Welcome to the Valley Baptist Church sermon podcast.
We're so glad you're here, and we hope this message inspires you,
builds your faith, and moves you toward a deep relationship with God.
Today, you'll find great insight into the Bible
and learn how you can apply it straight to your life.
So welcome and enjoy the message.
If you have your Bible, please open it with me to Genesis chapter 4
in a message I'm calling True Worship.
Now I thought about calling the message today, The Original Adams Family.
You'll get that here in just a moment as we continue reading our passage,
but I thought I need a little more serious title than that.
Now I think it's going to be really helpful for you to keep a copy of God's Word open to you.
So you can read along as we go through this passage very quickly.
We have a lot of verses to cover, if I can say that.
So stay with me, all right?
Now, Jesus said in the Gospel of John, chapter 4, he said that true worshipers worship in spirit and in truth.
See, from the very beginning, God's always been seeking true worshipers.
Now, if there is such a thing as true worshipers, that also means there's such a thing as false worshipers.
And in Genesis chapter 4, we're going to see that the main character, a man by the name of Cain, was a false worshiper.
So here's what we're going to do today.
We're going to learn what a true worshiper is by looking at what Cain lacked in his worship.
Now, for the past couple of months, we've been studying the book of Genesis together.
And so far, we've learned that God created a very good and perfect, beautiful world that was without pain and sickness and death.
But He also created mankind with a choice of whether we would live in loving obedience to Him or whether we would choose our own path.
Well, we read last couple of weeks in chapter 3 of Genesis that Adam and Eve, they chose their own path of sin and rebellion.
And their sin actually resulted in brokenness for them, for their family, and for all of creation.
Now, when we come to chapter 4, we see that the first family,
mom and dad and two brothers, they also experienced the
devastating consequences of Adam and Eve's sin.
We see that those consequences became generational.
Let's begin in verse number 1.
It says, Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and
bore Cain, and said, she did, I have acquired a man from the
Lord.
So Eve gets pregnant, and that must have been a surprise, right?
I mean, no one had ever been pregnant before.
So Eve's body is beginning to change.
It's beginning to grow.
I'm sure they're wondering what in the world is happening.
Well, eventually, Eve went into labor, and she has a little boy by the name of Cain.
And she says, I've acquired...
a man or a boy from the Lord.
Now, I love that because Eve understood
that just as God had made Adam from the dust of the ground,
just as God had made her from the rib of Adam,
he also made little Cain from the two of them.
You see, anytime you have a child, it's from the Lord.
Amen.
Anytime.
That's why every single human life is sacred
because God makes each and every person in his image
and he knits them together in their mother's womb.
Verse number two.
Then she bore again, this time his brother Abel.
Now Abel was a keeper of sheep,
but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
So Eve gives birth again,
and Cain gets a little brother by the name of Abel.
Now as these two boys grew up,
they eventually went their separate ways
in terms of occupation.
Cain became a farmer working the ground for produce.
Abel became a shepherd keeping sheep.
Both very respectable professions.
Verse number three.
And in the process of time, it came to pass that Cain brought an offering of the fruit of the ground to the Lord.
Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat.
And the Lord respected Abel and his offering, but he did not respect Cain and his offering.
And Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell.
Now,
Now, this is the first time anyone brings an offering
to the Lord that's recorded in the Bible.
And we see that Cain's offering is rejected by God
while Abel's offering is accepted.
Now, at first glance, both of these offerings
seem legitimate.
They seem to make a lot of sense.
I mean, Cain's a farmer, so he brings forth some produce.
Abel's a shepherd, so he brings a lamb.
And yet Abel's offering is accepted while Cain's is not.
And the question is why?
Many have suggested that God rejected Cain's offering because it wasn't a blood sacrifice.
However, the word sacrifice isn't used in the text.
Instead, it's a more general term for offering or gift that's used.
Now, we also know that the Israelites were later commanded in the Mosaic law to bring both a animal offering and a grain offering.
Both were received by the Lord.
