Bruised Reeds

Lightly edited for readability while preserving the speaker’s meaning and substantive statements.

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   God we stand in awe of you today. We are truly in awe that you love us so much. That you sent your only begotten son to die on a cross. For our sins, for all the evil and the wickedness and the lust and the just rebellion and all the things we've done that you would send him to take that upon himself. To die in our place when we deserved that suffering and that death. To provide a way for forgiveness, to provide a way for us to have eternal life. Lord I still after almost 30 years stand in awe. That you love us that much. You just you long to forgive us. You just want us to be willing to humble ourselves, confess our sins and turn away from them. You just want us to put you first. To love you back cuz you already love us. And you want us to love you back with more than our words but with our actions. So Lord I ask you Lord to help us do that today. All of us. Those here, those listening to this message and those who will hear it. Lord we we pray for that in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated this morning. We welcome you to Fire and Grace Church. Those listening by Blogtalkradio we welcome you this morning. Um. This is one of those mornings. And just over the weekend that I've you know been praying and. Different times trying to find the direction of the Lord and sometimes he waits till the very last second. To kind of give me the direction. That's why this morning I didn't really post a title for the message cuz I wasn't sure where we're going with this today. But, I'm just going to share some things with you that's on my heart because um I think it's important for us to understand that you know, I talk a lot about God's judgment and God's wrath and about God dealing with sin and God uh being justified in doing so. I've covered that in the last couple of weeks, I think pretty in-depth. That God is fully justified in his wrath and in his anger to bring judgment upon the earth, the wicked, uh even to discipline and chasten and judge us when his children when we get out of line and we are, you know, rebelling. But, you know, today, uh well, really, I guess it was a few days ago now. I guess when we were driving over to Georgia, the Lord spoke to me something that I've really never preached on. I've really never talked about it, this particular passage in depth.

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   Um but, go ahead and turn to um Oh, let's turn Let's do it first in Matthew chapter 12. You're going to wonder before the end of this how we ended up where we're going to end up, how we ended up there, but we'll we'll get there, but What did I just tell you? Matthew 12? And let me turn there cuz I didn't even plan on this, so. How many of you remember the the Romans Road of Salvation? You remember that? Did anybody learn that in Sunday school? Oh, come on now. You all didn't learn that? Somebody did. You know, you can go through the book of Romans, there's a thing that and you can basically easily lay out the gospel, which is real simple. Uh the Romans Road talks about um I believe it's Romans 3:10, "There is none good, no not one." Right? There is none good, no not one. No one that's ever lived from Adam and Eve on, no human being has ever been good enough, moral enough, godly enough, righteous enough. No one's ever been perfect enough to go to heaven, to have eternal life, to be right with God. No one has. And that is just a fundamental truth, and that is a fundamental truth where none of us can think we're better than anybody else. Because we've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. Now, that's another verse there, right? Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Right? So, they do That makes me I'm no better than Nancy, Nancy's no better than me. No one's any better than anybody. Cuz we are all sinners according to God. We've all broken his law. We've broken his commandments. We've all defiled ourselves with the wickedness of this world, whether it be anger or unforgiveness or hatred or greed or lust. We We've all sinned and come short of the glory of God. We've broken the 10 Commandments. At some point, we've broken those commandments. Now, we may not have murdered, but the Bible says if we hate our brother, we are a murderer. Right? And no murderer has eternal life in my So, we can't hate people. And then it says, "Well, you know," some would say, "keep the Sabbath." And there's a big argument, should Is the Sabbath on Saturday or Sunday? And of course, the New Testament says we're not held to any particular day. But what that means is, hey, we've all chucked church for a time. I know I went through a dark period in my life, even as a Christian, where I didn't go to church for over a year. I didn't like Christians. And I wasn't one. I went through that period, right? Anybody been there? Sick of church, sick of Christians, sick of hypocrites, sick of your you know, sick of yourself, sick of everything. Um but we've all broken those commandments. You know, you say, "Well,

