Living As Strangers: From Babel to Abraham

How does the life of a guy from over 4,000 years ago affect ours? As we study the life of Abraham, I think for every person here, you’re going to discover that you’re actually on a journey a lot like Abraham’s. His was a journey of faith, a journey of calling, a journey of separation from things he held close and dear, things his entire life was wrapped around. And God pulled him away from everything he imagined would be the good life into something that became not only a much better life for him, but a blessed life for everyone else who was impacted by his life.

So I think about my own life, the desire for impact, the desire for meaning. And I realize it also requires a calling. It requires separation. It requires a journey. It requires faith. It’s sometimes uncomfortable, but it’s what God has for me. And the question for every one of us is, are we ready to make the journey of a lifetime at any point in our life, or does it have to happen within a narrow framework of our twenties, or we’re not available? Because Abraham’s journey didn’t start until he was 75, childless, and still living under his father’s covering. God chose him then and there and did incredible things with him.

So as we walk through this series of messages over the next six or seven weeks, I think it’s a journey that almost anyone who has decided to live a life of faith and a life of following is going to find themselves at these same turns in the road, crossroads, and dead ends that Abraham finds himself. And the choices you make in those moments are going to determine whether your life becomes known or forgotten.

So let’s start following Abraham’s journey. We’re going to start in Genesis chapter 11, which is an unlikely place to start. Here’s why it’s an unlikely place to start: it’s not about Abraham. It’s the story of the Tower of Babel.

The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel happens after mankind is created by God in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve sin, eating from the tree they weren’t supposed to eat from, and they’re kicked out of the garden.

But before any of that occurs, God gave mankind an overarching mandate that was true then, has been true since, and will continue to be true. The mandate was this: be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth, subdue it, and tend to the garden I’ve given you, but don’t stay here in this little garden. Expand it throughout the entire earth.

Why? Because God walked with man in the garden. He was saying, allow mankind to expand and fill and make this planet a glorious place where I can come and walk among you. Don’t just keep it here in Eden. Move it out to the entire world.

But sin broke that fellowship, that experience of walking in the garden with God, and man was kicked out of the garden. And when that happened, distance between man and God leads inevitably toward sin, because it is the spirit of God in mankind that convicts us of sin. When we distance ourselves from the spirit of God, we go deeper into sin.

It got so bad that God literally looked at the planet he created and the mankind that was filling the Mesopotamian region, and he regretted that he had made mankind. So much so that he sent a flood to destroy them from the earth. But before he did it, he noticed a man who still loved him and still served him: Noah. Noah had three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth. Shem is the tenth generation removed grandfather of Abraham. Abraham is in the line of Shem.

After the flood ends, God gives the rainbow and says, “I’ll never destroy the earth again.” The mandate is still present. They’re still created in the image of God. They’re still supposed to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, and tend to the planet. God did not revoke the creation mandate. He never has.

But they decided not to follow the creation mandate. Like many of us, we say, “I have a better plan for my life than God. I think I’ll do life the way I want to do life.” So we pick up with the story of Babel, of man after the flood, within a few hundred years rejecting God’s direction for their lives.

In Genesis 11 and verse 4, it tells us this. Mankind said to themselves, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower up to the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Mankind is saying, let us reject the creation mandate of God to fill the earth and subdue it. Instead, let us remain together and safe. And how can we do that? We could build a tower.

Towers were known in the Mesopotamian region, and they’ve been dug up since. In fact, two of the cities we’re going to talk about in the story of Abraham have been unearthed: one in southern Iraq, and the other in Iran. Not Iran, sorry, but in Turkey. Both of these cities had something in common: a tower built and central to the city. This is what you’d have, a city with a tower in the middle. It was common for cities to have towers in the middle. Why was the tower in the middle? Because it was a high place where they would worship a god. Abraham’s people worshiped the moon. They called it the moon god. The god of the moon. Exactly who they were attempting to worship, it doesn’t describe, but probably they were creating a god, an idol. And they said, “If we create a centralized place of worship, we’ll make a great name for ourselves, and people won’t follow the mandate of God and scatter throughout the earth. They will collect here around this city and around this tower of worship. We will defeat the plan of God with our own bigger and better plan.”

