Forgiven

Continuing our series called, priests that we started last week, really excited about what God is doing in our community. And last week we kicked off with the history of worship. The history of worship. And so we started at the garden, how Adam and Eve remember he gave Adam and Eve this call of being priests and kings.

And at the end of the story, mirrors the beginning of the story, the end of the story is God dwelling with man on the earth, there being the overlap. How many of you guys remember the overlap? How God has a dwelling place and it's called heaven. We have a dwelling place called earth.

And God's intention was always that there'd be an overlap of heaven and earth, that his dwelling place would be the dwelling place of man. And so our call as Christians is as priests to care for the dwelling place of God, to actually be little mini temples, little mini dwelling places of God on the earth. And then when we come together, what happens is we're like building this corporate temple, this corporate place where God dwells and he starts hanging out with all of us together. And it's this big temple of worship.

It's this moment where there's an overlap that happens because a bunch of his mini overlaps us, where Holy Spirit dwells inside of us, we start stepping in together and there's this experience that we have with him of an overlap of heaven and earth because he is the main attraction in heaven. He is heaven, God himself. If you don't like him, right? You're not gonna like heaven.

That's what we talked about last week. You're not gonna like it. I promise you, you're not even gonna enjoy the gold streets. If you don't like him, you're not gonna like it.

And so some people go, how could a good God send good people to hell? It's like, well, did they even like him? They probably went like heaven if they didn't like him, right? They didn't like his leadership now.

Then why would they like his leadership in the future? They didn't wanna be led by him now. Why would they wanna be led by him and live in his kingdom in the future? That doesn't make sense, right?

Just a bonus. Okay. But we talked about how we see that there's anas that would spend long hours with God, rising up in the Twin Cities. That we believe that we want the Twin Cities to be one of God's favorite places in the earth.

I want it to be like Jerusalem Twin Cities, right? Like when he scours the whole earth and he finds a people that have so much love in their heart, the nurses in our city, the teachers in our city, the businessmen, the salesmen, the saleswomen, the moms, the dads, the scientists, all of them, the engineers in our city, loving their hearts for him. Stewarding the presence of God, just because they know that they're always meant to love him and have him love them and love them back. And there just be this exchange of love.

And when God looks down at the Twin Cities, he's going, oh my goodness, look at all of the Joshua's, lingering, staying a little bit longer with me. Look at all the anas, look at all the David's offering me extravagant worship and praise, extravagant lovers. I believe God is establishing our city. And it's not just something he's doing with us as a house.

He's doing with the church of the Twin Cities. That's what I'm believing for. Lord, in fact, the church of the Twin Cities with love again. Fascinate our hearts again with who you are.

Lord, there would just be a canopy of praise that start raising, there'd be incense everywhere, just rising, praise rising from our city. That's what we're believing for. And it starts with our understanding of being priests before God. And you are a priest, but there's hindrances to you actually living in that identity.

And what I want to talk about tonight is what are the hindrances that keep us walking in our rightful identity as priests? What are the things that come against our identity? And when I say priests, maybe you're going like, well, I don't even know what you mean by that. Like what do you mean by priests?

Priests in the Old Testament had this special access to connect with God. So if you want just like a really basic definition, a priest is someone that has special access to the presence of God, to minister to him, to worship him, to take the place of intercession. They were the ones that could get real close. And Jesus made a way so that we could be priests just like him.

Jesus was the high priest. He has direct access to God the Father. And he's going, hey, I want to open this all up. We're breaking down all of the doors that we're keeping everyone on the outside.

And I want them all to be priests. I want them all in here. I want them really close. No, you know what?

Don't even just stand over there. I want you to come and sit on my lap. I want you to sit on the throne. Be seated with me in heavenly places.

I don't want you to just hang out in the courts. I want you to be a priest. I don't want you to just be a normal priest. I want you to be like the high priest.

You get to go to the holy of holies. You get the special, special VIP access. You're the VIP guy that I need you to come back here, back stage. I want you backstage on the throne in the holy place.