So personally, I don't think the contents of the offering is why God rejected Cain's and accepted Abel's.
I think the reason goes much deeper than the offering.
It goes to the heart of the person who is giving the offering.
You see, God sees the heart.
And the prideful heart of Cain tainted and ruined the offering that he was bringing before the Lord.
Now, how do we know that? Well, I think there's an indicator in the text that we'll get to here in just a moment.
But the main way we know that is because God later tells us that in Hebrews chapter 11.
Verse number four, it says,
by faith Abel offered to God
a more excellent sacrifice than Cain.
Abel's offering was by faith, Cain's was not.
Here's our principle.
True worshipers always worship God from a heart of faith.
You see, God created us.
to be worshipers.
We were created for him, to worship him.
And the best way that we worship God
is when we're in relationship with him.
But because of our sin, we lost the capacity
to have a meaningful relationship with God
outside of Jesus.
Now, why in the world do people, Cain and Abel and others throughout history, why bring an offering to the Lord?
Well, it's in order to worship him because an offering is never the actual point.
Now, because God doesn't really need our offering, does he?
Now, God desires our offering because it's a tangible way for us to express our worship of him.
But the main thing God desires is not an offering, it's worship.
and worship, while it has its outward expressions
like we see in the text,
it primarily is inward and it's spiritual.
So why did God accept Cain's offering and reject, accept Abel's offering and reject Cain's?
It's very simple.
Abel gave his offering by faith and Cain did not.
Now we're going to see from the next verses that Cain actually has this conversation with God.
So how in the world can a person who has a conversation with Almighty God not have saving faith?
Well, it's because although Cain knew of God, he didn't love God.
See, the Bible says in the book of James
that even the demons believe, and yet they tremble.
You see, saving faith is always a worshiping faith.
It's a belief that trusts.
It's a belief that yields.
It's a belief that loves.
The Bible says that, man, we look on the outward appearance,
but God, the Lord, He looks on the heart.
And when God looked on the heart of Cain,
He didn't see faith in worship and love.
All he saw was selfishness and pride and arrogance.
Let me ask, what about you?
When God looks on your heart, what does he see?
You peel out all the outward layers.
What does he see inside of you?
What does God see when you give your offerings to him?
Assuming you give offerings to the Lord,
do you give them for religious purposes like Cain did?
Or do you give them for relationship purposes
like Abel did?
God says, I want you to give to me out of a faith relationship,
out of a love relationship, out of an obedience relationship
to me.
Now, you'll notice in verse three and four that Cain brought some of the fruit of the ground,
but Abel brought the firstborn of his flock.
Now, that's significant.
But Mosaic law had not yet been given at this point.
So we're not sure if Cain and Abel knew exactly what God's expectations were.
But later, we know that God would command the Israelites to give their first fruits.
Meaning you don't give leftovers, you don't give excess,
you give the first, you give the very best to the Lord.
Now, whether that was clear at this point
to Cain and Abel or not, we don't know.
I think maybe Adam and Eve may have shared
about giving offerings to the Lord with their kids.
We don't know, but we do know
that Abel gave in this way, out of a heart that was simply overflowing with love and
gratitude towards the Lord.
He gave the firstborn of his flock, and then it says, and of their fat, which means he
gave the very best that he had.
Here's our principle.
True worshipers give God their very best.
I remember the story of when my dad first became the pastor of First Baptist Oil Dail that later became Valley Baptist Church.
And soon after he got there, he started kind of cleaning house, all the junk that had been collected over the years.
And so in the youth room, there were all of these old, mangled, just poorly kept couches for the students to sit on.
And so he started getting rid of the couches, throwing them out.
And someone said, you can't do that.
We gave those couches.
You can't just get rid of them.
He said, you gave these couches to the church?
And they said, yes.
They used to be in our living room.
But when we bought new ones, we gave the old ones to the church.
And dad said, why did you give the old ones to the church?
Why not give the new one to the church
and keep the old one for you?
