And then one day, the evangelist crests the top of the mountain. You see him, Romans 10, how beautiful the feet of those who bring good news. That's where that came from. And the evangelist would shout the news of victory accomplished on their behalf down to the city, and he would say something like this. What he would do is he would, in their language, is he would preach a gospel. He would declare good news, and he would say something like this. He would say, it's finished. To tell us die, the victory has been accomplished. The enemy has been defeated, and instead of steel-killed destroy, we get life, life abundant life. Now, are you picking up what I'm putting down? Now, let's go back to Jesus, okay? When Jesus is on the cross, and he hangs on those nail pierced hands, and he cries out these things, to tell us die. He was saying, the debt of all of your sin, if you're a Christian, past sin that you've committed, that you can't forget, present sin, this lock in you up in a stronghold, and you're trying really hard, but you can't get out of it. Future sin that you're gonna commit, you don't even know you're gonna commit yet. He was saying the debt for your sin is fully paid. The judgment for your sin has been fully served, and then he was saying this, and this is my favorite one. So, let's go one layer deeper. Go back to Genesis two and three. When Adam and Eve sin, God comes to Adam and Eve, and he declares to them something Bible scholars call the Proto-Evangelion. It means the first telling of the gospel. And he tells Adam in Genesis two and three, he says, someday, someday one of your offspring, one, one of your offspring is gonna rise up. And this serpent that just wrecked everything, he's gonna do battle with that serpent, and that serpent is gonna bruise his heel, but that serpent crusher is gonna come someday, and he's gonna stomp on the head of that serpent, he's gonna kill him. Now, when Jesus goes to the cross, this is so great. When Jesus goes to the cross and pulls up and shouts to tell us die, that was a battle cry. And what he was saying was, at the cross, Colossians two says they went to the cross, and he disarmed the rulers and authorities, the principalities and the powers, Satan, death and demons. What he was saying is he was saying, enemy defeated, serpent crusher is here. I've stomped on his head. He's dead. Victory is accomplished on your behalf. Life, life, abundant life, to tell us die, it's finished. Amen, church. That's what he was saying. He was saying, it's done for you. It's already been done. And here's the big idea. Listen, listen, here's the big idea. Is you didn't have to do anything. He did all of the work, and we reap all of the reward. It is finished. Ephesians two says it like this, for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing. This is a gift of God. Your salvation had nothing to do with what you do or how good you can be. In fact, you didn't contribute anything to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary. That's all you did, okay? So number one, it is finished. What's finished? Everything necessary to put you back into a right relationship with the Father. All right, now, let me land a plane like this. Not just it is finished, it, this is so great. It is finished. Right now, it's finished, okay? So here's our problem. In my heart, I, in my head, know it's finished. Everything necessary for God to be good with me. It worked cool. Everything is done that need to be done, but I wake up every day and I ask a man, I forget. It's like my heart forgets that. And so what you will end up doing, just stay with me. What you'll end up doing is you'll start believing that God's level of love for you is dependent on your level of obedience to Him. And so in your heart, you'll start feeling like this, okay? Well, when I'm reading my Bible and I'm going to church and I'm like, at least avoiding the big sins and I'm being a good dad or a good mom or whatever it is, well, then me and God are good. But if I'm not doing those things or I'm struggling with like big sins, then he's probably angry with me, discussing with me or disappointed with me. Now, here's why this is a big deal. Because Satan knows he can't take away your salvation so he wants to take away your enjoyment of it. He labors day and night to do that and check this out. If Satan can get you to believe that the heart of the Father is against you and not for you, that even though you've been adopted as a son of the living God, you'll spend your entire life hiding from Him, avoiding Him. And when you sin, you'll run away from Him instead of running to Him, trusting that He has grace and love left for you. This is why that's a big deal. Now, here's why I'm noticed, okay? Loathe these many years. What I've noticed is that some people, they don't believe it is finished, but they believe it was finished. So they believe, okay, well, you know, when I was walking with God, we were good. But now I screwed it up and I'm in the doghouse and me and God are not good. And what you actually believe is that it was finished and it's not anymore because you screwed it up. That's what you think. Some people, they believe, it's kind of finished. So they believe it's like faith and grace plus me working really hard, doing really good equals rightness with God. They believe it's kind of finished. Now, I say something a little spicy, but it's my, I love you and it's my job to love you enough to tell you the truth. This right here, it's kind of finished is the official doctrine of the Catholic Church. Okay, so let me just shoot you really straight. We love our Catholic bosensisters. We're gonna see a lot of Catholic bosensisters in heaven, but the official doctrine of the Catholic Church is that it's faith plus works equal salvation in some sense. I'm gonna read this to you. This is from the Council