 This is part three and I've entitled this message this morning, power, persecution, and counter-cultural living. Power, persecution, and counter-cultural living. Let's look here, Acts chapter three, or Acts chapter four, sorry, Acts chapter four, beginning in verse number one. And it says, and as they were speaking to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple in the Sadducees came upon them, greatly annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they arrested them and put them in custody until the next day for it was already evening. But many of those who had heard the word believed and the number of men came to about 5,000. On the next day, the rulers and the elders and the scribes gathered together in Jerusalem with Annas, the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and all who were of the high priestly family. And when they had set them in their midst, they inquired by what power or by what name did you do this? Talking about the miracle of healing of the lame man. And then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers and the people and the elders, if we are being examined today concerning a good deed done to a crippled man by what means this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him, this man is standing before you well. This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which has now become the cornerstone. And there is salvation and no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated common men, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. But seeing the man who was healed standing beside them, they had nothing to say in opposition. But when they had commanded them to leave the council, they conferred with one another saying, what shall we do with these men? For that a notable miracle has been performed through them as evident to all the inhabitants of Jerusalem and we cannot deny it. But in order that it may spread no further among the people, let us warn them to speak no more to anyone in this name. So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. And when they had further threatened them, they let them go. Finding no way to punish them because of the people for all were praising God for what had happened. For the man on whom the sign of healing was performed was more than 40 years old. This is the beginning in chapter three and chapter four. It's the beginning of not just the power of God being poured out on the early church, which we saw in Acts one and Acts chapter two last week as John Tyson shared that with us. But now we begin to see not only the culture and the community of the church, but we also see the response of the culture around them to the church. And the response and in some ways, the persecution, the beginning of the persecution of Christians because of the way that they lived and because of their exclusive claims of who Jesus was. You see what we find in the very early chapters of the book of Acts is that the church under the power of the Holy Spirit is beginning to proclaim a message that is counter-cultural. It's a message that says that Jesus is king, Jesus is savior, and then they demonstrated both in the way that they live, their community and their culture, and also by the power that they demonstrated, the presence of the kingdom through signs and wonders. And their preaching and the message that they preached was this, it was repent, which was a confrontational counter-cultural message to the world, repent so that your sins may be forgiven, believe in Jesus, he's the only name, he's the only one that can save you and change the way that you think and the way that you live so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord. And what this did was this preaching and the way that they lived and the value system that the community of the church began to live out was so contrary to the way that the world lived that this confrontation actually produced conflict. It produced friction and agitation. Their message was subversive and in many ways was disruptive to the status quo of the community in which they found themselves, whether it was in Israel and Acts chapter three and four, or whether it's in Antioch and Acts chapter 15 or Greece and Athens in the mid-parts of the book of Acts or even in Rome, as we'll see near the end. It was subversive, which means it comes underneath and actually destabilizes the established order of things and it was disruptive because what we'll see is that as the message is preached, thousands and thousands of people believed in this message, this gospel message, this good news that Jesus saves and they began to join themselves to God's new alternative society, the church. It's what the church really was, was an alternative society. Paul writes in Philippians chapter three when he's writing to the church which has been established several years later after this, he says he reminds them that your citizenship is in heaven. In other words, you're part of a different culture, you're part of a different community and as the church is emerging and preaching this message with such boldness that has no earthly natural explanation for it, they begin to experience persecution in response to their boldness, but their boldness causes them to continue to preach the word and the word begins to spread like wildfire and what we will find, you can see this in the book of Acts, you can also see it throughout church history is that in about 200 to 250 year period of time, the message of Jesus, the subversive counter cultural message and people of Jesus actually begins to destabilize the most powerful empire and culture that the world has ever seen because of how subversive and because of how contrary it is to the rest of the culture that it finds itself in. And it literally overthrows the Roman empire, it literally overthrows the established order because the church and the message that it