I want you here. Don't be out there, right? But there's hindrances that keep us from approaching his throne. There's hindrances that keep us from actually stepping in and going, OK, I'm going to be at rest with him.

There's a couple of months ago, we were in our living room and all of a sudden we started hearing these beeps from the basement, these like chirps. And it was the fire alarm. And so I was like, OK, I know what's going on. And I have learned with living in our house that with our fire alarms, when they get 10 years old, then they start chirping at you.

And they're basically saying, like, hey, replace me, right? And so they start chirping every 30 seconds. And so I go down to the bottom of the stairs, and I'm just like, listen, you know, like, OK, which one is it? And there's one right here.

And then there's one over here. It's like 15 feet away. And I'm trying to listen. And I'm like, I got this.

I know what I'm doing. And I've done this before. This is going to be great. I'm just going to, ma'am, thank you, ma'am.

We're just going to be done with it. And so I turn off the power. I take it down. And I'm replacing it.

I'm hearing like a beep still, even though I took it down. But I know that the alarms are connected with each other throughout the house. So it's like, oh, since I took it down, it's just letting me know that something's not right. And so I take the alarm down, put the brand new one.

And I'm not talking about just any fire alarms. I'm not talking about like Menard's fire alarms. I got them at Home Depot. They're like, nice.

OK? Nice fire alarms. And so I replaced that one. I'm looking at my handiwork.

I turn on the power, and there's a beep. I'm going, what did I do wrong? And I'm not like an electrician. So I was like, OK, what?

And so I go over to this other fire alarm, and I'm listening. And I'm like, and I hear it. And I'm like, OK, I got the wrong fire alarm. And so I get, I'm kind of annoyed at this point.

So I was standing on a chair over there, and it was like 15 feet away. And so instead I grabbed the swivel chair. That was like right next to me. Because it's like, I'm not going to do that.

Like, that's a long ways away. And so I get up on the swivel chair. And I'm kind of just like getting my stability. And I take it down.

And I have this moment where I have to choose. Like, OK, do I go turn the power off? Or do I keep it on? And I'm kind of going, I want to hear if it's still beeping.

And I don't want to deal with that. The power panel, the electrical panel, is like 20 feet away. And I'm like, nobody has time for that, right? So I've got these.

And I know better. OK, I really do know better. But then there's some type of reasoning in my head. Oh, the fire alarm electrical is probably less powerful or something.

And so I'm up on the swivel chair. And I took it down and the wires. They're just hanging. Don't do it.

And I take my pliers and I have gloves on, so I'm going to be OK. And I'm approaching the wire with the clipper. And right before I just squeeze it, I look down. Because I know.

I kind of know. I think it's going to. And so I squeeze it. Pop!

It's just super, like, it's electricity. That's what it was. And everything goes dark. And I swiveled.

You know? And I caught myself. I'm OK. I'm looking.

I'm OK. Am I OK? And Katie yells down. She's like, hey, honey, the power just went off.

And I was like, oh my goodness, really? That's so weird. That's weird. I'll check in on it.

No worries. I got it. I'll go to the electrical panel. So I go to the electrical panel before I put in the new alarm.

And I turn it off. Go over. And I install the new fire alarm. And it's looking good.

And I go over, turn the power on. And as I'm walking past the first fire alarm up here, there's the beep. And I'm literally going. This is what the beep sounded like to me.

The beep literally sounded like, you're an idiot. That's what it sounded like. If the beep literally sounded like, you're an abyssal. And it was kind of like a ha-ha-ha.

It was laughing at me. The beep was. And I finally just, I'm looking at the instructions. And I've got two sets of instructions of the same fire alarm as if they're going to be different.

And I'm like Portuguese, Spanish, trying to do translations. It's like, there's English there. And I'm trying to figure out YouTube, nothing. Why is this still beeping?

And I just pause and I sit. And I just wait for the beep. And all of a sudden, it beeps for the last time. And it beeps for the last time, because when I heard the beep, I knew where it was coming from.