How many of you have ever had a period in your life where you had a sense of what God wanted you to do, but you had a bigger and better plan of what you should do? Yeah. So we can’t just look at these people and say they’re the only tower builders out there. We’ve all built a tower a time or two to keep our lives together and keep everything safe, and to do it the way we wanted to do.

This is the world that Abraham comes into. And in the tower world, they say, “Let us make a name for ourselves and not follow God’s dispersion of us over the planet, but gather against his will in one location. Not taking his glory, not filling the earth, not subduing it, not tending it. Staying centralized and safe and local. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Now, here’s the thing. This kingdom of God mandate, to fill the earth and subdue it, to bring the blessing of God through the people of God to the world that God has created, was exactly what the Jewish people were to do. The first Jew, by the way, is the guy we’re going to read about today. His name is Abraham, and he gives him a blessing and says, “All the nations of the world will be blessed through you. You’re to bring the blessing of God to the world.”

And yet the Jewish people tended to be very internal and not bring blessing to the world, but just stay internalized as their own people, their own nation, and not bring any grace and goodness. One of the exceptions was Jonah, who was sent out and didn’t want to go, and fought God to not bring blessing to Nineveh, to the Assyrians, and tell them how to repent of their sin. God was actually sending them out, and the answer was no.

And you’re like, well, that’s just terrible that those Jews kept it, and that’s just terrible at Babylon that they kept it. When Jesus died on the cross, do you remember where the disciples went? Did they go into all the world, or did they hide together? They hid. They gathered and they hid. They didn’t go. Once again, God said, kingdom moves forward when the kingdom people go into all the world and preach the gospel to all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Once again, kingdom expands as people go when God says go, right?

This is one of the repetitive, cyclical themes of all of scripture. God is creating us to be a blessing. To be a blessing means a life of going, obedience. And we are drawn toward safe, secure circles. And it’s always a tug of war between our heart for safety and God’s call for going. This is no different than the creation story, Babylon story, and it is Abraham’s story in a microcosm. And so when you read Abraham’s story, you’re reading a larger creation narrative of us being called to go and struggling to step out and do that.

The World Abraham Was Born Into

So this is a world that he’s born into. It’s tribal. It’s nomadic. Tribal means you stick with your family. Nomadic means that you take your herds and you travel to places where there’s fields for grazing.

Abraham appears to be a nomadic tribesman, following after his father, and he lives in the city of Ur. Archaeologists have since done excavations there and discovered the city of Ur, and they found the ziggurat in the middle of the city. The tower is called a ziggurat, a terraced tower, and there, all the inscriptions say that this was the city of Ur, and they worshiped the moon god.

When they eventually moved, they traveled along a trade route to the city of Haran in southern Turkey. Guess what, that’s also been dug up. There’s also a ziggurat there. And do you know what they worshiped in the city of Haran? The moon god. The same god.

It says that his father Terah was probably a moon god worshiper. In fact, Joshua says that Abraham’s family worshiped other gods before God appeared to him in Mesopotamia. In Acts chapter 7, it tells us that God actually appears to Abraham while he’s still in Mesopotamia, in Turkey, in the city of Haran. God appears to him there. And in that moment, he doesn’t know of the God of gods, the God of creation, the God of Noah before the flood, of his great ancestor Shem, the son of Noah. He doesn’t know of this God. He just knows of this moon god.

And God comes to our lives at times where I don’t know that we’re deserving and rewarding, and that we should be like, “Oh, God’s going to use my life right now because I’ve got it all together.” How many of you know Abraham did not have a Bible? There wasn’t such a thing as a Bible back then. He didn’t go to church. There wasn’t a church. He probably went to a ziggurat and worshiped the god of the moon with his family, most likely. It doesn’t say that in the passage, but we know that his family worshiped other gods from the book of Joshua.

So this is who the guy is that God says, “Now, I think you could become a blessing to the entire world, and I want to do something for your life.” And so I’m starting with that preface because I would like for you to consider something today. Abraham is 75 years old, a moon god worshiper, tribesman, herdsman, nomadic, with a wife who is old like he is, not as old as he is. He’s 75, and no children. And that guy gets picked by God to bless the entire world, through to send Jesus 42 generations after Abraham, as the blessing to the entire world.

So here’s my question. If God can use Abraham, can God use you? Right? Okay. So let’s begin the journey of faith that we have to walk through so that we can allow God to use our lives as well. And today I’m just going to start the journey with three thoughts from chapter 12 that’ll help you to understand this journey and maybe look at it for your life.

