Palm Springs Drive Church of Christ

Series: N/A

Service: Praise and Preaching Service

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Brian Messerli

Judges 21:25 - We just finished the book of Judges in our adult Bible class, and it’s hands down one of the darkest, most disturbingly wicked periods in Israel’s history.  Dwayne mentioned that you don’t hear too many sermons about the last few chapters in Judges, and I think that’s because it’s hard to talk about even among adults, let alone with kids in the audience.  I won’t go into graphic detail, but let me paint a broad picture of what this period was like and as I describe it to you, see if you notice any parallels to our modern culture.  In the time of the Judges, people were open to any and all religious beliefs and practices and all truths were treated as equally valid.  Those who claimed to worship the one true God had completely customized their religion, tailor made so they could worship God in whatever way was comfortable for them.  Women were treated as objects to be used and abused, men committed homosexual acts with each other, even in groups, and they weren’t ashamed of it at all, it was almost like they were proud of it and saw it as perfectly normal.  There was very little sense of social cohesion, and the 12 tribes that were meant to be united were divided against each other, to the point of physically taking up arms to wipe each other out.  They lost their group identity and became much more individualistic, and it was an every man and woman for himself kind of world.  The streets weren’t safe at all at night.  You couldn’t just hang out in the town square at night for fear of being jumped by gangs.  And the book of Judges ends with one of those gangs brutalizing a woman until she died, and then she gets chopped into pieces and sent out to the 12 tribes to be used as a tool to get revenge because they glorified violence.

The parallels to our modern culture are everywhere in Judges, and we could add to the list things happening today that are even worse than back then, and I realize it can be discouraging to think about the evil times we live in.  We talked a few weeks ago about not growing weary in doing good, and one of the things that makes us weary and discouraged is how evil the world is.  Especially since over the last century it seems like people have been abandoning God and the church in droves.  Even back in the 1800’s, the English poet Matthew Arnold was troubled by society’s general loss of faith in God with the emergence of modern skepticism and scientific rationalism.  And in a poem called “Dover Beach,” he wrote this line… “The Sea of Faith was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.  But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.”  He pictured faith in God as a tide wrapped around the shore of the world receding back into the sea, it’s crashing waves only to be heard faintly in the distance.

  Now, if we stopped here, I will have succeeded in thoroughly depressing you, but my goal this morning is to encourage you not to be discouraged by the dark times we live in, but to see this time as an opportunity for the gospel to flourish.  In fact, Justin Brierley, host of the highly popular Christian Radio show called “Unbelievable,” just released a book in 2023 called, “The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God:  Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers are Considering Christianity Again.”  He argues that new atheism has crumbled from within, and scientific rationalism has left people empty, creating more interest in Christianity.  He’s not saying more people are affiliating with churches, that’s another hurdle to get over later, but that there’s a new attraction to the gospel story of Christ, and the receding tide from Arnold’s poem may be coming back in.  And one of his points is that if we didn’t go through the dark times of the new atheistic movement, it wouldn’t have given rise to this new resurgence of faith!  I’ll be referencing his book throughout the lesson because he has his finger on the pulse of our culture, and I want us to see the bright side of dark times this morning by showing us 4 ways dark times can actually work in Christ’s favor.

1.  It Makes our Christian Light Shine Even Brighter!

• Illustration:  Whenever stores put diamond necklaces on display, they hang them against a black velvet setting.  Why?  Because the dark setting provides a contrast that makes the diamonds pop, instead of just being washed out by the background.  The same thing is true with stars.  They’re always out, but we can’t see them until it’s night time and they’re surrounded by darkness, and even at night in the city, it’s hard to see them because of our artificial light, but if you go out into the desert at night, that’s when the stars look like brilliant, sparkling diamonds strewn across the sky and they’re so beautiful you just can’t look away!
  • Ruth 2:4, 8-9 [In this book, we get a rare glimpse of people living during the time of the Judges who were actually righteous and cared about serving God] - Because the time of the Judges was so dark and disturbing, it makes Boaz’s attitude and behavior SO refreshing, because he greets people with “May the Lord bless you!” and instead of objectifying Ruth and treating her like his property like the men did at the end of Judges, he treasures her and takes care of her.  And Ruth herself is like a sparkling diamond in this book with her example of love and loyalty and self sacrifice and when you read the book of Ruth right after Judges, it’s such a stark contrast that it’s like beholding a diamond necklace set against a black velvet backdrop.  And Jesus tells us to go and be that kind of contrast in the world too!
  • Matthew 5:14, 16 - I couldn’t decide whether to make this a separate point, but I think it fits as a sub-point here.  One of the bright sides to dark times is to realize we’re not the only ones who have ever lived in dark times.  The Bible is filled from front to back with God’s people trying to be shining lights in a dark world, from Noah who lived in a time so wicked God destroyed the earth with a flood, to Israel under their evil kings like Ahab and Manasseh, to Jesus and Christians who lived in the Roman Empire.
    • In Brierley’s book, he mentions Tom Holland who wrote a book called “Dominion” in which he chronicles the way Christianity has shaped Western culture for the better, and he talks about how the world of Rome was completely foreign to our own in a terrifying way.  He described one of Caesar’s campaigns where he slaughtered a million Gauls and enslaved another million just to boost his political career.  There was no remorse for this, only pride, and even people in the streets carried billboards boasting about how many people he killed.
      • He said, “This is a really terrifying alien world, and the more you look at it, the more you realize that it is built on systemic exploitation.  In almost every way, this is a world that is unspeakably cruel to our way of thinking.”  It’s helpful for to realize as bad as we think things are now, things have been WAY worse for God’s people in the past.
• But it was precisely against this incredibly evil, violent, cruel, power-hungry backdrop that Christ’s life and teachings about love and self-sacrifice and forgiveness and hope and equal human dignity for all shine so brightly and change people’s lives so profoundly, to the point where our entire Western civilization was built on ideals that came from the light of Jesus’ teachings in dark times!
  • So rather than throw up our hands and say, “The world is too wicked for the gospel to be effective,” we should say, “Now the world can see the light of Jesus SO much more clearly because it’s such a stark contrast to the way they’ve been living without Him!”