of Trent, session six. This is the Catholic doctrine. Justification is not by faith alone, that's what they say. Works done in God's grace are part of salvation. At wrong, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Swing and a miss. We know this because Galatians 2.16 says this. It says, no that a person is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we too have put our faith in Christ Jesus, why? So that we may be justified. That word actually I'll get to that in a second. Justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law, no one will be justified. No one. Your salvation has absolutely nothing to do with what you do. Your salvation has everything to do with what he did, he accomplished and he finished everything. And it's only dependent on him. It's only dependent on him. Now, some people, they don't believe it was finished, or kind of finished, what some people believe is they think they will be finished. So they think, all right man, there's some future, better version of me. God's gonna really love me whenever I like, give my act together and clean stuff up and get rid of these bad habits. Well they ain't gotta love me. Here's what's gonna happen. When you do that, is church people are awesome at this. You just start showing everybody the fake you. You just get real good at hiding all the stuff you're actually dealing with. That's what most churches do. A bunch of fake people. And so you get in and it's like people ask you how you're done and that's always fine. Everything's good, we're real good. Everything's good, kids good, marriage's good, we're good, everything's good. Everything's good, great, great. And then nobody confesses actually any real sin. They just give their little fake version of them to everybody else. And if they're gonna confess anything, it'll be little things. Like, oh I'm struggling with my Bible reading lately. You know, it's like, so let me just tell you this, Matt, the fake you is doing just fine. Fake you's just fine. Here's a big deal. Jesus didn't die for the fake you. Jesus died for the real you. Listen, Jesus died for the real you. The real Jesus died on a real cross for the real you. And if you give him your life, he can really change it forever. That's what he did. He loves you as you are right now. Okay. Now, here's why this is a big deal. Jesus did not cry out. It was finished. He did not cry out. It's kind of finished. He did not cry out. It will be finished. When Jesus pushed up on those nail pierced hands as he was choking to death. And with his final breath, what he cried out was, it is finished right now. It's finished. Everything necessary for you and God to be reconciled and good, totally done. It's done. Now, this is, let me, let me just, just, just, just, single me here. To tell a style, when he says this in English, we only have three verb tenses, past, present, future. It's really confusing. There's actually no way to explain this in English. In Greek, there's four verb tenses, not three. In Greek, there's a verb tense called the perfect verb tense. To tell a style is in the perfect tense. I'm gonna read you from a Bible commentary, what that means. It says, to tell a style is in the perfect tense, which signals a past, completed action with abiding results. The work of salvation has been completed once and for all, and there is nothing that can alter the state of affairs it has established. Now, let's roll. If you were picking up, well, that just put down, that's the best news you ever heard. A past action with completed abiding results. Now, let me finish this in a similar way. So this is in the Gospel John. The Gospel John was written by, it's great. Okay, so what a trick question. We're gonna teach you how to read the Bible this year, okay? Now, in the Gospels, John the disciple, he's got a nickname, his nickname is the one whom Jesus loved. That's what one of the Gospels calls John. His nickname. Now, here's the problem with that. That nickname is only in the Gospel of John that was written by, you don't get to choose your own nickname. That's the problem with that, okay? So what John does is he doesn't just write this Gospel, he writes three other books of the New Testament, first, second, and third John, okay? Long on clarity, short on cute, on the titles there, okay? No. I want you to see how John, he actually gives us a peek into what's happening in heaven every second of your life, to show us how to tell us that was a past action that is still having abiding results in heaven. Now, check this out, here's what he says in first John. He says, hey, if we confess our sins, like when you stop doing the fake you thing and you get like, here's what you need, I'll talk about this in a few weeks, you need a band of brothers that you can be real with or a band of sisters you can be real with. And what it means to confess our sins is it's just going, hey man, all of us we trust in the grace of Jesus. And so I'm just gonna be honest with you, I don't got this, I'm struggling with this thing, we all pray for me, that's all it is. I don't got this, I'm struggling with this thing, we all pray for me, that's all it means. And he says, hey, if we confess our sins, he says this, he is faithful and what's that word right there? Faithful and just, interesting. And we'll forgive our sins and purify us from all our righteousness. Now, here's the question, class, how can it be just to forgive sins that would make any sense? Forgiveness of sins is by definition unjust. What in the world does he mean? God is just to forgive sins. The next verse tells us what it means and it's the best news you've ever heard. Second John 2, starting in verse 1, he says, my dear children, I write this to you so that you won't sin. Grace doesn't free us to sin, grace frees us from sin. So he's going, man, I'm writing these things to you to