God Calls Ordinary People

The first thought is this. Number one, God calls ordinary people. And I just made that point, but God calls very, very, very ordinary people. In fact, I think sometimes God is particularly drawn to ordinary people so that we don’t get glory.

What had they said in chapter 11? They said, “Let us build a tower and a city that we might make our name great.” We might make our name great. Everyone around will hear our great city, our great tower. We are going to defy God, make our name great, and stay together and do this.

What’s the call of God on Abraham’s life in Genesis 12:1-3? Listen to how these two chapters are so divergent. What they said about themselves: we will defy God. Stay in one location, not go elsewhere. Stay. Make our name great and build this tower of worship to something other than God.

Now, this is what God chooses to do in the next chapter. That’s what you’re going to do, humans. Here’s what I’m going to do. God says, now the Lord said to Abraham, “One guy, not all the people of the earth.” All the people of the earth have gathered in Genesis 11. And now God just says, “I’m going to go to one guy. Go from your country.” You don’t get to stay, you get to go. So this is already, mandate says go, not stay. So go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house. By the way, this is the entire security blanket of their culture. Because if you’re a nomadic tribesman, this is your insurance. This is your social security card. This is who takes care of you when you get old. He doesn’t have kids to take care of him. This is your inheritance. Normally he’s the oldest of three, and so normally you get a double inheritance. That’s not just Jewish culture. It was also surrounding cultures prior to Judaism. And so they’re thinking, this is safety. This is your job. This is security. This is everything that you have.

Leave it. Leave literally everything that you planned in your life behind. Now, have you ever had God tell you to leave something behind? You ever had God tell you to leave a relationship behind, or to leave a job behind, or a career behind, or a friendship behind? How many of you know that whenever God tells you to leave something behind, it’s one thing if you’re ready to leave it, it’s a very different thing if you’re clinging to it like it’s everything, right?

So here’s my question. If God’s ever told you to leave something behind, what did you do? Did you leave it? Some of you would say, “I didn’t. I wasn’t willing to leave that behind to pursue God.” So we’re already starting with Abraham taking a step, potentially, above a lot of us in the room, because I’m just going to tell you, he was actually willing to leave it behind. The call to leave things behind is common. The obedience to leave it behind is uncommon.

And so right now, go from everything that is secure in your life to the land that I will show you. Wait, that sounds really wonderful, but could you give me an address? Okay, just plug that in my GPS real quick, God. And I will make you a great nation. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, God, I have no children. Problem. I have no kids, God, and nations come from king’s children. I’ll make you a great nation and I will bless you. And what does it say? Make your name great. What was chapter 11? What did they say? They said, “We will make our name great.” And God totally smashed what they did. Sent them out, dispersed them throughout the earth, confounded and confused their languages, and said, “No, you will not. I will make your name great, or it will not be great.” So God just said, “No, that’s not gonna happen.” But he comes to this guy, 75 year old nomadic herdsman, and says, “I choose you. I know you worship the moon. Stop doing that.” Probably, you know, I’m probably, he’s like, “Oh, yeah. Turns out the moon’s not the real God, Dad. Turns out he appeared to me and it wasn’t the moon. It was different than that.” So I’ll make your name great, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing.

So God just totally reverses everything from chapter 11 in the Tower of Babel, and he says, “No, this is the way I work. I just find people that are willing. I just find people that are humble. I just find people that the world would never pick, that I pick. The one person in the family that’s the rebel, and I save him and save the whole family through the rebel. I pick the one person at work that everyone doesn’t get along with, and I transform their heart and change their life, and everyone sees what God can do through a life that’s transformed. I choose that person. I choose the most unskilled person, and I bless them and use them and use their life.” I think God cherishes finding the things in this world that are insignificant, and showing his significance through us.

And so I’m not going to exalt myself. I’m going to allow God to build. I’m not going to say, “I will make my name great.” I’m going to trust that God, in his own way, in his own time, will figure out where my greatness is to land. God, you put that on me. Show me where to go, and let me start following you. Over and over and over again, though, he gives him one command. His one command is to go, but then the rest of it is all God. God says, “I’ll read some of them. I will show you a land.” So God will give you the direction. All right? Don’t come up with your own significance. That’s like the ziggurat, the Tower of Babel. “We will build a tower. We will build a city.” Greatness is often contrived by us. This is what I will do to be great. But Abraham is a reverse story of that. He has no aspirations that we know of. And God shows up and says, “I will make your name great. You will go to a place.” So let God show up and tell you where to go. Let God direct your life towards the next thing.