Dad was bold.
If you knew, you're my dad,
you knew he was just ready to give it to you
no matter what you needed.
He was gonna speak the truth.
He had a good point, didn't he?
So many people, they want to give leftovers to the church.
Hey, we don't need this anymore.
It's of no value.
Maybe the church can use it.
And let's just give our leftovers.
Now, it may not be that you're giving leftover couches
to the Lord.
It may be that you're giving leftover time,
not prioritizing time to the Lord,
or you're giving leftover energy.
You're giving leftover money.
You're giving leftover this and that.
No, God deserves our very best in worship.
King David was looking to acquire some land
for his son Solomon to later build the temple upon,
and he identified a perfect piece of land
that a man named Ornan owned.
And so he goes to Ornan, and he asked to buy it from him.
And Ornan said, take it for free.
You can have it.
In fact, you can even have the oxen for burnt offering.
And David replies in 1 Chronicles 21, verse 24,
then King David said to Ornan,
No, but I will surely buy it for the full price.
For I will not take what is yours for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings with that which costs me nothing.
See, King David understood what Abel did thousands of years before.
Something all of us must understand that God deserves our very best in worship.
That which costs us something.
Verse number six.
So the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry?
And why is your countenance falling?
If you do well, will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door and it's desirous for you.
You should rule over it.
God's saying, Cain, don't get so angry.
Your offering, it was not pleasing to me.
It was not appropriate.
But you can change course.
You can make things right.
In other words, not all is lost at this point.
You still have some very important decisions to make.
You're going to stand some other forks in the road of life.
But I want you to know, sin lies at the door.
Now, that could be translated, sin lies crouching at the door.
It's a word that was used for a lion that's crouching,
and it's about to pounce.
God is sort of personifying sin here,
perhaps indicating that Satan was the one behind the
temptation of Cain.
And we know the devil crouches like a lion, doesn't he?
Seeking whom he may devour.
So God says to Cain, he said, sin's desire is for you, but you need to rule over it.
In other words, you need to choose right instead of wrong.
You are responsible still for your behavior.
God is providing here.
some correction to Cain's angry heart.
But as we'll see in a moment,
Cain does not receive the correction.
Here's a principle.
True worshipers, they receive correction from the Lord.
Now, folks, we need a lot of correcting, don't we?
I don't know about you, but I need a lot of correcting for the Lord.
Even if you've been a Christian for years, for decades,
I'm telling you, you need correction from the Lord.
At times, we let sin creep into our heart.
At times, we let our motives get distorted.
At times, we start pursuing things more passionately than we do the Lord.
And sin creeps into our heart.
It creeps into our life.
And when it does,
If you're a believer, if you're a child of God, the Holy Spirit will start to convict you.
And when he does, when he does, you got to respond.
He uses his word to convict us.
Maybe he'll use a friend to bring conviction.
Maybe it's the still, small voice of the Lord upon your heart saying,
something's not right, reminding you, you need to come back to me.
Whenever that happens, you be sure to receive the Lord's correction in your life.
Because if you don't course correct at that moment,
Sin can take you down a path you never even dreamed was possible in your life.
My dad used to say, sin will always take you further than you want to go,
and it will keep you longer than you wanted to stay,
and it will always cost you more than you wanted to pay.
So as soon as God begins to convict and correct something,
even when it's very small within your life,
receive his correction as an act of worship,
because it can get a whole lot worse in a hurry, just like it did for Cain.
And we see how it got worse. His sin grew in verse number 8.
It says, now Cain talked with Abel, his brother.
He's setting this whole thing up.
And it came to pass when they were in the field that Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him.
This is now, went from anger to premeditated murder.
Right?
The sin of Adam and Eve had grown more evil within their son.
And their oldest son killed their youngest son.
In a moment, Adam and Eve lost both of their boys.
Now I want you to notice that when God corrected Cain and he rejected his offering, Cain never asked why.
I mean, I would hope that I would have asked the Lord,
why, why is my offering not pleasing?
