we're doing this fall as we're going over kind of the core beliefs of our church and the beliefs that really shape what we do and how we act and who we are as a community and we've gotten now to the very heart of that this this core doctrine of salvation of what what God has done to give us life and as we go over it what I my hope for you is that you'll go far beyond understanding it. Understanding is is nice and it is necessary but it's just a starting place. I don't want my hope is that you do not leave here just understanding the gospel, understanding the good news of what Jesus has done for us. My hope for you is that all that this doctrine this truth will go so into your heart that it will transform you that it will get into your experience in such a way that it changes you. It's hard to explain that difference really all you can do is illustrate it and my favorite illustration is involves food what a shock. Two a couple years ago David and Jennifer took Bianca out for our anniversary and we went to this great little restaurant called Villa Ravenna. I'm pretty sure that's not how you say it but that is how a redneck says it and it's a great restaurant and they have the waiter was there talking to us about the appetizers and I don't really remember what it was the funny thing is I don't remember it was like a bread thing or how you ate it all I remember is as she described it she described figs and bacon and just the thought of figs and bacon I just thought that sweet taste with that salty good bake that's gonna be amazing and we just said route yeah whatever yes bring us that bring bring that and so she she comes back to the table when she pushed the appetizer in front of us and we all knew it was gonna be good none of us had it before but we knew it was going to be good and yet when each of us when we to a person everyone of us when we bit into that appetizer we went oh it was so good that's the difference between knowing and under and experiencing we knew it was good intellectually but when we experienced it it changed us and a weird way bacon does that it's what I want for you this is what I want for you some of you have been going to church for a long time and you know Jesus died on the cross from my sins you were told that when you were three you believed it when you were four big deal honestly in your heart you're thinking right now big deal and what I want you to know is you just haven't bitten into it yet you believe that it will taste good but when you bite into it it will change you it will it will elicit something from you it will reestablish your identity it will reestablish everything about you it will it will remake you and what I want to do especially for those of you who are saying to yourself well that's good for you Ricky you're kind of emotional and you know a little like that but that's just not the way I work I'm not emotional I'm not that kind of person I want to assure you you are you are don't settle for less drive deep into this truth drive deep into it and be changed by it please stand as we read from Colossians chapter 2 verses 6 through 15
therefore as you received Christ Jesus the Lord so walk in him rooted and built up in him and established in the faith just as you were taught abounding in thanksgiving see to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit according to human tradition according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily and you have been filled in him who is head of all rule and authority and him also you were circumcised with the circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ having been buried with him in baptism in which you also were raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh God made alive together with him having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands this he set aside nailing it to the cross he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by trying to think over them and him that's why the reading of God's word please be seated what I want you to see from this text is that Jesus has put himself in our place and in doing that he has cleansed us from all of our shame he has cleansed us from all of our guilt and he has cleansed us from all of our unworthiness because he loves us because he loves us at the heart of Christianity is this this belief in substitution that God looked upon us and he knew that we had a responsibility we could not fill we had paid a debt we had amassed a debt of sin that we could not pay and he has substituted himself for us if you want to just kind of you're in the quippy sayings you can you can think of it like this at the heart of sin the root of sin is man putting himself in God's rightful place deciding for ourselves who we will be and what we will do and who we will love and what we will love and what we will seek defining defining for ourselves what is good and what is not we've put ourselves in God's place and God out of love put himself in our rightful place that's the heart of salvation he substituted himself for us he put himself in the place where we deserve to be paying for our sin taking our shame taking our guilt so that we could have his love so that we could have his glory so we could have his beauty and I can I can stand up here and say there's a lot of I want to but you know you just got to illustrate it and I've got a hope that it kind of gets in and and my favorite kind of illustrations for those of you who are new around here are always redneck illustrations so here he goes I've got