And then he says, “I will make you a great nation.” This is God saying, “Let me do that.” Okay? Let me figure it out. “I will bless you. My favor will be on your life. And then I will make your name great. I will bless those who bless you.” Okay, thank you, Lord. And then he says, “And I’ll curse those who curse you.” So I’ll take care of your enemies. I’ll deal with the people that come up against you. So just decide you’re going to go after God.

Faith Gets Up and Goes

Then, as we continue down this story, he’s Abraham, 75 years old. This is where he is. And God shows up and says, I’m just going to choose an ordinary man.

The second thought is this. Faith gets up and goes. Faith, at some point, says, “Wait, I’m going to leave my father, my brothers, all of our herds,” and, you know, dad will probably let me take some, but I, you know, not going to be wealthy like I was living here in Haran with all the family, “just take everything and go to a land that I will show you.” So you’re going to give me a promise that there’s a land, and you’ll show it to me, and I’ll be great. But what I’m giving up is actual, concrete security. I know what I have here, and you’re saying just give it up and go, and I’ll just show you.

How many say it’s kind of hard to give up what you have when you don’t have clarity about what you’re going to get? It’s just hard. It’s like, “But I have this, God. If you could just define it a little more clearly, like, is there a particular spot in this land where I should recognize it when I get there? And that’s my spot. Like, even just, like, a little visual image, Lord, give me something.” He said, “Just go.” “Which way?” “I’ll show you.”

Imagine that conversation with all your family and extended relatives. “Well, we’re going.” “Great, where you going?” “Not sure yet.” “Going back maybe to–” “No, not going there.” “Where you think you’ll head?” “Well, we’ll just start walking and see where we end up.” Now, I have days like that with my wife. That’s some of my favorite days off. You ever have a day like that where it’s like, where do you want to go? Well, we’ll get in the car and we’ll start driving, and let’s see where we end up. Some of you are like, “I would never do that.” How many of you know what it’s like to be a leader and experience decision fatigue? If you experience decision fatigue, sometimes you just go, and then you just look at something and say, on a whim, “I think we’ll just stop and look at plants.” “Okay, do you want to plant plants?” “I don’t know if I want to plant plants. Let’s go look at some. We’ll decide.”

So maybe he’s just going, and letting God show him as he’s getting there. So God just spoke, and Abraham decides that he wants to follow God. He’s going to go after God. And he does. He goes after what God has said. Show, just go, and I’ll show you.

Now, the Hebrew word for go is used twice in his life. Once is right here, when he first meets God. God says, “Go to a land I will show you.” And the word there is lecha, and what it means is, the phrase is go, but it’s sort of a defining go. It’s go for yourself. Go without anyone with you. Go no matter what anyone else thinks. It’s decisive. You are making your decision. You go. Go for yourself. You mean if dad doesn’t want me to go, I’m still gonna go. Go for yourself. Go for. Now, there’s a moment where God is going to lay something on your life, on your heart, on your desires to do something. I’ve literally had spouses come to me and say, “I felt like God said go,” or, “give 10% of my paycheck,” and my husband or my wife refuses to give anything from theirs. I’m like, “So what has God called you to do? Go for yourself.”

Now, does it say Abraham consulted Sarai, consulted his father? It doesn’t say consulted. It said God had said go for yourself, and Abraham went and did what God called him to do. He went.

The second time it says this, it’s the bookends of Abraham’s calling, is when God says, “Take your son, your only son, the son whom you love, Isaac, and sacrifice him to me on the mount that I will show you.” Once again, you will journey for me to a place I will show you. Go for yourself. You must go and do this thing, and it’s the bookends of his entire life with God is go for yourself.

At some point you cannot depend on everyone around you to decide whether you should or should not go for God. At some point you have to have a gut level sense of what God has called you to do with your life. Now, I want to bring my wife along with me. So we’re going to have a lot of discussion, but you have to have a sense of what God is saying, right? You have to have a sense of it that you buy into, that you own, that is strong within you. And that I think is the reason that Abraham stepped out when many people don’t. Was at some point he had a strong sense of what God was doing, and he went out after it.