It was coming from the trash can. Because I had taken that fire alarm. And I had unplugged it, but there was still a battery inside. And I undid the, I removed the flap, took out the battery, no more beeps.

And I think that, so I'm going to somehow connect this to my message. I think it's impossible. If you've ever had a fire alarm going off or beeping, it's impossible to actually be at rest when it's beeping. Is that right?

You're not going to fall asleep when a fire alarm is chirping every 30 seconds. You're literally going to go insane. And I was in confusion. I was going crazy.

I could not be at rest. And sometimes I think that that's what happens when we're always meant to be at rest in the presence of God. We're always meant to be comfortable in our own skin in the presence of God. And yet, when sometimes we enter in, there's a chirping of accusation.

There's a chirping of shame of, man, you still are a sinner. Look at what you did. You lied. You're a liar.

Look at what you did. You lusted. You're an adulterer. And there's these accusations of identity of shame that attack us and keep us from actually being at rest.

And then there's guilt. And guilt says, you're not forgiven. You're not forgiven. You have to do this, this, this, and this, and this to actually be forgiven.

And so turning your Bibles to Hebrews 10, what I want to do is dive into debunking one of the greatest hindrances against being a priest in the kingdom of heaven. And I'd love to just completely destroy and rip out the battery out of the fire alarm of our hearts. How many of you know that fire alarms are created to warn you of a fire? It's basic, right?

Fire alarms exist to kind of warn you and tell you, run. Get out of there. Escape. And I don't know if you've heard some of the fire and brimstone messages that I've heard, but our God is a consuming fire.

He is a dreadful just God. He's the terrible God of the ages. He's mighty and strong and awesome and holy and righteous. And there's no changing him.

That's just who he is. And so we are deep inside. We're born with this understanding of, I'm not enough. I'm not right.

He's perfect. I'm not perfect. We're all born with that. We are all born broken and we know it.

And we know if he's God, then he's perfect and he's right. And so there's this traffic that happens when we go into his presence. Because then we start going, OK, if he's like that, then what shame and guilt are doing is there's an alarm sounding off. Run.

Get out of there. He's the mighty one. He's awesome and terrible and holy and righteous. And you're not.

Is that right? And man will go to so many different lengths to try to get right with him or try to ignore the chirping and they'll drive themselves crazy. They'll drive themselves to be successful millionaires and still be miserable because they're not right with him. What I want to do is I want to jump right into this passage in Hebrews 10.

And we're going to go. Is it OK if we go verse by verse? We're going to dance around the passage a little bit. But I want to take him in little chunks.

And we're going to talk through some of the truths of Hebrews 10. OK? Are you guys ready? All right.

Verse 11, Hebrews 10, 11. Say amen if you're there. Says in verse 11, and every priest stands daily at his service. So he's talking about the Old Testament, Old Covenant priests.

Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ or Messiah, King Jesus, had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. In the Old Testament, there was two types of sacrifices, generally two types of sacrifices. One sacrifice is the sin offering sacrifice.

And the other sacrifices were the sacrifices of thanksgiving and praise. And so what's happened is with the Old Covenant priests, it was this common understanding. There's no chairs in the temple because the work was never finished. The sacrifices were never finished because the blood of bulls and goats and animals could only cover sin, but they couldn't take them away.

And so we had to consistently, over and over and over again, make sacrifices. And there was never an end to the work because people keep on sitting. And so we got to cover all of the sin. We got to keep on making sacrifices.

The work is never done. But Jesus comes onto the scene. He dies, and he makes himself. He becomes sin, and he comes as the perfect sacrifice.

And what does he do? He goes up into heaven, and he's not found standing. What does it say in verse 12? But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, what did he do?

He sat down, which means the work is finished. It's done. And so that only leaves one type of sacrifice left. What is it?

It's not the sacrifice of sin. We don't start going, OK, how can I cover my sin, or how can I deal with my sin, or make a sacrifice for my sin? But instead, there's only one way that New Covenant priests make sacrifices. How is it?

