It Was Never About the Fish

If you'd stay standing for just another couple minutes, we're going to read scripture in just a moment. If you want to turn in your Bible to Luke chapter 5, Luke chapter 5. We're in a message series. We started a long time ago uh last year, months ago now, and we've made it to chapter 5. We're in a message series called Authentic. Uh we're studying the unfiltered story of Jesus through the lens of the Gospel of Luke. And if you're new to the Bible, the Bible has two parts. what's called an Old Testament, which is the story of God before Jesus came to the earth. And then [music] what's called the New Testament, which is the story of God once Jesus entered the earth. And the New Testament starts with four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And they tell the story specifically of Jesus coming to the earth and then his ministry, his death and resurrection uh for the forgiveness of sins, proving in his resurrection he defeated death, [snorts] sin, and shame. And so, we've been studying to learn this. So, like, how could we know the real Jesus better so that we as his followers could walk out what he has for our life? And so, today, I'm excited to share out of Luke chapter 5. And I really honor those of you that were able to make it today. Come on. And in Hampton Roads, we know this was a massive snowstorm for us. And uh Pastor Megan reminds me, you know, you're from the Midwest, so you're used to you grew up driving in all this. You know, people that are from here didn't learn to drive in this. And so I can tell based on the things people say whether or not you're from here or not from here from for the most part. Um so especially those of you that are like born and raised around here, way to go coming to church today. I just cuz you're like you may have put chains on your tires. I don't know, but you came and I'm glad you're here. And specifically, and you might be a guest with us today because um you wanted to come to church and I know there this was maybe an opportunity for you to be in church, but if you're part of our church, you know, we just finished 21 days in prayer and fasting yesterday. So, today is a celebration and it's like what the Lord did. And so, I'm so glad we can gather. Luke chapter 5. Luke chapter 5. I'm going to read the first 11 verses of Luke chapter 5 and then after that I'll pray and then you can have a seat. It says this. One day Jesus was standing by the lake of Guinness. The people were crowding around him and listening to the word of God. He saw at the wat's edge two boats left there by the fishermen who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and he asked him to put it out a little from the shore. Then he sat down and he taught the people from the boat. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let the nets down for a catch." Simon answered, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything, but because you say so, we will let down the nets." When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and they filled both boats so full they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man." For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken. And so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid. From now on, you will fish for people." So they pulled up their boats on the shore, left everything, and followed him. Jesus, I ask you this morning in your presence to change every one of us. >> Lord, we believe that one encounter with you can change not just a day, but an entire life. And so I ask for that encounter for every one of us today. Maybe we've already had it in our worship. Maybe it will come right now. God, we ask for that encounter. Would you change every one of us by your spirit and by your word? Would you make us more like you in Jesus name? Amen. You can have a seat this morning. Thank you, worship team. also make sure uh I just want to let's um because there's no real better way to show gratitude. So, we're going to do it just with an applause if they hear us. Could we show gratitude for all the facilities team volunteers and staff that came in early? And [applause] I was I was standing on our lobby and looking at the floor and I was like thinking about our team that's going to clean the building. And so I'm like we're just so grateful uh so grateful because um I know it's a lot and I'm grateful we can gather as the church and uh we normally have three services on Sunday and so a lot of people are serving in a live kids space and so normally you you uh serve one or two services and attend one service and so there's people that are uh that are not going to be able to be in service today because they're serving. And so make sure as you pick up your kids today that you just show appreciation to those volunteers serving in our kids spaces for investing in our kids and and really caring about the next generation in a tangible way by sharing the truth of Jesus with them and what he has for them. So um no basketball team update today. We didn't the games were cancelled yesterday because as you know there was a forecast of snow. So they canled all those games yesterday morning and so I don't have any exciting news in regards to that. If you're taking notes, you can write down the title of today's message. It's one I like. I don't always give you a title, but I like today's title. Write down, it was never about the fish. It was never about the fish. One of the main questions that Jesus is showing us in the Gospel of Luke that is a same question that all of us have to deal with in our life today. It's been the same for 2,000 years. And it's what do we do with the reality of Jesus? What do we do with this thing called for us now the Bible? What do we do with this thing called the