carried and the boldness that it proclaimed their message with could not be stopped. And this is what we see right in the very beginning of the book of Acts and this story that we just read in Acts chapter four is about John and Peter. Acts chapter three, they were just on their way to the temple at the hour of prayer. They had established times of prayer and this was one of those times they're on their way up, they're entering into the temple and as they come to the Eastern gate, the gate called beautiful, there's a man who is sitting outside the temple. The reason why he's sitting outside the temple is because ceremonially he's unclean, he can't go in and worship. But he's 40 years old, he's been lame his entire life from birth. He's never walked a day in his life, but every day somebody brings him and sets him outside of the gate to beg for alms. And on this particular day as they come by him, he asks them for silver or for gold, he asks them for a donation, I can just see him holding a sign, please help, anything helps. And in this moment, Peter and John turn their attention to him and say, we don't have any money but what we do have, we freely give to you. And what they had was they had the heart of Jesus, they had the gospel message and they had the power of the Holy Spirit and they prayed for the man and he was instantly healed, a notable miracle. I mean this man, they lift him up, he stands, he jumps, he runs, he walks and he runs into the temple. Imagine being the religious leaders who think you've gotten rid of Christianity, you've gotten rid of this Jesus and all of his followers, you crucified him and now there's some rumor about him being raised from the dead and there's this little group over here causing a commotion, but now a man that everybody in the temple knows, because they've all seen him, he's now walking and they can't deny the miracle. And what I think is interesting is instead of that sign and that wonder softening their heart to believe in Jesus, they actually double down and they harden their hearts against Jesus and against his followers and against the message they proclaim and they persecute them. See, oftentimes we think, wow, if a miracle would happen in our culture, if a miracle, a massive miracle would happen in our city, everybody would believe, not necessarily so. I think we underestimate how hard and how deceptively wicked the human heart is and how many times we just wanna resist what we know is really the heart of God. That's what happens here. But what I think is really interesting is the response of the church, the response of the apostles. It says that they knew that they were uneducated, common, everyday men, they didn't go to seminary, they weren't on the same intellectual level as the religious leaders were, but what they knew about them was that they had been with Jesus and it changed them. They had been with Jesus. You see, when you are not just believing in Jesus from a secondhand experience or a secondhand rumor, but when you've had a first-hand encounter with God, it changes everything in your life. You can't literally be around Jesus for real, around Jesus, with a soft tender heart and have it not change your life and have it not be evident to the world around you. How many of you remember when there were smoking sections in restaurants? Remember that? Remember Denny's? Denny's was the worst. My first job was working at Denny's. I was 16 years old, I was a busboy dishwasher. I was back in the days in the 80s when they had, it was open 24-7 and they had the bar crowds that would come in late at night and they had a smoking section, but what that means is you can smoke here, but everybody else is gonna get secondhand smoke. You could always tell when somebody was in either a bowling alley, a bar, or a smoking section of a restaurant. When they came out of it, it's like they would come into the room and you'd be like, where have you been? Oh, Denny's, that makes sense. You smell like grease in cigarettes. Obviously, that's Denny's. Or you smell like stale bowling shoes and cigarettes. You've been in a bowling alley. It's because you could tell the environment they had been in or who they had been around. My mom used to always smell me for cigarettes when I would come in the house after hanging out with a friend. She'd be like, do you smell like anything? I was like, mom, mom, I'm good, I'm good. Because she knew that you could smell who someone had been with. There was a fragrance. There was something that was imparted. And the same is true when you've been around Jesus. When you've been around God, when you've been around Jesus on a personal level, it changes, it transforms your life. That's what they knew about this band of Jesus followers early on in the book of Acts. It says that when they saw their boldness, Peter and John, and they perceived that they were uneducated and common men, they were astonished. But then they recognized, oh, they've been with Jesus. What was it about the church that caused them to be so powerful? To be so culture bending? Well, I believe the answer was they were counter-cultural. They were counter-cultural. What does it mean to be counter-cultural? Here's the definition. A counter-culture is a culture in which the values expressed and promoted are in potential and actual opposition to those of the dominant culture. Sometimes amounting to a wholesale rejection of that culture. In other words, a group of people who live within a dominant culture who have embraced a set of virtues and values and beliefs as truth and choose to live by them even though it goes contrary to the established culture that they find themselves in. This is what a counter-culture is. And it's exactly what the church was and was called to be. It was going against the grain of the world system. It was becoming an alternative culture in the midst of a world gone wrong. It was