What is it? It's the sacrifice of praise. It's the sacrifice of thanksgiving. It's the sacrifice of worship.

That's all that's left. If you're a priest, all that you have left is sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, and worship. And so let's continue. But I think you know that you don't believe this.

If you're still asking God to forgive your sins after you're a follower of Jesus. If you're still pleading with God to forgive you, then maybe you're not sure if the sacrifice actually took care of your sin. Was it enough? Was the blood enough to wipe out and take away your past, present, and future sins?

Jesus died 2,000 years ago. Is that right? So when he died, all of your sins were in the future. And all of your sins were in the future, and they were all forgiven.

All of your future sins, when you're 40, when you're 50, when you're 67, all of those sins that you're 67, they're already forgiven before God. And yet we're still going, OK, his forgiveness is contingent on me remembering to apologize. Man, we're in trouble. Because how many sins have you forgotten to apologize for and ask him to forgive you for?

Uh-oh. If those aren't forgiven, and it's contingent on you adding to the work that he did to try to convince him to forgive you, see, how many times have we responded at the altar when the preacher says, we need to get right with God? No, Jesus made you right with God. See, you can't get yourself right with God.

You can't do it. You can't get right with God. He's the one that makes you right with God. And you don't have to.

So I want to backtrack. When you give your life to Jesus, you repent and change the way that you're thinking. And you leave behind your old life. And you receive the forgiveness.

See, all of the sins of the world have been forgiven. It's in the New Testament everywhere. But some people won't receive it. They've been forgiven, but some people won't receive the Savior.

They won't receive the forgiveness. And so when we come into His presence, we can come in receiving. Lord, thank you that you're forgiven. See, did you hear the thank you?

That was a sacrifice of thanksgiving as a priest. Thank you that I'm forgiven. Lord, when we mess up, it's just the Pavlov's dog of, oh, that leads me into thanksgiving and worship. Every time I send, it's like, oh, thank you for making me clean and righteous and holy before you.

I don't deserve it, but you made me clean. You've forgiven me. God's calling us to actually step into confidence. But what happens, I just play this out, where it's like, man, he really is upset with me.

He knows what I did. And then sometimes we picture, in our minds, I almost as if Satan is the king's advisor. You know in movies where you've got those slimy advisors of a king, and they're like whispering in his ear? Do you know what I'm talking about in those movies?

I don't know. I can't think of a movie that's like that. But we know the character. You know the king's advisor.

And he's whispering into his ear. And so we come into worship. We come in our quiet time. We become conscious of God.

And there's Satan. He's like, do you know what he did? God, do you know what he did? And the father's leaning back, listening to him.

It's like, are you serious? That he did that? And then he said that. And he thinks that he can come into my presence?

You know what I'm saying? Listen, he's not entertaining the accuser's voice. He doesn't have Satan and his demons as advisors. Do you know whose advisor is?

Jesus. Jesus is actually the one that is right hand. And Jesus finished the work. And he's sitting down next to the father.

And they're both looking at you like, oh, here he comes. All right. We're going to move to verse 14, OK? Verse 14, for by a single offering, he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.

Wow. OK, this is interesting. This is very interesting because he just said that you're perfected. But then he says you're in process.

Sanctification is this process of you're not there yet. And you're becoming more and more like God. So that's what sanctification is. You start looking more and more like God in how you think, how you act, how you live.

That's sanctification. And so he's saying he's made us perfect, but we're also not perfect. And this is the tension that we live in all the time, in our relationship with God, right? So I'm perfect, but I'm not perfect.

What? And so what he's saying is in the spirit, you've been made right and perfect. And he's taken that old nature and he's thrown it in the trash. But sometimes that old nature, that sin nature, they start beating at you.

And they start trying to remind you of who you used to be and try to convince you that it's who you are now. And they try to convince you and they try to cause confusion in your life. And it can drive you crazy because you're still wondering, you know that you're in process. You know that you're getting sanctified.

