What Do We Do With Grace? | Pastor Jeff Shipley

Now, I want you to pay attention. It wasn't anything in Israel. It wasn't their military size.

It wasn't the type of people. A couple of weeks ago,

I shared with you folks that I would begin a series on the

Palestine -Israel conflict, the historical aspects of it, but also the theological ramifications of it.

And I tell you, there are many, and I hope, well, I will start that next

Sunday, and I hope to try to wrap that up within three weeks. But to be honest with you, there's about 5 ,000 years of recorded history there, so it's probably an exercise in futility, but I hope that it will at least start a conversation, especially with those folks who are not converted.

Luke chapter 10. This is a familiar passage with you people who grew up in church.

I'm not one of them, but I have come to know this passage as something else other than, quote, the

Good Samaritan. I really, actually, I hate that title. I really do.

It's so much more than just an ethical or moral lesson. Sometimes the world, and the church helps, tries to breed within the gospel of Jesus Christ a philosophical, humanistic understanding of what really, harmonetically,

Jesus is trying to say. And once again, I encourage you strongly, please don't be church people.

For the love of God, don't be church people. Be regenerated believers in the name of Jesus Christ who understand good harmonetics and understand what

Jesus is trying to say here. We're going to try our best today to discuss it.

Now, before we do, in reference to this sermon, I want you to look at your little notes that you were given at the door, and I'm going to give you a couple of minutes, and I want you to do story time with Pastor Jeff.

Story time with Pastor Jeff. Read that on the back about a guy named

Zach. Man, y 'all are slow readers.

Good gracious. You Tennessee folks, help out the

Mississippi folk. This is a true story. This is a true story.

Where literally, four government agencies and 75 people watched a man drown to death.

Now, immediately, of course, there are those within our community who would immediately blame the police department for this, or blame the fire department, or the coast guard, or the beach, or the rescue.

But in reality, the ultimate responsibility of this young man's death was this young man.

Absolutely, categorically, without a doubt. But it is also true to understand, and this is something our society, what used to make

America great was the individual responsibility and the entrepreneurship of our country that has now become a welfare state, and we rely on the government who has no onus or responsibility to save your life.

I know people say all the time, well, if the police would have done this, the police would have done this. It is not the police department's job to protect your home.

I know that sounds weird, but it's not. That is not what they're there to do.

They're there to enforce the law. You say, well, it's against the law to break into a house. Yes, in the general sense, but you've got to quit blaming the cops, the fire department, the

U .S. government, and everybody else for your failures in life.

Yeah, right. But here's the second thing. And in relation to that, the church is failing.

I hear it all the time. And yes, I agree that the church is weak.

I hear these little yuppie missionary kids that get $50 ,000 a year through the

Southern Baptist Cooperative Program, go across the ocean. I know four of them personally, and for two years work in the mission field in Turkey and other places, but they are told you cannot openly share the gospel with anyone.

You can't do it. It's against the law. And then these same people turn around and look at the church and say, well, the church in America is dying.

It's all dribbled up. Hey, you arrogant slob, you wouldn't be where you are today in that foreign country if it were not for the church in the

United States of America. Be very careful where you throw rocks. It is true that churches today are on the struggle bus.

Now, I'm here to tell you and report to you that Wheaton Baptist Church ain't one of them, okay?

I'm here to tell you that this place is rocking and rolling, and it's not because of an entity or a pastor or a creed.

It's because of the sanctification of the individual member taking responsibility for what

God has given them and turning it around and sharing it with somebody else. You see, you can't sit there and say the name

Wheaton Baptist. You can't say, well, Pastor Jeff, as awesome as a man as he is, as good looking and a perfect specimen of the male human species that he is, you can't get...

You choked up there, Carl, a little bit? Get her some water. I am not responsible for your success or, wait a minute, your failures in Jesus Christ.

I have people that tell me all the time, and they're hippie Christians, and I love them, we need hippie Christians, okay?

We do. A few of them. You got to have them. Break in case somebody's clarion, you know? Send in the hippies, right?