a great friend his name is John Stone he is a redneck from Lugal South Carolina we actually hadn't come speak a few years ago at a marriage conference so you got to experience his red neckness for yourself and he now lives in Knoxville Tennessee now what you need to know about Knoxville is in this illustration is that it is the home of two things it is the home of the University of Tennessee where the volunteers play the second biggest football stadium in the world that's where they that's big orange country secondly you need to know that Knoxville has one true country club one true country club that embodies everything that the words kind of imply and for the sake of this illustration I need you to lay aside all of your liberal left wing leanings and just not be critical of country clubs just for this illustration please I know I have so many left to send here and I need you to just calm that down for a second so my friend John does not belong to the Cherokee Hills country club he could not afford to be a part of that country club if he could afford to be a part of that country club they still wouldn't let him be a part of it you have to have you know you have to put your name on a list is it's one of those clubs it's still black balls members and you have to get 100% approval and and they really don't want anybody if they don't know your family and know who you are and what you do it's one of those kinds of clubs but one day John who enjoys he just enjoys riling people up just drove into the Cherokee Hills country club and right there at the gate there's a big sign that says trespassers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and he just blew right by it and at that point he was trespassing like no and he pulled into the parking lot in his minivan in his old worn out minivan and he did not fit in from that point on it was clear he did not fit in he got out of the car in his brown pants with a black belt and a pink shirt and he pulled walks around to the back of the minivan and he created he commits the unforgivable sin in our true country club he opened up the back of his van and changed shoes in the parking lot just a hint word otherwise if the country club has a locker room they expect you to use it so he changed shoes right there and the the guy the the valet who's supposed to be taking care of clubs he freaks out a little bit and he starts running over there and John puts on his bright yellow shoes in his pink on his orange sorry clims in that and everything about him is screaming red neck who does not belong and he pulls out his golf clubs it has a flamingo head cover on the driver because his daughter bought it for him for Christmas and he sees the valet coming to him and he sets his clothes up right in the middle of the parking lot and he knows that the valet is supposed to clean those clubs up and do whatever it takes to get a tip and he does not like that and so he says do not touch these clubs and walks off and valet's like oh and he walks around to the restaurant portion of the country club and they have this beautiful balcony that overlooks the Tennessee river it's in the hills it really is a beautiful beautiful part of the country and he walks onto that balcony just kind of through the restaurant like he owns the place and and there's a table there with a reserved sign and a kind of a plaque there on the table reserved for the chairman and he sits there because he enjoys doing that kind of thing and behind him there's a table of white haired ladies having their chicken salad sandwiches and you know talking about bridge and they are appalled at this red neck wearing his hat and his yellow golf shoes in their restaurant and over to the side there is a table of lawyers making business deals and trying to impress someone from out of town so they can get his money and they are appalled by this red neck sitting at the table the table that is reserved for the chairman of the board and one of the lawyers pops up and goes and gets the manager and the manager comes over Bill is his name and he comes over to John and he says sir may I help you and John says no I'm fine and just fold his arms and Bill walks away checks his guest list and one of the ladies gets up and goes and talks to him and he comes back and he says sir I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you what you're doing and at that point John looks at him and says well I kind of think that's my business isn't it and Bill and again John just loves doing that kind of thing so and Bill looks at him and says well actually sir it's my business and if you don't tell me what you're doing here I'm going to have to have you arrested at that point I want you to know Bill is right John did not belong there we believe in private property even if you don't let it go Bill John was trespassing he had no right to be there Bill was right John was caught in trouble inappropriately dressed in redneck and John and Bill and John at that point looked at Bill and said hey I'm sorry I'm just teasing you my Hamilton asked me to come here and meet him today now what you need to know about my Hamilton name that means nothing to you is at that point he was the athletic coordinator for the University of Tennessee the most popular person in the state the person who's responsibility it is to get a hundred and seven thousand souls into that temple of a football stadium that they have built the person who's responsibility it is to get twenty thousand souls into that temple of a basketball court