That is most definitely true. We owe everything to him. Everything. In this life, there's absolutely nothing we can do to find salvation except Jesus Christ. We can't work our way to heaven.

We can't buy our way to heaven. We can't be good enough to get to heaven. There's nothing we as individuals can do in our own strength and our own power to spend an eternity in heaven except through Jesus Christ. And so, you know, this week, we were looking at the the snow, and, honestly, you already know I was pretty excited about the whole event. I enjoy the cooler temperatures.

The snow was so beautiful. I was amazed at how much snow we got. I couldn't believe that that much snow was falling, and it was just continuing to come down. The temperatures did get too cold even for me, but, you know, I was really enjoying all of the beauty and everything that was there. It was so beautiful.

And even if it wasn't anything else, if you didn't like going out in it, you didn't wanna play in it, you didn't wanna do anything, you could look out at it, and it was absolutely beautiful. It was amazing to me to look out at my yard. And as I was talking about, my yard is it's got some ups and downs in some places that don't look so good and some that no grass will grow and other places everything was dead. But, you know, in just a matter of an hour or so, all of that was gone. It was covered with snow.

And the deeper the snow got, the more smooth the yard got. And so as I looked out to this beautiful yard with this beautiful white snow, the front, the back, everything was just gorgeous. And I looked at all of that, and while I was looking at all that snow, the verse came to me about being made whiter than snow. And so incredible to think about all of that that was happening in all of the snow and looking at it. And I said, well, you know what?

I think that God is trying to tell me I gotta preach on whiter than snow. And, so we you know, I spent some time praying and and looking at everything. And, I looked as the snow fell, and the snow covered everything. It covered the ground. It covered, the the deck, the cars.

It covered everything. I looked out while that snow was falling, and all I could think about was that that's just how God cleansed me. You know, I was I was a sinner full of sin, but I gave my life to him and all of that just came down and covered me up. And no longer does God see that ugly, nasty sin in my life. No longer does he see the person that I once was.

Now what he sees is he sees me exactly how he wanted me to be, cleansed and pure and all of those things that he has done. And so the snow, it covered everything. I want you to understand this. It did not skip anything. There wasn't anything that wasn't protected from it that wasn't covered.

It it it felt look. You know, they say, if a tree falls in the forest, does anybody hear? It? If it snows in the forest, it gets covered. Everything is covered.

There's snow everywhere. In fact, yesterday afternoon, there were still places there was snow that hadn't yet melted. It covered everything. It didn't leave anything uncovered. And so when I think about that, that as that snow came down and it covered everything, it was so pretty, it was so, you know, enveloping, and it did all of that.

It reminded me of how God cleanses all our sins, all our shortcomings, everything about us that is not holy at all, God covers it through the blood of Jesus Christ. He gave us that opportunity for it all to be covered, everything. Probably you I know I and probably you sometimes walk into, talk to someone and they say, well, you know, I would like to ask Jesus into my life, but I just got too much baggage. It's just too I've done too many things. Listen, I'm however old and from a very young age, I have done nothing but live my life badly.

I've done things that I I I wouldn't even tell anybody because they were so bad. And I've got all of this that I'm carrying in my life, and I'm trying to be a better person, but I know there's no way that God can forgive all that. There's no way. Just like that snow covered every square inch of my yard, Jesus blood can cover every single sin in your life. Everything you've ever done, ever will do, it can all be covered.

There is nothing that does not get covered because it's too bad. There's nothing that is done that is too bad that God can't cover. We see in scripture where God forgive people who committed murder. We see in scripture where God forgave people who committed adultery. We see in scripture where God forgave people who were thieves.

We look at all of this, and God can forgive every single bit of that. Just like that snow came down and covered everything, Jesus' blood covers every area of your life. Covers everything. There's nothing that cannot be covered. God covers it all.

Look with me to Psalm 517. Actually, I think it's let's see. Yeah. 517, and it says this. It says, purify me with hyssop and I shall be clean.

Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Purify me with hyssop, I shall be clean, but wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. That's an amazing thought to me, to think about what God can do. To think about the things that he can do and how we can be covered. This whole passage, by the way, was after Nathan, the prophet Nathan, had pointed out David's sin to him.

David sinned, but, you know, he tried to put that behind him. He tried to just act as if it never happened. He did a lot to cover it up, by the way, and I'm talking about the sin with Bathsheba. He did a lot to try to cover that sin up. And, you know, that's what we do too.

We sin, and something happens in our life, and the first thing we do is we try to cover it up. Push it under the rug, you know, pretend it's not there. You know, that lump is there every day. We can see it, but we act as if it's not. I I didn't see that.

That sin's not there. We try to cover it so nobody else can see it. We try to cover it so we don't feel bad about it. We try not to think about it. Do you know that people won't walk into a church because they know they have sin in their life, and they're trying to forget about it?

And they know if they walk in, God's gonna reveal it to them. That's true. He will. God revealed David's sin to him through Nathan. Nathan told him a story about, someone stealing the one lamb that a person had, and David was so angry, and then Nathan said, that that man is you.

And he pointed this sin out to David, and David was heartbroken. David finally admitted and and looked and and and head on faced the sin that he had in his life. And so this whole passage is after Nathan had pointed out David's sin to him. David I mean, he was totally heartbroken from that, and we see the conversation that he is having with God. That's what that psalm is.

It's the conversation that David is having with God after this sin has been pointed out in his life. So David is heartbroken, and he's facing this, and he's praying, and he's asking God, cleanse me. Cleanse me. Wash me whiter than snow. Make me clean completely, because he knew that the sin that was in his life was something he could not do anything about, only God could.

He was truly broken, and we see this conversation. David is asking God, purify me with hyssop, which was used during purification rituals of that day. Right? They took this hyssop and they used it and they covered the person with it, and that was supposed to, purify them. And so during all these rituals and the things that they did, they used it as a purification ritual.

Here's the thing, if man is doing it, it's not gonna last. David said, purify me with that, but he went even further and said, wash me. God, you wash me. You cleanse me. You take care of all of that because he knew that if God washed him, then he would be whiter than snow.