But people tell me all the time, well, Pastor, that guy quit coming to church. Yeah? Okay. You guys understand.

I'm not here to notice who's not here. I am here to notice who is here.

People say all the time, well, what about the lost sheep? Jesus went out and found the one and left the 99.

That's great. That's Jesus Christ. In case, I know I'm wonderful, but in case you haven't realized,

I'm not the Holy Spirit of God. Okay? Church, let me ask you a question. Where are you?

And here's the indictment that we're going to talk about today. Why are you telling me who's not here?

Why aren't you going and getting them? Where are you? Well, I'm not a pastor.

Oh, okay, so I have a different Spirit of God in me than is in you? The same Spirit of God that's in me, the same blood of Jesus that saved me, is the same blood that saved you.

The same promises of God for my life are the same promises of God for your life. Can we just be honest for a second?

The reason you aren't doing what you had to do had nothing to do with... Here's the other one.

Church people always say this. Well, I would come to church, but I was wounded in my last church.

Wow. Go take a baby aspirin and grow up a little bit. Grow up a little bit.

Here's what you need to do. I want you to take whatever happened to you, and there are some horrible things that have happened, okay?

There are some horrible things that have happened in churches. But I want you to take that and put it into perspective of those lashes hitting

Jesus' back and His blood splattering 30 feet away.

I want you to put in perspective as He hung on that cross and He said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

When you put it into that context, how wounded are you really? And how much are you going to struggle in the victimhood of your own life rather than responding to the call

God has given us? This is the last sermon in a series on grace.

We have talked about grace. It is unearnable. You cannot earn grace. It is unlosable.

You can't lose grace. But the question I have for you this morning is, what are you going to do with grace?

Read with me Luke 10 starting in verse 25. And behold a lawyer, pneumocos.

Is Mike here today? Mike Gilroy, are you here? Dang it, I was going to make fun of him a whole bunch today.

A lawyer stood up to put him to the test saying, Teacher, what shall

I do to inherit eternal life? He said to him, What is written in the law? How do you read it?

And he answered, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

And he said to him, You have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, Who is my neighbor?

Nineteen times in the New Testament, nineteen times that are recorded, someone comes up to Jesus and says this,

What must I do to have eternal life? Some of you are in this room, and you're asking that same question.

I know on the outside you're a Christian because you ask Jesus Christ your heart and all that garbage that's found nowhere in Scripture.

I get that. I get the fact that you're a good moral person. But you still, in the wee hours in the morning, or in those moments after failure because your sanctification is so weak, you begin to wonder,

What must I do to inherit eternal life? I want you to notice something.

Grace is three things how we respond to it. The first thing is we discard it.

How do you discard the grace of God? Well, it's very evident if you look there in verse 29.

But He, wanting to justify Himself. The antithesis of grace is this.

It is justification by self. You may say to yourself, Well, I am a good person.

I'm a good guy. I'm not a child molester. I'm not a politician.

I'm not any of those other things. So ergo, because I'm not those things,

God will accept me. What you fail to understand, what that lawyer failed to understand, was that there are none who are righteous.

The entire Bible, from Old Testament to the New Testament, theologically and systematically tells us over and over and over again, there are none that are righteous, no, not one.

And you who are sitting, chewing on your fingernail, playing on your phone right now, it is to you whom you probably need to listen to this.

Guys, do you understand that eternity is one heartbeat away from at your feet? You're not listening to me.

I'm an idiot. But the Word of God here for you today, this may be your opportunity to find out what it is to truly be justified.

Anyways, Jesus sits there, and there's a mild sarcasm in Jesus' words.

He actually says to him, you're a lawyer. What does the Word of God say?

How do you read it? And he answered correctly, and Jesus affirmed that.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said, you have answered correctly.

But this guy discarded that grace, and I'm going to tell you why. It's a trick question.

If you want to go to heaven, all you got to do is love your Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might, every day.

Is there anyone in this room, even after you become a Christian, that has done that? Is there anyone in history?

Don't say Jesus, please. Is there anyone in history that has done that? Not even close.