that they have built the person who hires and fires coaches and at that time the most the most recognized one of the most recognized faces in the state of Tennessee the Tennessee in at that year had run a poll and it this will tell you something and the most recognizable face was a Barack Obama the second most recognizable face was Dolly Parton and then Thor was my Hamilton so that that tells you all you need to know about Tennessee Dolly Parton sports and politics and so when when John mentions my Hamilton's name everything changes everything the little ladies who are very angry that he was there being going oh he knows Mike oh welcome to our club one of the lawyers who have gotten up to have him removed comes over and sits with me I just want to meet you how do you know Mike well I know Mike from college and I actually went to Clemson together oh I explained to Clemson that we're so glad you're here the valet who was offended in the parking lot and rightly so comes in and says may I put your golf clubs on a cart for you Mr. Stone if the own the manager comes to him and says is there anything we can get you are you hungry are you thirsty is there anything we can do for you oh friend of my Hamilton right now let me ask you this what changed on second number one John's about to get put in jail on second number eight he is a valued guest who has literally everybody on the property at his back and call he is still a redneck he still cannot afford to be part of this club he still would not be invited to be part of the club even if he could afford it he still frankly does not belong there what has changed he's Mike's friend and all of Mike's credibility has been put on him and all of his redneck tackiness has been charged to Mike's account and Mike's account can more than handle it that's all the change that is the gospel in a very odd way no heaven's not a country club just work with me here that's the gospel when you come to Christ when you enter into a relationship with Jesus what changes about you you're still a sinner you are still woefully in debt you still have not been what you ought to be you still owe God your obedience that you're never going to be able to give him you still deserve his sin you deserve his punishment but what changes is now all of a sudden you are given all of Christ's credit you're given all of Jesus's glory you're given all of the love that he deserves purely by the relationship you just receive it you just receive it that is Jesus putting himself in our place and that is how Jesus cleanses us from all of our shame from all of our guilt and from all of our unworthiness and I want to just go through that and I want you to see that and I want you to feel it the first thing I want you to see is that he cleanses us from all of our shame from all of our dirt Paul here uses a long word circumcised it represents this old testament ceremony where they would cut off a dirty useless part of the flesh to symbolize kind of coming into the new covenant and a cleansing of the covenant and he says but in Christ also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ having been buried with him in baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead he said that that circumcision of the Old Testament that was just symbolic but it wasn't enough if we were to get rid of everything in your body that was dirty and polluted and worthless we'd have to bury the whole thing and that's what happens when Jesus is crucified and buried your body is buried with him your body is buried with him your body is put off it's cleansed we carry our shame around in our bodies you can tell when someone is dealing with shame when they are when someone is sinned or been sinned against in a way that makes them feel ashamed they cover their bodies up they want to hide their body I'm dealing with shame right now so I'm showing about eight inches of body that's it I'm covering everything else up that's the way we live we know that there's something here that needs to be hidden we know there's something here that needs to be put off and then Christ our bodies are buried our bodies are buried our entire body has been put off that's something we don't talk a lot about I don't know why we talk a lot about the death of Christ on the cross I don't I think we were missing a little bit of the importance of the fact that his body was buried and our body with him was buried that stuff is gone I tell you who understands the people who understand that I think are those who do opposed abortion counseling when when ladies have abortions and they later repent and begin to feel this guilt and this shame and of what they've done a lot of times their counselors will have them buy a small coffin and they will bury that coffin and they will have their friends come to the burial ceremony and their families and they will cry together and they will pray together and they'll have a complete funeral and at the end of the service they say not only you know does this represent the burial of that the baby that was aborted this is the burial of the abortion itself it's put off it's done when Jesus was buried that sin was buried with it some of you are still carrying around sins from your past that need to be buried or gone you need to let them be buried and when you're tempted to remember them late at night or early in the morning or whenever you need to remind yourself that is buried it was buried with Christ that is not me your shame has been dealt with in him and he has given you a new body he