He said, I I'm I'm heartbroken. All of this that I've done, and and I've I've tried to cover it up. I've tried to live as if it didn't happen, but you sent Nathan to tell me that you still knew that it happened, and you still see that sin, that it's still there. I've never repented of that sin. I've never given it to you.

God, now I'm heartbroken. I'm asking you, please forgive me. Wash it. Get rid of it. He said, cleanse me and make me whiter than snow.

I found that interesting. Why whiter than snow? Snow is pretty white. If you walked out this week and looked at the snow, like I said, it's blinding. That sun started coming down on, Wednesday with all that snow on the ground, it was very bright.

Why whiter than snow? Because he wanted it whiter, more cleansed than anything that could ever be seen on earth. He wanted it to be a supernatural cleansing that god would cleanse him and make him so clean. He would wash him and make him so clean that he would even be whiter than snow. He would be greater than anything that could happen in this world because it was god.

Take it all away. Get everything out of my life, and make me whiter than snow. Not just white as snow, but whiter than snow. Cleanse everything. You see, God can do that.

Too many times we limit God. We think, well, God can't he can't do everything. Yes, he can. He can't cleanse all those things that happened. Yes, he can.

God can forgive, he can cleanse, he can take away every thing in your life that is holding you back. He said, make me whiter than snow. The snow is so white it was blinding, but David said, make me even whiter than that. Cleanse me completely with everything. Here's something I want us to think about.

We have sin that happens in our life. As a believer, if you know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, he says, we are to confess our sins. Many times, we try to hide it. Just like David. I sinned, but I'm the only one that knows it.

Nobody else knows it. I'm just gonna put it out of my mind. I'm not gonna worry about it. I'll leave it there. Well, when you leave it there and it's unconfessed, it stays.

It is not gone, it's still there. God can forgive you and he has forgiven you, but he wants you to say, forgive me of this. He wants you to acknowledge, I sinned against you, god. And as I have, I I'm asking you to forgive it. And it's that sin that's unrepentant in your life that limits you and causes you problems, and it causes heartache and pain and everything in your life when you could be washed whiter than snow if you give it to god.

David saw that. He gave it to god. He said, make me whiter than snow, cleanse everything. Sometimes, even when we think we got something clean, there are germs hiding underneath. Right?

Oh, I I got it. That's beautiful. It's very clean. You can take a cup, put some hot water in it, rinse everything out. It looks beautiful.

I put it under a microscope. You didn't put any soap in there, you just put water. Put it under a microscope, guess what? You're gonna see all those germs still hanging around in there. They didn't get clean.

It looked clean. It looks beautiful. But still, there are all those germs hanging out in there because you only put hot water. You didn't use any soap. You only did part of it.

You didn't finish it. Many times when we do that, all this is hiding underneath. It looks clean on the outside, but it's not really clean on the inside. There are things there that never got cleansed. David said, cleanse everything, even the sin hiding underneath.

Cleanse all of it. Cleanse everything. God, I don't want to just take a bath, and I'm clean, but I'm only clean on the outside. I'm not clean on the inside, because I've never confessed that sin to you. I've never given it to you.

I've never asked you to take it away and wash me. I've never done all of that. He's clean on the outside, but he's not clean on the inside. Jesus used to, with the Pharisees, they did all this ritual hand washing and cleaning and everything he did. He called them hypocrites.

He said, you wash everything, but it's not what goes in the body that defiles it. It's what comes out the body that defiles it. You do all this external cleansing, but you didn't do anything about cleansing your heart on the inside. Listen, as believers, we walk around with that in our life. If we're not cleansed on the inside, then what comes out is not clean.

We can look beautiful, we can put on the best clothes, have our hair fixed just perfectly, we can look great on the outside, our lives to onlookers can be wonderful. But you know, if you have that sin in your life that you have not repented. Only God can make us clean. Only God can do it. You know, just like you had to have soap to get the glass clean, you gotta have God to get your sin cleansed.

He's the only one. You can't buy it at Walmart. God is the only one that can cleanse it. He is the only one that can make us clean, because he cleanses the inner most parts of our heart. Those things that we even hide deeply from our self.

There are times when we hide things in our life so deeply, that we literally walk around not remembering something because we've hidden it away so far. But something's still not right. Something's still not not perfect. You know, it's kinda it'll rock in your shoe, and it kind of moves over out of the way, and you don't feel that rock. Right?

So for right now, that rock is still there. You never got it out, but it's not hurting. So you kinda got it away, and it doesn't bother you. But it's still there, and one day that rock rolls back under your hill and you step down and about fall on the ground because it hurts so much. That sin that you think you've tucked away and hidden away and it's never gonna bother you again, it's still there waiting for the moment when it's gonna cripple you.

Waiting for the moment when it's gonna destroy whatever's going on in your life. Waiting for the moment when it's gonna destroy your witness as you try to talk to somebody else. Waiting for something. That sin is still there. You can try to bury it.

You can try to hide it, but it's still there. It's not gone. And if it's not gone, it's still going to be a problem, because you're hiding it. But wait a minute, preacher. I thought that when you asked Jesus into your heart, he forgave you of all your sins, present and future.

He did. It's not that he can't forgive you of that sin, it's that you're holding on to it in your life because you haven't confessed it. You're the one that's holding you on to it. You're the one that's causing the problems in your life. You're the one that hasn't gotten rid of it because you're holding on.

You're holding on. He's offered to cleanse it. He said he will cleanse it, but you're holding on to it. You've never gotten rid of it. Well, listen.

It starts with confession. It starts with confession. Oh, hold on now. I don't like this confession thing. I I don't I don't wanna do this confession thing, because, you know, confessing that that bringing that forward and and hashing it again, all that.

I don't I don't like that. Well, it starts with confession. I want you to look with me to the verses 1 through 4 of that same passage. Verses 1 through 4 of that same passage. It says this, be gracious to me, oh god, according to your lovingkindness, according to the greatness of your compassion, blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, I have sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified when you speak and blameless when you judge. In order to confess, you've gotta have that broken heart. You've gotta get to that place and understand that you have sinned against 1, against God.