Now notice what the lawyer said in his cross -examination of Jesus. Who is my neighbor?

You see, because in his mind, he dismissed the first one, and focused on the second one.

Why? Because he went to church every Saturday. Sunday. He was the person who tithed.

He was the person who read his Bible every day. He had his daily bread.

Or Billy Graham's moment devotional. Or Charles Spurgeon's day and morning nightly readings.

And in his life, he didn't cuss, smoke, or drink, or have tattoos. So of course, he loved

God. So he dismissed that entirely. But then he goes, and his question to Jesus is based upon a preconceived racial understanding.

Now you have to stay with me for a minute. For those of you folks that don't regularly attend Witten, a little question.

How many races of people are there? One. There's one race of people. Please, please leave here smarter than you walked in.

There are not multiple races of people. There's not Filipinos. We have Filipinos, Koreans.

We got black folk, white folk. We got, I don't know, what else have we got in here? Redneck. Oh, we got redneck out there, man.

We got to spray for those things. We got some Mexicaneses. Huh? We definitely got

Dagos. Dagos. Mi Pazano. We have all those people, but scientifically and in reality, they're all homo sapiens sapiens.

Every single one of them. Okay? A Chihuahua and a German Shepherd are both, stop being stupid.

Okay? We'd all appreciate it. But the reality here is that Jesus, when he asks him this, and the lawyer tries to cross -examine, he wants to know who his neighbor is.

Now you have to understand that to the Jew, they are it. They are the skimios.

That's it. They were the bee's knees. Everybody else was less than.

You see, because God, the creator, the one who destroyed Egypt, God told the people of Israel, you are my chosen people.

From out of all the peoples of the earth, I choose you. And they went around like Fred Sanford and George Jefferson, man, saying that's right, that's right.

We're bad. We ain't like the rest of you chattel. We are God's chosen people.

He called us the apple of his eye. And so everybody else is less than.

So in the Jew's mind, the only neighbor he had was the national ethnic understanding of a fellow

Jew. That's who his neighbor was. And so Jesus, knowing that's what his heart is, gave this example.

Now you have to understand that the three people that he lumped together was going to be so offensive.

Some of you folks like offend folks. Jesus, what he did right here was horribly offensive to a

Jew. So he sits there and goes, alright boy, let me tell you a story.

Jesus replied, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead.

Now by chance, a priest was going down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side.

Verse 32, And so likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

There are those people that disregard grace and try to justify themselves. But there is another type of people, and I tell you, they are reserved.

The people who disregard grace are lost and going to hell. The people who disrespect grace are the people who claim to know

Jesus. And here's what Jesus is sitting there saying. First of all, he says, a man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho.

And of course, there's always some little dorky atheist who couldn't make the football team on his computer going, how do you go down from a city?

Well, I put a map on your little notes for you, and it just so happens, Jericho is 800 feet below Jerusalem.

So you have to actually think three -dimensionally life is bigger than your computer screen. So anyways, the guy is going down.

Now we know from historical accounts outside the Bible, one of them by the name of Josephus, that the road from Jerusalem to Jericho was inundated.

It was like, what's a really bad road in Memphis?

Summer, Poplar, all those roads. You are going to get jacked going down that road.

If you went by yourself, you're going to get jacked. You just will. You're going to get car jacked, mule jacked, whatever you ride.

And they're going to come down and they're going to jack you. And so this guy is going down the road.

And he gets jumped. He gets rolled. He's laying on the side of the street. Jesus says, a priest comes by, and as he's walking down, by chance, he sees

Aisha laying on the ground right there all bloody. And this is what he does. Oh my goodness, it's so terrible.

And he keeps on going. Church people, Christians, do you disregard grace?

Well, no pastor, I'm saved by grace. I learned Ephesians 2 .8 .9 and got a Bible badge in Sunday school for it.

What are you doing with it? Do you know the word compassion? There is no definition for compassion that does not include action.

There's no such thing. Well, I love you. Okay. I told chicks to that at 616 every weekend.

You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? It's sad that half my church actually knows what 616 is.

