 In Ezekiel chapter 3 verse 20 it says, again, when the righteous man churns from his righteousness and commits iniquity and I lay a stumbling block before him, he shall die. Because you did not give him warning, he shall die in his sin. His righteousness which he has done will not be remembered. But his blood I will require of your hand. Now at first, don't let the blood and the death kind of scare you off. But I want you to see this. The Bible says, if a righteous person churns away from the righteousness, how many righteous people we have this afternoon? How many righteous people we have this afternoon? As believers, we are not righteous because we do righteous works. We are righteous to do righteous works. Righteousness is a gift from Jesus. And there is an opportunity where a righteous person can forfeit the righteousness by churning away from his righteousness. Watch this what it says. If a righteous person churns away from his righteousness, our righteousness is Jesus Christ. So if a righteous person churns away from his righteousness, that's not something we should do, but it's something we are capable of doing. Here at Hungry Gen, we don't believe that once saved, always saved. Meaning, if you're saved, you do not have the opportunity to forfeit your salvation. We believe that our salvation is secure in Jesus Christ. We believe it's like being in the airplane. But when you get into the plane, you know, the plane gets shot and you can exit from the seat that you are in. You can walk in the aisle and there is no fear of falling off the plane. But every single airplane has a door inside where if you are crazy, you can pull that door and get out. Now, if you are going to do that and I'm going to be in the plane, I will hold you back from doing that. Why? Because I care about you. If you're going to go to the door in the airplane and start messing with the door, most people will come and say, hey, bro, no, get back into your seat. But you can still do that. A Christian doesn't lose his salvation, but a Christian can forfeit his salvation by churning away from Jesus Christ. By opening that door and saying, bye-bye Jesus, I don't want to do anything with you. There's a lot of people that live with the fear of losing their salvation. Don't live with the fear of losing your salvation. Your salvation is secure. Salvation is not like a ring that you lose. Salvation is like a marriage that you lose. How many of you know you can lose this on accident? How many of you know you can lose this by being negligent? How many of you know none of you lose a marriage by being negligent? You don't just wake up on this like, oh my God, I lost my marriage. No, you don't lose your marriage like you lose your ring. To lose your marriage, you got to cheat on your spouse. To lose your marriage, you got to do more than forget to get the garbage out. To lose your marriage, you got to do more than sleep in one day and forget to tell your wife, I love you and forgot to bring flowers for the last six months. That takes a lot more because to lose your marriage, there's a bond in that relationship. The relationship with Jesus is a deeper and stronger bond than a marriage. You're not going to lose that easily. And what I love about this is the Bible says, if a righteous man turns away from God, God says, I don't let them go yet. I will put a stumbling block. Meaning God says, I will not let them jump off the plane that easy. I love this about grace. I love this about God. Because see, most of us think even the story of the prodigal son, the lost sheep and the lost coin deals with the lost people. But may I remind you, the lost sheep, the lost, lost coin and the lost prodigal son do not deal with the lost people. They deal with believers who turn away from the Lord because the son was a son. The coin belonged to a woman and the sheep belonged to a shepherd. And when the father got his son back, he didn't get a new son. He got the same one. When the woman got the coin back, she got the same coin. And when the shepherd got the sheep, it was the same sheep. It was not a different one. So that tells me when a believer turns away from their righteousness and begins to go and do iniquity as Ezekiel said, God says, I put a stumbling block. Have you ever seen a police chase? When you are running away from... I'm not going to ask for anybody, if anybody ever was involved in a police chase. But I'm very curious to find out if anybody has been in a police chase. I'm not going to ask for that. But anyway, have you? Anybody? Police chase is when you break the law. And then there's road signs. You ignore them because they don't apply to you. They apply to everybody about you. And then you start... you hear a siren and you ignore the siren. And then you keep going after the siren. You begin to notice that there are people that are chasing you. Now they are going after you. And then there comes this point. A lot of times there are speed bumps that you go through really fast. And the police uses these stripes spikes where they would throw on the road so that they could puncture your tires to slow you down. And there's a little video behind me if you can play the word. Even there are people who are so stubborn