Sermon - At What Cost: Altar'd Series

Sermon Outline
Focus: God calls us to surrender our failure to receive His restoration.
             This restoration leads to true worship.

I) Key to maturity starts at accepting responsibility for our failure
        A lesson from sixth grade basketball: “Owning my life” by getting rid of the              “but”

II) David Confesses his failure to trust the Lord to defend Israel (I Chronicles 21:8)
        What is the big deal with a census of available troops? (21:1-6)
              Failure to trust that God would provide
        Confession leads to grace while facing consequences of failure:
              Famine, devastation, plague (21:10-12)
        David trusts in the mercy of the Lord (21:13)

III) True Worship of the LORD Requires Sacrifice
              David: “I will not offer…what costs me nothing” (v. 24)
              True worship isn’t about comfort: it’s about commitment
               Requires Surrender “presented burnt offerings and offerings of well-                           being” (v. 26)
              Costly grace: calls us to follow, surrender, and be transformed
              Bonhoeffer: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring
              repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without
              confession, absolution without personal confession.”

IV) The LORD meets our failure with Restoration
        After David builds the altar, his sacrifice is sealed with fire and judgment stops (v. 26-27)
        David’s space to remember his failure becomes the site of the Jerusalem temple (22:1)
        God redeems broken places by sending Jesus to die on adjacent hill of Calvary
        Jesus is the ultimate guilt offering (Hebrews 10:10–14)
        What failure do you need to surrender so God can bring restoration?

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

But listen, church, when honesty replaces our excuses, what happens is grace, this undeserved favor of God begins to flow in our lives. Not only between us and God, but also between us and one another. Forgiveness flows where there is a real desire to repent.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Welcome to the Church of the Lakes weekly sermon podcast. We're honored that you're here listening and allowing us to be part of your spiritual journey. We're now in the Latin season. And in today's episode, Pastor Jared Priestett is preaching sermon number six of a seven-week series entitled Altar. The title of today's sermon is entitled, At What Cost? Are you carrying the weight of past failures and sins? Well, God calls us to surrender all of that and receive his restoration. This restoration leads to true worship. All throughout the scriptures, the altar was where people met God. The altar is where we laid something down. And today, we surrender our past sins and failures so a doorway is opened for our transformation and peace with God. And now, here's Pastor Jared. Be blessed.

SPEAKER_01 1:21

Well, good morning. It is so good to see you. The way we plan the preaching schedule this part of the year, I haven't been in here in a month. And I've missed you. It is a joy to gather with you on Palm Sunday. For those of you who are new to the church or new to even Christianity, you're like, what is going on with kids waving palms as they're circling around the stage and the chairs? Palm Sunday is the kickoff, the holy week, as Pat mentioned a moment ago. It is the day that Jesus made a triumphal entry into the city of Jerusalem. However, that triumphal entry would end up at a cross where he would die and shed his blood for the sins of humanity. And so we like to celebrate this week. We like to kick it off with celebration, Hosanna's. Mark chapter 11 is that passage of scripture. If you want to uh look at that outside of this hour, I commend that to you. And uh the crowds were there praising Jesus as we are, but they soon turned into jeering crowds on Friday when they asked for the religious leaders to crucify him. And so we're just kind of walking through this story. Again, if you're new to Christianity or the church, we're walking through the story this week of Jesus' final uh life on earth uh that preceded his resurrection. And so my hope is you don't just come today and celebrate and then come next week and celebrate the resurrection, but you actually will take the time Thursday and Friday to meet Jesus in the upper room and have uh the communion uh with your faith family in the traditional sanctuary on Thursday at 7.30. Uh we'll start with communion, we'll transition into what we call a service of shadows, a service of darkness, where we will extinguish candles as we recite and read the biblical narrative of Jesus' um final hours. Uh Friday, there will be the opportunity to do experiential worship where you will come and do a self-uh-led stations of the cross where you will read scripture, you will do some manipulatives with your hand like tearing cloth or tasting vinegar and nailing your cross sins on a cross. And definitely covet that to you as well. Commend that to you. 