That's not what we're talking about here. See, compassion is this.

Little baby Alina. Her little fuzzy head. I don't even know what color her eyes are.

Are they blue? Oh, they are. God, her eyes and her smile, my heart is done. She's out waddling and she falls in the swimming pool and I go,

I love you so much! She's trying her best.

Her fingernails being chipped away at the concrete, struggling to climb out of the pool, lungs slowly filling with water, listening to her choke and die.

And I'm screaming John 3 .16 to her the whole time. I love you.

I love you. Oh, I'll have a big tent set up with a Red Cross symbol on it.

Oh, I love you, Alina. Come up out of that water and I'll help you.

I'll call 911 and I'll rely on the pastors or the churches to come rescue her because who am

I? I'm not certified Red Cross. Well, actually I am. But in this story,

I'm not. It's funny, Christian. Those of you that have been saved by grace separated from death and been given eternal life, you stand by and watch as somebody drowns praying for them the whole time.

You have disrespected the grace of God. Do you know why Israel was chosen to be

God's people? They were chosen to be the workers. They were chosen to be the ones to take

God's message out of that room. Out of that nation. That's what

God gave them the hope, the prophecy. He gave them everything to go and share it with a lost and dying world.

And some of us can't even invite someone to go to church. Can't even invite them. You know what really torques my backside?

You know what really chaps my butt? Is when I see 79 people of Witten Baptist Church working their brains out to serve 2300 people.

You see, it's just like Kay said. And she did pretty good for a blonde, didn't she? That was a beautiful little picture of what we should be doing.

But it was handing out the gospel. Every person that came in here received the gospel of Jesus Christ.

2300 times. You know what chaps my rear end? Is when I see, I haven't seen it in a long time, but a couple, three years ago,

I sat and watched a family from this church walk up, stand in that line, playing with their kids, go through the line, walk through those doors, walk through every booth that we had collecting candy, and then walk their butts back out.

Who do you think you are? It ain't here for you.

We are here for them. You have disregarded the grace of God to such an epic part of your life that it did not even dawn on your brain to pitch in and help those who are already working.

You partook of the food that we were handing to people starving to death.

And you had no shame. You had no conviction. Dare I say, I doubt you had the grace of God in your life.

Now there's always someone who says, Pastor, you're being a little harsh. Well, listen here, bucky beaver badge.

Listen here, you little hippie. You take the grace of God and soil it.

You stain it to such a degree that the only thing we hold up and the world sees is the failures of the individuals instead of the corporate working of the peoples.

How many people say, well, I don't want to go to church because it's full of... Stop it, please!

You're just making it harder for the rest of us. God, there are people in here who really want to reach this community for Jesus.

I mean, it's great we have people from Mason, Tennessee coming. Yay! And Marty and Karina, we love them.

But they're from Mason, Tennessee. And they are an anomaly. They have all their teeth. But we want to reach the people in this neighborhood.

We want to... And that's what makes Witten different. We want the ones no one else wants.

That's who we want. That is our calling from God. We were offered $2 .7

million for this piece of property. $2 .7 million. And we said, keep it.

There don't need to be another church on the Houston levee. They got 14 of them every square mile.

There needs to be churches right here reaching this community. Because we don't want to discard or discredit the grace that saved me.

Because I still remember where I came from. I still remember my failures.

I still, in the middle of the night, sweat by dreams because of the things I did.

Yet in the morning time, I am renewed because His mercy is renewed.

And I want to share that with somebody else. I ain't up here to try to be super pastor.

In fact, I have more days behind me than I do in front of me. But I tell you this, with every burning passion of every atom of my body,

I want to stand before God and Him say to me, Well done, thou good and faithful servant.

Enter into the joy of thy kingdom. I want to go down swinging. And that ain't just some zealot thing that somebody's saying to get an amen.

That is the core of who I am. I want to go down swinging.

If you're a member of this church, that is what you have agreed to.

You're not like the priest who stands in the supple halls of gilded buildings trying to shout out the door,

Jesus loves you. You are a fellow warrior of this place where you are encouraged in here, taught in here, you are held accountable in here, but you are to go out there and share the gospel.