2.  It Wakes People Up to the Emptiness of their Worldview

• Judges 19:30 [After the incident with the woman who was brutalized and chopped up, the tribes were absolutely horrified] - It’s been said that sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you realize how far you’ve fallen.  They’ve hit rock bottom here, and I wish I could tell you in their case that it led to serious long-term repentance.  It didn’t, but it was at least jarring for them and they had the right response in the moment when they said, “Let’s consider how in the world something like this could have happened!  And let’s take counsel and learn something from this, and then let’s do something to correct it!”  They reached this point because of their moral relativism, the idea that everyone can do whatever is right in their own eyes, and it was such an empty and vacuous ideology that not only didn’t satisfy people’s souls, it led them to do evil.
  • This is what happened to the New Atheist movement that labeled people of faith as idiots and labeled God as a monster and religion as evil.  It left people totally empty and confused about what moral values to live by.  They talked about doing what was good for society, but people in the movement couldn’t agree what was good for society.  Brierley put it this way:  “New Atheism had been largely united in agreeing that religion was bad and science was good.  But it turns out that life is more complicated than that.  Once the community discovered they held radically different views about how life should be lived once religion has been abandoned, things quickly spiraled downwards.” One atheist blogger put it this way: “the atheist community has splintered into a million shards in recent years.  There are the atheist feminists and the atheist anti-feminists, the social justice warrior atheists, and the anti-social justice warrior atheists.  The pro-PC atheists and the anti-PC atheists, there are pro-Trump atheists and anti-Trump atheists.  Atheists are split over whether we should organize, or whether we should even call ourselves atheists at all.  The divisions go on and on.”  Without God, you’re left with moral relativism and you get to decide whatever morality you want to live by, and while I’m not saying being an atheist means you’re going to be this horrible person and become an ax murderer, if an atheist chooses to be kind, that’s just a personal choice and there’s nothing inherently demanding of that choice to be kind in the atheistic worldview, so other atheists are free to choose NOT to be kind, and there were many reports of sexual harassment and misogyny among the new atheist leaders, leaving many of their followers disillusioned and discouraged.
    • Jeremiah 2:13 - When you abandon God, you’re left with a completely empty worldview, and Jeremiah describes it like trying to drink out of a bottle with a hole in the bottom.  Not only did atheism leave people empty in terms of a clear moral path, but they left us with a very odd story of humanity.  The story is, we were not put here for a purpose, we’re descendants of fish, we have no souls, we’re just really advanced bags of chemicals, and when we die that’s the end, so make the most of your time here because this is all there is.  There’s no spiritual realm, there’s only what we can see.
      • Now, we shouldn’t say that story isn’t true just because it’s we think it’s odd or because we don’t want it to be true.  But over the decades, deep thinkers have realized this story is odd because it doesn’t match up with human experience at all.  If that story is true, why does every human have an innate sense that there’s something more to life and that we must be here for a purpose, why do we have longings in our heart that seem unmet even by the greatest pleasures in this world, why are we so driven to worship a higher power, and if there’s no unseen realm, where did human consciousness come from, and why do we so often ponder our own existence and ask why am I here and where did I come from?  Why do stories of good triumphing over evil and of worlds beyond our own speak so universally to the human heart?
        • I agree with Brierley that we HAD to go through this dark period where we tried to remove God and rely only on science and reason to answer the deepest questions of life, because it exposed the fact that science and reason CAN’T answer the deepest questions of life!  They CAN’T tell us why we’re here and how we should live, and they can’t answer the deepest longings of our hearts.  Only God can!
          • And that’s what the new conversation about God in our culture is all about now.  It’s not as much focused on evidences for the resurrection or proofs the Bible is God’s word.  Those things do come up still, but mainly the conversation is about meaning, purpose, and identity.  The new conversation is about whether we can flourish and make sense of our world at all without God?  And we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if our society hadn’t TRIED to live without Him for so long, so the dark times led to the bright side of a new emergence of interest in God because atheism and secularism left people empty and longing to be filled with substantive, real answers to life’s problems.
            • John 4:13-14, 28-29 [Jesus spoke with a woman who’s empty worldview led her to get divorced 5 times and to now be sleeping with a guy she wasn’t married to.  How fitting that he found her drawing water from a well, because it was symbolic of the kind of life she was living, clinging to one man after another, trying so desperately to fill some void and quench the thirst of her soul.  And when she met Jesus, he looked at her, not with anger or judgment, but with compassion because he saw a woman who’s worldview made her so thirsty for real soul satisfaction, and her way of finding it wasn’t working.  So He offered to quench her thirst once and for all] - Once she found Jesus, the true source of satisfaction, she left her water pot behind, a symbol of leaving her old life behind, and now instead of drinking from bottles with holes in the bottom, Jesus gave her a spring of eternal water than never ran dry.  The bright side to our dark atheistic times is that atheism has left people so thirsty for something real, and many are finding that Jesus has the answers.

3.  It Wakes People Up to the Need for Community

• Judges 21:25 - Any time people in the Bible are serving God, whether in the Old or New Testaments, it brings them together in community.  God understands part of human flourishing is social cohesion, so He unites us together in purpose, in identity as a family, and in the activity of service.  But because the people in Judges had no king to lead them in God’s law, they became the gods of their own life and determined their purpose, identity, and activities for themselves.  As a result, they become FAR more divided and individualistic.
  • And this is what’s happened in the modern world.  We’ve been told by atheism that there is no inherent meaning in life or shared identity.  You can create your own meaning and identity, and while that sounds like freedom, it’s incredibly unsettling because it leaves you confused about who you should be and what you should be doing, and it leaves you lonely because everyone is doing their own thing.  GK Chesterton once said, “When people stop believing in God, they do not believe in nothing.  They believe in anything.”  This describes our culture so well! It’s hard to feel any sort of shared identity or cohesion with people who believe things that aren’t rooted in truth or reality at all.
    • So we try to root our identity in how we present ourselves on social media, or based on our sexual orientation, skin color, or gender, or in what political candidates we support, but ultimately these things just divide us from each other because these false sources of identity apart from God focus far more on our differences than our commonalities.
      • Plus, our culture is so politically charged because we’ve defined our identity by politics, so if you question or attack my political views, you’re attacking ME, and we’ve redefined love to mean validating everyone’s views as equally true, so now people are afraid to disagree with each other for fear of being politically incorrect or being cancelled or labeled hateful.  There’s absolutely no grace or forgiveness in the identity groups people form today; if you don’t tow the line, you’re ostracized and branded a traitor forever, and even if you apologize, it’s not enough because without God, all you have to cling to for meaning and identity is your own narrative, and if someone threatens it, they’re threatening your whole world and it cannot be tolerated.
        • Add to all this the fact that many people’s attempts to form communities happens online, which also leaves people feeling lonely because online connection simply isn’t the same as personal connection!
        • Brierley references a book written by Graham Tomlin called, “Why Being Yourself is a Bad Idea.”  And Tomlin argues that since we’ve lost our belief in God or any sense of cosmic order, there’s no longer any overarching sacred structure that holds the world together.  So we’re left on our own as individuals in a world with no predetermined order to tell us who we are or where we fit in the grand scheme of things.  And he argues that our isolated individualism is in large part what’s led to the mental health crisis in our country.
          • “An increasing number of studies, especially during the pandemic, tell us that happiness and wellbeing are found not in isolated individuality but in social connection.  It is through strong relationships with family, friends, and community that we truly flourish.  In other words, focusing on my own unique individuality is the wrong place to look.”
• Acts 2:43-47 - [With that bleak, dark picture in mind, look at the beautiful diamond necklace of God’s community in Acts] - Whether they realize it or not, this is what the world is desperately craving.  The darkness of isolation in a lonely, confusing, divided, unforgiving world, tills the soil of people’s hearts to be ready for Christ to unite them and place them in an eternal heaven-on-earth community where we’re NOT doing what’s right in our own eyes, but we’re all united under ONE benevolent King, and we don’t have to wonder who we are or where we fit in the grand scheme of things, and we don’t have to figure out our meaning, identity, or purpose on our own.  Those things have been revealed to us by our King; it’s our job simply to have the faith to walk in that purpose, embrace our true identity in Him, and live in a community of hope, joy, love, unity, honesty, and yes, grace and forgiveness!