literally embracing the culture of heaven in the midst of the kingdoms of this world and living according to the way of Jesus. It's exactly what Paul means when he writes in Romans chapter 12 verse two when he says, do not be conformed to this world but be transformed how? By the renewing of your mind so that you might prove what is the good, the acceptable and the perfect will of God. We all know this. Whatever you conform to or whatever you're shaped by will determine the responses and the way that you live your life. So if we allow the world to put us into their cookie cutter mold and we live like everybody else and we think like everybody else and we agree with everybody else and we just find what's the path of least resistance? What's the consensus? What is the majority of polls say that people believe? And if we just get into that jet stream because we don't wanna stand out then what's happening is we're actually being conformed but Jesus does not call us to be conformed to the world. He wants us to be transformed. In other words, he wants us to be changed. He wants our thinking to be renewed and to be changed and transformed to actually think like God thinks, to agree with God and not to agree with the world even when it means that it will cause us to stand out. It will call us to stand out and in some cases to go against the grain. This is what the church is always called to be a counterculture. And it's why the book of Acts reveals a church that was countercultural and effective. And I believe what we need more than anything today is in the American church, in the church of Jesus Christ for us to re-embrace our call to be a countercultural people. To be people that are known by the power of God's spirit in our midst. To be known by the love of God that's expressed through us but even more than that, to be known by the fact that we're willing to embrace a culture and a way of living that even if it means persecution and difficulty, we embrace it because whether we obey man or whether we obey God, we choose to obey God no matter what. Radical obedience. Jesus didn't just call us to believe in him intellectually. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. Jesus didn't call us to his disciples and any of us, he didn't say believe in me, he said follow me. Which means if we're gonna follow Jesus, we're gonna have to walk in the way of Jesus. And Jesus said, narrow is the way that leads to life but wide is the way that leads to destruction. What is the wide way? The wide way is the way everybody else is going. It's a 10 lane highway and it leads right to a drop off into the abyss. But there is a narrow way that leads to life and Jesus said, few are those who find it. Why is it so few? Because so few are willing to choose it. What we need today is we don't need more intellectual content. What we need more is we need more spiritual commitment. I'm gonna preach to the 9 a.m. I promise you, it's coming. So let me give you three things this morning that I believe with all of my heart. We're called to, we're called and what is required to be a counter cultural people. Number one is it requires seeing through a different lens, seeing through a different lens. If we're gonna be counter cultural people, kingdom people, we're gonna have to see ourselves, see God, see the world and see the purpose for our life to see truth through a different lens. See the way that the world sees things, the world just kind of the consensus, the generally accepted belief system is this, is that the world is good and people are good and nothing bad should ever happen and if something bad does happen, it's probably God's fault. It's a good world, good people, nothing bad should ever happen. God, why are you picking on us? But actually the kingdom or the way that we're supposed to view it is this, the way God views it. The world is broken, God did create the world good and perfect in the beginning, but we broke it. The world is broken, people are broken and only God can fix it. And he has in the person of Jesus Christ, he has made a way for all things to be made new again. But there's no other name given among men by which we must be saved except the name of Jesus. You see, as kingdom people, we see through the lens of Jesus. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. John 14 says that. It doesn't say that he's a way, a truth and a life. He's not an option at Walmart where you can do this, this or this. He said, I'm the way, the truth and the life. Seeing through a different lens is exactly what Jesus met in Matthew 633 when he said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And then all these other things will be added unto you. What does it mean to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness? It means this, when you seek his kingdom, it means you're coming under Jesus' kingship. It means I'm not my own master. Jesus is king. And when it says, and his righteousness, it means this. I wanna do things the way you do things, Jesus, because your way is perfect. How many have discovered in your own life that you have a way that very often you think is the right way, but most of the time it pans out not being the right way? Has anybody ever found that to be true in your own life? My way is not necessarily the right way. Trying to put furniture together and you've got all these extra pieces and you've got the instruction manual wide open and it's like, yeah, I could do it that way, but I think my way works pretty good. And that's why your table does this. Anytime you set anything on it. It's like, that's your way. Our life reflects our way, but Jesus calls us to repent. I mean, change your mind, change the way that you think things and believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that as we seek Him and His way of doing things, His lens becomes our lens and we begin to see through the way that Jesus