give you power to get free from sin. But if anybody does sin, so heads up, if you've been a Christian for longer than like 40 seconds, you're still going to sin. News flash, okay? He's going, when you do sin, I got some good news for you. We have an advocate with the father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Okay, now, let's go a layer of deeper and let's finish it right here. When he, go back to that, I want him to see it. When he uses this word advocate, it's the Greek word for a defense attorney. It's a legal term. Here's why that's really interesting. If you go to the book of Revelation, Revelation calls Satan, quote, the accuser of the brethren. And when Revelation uses the word accuser, it's the Greek word for a prosecuting attorney. So here's what he's saying. Every second of your life, it's like there's a courtroom in heaven. And every single time you sin, Satan, the accuser who wants you destroyed and condemned, he stands up and he says something like this to God, the just judge. He says, your honor, Josh Howard and sinned again for the 3,787th, 946,000, whatever it is, time. Josh sinned again. And your honor, your word says that sin deserves death. The wages of sin is death. And you said that not one jot, tidal or Iota of the law would fail to be accomplished. Your word will hold true. So Josh sinned, sin deserves death. Your honor, you must condemn Josh Howard. And then it's almost like there's a hush in the courtroom in heaven. Everybody's like, what's going to happen? And then from the back of the courtroom, somebody stands up and says, objection, your honor. And you look back and it's Jesus Christ himself. And then he walks forward and he takes his place on the bench right next to you in the position of a defense attorney. Now remember this, what a good attorney does is they don't ask a judge for mercy or grace. A good attorney pleads an airtight case. So it is as if Jesus stands next to you and then he says something like this, your honor. It is true that Josh Howard's sinned again and it is true that his sin deserves death. But then, watch this, but then he holds up his hands. And he says, but your honor, look at the bloody holes in these palms. I went to the cross and I took the punishment for Josh's sin already and your honor, it would be wrong, unjust for you to punish the same sin twice. So on the basis of my finished work and my spilled blood, your honor, I do not ask for mercy, I demand justice for my spilled blood for Josh Howard's sin. You must forgive him and then every second of every day. Listen, watch this, perfect tense. Past action abiding results, every second of every day. God looks back to the cross and he goes, acquitted, acquitted, case dismissed. Now, here's how I wanna finish it. Every one of you, you've got an advocate in heaven but you've got an accuser on earth. And what the Bible says is that this world that you live in is lorded over by the Father of lies. And in the words of my pastor, Franjoe Martin, the number one lie the enemy wants you to believe is that you are your activity, that what you did is who you are. That's the number one lie he wants you to believe. So listen, I just wanna tell you something, watch this. Only Jesus gets to tell you who you are. Nobody else gets to do that. Only Jesus has purchased the naming rights to your soul with his own blood. Only Jesus gets to tell you who you are. So listen to me, you are not your addiction. And I don't care how many times you stood up in an A meeting and you've said, how my name is John and I'm an alcoholic, listen, you may have struggled with alcoholism but your deep, with alcoholism, but your deepest identity is not that you are an alcoholic, you are a child of the living God. Okay, listen, so you're not your addiction. You are not your past, no matter how bad what you did was, you're not your past. You are not your sin, no matter how deep the transgression you are not your sin. And listen, this one's a little, whatever in our culture, listen to me. You are not your orientation. And I know you got a million people in your life telling you what you shouldn't do with that part of your life but you are not your orientation. You are not your affair, you are not your abortion, you are not your divorce. And I know you may look at me and say, yeah, Josh, but that's the biggest thing that ever happened in my life. Know it isn't Jesus done on the cross for you is the biggest thing that ever happened in your life. That is what defines you and nothing else. Jesus, it is finished. You are not your obesity, you are not your bankruptcy, you are not the rape that happened to you. Only Jesus gets to tell you who you are. And listen to me, you are also you're not your successes. Listen, man, you are not your 401k. You are not your position on the corporate, you are not your dad gum Instagram likes. Only Jesus gets to tell you who you are and what he is declared is that every second of your life there's a banner over your head that reads, it is finished, adopted child of the living God. Beloved, beloved is what he's saying. Come on, man, that's good news. Let's go, let's go. Now, so here's what I want to do. A disciple believes it is finished, so they're always running the fuck. Here's how I want to finish this sermon. What I got right here is a big, big, big, big, big long list of everything the Bible says about who you are. And what I'm gonna do to finish this sermon is I'm just gonna read this thing over you. And it's really long. Like when you think I'm about finished, I'm probably like halfway through, it's really long. But the reason I'm doing this is you have spent decades of your life having lies of the enemy spoken over your soul. And you need to hear what the word of God actually says about who you are if you are in Christ. Okay, so here's what I do. We're gonna finish like