4.  It Wakes the Church Up to their Watered Down Presentation of the Gospel

• Whenever we talk about dark times, it’s easy to point the finger out there to the world around us, but in the book of Judges the darkness wasn’t just outside, but from within God’s own people.  They were supposed to be the diamond necklace against the dark backdrop of the evil Canaanite world, but they became just as dark and so they weren’t a light to the world around them at all.
  • Revelation 2:13-16 [This was another extremely dark time in history when Rome was persecuting Christians, and listen to what Jesus said to the church in Pergamum] - Jesus is telling this church that they need to wake up to the fact that they’re compromising with their culture and teaching things they shouldn’t.  There’s no way they’re going to succeed in shining Christ’s light in a dark world if they aren’t actually teaching truth.
  • Brierley pointed out that part of the reason the new atheism movement was so successful is because before that time, many churches were trying to be more seeker sensitive, to be more contemporary to appeal to younger audiences and throw off some of the more traditional aspects of worship, and what happened is that many of them gave themselves over to shallow emotionalism.  They lost the robust intellectual teaching of God’s word and the conviction of the gospel and it became much more about good feelings and entertainment.  So when intellectual giants like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens came along challenging Christianity, many churches had no answer.  And what’s even more sad is that when atheists told a different story about humanity, many churches couldn’t express to their members and visitors why the story of Christ was far superior because their presentations of the gospel had been so watered down.  They basically turned Jesus into a politically correct, loving hippie who tolerated everyone and didn’t make any demands on your life.
    • One journalist named Ben Sixsmith, who’s not even a Christian, chastised churches for doing this!
      • “I am not religious, so it is not my place to dictate to Christians what they should and should not believe.  Still, if someone has a faith worth following, I feel that their beliefs should make me feel uncomfortable for not doing so.  If they share 90 percent of my lifestyle and values, then there is nothing especially inspiring about them.  Instead of making me want to become more like them, it looks very much as if they want to become more like me.”
        • Brierley adds to this sentiment and says, “Many churches have made it their mission to appear ‘normal’ and as unthreatening as possible in their efforts to bring people through the doors.  But those who walk through the doors are looking for something completely different to their ‘normal,’ everyday life.  They want to be transported into another world, a different story!…While there’s no advantage to creating unnecessary barriers, churches shouldn’t dumb down their worship or their doctrine in order to win new converts.  They should demand more, not less, of the people who come through their doors.”
• Now gratefully God used the dark times of the new atheism movement to wake churches up to their shallow emotionalism and it sparked a MASSIVE apologetics movement among Christians to write books, create online courses, lecture on college campuses, and start websites and Youtube channels devoted to presenting clear, intellectually solid defenses for the faith!  That was a wonderful bright side to the dark times, because it forced us to find answers to the attacks against God.
  • But as I wrote about in today’s bulletin article, it’s not enough simply to appeal to reason and logic.  We have to appeal to the heart and the imagination, and the gospel of Jesus Christ appeals to all of it, every part of us, in a way nothing else can!  If we want to shine the light of Christ in a dark world, we must not water down the gospel by making Jesus sound like just another politician promising to make our lives better, or by presenting a Jesus who never says anything offensive or challenging to us, or by removing any notions of Hell or our need to repent, or by presenting the gospel as just one truth among many.  No…
    • People are SO exhausted from drifting around in a sea of subjectivity where everyone lives their own truth.  They’re ready for a worldview that gives them objective truth, beauty, virtue, identity, purpose, and hope.  They’re ready for the gospel of Jesus Christ, and if that wakes us up and makes us more ready and motivated to give it to them, that’s a pretty bright side to dark times.
      • Rather than being discouraged by dark times, let’s see this moment in history as an opportunity to embrace and live out the gospel even more clearly in our lives to shine the light of Christ into a world that’s tired of groping around in the dark.

Invitation:

If you’re not a Christian, I want to tell you the good news that Jesus is King, which not only means all of your sins can be completely forgiven, it also means there’s hope of a world beyond our own where all suffering, injustice, and even death itself will be done away with and all wrongs in this world will be made right.  There’s hope to participate in the joy of an eternal kingdom we’ve dreamt about since we were kids and didn’t realize it, a kingdom where the good guys win and good triumphs over evil, where love triumphs over hate, where we live forever and never die, where we’re surrounded by beauty, where we’re completely safe in the arms of a loving Father who always takes care of us and never hurts us, and where we all live happily ever after in a loving family.  Jesus came to unlock the world we locked away deep inside us as adults because we were told it’s foolish to believe in such things; a world we once knew but chose to forget.  That world is real, and Jesus is calling us home.

Series: Authentic Relationships

Service: Praise and Preaching Service

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

Summary: Authentic Relationships – Love That Is Real

At the heart of the Christian life is authentic love—a love that is chosen, spoken, and shown. This sermon, which opens a new series on building strong, authentic relationships at the Palm Springs Drive Church of Christ, calls believers to examine their love for God and others through the lens of Scripture, honesty, and eternal purpose.

The Ultimate Measure of Success

The speaker begins with a powerful mental exercise: imagine the end of your life. As we sit in our final days, what will determine whether our life was a success? According to Scripture, the answer is not wealth, possessions, or status, but the quality of our relationships. Have we loved others well? Have we helped them draw closer to God and prepare for eternity?

The goal of this sermon—and the series it launches—is to foster unity, love, and encouragement within the church so that we can impact heaven's population. By building deeper connections with each other, we reflect the love of Jesus, who came not to enrich our material lives but to restore our relationship with God and one another.

Foundational Truth: Love Is the Bedrock

This lesson explores three dimensions of love that must be present for relationships to be genuine and life-giving:

1. Love is a choice
2. Love must be verbalized
3. Love must be demonstrated

1. Love Is a Choice

We often hear that love is a choice, not merely an emotion. But this sermon deepens that idea: when we accepted the love of God through Jesus Christ, we already made the choice to love others—including our enemies. Matthew 5:43-48 makes this clear: we must love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us, and do good to those who do us harm.

The love Christians are called to is not reactive—it’s proactive and intentional. We don’t get to decide whom we love based on how they treat us. Instead, we made the decision to love when we chose to follow Jesus. That includes spouses (Titus 2), children, and especially fellow Christians (John 13:34-35). It’s not always easy, but it’s a commandment, not an option.

The key? Our love must come from the right source: God Himself. 1 John 4:7-12 teaches that real love begins with knowing God. Without a genuine relationship with God, any attempt at loving others will be shallow and eventually falter. Authentic love stems from an authentic relationship with God.

2. Love Must Be Verbalized

It’s not enough to feel or even choose love—we must say it. Just as Jesus told His disciples, “I love you,” we too should verbalize our love. Paul repeatedly expressed his love for churches and individuals in his letters (1 Corinthians 16:23, 2 Corinthians 2:4), and Jesus even asked Peter to affirm his love three times in John 21, proving how important it is to say “I love you.”

The sermon challenges us: Do we regularly say “I love you” to our family, our friends, our church family? We can’t assume people know we love them. Words of affirmation are powerful. If we say it often and sincerely, our hearts will follow. If we avoid saying it, it may signal a deeper disconnect in our relationships.

3. Love Must Be Demonstrated

Words are powerful, but actions are the proof of our love. If we say we love someone but treat them poorly, our words become hollow. Authentic love must be backed up by consistent, sacrificial actions.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) illustrates this truth perfectly. A priest and a Levite passed by a suffering man, while a Samaritan—an outsider—stopped, helped, paid, and followed up. Jesus ends the story with the command: “Go and do likewise.”

True love is seen in the merciful, sacrificial, and costly actions we take to serve others. It’s seen in parents modeling love to their children, in married couples enduring and supporting one another through difficulties, in Christians mending broken relationships, and even in the humility of a Roman centurion who pleaded for help on behalf of a beloved servant (Luke 7).

The sermon reminds us that love sometimes means saying hard truths. It’s not just about making others feel good—it’s about doing what is right for them spiritually. Real love is truthful, even when it's uncomfortable.

The Example of Christ

The ultimate demonstration of love is found in Jesus’ suffering and death. Matthew 26–27 and Luke 23 recount how He was beaten, mocked, and crucified, yet He still said, “Father, forgive them.” Why? Because love compelled Him. John 15:13 reminds us: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

When we accepted the love of God through Jesus, we made a lifelong commitment to love others in return. As our relationship with God deepens, so will our capacity to love others more deeply and authentically.

Practical Applications

The sermon concludes with some practical suggestions:

• Know God better. If you want to love others better, you must grow in your relationship with God.
• Repair strained relationships. Choose to love, even when it’s hard. Tell people you love them. Serve them in meaningful ways.
• Say “I love you” more often. Get over the discomfort or awkwardness. Make it a normal part of your Christian relationships.
• Be a church that reflects Jesus. Our love for one another should be so visible, so authentic, that the world says, “They are the disciples of Christ.”

The Final Challenge

The most important question anyone can ask is: Where is your relationship with God right now? Have you been washed in the blood of Christ? Are you growing in your faith or have you stalled out?