sees things. It's interesting right now, most recently, they did a survey among millennials and Gen Z. What do you think are the biggest problems that are keeping us from fixing the world? And this is from a world's perspective and here's the top 10 problems as they see it. In other words, if these things were fixed, our world would be perfect. We would just have everything right. Number one is climate change. Number two is lack of education. Number three, hunger and malnutrition. Number four, security and safety. Number five, income inequality. Number six, religious extremism. Number seven, global poverty. Number eight, nuclear war and major conflicts. Number nine, unemployment and opportunities. And number 10, corruption and politics and government. So they said these are the top, these are the biggest problems right now in the world. If we could fix these issues, we would live in the age of Aquarius, in a Utopia. It would be a paradise. We just have to fix these problems. That's the world's perspective. And by the way, some of these issues are really important issues, but they're not the biggest issues. Let me give you the biggest problems that keep us from fixing the world from a kingdom perspective. You ready? They may not what you think. They may not be what you think. Number one, human beings are in rebellion against God. Number two, human beings cannot save themselves. Number three, human beings are massively deceived. Number four, human beings have chosen to worship themselves. Number five, human beings have put God on trial. Number six, human beings think everyone else is wrong except them. Number seven, human beings are spiritually blinded because of their sin. Number eight, human beings are dead in their sins and do not know it. Number nine, human beings make matters worse when they try to fix it in their own strength. And number 10, human beings have rejected God's son. Those are the 10 biggest issues in the world. Have you noticed what's the common denominator in all 10 of those? Human beings. Because the problem that has wrecked our world that started in the garden and that Jesus comes to restore is not the things that are out there. It starts with the human heart. Because the problem with all these other things, the problem with injustice and the problem with being deceived and the problem with safety and security and wars and rumors of wars and all these things, they are the things that flow out of the heart of sinful human beings. We create these problems. The only way to solve these issues is if you solve the issue of the human heart. You solve that and it's amazing. We can have perfect shalom in the world just as it was in the garden but first you have to address the issue of the heart. And that is what the church carries, the message that saves and delivers. It's the message that Jesus Christ was crucified for the sins of the world, raised on the third day, is seated at the right hand of the Father, reigning and ruling over the universe and one day he's going to come to judge the living and the dead. Repent and believe. Repent and believe. Well I don't wanna repent. Great, stand in judgment. Because that's your alternative. When Jesus comes, you can't pack your bags and head south of the border and go into hideout. There will be nothing that is hidden when Jesus returns. Every man and woman will stand before Jesus because he is the rightful king and would be judged not best on your best intentions but on his righteousness and his word and his truth. Every knee is gonna bow and every dung is gonna confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. My Lord church. Happy Mother's Day. Okay so the call to repent is a call to reverse course and to submit to the kingship of Jesus. And the reason why we do that is because of grace and truth. Grace because we've experienced grace from God. This is what the early church had experienced. They had been so shaken by God's grace in their life and it was truth, the truth of who Jesus was that had so shaken them and changed them and transformed them that they wanted everybody else to know. If you had a cure for cancer, I mean if somehow you were Googling and you put the right recipe together and you're just like, oh this is it, you're a scientist and you found the cure for all cancer. You wouldn't keep that to yourself and say, well I don't wanna impose my belief on anybody else. You wouldn't let people just die of cancer. But yet here we are as the church. We have the cure for sin. We have the cure for spiritual death and we have the answer to eternal life. And oftentimes we're intimidated. Oftentimes we're insecure or we just wanna keep it to ourselves. But it's the answer. The gospel is the power of God under salvation for those who believe beginning with the Jew first and also for the Greek. It's the only hope of this world. And we need to be motivated by grace and truth. Number two, if we're gonna be counter cultural people it requires a radically different response to the brokenness of our world. And a radically different response to the agitation, disruption, confrontation that occurs as a result of the faith that we hold. In Acts chapter four verse 18 through 20 it says they called them and they charged them not to speak or to teach at all in the name of Jesus. But Peter and John answered them and said this whether it's right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge. For we cannot but speak what we have seen and heard. They said, listen, listen, you're threatening us. And you're telling us you're gonna beat us. You're gonna jealous. You're gonna take everything away from us. But we're telling you you're gonna have to determine what you're gonna do because we've already determined what we're gonna do. If it comes down to obeying man in order to maintain status quo and acceptance or to obey God and that produces persecution and suffering and