that even if you put spikes in the road and you puncture their tires, they will still keep driving. No, not this one. It's the one from Dropbox. That was a little bit different one. I apologize. In the first service I talked about hell. Police watch the first service message. It's a lot more sober than this one. It's on Dropbox. And so the police would put spikes that they would puncture your tires. And after your tires are punctured, and I watched these videos this week where people would still drive and car would come to a stop. The car cannot go anymore. The tires cannot go anymore. And the people would still run out of the car and run. And of course they would send dogs. And then these particular group of people that I watched on the YouTube clip is that they would come and would get arrested. That's really how backsliding looks like. I want to let you know a few things. One is that God will use road signs. And if we don't heed them, He will use speed bumps. What are speed bumps? It's the experiences of people close to you. When somebody, your friend has a testimony and they share with you how they got saved. It gives you a speed bump. It shakes you up a little bit. You're like, oh my goodness, I'm doing exactly the same thing. I probably need to get saved. It shakes you up. But some of us, that's not enough. We need to have some spikes in our life. We need to have some stuff happen to our own selves. Our bottom has to fall off. We have to fall from the horse and bite the dust. We have to get hit a lot of times. And when our tires get punctured. When Peter preached, the hearts of people were cut. And the Bible says they were cut. Meaning the conviction of God came in. But some of us we are so stubborn that even if you puncture our heart, our heart is broken. Maybe it's a breakup. Maybe it's some kind of a devastating situation. And God allows that. Because he is chasing after us. He wants us to come to a stop. He wants us to surrender. He wants us to be pulled back. God says, if you turn away from your righteousness and go do iniquity. He says, I will set a tripping block. A spike, a road block. Why? Because I want to capture you. And no, I don't want to arrest you to take you to prison. I want to bind you with my love to take you home. Come on, somebody. In Hosea 3 verse 1 it says, Then the Lord said to me, Go again. Love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery. So this is, relationship is broken. This woman, she didn't just go out and have fun with her friends. This woman did not just forget that she was married. She went and she was loved by a lover and is committing adultery. She broke her covenant. I've struggled a lot of times to understand fully what is God's response to a believer who walks away from him. You know, there are scriptures in the Bible everywhere where it talks about, you know, severity of God's judgment. But I want you to hear today something where God's love is not only for the lost. It's also for a backslider. Look what he said to this man. He says, Go again. Love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery. Just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans. God pursues with the passion of a lover, the lifestyle of a felon. God pursues with an intensity of a police officer, somebody who's running from him. God tells Hosea, your wife, who legally, scripturally, you have to stone her according to the Old Testament. According to the New Testament, you have a free pass to walk away, wash your hands from that relationship and say, She was a prostitute before I met her. She went back the whole old life. And you know what? I'm just going to go get inner healing, get me some therapy, sign up for prayer line, get delivered, give me a six to set 12 months, and then I'm going to go ChristianMingleChristianSingle.com and then I'm just going to go find me a new wife. But God says to Hosea in the Old Testament, he says, I want you not only to go find her, rebuke her and tell her what she did wrong. He says, I want you to go. And this is the challenging part. Not just forgive her, not just accept her, not just bring her back and give her her room and her makeup table and her vanity table. He says, love her. I can tolerate her. I'm okay with not killing her. That's already mercy, God. I'm okay with not giving her divorce papers. God, that's huge. But you want me to love her while she's currently in an affair relationship. It's not that she broke up and came repenting. She's currently in that relationship. And God says, love her. Win her back. Why? Because that's exactly how my love is for my children who turn away from me. See, most of us think is that when God, when people turn away from God, when Christians walk away from the Lord, college life, maybe abuse happened, perhaps something other happened in your life that caused you to a stumbling block. You tripped over, you walked away from the Lord. You stopped abiding in Him and you dried up spiritually. You died. There's another stumbling block. See, the devil is not the only one that uses stumbling blocks to get you off of Christ. God uses stumbling blocks to get you out of the devil. God will put stumbling blocks and God will pursue you with His love