We shall not disregard the grace of God at Witten, for it is by God's grace we are saved through faith.

Look at this next cat. The Levite. Now, as people get confused about this, understand this.

Every priest was a Levite, but not every Levite was a priest. Kind of think of it like this.

The Levites... Think of it like this. The priests are kind of like the deacons. The Levites are kind of like the pastors.

Sort of. Sort of. But that's as close as I can get right now. So the priest walked by, and he was like, this is awkward.

I'm feeling very awkward about this. And he keeps walking his little Nancy way down the road. But then here comes the

Levite. That title. The epoch.

The rose. The schooling. The education. He can read and memorize the whole first five books of the

Bible for you. Literally take a day and a half and recite it word for word for you.

He gives you goosebumps. He's a super Christian. Now look what he does.

He's walking up down the road, and it says, as he came by and he saw it, he came upon him.

You know what he did? He 240'd his butt. You say to me, what's he mean he 240'd?

Have you ever been driving down 240? And for whatever reason, those mesmerizing blue lights are flashing.

And as you're driving down the road, you're doing this. Because you've got to look.

Right? You've got to look. You've got to look. You might know him.

Yeah, that's what it is. Oh, I hope it's not. Yeah. Human nature is this.

Human nature is this. In our entertainment, in our everyday life, drama and the pain of humanity has become our entertainment.

It has become our entertainment. Every time a war breaks out,

Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, the ratings go through the roof.

Why? Well, because I'm really concerned about the whole geopolitical situation in the Middle East. No, man.

You're entertained. You hear Russell Crowe in the gladiators arena saying, are you not entertained?

Yes. Give me more. But there's no compassion. There's not even a prayer lifted up.

There's no heart involved. You just want to come across that person and that Levite goes, dang, boy, that looked like that hurt.

Glad it ain't me. Peace. And he walks on down the road.

Whew. How do we disregard God's grace? You see, and try to get this.

This is not philosophical. This is theological. Dare I say doctrinal. How does the world see an invisible

God? They see it through the church.

Do you know why so many kids rebel against their parents? Because the parents will send them to Sunday school class, but not mimic it in their day to day lives.

The kids see mom and dad driving to the church on Sunday morning with their finest garb upon them arguing and bickering and calling each other names.

And when they hit the church parking lot and that air containment chamber of their vehicle opens, a metamorphile takes place.

They've gone from calling her everything but a white woman to getting out and saying, oh, good morning.

God bless you. Oh, isn't it a beautiful day? Hallelujah. And then we wonder in amazement and call them names.

Call them everything in the book when they dare to say, the emperor has no clothes.

It's full of hypocrites. Now, if you're one of those people in here today and you've had your little feelings hurt because of the hypocrites, come in and join us anyways.

One more won't matter because you are the hypocrites. You are the hypocrite. You got an exhaust fan in your bathroom.

You stink too. So do we. We're just trying to all demonstrate a little grace for our lost and dying world.

So show on up and go to work. So we have people who have discarded grace, disrespected grace, but praise

God, you've got a lot of folks in this church that demonstrate grace.

Jesus gets to this part. And as He's used the priest and the Levi, He finally comes upon the

Samaritan. Verse 33, But, remember, when you're reading

Scripture, you need to like big buts. Every time it says but in Scripture, it's not just a juxtaposition, it is something that needs the comparison and contrast, but it's about to give you the ultimate axiom of what

Jesus is saying. It says, but a Samaritan. Don't miss that.

But a Samaritan on His journey came up to Him. And when He saw the man,

He had compassion. And He prayed over him and said, good luck, and went on His way.

How did He have compassion? Oh, He went over to him, bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine, and then

He put him on His own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day,

He took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, take care of him. When I come back,

I will reimburse you for whatever extra you spend. Guys, do you know what the

Samaritans were? To the Jew, they were the trailer park trash.

I'm sorry. We've got some folks living in trailers. They were the

Frazier folks. We've got folks from Frazier. They were us! Okay?