In fact, Hebrews 11:8, it tells us this, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out,” What’s it say? “Not knowing where he was going.” He didn’t have an idea, but he had faith in the one who had called him. So he went, and he went for that thing.

And I wish I could tell you everything’s going to work out, and this is how it’s going to work out, and it’s going to be great. There’s going to be no issues and no problems, and just when you go for God, everything happens just the way you imagined it’s going to happen. But I want to tell you, everything didn’t work out just amazing for Abraham, just the way he might have imagined it was going to happen. There were a lot of trials and challenges on the journey to get where God had called him. That’s for other weeks. We’ll start into some of those next week. But it didn’t work out just perfect, peachy king, no issues, no problems as he went out. But he stepped out, and he obeyed.

God Blesses You So That You Can Bless the World

And the third thought for today that I’m going to leave you with, as we’re going on our journey, is this. Third thought is this. God blesses you so that you can bless the world.

Now, frequently, here’s a misunderstanding, typically, of when people feel like God has called them. Maybe you’re called into a new business, and you succeed in that business, and it becomes a multi-million dollar business, and you sell it off in 10 or 15 years, and you’re set for life, or whatever it is. I don’t know. But you have this idea. God says, “Go and do this thing, and I’ll bless you.” And he does, and he blesses you.

How many of you understand that when God blesses you, he blesses you to become a blessing, right? He doesn’t bless you to hold and hoard blessing. He blesses our lives, because the original Eden mandate is still on mankind, to go to the entire earth, to fill the earth, to bring the presence and the glory and the grace of God. The Great Commission: go into all the world and preach the gospel. The Abrahamic call: go, and you will be a blessing to all nations. If you are a follower of God, you are called to be a bringer of blessing, not a hoarder of blessing. Your life is oriented that direction as a follower of Christ.

Who was that? The blessing of God to mankind, as he went, left heaven, came to earth, sacrificed himself so that you could experience the richness of God while he experienced the curse of sin. That is the call. God blesses those who choose to go out.

And so when Abraham enters Canaan, it’s not all free and open and wonderful. It’s inhabited. God says, “Go, and I’ll show you, and I’ll give you a land, and I’ll make it yours, and I’ll make you a father of a nation.” And he finally follows God, and he goes, and he arrives, and the land is already taken and full of a whole bunch of other people, the Canaanites, and they like their land, and they’re not planning on going anywhere.

Now, some of you, you have a dream, and then you get there, and it’s like it didn’t work out, because look, there’s no opportunity here, and no one’s listening to me, and everything’s in the way of me doing it. So did Abraham turn around and go back to Haran and say, “Well, I guess I was wrong, because when I got to the land God was going to give me, someone else already had it, so I just went home”? No. This is what happens in Genesis 12 and verse 7. He gets there, the land’s full. Then the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, to his offspring, “I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. But right there in this chapter, it tells us when he arrived, the Canaanites filled the land. And then the Lord said, “And I’m going to give it to you.” So he just built an altar and said, “Well, thank you, Lord, that I’m going to get the land.”

Now, that’s an interesting posture, that in the face of defeat, you worship God for victory. It’s an interesting heart posture to say, my victory and my defeat are not in what I see, but in the God who promises what will be, right? And it’s so much so that I actually will worship him even when I’m seeing defeat, because I am believing and thankful for the blessing that’s ahead. I went home to be a missionary to my kids, and they all rejected me, and they’re all filled with Canaanite values from this world. And you said, “Well, I just went in my master closet, and I made an altar, and I thank God that each one of my children will follow Jesus Christ with their whole heart and soul and mind and strength. Even though they right now are living in the land of Canaan, I believe God that he’s going to bring them to the promised land of grace and victory and God’s presence.” Amen.

And so it’s an interesting heart posture, but I think it’s one certainly worth learning in our lives. The Apostle Paul tells us that all of this was actually a picture of what God would do through Abraham, for your life, for my life, for the people of the first century that Paul was writing to. He was saying literally all of this was about what was going to happen more than what was happening in Abraham’s life. What was going to happen was the blessing would come through him to everyone.