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   I have never committed adultery." But you know what? Jesus said if we look on another, the opposite sex, and we lust after them, it says we've committed adultery in our heart. Right? So, we've all committed adultery in our heart. You know, the first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me. How many times we put everything else before God? You shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. Uh-oh. Everybody's done that one. And you say, "Well, I don't say GD." Well, you might not say GD, but how many times have you said, "I serve Jesus." or "I believe in Jesus." or "I'm a Christian." and yet you've done things completely in public view, completely opposite of that. Taking the Lord's name in vain. We've all done it. I mean, I can go down and keep going down the list, couldn't I? We've we've told lies about people. We've all done that at some point. Right? Or we've skewed the truth a little bit. You know, favorites of some people, especially politicians, is to not tell the whole truth. You know, telling a half truth and presenting it as the truth is still a lie. Deception. Right? So, we've broken them. We've broken the 10 Commandments. Everybody No one can say, "I am I am good. I am holy. I am just. I am moral. I am more righteous than you." No, we've all broken these commandments. Now, some, granted, take these things much further than others, but that still doesn't make you know, just because I might not be a murderer, doesn't make me any better than the murderer. I need the same forgiveness that the murderer needs. Only the blood of Jesus and faith in the blood of Jesus and my confession to Jesus and my willingness to turn away from it, the only thing that makes me clean is the only thing that's going to make the murderer clean. We need the same remedy. We got the same disease. Sin is the spiritual disease that all of mankind have. People talk about, "Oh, it's you know, we we've got the It's a white problem. It's a black problem. It's a It's a Muslim problem. It's a It's a you know, whatever. Communist or socialist problem. Capitalist problem." No, it's a It's a sin problem. The heart problem. All mankind have the same disease. It's a cancer. It's the spiritual cancer. It's called sin. And here is the revelation. You can't cure yourself. Not by yourself. There's no way to cure yourself of it. If there If there was a way you could go to heaven without Jesus, then you could cure yourself, right? We wouldn't need Jesus. He wouldn't have to come and die for us. Right? But there's only one remedy. There's a

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   lot of people down saying to Oprah and all the rest of them saying, "Oh, there's many ways to God. It doesn't matter who you choose or which way you choose or if it's Allah or Muhammad or Buddha or Krishna or it doesn't matter." No. There's only one. Only one person that's ever lived that said, "I am God. I am the Messiah. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I will give myself as a sacrifice for sin, and I will raise myself back up from the dead and prove it. There's only one that did it. And that's why Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man will come to the Father but through me." Nobody. Now, having said that, I want to say this, being saved and staying saved is real simple. It's not complicated. All God wants us to do is believe that Jesus died for our sins, that he rose from the dead, that only his blood can wash our sins away. All we have to do is believe that, confess our sins to him, ask for forgiveness, and repent. Meaning, FROM THIS POINT ON, I'm going to change. I'm going to turn from those things. Now, listen, I know this. I've been counseling people I've been a minister for 30 almost 30 years now, and I can tell you that Christians do not live sinless perfect lives, but there's a difference between dwelling in something, living in something, habitually practicing something, versus you know what? I'm walking this way, the way the Lord wants me to walk. I trip over something, I fall in something, or I have a bad day, and I do something I shouldn't do. That's different than living in it and doing it every day, or every week, or every weekend. Some people say every weekend. Right? And God KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE. GOD knows if you are sincerely trying to walk with him and obey him and love him and put him first. He knows if you're playing games. He knows. There's no fooling God. You might fool your neighbor, you might fool your spouse. Some people fool their spouse. You might fool the preacher for a little while. You might fool some people, but you're never going to fool God. He knows the intentions of your heart. And And some people, this is their intentions of of Christianity. They want to go to heaven. They want fire insurance. They don't want to go to hell. They say, "Well, I believe in Jesus, but I want to see how close to the edge I can I can live without falling off." I can tell you right now, if that's your mentality, your heart's completely wrong. You're not right with God. Because if you love Jesus with all your

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