to get you back. He loves you so much. Today is your time to pull over, lift your hands and say, I surrender to your love and to your grace. In Matthew chapter one, in Matthew chapter one, it has this beautiful genealogy. And this is those about, how many verses are here, about 17 verses that if you ever started to read the Bible, these are probably you skipped. Because you're like, he begot who and begot what. And then you're like, man, I remember mom giving birth, but like that wasn't really a part of that. I mean, he was a part of that process, but not actually like delivering process. And so then you're reading, you're like an Abraham, you know, gave birth and you're like, man, this is the Bible must be right, but I don't understand it. And so let me just skip over until it starts talking about some stories. If you read this very carefully, you will realize it mentions a lot of men. And then it mentions only four women in 17 verses. These four women, it's important to highlight. The first woman that is mentioned is Tomar. The second woman is Rahab. Third woman is Ruth. Fourth woman is Peshiba. Now, this is not God saying all these men are righteous and all the women there are so messed up. Come on, we all know that none of these guys were good either. Okay, they were bad boys of the Bible, okay. They were the bad boys of the Bible. All of them from Abraham down to every one of these guys were bad boys. And it's not that there was no other good women, but I find it fascinating that God takes honestly the baddest women of the Old Testament. Scandalous women. Those kind of women that honestly, we would want to keep them away from a spotlight in the church. We're like, please go serve somewhere where nobody knows you come to our church. These are those women, they were on the front page of their local newspapers. The scandals they were involved in is nasty. Tomar slept with her father-in-law. That's bad. Rahab was a sex worker. That was her nine to five. Ruth was a part of Mobianites where they offered their children in fire toward their gods. She served. She lived in that part of the world. Her husband died. And then she met Boas. And Peshiba, well we all know Peshiba, couldn't afford shower curtains. David could not keep his eyes focused on whatever he was supposed to be doing. And next thing that happens is that, oops, I'm pregnant. And then Peshiba, you know, end up to be his wife and she was the lover. And so you look at these stories, they're extremely... These, if you were to write, that's why I believe God wrote the Bible. Because if we would write the Bible, we would hide them. We would say, these are things we don't want to talk about. Let's erase it. Where is the eraser? Let's not mention these are not our most proud moments. God takes these four women and he puts them in genealogy of Christ. What am I talking today about? God's chasing you. God pursuing you. The felon, the criminal, the sexually immoral. The person who crosses every boundary, breaks every conviction that they subscribe to. Falls flat on their face morally. God not only finds them. God not only rescues them. God is not ashamed of them. God is not embarrassed to involve them. Not scared to use them. And not intimidated to put them in the genealogy of a holy Christ. And not ashamed to start the first chapter of his new covenant to show off. And say, these are the people my son came through. A few things I want you to remember. Number one, every saint has a past. Every sinner has a future. Because of Jesus. Because of Jesus. No matter how deep you've fallen. No matter where you've fallen. No matter how scandalous your story is. No matter how the family, the media and others has spun that out of context. Oh, even if it's true. The birth of Jesus Christ, it starts from the beginning. God saying, God taking scandalous, perversion, even sexual immorality, moral failure. God taking all of that and saying, not only I can redeem that. Not only I can rescue you from that. I can restore you, use you and put you back on your feet. That's number one. Number two, Christ is better at saving you than you are at sinning. You're not as good of a sinner as Christ is the Savior. You're not that good. He is better at saving than you are at sinning. His grace is more powerful than sin. His blood is more powerful than the stain of sin. His holiness, His love, His grace, His death is way more powerful. He conquered death. What is your sin? He defied death. No emperor could ever do that. Alexander the Great couldn't do that. No dictator, no wise man, Solomon couldn't do that. Nobody could conquer death. Death leveled every great general, every great adventurer and leveled them all equal, except Christ. He conquered death. Therefore, your sin is no match to him. Even the sin of murder, even the sin of abortion, even the sin that you've done everything to earn your penance and it still doesn't remove your memory and it still torments you and it still reminds you that you are no good, that you are worthless. I'm gonna tell you something. There is someone who is better at saving you than you are at damning you. Does somebody say amen? 1 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 9, it says the following. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor soramites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunken, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God. And such were some of you, homosexual, lesbian, extortioners, covetousness, greedy, gossipers, backbiders, religious, self-righteous, and some and such were some of you. And see the Bible doesn't just say, but Jesus just forgave you. He said, but you were washed. This is more than forgiven. You know where sometimes you stick your finger into something, you should not be sticking your finger and then you're trying to get that off of your finger and the thing that you stuck your finger into might have forgiven you, but it still sticks. See Christ didn't just pardon your sin. He took you and washed you. He, see the Old Covenant covered your sin until the next year and then it will be covered and covered and covered and covered and covered. Christ didn't cover. He came in and he totally washed. He removed that. That's why people who get saved, they say that I feel clean. But they didn't take a shower. You say, what do you mean? You feel, he said, I feel clean. I feel like something is scrubbed out of me. If you've been abused, if you've been the abuser, if you've been done something that you could not forgive yourself, I can tell you the cure is not retribution. The cure is not, I'm going to try to do so much good to undo the bad. That stuff messes the whole thing up. The best cure is to come into a shower of the blood of Jesus, of the forgiving flow of the grace of God. And some were such of you. If you were involved in homosexual behavior, your cure is to be washed. If you were in lesbianism, you need to be washed. If you stole some things that were not yours, if you destroyed other people's reputation, you need to be washed. I'm not saying what you did was right, but Jesus Christ took it on a cross and he paid a full penalty for your sin. And today he is saying, I want to wash you. Even the stain of that sin, even the memory of the sin, even the guilt of that sin will be removed. But you were washed. You were sanctified. God doesn't just wash you. I could imagine the rehab in the Old Covenant where people judged other people for their sin. She was a sex worker, a temple prostitute. She not only was washed from her many men a day prostitution, but she lived in Israel, not as some leper on the outside, as sinful. Nobody talked to that woman. Nobody do anything. Husbands, look away. No, this woman, not only she was washed, she was sanctified. She married one of the spies who came into her house, Salman. She got married. She had children. Boas was her son. Who married Ruth, who eventually had orbit and so on. So she was sanctified. See, I want to tell you something. God's grace is not just powerful to squeeze you in quietly into heaven. God wants to display his glory through your story. But it starts with washing you. God chases you down. He will put roadblocks. He will put spikes. He will put prayers on people. He will put church in your way. Why? God wants to arrest you so he can wash you. So he can sanctify you, meaning restore your life. And then the Bible says, end justified. Word justified means just as you never did it. Justified is not forgiven. Justified is just like you never did it. The record is clean. The record is wiped. The record is destroyed. There is no evidence. This is not that you served your sentence, got out of jail, and you're still a felon and it shows up on every application where you apply for housing or for work. It's that your record is sponged. It's completely clean. Just like you've never done. So these were Corinthians. Saramites. Homosexual. Thieves. Murderous. Idolaters. I want you to see what Paul says in 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 11-2. He says, I am jealous for you. With God the jealousy. For I have bethrowed you to the one husband that I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ. How can you be a virgin to Christ if you were a Saramite? Homosexual. A thief. Idolater. A Gossiper. See, in the 1 Corinthians, Paul says, and such were some of you. And he says, but you were washed. You were sanctified. And you were justified. In the 2 Corinthians, he no longer talks about Saramites. Homosexuals. Adults. He's talking about a chaste virgin. So not only Jesus restores my life. He redeems my innocence. There are some of you in here today. You lost your virginity. You lost your purity. And you feel like you are second best. Or maybe you feel like man, but I'm just a wasted person who just been loved by God, saved by grace, my friend. Oh no, no, no, no, no. You were washed. You were sanctified. And you were justified. And God is presenting you as a chaste virgin. God is restoring your innocence. He is restoring your righteousness. He is restoring your purity. That grace is a good grace. It's a mighty grace. It's the glorious grace. And it's a grace worth shouting about. Grace worth giving God praise about. Grace worth giving God glory about. Somebody give God some praise. I'm not only rescued from the wrath of God. I'm redeemed from the life of sin. And Christ restores my future. The tale of the four women teaches me that