Cain didn't do any soul searching,
figure out what's wrong,
how could I possibly offer an offering
that's pleasing to you?
No, he was focused on himself.
All Cain could think about was Cain
and his jealous pride that was growing for his brother,
which drove him to eventually murder his little brother.
Here's our principle.
True worshipers are focused on pleasing God,
not themselves.
Cain was only focused on self.
How often?
Are we focused on self?
When we come to worship, we're not focused on pleasing God,
we're focused on pleasing ourselves.
When we come to church, when we come to worship the Lord,
how often do we come with a consumer mindset?
What am I gonna get today?
What am I gonna get from worship?
Or we have the thought, you know,
worship wasn't really my style today, or it was my style.
Or we think the songs that we sang, they weren't my type of songs, or they were my type of songs,
or it wasn't my favorite kind of worship, or it was my favorite kind of worship.
Either way, what do those sentences have in common?
The word my.
My worship.
Listen, worship is not mine.
It's God's.
We give it to him.
Now, there's some amazing blessings that we get and that we receive as we worship the Lord.
But worshiping God is not about getting.
It's about giving.
By definition, offering is a gift.
We give an offering of praise to the Lord.
He's the one that receives it.
So whenever you come to worship, do not focus on what you're going to get out of it.
Focus on what you're going to give.
And when giving becomes your focus, you will receive more than you ever could imagine possible.
Verse number nine.
Then the Lord said to Cain,
Where is Abel your brother?
He said, I do not know.
Am I my brother's keeper?
So God approaches Cain in the same way
that he approached Adam with a question.
Now, God never asks a question that he doesn't already
know the answer to.
I hope you know that.
And so why is he asking?
He's asking in order to give Cain an opportunity to confess
to come clean and say, I did it, to come clean.
But Cain doesn't do that.
Instead, he lies about it.
He says, I don't know where he is,
even though he knew exactly where he left his dead body.
Here's our principle.
True worshipers, they own their sin and they turn from it.
Cain's not owning his sin here. He's lying about it. And then he says,
am I my brother's keeper?
What an audacious thing to say to the living God.
And the answer to this question is yes. The Bible answers very clearly.
We are our brother's keeper. Cain's ugly heart.
It's surfacing more and more here.
We're understanding more and more why God rejected his offering originally in
the first place.
See, one of the keys in life,
one of the keys to becoming a true worshiper in spirit and in truth is
is to own your sin, confess it, and turn from it.
In fact, that's the starting place of worship.
Because we've all sinned, the Bible says,
for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We've all sinned, we've all messed up,
we've all missed the mark of God of perfection,
and the only way to become a true worshiper
is to own it, turn from it, and turn to God in faith.
Verse number 10.
And he said, what have you done?
The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.
You see, God always knows about our sin.
We can't hide it from God.
He knows every bit of sin you've ever done.
He says, so now you're cursed from the earth,
which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.
When you till the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength to you.
A fugitive and a vagabond you shall be upon the earth.
We see here that God curses Cain.
Now with Adam's sin, God didn't actually curse him.
He cursed the ground.
Cain's sin was much worse though.
So God curses him and he says,
"'Your work as a farmer is not gonna yield a crop.
Instead of farming, you're gonna be a vagabond,
a fugitive, a wanderer on the loose.'"
Verse 13.
And Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear.
Surely you've driven me out this day from the face of the ground.
I shall be hidden from your face.
I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth,
and it will happen that anyone who finds me will kill me.
Cain is saying this is a death sentence.
Now notice here that Cain expresses regrets,
but not remorse.
I mean, he's discouraged, isn't he?
He's sorrowful, but he isn't remorseful.
And there's a difference between being sorry for our sin
and being remorseful over it.
2 Corinthians 7, verse 10 says,
"'For godly sorrow produces repentance,
leading to salvation, not to be regretted,
but the sorrow of the world produces death.'"
See, true worshipers aren't just sorry they got caught.