even the loss of our lives then we're going to obey God. And their response was a radically different response in the way that they lived their lives was a radically different. It was actually a prophetic declaration back to a broken culture because the church in and of itself was a radically different organism. You see in the Roman culture in the Greco-Roman culture there was a class system. You had the very wealthy and you had the very poor. You had slaves and you had women. Women didn't have rights that men had. Slaves had no rights. There were property. Then you had the upper class. You had a lower class. And there were all these different structures and people of the high class didn't associate with the low class. The color of clothing that you wore in the Roman world was determined by the class that you were in. If you were wealthy, you were allowed to wear a certain color. If you were poor, you had to wear a different color. If you were a slave, then you had to wear certain identifiable things so that when walking down the street people knew who you were, people knew what class you were a part of. If you were a woman, you didn't have right to property. You didn't have right to divorce in many cases. But yet in the church, as people from all these different classes, wealthy and poor, slave and free, men and women were encountering Jesus and gathering together. It was the only place. Imagine in Rome, imagine this epicenter of Greco-Roman culture. There were these subversive meetings of people that were gathering together, of Jews and Greeks, men and women, rich and poor, slave and free, who were gathering together and there was no hierarchy. Everybody was on level ground in the eyes of Jesus. Receiving communion together, singing together, taking turns reading the scriptures together, praying for one another, a slave laying hands on a very wealthy senator. This was taking place in the church and it was an abomination to the rest of the Greco-Roman culture. They're just like, these people are crazy. What are they doing? What's that slave woman doing by laying her hands upon a very rich, patrician senator and praying for his healing and yet they're God desert. It was so subversive that it actually is what overthrew the entire structure and the entire system of the Roman Empire. Because it was love and it was unity and it was equality. Jesus gave us the constitution to the kingdom of God. It's called the Sermon on the Mount lifestyle. How many of you have ever read the Sermon on the Mount? Matthew five, six and seven. Raise your hand if you've read the Sermon on the Mount. If you've read it really through the eyes of not just poetry, but you've read it like, okay, what would it take to live this out? You know it's the most difficult lifestyle to live because it's all about forgiveness. How many of you know forgiveness is easy as long as nobody offends you? It's a lifestyle of reconciliation. It's a lifestyle of peacemaking. It's a lifestyle of remaining pure in the heart, not just in your behavior. It's a lifestyle where we're called to loyalty and fidelity and faithfulness, called to love our enemies, called to pray for those who persecute us, called to care for the poor. It's a radical lifestyle. And if we're going to be followers of Jesus, then we're not gonna get it perfect, but that's our aim. To live in this way as a counterculture in the midst of a world that is living for themselves, that is bent on vengeance and retribution, that pleasure is top of the chart. If you want it, buy it. If it feels good, do it. There's no parameters to pleasure. There's no parameters to fidelity. It's a no fault divorce culture. And it doesn't matter what's going on in your heart. You're automatically a good person. It's just about your external image. That's the world. This is the kingdom. We're called to live radically different from the inside out. And because we believe these things, the church is a counterculture way of life. This last week, we saw leaked documents from the Supreme Court about the issue of Roe versus Wade and abortion in our nation. And we've seen people respond and react from both sides of the political spectrum on this issue. Protesters all over the place. In fact, yesterday we had protesters downtown in front of Matchhead. 30 or so protesters who were chanting, they didn't want us in the city, my body, my choice, because they know that as Christians, we are a countercultural group of people, followers of Jesus, and we place an incredible intrinsic value on life from beginning from conception all the way through life because of what we believe about every human being. That every human being is indelibly marked and a bearer of the image of God. And because they're an image bearer, they have value and they have the right to life. But I wanna tell you, this is nothing new to the Christian church. And I'm addressing this this morning because I think it's important congregation that we know that as followers of Jesus, if we're disciples of the world, then we can believe whatever we wanna believe. But if we've claimed loyalty to Jesus, then his way and his righteousness is truth. And this is what the church historically is always embraced. The church has always, always, always valued human life. And in fact, think about this. This is the Roman perspective on life. In first century, this is what was written in some of their documents. This is from the law of the 12 tablets. This is table number four, quoted about unborn children. A dreadfully deformed child shall be quickly killed. So a child who's born and has a deformity was to be quickly killed. Cicero on law wrote this. Deformed infants shall be killed. Seneca in his writings on anger said, mad dogs, we knock on the head. On natural progeny we destroy. We drown even children at birth who are weak and abnormal. Lots of different reasons in the Roman culture of why