The speaker invites those who are not yet Christians to be baptized, and offers prayers for those who want to renew their love for God and others. Because if we don’t love God, we can’t truly love people—and if we don’t love people, we’re not truly following Jesus.

Series: Life and Character of David

Service: Sun Bible Study

Type: Bible Class

Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

Series: N/A

Service: Lord’s Supper Service

Type: Lord's Supper Talk

Speaker: Brian Messerli

Series: Joshua and Judges

Service: Wed Bible Study

Type: Bible Class

Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

Series: N/A

Service: Lord’s Supper Service

Type: Lord's Supper Talk

Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

Dignity of Jesus Part 1 - 03-30…

As we prepare to remember Jesus, it is important to begin by fixing a clear picture in our minds. Imagine Jesus on the cross. He is alone. He has been stripped of His clothing. His body is covered in dried blood and beaten beyond recognition. His disciples have fled. The crowds mock Him. His enemies laugh and taunt Him with cruel words: “You saved others. Yourself you cannot save.” “If you are the chosen one of God, come down from the cross.”

According to the law, “cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree,” and to human eyes Jesus looks utterly forsaken. The soldiers gamble for His only remaining possession, His garment, at the foot of the cross. There is no crown on His head, no robe on His shoulders, no throne beneath Him. There is no palace, no army, no advocate to declare His innocence.

Every outward symbol of dignity has been stripped away.

And yet, this moment—this brutal, humiliating scene—is the most dignified moment in all of history.

Jesus does not beg. He does not curse. He does not lash out at those who mock Him. Instead, He prays, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Satan’s ultimate attempt to strip Jesus of His dignity instead reveals a dignity that cannot be taken. His silence is not weakness; it is strength. His suffering is not defeat; it is redemption. His nakedness is not merely shame; it is love laid bare for the world to see.

To understand how Jesus could remain dignified when every visible sign of dignity was removed, we must first understand what dignity truly is.

Dignity is often confused with appearances. We tend to associate it with clothing, status, wealth, power, or external success. But dignity is not something we wear or display. It is something we possess. It is intrinsic value rooted in identity. Dignity flows out of who we are, not what we have. When dignity is reduced to outward signs, it becomes fragile. When dignity is grounded in identity, it becomes unbreakable.

Scripture grounds human dignity in creation itself. In Genesis 1, God declares that humanity is created in His image. That is where human value begins. Psalm 8 affirms this truth, saying that God has crowned humanity with glory and honor. Our dignity comes from God’s declaration, not from human approval.

When we apply this truth to Jesus, we see something unique. Jesus possessed perfect human dignity because He was fully human, created in the image of God. But He also possessed divine dignity because He is God Himself. Colossians 1 describes Him as “the image of the invisible God,” the One through whom all things were created, the One who existed before all things and in whom all things hold together. The fullness of deity dwelt in Him.

John echoes this truth when he writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jesus’ dignity was inseparably tied to His identity. He knew who He was and why He had come.

This is why dignity matters so deeply. We always act out of our identity. What we believe about who we are shapes how we live. Satan understands this, which is why he always attacks identity first. If he can separate someone from their identity in God, dignity collapses, and behavior soon follows.

We see this strategy throughout Scripture. Satan attacked Eve by questioning God’s trustworthiness and worthiness. “God is holding something back from you,” he implied. “You would be better off identifying apart from Him.” In Egypt, Joseph’s captors attempted to erase every external marker of his Hebrew identity so that he would rule as an Egyptian, not as a servant of God. In Babylon, Daniel and his friends were stripped of their names, language, education, and culture in an effort to sever their connection to God.

The world has always tried to redefine identity by erasing connections to God.

The same battle was waged against Jesus. From the beginning of His ministry, Satan went straight for the heart. In Matthew 4, Satan repeatedly challenged Jesus with the words, “If you are the Son of God…” He was not merely tempting Jesus to perform miracles. He was attempting to sever the link between Jesus and His Father. If Jesus doubted His identity, Satan would win.

When direct temptation failed, Satan turned to humiliation, shame, and suffering. Religious leaders questioned the legitimacy of Jesus’ birth. His family was told He was out of His mind. Others accused Him of being demon-possessed. Each accusation was more than an insult; it was an assault on identity.

Even at His arrest, Jesus’ dignity was tested. In Mark 14, false witnesses failed to agree in their testimony. The high priest demanded an answer, but Jesus remained silent. That silence was not weakness. It was restraint. It was power under control. When asked directly, “Are You the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?” Jesus answered plainly: “I am.”

In that moment, Jesus did what Satan had been trying to prevent all along. He clung to His identity. He refused to deny His Father. He refused to trade truth for escape.

At the cross, every external sign of dignity was gone, but Jesus’ dignity remained untouched because His identity remained intact. He endured shame not because He lacked value, but because He knew His value came from God. And He endured it not only for Himself, but for us.

Through sin, humanity severed its own connection to God. We stopped identifying with Him and began identifying with rebellion. Sin separated us from our source of dignity. Jesus came to restore what was lost. By holding fast to His identity, even unto death, He made reconciliation possible.

At the table, we remember more than suffering. We remember resolve. We remember a Savior who refused to abandon His Father so that we could be brought back to God. We remember that dignity is not something the world gives or takes away. It is something God restores.

Biblical remembering is not passive. It is not simply recalling events. It is remembering what Jesus did, what it means, and how it shapes who we are. Because of Jesus, we are no longer enemies of God. We are no longer separated. We are saints, children, and heirs. Our dignity is restored because our identity is restored.

As we eat the bread and drink the cup, we remember Jesus—not only what He endured, but what He secured. And we commit ourselves to live as people who know who we are because of Him.

Series: N/A

Service: Praise and Preaching Service

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Brian Messerli

Galatians 6:9-10 - One of the things I love most about God’s word is that it displays an intricate understanding of human psychology.  God understands our thoughts and feelings perfectly, and it can be surprising how well He knows us.

It wouldn’t be surprising if Paul said, “Don’t lose heart in your struggle against sin or don’t lose heart if people aren’t obeying the gospel.”  But here he says, “Don’t lose heart in doing good.”  Some translations read, “Don’t grow weary in doing good.”  So on the one hand, God calls us to do good works, in fact He says to do good right there in v. 10.  But at the same time, He acknowledges doing good can be exhausting and even discouraging at times!

And if we were to survey the Bible, we could piece together some of the reasons why we might grow weary in doing good.  For instance, maybe you feel all alone, like you’re the only one doing good and everyone else around you is distracted with other things or has a more nefarious agenda.  Maybe you’re being persecuted and people are calling you a “Goody-two shoes,” for doing good.  It could be that you’re doing good, but you can’t see immediate results, or you can’t see any of the results you hoped for, causing you to question whether the good you’re doing is doing any good at all!  Maybe when you do good, it’s thankless and goes unappreciated, and people take your good deeds for granted.

There’s a story from ancient Greek mythology about a king of Corinth named Sisyphus who angered the gods through his lies and deception, and was sentenced to eternal punishment.  His punishment was to roll a huge boulder up a steep hill, and every time he would almost reach the top, the boulder would roll back down the hill and he’d have to start all over again.  He was doomed to repeat this for all eternity with no hope of success.

Now that’s pretty depressing, but if you’ve ever grown weary in doing good, that’s how it can feel.  You do all this good to push the boulder up the hill, but then you don’t get the results you want and it rolls back down again and it can feel like you’re on this continuous loop of futility.  And when we’re feeling that way, we’ve got to come back to the truths in God’s word because just as surely as God understands our problems, He also understands the solutions to our problems, and so this morning if we’ve grown weary in doing good, I want us to look to Nehemiah, a Godly leader from the Old Testament, to help us keep doing good no matter the obstacles and to assure us, we’re not like Sisyphus at all.