That's who you've really sinned against. Oh, you may have hurt somebody's feelings. You may have done something, against someone. You may have something against somebody else, but the true sin is against God because God's already given us the directives. God's already shown us how we're supposed to live.

So that sin is really against God, and we're holding on to the sin. If we hold on to the sin in our life, then we're the ones that are suffering. One of the hardest things for someone to understand. If someone has done something to you, and you say, I will never forgive them for that, the person you're hurting is you. It's not them.

A lot of times, they don't even know they did anything. You're holding something against them. They don't know why you're mad. You're absolutely holding on to it until you repent of that, and you go to them, and you tell them what they've done, and forgive them for what they've done to you, then you can't move on. You're locked into that.

It's gonna keep dragging you down. When you have that sin in your life that you keep tucking away and you haven't gotten rid of it, it's gonna keep holding you down just as surely as if you're wearing weights. If you're walking around and everything's cool, all of a sudden you put 20 pound weights on both feet, it's much harder to walk. You got a choice, take them off or keep walking. You decide, I'm just gonna pretend they're not there.

Keep walking. Keep trudging along. Suddenly, finally, you take them off. Man, how much lighter it is. How much easier it is to walk.

How much different it is. The sin in your life is just as heavy and weighing you down as those weights on you. You have to confess. That's the first thing. Well, you mean I gotta stand up in front of the church and tell everybody what I did?

Well, if God tells you that I'm talking about confessing it to God. Well, doesn't he already know? Mhmm. But he wants you to take the responsibility for it. And if you don't confess it to him, you can't start the responsibility.

It starts with a confession. You have to take the responsibility and say, okay. I did it. I can't blame it on this person or that person. I can't blame it on my circumstances.

I can't blame it on all these other things, but I did it, God. I sinned. I have this sin in my life. I did it. You gotta start with that confession.

In order to confess, your heart's gotta be broken. What do you mean my heart's gotta be broken? Until that happens, you're not ready to confess. Until you realize what you've done and the sin that you've committed against God, and the fact that it has broken your heart because you have done what you did against God, you're not ready to confess. Otherwise, you might try to do it superficially.

You need that broken heart. Your heart needs to be broken just like god's heart is broken when he sees the sin in your life. God, I've sinned. I've let you down. I've sinned against you.

That broken heart causes the confession to come forth. You've got to examine yourself. You see, that's where we as believers in Christ in the 21st century in the United States of America, fail miserably. We don't examine our own life. We like to point out everybody else's stuff, but we don't do our own.

We don't look at ourself. I'm okay. But let me tell you about you. Scripture says, take a look at your own eye first. We don't like to examine ourself on a daily.

We don't like to check and see, did I make a good decision? And sometimes even when we know that something we did was wrong, we just try to play it off. Well, you know, everybody makes mistakes. It's okay. No.

That's something you need to confess. Look at your walk with God. Are you walking with him? If he was standing beside you as you walk, are you thinking he would be satisfied with how you're living your life? Have you even checked that out?

Have you even thought about it? Many people today do not even consider that I need to check myself out. Do you know the number one cause for heart attacks for both men and women in the United States of America? Failure to go see a doctor. Undiagnosed problems.

They don't go get it checked out. Well, I'm okay. They don't check their self out. Well, I hadn't had any chest pains. Well, if you're having chest pains as you're getting late and getting checked out, You're having problems, that's not that you need to go before then.

Have a physical examination. Have the doctor check everything. See what's going on because you can't see it inside your own body. Go see the doctor before that. If you're walking in in in Christ, and and you're not having a physical examination, a heart examination by God on a daily basis, then there are things there that you have either, a, pushed down to try to forget, or, b, for some reason you've not recognized.

You need to be checking yourself daily. That's the only way we can stay in the good walk with God is daily, take up our cross and follow him. Daily, deny ourselves. Daily, ask him to look in our lives. It starts with confession.

David confessed before God that he is a sinner. For some, this could be the first time that you confess and that Jesus comes into your life. So when I say you have to confess, first of all, when you confess, is it the first time you've ever confessed? Is it the first time you've ever asked God to forgive you of your sin and come into your life? Have you ever done that?

If you've never done that, you can't just simply go and confess your sin now. You've got to confess that you don't know him, that he's not in your life. You gotta ask him to come into your life. To come in and take control. If you have asked him to come into your life and you know that you are saved, that you've given your life to Christ, and you know that he has given you salvation, then it's a time of reflection and understanding that all y'all know my word, all.

It's completely inclusive. No exclusions. All sin needs to be confessed. You mean when the clerk gave me back 50¢ more than I was supposed to get back, I and I didn't give it back to her, I gotta confess that? Stealing.

Well, is it really stealing? Yeah. If you're trying to, justify what you did, it's probably already the fact that you've already sinned. When you start trying to justify why you did something that you know already you shouldn't have done, yeah, it's sin. So you mean when when, you know, I I I took that pen from work because my kid needed one for school, that's a problem.

Yeah. That's stealing. All these things have to be confessed to God. Confess them. Get them out of your life.

I thought about this. What if every time you sinned, there was a rock in your house? Every time you sinned, there's a big rock that just shows up in your house. If you don't confess that the rock stays, then there's another sin and another rock and another sin. Pretty soon you want those rocks out of the house.

Right? You wanna throw them out. You wanna get them out of the way. You don't want them in the house. You don't want them in the way.

Well, if every time you sin, what if a weight shows up on your feet, and you don't confess it? The weights keep getting heavier and heavier and heavier. If you're not confessing that sin and cleansing, getting that cleansing from God, then you are being weighed down on a daily basis. Many of us just live with that. Well, it's just my cross to bear.

No. It's not. Jesus said give it to him. It's not yours. He said, give it to him.

Think about this. Why are we confessing it? Because all sin is against god. Just let that sink in a second. All sin is against God.

The creator, the one who gave you life, the one who gave you salvation, the one who gave you everything, all sin is against him. All of it. In order to confess, you must have a broken heart. You must have remorse for what you've done. You must have that that point that you can do nothing else but confess.