word of God? What do we do with this thing that's called the good news? What do we do with this man who says he's God? What do we do with this man that says he's the savior and the Messiah and teaches us things about how to live our life and shows us a different way of living that is the norm for so many. What do we do about this reality? This is what Jesus is going to show Simon or Simon Peter depending on your your translation today. Um, Simon, the Lord changed his name to Peter. That's who this is, by the way. So, that's who we're talking about. We'll learn more about him through this series. I want to walk through this. It's a it's a message. It's a little bit of a Bible study. In fact, Pastor Megan and I recorded a podcast through this passage. That's what's online uh for online service today. So, even though you're in the room, I'd encourage you go watch that podcast because you'll it'll be even a a different approach probably to how I preach this. Hopefully, there's no uh disagreement in what those two things are, but if there were, that'd be even fun to see what that was. But, um what's happened in this text today in in Luke chapter 5 first starts with something that's fascinating just to to learn a little bit of Bible. It's called a lake. This is what we know as the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is not a big sea. The way we would think of it typically as people who live in the United States of America, we would call it a lake. Um, it was it's a small enclosed body of water. It was interesting this body of water because it would get storms the way it was positioned and the way it is positioned geographically. Storms would come up on this Sea of Galilee that would be some of the biggest storms you could experience. Like we would think about being out in the ocean, these would happen on this sea. So, it wasn't just your normal day-to-day lake, so to speak. So that gives us just some setting for where we are when uh Jesus is teaching and they're crowding around him. I also find it fascinating in Luke 5:1 that Jesus is referring or Jesus is himself teaching the word of God. So John says that Jesus is the word and Jesus is teaching the word. Most commentators agree that he is literally talking about the what we would call the good news, the gospel. So just fascinating. If you were here a couple weeks ago, we talked about Jesus standing up in a temple and reading a line from the prophet Isaiah and basically he reads how he has been sent to set people free. Reads it, sits down, he's like, "Yo, I'm that guy." We're learning more and more about Jesus because now he's preaching the good news and he is the good news and the people are digging it. >> They're like, "This guy seems seems legit and they want to learn more about him." And so Jesus is smart, right? He's he's God, so he knows a little bit of things. So the people are crowding around and he has a problem. And the problem is that when people get into a crowd, you have to have a way to communicate to the crowd. like if with no microphone, if people crowd around, it's you're limited to how much communication you can do. So Jesus sees there's this problem. There's a lot of people and I have the good news to share with them. And so he gets into Simon's boat. Now, this is why we got to get into the Bible and get it real for a moment. He just gets into one of the fisherman's boats. He doesn't ask. He just gets in his boat. I don't know if you've ever been in a fishing boat. Now, I'm not talking about if you've ever chartered a boat and gone deep sea fishing. I'm not talking about if you've got a real nice bass fishing boat. I'm talking about a commercial fishing boat. Those things stink. >> Like, listen y'all, I know they clean them, but they stink. And the scriptures tell us that they were washing their nets. They don't tell us that they had washed the boat. And I'm thinking about Jesus stepping into Simon's boat and Simon going, "Uh, well, uh, hey, uh, wow. I would have liked to have prepared for this moment." I mean, think about your house. You came to church this morning and some of you maybe it's just a little bit laid-back morning, a little later than some of you normally start. Maybe you just like were going to chill a little bit. Maybe you didn't have time to get all the dishes put away. Maybe you have kids and they were outside playing in the snow and you just left all the clo all the snow clothes everywhere a mess and then you just come to church and just imagine after church Jesus just shows up like just walks in. You're like I would have cleaned up if I knew that you know what I you were going to show up. This is a little bit what I feel like Simon is going to feel in that moment cuz he's just a dude. He believes that he he's not convinced yet that this is God, but he knows there's something about this person and he just gets in his boat and then he begins to teach. This is Jesus demonstrating the importance of acoustics. I've taught this before to a group of pastors uh years ago that this was the first mega church instituted because Jesus finds a way to give himself a platform to speak to a large group of people. He needed the sound to be carried by the water. So he got into the boat and got the boat off the shore so that he could speak and the sound waves would be carried off the water so the crowd could hear what he had to say. They're crowded around and they're excited about what he has to say. But this isn't about what he had to say. I love how Jesus takes a whole teaching, whole moments that we get in our scriptures and they're not about sometimes the big crowd. They're just about the one dude, the one person, the one moment. He gets into Simon's messy boat. And then there's a demonstration in that. By the way, Jesus