Nehemiah 4:6, 10 [The year is 445 BC, and many of the Jews have returned home to Jerusalem after being set free from Babylonian captivity by the Persians.  They’ve rebuilt the temple, but after 140 years since its destruction, the wall of Jerusalem is still in ruins, so Nehemiah sets out to lead the Jews as their governor in an effort to rebuild the wall.  Without a wall, Jerusalem is just a village, not a legitimate city.  And this is GOD’S city, so it’s an abomination for the city wall of the One true God to be left in a heap of rubble.] - Wait a second, what happened here?  First the people had a mind to work and they were doing great on the wall!  But then all the sudden, they’re saying, “There’s no way we can go on!  We have no strength left and there’s still so much rubble there’s no way we’ll ever finish this project!”  They grew weary in doing good and they’re ready to throw in the towel.

Why?  It’s because they let their enemies discourage them.  There were people living in the land who didn’t like that the Jews were back home, and certainly didn’t like that they were rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls.

Nehemiah 4:1-3 - Think about the way Sanballat and Tobiah got in their head.  First, he calls them weak and feeble.  In other words, “This project is too much for you to handle!”  Second, he insults their God.  “Can they offer sacrifices to God as if He’ll actually help them complete this task?”  Third, he asks, “Can they finish in a day?”  In other words, “Even if you COULD build the wall, it would take you absolutely forever!"  But fourth, “You CAN’T do it!  It’s impossible to reverse this situation and revive these stones!  In fact, what’s left of this wall is so fragile, if a fox were to jump on it, the whole thing would crumble!”

Now, we’ve already seen that in v. 6, despite these taunts, they still had a mind to work, but now watch what happens…

Nehemiah 4:7-8 - Now they aren’t just being mocked, they have enemies from all sides, North, South, East, and West, conspiring to go to war with them and physically stop them from rebuilding.  So once you add fear onto their discouragement, it’s the perfect storm and they say in v. 10, “We can’t do this Nehemiah.”

Nehemiah 4:11 - But here’s the amazing thing.  The people grew weary in doing good and lost heart, but Nehemiah never did, and for the rest of the lesson I want to point out 5 ways Nehemiah shows us how to not grow weary in doing good.

1. Stay Connected to God

• All throughout this book, Nehemiah is constantly in prayer.  It started in chapter 1 when he first heard about the walls being in ruin.
  • Nehemiah 1:11 - Right up front, Nehemiah knows it’s impossible for him to be successful in taking on this good project without God’s help.  When he says, “before this man,” he’s talking about the King of Persia, because Nehemiah is his cupbearer and can’t go without his permission!  Think about how absurd his request is!  He’s a cupbearer, and he’s about to ask the king to leave his service and go be governor over his people to help rebuild their city!  The king could kill him just for asking something like that!
    • Nehemiah 2:4 - Nehemiah prayed to God again, this time in the moment right before asking the King to let him go because it’s incredibly risky just to ask!  And  God answers Nehemiah’s prayer, and when the king lets him go, listen to what he tells the enemies after they tell him they’ve got a problem with him building this wall.
    • Nehemiah 2:20 - And then after the Jews grew weary in doing good and were ready to quit out of fear and discouragement, notice what Nehemiah says to them!
      • Nehemiah 4:14 - Nehemiah shows us the way to not grow weary in doing good is to stay connected to God in prayer, because when we do that, it reminds us how great and awesome God is and that HE will give us the strength to keep going when we’re not feeling very great and awesome at all and we just feel like giving up!
      • Illustration:  When the last hurricane came through, I was so grateful to Larry Van Cleef for lending me his generator, and for Terry Petty who set up my garage outlet to handle it.  But the only problem with the generator was that it ran on gasoline and so it was limited in how long it would run.  Now Larry’s was great because it went a long time, like over 12 hours, but eventually the generator would grow weary and run out of gas, and sometimes at the most annoying times like 4 in the morning.  Well, I recently learned that though it’s much more expensive, you can buy generators that hook directly up to your natural gas line if have you one, which means I would never have to go out there and put gas in it again, it never runs out of fuel!
        • Sometimes the reason we grow in doing good is because we’re relying on our own fuel.  As human beings, we’re gasoline powered and we get tired and run down, but when we stay connected to God like Nehemiah did, it’s like we’re hooking ourselves up to the natural gas line and instead of trying to run on our own limited supply of goodness, we’re constantly being fueled by God’s unlimited supply of goodness.
          • Any good work we do is ultimately the goodness of Christ flowing out from us, and prayer connects us to the source of all goodness so that the well of goodness within us never runs dry!
        • John 7:38 - By this, He was speaking of the Holy Spirit, which is like a never ending well of goodness, out of which we bear fruit for Him.
        • John 15:4-5 - If we want to not grow weary in doing good, we have to stay connected to the Vine, to the source of all power, strength, and goodness so that He can continue to do good works through us!

2.   Remember We’re in this Together!

• Nehemiah 4:12-13, 15-20 - Instead of letting discouragement and fear win, Nehemiah had everyone team up and work together so no one felt alone.  And if anyone got overwhelmed or attacked, everyone else would rally to them and help.  Everyone had a role to play, everyone did their part contributing to the work in their own way.
  • If there’s ever a time when we feel like we’re the only ones doing good works and making sacrifices, remember there’s a church full of people here at PSD who are all doing good right along with you!  You’re never the only one doing good works and making sacrifices.  You may not be working on the same project with your brethren, but you ARE all serving the same Lord and reflecting His goodness in the world in your own unique way.
    • Some are taking care of aging parents, others are reaching out to shut ins, preparing meals, writing cards, making hospital visits, mailing bulletins to people who can’t be here, painting new lines in the parking lot, helping people in the community clean their apartments, working at the Christian sharing center, raising Godly kids in an ungodly world, making sacrifices for their spouses to build stronger marriages, inviting neighbors to come to worship here, working hard in their careers to provide for their families and shine the light of Christ in the workplace, and there are so many others doing good works here that none of us will ever see or know about.  So if you ever get to a place where you feel like the only one doing good, it’s just NOT true.  You’ve got brothers and sisters in the Lord fighting the battle for good right alongside you.
      • And if there’s a particular good work you’re doing that’s overwhelming to you and making you weary, it may actually BE too much for one person.  So grab another brother or sister in Christ, or maybe a whole team of them, and see if they’ll come rally around you like Nehemiah encouraged the Jews to do!
        • Galatians 6:2 - Usually we think of burdens as sins weighing us down, or as really bad situations in our life.  But actually doing good can be a burden we need each other’s help with too.  I cannot express to you all how grateful I am that I could send an email out and get two teams of brethren to help with the project we worked on this past Friday and Saturday.  There’s no way in a million years I could have handled that myself, I would have grown weary and felt like Sisyphus within 2 minutes.  The same thing would be true if Nehemiah tried to build the wall by himself!  That’s because some good works are simply too much to bear alone, and God never intended us to.  He gave us the church to know we’re all in this together!