The point that is so heavy that it's driving you to your knees. When a a lost person never sees they're a sinner, they can't be remorseful. They can't have remorse for the sin in their life if they never realized they're a sinner. For a lost person, the confession they have is that I'm lost. That's the confession they have upfront.

I'm lost. And at that point, then God reveals the sin. They have to come and have that heart that's broken for the things that they know they're missing. If God removes the veil from their eyes, then they can see. It takes God doing that.

For a saved person, we have to look deep in our hearts and see what it is that we've been lying about. What do you mean lying? You've been lying to yourself. You've been lying to God. You've been lying to everybody, because there's sin that hasn't been acknowledged.

When our sin is acknowledged and our heart is broken, it causes us to confess it. When we confess it, God cleanses it. God has the power to cleanse even the hardest stains. Even the hardest stains. You ever had a a pot that something burned in?

Man, you scrub with everything you can think of trying to get that stuff out. And sometimes it just seems like you're never gonna get that stain out. Sometimes, it's sin is the same way in our lives. It's a hard stain because it's been there a long time. The longer it sits, the harder it is to clean.

The longer that sin stays in your heart, the harder it is to confess, the harder it is to clean. But God has the power to cleanse even the hardest stains. And for him, it's easy. He can cleanse it like that. But we leave it sit, continuing to fester, continuing to get that way.

Sometimes we give up with whatever it is that we're trying to cleanse, and we just throw it out because, you know, it's not worth it. It's gotten to the point where we can't clean it. It won't come clean. We've tried everything but gasoline, and we can't get it clean. Right?

So we just toss it. Get rid of it. Can I tell you something? God will never throw you out. He will never give up on you.

He will never just stop because that stain is too old and too hard to clean. He will never give up. God is willing. He stands ready to forgive. We just have to confess it to him.

We have to bring it to him, and he can cleanse even the hardest thing. Man will give up, but God will not. Man will give up, but God will not. He can cleanse beyond man's ability, and he can make you whiter than even snow. He can do that.

But this cleansing process, it's a process. What do you mean? You just said he could cleanse it like that. He can, but it's a process. 1st, your heart needs to be broken for that sin.

It needs to be broken. It takes us looking deeply and honestly in our self in order for us to see that sin and to acknowledge that sin. Next, we have to confess it. We have to confess it. It has to be done.

If you don't confess it, then why would God wanna cleanse it for you? It has to be confessed. Our heart should be broken for it. God's heart is broken every time we sin. Our heart should be broken every time we sin.

We need to confess it. Get it out. Here it is. God, take it out. And then when we confess it, God is faithful to cleanse it.

He is faithful to cleanse that sin and get it out of your heart. You confess that sin against God to God himself. Romans 10:9 says, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is lord and believe that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. It takes a confession for you to be saved. If you know Jesus as lord and savior, you've done that already, then it takes a confession to keep you cleansed.

To keep all of that out, it takes that confession. But we also not only when we confess it, we have to forgive I mean, we have to receive the forgiveness. We have to receive it. The number one reason that people walk around with the sin still in their life, is they don't believe that when God gives them that forgiveness that they can even accept it. I'm not worthy to receive that.

I know God can cleanse me, but I'm not worthy. Look what I did. I'm not worthy to receive the forgiveness that God offers. We put our self in that position and say, I know that you can cleanse me, but I'm not worthy of that, and I don't want to accept it. I don't want to accept it.

Well, what we're doing is we're putting our self above god. We're saying we know better than you, god. We know better than you that we shouldn't be forgiven even though you said we can be. Even though you're giving us the opportunity, we're trying to say we know better than you. No.

We don't. It's a process. God has given us that cleansing. All we have to do is accept it. And listen, when you accept it, it's gone.

All of that sin is cleansed. You'll never see it. It's just like that ground under the snow. I couldn't see that ground under the snow unless I got out there and started digging down in it to try to find it. God said, no.

Don't I've covered it. Leave it alone. Don't don't mess with it. I've covered it up. I've taken care of it.

I've covered it with the blood of Christ. It's gone. It's gone. He said he cast it as far as the east is from the west. It's gone.

This process that God gives us is something we need to do on a daily basis. We need to look into ourselves. We need to examine our walk on a daily basis. We need to be the ones that are ready to confess when we find those things in our life. But if you don't know him, if you've never given your life to him, then my question for you today is this, are you ready to be cleansed wider than snow?

Are you ready for that? Are you ready to have all that weight lifted off of you? Are you ready to walk as a brand new creation? The old you being gone, the new you being a new creation in Christ. Are you ready for that?

Is there things in your life that God has shown you that you need to confess and get rid of? Then do it today. For those of you who know him, listen. How effective can you be telling someone about how wonderful the forgiveness of Christ is if you are not willing to accept it yourself? If you're not willing to accept it yourself, how can you really tell them how wonderful it is?

Be like those paid actors on TV that tells you how wonderful this product is. They've never tried it in their life. You know it's fake, and the person you're talking to and telling them how great god's forgiveness is, they're not gonna believe you because they can see in your life that you're not being you're not accepting that same forgiveness that you're trying to tell them about. It makes us ineffective. We look around this world today, and there are so many people that need to know about the forgiveness of Christ, yet we haven't received it because we haven't just accepted it.

And how can we tell them? This past Saturday, we had a time of visitation. Had brother Tim come and teach us a little bit about how to witness to somebody. It was supposed to have been last weekend, and then it was supposed to rain, and we changed it to this weekend. And we were very low in number.

I'm not saying that to try to hurt people's feelings. What I'm saying is, people need to know about Jesus. And if we don't have that close walk in our own life, it makes it very difficult for us to have a desire to go out and tell other people. So I want to encourage you today. It's time for a spiritual examination.

Just like you go to the doctor for a physical examination, it's time for a spiritual examination in your own life. Are you whiter than snow today? Or are you holding on to those stains that God's trying to cleanse? Have you confessed any of them? Are you ready to let all that weight go that God might use you to reach others?