They feel bad enough about their sin that they repent and turn from it.
But that is not Cain.
Verse number 15.
And the Lord said to him, Therefore, whoever kills Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold.
And the Lord set a mark on Cain, lest anyone should find him and should kill him.
Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.
So God places a mark on Cain as a sign that no one's to touch him and no one's to kill him.
Now, what exactly was this mark?
Well, I read enough expert opinions on this this week to know that no one has a clue what this mark is.
All right.
If they say they do, I'm telling you, they're speculating.
But God places a mark on him of some kind as an act of mercy.
Right.
I mean, later, God is going to institute the death penalty for premeditated murder.
But here he's gracious.
He's merciful.
And Cain is allowed to just leave the presence of God,
meaning he gets further away from God.
Wherever you're at in your life,
and even if you're sinning, you're separated from God,
did you know there's a further place you can go from God?
Cain leaves further from the presence of the Lord,
and he goes and he dwells in the land of Nod.
Now, we don't even know if Nod is an actual place
because the word Nod literally means wandering.
Verse 17.
And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch.
Now, this is a different Enoch that we'll find a different one in chapter 5, who walked with God.
And he, that's Cain, built a city and called the name of the city after the name of his son, Enoch.
So Cain has a baby with his wife.
Now, where did Cain get his wife?
That's the favorite question of all the skeptics out there, right?
Well, we actually know from the very next chapter that Adam and Eve, they had more sons and more daughters.
So I would assume that Cain married one of his sisters.
Now, God later would forbid that clearly, but apparently it was acceptable in the early years.
But I don't want you to focus on that rabbit trail.
I want you to come back to what it says about Cain.
It says he built a city.
Now, God had just told him that he was to be a nomad wandering around like a vagabond.
But instead, Cain goes out and he builds himself a city, which is in direct violation to what God had told him to do.
Here's our principle.
True worshipers respond in love
and obedience to God's mercy.
God had been incredibly merciful to Cain,
allowing him to live.
He deserved to die, but God allows him to live.
Not only that, he places a mark of protection on Cain.
And how does Cain respond?
He continues to disobey the Lord.
Now, before we just throw stones at Cain,
Please know there are a lot of people like that today
who have gone the way of Cain,
as Jude says in the New Testament.
People who God has granted mercy and grace to,
who figuratively spit in the face of the Lord.
Did you know that there's also a sense
in which God is merciful to everyone?
Theologians call it common grace,
that it rains upon the just and the unjust alike.
I mean, have you ever wondered why we're not immediately condemned and struck dead the moment that we sin?
Why is it that we're not immediately judged?
Well, Peter tells us that God is patient with us, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
God is seeking us.
But in spite of God's patience, in spite of his mercy and his delayed judgment, most people go the way of Cain.
Now, in verse number 18, we see the genealogy of Cain.
And I get the privilege of trying to read these names.
It says, "'To Enoch was born Arad,
and Arad begot Mahushael,
and Mahushael begot Methushael,
and Methushael begot Lamech.
Then Lamech took for himself two wives.
The name of the one was Adah,
and the name of the second was Zillah.
And Adah bore Jabal.
He was a father of those who dwell in tents
and have livestock.
His brother's name was Jubal.
He was the father of all those who play the harp and flute.
And as for Zillah, she also bore Tubal-Cain,
an instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron.
And the sister of Tubal-Cain was Naamah.
Then Lamech said to his wives, Ada and Zillah, hear my voice, wives of Lamech.
Listen to my speech, for I have killed a man for wounding me,
even a young man for hurting me.
If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, then Lamech
seventy seven fold.
Here's what we see in this passage.
We see that the wickedness and the pride of Cain's descendants, his kids and his grandkids, only grew.
No.
And it became most pronounced in his great-great-grandson Lamech.
Now, this is not to be confused with Lamech that we find in the next chapter,
who is Noah's dad.
That's a different guy.
This Lamech was a very wicked man.