You know that you're becoming like him, and you're falling, and you're screwing up, and you're messing up. But then he says that you're perfect. And so we have to rip out that battery. Because sometimes we entertain that beeping.

It just needs to get ripped out. We just need to silence the accusing voice of the old dead sin nature that's a corpse. See, it's thrown away. It's in the trash.

It's been brought to nothing. And we just got to remind it of that. You know, sometimes it like, ugh, it tries to wake up and like beep it us. And it's just like, oh, you're dead, actually.

Let me remind you. You served your purpose. And it's the backdrop of all of the goodness of the Lord. All right.

Verse 17. We're going to skip a couple verses there. They're all so good. But for the sake of time, says this, then he adds in verse 17, I will remember your sins and your lawless deeds no more.

Where there is forgiveness of these lawless deeds and sins, there is no longer any offering for sin. I will remember their sins no more. Sometimes we come into the place of worship and prayer, thinking about all of our mistakes and sins. And we try to talk to him about it.

And he's literally like, I don't even remember what you're talking about. See, it says that he remembers our sins no more. Now, Holy Spirit loves helping us uproot lies and destroy lies and destroy unforgiveness so that we can walk and hold this and continue our sanctification process, right? But when we're coming before the Lord, a lot of times we're thinking about all of our mistakes and all of our sins.

And the Lord's like, I'm not preoccupied with that. We're preoccupied with something that the Lord's not even wanting to be preoccupied with. He's like, oh, if you just look at me, if you just come close, a lot of those things are going to get taken care of, because I'm going to show you who I am. I'm going to show you who you are.

And that's going to deal with all the root system. The root system of the sins that you think I need to do the sin management thing. And God is saying, your Christian life isn't about sin management. Your Christian life isn't made up of God.

I'm sorry. Christianity. Christianity isn't. I sin made mistakes.

I'm going to come into your presence with my tail between my legs, and I'm really sorry. That's not what following Jesus is about. Following Jesus isn't about not doing things. We've made it about being good and being a good person.

And the Lord is saying, leave those things behind. It's me that you want. You have been so distracted with so many other things, Martha. So many other things, trying to bizzer yourself, to get right, to be understood, to be seen.

And the Lord is going, oh, just come close and sit with me and receive. A lot of times what we do is we try to make sacrifices of apology. I'm so sorry. If I feel guilty enough, then he's going to forgive me.

No, you're forgiven. Please, if you're sinning, and then you don't talk to God for three days, and you feel guilty enough for three days, and then you feel like you're forgiven, because there's been time that's gone by since you sinned, that's not healthy. And that's not what God wants for you. So just because you got into a bad funk and you fell into temptation, that is the worst time to go, OK, I'm just going to do my own thing and be distant.

And I'm going to leave. We'll reconvene later, Lord. We'll reconvene later. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I can't face it. And then we feel guilty enough.

And we feel bad enough. And then now it's like, OK, now I can worship. You guys, he's not as concerned about your sin. He's more concerned with how you're responding to sin.

He's not as concerned about, OK, oh my gosh, you did that? How dare you? He's more so concerned with, OK, you did that. Let's process it and talk about it and weed out the lies so that we can just not do that anymore because that hurts you, OK?

Verse 19, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he's opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh. And since we have a great high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. Whenever you have someone in your life that you're not sure how they feel about you and you think they're pretty upset and frustrated, a lot of times what you do in that relationship is you come into that interacting with them with walls of defense.

Is that right? You're like, hey, how's it going? And you just have this wall of, I'm defending myself because you're mad at me. And when we come in defense mode before the Lord, some of us are not getting traction in our relationship with God because we're in defense mode, because we don't know how he feels about us and we're second guessing and we're uneasy.

And we've got to actually land in the full assurance. I know that I know he loves me and I know that I know that my sense has been removed from me as far as the East is from the West, so that when I come to him, I can approach him with confidence and boldness. But when we're in defense mode, half the reason why you haven't experienced the love of God is because you're still in defense mode. Because you're still unsure of if he loves me or if he doesn't love me and you've got your walls up.