not only every saint had a past and every sinner has a future. But it teaches me that Christ is better at saving me than I am at sinning. Christ not only redeems, restores, but He renews my whole life. If I let His grace do that. Number three, forgive yourself as Christ has forgiven you. This gift of Christ's death for many people, it doesn't fully work because of spiritual pride. What do I mean by spiritual pride? It's when you know Christ has forgiven you. But you somehow cannot forgive yourself. And why? Because somehow your standards are higher than Christ's standards. Like the reason why He forgave you, well of course because He is loving God. But you, your standards are so much higher than His. If they're so much higher, why did you sin in the first place? If you cannot forgive yourself, you're telling Christ you are holier than Him. You're telling Christ you are better than Him. Somehow you know something about you He doesn't know. I want to tell you something that you are not holier than Christ. The greatest gift you can give yourself this Christmas is not a new Apple watch, it's not a new iPhone, it's not a new trip to a spa. It's not going to put collars on your nails because you're not happy with the fact they're clear. It's when you can give a gift to yourself, the same gift God has given to you. It's called forgiveness. The Bible says to forgive others. Did you know that part of others is you? You're also that other, that's you. So many people hold themselves and punish themselves when Christ no longer punishes them. And they live in a cycle reliving their past even when Christ has redeemed them. I can tell you one thing, Rahab had to mentally excuse herself from her past. And to say to herself, that woman doesn't exist anymore. She still has the same name, but it's a total different nature. And when people looked at her funny and when people kind of like walked away because I can tell you one thing, if people do that in church, can you imagine that in the Old Testament? She was not even, she didn't even speak Hebrew. She wasn't even in Israel. I can tell you one thing, people would gather together to worship God at the festivals and there were women who were like, and I'm pretty sure Rahab had to tell herself, that's not who I am. You can look at me like that. You can give me those looks, give yourself those looks. I am washed, I am sanctified, I am justified. I'm a chaste virgin before God. Your opinion of me doesn't incarcerate my future. Your view of me doesn't limit my future. It's my view of me that limits my future. And I'm going to only allow God to limit that future. If he has forgiven me, I choose to forgive myself. Even if that which was done was abortion, release yourself from that. Save yourself, you are destroying yourself while Christ is trying to rebuild you. Because somebody say amen. Today is the day of salvation. Today is the day of forgiveness. Today is the day where the blood of Jesus Christ wants to wash you clean. Maybe you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior. Maybe you're visiting one of your friends because they invited you to a Christmas service and maybe the light show scared you a little bit. You're like, I answered both. We have a very dedicated young man over there. Ryan. See it as not us training creators show. We're just trying to give Ryan a place to exercise his gifts. And he has tremendous gift. Maybe this is completely new for you. I want to tell you something. You will live forever. That's according to the Bible. Jesus did come on this service. That's historic fact. He's either a liar, a lunatic or he's a Lord. He did not say he was just a good man. He said he was a king and he said he was God. He died on a cross for what he said. But the Bible says he died on a cross for your sin. He rose again on the third day. He didn't come to start a boys and girls club. He didn't come to start a social club. He did not come to start a social movement and he did not die to save a planet. He died to save you. He died to save your heart. He did not come to save your skin. He died to save your spirit. Today you have a choice. If you reject that offer you are going to follow the default destination that the scripture says it is appointed for a man to die and stand before judgment. It says the wages of sin is death, not physical death. It's the spiritual separation from God. That's going to be you may say, but that's harsh. You know what's harsh is when somebody did everything they could make sure you don't go that and you still reject that. That's harsh. God is a holy God. He'll never stop being unholy to cater to you. Do not justify or hide behind the mask of I grew up Catholic. I got confirmed at this age. They sprinkled water on me. I sprinkled water on myself every day. It doesn't make me born again believer. Oh, but I watch services. I'm a good person. I follow like three pastors on Instagram and that's like that is awesome. That is really, really cool. But I'm really just like I'm just into positivity and everything and just positive vibes and just like good atmosphere. I just really like that stuff. That's new age. We're talking about new life. We're talking about Jesus the Savior, not energy not