In fact, he was the first guy.
to practice polygamy in the Bible. He had two wives, which was clearly a violation of God's
design for marriage found in Genesis chapter 2. Lamech was also a very violent man, just like his
great-great-grandpa Cain. We see that he even boasts at the end of the verses that we just read,
he boasted to his wives about his violence against even a young man who tried to hurt him.
And he says, my vengeance is going to be greater than God's.
Now, remember, God has said to anyone, anyone who kills Cain, I shall avenge it upon him sevenfold.
And Lamech, he says, ah, my vengeance is greater than God's.
It'll be 70-fold if you touch me.
This was an arrogant, prideful, wicked human being.
Now, that said, his kids and grandkids
were extremely successful.
One of them brought tremendous advancement
in the keeping of livestock.
Another was the first to make the flute and the harp,
a masterful musician.
Another was a craftsman of metal,
bronze and iron for tools and weapons, I'm sure.
And so his kids, they helped advance civilization
in a tremendous way, but they did so
with God outside of the equation.
And that led to their city only growing more prideful
and more corrupt, as we'll see in Genesis chapter six, verse 25.
And Adam knew his wife again,
and she bore a son and named him Seth.
And she says, For God has appointed another seed for me
instead of Abel, whom Cain killed.
We close out the chapter with God reminding us of the promise that he had made in the previous chapter,
chapter 3, verse 15, that there would be a coming seed born of the woman,
a coming Messiah, a coming Savior, a coming King.
And we find out here he would not be the descendant of Cain.
He would not be the descendant of Abel.
He would be the descendant of Seth.
Verse 26.
And as for Seth, to him also a son was born,
and he named him Enosh.
Then men began to call upon the name of the Lord.
I love how this chapter ends in the same way it began,
with worship, true worship.
Men and women calling on the name of the Lord.
That means they were praying, they were they were proclaiming,
they were calling upon the name of the Lord.
Here's our last principle.
True worshipers always call upon the name of the Lord.
Always.
In fact, did you know that's where worship begins?
The Bible says, For whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
So maybe today as you're listening to this message,
you are feeling a weight upon your life
and you're thinking, I have gone the way of Cain in my life.
I have not heeded the voice of God.
I have not heeded the warnings.
I have rebelled.
I've gone the way of Cain in my life.
Listen, it's not too late.
It's not too late to take a different course.
As long as you have air in your lungs,
as long as you have a heart beating in your chest,
you are still alive, I'm telling you,
because God is being patient with you.
There's no other reason that God has spared your life.
He's been patient with you.
And perhaps, perhaps.
If you listen closely, you can hear the still small voice of God upon your soul saying,
come home to me.
You don't have to be a nomad, spiritually lost, wandering around spiritually aimlessly
with no purpose.
You can come home today and find forgiveness and purpose and peace and joy and life and
rest in me.
You hear the Spirit of God calling upon your life in that kind of way.
I want you to know there's only one way that you can come home to the Father.
And it's through his son, Jesus.
It's through Jesus.
I want us to close by reading Acts 4, verse number 12.
It says, nor is there salvation in any other,
for there's no other name under heaven given among men
by which we must be saved.
We must call upon the name of the Lord
the name of Jesus.
The son of Adam,
the son of Seth,
the son of Noah,
the son of Abraham,
the son of Isaac,
of Jacob, Israel,
the son of Judah,
the son of David,
his name is Jesus.
Now let's bow together in an attitude of prayer, if you will.
both here and at Olive Drive.
This is a holy moment in the life of our church,
and we're asking each and every person who is here or listening
that this would be a holy moment for you personally.
Anytime we hear the Word of God,
we are then called to be doers of the Word of God.
meaning that God's word never returns void.
And if it returns void, it means that you're not listening.
You're going the way of Cain in some area of your life.
And so I challenge you right now for you to do business with the Lord.
He's with us.
He's here.
He's present.
And I'm praying he's touching lives.
Now, it's true.
that a blood sacrifice is needed to forgive sins.