Let me give you an example. When I go to a pastor's conference around here, this is how

I show up. You know why? Because this is how I show up on Sundays. This is how I dress at home. Because I'm not going to be different than I am.

Okay? So I show up. I'm the only dude in the room without a master's degree.

Most of them have doctorates. I don't care. I don't care.

Now it's funny, a lot of the brothers in Christ, they'll sit there and go, hey Jeff, what's up man?

How you doing man? I'm doing good brother. How you doing? I'm doing great. God love you. Peace, praise, love. I'm gone. But there are some other guys that are like this.

When I walk in, I'm like, I don't walk in. I think they have a class in Southern Baptist Seminary on how you're supposed to approach people.

Because it's like, men, it's like they sashay. And when they're younger, they have the skinny jeans on with the polo shirt, you know, and the slick back ten inch part hair with the horn rim sissy glasses.

And you know, I'm just like, dude, you were a man before you were a pastor.

Can you act like one? Please, please stop doing this. Please. Right? There are some folks that look down on other folks because they don't look like they belong.

Y 'all know what I'm saying. You know what I'm saying. That's who the Samaritans were to Jews.

In reality, the Samaritans were half breeds, split half power.

Man, God, I swear. You white folk and you black folk, y 'all are losers. Them half breeds, man, they're the cutest thing in the world.

So cute, I just want to kiss the little fats off of them. But they're the ones that are like half, they used to be half

Jewish, but they married unwashed people. You know? And Jews hated them.

Except there was this guy named Jesus in John chapter 4 who went to a well because he had to meet a chick, a female, who was a

Samaritan and he showed up on that day and that is when a church was born in 10 different cities from the words of one woman.

I'm so sick of men being pansies. But anyways, that's another sermon. Samaritan walks up.

He sees the situation. Now notice what Scripture says. And he had compassion. It wasn't a feeling.

It wasn't gas. It wasn't a prayer service. Compassion is love in work clothes.

And he went to work. He didn't check his criterion of his medical training.

He didn't check the gender. He didn't check the nationality. He didn't check anything about that man.

He saw a need and immediately he had compassion. And he bound up his wounds.

And let me tell you something about grace. Christian, do you know when you know when it's grace?

It's when it costs you something. Now listen, for God so loved the world that He gave

His only Son. Only Son. People say, well, yeah,

I'm in ministry. I get up here every week and I sing a song. That's not ministry.

I know that just stresses some of you out. You need to get over the 1950's.

That is not ministry. Wait a minute. Getting up here and preaching is not ministry.

I am not ministering to you. I am preaching to you. Now all day today, six different people are coming up and going to talk to me all day long about issues.

And I'm going to have to spend my time when I could be watching football and eating popcorn in my recliner talking to them.

It's going to cost you. Christian, let me ask you a question. What are you paying in your time and cost to minister to people?

Well, I sent a shoebox to little Mexican children last Christmas. There are people who have told me, you've been to church 30 years and you're still that big of a loser?

Really? You sent a shoebox to Mexico? It's going to come back across the river anyways.

What good did you do to send that? Build that wall.

Now listen. Where is your ministry? It's okay.

Focus. Where is your ministry? What is it costing you? This guy poured oil and wine onto the wounds.

Now there are some preachers who sit there and go, well, that represents the Holy Spirit. I think it represents oil and wine.

Okay? I think it represents oil and wine. It costs that man to do that. But wait.

There's more. He puts him on his animal. On his vehicle.

And you know what he does? If he's on his animal, what's that mean that dude doing? Walking, baby.

Walking. Some of you young men that keep parking up here, I swear I'm going to have your cars towed.

I'm going to slit your tires. Walk your lazy butt from the other side of the parking lot and let the pregnant women and visitors and old people park up here.

I'm 300 pounds and 55 years old. I'll take that route. Walk your butt up here.

Well, honey, I want to walk with my wife. She'll still be there. Drop her off and you walk.

Come up with something other than an excuse. Okay? By the way, why am I, as a senior pastor, don't have a special parking place?

You walk. Yeah. Walk. Let it cost you something.