Did you know that Christ, according to the biblical lineages, was born 42 generations after Abraham? 42 generations later, Abraham became a blessing to the entire world through his lineage, because Christ died on the cross for the sins of every person from every nation, right? Amen. Every person from every nation, Christ died for. And where does it start? The Tower of Babel. Everyone says, “We will make a name. We will gather. We will be great.” And God says, “No, I will bless every nation through one little guy here, 75 years old, without children, who will just say yes. I will send blessing your way.” Through this, not through your plan, but through my plan. “I’ll bless the entire world through him, through one guy who will step out in faith and believe me.”

In Galatians chapter 3 and verse 8, it tells us this. Galatians 3:8 says, “And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preached the gospel beforehand, before Jesus, to Abraham, saying, ‘And you shall all the nations be blessed in you.'” In other words, every nation on earth will receive the gospel through your offspring, Jesus Christ, the son of God, who comes and dies, is born of the Virgin Mary, son of God, son of man, born of the Virgin Mary, lived a sinless life, died on the cross, and every nation of the world will be blessed. He says the gospel was being preached all the way back at Abraham. All the way back at Abraham, God was telling us that there would be blessing, and there would be salvation, and it would be for all mankind. God has had this narrative since Genesis. This narrative for mankind, to know him, to come near to him, to be brought and drawn into his purposes, and then to go and bring God’s kingdom wherever they go, to the world, to be the spreaders of God’s grace to the world around them.

And Jesus is that offspring, 42 generations later. In 2 Corinthians chapter 8 and verse 9, listen to who Christ is. It says, “For you to know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.” It’s this journey, this journey of calling, where it says, “For God so loved the world that he sent his own son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.” The son who has everything leaves the promised land of heaven to go on the journey, the hard journey, to earth, in faith, in his father’s will and his father’s plan, to take the journey from heaven to earth, to the cross, for our sins, because of love, because of bringing blessing to the world. Christ exemplifies the journey himself of following the father’s will to bring blessing to others, to mankind, because of faith in his father, because of absolute knowledge of his father.

And so the question is, is your life on that journey? Have you begun the journey of faith, believing in Christ to save you from your sins? That God is actually in pursuit of you. That just like Abraham did not pursue God, but God pursued Abraham. God found him in a lost place, in a lost land, and drew him to himself. God is still, through Jesus Christ, he comes down to us to pursue us. And still to this day, God is pursuing you. God is pursuing you to live the life he’s called you to. A life of meaning and purpose. A life sent out to be blessed and a blessing. And he pursues you, who have not yet found him. And maybe you’re still at your ziggurat, worshiping money, worshiping relationships, worshiping career aspirations, worshiping anything and everything but God himself. And in those places, he still finds us. He still loves us. He still calls us. He still directs us, because God’s intent was to bless every man, every child, everyone in this world.

So today, I want to give you an opportunity. First, if you’re not yet a follower of Jesus Christ, the one who came to find you, I want to ask you to find him today, to say, “He’s appearing to me even today, like he did to Abraham, in my heart. I sense him, that he’s real, that he really gave his life for my sins, and I just want to ask for his forgiveness for the life that I’ve lived apart from him, doing my thing. I want to make a choice to follow him, to go after God.” If you’d like to pray that prayer, I’m going to lead you in a prayer of commitment and following Jesus Christ.

And if you want to pray that prayer, in a moment, I ask you to raise your hand and say, “Matt, I’m praying with you.” I won’t ask you to stand and come up or anything, but I want you to acknowledge that you’re going to follow Jesus Christ and not be ashamed of following him.

I want you to at least acknowledge to God, “I’m not ashamed to follow you. I’m going after you with my whole heart. I’m following you. Forgive me.” Could we bow our heads for prayer right now?

With every head bowed, every eye closed, if you’d say, “Pastor Matt, would you lead me? I want to join you here in this moment of committing my life to Christ and believing in Jesus as my savior, my sins forgiven, heaven is my home and purpose for today.” If that’s you, would you raise your hand real high right now? Put it up and say, “This is my moment.”

Amen and amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Many people all across the room are just joining over here. Amen. Amen. Church, would you be super supportive? Let’s just pray together out loud. If you’re already a Christian, reaffirm your faith as we pray this. If you’re not yet a follower of Christ, and you raised your hand, I want you to just pray this out to Christ himself. It’s not just repeating what I’m saying. It’s talking to the God who knows you and loves you and wants to save you of those sins as you believe and trust in him. Let’s pray together right now.

Jesus…