The Bible says, without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sins.
I don't know if that's the reason
that Cain's offering was rejected.
Perhaps it was.
We don't know for sure.
But I do know that a blood sacrifice is needed,
and that's why God sent his son Jesus
to die on the cross for our sins,
shedding his blood for us.
Earlier in our services,
we remember the body and the blood of our Lord.
As we took of the bread and we took of the cup,
we remembered our Lord's sacrifice.
But those things are just
a symbol in a picture of something greater.
And so if all you do is you take of the cup and you take of the bread,
but you have not taken of the person of Jesus by faith
and received him as your Savior and Lord by the grace of God, by faith,
then none of that means anything.
So I want to invite you.
To place your faith in Jesus, maybe you're listening today
and you've never given an offering to the Lord before.
Listen, God desires an offering from us,
but it must be by faith.
Now, what kind of offering does God desire?
Well, in the Bible,
his people gave all kinds of different offerings.
So if you're a child of God,
the Holy Spirit will make clear to you
what kind of offering he's calling you to give.
But I want you to know that
Those things are all secondary and tertiary because the greatest offering that God calls upon us to give is ourselves in faith.
Romans chapter 12 says, I beg you, Paul says,
by the spirit of God, I beseech you,
I plead with you by the mercies of God
that you present your bodies.
That means you present all of who you are
as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable God,
which is your reasonable service.
Another translation says, which is your true worship.
True worship.
is about giving our whole life to our Savior who bought us with his blood and loves us.
We make him Lord.
So I'm inviting you to call out to the name of Jesus and give your life to him as an offering to God.
Just a moment, we're going to have pastors and other leaders here at the front,
and both here and at Olive Drive, and we're going to ask you to just come as you are.
We're going to stand after I pray, we're going to sing,
and we're going to be here, ready to talk with you.
If God is touching your heart about something,
As we stand, I'm just going to invite you.
As soon as the first word we sing out, you just start coming down this aisle.
One of these aisles, one of these staircases.
You take one of these leaders by the hand and you just share with them what God's doing.
You just let them know, it's time.
I want to give my life to Jesus.
And here's the thing.
You can only come as you are.
Don't fake it.
Don't try to make it sound better than what it is.
Don't try to clean up your life and then come to Jesus.
It's the opposite.
I'm telling you, you come to Jesus to receive cleansing from him.
He cleans up.
So I want to invite you in just a moment,
as soon as we stand, you just start coming forward,
whether here or at Olive Drive,
and these folks will know how to help you.
Or maybe you say, I want to be baptized like others today,
or I'd like to join this church family,
become a family member.
You let us know.
We'd love to talk with you about that.
Or maybe you just want to come to these steps
and pour out your heart to the Lord.
However God leads, please come as we sing.
Let's pray.
Father, we love you.
We thank you.
We are sorry for any and all moments of our lives that we have gone the way of Cain.
Help us, Lord, heed your correction.
Help us, Lord, not let sin grow into something uglier than what it already is.
Help us respond at the first touch of your spirit.
Father, I thank you for your word.
I thank you, Lord, that even though I admit, Lord, when I first came to this
chapter, I kind of panicked on what all I was going to say, but Lord, you are so
kind, you are so gracious to show me how merciful you really are, how patient you
are, even with those who of us who do evil, you are patient.
Thank you, Lord, for sending your son, Jesus, to do that which we could not do.
I pray, Lord, that you would touch hearts and lives right now.
Do that which I'm unable to do.
Would you touch them in a deep place by your spirit?
We pray in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Thanks for listening today.
We hope you enjoyed this message.
And if you did, we would be so grateful
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If you feel the Lord calling you
to take the next step in faith
through salvation, service, or giving, don't wait.
reach out to us by texting podcast to 88988.
That's podcast to 88988
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You can also visit our website, valleybaptist.org
to find even more great resources.
No matter where you are in your journey,
know that we love you.
We're praying for you
and we can't wait to see what God will do in your life.