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., the sanctuary will be open for that experience. And of course, next Sunday, gather in this space again to celebrate the greatest reality that Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Well, we are nearing the end of our Lenten journey. Lenten is the season of 40 days leading up to Resurrection Sunday, uh, where we take time to kind of self-reflect, to sit back, to slow down, and to really consider uh the beauty of our faith and what Christ did for us in shedding his blood on the cross. And so throughout this Lenten season, we've been working our way through a series of messages called altered, surrendering to the King. And what we've been seeing is in the biblical narrative, uh, the altar which is in before us now is not just a piece of furniture in a worshiping space or a holy space or a sanctuary. The altar was really the place where people went to meet God and were never the less never um the same afterward. It was the place where something was laid down so something new could be risen up. Um, the altar was the place people went to be altered by the transformative presence of our living God. Um, so each week we've been asking ourselves this same question: what do I, what do you, what do we need to surrender at the altar in order for God to bring resurrection life inside of us? And so we've been walking through the variety of altars that were built by many of the biblical characters in the Old Testament so they could present one of five offerings on that altar. Burn offerings we've talked about, grain offerings, peace offerings. Last week we talked about the sin offering, and today we talk about the guilt offering, and uh, we looked at the story of Noah, who showed us that uh building an altar is making space for surrender, to surrender to the living God. We then moved into the story of Abraham presenting his Isaac on the altar on Mount Moriah, and we talked about the need to lay our Isaacs on the altar and surrender control of our future into the hands of our living God. And then we went to Mount Carmel with Elijah in 1 Kings 18, where he had that showdown with the prophets of Baal. And what Elijah showed us is an aspect of surrender is putting God first in our lives. In American Christianity, we've bought into this lie that it's Jesus plus, whatever that plus is. But Elijah is saying that's not it at all. It is Jesus, not only our everything, but Jesus as our only thing. And then from there we went to Joshua and Joshua A, where in the middle of a battle, as if he's moving Israel into the promised land, he pauses in order to offer a peace offering to the Lord, an offering of gratitude, so he could experience the restorative power of God in his life, be given peace. Uh last week, Pastor Brian and Pastor Robbie in their respective places of worship looked at Jason, uh Jacob wrestling that mysterious figure on the banks of the Japan River, and we talked about the need to surrender our past to make room for God's grace to work in our lives. And today we are going to go to another altar, another offering, and that is in the story of David. But this one's a little different. And the reason I say this one's different is because David built an altar to offer up a guilt offering on it in the middle of his failure. And here's what I want us to understand today, friends. God calls us to surrender our failure so we can receive his restoration, his restorative power in our lives. Listen, every one of us, all Christians here that ever existed, at some point in time has to figure out what they're going to do with their sin. Do they hide it? Do they justify it? Do they expose it? Do they live with the guilt over it for the rest of their earthly existence? Or do they do with their sin what David did with his? And present it as an offering on an altar to the Lord. Listen to this story of Scripture. We're going to go into 1 Chronicles. When was the last time you read out of 1 Chronicles, right? Beautiful book of the Bible. But we're going to start in chapter 21, and it's going to kind of describe for us, give us a narrative of the aftermath of David's great sin. And here's what the Scripture has to say this morning. Gad was a prophet of God, to tell David that he should go up and build an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite. So David went up following Gad's instructions, which he had spoken in the name of the Lord. Ornan turned and saw the angel, and while his four sons who were with him hid themselves, Ornan continued to thresh wheat. As David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David. He went out from the threshing floor, bowed before David with his face to the ground. David then said to Ornan, Give me the site of the fleshing floor of threshing floor, that I may build on it an altar to the Lord. Give it to me at the full price, so that I that the plague the Lord has sent may be averted from the people. Then Ornan said to David, No, take it, and let my Lord the king do what seems good to him. See, I present to you not only the threshing floor, but the oxen for burnt offering, the threshing sledges for the wood, and the wheat for the grain