You know, the only way that our nation will ever be a Christian nation again is if God's people will release all of that sin. I love passage that says, if my people who are called by my name, will humble themselves and sin that we hold on to, the sin that we haven't confessed, the sin that we haven't accepted the forgiveness for, is what's holding God's people back today. Examine yourself this week. Are there things you need to confess? Are there things you need to do?

Is there someone you need to go to and forgive? Whatever it is, don't wait. You'd be amazed at how much lighter your walk will be, if you just give all that to God. We don't know when our time will end on this earth. It could be tonight.

It could be a 100 years from now. We don't know. We don't know what God will do. We don't know when he's coming back. We don't know how many breaths we've been given.

Why hold on to something that you could seek forgiveness for today? And be washed whiter than snow.

That whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Notice that it says, whosoever. That means there are no restrictions. It doesn't matter where you come from, who you look like, or what's going on in your life, how bad you've been, how much money you've got. None of those things matter.

God so loved all of us, the world, that He gave His only Son, that you might have eternal life. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of our praise team this morning, and Miss Sharon, Miss Vicky is out sick, and so thank you guys for, doing such a fantastic job. You know, I love worshiping God in so many ways. You understand that when we say, well, we're gonna have a worship time and then preaching, it's all worship.

It's all worship. You see, we worship God through song. We worship God through giving. We worship God through hearing of his word. We worship God through reading his word.

We worship God through praying, and we worship God through living our lives. It's all worship. The problem is sometimes that last part, the living of our lives, we find ourselves not living it in worship, but instead living it selfishly, or living it in some way that's not necessarily pleasing to God. So here we are in a brand new year, 2025. It's we're almost halfway through the month.

It's rushing by already. It's incredible. And God was placing something on me, and so the the the sermon title today is Lord or Not. There we go. I wasn't on.

So we as believers often say, he is Lord of all. Right? Do I hear you guys say that? Do you say it sometime? Let's say it together.

He is lord of all. He's lord of all. We say that a lot of times. He is lord of all. Jesus is lord.

As I explained to the children, that means master. That means king. You can look at it any of those ways. He is lord of all. We know that scripture tells us Jesus is lord of all.

It says he is lord of lord and kings of kings. We know that scripture tells us that. So we understand in our mind, Jesus is lord of all. He is lord. Now the question today is this.

In your life, is he really? Is he really lord of all? Is he really lord at all? Is he the one that is lord in your life? The reality is too many times we say with our mouth, Jesus is lord.

But is he really? Is he lord, or is he not? Here's the thing. He can't be lord sometimes and other times not. If he's lord of all, he's lord at all times.

Is he lord or is he not? The definition of lord is someone having power, authority, or influence, master or ruler. There's a word in there that most of us do not like, master. Well, come on now, preacher. That word master, I mean, you know, we equate that with slaves, and and we don't want a a master over us.

We don't we're not we're not slaves to anyone. Well, the scripture tells us that we are bondservants if we call Jesus Lord, and that bondservant means slave. It means that we are a slave to him, but we are a slave because we choose to be, not because he forces us to be. You see the difference when we look at is he master or is he not master is do you choose him as master? You see, when we put that connotation in our mind and we say, well, we don't like that word master.

Those masters were ones who the people under them had no choice. They were forced into that servanthood. They were forced into that. Jesus will never force you. God never forces us to serve him.

He gives us a choice. He says, if you confess with your mouth. The point is, is he lord? Have you chosen to serve him? If he's lord, understand that means master.

That means he's over everything. He's over you on Sunday just like he's over you on Friday night. He's over you on Monday just like he's over you on Wednesday night. The reality is if he is lord by that definition, master or ruler, then he is over everything. So is he lord of all, or is he not lord at all?

We love to live in gray areas all the time. It's a gray area. It's not a gray area. Is he lord? Is he not?

England has a king. King Charles. Right? England has a king. First time they had a king in a long time.

Had a queen for a long, long time. Now they have a king. England has a king, so, of course, he's in charge. Right? He's the king.

Well, here's the reality. He is king in name only. The royal family has been in existence in the country for centuries. They have kings, they have queens, they have princes, princesses, duchess, dukes, all the different stuff that they have. Right?

They have all these things. They've been there for all of this time. But one thing every single one of those titles has in common in that country is they have no real authority. They have no authority. The king cannot make a declaration of war.

The king cannot make laws. The king cannot even enforce the laws. The king is nothing but a figurehead. The king over the king of England, basically, he is there in name only. And the country pays them to be king.

Ain't that amazing? Country pays him to be king. He's king with no authority. Too many people try to make Jesus lord with no authority in their life. Oh, they say he's lord.

Oh, yes. We we say he's lord. We call Jesus lord, but we don't actually give him the authority that he has. We call Jesus lord without allowing him to be lord. Oh, yes.

Jesus is lord of my life. Is he lord of everything? What do you mean is he lord of everything? Well, is there anything you put above god? What if, let's just say, everybody knows I love football.

Right? What if God put in my heart, you know what? You need to leave football completely alone. You just need to forget about football. Don't do anything, have anything at all to do with football.

Don't even need to watch it ever again. You need to take that time that you were watching football. You need to spend it in studying God's word or praying or going out and reaching people. If God put that in my heart and said, you just need to leave football alone. Now the question is, will I accept that?

Will I allow it? Will I say, okay, God, or now I'm gonna start bargaining. Right? Wait a minute, God. You know, I I mean, I can go out after the game.

Right? I can go out before the game. I can read my bible later on. I can do what god's no. This is what I want.

Am I gonna allow that to happen? Am I gonna make him lord? Because if I'm not gonna make him lord and obey that, then is he lord at all? Does he have any authority in my life for you? Maybe there's something in your life.

Maybe it's, I don't know, golf. Maybe it's work. Maybe it's family. Maybe it's money. Whatever it is.

And god says, that is not got a place in your life. I want you to put it aside and fill it with me. Will you do that? Or will you say, I I can't? Because if we say, I I can't do that, then is he lord at all?

Because if he's supposed to be lord, master, king of everything, he rules your life. If he's ruling your life and you refuse to follow that, is he lord at all? Is he lord at all? We say Jesus is lord, but then we try to limit what he is lord of. We wanna limit it.