And so God is actually calling us to get out of the mindset of he loves me, he loves me not and into the mindset of, I'm fully assured that I'm clean. I'm fully assured that I'm righteous. I'm fully assured that I'm justified. Justified is what it really means is, it's just as if I've never sinned before.

When I come before God, how could God say to Jesus that he loves us in the same way that he loves Jesus? He literally loves us in the same way that he loves his son. How could he say that? Have we experienced that?

God's inviting us to experience that. We're gonna move to verse 24. But before we do, I just wanna remind us he is not swayed by the accuser's voice. I'm reminded of Zechariah 3.

There's a scene that plays out. And Joshua, the priest, he's a high priest and he comes before God and the accuser comes in and accuses Joshua in the presence of God. And God comes in, Jesus comes in and says, the Lord rebuke you and deals with Satan. And then Joshua, the high priest, in Zechariah 3, Jesus has angels come and put a new clean turban on Joshua's head.

And I believe that represents a new mindset. He gives Joshua new mindset and a new perspective of who he is so that he can see the Father rightly. And I believe that God is calling us, as Joshua's, as high priest, to let God defend us. Let the blood defend you.

Let the blood defend you from the accuser. And just remind yourself, oh, thank you, that his blood finished the work. Thank you that this war has been won, that this freedom that I'm seeking has already been purchased, that now I just draw on it. It's in my bank account.

It's my freedom, it's already mine. All I need to do is pull on the freedom that's already mine. I am clean. I am pure.

Maybe I made a mistake, but it's just who I am. I'm a clean one. I'm a pure one. That's my identity.

Verse 24, here's where the rubber starts meeting the road, though, when we're reading our own Bibles. Oh, man. And how many of you have read a passage? And you're like, wow, that's really good news.

And then you read a list. And you read a list in the Bible. And it's all of these things about how people are going to go and burn in hell. You read all of this good news.

And then you start seeing some of your secret sins in the list. And you start going into second guessing mode. Have you ever done that? You start seeing it, and you're like, all those that are lusters.

And you're like, oh, shoot. Does that mean? And you go into second guessing. Let's read this.

This is fun. The verse 24, let us consider how to stir one up another in love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as in the habit of some. Wow, I'm working on my reading. But encouraging one another.

And all the more, as you see the day, drawing near. So the writer of Hebrews is saying, hey, keep on meeting together. Because if you don't, it gets you off track. It's healthy for you to have community.

Then verse 26. For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of truth, there is no longer remains. There no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.

How much worse do you think will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and has outraged the spirit of grace? For we know him who said, vengeance is mine, I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Oh, no, right? Because if I went around to each one of us and I said, have you since you followed Jesus, sinned deliberately? Like you knew what you were doing and you sinned anyways. If I went around everything, one of you would be like, yes.

If what this passage is saying is that you've sinned deliberately many times, then you only have an expectation of the fury of God and vengeance, then you all have no hope. All of us are going to burn in the lake of fire. If that's what that passage is saying, then none of us have hope. So what is being said?

What is being said in this passage? In the passage he's saying, if you continue to sin deliberately and like Judas, you're actually someone that is around God, you've heard the truth. You know the truth and yet you continue to say, yeah, but I'm gonna be the God on my own life. And you take the sacrifice of the gospel, the sacrifice on the cross and you turn your nose up to that and you just continue to go, I'm actually gonna just choose my own way.

When you give your life to Jesus, listen, when you give your life to Jesus, you're not just receiving forgiveness. You're setting Jesus as the Lord of your life and you're surrendering control of your life to him. It's not just like, oh, thank you for forgiving me and now I'm gonna live in whatever way I want to. No, you're giving up the idea of being the God of your own life.

That's what the covenant is. It's all of me for all of him. It's all of him for all of me. And so if you're gonna see, if you're a follower of Jesus, you wanna know how you're a follower of Jesus, after you make a mistake and after you sin, you have remorse about it.