Let your sacrifice be acceptable to God. Offer Him something other than your attendance in a building.

Let it cost you. Oh, here it comes. When he gets to the end, he starts taking care of him.

He starts taking care of him, but then he pulls two days' wages out of his pocket.

Ain't no pennies. He pulls out two days of hard labor out of his pocket, and he gives it to the innkeeper and says, hey, take care of him.

I'm going to come back. And if he eats up that, whatever he eats up when

I come back, I'll hook you up. Hey, one of the rules 20 years ago when

I came here, when I came here 20 years ago, the pastor had a clothing fund, an education fund, a car fund, a book fund, and a convention fund.

This church was taking in $1 ,200 a week from 50 people. We couldn't even keep the lights on, but the pastor has all of that.

Oh, yeah, I forgot mileage. I was like, do you get paid to drive to work? Well, no, then why do I? I don't get paid to drive to work.

Get all that crap out of there. Get all that crap out of here. And then we did this.

We made a new rule that we have defended to the death around here.

Pastors don't collect money, count money, know who spends, know who gives. We don't know any of that mess.

And I'm going to tell you why. Because I know Jeff Shipley. Dude, I know me.

Let's say Brittany here gives $10 ,000 a week to this church. Vicki gives a buck. They both call me.

Who am I going to answer the phone? Some of you are like, well, pastor, you're a very... No, I'm going to answer

Brittany's call. I'm going to tell you how it is. Right? I'm going to tell you how it is.

I don't want to know. But... I do get statistics.

And let me tell you something. Some of you people are disgusting. And I'm going to tell you why.

You're members of this church and you give nothing. Like, oh, pastor's talking about money.

No, you godless heathen. I'm talking about grace. And your lack of it. Well, pastor,

I don't make a bunch of money. I don't either. I give every week. So, what's your point?

Well, pastor, I... Can you stop, please, being a 12 -year -old kid who's busted and keep coming up with excuses to keep ruining your life?

Instead, why don't you repent, humble yourself, and get right with God? I hate talking about money.

Money is disgusting to me. I hate it. With a flaming passion.

Almost as bad as Alabama. Okay? God, I thought LSU was going to do it!

Dang gum it. Roll tide. But what it's a measurement of is what are you willing to sacrifice?

What are you willing to sacrifice? I don't see it. I don't count it. I don't want it. And I'm here to tell you, I don't care about it.

I got people for that. I care about you and where you're at.

And the maturity and matriculation of your life from a godless child in Christ to a mature person in Christ.

Well, pastor, how do I mature? Faith. Trusting God instead of yourself. Guys, you are putting so much stock and pieces of paper with dead white dudes' faces on it.

Like, that's really going to give you security. No! I mean, we have crackheads all over Hollywood that got more money than the

Shake a Stick Act and they're the most miserable human beings on the face of the earth. Guys, you want to know what it is to know peace?

Watch this. Quit trusting yourself or any agency of men, including religion, and start trusting in Jesus Christ.

Now, I'm going to close now because that looks like I've gone over a little bit and my ADD people are freaking out.

Okay? That's okay. That's okay. Okay. Focus just a second. I want the little music peoples to come up.

But listen to me. Where are you this morning? Have you discarded focus?

If you've got to go, go on and go. The rest of everybody listen. Have you discarded grace?

In other words, you've put faith in a prayer, a church, or a pastor instead of the

Word of the living God. If you have, you're going to be burning in hell right next to the child molester and everybody else that has rejected

God. Your crap stinks too. If you think your morality justifies you, you've lost your ever -loving mind.

Number two, you really are saved, but you've disrespected grace by not giving what

God told you to give, which is your entire life. Your church attendance and your little brain is all that is needed.

Guys, you don't go to church. You are the church. Start acting like it. Or you're in this room today and you are truly demonstrating grace.

Here's the next thing you need to do. Get with someone who's not and teach them how to do it. I'm going to ask you to stand with me this morning.

There will be pastors down here at the front. If you need to get saved, need to join a church, you need prayer about something, you come this morning as God leads.