you could have an abortion or why you could leave your children out for exposure. You see, that's what they would do. If they had a child that was born and they didn't want it, they just left it on the trash heaps. And you could do it for these reasons legally. Economics, if you were too poor and didn't feel like you could provide for your child, you could do it because of their sex or their gender. Girls were abandoned to exposure at higher rates than boys because they were devalued and also carried a doll reliability. You could leave your child out to die or you could abort it if there were imperfections. A child with deformities was commanded to be killed and children that appeared weak or imperfect were often judged unworthy of becoming part of society and therefore left out for exposure. You could do that for questionable paternity. If you did not know who the father was or you could just simply do it because you had no desire for the child. Fathers had the legal right to abandon any infants under his power to exposure because they had no value for human life. But let me read to you the early church's response to that. This is one of the early church fathers, his name is Tertullian. And he said this, he said, in our case, a murder, a murder being once and for all forbidden, we may not destroy even the fetus in the womb. While as yet, the human being derives blood from the other parts of the body for its sustenance. To hinder a birth is merely a speedier man killing. Nor does it matter whether you take away a life that is born or destroy one that is coming to birth. That is a man which is going to be one and you have the fruit already in the seed. And here was one of the radical things that the early church did. The early Christians knew that Romans threw children out on the trash heaps when they didn't want them. You know what the Christians would do? They would walk up and down the alleyways of Rome and they would collect the children and they would take them in and families would adopt them. Families would provide for them. They would even find out maybe their master had a daughter who was going to abort a child and they would go to the master and say if you'll bring it to full term, we'll adopt this child. And it's one of the ways that the church grew exponentially. See, it was even written about Christians and about the Christian culture from secular descriptions. This is what I'm about to read to you as a secular description of how the Romans saw the Christians in response to this issue of unborn and infant children that were left to exposure. It says this about Christians. Kindness is their nature. There is no falsehood among them. They love one another. They do not neglect widows. Orphans they rescue from those who would be cruel to them. Every one of them who has anything gives up ungrudgingly to the one who has nothing. So this is how the world saw the church. And you know, one of the arguments that's made against Christians and their view of the sanctity of life and their view that life begins at conception and it's so because in Jeremiah chapter one, God said to Jeremiah, before you were even in your mother's womb, I knew you. The first person who greeted Jesus, our Lord, when he was in his mother's womb was his cousin, John the Baptist, who was still a first trimester embryo who leapt in his mother's womb and celebration at the glory of God in Mary. So we've always believed this. But one of the major arguments against this is, well, you Christians, all you care about is the unborn and then after they're born, they don't care anymore. You guys just, you know, you abandon them. You need to have a holistic life view. Well, first of all, let me just say, at least they have an opportunity to live. But second of all, every crisis pregnancy center in America is run by Christians. Christians adopt more children and are more involved in the foster care system than any other segment of society. Christians give generously to more needs and care for the poor in our cities across America and around the world than any other segment of society. And there is no more pro-woman religion on the face of the earth than Christianity. And the reason why we do that, the reason why we do that is because we believe that our creator has made every single one of us and put life in us so that we might know him. And listen, there's not just one victim when it comes to abortion. There are so many women in our world that have been deceived by the spirit of death across our country. Just get rid of your child. And that they've had to live with the guilt and the shame of that decision for the rest of their life. And I want to just say, as a pastor, if that's you or you know somebody, you don't have to live under condemnation and shame because the same Jesus who healed the lame man is the same Jesus who can heal every lame heart, every lame spirit and forgive every single one of our sins. You can have a brand new beginning. You weren't created to carry shame. You were created to know your God, to be a child of God. And that's why the church as a counterculture has always cared for the poor, the widows, and the orphans and children. Because God who is our Father sent his son Jesus to come and rescue us, our prodigal orphaned hearts. It just requires us to live out a radically different response and to also recognize that we have to have a willingness to suffer in the short term. Church, if we're gonna live in the radical Jesus way, we're gonna be persecuted. We're gonna be persecuted. If you just wanna go with the flow and blend in with everybody else, guess what, you could skate through life and nobody will ever, I mean, if we get through the end of our lives and people go, oh, you were a Christian, I didn't even know. I mean, you can have a nice, comfy, cushy little life, but there's not gonna be any eternal reward for you. Jesus said