wasn't afraid of Simon's mess. This isn't about if Simon's boat was clean or not. I just want to remind you, in case you're newer to church, that we don't need to get cleaned up to come to Jesus. We come to Jesus and then in the process of following Jesus, our life gets cleaned up. He is God is not afraid to just get in the mess with us. He's not afraid to just get in the brokenness with us. He's not afraid for us to be like, I don't understand 99.9% of the things. I'm still struggling with this long list of things. And he's like, great, just let me get in the boat. Like, let's just let's be here together. Just don't push me away. Just don't act like you're going to get it together before I get let let's do this together. But let Jesus being like, "Let me be the one who shapes you, who changed you." That's what he's going to do right here with Simon. So they go out there a little bit further. He teaches the people and he finishes speaking. The text says in verse four, he finished speaking and he says to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch." So he gets in the boat without asking. He does ask him to take it out a little bit further. Then he tells him what to do again. Now, Simon's response is a very important one for us to learn from because he says, "Master, we've worked hard all night and haven't caught anything." He did not respond to Jesus by denying the reality of the current situation. Jesus already knows everything, but it's so important that we become convinced ourselves and are able to confess out of our own mouths the real situation we're in. God knows. But we need to understand what we even need God for. Like if I said, "Do you need God's help in your life?" And most of us would say yes. And we would say, "What do you need God's help with?" And and if we're like, [sighs] "No clue. We need to have a self-awareness. We need to be aware of the actual situation. Where do we need the presence of God? Where do we need the wisdom of the Holy Spirit? Where is the miracle we need? Where is the practical thing we need? So Jesus is like, "Hey, let's go and catch some fish." And he's like, "Yo, been there, done that. It didn't work." But then the next statement that Simon says, "But because you say so, I will let down the nets." Because you said so. I wonder how many of us in church today would be willing to say to Jesus, I want to live a because you said so life. You know what? This isn't really what I necessarily want to do, but because you said so. You know what, God? If I was in charge, this isn't the way I would do it, but I'll do this because you said so. >> If I was God for a day, let me give you the list of things I would do and how it would go. But that's not the way it seems to be going. You said something different and because you said so, that's what I'm going to do. It makes no sense to us in the natural why Simon in this moment would just respond because he knows how to fish. This isn't like me out on that boat fishing. You know what I mean? Jesus tells me to throw down the net on the other side. Like, great. I was probably doing it wrong the whole time anyway. Got no issues with that. I mean, Simon's good at this. It's his job. And he hasn't been able to do it right. It has not worked. Think about the things that you and I feel like it's okay. I don't mean this in an arrogant way. Most of us, there might be a few things in our life we can say, I think I'm pretty good at that. Like, we should all have a couple of things that we're like, I can do that decently. And if it's not working, sometimes we think we know why it's not working. Like my one one of my boys, he loves to fish and he'll tell me when the fish are going to bite or when they're not going to bite. And I mean, I argue with him sometimes, but he probably knows more than I do what he's talking about. I'm like, I don't know. So, I could say go do it anyway, but if he didn't listen to me, I would understand because I don't know what I'm talking about. I have caught some fish just for clarity. Like I do know how to fish. I can cast. I just want to make sure. When I was a kid, I used to catfish all the time. And we got one service today. We got nowhere to go. We just hang out here all day. When I was a kid, I used to catfish all the time. And uh and they they you know, does anybody know have anybody sitting catfish here? you know, so they're they're great because they don't they don't have like bones in them, right? Or whatever. I think that's how you say it. Maybe that's not what they're called in fish. Is that what it's called? And Anyway, yeah, thank you. So, I'm like I'm looking at the front row. I mean, I got to find a different row, find out where, [laughter] [panting] but [snorts] they're great because there's no choking hazard, you know. So, I grew up on the on uh in in a small town in Missouri where we would there's a river, small river. It's a good fishing river. And we would go gigging where we gigging fish gigging. You stand over the edge of a johnboat like on a there's a rail like this. You stand over with a spear and you [snorts] stab other they're like they're called sucker fish. They're bottom feeders. And you would stab them down like that. And you'd have to go at night in the dark. You go when it's really cold so the water's crystal clear. It is so fun. But those fish are full of bones. Catfish are not. So catfish are easier eating. This is the moral of this story. [snorts] Anyway, this will not help any of your life. Pastor Megan's going, "You should have just played the podcast." And so, [laughter] but because you said so, I think that if we're not careful, we think that God needs our ability. I I think that if we're not careful, we begin to think that God needs our gift that he he wants to he wants