3.  Remember There is No Greater Work than Doing God’s Work

• Nehemiah 6:3 - [Later, Sanballat and his crew try to trick Nehemiah into meeting them so they can ambush and kill him.  But Nehemiah refuses, and notice his reason.] - Nehemiah saw this work on God’s city wall as a GREAT work, well worthy of all his attention and care, and he says, “Look I can’t be distracted and take a break because this is just too important.”
  • Sometimes we grow weary in doing good because we question whether our good deeds really matter.  Especially if they’re just small acts and they aren’t grand gestures worthy of local news coverage.  But remember Jesus said this…
    • Matthew 10:42 - Here Jesus is talking about people welcoming His disciples, because if you show kindness to a disciple, you’re showing kindness to Jesus and are more likely to obey the gospel.  And here, the good work Jesus is praising isn’t very big at all.  It’s just a cup of cold water.  But to Jesus, this is considered a great work because it pleases and honors God.
    • Acts 10:38 - Now, some of Jesus’ good works WERE grand gestures.  He healed a blind man, something that had never been done before.  He saved His disciples from a storm by controlling the weather, and of course He sacrificed His life to save the entire world!  Those are good works that absolutely deserved local news coverage.  That’s front page material.  But other good works Jesus did were much smaller, like speaking with a Samaritan woman and offering her living water.  Or stopping to play with children, or washing people’s feet.  But no matter where Jesus’ good works were on the spectrum from small to big, it was all EXTREMELY important work because it was His Father’s work!  It was His purpose in life to do good.  And Nehemiah had the same attitude that working on that wall was a GREAT work, NOT because of the publicity or grandeur of the project, but because it was God’s work and Nehemiah’s purpose in life.  And the same is true for us!
      • Ephesians 2:10 - When we’re feeling weary of doing good, we need to remind ourselves this is what we were created for and it’s what Jesus died on the cross so we could be RE-created for, so that our lives would be filled with GREAT works just like His, no matter how big or small.

4.  God Appreciates your Good Deeds, Even if No One Else Does

• Nehemiah did something interesting.  Even though he was governor and had the right to tax the people to pay for his food, he knew they were in rough shape financially, and so for 12 years he refused to take the governor’s food allowance.
  • Nehemiah 5:18 - Now, as far as we know, none of the people ever thanked Nehemiah for this.  They may not have even known it was the policy under the Persian empire.  So Nehemiah may have been making this sacrifice for them and the people had no idea.  Yet listen to what He says…
    • Nehemiah 5:19 - Here he is again, praying to God.  And he asks God to remember him for this.  Nehemiah did this for God, not to get praise for himself.
    • Nehemiah 5:15 - He wasn’t doing this so people would come up and pat him on the back and tell him he’s the best governor ever and how they could never thank him enough.  No, all he cared about was that God appreciated and remembered this good deed.
      • Matthew 6:2-4 - It can be hard when our good deeds go unnoticed and unappreciated.  It’s even worse when we feel like people take us for granted and take advantage of our kindness.  But Jesus and Nehemiah remind us that’s not why we’re doing good.  We’re not doing good to be noticed and appreciated by people.  We’re doing good to be noticed and appreciated by God, not in the sense that we’re trying to earn Heaven with our goodness, but just that we’re trying to please our Heavenly Father.  So the good news is, if we hand a cup of cold water to someone and they scowl and say, “What took you so long?” Or “This isn’t cold enough, where’s the ice?”  God isn’t scowling and criticizing us, He’s smiling because His child is reflecting His image in the world.

5.  We May Not See Results Now, but We’ll See them Later in this Life and/or the Next

• Nehemiah 6:15-16 - Their enemies were right, this wall could NOT be finished in a day.  It took 52 days, almost two months.  If they were looking for immediate results they would have continued to grow weary in doing good, but they kept going, trusting God that one day they’d finish and have something to show for the good they had done.  And gratefully, they were blessed by God to see the results of their good labor in this life.
  • But did you know when Nehemiah said to God, “Remember me for good,” he actually says that on 4 separate occasions in the book?  In fact, that’s the last line of the book!  By it, I don’t think Nehemiah meant, “Make sure everything goes well for me in this life God.”  I think he was asking God, “No matter what happens in this life, remember me in eternity.”  It’s a request to see the eternal results of his good works.
    • In fact, at the end of this book, the people had become very evil.  They weren’t paying tithes, the priesthood was corrupt, they weren’t keeping the Sabbath day, and they intermarried with pagans!  And while Nehemiah did more good works and helped them make good changes in their behavior, I’m not sure how confident he was in the long term results of his good work in this life.  Because the people could just go right back to their old ways once he was gone.  That’s what Israel had always done throughout their history, so Nehemiah would have to be pretty naive to think the good work he did would last.  In fact, praying, “Remember me Oh God” is something you pray when you aren’t sure anyone else in life is going to remember you.  He may have pushed the boulder up the hill in his generation, but he knows the chances are, the boulder’s probably coming right back down in the next.  So rather than worrying about the long-term results in this life, he’s concerned about God remembering him for these things in the next life.
    • Galatians 6:7-8 [This brings us back full circle to where we started] - I love how Paul uses gardening imagery, because gardening takes time, and when we sow seeds of goodness from the Spirit of God, it’s rare to reap that harvest right away.  But…
      • Galatians 6:9 - Paul says we WILL reap the harvest of our good deeds in due time, either in this life, or we’ll reap eternal life in the end and God will remember us just like He remembered Nehemiah!
        • We may be doing good works, but not seeing the results or even expecting the results to last.  We may be doing good to help our kids be more disciplined, but we don’t feel like we’re making much progress.  Or we may be trying to help our friend come to the Lord, but no matter how many times we’ve talked to them or how many good deeds we’ve done for them, they still aren’t budging.  We may have even helped someone become a Christian, then they went right back into the world and it seems like the good we did was like Sisyphus and was totally useless in the end.
          • God says in due time, we WILL reap if we do not grow weary.  It helps me here to think about Jesus, who died all alone.  His disciples with whom He spent the previous 3 years fled from Him.  John didn’t, but he still didn’t really understand what was happening.  Jesus was the son of God who went around doing good for 3 years, yet there weren’t thousands of disciples wanting to follow Him in the end while He hung on that cross.  He couldn’t see many visible results of the good He did in this life at all.  But in due time, He reaped the harvest of the good he sowed, and in the resurrection, God remembered Him and now thousands of followers came flooding to Jesus, and thousands became tens of thousands, and over the centuries tens of thousands became millions, and millions became hundreds of millions, to the point where even now in 2025, we’re here worshipping Him for the good that He did for us 2,000 years before.  He did NOT see immediate results in this life, but He DID see eternal results in the next.

There are two ways to look at the story of Sisyphus.  One way is to see it as a representation of the futility of life, and how it does feel sometimes like despite our best efforts, we’re not really making any difference.  And while it absolutely CAN feel that way, another way to look at it is an inspiring example of a man who never quits trying.  The boulder makes him weary, but he never loses heart.  He keeps going back down that hill to push it back up once again.

If we’ll be like Nehemiah and Paul and Jesus, we can have a Siphysus-like grit and determination to keep doing good, even when it makes us weary.  And the good news is, because Christ didn’t grow weary and lose heart in doing good, we’re not like trapped like Sisyphus at all.  We’re not trapped in an endless cycle of futility, because in Christ we actually CAN push that boulder to the top of the mountain without it rolling back down because GOD and our brethren are pushing it with us and because of Christ’s resurrection, there actually IS a top to the mountain.  We can get that boulder over the final ledge, and when we get there to the top at the end of our lives, we’ll find our Heavenly Father waiting for us there, who is SO pleased that we never lost heart and gave up on Him, because He never lost heart or gave up on us.

Invitation:  That’s the good news of the gospel!  That Jesus did not grow weary or lose heart in the good work of saving our souls.  As He carried the cross beam up the hill to the crucifixion site, He could have said, “The strength of the burden bearers has failed, and I cannot go on.”  Instead, He relied on Simon of Cyrene to help Him bear the burden, and He continued up the hill to the top and hung there for 6 hours so He could save our souls.

Series: Joshua and Judges

Service: Sun Bible Study

Type: Bible Class

Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

Series: N/A

Service: Lord’s Supper Service

Type: Lord's Supper Talk

Speaker: Brian Messerli

Job 1:9 - One of our greatest fears is that the people in our lives don’t love us for who we are, but only for what we can do for them.  I heard someone in an interview recently describing how hard it is for celebrities to have close relationships and to get married, because for many of them there’s always a question in the back of their minds:  does this person really love me for me?  Or is it because I’m rich and famous?  About 10 years ago, there was a song by R. City and Adam Levine called, “Locked Away,” and in the chorus he asked the woman he was with, “If I got locked away, and we lost it all today, would you still love me the same?”  God in His Word recognizes our tendency to build relationships for utilitarian reasons.  Proverbs 19:4 says, “Wealth adds many friends, but a poor man is separated from his friend.”  This is why the Pharisees in Luke 14 hosted dinners where they only invited their rich friends, because they didn’t love those people for who they are, but for their networking value.