offering. I give it all. But David said to Ornan, No, I will buy them from you at full price. I will not take for the Lord what is yours, nor offer burnt offerings that cost me nothing. So David paid Ornan six hundred shekels of gold by weight for the sight. David then built there an altar to the Lord and presented burnt offerings and peace offerings. He called upon the Lord and he answered him. The Lord answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering and to finish it off. Then the Lord commanded the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath. David said, No, I will buy it for full price. For I will not offer the Lord burnt offerings that cost me nothing. Friends, this is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Let us pray. Gracious and loving God, I thank you that by the power of your Holy Spirit you are in this space, working in each and every one of our lives. And I just ask in the midst of these next few moments as I offer up reflection on your life-giving word, that you'd bless the words of my lips, the meditation of all our hearts, that they be of profit to us and acceptable to you, for you indeed are our rock and our redeemer. Amen. So to understand what's happening in this moment in the biblical narrative, we have to go back and see what did David actually do that compelled him to build an altar and present on that altar guilt offerings. What did David do that was so bad that unleashed a plague on the people of God in this hour, in this day? Now you're scratching your head going, that's it? He wanted to number his army? That's this great sin that deserved a guild offering? I mean, our government takes censuses of us every ten years, right? So we can divvy out electoral college votes in presidential elections. What's so bad about David wanting a consensus of his army? Well, you gotta back up at the significance of that in Old Testament history. For David to ask for a census of the army meant that he was placing his trust in military strength instead of in God's power. Instead of trusting that the Lord would defend Israel, David wanted to measure his own strength. He wanted to puff out his own chest and show the people just how big the army that he acquired for himself was. General Joab, his head general, warned David against it. David, don't do it. David, this isn't good, don't do it. But David insisted. So Joab followed the will of the king, he took the census, and as soon as the number came in, we're told in Scripture that David was struck in the heart. What does that mean? He felt the sting of conviction. David realized he done messed up. He realized that he replaced pride or replaced trust with pride, and he knew because he did that, because he sinned against the Lord, that there would be consequences that he would have to endure. And so what God does is he struck the people of God with a plague. And hear this, thousands upon thousands of Israelites died. And David realized something sobering in that moment. He realized that his private pride produced public pain. So what does David's mishap in this moment in his narrative and his subsequent repentance have to tell us and teach us today? I think the first thing it teaches us today, friends, is that our failure, hear me, exposes our need for grace. When David realized what David had done, he simply said, I have sinned greatly. Do you notice that statement? I have sinned greatly. There's no excuses, no hiding what he had done, no justification for his sin. He just simply confessed. And let's be honest, that in and of itself is pretty remarkable, isn't it? The reason I say that is because a lot of us, if I could take a poll, I could probably get the number. Maybe even most of us apologize a lot differently, don't we? When we apologize, we often will throw that conjunction butt in the state in the apology, won't we? Let me give you an example. Tell me if you've ever apologized like this with the butt. I'm sorry I hurt you. But you have to realize I have a lot of stress in my life right now. Has anyone ever said that? Or I I'm sorry I missed that, but you have to know I have a lot going on. You shouldn't have expected that much out of me. Anyone apologize like that? How about this one? I'm sorry I said that, but let's be honest, you provoked me. It's your fault I said that. Maybe that one hits. Listen, when you put a butt in a conf in an apology, what it does is it takes a confession and makes it nothing more than self-defense. It softens responsibility. But David in this moment doesn't say, I sinned greatly, but he just simply says, I have sinned greatly. Listen, church, when honesty replaces our excuses, what happens is grace, this undeserved favor of God begins to flow in our lives. Not only between us and God, but also between us and one another. Forgiveness flows where there is a real desire to repent. I'm sorry is pretty hard to receive, but is pretty hard to receive, isn't it? In fact, when somebody has wronged you and they've said to you, I'm sorry, but have you heard anything before the but in that statement? No. But if they come to you and say, I'm sorry, I wrong, I wronged you. And