You have a godly grieving about it going, that's not who I am. That's not honoring to you, Lord, that's not honoring to the other person, that's not honoring to me. I hate that I did that. If you hate that you just sinned, you know you're a son of God.

If you hate that you, if you're looking at it and going, I hate that I just did that. It's the testimony of the Holy Spirit going, I know I meant for righteousness. I know I meant to rightly live in him and it's actually a reminder of see, you're born again. See, you're part of the family.

See, it's part of your nature that you wanna resist sin and turn to God. But the accuser is going, see, look at these passages. You only have fury ahead of you. And the Lord's going, no, no, no, no, this is for the person that's heard the truth, that said, okay, yep, that's great, but I'm gonna live the way that I want to.

I'm gonna trample on the covenant and say, I don't need the covenant. And it's the person that continues to deliberately be the God unto themselves and reject the surrender of Jesus and surrender in your lifetime. And I just wanna encourage you, I think that there's many of us in the room that have read these passages and you've been uneasy. You've had this feeling of like, I feel like my sin is in that list.

And now what do I do with that? And I'm telling you this, if you've responded to sin, going, I wanna repent, I wanna change. This isn't who I am, I don't like it. I wanna turn to you.

That is the character of God inside of you. Stop giving a foothold to the enemy and measuring yourself against the do's and don'ts that is the law. You've been set free from the law. Now you can confidently enter into the presence of God, but I'm telling you this, there's still, God is calling you to obedience.

And that's why Paul is saying, with this free grace, do we continue living in sin? Of course not. So all throughout the scriptures, he's going, this is all the good news, but does that mean we can just do whatever we want? Of course not, because when you gave your life to Jesus, you surrender just doing whatever you want.

You are a son or daughter of God and your father knows what's best for you and that's why you wanna obey him. Because he's the worthy God and you're a priest and you don't even want to entertain any type of chirping. Listen, the chirping is not good for you. And when you fall into sin and you give yourself to sin, it's hard to silence the chirping.

Cause you have to then again remind yourself and go, okay, yes, you've dealt with that. I'm actually forgiven. That's not who I am. Just because I lied, I'm not a liar, but you still have to face the consequences of your sin.

The consequences aren't eternal before God, but there's consequences for when we sin and there's no victimless sin. Listen, there's no victimless sin. You think, this only impacts me, I'm telling you, it doesn't just impact you. It's just this once, it doesn't just impact you.

Because what happens is you're changing your neural pathways and how you think about yourself and how you think about others. And then five years down the road, you're responding to someone according to the mindsets of secret sin that you've been living in for years. And now you're treating someone according to the mindset that's been bred in secret, thinking it's just affecting me. And all of a sudden you start realizing it wasn't affecting me at all.

It was affecting me, but now it's affecting someone else. God is actually calling us out of the darkness to step into the light of his presence, approach his throne with confidence and boldness as his priest. It goes in on his lap, process with him, that's great. But remember that he's forgetting.

And so as the accuser starts trying to whisper and chirp and beep at you, you as a priest, how you respond as a priest is you turn away from the chirping, you rip out the chirping alarm that says, run away from God, he's too holy, he's too righteous, he's too other than and rip out that battery and silence the chirping of accusation and shame and guilt. And you turn and you turn to him and you say, God, I give you the sacrifice of thanksgiving as a priest. I give you the sacrifice of praise. Thank you that you've made me righteous.

Thank you that you've made me holy. Thank you that you've made me pure. Even in my impurity, then you transposed your, my impurity and you actually removed it from me and now I've got your purity. Thank you.

I'm not an adulterer, I'm not a liar, I'm not greedy. I'm actually generous, thank you for making me a generous man. Thank you for making me a generous woman of God. Thank you for making me a woman of honesty.

Thank you for removing all of the things that hinder love so I can just come boldly. God's calling forth bold priests. He wants bold priests, not cowering priests. You weren't meant to cower in his presence.