Satan’s accusation here in Job 1:9 is that, “Job is just using you God!  He’s not serving You for nothing, he’s serving You for SOMETHING.  You’re like a wealthy friend to Job, and it’s simply a utilitarian arrangement where he serves you, and then you bless him with health, wealth, a wife, children, and a good life.  But if you stopped providing those things for him, Job would curse you and stop serving you!”  In other words, Satan doesn’t believe Job loves God for who He is, but only for what He can do for Job.

And Satan could not have been more wrong.  Job lost all of his wealth, all of his servants and livestock, and even all 10 of his children.  They died when a tornado hit their house while celebrating a birthday.  It’s one of the most horrendous tragedies in history.  There’s nothing more painful in life than losing a child.  We know firsthand from the loss of Fair Roberts how devastating it can be to lose even ONE child, but can you imagine losing all of your children?  And then Job lost his health and was stricken with boils which put him in a state of chronic physical pain as he desperately scraped his sores with pottery, tossing back and forth all night, unable to sleep from the physical and emotional pain.

Job 2:9-10 - While we can certainly sympathize with Job’s wife, because she lost her children too, it’s clear she’s not willing to serve God for nothing.  She was serving God because of all the blessings he gave her, but when Job asks, “Shall we accept good and not adversity?” he’s expressing his willingness to serve God for nothing.  Another way to phrase it is, “Shall we serve God only when He gives us something, but not when He leaves us with nothing?”

Job 1:21 - Job recognized everything he had were undeserved gifts from God.  God didn’t owe him those things, and if God decided to take them away, it wouldn’t stop Job from serving Him.  After all, he knows all the blessings in this life are temporary anyway, and we can’t take them with us.  Naked we came, and naked we’ll go, and Job is serving God even after God has stripped him naked!  Talk about serving God for nothing!  If you’re naked, you can’t possibly have any less.  And yet…

Job 1:22 - Job proved Satan wrong.  He DOES serve God for nothing.  He even comes to the point in Job 13:15 of saying, “Even if God KILLS me, I’ll still hope in Him!”  That’s even WORSE than being naked and having nothing, because at least if you’re naked you still have your life, but Job says even if God takes my LIFE from me, I’ll still serve Him!

Now, the name “Satan” means “adversary” or “accuser.”  And one of Satan’s main goals is to be an adversary to our relationship with God, and one of the ways he does that is by accusing us of sin and of sinful motives to God.  Here he tries to drive a wedge between God and Job by accusing Job of using God and taking advantage of Him.  This is one of the core lies Satan tells to God in Scripture, that human beings won’t serve Him for nothing.  They won’t really love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength, they’ll only be fair-weather servants when things are going their way.

But also, I believe this is one of the core lies Satan tells to humans about God in Scripture, that God doesn’t really love YOU for nothing.  That God is just using you for His benefit in some way, and the relationship is purely utilitarian.

Genesis 3:4-5 [It’s important to know that in ancient Mesopotamian creation myths, the gods did not create human beings because they loved them.  That’s a totally unique claim in Christianity.  The false gods of the ancients created them for utilitarian purposes.  The Babylonian gods, for instance, created humans to be their slaves and to relieve themselves from hard labor.  The gods were tired and needed humans to do the work they didn’t want to do.  The Egyptian gods created humans to feed them through their sacrificial offerings.] - Satan implies that God doesn’t really want you to know what he knows, He wants to maintain power and control over you.  Satan doesn’t explicitly say God is using them, but He’s accusing God of having questionable motives.  He’s not telling them to avoid the forbidden fruit because He loves them, but because He’s benefiting and getting something out of their ignorance.  And that’s one of Satan’s favorite accusations to throw at God; that “He’s up to something, that He can’t really be so loving and kind as to seek our good, He must have some ulterior motive.  There must be something in this for Him, there’s no way He’s loving us for our own sake and that He would want a relationship with us for nothing.”

Do you all see how this sets us up to appreciate the power and beauty of what Jesus came to show us?  The two main accusations by Satan are that, “Humans won’t serve God for nothing,” and that “God won’t serve humans for nothing.”  When Jesus came, He shut Satan’s lying accusing mouth for good by proving both charges wrong.  For the rest of our time this morning, let’s consider how:

Matthew 4:2-4 - The very first step in Jesus’ ministry was to purposely put Himself in a position of having nothing.  No food for 40 days, He’s out in the wilderness with no friends, no family, no job to make money, He’s in physical pain from the hunger, and Satan comes along and says, “Hey you’re God’s Son, you shouldn’t have to suffer like this.  Just make some bread and you can end your hunger right now!”  But Jesus assures Him, “I don’t need bread, I don’t need comfort, I need absolutely nothing except the words of My Father.  Jesus was a human serving God for nothing.  Then Satan tries to entice Jesus to follow HIM by giving Him everything!  He’s assuming Jesus’ devotion is purely utilitarian, so if Satan can give Him all kinds of benefits and power in this life, then Jesus will be devoted to him.

Matthew 4:8-10 - Jesus’ motivation for who to serve has nothing to do with the health or wealth they can give Him.  It has nothing to do with living His best life now.  For Jesus, the only question that matters is, “Who is WORTHY of worship?”  And for Jesus, the answer was God.  He was going to serve God because He loved Him for Him, and not for what He could GET from Him!

And this attitude was only magnified as His ministry progressed.  It’s not just that He wasn’t rich or powerful, it’s that He had nothing.  He said, “Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”  He lost His family, in the sense that His brothers didn’t believe him and thought He was crazy and His mother didn’t really understand what He had to do.  And when He was crucified, He died the death of a slave and a criminal with zero social status, zero wealth, zero power, and He even died naked as the soldiers gambled to divide up His clothes.  Naked He came into the world as a baby, and naked He died on a cross for our sins.  Yet through it all, Jesus remained faithful to His Father, and proved Satan wrong like Job did but to an even greater extent.  Because Job said, “Even if God kills me, I’ll serve Him,” but God spared Job from being killed by Satan, so Job’s statement was only theoretical.  But for Jesus, it was real because God did not stop Satan from killing Him, and yet even to the point of His final breath, Jesus served God for nothing. He proved that Satan was wrong; that humans can love God for who He is, and not just what He can do for them.  We can even serve Him from a cross, because God is worth serving for nothing.  Why?  Because the cross also shows us He served us for nothing.

1 John 4:7-10 - Jesus revealed to us the true depths of God’s love by proving that God loved us for nothing.  He didn’t send Jesus because of all the great things we would do for Him.  No, He knew we’d put His Son on a cross!  He didn’t die for us out of some utilitarian reason like having us do slave labor for Him or to keep Him fed through our sacrifices.  He didn’t do it as a power trip because He likes telling us what to do.  The cross proves that God’s love is completely selfless, and He loved us for us.  We never have to wonder, “Is He just using us?”  We can be absolutely confident His love for us is genuine because He gave it to us purely for our own sake and our good.  Now, of course, God benefits from our relationship, He gets joy from sharing His love, and we benefit from our relationship with God even more!  But the cross proves our relationship with God and His relationship with us is so special, and our love for each other is so deep, that it’s worth having even for nothing.  Even if we lose everything in this life, all we need is our loving relationship with God through the body and blood of our Lord Jesus.

Series: N/A

Service: Praise and Preaching Service

Type: Sermon

Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

Preached by: Dwayne Gandy | Date: March 23, 2025
Theme Verse: Colossians 3:17 – “And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.”