I'm gonna own this one, this is on me. Okay. Now you've just opened the door to what? To real repentance. Forgiveness flows where there's real repentance, not only with one another, but also with God. Listen, when we stop editing our story as David did in this moment, when we confess honestly, we receive grace, this unmerited favor that God is so ready and willing to bestow in our lives. And when we've been forgiven fully, it makes us more willing to forgive one another, isn't it? When we've been forgiven more fully, we're quicker to release bitterness, I think. We're maybe quicker to extend grace to that person who's as broken as you are, because we've come to understand that forgiven people forgive people. Hurt people hurt people, right? But forgiven people also forgive people. So again, when we replace excuses with honest repentance, we don't just find restoration with God, but we find it with one another. Grace flows best where honesty is present. But there's a deeper layer of what's going on here with David's apology. And here it is. Did you realize with the plague that hit Israel that David's sin didn't just affect David, it affected the entire nation. Like thousands of people died of a plague that God had unleashed. And this reminds us of something I think we so often forget, and that is sin is never just private. It's never just personal. We often will think, oh, my sin only affects me. My private choices are my business. What I do at home on my phone or computer at night in the dark is my business. My hidden struggles, struggles belong to nobody else and affect nobody else but me. But church, hear me, sin always spreads. The consequence of sin always spreads. A parent's hidden sin affects the entire family. A leader's pride affects an entire nation. A secret addiction damages relationship. Even sin committed behind closed doors eventually ripples outward, right? David's pride became Israel's pain. Think about the diagnosis of a serious disease illness. Hearing the diagnosis, friends, may be really uncomfortable to hear. And some of you have been in that doctor's office and you've heard those diagnoses. But hear me, the diagnosis is the first step toward healing, right? Ignoring the diagnosis doesn't cure the issue. Pretending nothing's wrong doesn't restore health. The same is the same with spiritual life. Um, confession brings restoration. The apostle John James says that in his letter to the early church in James 5. He says, You want to be healed? Let me give you the um the cause and effect of how you can be healed. Pray for one another and confess your sin, and then you will be healed. It's contingent. Healing's contingent on prayer and confession. Man, how many of us are carrying with us in this space today guilt that we've been trying to manage our sin? We feel shame because we're trying to hide our sin instead of confessing that sin before God. We've been spending years minimizing it, excusing it, maybe blaming circumstance. But restoration starts when we stop saying, I'm sorry, but and we start doing what David did and just simply saying, God, I have sinned greatly. That's where grace begins to flow. That's where restoration begins to take form. Friends, hear me. Failure simply exposes our need for God's grace. Confession gets us to receiving God's grace. Here's the second thing I see in this text that I think is so important, and that is true worship costs something. Every time, true worship costs something. So God tells David after he feels remorse and repentance over his sin. He says, Go build an altar for me on the threshing floor of a guy named Ornan. So David goes to Ornan, and Ornan just simply offers David everything for free. Take the land, take the wood, take the oxen. You can have it all for free. Do whatever you want with it. But David refuses that generosity. He even goes on to say, No, I will not offer the Lord that which costs me nothing. For those of you who've been hanging out in this series for the past six weeks, that statement should hopefully help you remember week one when we went into the Noah story. That true worship costs something, because the first thing Noah does after he gets off the ark, it's not construction, it's consecration. He builds an altar, he makes space to surrender to the Lord, and on that altar, he sacrifices the clean animals. That descriptive word clean is really important in that moment. Because what that's saying is Noah presented and gave to God as a sacrifice the best he had, the things that were most important for survival and for reproduction, that were most important for rebuilding life on earth. Noah gave God that thing, those things. He gave God the thing that cost him the most. Again, true worship always involves sacrifice. There was a famous theologian named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Some of you know that name. I think they made a movie about him a couple years ago. But Dietrich von Hoeffer was a theologian in uh Germany during uh Nazism. Credible mind, just a brilliant man. And uh Dietrich was part of a plan to try to assassinate Hitler at one point, even though he was a fascist fascist