universe. I'm not talking about connecting with universe or energy. I'm talking about connecting with the being with the person whose name is Jesus Christ. Let me speak to the other category of people. Maybe you're returning today to church or to God and honestly you feel like you left them perhaps you feel that you dropped maybe you feel like man but I departed from my righteousness and I went into iniquity and man I have had few few speed bumps. In fact God has punctured my tires I'm flat my heart is flat. I feel like the air is gone, life is gone and will Christ accept me? The parable of the lost son the lost coin and the lost sheep is about you. Christ pursues you today in fact you're listening to me right now not on a mistake Christ pursues you you're already guilty He's not trying to make you feel guilty sin does that really well He brings conviction because conviction brings hope condemnation brings despair all you gotta do today is what you do when the police officer pulls you over and asks you for your ID but in your case God is not asking for the ID he says get out of the car lift your hands I need to see your hands in other words God's saying I want you to surrender this is not a time where you give me your card little prayer God says I need total surrender why? Because I want to wash you I want to sanctify you and I want to justify you let's rise Thorpey as the worship team is going to sing a song I would like to invite people in both of the categories today if you are in a category where you don't know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior I would like to give you the opportunity today to make Jesus the Lord of your life if you're in a category today where you backslid you walked away from relationship with God I'm not talking about the church I'm talking when you walked away from relationship with God your heart is judging you today maybe there's a conviction a punctured heart there's a call for you Jesus wants to bring you home today every head bowed and every eye closed if you're watching me on live stream on zoom or on YouTube 175 of you that are watching right now today is your day today now is your time if you're saying I would like to get right with God I would like to give my life to Jesus I'm not there what I supposed to be I feel that God is out to get me He is actually but not for the reason that you think He is He has no pleasure in seeing your destruction for He so loved you that He gave His Son He doesn't warm His hands at your calamity He came to save you not to condemn you not to push you down but to lift you up He didn't come to remind you of your past He came to remind you of His Son of His blood and of His sacrifice in this room or you on live stream and you're in one of these two categories where you're saying I'm far from Christ or I've never made a decision to follow Christ when I count to three I'm going to ask you to raise your hand high as your sign of saying Lord I surrender I surrender to your love and surrender to your grace I need your salvation today I don't want to keep running away from you God I want to run with you one two, three just raise that head high I'm going all over this room thank you thank you I see hands going all over this room thank you I'm going to ask you to do something bold right now for those of you who lifted your hand or who wanted to lift your hand but you just didn't find the courage to do so when the team will sing I'm going to ask you to come out of your seat and stand here with me I want to pray with you you can just begin to make your way out of your seat as the team begins to sing come with your family member just come just come come on come on church we can applaud them this is the best decision that people make it's to give their life to Christ it's to run to Christ instead of running from God come on come on if you can do the grace beautiful grace beautiful grace yes Lord I want to get saved I want to get run with God the presence of God is going to wash you right now his blood is going to cleanse you right now just to receive his grace just surrender to him right now come on church if you are grateful that he washed you and such were some of you and such were some of us but it's been the grace of God it was at this encounter at the altar it was this encounter somewhere in your car in somebody's house at the blood of Jesus washed you that his spirit gave you new life he revived those of you who are here in the front I see a lot of you God's presence is touching you you're breaking down and it's the blood it's the love of Jesus that is melting your heart it's the love of Jesus that's taking away the stony heart the religious heart the self-righteous maybe a sinful heart a proud heart right now I'm going to lead you into prayer but make no mistake no prayer can save you only Jesus saves us we believe with our heart and we confess with our mouth if you're watching us on live stream pray this prayer with me say this out loud with me say Lord Jesus I'm a sinner please forgive me of all my sin and wash me with your blood sanctify me fill me with your spirit and use me for your glory I surrender my whole life to you from this day forward I want to follow you in Jesus name Amen