has been raised for you and the body you live in is the body that Christ has given you that is that is what you have now and you need to wear that new body just as if just as if the imagine the the pro shop manager coming out of this golf shop and giving John a whole new set of clothes so he doesn't have to wear the bright lime green shoes and the ugly pink shirt he can wear something that fits in and certainly not that cleans and hat which is right out just getting okay about coming Jesus has given you a new body you belong he has cleansed us from all of our dirt and he's cleared us from all of our guilt verses 13 through 15 say this and you who were dead in your trespasses and the unsurconcision of your flesh God made alive together with him having forgiven us all of our trespasses by canceling the record of death stood against us with its legal demands this he set aside nailing it to the cross he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by trying up thing over them in him what's the Bible saying the Bible is saying that you stood guilty and condemned and Jesus underwent all that condemnation he put all that guilt upon himself and God punished that in him now in our day and age there's really funny there's a there's a tension around this we want to say well this this God talking about God of judgment that's that's so old fashion I mean if you honestly try to bring up hell in a serious way people look at you like you're you just walk straight out of the 17th century like hell judgment you don't believe that do you I mean surely you're more enlightened than that surely you believe that God's loving and going to forgive everybody and that sounds so good if you don't really believe that God exists but if you do then just look at the standard you're holding him to right let's let's let's talk in modern days for a second okay I read the news you read the news I assume I don't let me take that back I don't read the news I read the sports section of the news right are you sports and if you read if you know anything about sports in the last six weeks you know that the NFL is undergoing this huge round of criticism because the the chairman the commissioner of the NFL they had a superstar called beating his wife savagely knocking her unconscious and he suspended her for him for only two games he's the the commissioner suspended his star for two games and it's been a nationwide uproar the Senate has gotten involved the governor of Minnesota has gotten involved I don't know but there's this nationwide uproar that that was not enough of a punishment he he caught somebody being guilty and he didn't punish him enough now just think about that for a second we are as a culture wanting to fire a commissioner of a football league or not punishing sin enough and yet we're saying if God is truly worth worshipping he won't punish sin at all we're holding the commissioner of a football league to a higher standard than we're holding the Lord of the universe is that same right to you if God is worth worship at all certainly he's going to judge the guilty he has to he would be a complete joke a complete completely unworthy and you know that that is why we suffer with guilt feelings it's not just some kind of shame that our parents put on us for uh by improper potty training techniques shame and guilt is real because you're guilty because you owe God your love just like you don't have to you know list reasons why you should love your mother everybody knows you should love your mother if you say you don't love your mother then people look at you weird you owe it to her you owe God your obedience you owe him your love and if you and you know that you have not served in the way you should and that's where guilt comes from when guilt when we struggle with guilt what's happening is the powers of evil are bringing the law to us and our consciences are agreeing with them understand we're guilty we have not been who we ought to be and they're showing us the violation ticket they're showing us the ticket you cannot pay
and the Bible tells us that Jesus has taken that ticket that ticket we deserve John you deserve to go to jail I'm going to have to have you arrested you are trespassing Jesus has taken that ticket that we deserve and he has nailed it to the cross I've paid that for you it's gone I've paid it for you and in doing that God does something that we all desperately want to do we know implicitly that they're all to be a way to do this but we can't figure it out in the American criminal justice system um we want so desperately to be able to punish the part of this person who commits a crime and then kind of renovate everything else about him right and so we're we basically have you know done away with the death penalty to the fact to the point that it's useless so I mean you know one or two a year at most and you know we have hundreds of criminals every year and we don't put them give them the death penalty because we know somehow that they're all to be a way that we can punish the sin punish this crime and renovate them but we can't do it why not because we can't surgically get into this person and and remove the sinful part of them because that's their soul and we as humans can't take that soul out but God says he had he can was he say he does he we he says you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcisionary of your flesh and God made you to live together with him your soul has died with him he's given you a new spirit a new heart you've been born again