or a pacifist, excuse me. And um, he wrote some incredible uh works uh uh of Christian spirituality, probably the most important was uh cost of discipleship. And Beetrich Bonhoeffer, who later would go on to be put in a concentration camp and die as a prisoner of war, he understood the sacrifice involved in true worship of the living God. He uh in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, he contrasted cheap grace versus costly grace. This is how he defined cheap grace. He said, cheap grace is grace without the cross. It's grace without, or it's salvation without surrender. Costly grace, he defines this way. He says, costly grace is a grace that calls us to follow Jesus. And for those of you who've read the Gospels, Jesus says if we are to follow him, we must deny ourselves and pick up a cross. Costly grace is the kind of grace that calls us to follow Jesus, it calls us to surrender. Cheap grace, hear this, leaves you unchanged. Costly grace, however, transforms you from the inside out. Think of physical therapy after a serious injury or joint replacement. How many new knees and hips do we have in this place right now? Show of hands. Seriously, show of hands. What's the first thing the doctor wants you to do after you get out of from under anesthesia? Get up and start working those new joints, right? And it is painful from what I hear. I don't have any new joints yet, but for as much as I run, I'm sure I will. I'm hearing it is painful, right? It requires a lot of effort, but you have to do it because it also restores the mobility and the strength in that joint. Friends, cheap grace averts pain and stays injured. Costly grace does the work that leads to healing. Following Jesus costs something. And I think that's really hard for us to hear in the American culture, isn't it? Because we have built a culture around the three C's comfort, convenience, and control. And I'm saying this to a room full of suburbans, right? I mean, out of anyone in America, we've learned how to build lives that feel safe and manageable. Emphasize the word feel. And if we're not careful, what we do is even though we've constructed these lives that feel safe and manageable, we've moved that even into what we know about our faith in the Lord. But hear me, Jesus didn't come to fit into your life. I don't care what your mama tells you. Jesus didn't come to fit into your life. He's come to take over your life. Following Jesus is gonna cost you something. For us in the suburbs, following Jesus is gonna cost us our pride. How many of us have said things like this? I've got this. I'll figure it out. No worries here. I can handle it. I'll lift myself up by my own bootstraps. You know what the gospel says? Lord, I can't fix this. I need you. I'm dependent on you. It costs us our pride. It also costs us our excuses. Man, we live in a world where nobody is taking responsibility for their faults and failures. Like there's always a reason, there's always a justification, even if it's the devil made me do it, right? But following Jesus, it means regardless of the reason I was wrong. Again, remember, it's in that honest confession is where God's grace begins to flow into our lives. When we stop making those excuses, it also is going to cost us our desire to control the narrative. We want to measure our outcome, though, don't we? We want to plan and protect our future. We want to write our own script, but hear me, following Jesus, it means handing him the pen and trusting that his story is better than our story, because the reality of life is none of us are the protagonists of our own story. We're all actors in a greater story. And the protagonist of that story is God Almighty. Listen, here's the promise. When you surrender those things, when you give up pride, when you give up excuses, when you give up the control of needing to write your own script, God, hear me, He doesn't diminish your life. He enhances it, he restores it. He replaces pride with peace. Who wants more peace? He replaces excuses with freedom. Who wants more freedom? He replaces control with trust. So, yes, following Jesus does cost you something. But here's a thought. What if the cost of following Jesus turns out to be far less than what you actually receive in following Jesus? Does it even cost at that point? Or you just make an investment? Listen, when you surrender your life, you don't lose it. Jesus tells us in the gospels that you actually find it. True worship costs something. All our failure does, church, is expose us to our need for grace. Here's the third and final thing, and I love this. God meets our failure with restoration. David builds an altar on the threshing floor of Ornan. He offers this guilt offering. And we're told, like in the Elijah story, fire fell from heaven, which was indicative that God accepted his offering, which made the judgment stop and mercy begin to flow. But here's the incredible thing about this moment. The threshing floor of Ornan, where David offered the sacrifice to God, would later become the site where the temple in Jerusalem was built. Isn't that amazing? The place where David experienced his greatest