I tell people this. When you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord, this is the throne of your life. And you say, god, I want you to be lord of my life. Here's the throne. You take it.

You sit on the throne, god. You give me direction. You tell me everything that I am to do, and I will be a loyal subject, and I will follow what you ask me to do. God says, I want you to go and be a missionary. You say, hang on.

Hang on. Get up. Move over. Wait. No.

Let me sit back down here. No. I can't do that. That's not me. I can't do that, lord.

You just pushed him out of the center of your life. You just pushed him away and said, no. You're not going to be my lord because you want me to do something that I don't wanna do. Understand that when Jesus called the disciples, he told them to leave what they were doing and follow him and follow him completely. He said, you follow me, I'll take care of the rest.

If you have called Jesus lord in your life, he said, you follow me. I'll take care of the rest. The royal family is a pretty figurehead for England. Oh, they dress up nice. They have all these crowns and robes and gowns and all the amazing things, and they have all the pomp and circumstance, and the horses, and the carriages, and, man, they have everything.

Oh, it looks beautiful. It looks beautiful when you're looking at it on the outside. Sometimes, that's what we want to do with God. The actual running of the country is done by parliament. The king's not part of parliament.

The king has no vote. King has no say so. The king, while having the title, is actually king of nothing. Does Jesus' title of lord act the same way in your life? Does he have the title lord, but he's actually lord of nothing?

We call him that. Do we like to parade Jesus around and say, Jesus is my lord. And then after people look at us, we push him back in the closet and say, but not today. We just make decisions without him. I came to know Jesus Christ 10 years of age.

10 years of age, and I look at my life, and I look back at the things that I did. And I was just sharing with someone the other day the importance of asking God his plans for your life. I made decisions about what I was gonna do as an adult in life, how I was gonna make a living, all the choices that I made. I made every one of those decisions, and not once during all of that time did I ever pause and say, god, what is it that you want me to do in this life? I said, this is what I'm doing.

God bless it. I made the decision. Now you bless the decision I made. If he's lord, that's not the way we do things. It wasn't until I was 38, 39 years old, I was getting ready to retire from the military, and I was looking at what am I gonna do after military life.

Oh, I had some plans, and I was already starting to pursue those plans. And one day, a pastor preaching a sermon said, are you on God's agenda? I don't know. I never asked God what his agenda was. Maybe I should do that.

And I began to pray about it, and god started calling me into ministry. Of course, you've heard the story. I said, no. No. That can't be me.

You've gotta be wrong about this. I fought it for a long time. But here's what I think about. If I called Jesus Lord at 10 years old, if I listened to him and asked him what he wanted from me in my life at 18 years old, would he have said, I want you in ministry at 18 years old? Perhaps, I should have been serving him in ministry, in vocational ministry for 20 years before I started.

What difference could that have made in not only my life, but also the lives of many people that I came in touch with? Does Jesus' title of lord act like a figurehead and not as an actual lord in your life? Look at me to Romans chapter 10 verse 9 and 10. Romans chapter 10 verse 9 and 10. Many of you are very familiar.

I've quoted the first part of this verse 2 or 3 times already this morning. Romans 109 and 10 says this, if you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, a person believes resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth, he confesses resulting in salvation. If you confess Jesus as lord. Have you ever done that?

If you confess Jesus as lord, reality is that you are given the choice to accept the call of god in your life to confess that he is lord, meaning you have given him the kingship of your life voluntarily. You gave it to him and believe that god raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. Have you voluntarily given him the kingship of your life, and are you allowing him to stay on the throne or are you pushing him out of the way? Understand what this means if you confess. You proclaim that Jesus will be your lord, your master, your king, your number 1 in your life.

You make a public proclamation of that. Right? Because we say that if you confess Jesus as lord, then you need to confess him before men so he will confess you before his father. So we have people come forward and they say, I proclaim Jesus. I accepted him into my life today as lord, and it's a public profession.

Then we have baptism, which is another public profession that the old you has died, and the new you has risen to walk under the lordship of Jesus Christ. But do we accept that, or is it simply words? Here's the simply words. You give him your life in exchange for salvation. Understand that.

You surrender your life to him just as surely as if you could pull the actual life out of your body and hand it to god and give it to him, and then he puts it back. You give him your life in exchange for salvation, a life that doesn't end, a life that goes on forever and all eternity. It says if you confess with your mouth Jesus as lord and believe that god raised him from the dead, you shall have eternal life. You give him your life, and in exchange, you receive salvation. But do you really give him all of your life?

Do you really give him all of your life? So When you're in the privacy of your home, when you're away from church, when you're in a place where you're not even gonna see the people that you go to church with, Maybe you're away from even your family. Is he still lord? Is he still the one that you're seeking to find out what you're to do every day? Do you get up each day and recommit that to him, god your lord?

Bible says, take up your cross daily. Daily. Deny yourself and take up your cross daily. Every day, it's a brand new surrender. It's a brand new surrender to him, because we tend to have short term memory.

Oh, yesterday, I gave my life to Christ, but that was yesterday. Today, I got these other things. Daily, we're supposed to give our life to him. Now listen. I'm not standing before you today as a person who has always followed the right path, and I've always given my life to god every single day, and always allowed him to be lord in my life.

But I'm a man that stands before you today just as you looking at me probably realize I need to work on that. I need to work on that. Every day, we need to give him our life. The phrase, either you're lord or you're not. I heard someone say, a new believer that had a lot of things in their life that they were trying to do.

And they were saying, god, what do I do? What what do I need to do? Show me the directions I need to do. And god said, that video game system that you love so much, you need to do away with that. He said, oh, come on.

Not that, god. He's looking at it, and he's going, not that, but that's I love doing that. He said, okay. Either you're lord or you're not. And he packed up the box, and he sent it to the palm shop.

Got rid of it. He said, I gotta get rid of it. That's what God has told me. Is there something in your life that God has shown you that needs to go, but yet we keep holding on to it because it's one of our favorite things. Is there something in your life that god has shown you you need to do, but you keep putting it off because of every excuse in the world?