to do something incredible and he's given us a gift or ability and we need to give him that gift or ability. We need to let him know, remind him, remind ourselves that we have that gift or that ability. What Simon's revealing to us about what Jesus looks for in people in Luke chapter 5 is not that Jesus is after our gift or our ability. Jesus doesn't ask about our ability. He asks for our obedience. [snorts] He doesn't ask for our ability. He doesn't say, "Is your gift good enough to catch fish?" He doesn't say, "Okay, Simon, I've heard the story about how you've been able to catch a hundred. Do you think you could catch 200?" He just says, "Throw the nets down." He just says, "Would you be obedient?" And sometimes I've talked to us talked to us as a community about this before. Sometimes we think about obedience to Jesus and we'll be like, "Man, the biggest thing that God would call that whatever in your mind would be the biggest thing God could ask you to do." You're like, "I would do that." But then small obedience like you should get on a serve team. You're like, "Nah, I don't have time. It's the small, seemingly not that big of a deal, sometimes unimportant steps of obedience that so often reveal the massive master plan God is working. But we don't get to be a part of it. We don't get to see it without obedience. So Simon does it and the by the way I hope that you'll read this passage some on your own this week because it's just if you get in this story with this moment with Jesus and Simon and the other guys it's fascinating. So he throws the nets in. It says when he had done so they caught such a large number of fish that the nets begin to break. So they signaled to their partners in another boat to come and help them. They came and they filled both boats so full that they began to sink. Now, here's what the text doesn't tell us. What was Jesus doing? Because he was in the boat with Simon. Is he just sitting there like, "Mhm, told you it would work." And they're like, "GET IN THE NETS. GET OVER HERE AND HELP." YOU KNOW, and then they come and and I'm like, and Jesus is like, "Yep, good job, guys. We'll see later. Humans freak out. They freak out about storms on the sea. They freak out in all these moments. Jesus is always calm. It's because of his nature and character that I assume in this moment he must have just been sitting there calmly watching what was taking place, watching what the process was happening. They throw him in the boat. They single their partners. They come over there. Now verse eight, it says, "When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord. I am a sinful man." You know what I've learned both as a human and as a parent that telling somebody what they're doing is sinful doesn't just make them not want to be sinful. Don't Don't you wish if there's anybody that you're the leader of in some level of authority in their life and you just say, "Hey, that's not what you should do." And they would just respond and go, "Thank you for letting me know that. I'm going to discontinue that behavior." That's not really been my experience. I don't think I've responded that way probably for most of my life. I And and my kids haven't responded that way for most of their life. my typical response and their typical response is you're wrong. That's not sinful. Because we we don't really want to be honest. We don't like to be called out and we'd like to be able to live our life pretending that certain aspects of our sinfulness aren't really there because we buy into a belief that says if I admit that I'm not doing this right or if I admit that I said that wrong or if I admit I shouldn't have been doing that or whatever it would be often just small things then it makes me a failure. >> It makes me not good. Yeah, >> it makes me not enough. >> And so rather than being honest, we just hold in all that shame and that guilt and we try to go through our life and we try to put on a smile and we try to be joyful everywhere we go knowing that inside this is the weight and this is the feeling that I have. But I don't know what to do with it because I don't see a way out in those moments. The text doesn't tell us exactly what Simon had felt about himself leading up to this moment. But what it does tell us is the moment he became fully convinced that he was in the presence of God, he could no longer try to pretend he wasn't sinful. The moment he had a true encounter with who we know as the living God was the moment he knew right then and right there, my sin is going to be found out. I no longer have to wear myself out trying to hide it. And the same moment it freaked him out. >> Because while cultures may have been different 2,000 years ago, humanity is exactly the same. And we have been and we still are convinced that being honest about our shortcomings, being honest about our sinfulness is reason for condemnation. Jesus came so that we would know that is not true. Jesus went to the cross and died for my sin and for your sin so that we would know our sinfulness doesn't have to mean condemnation. That we can be forgiven. Simon didn't know that yet. He just knew this dude who doesn't know anything about fishing just told me to do something and I know everything about fishing. And it was something I've never seen before. Oh my gosh. >> This is something. Jesus, get away from me. I'm not worthy. We push away when we feel like we've been found out. We push away. The book of Proverbs says, "He who isolates himself seeks his own desire." We push people away when we feel about ourselves what we don't like. because of the false perception that if I I push him away, I I don't have to actually deal with this. The reality for me, and some of you, you've had this encounter, this moment, a Simon Peter style