failure, hear this, became the center of worship for generations. Friends, God took David's worst mistake and turned it into a place of restoration. Not only for him, but for generations of people to follow. Man, that's the power of our God, isn't it? Listen, when you surrender to the Lord like David did, he can take your greatest failure and make it the first line of your testimony. He can take your greatest failure and make it the first line of your testimony. There are artists that can uh take fragmented pieces of glass and make beautiful mosaics out of it. I'm not an artist, per se. But but if I saw a bucket of fragmented glass, I would think to myself, what a basket of worthless things. Jagged, right? Sharp, worthless shards of grout of glass. But artists will take those shards of glass and make them into beautiful mosaics, beautiful creations of art as you see on your screen right now. Shards of g of glass made in the form of a cross. You know, they take what is broken, and and what's broken becomes the centerpiece of magnificent art. Hear me, that's what God does with your life and mine. He takes the shattered pieces of our mistakes and he turns them into testimonies of his grace. God has so much power, let me say it again, he can take your greatest failure and make it the first line of your testimony. But even this altar, with this offering placed on it, that David did thousands of years ago, would ultimately point to another altar, right? Like all of the altars and offerings. Whether it be the burnt or the grain or the peace or the sin or the guilt offering, every single one of those offerings pointed to a greater offering being Jesus. Can I give you the gospel in four words? Bad worst, good best. Here's the bad news. We were created to be in relationship with our living God. We were told in Scripture that we could walk in the Garden of Eden with Him in the cool of the day and just have conversation. But we chose to be disobedient by breaking God's law, which fractured our relationship with the living God. Here's the worst news. There is nothing you and I can do about that. There's no amount of strength and ability or working we can do to restore and reconcile our fractured relationship with the living God. But here's the good news: God found a way. He sent his son Jesus to bring a sacrifice to us. And Jesus lived a life that you and I could not live. He lived it in perfect obedience and perfect righteousness. But here's the greatest news Jesus didn't just bring a sacrifice, Jesus was the sacrifice we needed for our lives to be reconciled with the God who created us. Friends, on the cross, Jesus took our failure. He took our guilt. With his blood, he paid our debt so we could have restoration and relationship with the God who created us. His blood is what saves. We look at the cross as the power of our faith, and it is a symbol of our faith. But the reason that is a symbol of our faith and the power of our faith is not in the wood itself. It's in the blood that was shed by the man who hung on it. You're cleansed of all unrighteousness because of the blood of Jesus. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever carried something? This is an obvious answer, but I'm going to ask it anyways. Do you ever carry something that at first didn't seem that heavy? But the longer you carry it, the heavier it got. I brought a backpack with me this morning. I want to show you. This backpack isn't too heavy right now. It's got a few rocks in it. And the rocks that are in this bag consist of, oh, I don't know, the regrets, the mistakes, the poor choices that I've made over my lifetime, and they've kind of stacked in here over time. And honestly, it's not really that heavy. This is something I can deal with and carry around on my back for as long as I think I probably need to carry it. But here's the problem. When I just throw the, figurely speaking, the rocks that consist of my shame and my guilt and my mistakes and my regrets in this bag over a lifetime, and I do nothing else with them, the bag's gonna get a little heavier, isn't it? Here's a few more rocks I want to throw in here for you this morning. This is Confession Sunday for Jared. This rock is uh regret I had when I was a little boy, and I was in the store with my mother, and I stole a York peppermint patty from behind her back, and we didn't know it until after the fact, and of course I got in trouble for it, but we're gonna throw that regret in there. Uh this one is a mistake I made when I hoodwinked my twin brother Jason to getting into a dryer at my house, and I shut the door and I turned it on. And he started going Kerplunk, Kerplunk, Kerplunk. We'll just throw that rock in there and we'll get a little more serious. This rock represents all those years in high school where I snuck out of my house and went to places I shouldn't have gone to and did things I shouldn't have done. I'm kind of shameful about those things. Man, this rock is when I was probably 16, 17 years old, and I had a really tenuous relationship with my parents at that time. I was just, I was a jerk, to be honest with you. And I called my mother a name that