Perhaps there's someone that god has said, you need to talk to them. You said, yeah. I can't do that. Is he lord or is he not? In the military, if they gave you an order and said, go do this, and you said, I ain't doing that, there's punishment involved in that.

You don't refuse an order. This is an order. You go do it. But somehow when god gives us a directive, we think it's debatable. We wanna say, ah, man, you know, send somebody else.

I'm I probably wouldn't be good at that. And Moses did the same thing. Right? He said, no. I can't do that.

I can't talk. I can't do the one be the one that speaks and does all of that, and he kept arguing with God. By the way, Moses did eventually speak to the people. Aaron wasn't continually always the one that spoke. Eventually, Moses did, but he gave Aaron to speak for him until he got him broke in.

The reality is, it's a process that we all have to learn. We have to give it to God every day. Do we really give it to him? Do we understand? We gave him our life.

Are we really going to give him all of our life? Is he lord or is he not? It means every single area of your life belongs to him. It belongs to him. When you're in the military, they tell you this.

They say, you know what? You're now government property. That doesn't sound good. I went to basic training, and they said, you gotta get a haircut. I had pretty short hair, you know, about like I have now.

No. No. You need a haircut. They sat me down that chair, and they didn't leave me any hair. I had to I could feel it, but I couldn't grab it.

There was nothing there. It was gone. Man, that's horrible. Of course, everybody, they shaved all their heads like that. We all walked out rubbing our heads.

Immediately got in trouble because we're supposed to have our hat on. That night, one of the men decided, you know what? If they took that much, I'm gonna take it all. So he got a razor out, and he shaved his head all the way down to bald. Nothing but skin.

Next day, falls out in formation. Do physical training and we don't wear a hat then. Drill sergeant came up and said, what did you do? He said, well, I just went ahead and shaved all the hair off my head. He said, did I tell you to do that?

Did anybody give you a direction to do that? That is destruction of government property, and you can be subject to article 15 because nobody told you to do that. Wow. What if that's what god did? Did I tell you to do that?

You're in trouble. I'm gonna punish you now because you didn't do what I told you to do, or you did something I didn't tell you to do. What if god did that? He doesn't. But what if he did?

Think about it like this. If if we can commit to a organization, a government organization, a military, and follow every rule they tell us that we have follow and do everything that they say we have to do? Why can't we do that with God? Why are we not willing to do it with the one that is above all? Why do we have to do it our way?

The reality for all of us is we have to learn to submit. We don't like that word either, especially Americans. We don't like that word submit or surrender. We want to be in charge. Every once in a while, one of the leaders would put a junior person in charge and go, okay.

You're in charge now. No training. No telling anything. Just you're in charge. And you know what happened every single time?

They messed it up. You know why they messed it up? Because they didn't know what they were doing. But they wanted to be the one in charge, so they got put in charge. God will never mess it up.

Everything he does, he knows exactly what he's doing and why he is doing it. It might not make exact sense to you, but he knows what he's doing. Do you ask god daily what he wants? The majority of us probably don't. We ask god at some point, what do you want?

We went in that direction, and we didn't ask anymore. Daily, we need to be asking, god, what do you want from me today? Maybe there's a new person in your life, and he wants you to talk to them. Maybe there's a habit in your life that you need to break. Maybe there's something that you need to start.

Whatever it is. What do you want today? Are there things in your life that he wants you to give up? That's hard, isn't it? Are there things in your life that he wants you to give up?

Man said he prayed to god, what do you want me to do that I might be a better servant to you, god? God said, you play too much golf. You need to cut that out. This man played golf 2, 3 times a week. He said, nope.

Put the golf aside. That was hard. But he said what he found when he did it was God filled that time that he used to go play golf with opportunities to share Jesus to those that don't know. God gave him opportunities to do things that he never would have had the opportunity if he spent all that time playing golf. God taught him things that he probably never would have listened to if he was busy with that what was going on in his life.

Are there things in your life that you have resisted giving up? Are there things that God said, get it out of your life, and you've resisted and said, no. I I don't wanna I wanna keep doing that. Or are there things that he wants in your life, but you have resisted? God said, go.

I want you to be a minister. I want you to be a vocational minister. I said, that can't be me. I resisted. I fought.

Eventually, as he does, god won. I look back at my life now and and I don't know how I would have ever survived had I not done what he told me to do. If we call him lord, but do not surrender everything, he isn't really lord. That's pretty simple fact. If we call him lord, but we do not surrender everything, he isn't really lord.

We're still lord. We just let him hold the role like the king of England. We let him walk around being the one that's pretty and everybody understands, yes, he's lord, but he's not. The biggest problem is we convince ourselves it's okay to only surrender part of our life. It's fine.

No problem. You know, I gave God the big parts. I do most of everything that God puts on my heart. I ask him about a lot of things, but, you know, I don't want to bother him with the little stuff. I don't wanna bother him with questions about the day to day, the mundane.

I don't wanna bother him with that. Listen, if he knows how many hairs are on your head or lack thereof, he wants to know every detail. He wants you to keep him involved in everything. He doesn't ever want you to do it on your own. In fact, scripture says, apart from me, you can do nothing.

He wants to be part of all of it. It's not okay to only surrender part of your life. What if he only partly gave you salvation? Okay. Your right arm and your right leg are saved, but rest of you still in question.

I'll give you salvation, but only for a 100 years. After that, you're on your own. Yes. You can you can be in heaven, but it's on a trial basis. I can cancel your subscription at any time.

What if he only gave us part of salvation? Because we only gave him part of lordship. We don't like it going the other way. We think it's fine. We convince ourselves it's alright when we're doing it to him.

But if he did it to us, how would a partial salvation even work? Here's the reality. It can't. There's no way that a partial salvation could ever work. Neither can a partial surrender.

A partial surrender doesn't work either. We convince ourselves it's okay, but it doesn't work. Have you spent time seeking what god wants from you? Remember, I've shared with you before, the average Christian, on a daily basis, spends less than 5 minutes a day in prayer, and that includes asking blessings over their food. The average Christian the average Christian does not spend time asking God what he wants.