this. And he's just chill out, clear the mechanism. And even though you're gonna hear my voice, these are the words of the living God your heavenly Father spoken over you about who you are. I want you to receive it in the deep parts of your soul. Only Jesus gets to tell you who you are. All right? Number one, you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are a child of God. You are Jesus Christ's friend. You are chosen and appointed by Christ to bear his fruit. You are a slave of righteousness. You are a temple. And that's got nothing to do with what you look like in a bathing suit. Come on, man. He's you are a dwelling place of the living God. You are a new creation. You are reconciled to God and you are a minister of reconciliation. You are a saint. Ephesians one one says you are a saint. You're that Catholics. You're a saint. So you can take off that little necklace, that little dead guy, and you can put get a necklace to your own face on it. And when you go to visit your grandma, you can be like, Grandma from now on, it's saintly Roy. Because Ephesians one one says I'm a saint. You're a saint. You are holy and dearly loved. You are a member of a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for God's own possession. You are an alien and a stranger in this world in which you temporarily live. You are an enemy of the devil. You are born of God and the devil cannot touch you. You are not the great I am, but by the grace of God, you are what you are. You are justified. And when the Bible says justified, it's a word that means when God looks at you, it's just as if you'd never sin, but it's actually even better than that. Because you have been clothed with the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ. So when God looks at you, it's not just as if you'd never sined. It's just as if you'd always obeyed. You are justified, completely forgiven and made righteous. You are free forever from condemnation. You have received the spirit of God into your life that you might know the things freely given to you by God. You are valuable and you deserve to be treated as valuable. You are sealed by God in Christ. You have been given the Holy Spirit as a pledge guaranteeing your inheritance to come. You have been crucified with Christ. It's no longer you who lives, this Christ who lives in you. You have been blessed with every spiritual blessing. You have direct access to God through the Holy Spirit that you may approach the throne of God with boldness. Why? Because he's your dad and dad's love it when their kids come run into them. You have been rescued from the domain of Satan's rule and you have been transferred to the kingdom of Christ. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You should know that full well. You died with Christ and you have been raised with Christ that your life is now hidden with Christ in God. You have been given a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. You have been saved and set apart according to God's good doing and because you have been sanctified, you are one with your sanctifier. He is not ashamed to call you brother or sister. You have the right to come boldly before the throne of God and find mercy and grace in your time of need. You have been given exceedingly great and precious promises by God by which you are a partaker in his divine nature and you are loved by God because it is finished. Amen, church. It is finished. Come on, man. And every single one of those things is true about you forever and all time. If you have placed your faith in Jesus, but listen to me. If you have never bent your knee to the Lordship of Jesus in faith, not a single thing I said is true about you. Not one. Right now, you stand in your sins condemned and you are alienated from your heavenly Father and you are actually living in open war and rebellion against Him. But God loved you so much that He gave His one and only son and if you believe, you will receive why? Because a disciple believes it is finished. So outside of 26, if you never done it before, I want to give you a chance to bend your knee to the Lordship of Jesus and have all that to come through about you. So if you do this at all of our campuses, would you buy your heads and close your eyes? And if you realize that you need to cross a line of faith right now, maybe for the first time, I just want you to pray this prayer from a sincere heart in your seat silently. Just pray it after me. Spray God. I know I'm a sinner and that I have lived for other things besides you first. But I believe you died for my sin. I believe that somehow, in some way, the cross counted for me. And I believe you rose from the dead and that you live to give life to anybody that would call in your name. From this day forward, as best as I know how, I will live for you first. Today, I receive the free gift of the forgiveness of sin apart from anything I've ever done. Thank you, God, for adopting me as a son or a daughter. Now, keep your heads about in your ass close. Now, we move. If you prayed that prayer, maybe for the first time to cross a line of faith and come home to the Father. Here in a second, I'm account to three. And on the count of three, I just want you to put your hand boldly up in the air. Don't ever let somebody make you ashamed of coming to God in the house of God. Don't ever let that happen. So on the count of three, if that's you, hands up in the air with courage. One, God loves you. Two, you came here for a reason today. Three, right now, hands in the air. Right now, if that's you, I'm crossing a line of faith. Keep them up. Wow, keep them up. Keep them up. Lock that elbow. We want to know who we're praying for right now. I'm coming home. Jesus, I'm yours. I trust you with my life. I believe it's finished. My life belongs to you. Keep them up. Matt, all over the room. Amen, amen, and amen.