you should never call your mother. And to this day I still feel bad about that. And to add insult to injury, I actually called her that name in front of my father. So this rock represents my stupidity there for that. Um this rock represents the moments I maybe was harsh with my wife when I was first married because uh I took the stress of being a police officer home to the house with me. And I was unkind and harsh to her in a lot of those years, and man, I wish I could take that back, and we'll throw that in there. And this big old rock right here, let's let this represent all of the uh anger anger I have when I'm in the car driving at other drivers. Do you see how this bag just got a lot heavier? And I can't even lift it up anymore. And I work out. How many of you came in here today with a bag like this on your shoulders? Not physically, but spiritually and emotionally. You're full of just guilt and shame over regret and mistakes that you've made in the past. But the cross of Jesus Christ wants you to do something radical with this bag. Not to manage it, not to hide it, not to excuse it, but to lay it down. At the foot of the cross. Jesus already carried the weight of that bag. All the mistakes, all of your guilt, all of your shame, all of your regret he carried to the cross, which means you don't gotta carry it anymore. Not because it didn't matter, but because it's already been paid for. So today let me ask you, what are you still carrying on your back that Jesus Christ has freed you from? What is it? Is it shame? Is it guilt? Is it regret? Is it a mistake? What do you need to lay down today to be set free? Friends, the gospels tell us that Jesus came to set us free. Not just free tomorrow, free today, right now, in this moment. Listen, David built God an altar and gave him a sacrifice in the middle of his failure. Not after he fixed everything on his own, not after he cleaned up his life. No, right in the middle of the mess. And God is asking you to do the same right now. Maybe today again you're carrying guilt. Maybe it's shame. Maybe it's just simply regret. Please hear me. You don't have to carry it anymore. Jesus took it to the cross. He paid the price for your sin and my sin. In a moment, we're gonna sing a song called Brokenness Aside. I want to invite Tony and his team up. And as we're singing this song, we're gonna do what we've done every week. We're gonna open up the altar to you to come and kneel. And maybe there is something that has been weighing you down for a day, a week, a month, maybe for years, that you just need to let go of. Will you come forward and kneel at the altar and let go of your baggage? Give it to the Lord because He's already paid for it. Come and kneel. Friends, sometimes the most eloquent prayer we can pray is not with word, it's with movement, it's with action. It's with simply stepping out of your seat in a sanctuary and coming and approaching your God and King at the foot of the cross and kneeling and giving up what he has died and paid for. I know you might be thinking, because I've gotten comments from people in the past weeks with our altar calls, that I wish I would have gone, but I was just nervous at what the person next to me was gonna think. Who cares what the person next to you is gonna think? This is a moment I want to give you between you and God to come and lay down what you don't have to carry anymore. Be courageous, and maybe your courage will spur courage on in somebody else to come and lay before the throne, the altar, that which God has already taken away. It's been such a joy to worship Jesus Christ with you this morning. Um, as you head out today, uh know that the Lord Jesus has set you free. And when the Lord has set you free, you have become free indeed. Praise be to God for that. So, guys, we head out into the mission field just outside the doors of this place as a people that have been set free. Send us into our circles of influence, into our mission field, God, in the power of your Holy Spirit, to make known the mysteries of your gospel so we can set other people free. With Jesus. Lord, send us forth with your peace to do your will in accordance to your words. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

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Thank you for listening to the Church of the Lakes podcast with Pastor Jared Preesett. If today's message encouraged you and helped you grow as a devoted follower of Christ, we invite you to subscribe so you never miss an episode. You can also help others discover this podcast by leaving a five-star rating or review and sharing it with your friends, family, co-workers, and others in your circle of interest. We're also very grateful for your generosity, which helps make messages like this available to more people. If you feel led to give, please check the link in the description. And if you're in the Kent Ohio area, we'd love to invite you to join us in person on Sunday and worship together. To learn more about Church of the Lakes, visit churchoftheakes.org or click the website link in the description. Until next time, stay encouraged and keep walking in faith.