The average Christian tells God what I'm gonna do and ask God to bless it. Have you spent time seeking what God wants for you? Well, listen, preacher. I'm, you know, 8 plus years old, and and I've I've lived my whole life. And so, you know, I've done the things before, but I I don't really have left things left to do.

How do you know? Have you asked God? At a 100 years old, God told Abraham, you're gonna be a brand new daddy. He wasn't done with him yet. If you're still breathing here today, he's not done with you yet.

Have you asked God daily, what does he want from you? If you're a young person here, have you asked God, what does he want? Are you looking at your future and making decisions? Are you asking God, what does he want? You said he's lord.

Let him be lord. Ask him what he wants. Let him tell you his plan for you. Follow what he has. Surrender.

Submit to everything that he wants for you. Perhaps there are things in your life that are preventing full surrender. Maybe there's something in your life that is preventing full surrender. You know, oftentimes when a person comes and they give their life to the Lord, there are things that have happened in their life, and and nobody's ever taught them to let it all go. And they're still holding on to that, and they're going, I can't serve God because of this thing in my life.

They if they found out that I used to do that, there's no way they would want me to do that. There's no way I could I could do this because of those things I've done. No. When you gave your life to God and you said, I want you to be lord, when he became your lord, he took everything that was not good in your life, every sin that you'd ever committed, and he cast it as far as the east is from the west. And if he took it all out, then there's nothing to prevent you from full surrender, except you.

You're the only one. You're the only one that can do that. There's nothing in your life that's doing that. God took it away. These are the things that you have to start with.

The first question is, have you ever truly asked Jesus to be your lord? Did you ever truly ask him? Anybody here ever go to Vacation Bible School? A few of us, right, went to Vacation Bible School. You know it's amazing.

When you have Vacation Bible School, almost every year when you have Vacation Bible School, you'll have several children that make a profession of faith. It's an amazing thing. I love Vacation Bible School. Here's the problem. A lot of times when you have Vacation Bible School, you have children that are coming that have never been in a church before.

And they see Johnny go up, and they think, well, that's what I'm supposed to do, so they run up too. And they heard what Johnny said, and they say the same thing, and we say, hallelujah. You just gave your life to the Lord. They don't have any idea what they just did. They don't have any idea.

They said some words. They don't know what it means. They weren't convicted to come forward. They followed little Johnny. But some take that profession and baptism that follows and say, I'm saved.

And they live their life saying, I'm saved. But they've never given their life to God. So the first question is, have you actually ever truly asked Jesus to be your lord? Have you truly given yourself to him at some point? Have you ever done that?

You know, I always think it would be great if I could just look out, and there would be, like, you know, a halo over everybody that gave their life to Christ, and not over the ones that didn't. And I can focus on the people that I know do not know Jesus, but I can't see that. The only thing God sees it all. You know, if you ask yourself that, was it a true salvation? It's an amazing thing.

I have a friend who was going to seminary, going to be a pastor. He came home from seminary 1 weekend, and there was a a service going on, a guest pastor preaching, and that pastor preached on the wheat and the tares. They look so much alike that it's very hard to tell the difference. But when you throw them up in the air, the wheat falls down and the tares blow away. At the end of the service, when a pastor opened up invitation time, he jumped up.

His wife said, where are you going? He said, leave me alone. I gotta go get saved. He ran up to the front, and he said, I'm a tear. I've been a tear my whole life.

I've been living like I thought I was supposed to live. I look like a Christian because I go to church. I sing the songs. I read my bible. I even go into seminary.

But I've never truly accepted Jesus as my savior right that moment he got saved. I said, well, what's the next step? He said, well, I gotta go back to seminary class on Monday and explain to the class that that I was lost, But now I'm saved. I said, do you think you're still supposed to be in seminary? He said, I have no doubt.

He said, that's the thing that pushed me to the point to know that he's my savior and I want to serve him forever. First question is, have you ever asked Jesus, truly asked Jesus to be your lord? Have you accepted him fully, completely, ever? If so, then it's time to let him be lord of all. Today, as we think about this question, is he lord or is he not?

You're the only one that can answer that. When you take a deep examination, has he given himself have you given yourself to him, or are you just walking the walk, talking the talk, but not really doing it? You're just pretending. Or have you given your life to him? And if you have, then the next question is, are you allowing him to be lord or are you still trying to be lord?

We look around the world today, and there are lost people everywhere. We look around the churches, and we say, why are the churches not full? Why are there so many people that are walking away from Christianity? Why are there so many people that despise Christianity? Why are there so many people that don't understand they need Jesus in their life?

Well, one of the biggest reasons is that there are not enough people treating him as lord and following what he wants us to do. Churches should be full every Sunday, and they're not. People should understand that the number one thing they need in life is salvation because of the sin in their life, but they don't. If nobody tells them, how will they know? Nobody shares the gospel, how will they be saved?

They're not gonna get it through the Internet. They're not gonna get it on the television. They're not gonna get it through going to the nightclubs and all of the things they're doing in life. How will they know? Are you allowing God to be lord of your life or not?

If you've called him lord, you've confessed with your mouth and said, I want you to be lord, and you look in yourself today and you say, I'm not letting him do that, then I'm gonna ask you to recommit today. I'm gonna ask you to confess again. I want you to be lord. Help me to surrender all to you. If you don't know him, you've never come to know him, you maybe you've been at church, you've done the things that Christians do, but you've never accepted Jesus, then I'm gonna ask you today, don't wait anymore.

Accept him into your life and then follow him as lord of your life. He always knows exactly what's the right thing for you, And he is the only one that can provide the salvation that you so desperately need. I'm gonna have a time invitation in just a moment. As we do, I'm gonna ask you to come forward. If you need to come and and ask Jesus into your heart, come today and I'll tell you exactly what to do.

Maybe you wanna come to the altar and you wanna recommit to him. You wanna surrender again. It's open. Whatever you need to do, I ask you to submit to whatever god puts on your heart this morning.