He's great and terrible, but he wants you close. He wants you to feel the heat of his presence. The fiery gaze of his eyes. Yeah, the alarm is going off, but silence the alarm because his eyes of fire on you are not to bring accusation but their eyes of love.

Sometimes his fiery love feels intense and it is intense, but you're always meant to sit in it, to sit close, to feel his warmth, the warmth of his love. You are destined for it as a priest. Let's all stand, I just wanna pray over us. It makes me, I get frustrated and upset and mad.

When I think about all of the games that the enemy has played with us for years of accusation. You fall, you sin, you screw up, and then there's these mind games around like, okay, because I did that, then my circumstance is like, there's this weird thing that the enemy will do where he'll take that disobedience and try to make it almost like you're, like there's gonna be bad things that are gonna happen to you now that have nothing to do with the seeds of sin that you sowed. And then he's trying to convince you like, oh, I didn't get the deal. I didn't make the sale because I fell and sin.

That's how the, that sounds like the enemy. I just wanna name that. That's not true. That's not how it works.

That's the liar telling you that. The accuser has been making up all of these random lies to try to keep you at a distance and God is saying not anymore. Come here. I want you really close.

So Lord, I just commission out your people. I just wanna, us to picture something in our imagination with the Lord. I want you to picture holding, holding the shame or the guilt. You know, the holding the sins that you've maybe been struggling with, the mindsets, maybe the impatience that you've had as a parent.

Maybe the laziness that you've been experiencing that you just can't get out of, the greed. Whatever it is, the unforgiveness, the jealousy on social media, whatever it is, just holding that in your hand. And I want us to just take those things. And I want us to approach the throne in our imagination.

I just want you to approach God the Father in your imagination. And I want you to just throw those things onto his lap. And I want you to watch in your imagination. I believe a Holy Spirit wants to show us what he's gonna do with that when we give it to him.

He's gonna do something with what you just handed him. I want you to, Holy Spirit wants to show you what he does, what he thinks about the sin, how he responds to you when you bring it to him. Let's just continue to engage your heart. Just Holy Spirit, thank you that you're giving us pictures in our imagination.

You love using our imaginations to create connection with your heart. And whatever he did with that sin, whatever he did with that shame or guilt, Lord, our response is thank you. Thank you for taking it away from me. Thank you for gladly removing it from me.

Thank you for dealing with the thing that I couldn't deal with myself. I just declare over this house that these men and women are priests that can draw near to God in full assurance of who they are. I just declare over you that your conscience is meant to be clean, that you're always righteous before the Lord, that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. You just receive these truths.

Lord, I thank you that your advisor is not the enemy, but your advisor is Jesus. Lord, we declare that you have called us as confident ones before you, that you've called us as those that can actually sit and rest in your presence. And so Lord, we thank you that you're calling us as priests to be confident priests. We're leaving coward in behind.

We're leaving the approaching you, afraid of what you think about us, the uneasiness behind and we declare over our hearts that we're the confident ones in your presence. We're the bold ones in your presence. We're the ones that you want us to sit with you. You want us to draw close.

You want us to be with you. The whole reason why you send your son Jesus is so that we could have every wall removed and have direct access. The garden has always been in your heart. God with us, us with God.

It's the end of the story. It's the beginning of the story. It's my story. Lord, we declare that over our hearts.

It's our story. Us with you without shame. Us with you free from guilt, knowing that we're forgiven. So Lord, here we go.

We go into our every days fully clean, fully right, fully made righteous and justified before you. In Jesus name, we thank you for that. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Hey, if as I was sharing the message, if there was some of you that felt like, man, this has been something that I've been struggling with and you want to receive prayer, I'll be up at the front. If there's any deacons that want to pray for people as well, you can just come to the front and people can receive prayer. If you haven't given your life to Jesus before and you're going, man, I've always felt condemned.

I've never had that type of relationship with God. I want to encourage you to respond. And I'd love to pray with you if you want to give your life to Jesus for the first time. Have an awesome week.

We'll see you on Sunday.