that part of you that was disobedient and rebellious has died and he's made you new he's cleansed us from our dirt and he's cleared us of our guilt and he's washed us of unworthiness he's washed us of unworthiness it says this is from chapter one you who once were alienated and hostile in mind doing evil deeds he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him holy and blameless and above reproach now some of you you just can't stand that story I told the beginning because all you can think is if you were that were you and you were the person in that country club all you would think is I don't belong here I don't have the right clothes I don't have the right car I don't belong here I'm not one of these people you wouldn't even be able to enjoy that I see that all the time a friend of mine last Christmas my niece came to stay with me and I took her out shopping we're just goofing around and we went into the most expensive store we could find at Utica Square and I was very honest I told the lady there I said one hot buying you thing but you look bored and we're bored I would love to see my niece in the most expensive most beautiful dress you can put on her and she was I mean the shopkeeper was loved it's like that's a great idea let's do that let's play dress up so she went and found her this like two thousand dollar black just gorgeous evening gown and put it on my niece and she walked out of the dressing room and she looked beautiful except for her face and her face looked like this and she said to me when we were walking out she said I kept thinking I just don't belong here I'm not one of these people that made me so sad because she's agreeing with other people's judgment of her and some of you have that that real struggle it's like well maybe I am forgiven maybe my shame is taken away but I am not worthy I don't belong with these people I can't go into a community group I can't join into the fellowship of this church because I don't belong with these people I'm unworthy and I want you to understand where you get your worth you get it imported to you think in terms of this again illustrations always help think of your pets I heard this hilarious story last night I hope you think it's funny this guy in North Carolina has three daughters and he had a guinea pig and they all love this guinea and one night was a Saturday night didn't have anything to do and they thought it would be a fun kind of family activity to give the guinea pig a bath if nothing else this will be a helpful public service announcement so they're just kind of all playing around you know the guinea pigs in the wash tub kind of kicking around spitting and and you know Mike there's kind of holding the guinea pig and the little girls are squealing with joy and Mike turned around to watch him squeal and when he turned around his hand just kind of goes down he holds the guinea pig underwater for a couple of seconds okay you're not supposed to do that who knew so guinea pigs can't hold their breath and he pulls the guinea pig out and it's coughing and it can't breathe and it's all the sun you know code blue in the kitchen and and he puts the pig on he's not gonna make it he's not gonna make it starts giving the guinea pig CPR pressing on his little chest blowing into his mouth he's giving mouth the mouth's resuscitation to a guinea pig the kids are crying the girls are just melting down screaming the guinea pig didn't make it had to go out in the backyard and bury him the girls were bawling but comforting his daughters why I mean it's a guinea pig it's a rodent if you give if you if you were to tape a tail that long on that end of that guinea pig everybody would think it was a rat and he would have gotten his shotgun out and fired it in the house to kill it the girls would have been screaming standing on top of their refrigerator to get a weight from it what makes this guinea pig so valuable nothing about the rodent the fact that he was loved made him valuable the fact that those girls loved him made him valuable if you are in Christ then the Lord of the universe loved you so much he gave his only son for you that is where you get your value that's where your value comes from not from being the best baseball player not from being the smartest student not from having the biggest bank account you get your value from how much you are loved and the beautiful thing about getting your value there is if you did get your value from how much money you had you would be an arrogant jerk and we would hate you if you got your value from being a best baseball player you would be a bully and we would hate you but if you get your value from how much you are loved it makes you humble and gracious and kind and we want to be with it elevates you infinitely more than anything else and yet in such a way that in no way makes you prideful or sinful there's nothing else like that and I want you so badly for you to come and taste that today and let it change you please pray with me my father and heaven I pray that we would not hesitate to take a big bite of your grace and I pray that we would experience it and we would believe that our shame is forever buried that we would believe that our guilt is forever paid for and that we would believe we would believe Lord somehow give us the grace to believe that the Lord of the universe the creator of everything loves us and I pray that that would give us an identity I pray that would give us value I pray that it would just fundamentally change the source of our security