moment where you realized Jesus is real. like I think he's real. Like I think Jesus is God. And you realized I'm not that good because of the side of the cross and the tomb we're on that Simon Peter wasn't on yet. And then the third thing that you did in that moment was said, "Jesus, I'm going to follow you and I'm coming after you and I believe that's where freedom is." He didn't know that yet. I want to make sure you know that. That's why we go after encounters with Jesus so often because one encounter with Jesus, it's not just about this feeling. An encounter with Jesus is not about a euphoric feeling. >> I'm really thankful when I feel the presence of God. Like I love it, you know, encounter night on Friday night. We had moments like that. Some of the moments in the prayer room the last three weeks. I love I mean I every Sunday if I'm honest with you I love just like I feel the presence of God. This is amazing and that's great. But in an encounter with God you realize your own brokenness and you realize how Jesus is enough for your own brokenness. And so Simon's like get away from me. I'm a sinful man. Says he and all his companions were astonished. So were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. James and John were called the sons of thunder. They were like couple rambunctious brothers. played John in a play about 20 years ago. It's pretty cool. Just information to share again along with the fishing, [snorts] not to help your life. I picture this moment where Simon, which by the way, the way the text reads, there's there's oneonone and there's Jesus communicating to the plural when you get into the Greek and in some of the study. So Jesus was saying things to Simon and he's saying things to the group through this whole process. It wasn't that he's ignoring everybody in Luke chapter 5, but he's zeroing in in certain aspects on Simon. And so they get through this whole process and I mean Simon's in awe. He's freaked out. How's Jesus going to respond? Because according to the text, he told Jesus to get away from him because he knew he was a sinful man. I feel to say this before I read this text. You and I have to make the choice to get away from Jesus. meaning Jesus will not leave you. It's a conscious choice or decision that any human can make. We do have free will and free choice. We can come to Jesus and then we can choose to leave Jesus. But Jesus will never leave us. Your salvation is not fragile. That means you're never in danger of losing Jesus. You're never in danger of losing your salvation. Simon says, "Get away from me." And it's as if Jesus is like, "You don't understand things about me. That's not the kind of God I am." And he says this, "Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid of your sinfulness. Don't be afraid of the reality of this moment. From now on, you will fish for people. The whole text, this is what I love about Jesus. 10 verses to tell him to do outreach. 10 verses so that he could say, "Hey, you need to go share your faith. Why? Because it's not about just having some words. It's about having a revelation in your heart. I can't remember who says this quote and I might misquote it a little bit right now. I typically teach it in leadership academy, but it goes like this. It's impossible to get a fire burning in someone's else someone else's heart that's not already burning in your heart. If you don't have a heart burning to see lost people get saved, you aren't going to be able to help other people get a heart to help lost people get saved. And Jesus by his own words came to the earth for humanity. Jesus entered the earth as we know it so that millions upon millions of people could be saved. It's burning in his heart. He went to the cross because you and I were burning in his heart. And he just wants that same passion to begin to burn in our hearts. I actually think this this text in Luke chapter 5 is somewhat of a formula on on how to share your faith and do outreach because what he said in the beginning when he told Peter how to fish, he said, "You're going to have to put the nets down deep." And I think about this idea of reaching people. I I think about it. Our church, if if I'm honest, we're, you know, all the different locations that the Lord allows us to be to do and and the dream center and what's going on in the Philippines. And I mean, people in our church, the military, the schools, different government, different, you know, all these places of work, all the neighborhoods. I'm like, man, let's put the nets down everywhere. Let's put the nets. Go deep. Go everywhere you can put the nets down. Why? Because we want a huge catch. Yeah, >> because we want a huge catch. >> Simon, from now on, >> you're going to fish for people. NT Wright, theologian and author. He he wrote a translation of the New Testament, and I like the way he wrote verse 10. He said, "From now on, you will be catching people." I like that better because what I didn't tell you earlier is I love to catch fishing. I could take it or leave it. Catching is always a ton of fun. From now on, you'll be catching people. This is a pretty cool moment. It wasn't about the fish. It's about the people. But they still had to do something. They still had to do something. And verse 11 tells us what they did. So they pulled their boats up on the shore and left everything and followed him. I say this, I pray that you would feel both kindness, conviction, and a third thing, directness. Jesus requires a response. We cannot remain passive about Jesus. They left everything trained fishermen, their livelihood, everything they've known. There was no like here's how this is going to work. This concept is totally foreign. It wasn't like, oh, back in those days people would just say, and now you fish