this, if you won't confess me before men, I won't confess you before my father. But if you're gonna live godly and righteously in Christ Jesus, you're gonna be persecuted. People aren't gonna understand. They're gonna think you're strange. They're gonna think you're weird. Why are you living like that? We're not doing it for any other reason, but because this world is broken and Jesus is the only answer for the world today. Jesus can save, Jesus can heal, Jesus can deliver, Jesus can transform a society, He can turn the tide, He can restore families, He can heal broken hearts, He can give purpose to every single human being. And this is why we care. We care because people last forever. Nothing else in this world lasts forever, but people do. And God has called us to rescue the perishing and that's why the good news is so good. On this Mother's Day, it's good news. Jesus is alive and well. Would you stand with me to your feet? All across this room, I just wanna ask you and also at Portage, would you just bow your heads with me? Father, today, in this place and in this moment, we stand humbled before you because you didn't have to rescue us. Jesus, you didn't have to save us. You could have left us to our own devices. You could have left us in our brokenness, in our shame, in our sin. You could have left us in our deception. And we would go off into eternity, separated from you and never experience the life and the relationship with you that you always wanted for us. Jesus, you are the way. You are the truth and you are the life. And you look at every single one of the 8 billion people on this planet, men and women, young and old, orphans, widows, rich and poor, black, white, brown and every other color on the spectrum. And you see us and you see the image of God marked upon us even though it's been broken by sin. And you're committed to every single one of us because you loved us so. Jesus, you loved us. You didn't love us because we behaved. You didn't love us because we were qualified. You loved us because you made us for yourself. And I pray that the things that hold us back from you would be broken down in our lives and we would have hearts that say yes to you. Yes, God, have your way. Jesus, come in, reorient my world, reorient my thinking around your thinking. Renew my mind, restore my heart, save me, rescue me. I pray that you do it. And those of us who are already believers and you would do it in those of us who have not yet placed our trust in you, Jesus. And in this moment, please, everyone around the room, just continue to just pray for a second because I believe that there are some that may be listening to me right now and you do not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You've never placed your trust in him to forgive your sins, to give you eternal life and submitted your life to him. You say, well, why do I need to do that? Because number one, we're all dead in our sins. We're all dead spiritually. And number two, none of us can fix ourselves. But number three, God so loved you that he did for you what you could not do for yourself. He came, he lived perfectly. He died upon a cross for your sins to pay for them completely. And now he offers you eternal life, a clean slate, a new heart, eternal life. But he calls you to repent. He calls you to believe in Jesus and to turn from your way of doing things and say, Jesus, you are now Lord of my life. If you'll do that today, if you'll do that right now, you can be made right with God. You can have a relationship with God and you don't have to do anything other than receive it. It's a gift. Today all over this room, I wanna lead those in a prayer of commitment of your life and receiving that grace that God has for you. The Holy Spirit right now is moving through the room and there's some, he's tugging on your heart saying, it's you, I need to do this. You need to do this. Today, surrender your life to Jesus. Receive him as your personal Lord and savior. Be saved from this twisted and perverse generation. Today all over this room, if you're here and you say, I know I need to get my life right with God, passionately pray for me. Today I want this to be a new beginning. I want Jesus to be my Lord and savior. I wanna be forgiven. I wanna have eternal life. Pray for me. If that's you, I just simply want you to raise your hand, indicate that, say pray for me, include me in this prayer. Thank you, I see that hand. I'm scanning the room. Raise it if that's you. Say, today I need Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you. All the way in the back, yes. Come on, he still saves. Thank you, sir. Just like he did in the book of Acts. Thank you, young lady. He'll forgive, he'll wash it all away as if it never happened and give you a brand new heart. Last call, if you've not raised your hand, raise it right now. Thank you, young lady. Right now, all over this room, those of you who raised your hands, I'm so proud of you, we're so proud of you. The Bible says this, if we believe in our heart on the Lord Jesus Christ and we confess with our mouth that God raised him from the dead, we will be saved. I'm just gonna lead you in a prayer of confession. I want everyone in the room to pray this with me. Out loud, here we go. Say, Heavenly Father, I come in Jesus' name and I confess, I have sinned, I've lived for myself and I need a savior. Jesus, I believe in you. You are the Son of God. You died upon the cross for my sins and you rose on the third day. And Jesus, you are returning to reign and rule. I invite you into my heart to be my Lord and savior. Please forgive my sins. Please give me a new heart and put your spirit in me. From this day forward, I repent and I turn my back on my past. I turn my back on my sins and my way of doing things. And from this point forward, I will follow Jesus, no matter what. Thank you for loving me and saving me in Jesus' name. Amen.