for people and he knew what they This is just like it sounds to us today. everything's gonna change. Simon and the rest of the guys and they're all like, "Let's go. Let's just let's just go follow him." They didn't even try to sell their boats. List them on eBay. At least could have got a little something. No, >> they're just gone. Jesus is going. We're going with Jesus. What's it going to look like? I have no idea. Here's where I believe Jesus is driving us in these 11 verses. To live fully alive, you must fully surrender to Jesus. Living fully alive, it is our vision. It sounds good and it can sound just like a make your life better, be happy. Let me tell you that the only way we live fully alive is when we fully surrender to Jesus. I want to do what I want to do and I I want to surrender if just to me and my flesh. I want to surrender to Michael's will and I want Jesus to help me make sure I live fully alive. But the only way that actually happens is when I surrender to the way of Jesus. When I get myself in a place [snorts] to go, I'm convinced that God's way is true. I'm convinced that the external things and the situations of my life, those don't have to be the things I surrender to. I think about teenagers and kids in the room, and you don't have to wait to surrender your life to Jesus. [snorts] You're not going to miss out on anything by not surrendering your life to Jesus. I know it feels like it will. Some of you may be mid20s, mid-30s, you feel like, well, eventually I'm going to get real ser eventually I'm going to get real serious about my faith. But but but we'll say this, but there's still a few things I want to do because we're we're we we become convinced that there's some things in our life that are going to be awesome that we wouldn't feel okay about doing if we surrendered to Jesus and we'll miss out if we don't get to do them. Which is a false way of thinking about who Jesus really is. Jesus did not go to the cross and go through hell so that we could live a mediocre life. He did that because he wanted us to know I have a life for you that's better than anything else. I have a way of life for you that's better than anything else. And I invite you to surrender to the way of Jesus. and then you can walk in this life. And so what I want to invite us to do in this moment is receive communion together as a way of us surrendering our life to Jesus. I'll walk us through this moment, but if you look at the seat in front of you, you should see a little cup like this in the front row. There's some some somewhere. If not, just wave your hand. We got our team's bringing some around. We're going to go ahead and open these because people already start started. I mean, you probably ate the fast is over, but so it's not as exciting. Listen, communion in a fast, you're like, "This is great. I've been waiting for this all week." You know what I'm saying? But so let's go ahead and peel back the top. Don't take the elements yet. I want to talk about them, please. But peel back the top and hold the cracker and then peel back the next layer and it will open the juice. This this this act [snorts] this sacrament is something that believers have been doing for a couple thousand years since Jesus instituted what we know as the last supper in scripture. And this cracker for us represents the body of Jesus going to the cross being given up for us. This juice represents the blood of Jesus poured, shed on that cross. According to the way that God set things up, not by my choice, but by his plan, all sin required sacrifice to be paid for. And the only way that human sin could be fully paid for once and for all was Jesus, who is God, also fully human, paying his human life. So that in our humanity, we would no longer have to try to offer another sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins. that Jesus paid the price and became our sacrifice. And most of us know we make mistakes sometimes and need some level of forgiveness sometimes. What I'm asking God to do in your heart today is maybe to recognize it's not just sometimes that Jesus did the ultimate for all time. that we don't have to be afraid of our sin. We can actually take it to God. We can surrender everything, our sin and our shame. We can truly be forgiven and not live a life worried and stressed because we know God reigns. And it's the people who are surrendered to him who get to experience that. So before we receive this, we're going to just begin to sing I surrender also old hymn. >> [music] >> and trust [singing] his presence. >> Come on, >> God. We surrender all to you right now, >> Jesus. our hopes, our dreams >> to thee, my blessed Savior. I [music] [singing] surrender all. [singing] Lord, help us mean it from the depths of our hearts right now. our dreams, >> our desires [singing and music] to thee, my blessed. [snorts] >> Jesus, we thank you for the cross. We pray right now that you would forgive us of our sins. God, would you forgive us for where we've been selfish? Would you forgive us for [music] where we've believed you weren't enough? Would you help us all experience you right now as the God [music] who is more than enough? Sins forgiven, set free, made [music] whole. We thank you in Jesus name. Let's take the cracker cup. God, I pray over all of our lives right [music] now that we would hear the call. I pray that [music] we would hear the call as you said to Simon and the guys with him. From now on, you'll fish [music] for people. I pray over this room of people right now. Holy Spirit, way may we hear your voice speak into our heart and minds the true purpose of people, the true reason we're here. And may we have faith to say yes to what [music] you're doing in Jesus name. Amen. And amen. Let's give God praise one more time today.