In this foundational sermon, Dwayne Gandy introduces a new series on the authority of God, beginning with a deep dive into the meaning and power of a name—especially the name of Jesus. Drawing from both Scripture and personal stories, Dwayne explains why it’s critical for believers to live, worship, and act under the authority of Christ.

The sermon explores four core truths about names:

1. A Name Means Something – In biblical times, names carried deep meaning and often reflected a person’s identity, role, or destiny. Names like Eve, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus were given for specific reasons. Understanding this helps us grasp the significance of doing everything “in the name of Jesus.”

2. A Name Represents a Person – Saying "in Jesus’ name" isn't a formula; it points directly to the person and authority of Jesus. The name of Jesus only carries power because of who He is. Stories from Acts highlight how healing and salvation came through faith in His name—not just the words themselves.

3. A Name Reflects a Person’s Qualities – Names like Holy, Lord, and Savior reflect the divine character of God. Jesus’ name carries the weight of His identity—He is the Holy One, the Anointed One (Christ), the Savior, and God with us (Emmanuel).

4. A Name Can Represent a Person’s Position – Titles like King of Kings and Lord of Lords signify Jesus' ultimate authority. In Philippians 2, we’re told that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess His name. Jesus is not just a teacher or prophet—He is the one to whom we submit our entire lives.

The sermon closes with a powerful call to action:
✅ Evaluate your life. Are you living under the authority of Jesus Christ?
✅ Return to the Word—not tradition or opinion—to guide your faith and decisions.
✅ Submit to Jesus as both Savior and King, the only name by which we are saved.

Complete Transcript (ChatGPT transcribed this sermon. Let me know if you find mistakes I missed at [email protected])

03-23-25 Whats in a name

We're going to start with some praise statements. If you agree with these, you're welcome to say amen or nod your head.

Praise God for being in charge. We need someone to be in charge. It's good that God is the one that's in charge.

And praise God for using his absolute authority in an absolutely perfect way. God is our authority. So what we're gonna do is we're just gonna start a series of lessons that I'm gonna be preaching to you over the next few months, coming back to a very important basic topic, and that is to make sure that we're always doing things according to what God wants us to do.

So it's gonna be lessons on God's authority. The theme verse is going to be there in Colossians. Colossians chapter three and verse 17.

I love the song that Phil led for us. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. Now that's true of us individually.

Everything we do in our lives should be under the authority of Jesus. We should be doing it for his honor, his glory, and God's honor and God's glory. That's also true with what we do collectively.

We call ourselves and we describe ourselves, hopefully accurately, as the Church of Christ. That's not a name. That's a description.

We belong to Christ. And so Christ is the authority for everything that we do. And so over the next several times that I have a chance to give a lesson, over the next few months at least, maybe there'll be some breaks in there when I do something different, I'm gonna be talking about how we establish authority in what we do and to make sure that everything we do in our own lives and what we do together is done under the authority of Jesus Christ.

Because we do not wanna act outside the authority of Jesus and call ourselves a church that belongs to him. So I think it's gonna be very important, very helpful. It's sort of maybe a more fundamental or foundational thought, but I think we need to come back to things like this on a regular basis to make sure that we're grounded in these kind of ideas and that we're all on the same page, that we all realize, hey, you know what? If we have some kind of a discussion, we're both gonna go back to God's word and try to find his answer and not my opinion or your opinion or what you prefer or what I prefer.

We're going back to what God says. So I think these will be helpful to us as we make sure that we have a solid foundation, that we are going to act under the authority of Jesus. Everything we do in word or deed is done in the name of Jesus, giving thanks to the Father through him.

All right, I do have one thing of housekeeping. I just totally did not do a great job on the word scramble in the bulletin. Have you noticed there's a word scramble instead of a word search? Some people like to do those puzzles, maybe between services or whatever.

They like to look back at those. Those word scrambles, they're actually the answer to the blanks as well, and I didn't describe it at all in there. People are like, these are hard.

These are difficult. It'll be a lot easier after the lesson because all you got to do is go to the lesson. You'll have them all answered for you, a piece of cake, but I don't know if I'll do any more word scrambles.

If you have a suggestion, I'm up for that. I know sometimes the kids like to do these to keep their mind focused on something in the lesson, and then sometimes I've even had some of the grownups tell me that when they go home, they color the pages. They have a few extra minutes, they color the pages.

So hopefully those will be helpful, and they're always trying to get us back focused on whatever the theme of that particular day is. So they're not just random, usually. They have something to do with the theme of this lesson.

The coloring page now is the verse that we just read today. So this lesson here is a lesson that we're gonna talk about the importance in a name because in order to understand what it means to do everything in the name of Jesus, we have to understand the value and importance that goes along with someone's name, and that's not really normal in our society. So the four points we're gonna consider together this morning, first of all, a name means something.

Figuring out what the name means could be a very important part of doing things under his name. Second, a name represents a person. So it's not just doing something under the authority of a particular name; it's the person behind that name who we're trying to follow, and his authority is who we're going to be under.

The third is a name represents a person's quality, and then the fourth is a name represents a person's position. Sometimes a name can tell you in and of itself just the name that person's in charge, that person has authority. It could be boss, it could be dad, it could be mom, it could be whatever it is, that just the title, just the name carries with it authority and of course that's true of God and that's true of Jesus as we go through scripture and examine these concepts.

Our first point here is a name means something. Now that's foreign to us. At least before Google it was foreign to us because we had no way of knowing what the names meant that we were naming our kids.

You probably didn't sit around the house naming your kid based upon the definition of the name. All right, here's this name, I love the definition of this name, I'm gonna call my kid this particular name. For instance, my name is Richard Dwayne Gandy.

Herb just found out that the other day in one of our meetings. Richard Dwayne Gandy, my dad's name was Richard, so I didn't go by Richard, I always went by Dwayne, which made first day of school always terrible. But here's what my name means.

I am supposed to be a rich ruler who makes wagons and wears gloves. So I don't think my parents sat around in the hospital room thinking, you know what, the world needs more wagon makers who wear gloves and that's what we want for our son. We are going to name him, we'd like for him to be rich too, Richard Dwayne Gandy.

It didn't work that way. One of my daughter's names, Ann Marie, she's the redhead that comes so much, she just graduated from college. Her name means sea of bitterness.

We didn't sit around the hospital thinking, you know what, we want a bitter girl. I mean, we want not just a bitter young lady, we want a young lady who is a sea of it. I mean, we just want total bitterness everywhere she goes.

Now she's not that. I think I told you at one point when she was younger, somebody described her as having a zest for life. I did a little more research this week about the last name Gandy just because I was doing this.

And there are different names for Gandy instead of one who wears gloves. There's another one, one who works for the mayor. You know, that's another possibility of where the name Gandy came from.

It could also be one who tricks or somebody who is involved in trickery or one who parts air or breaks wind, I guess. When I told Peyton that, he said, verified. For those of you who have been named before Google, your parents didn't set out to say, all right, what does this name mean? Before we name it that, we just, you know, what sounds good with Gandy? And you know, we think this name sounds good with Gandy.

That's how we did it. Galatians chapter three and verse 20. Galatians chapter three and verse 20.

Genesis chapter three and verse 20. This idea of names meaning something goes all the way back to the book of Genesis when God created Eve and brought Eve to Adam. It says in Genesis chapter three and verse 20, and Adam called his wife's name Eve.

Why? Why, because it sounded good? No, because she was the mother of all living. See, the name meant something. The name means mother.

She's the mother of all living. Let's call her that so when someone says her name, she knows who she is more than just a descriptive title, more than just a name that identifies someone. It identifies who she was, who is she? She's the mother of all living.

If you go down to Genesis chapter 17 and verse four, Genesis chapter 17 and verse four, sometimes God changed people's names. It says, as for me, behold, my covenant is with you and you shall be a father of many nations. This is when God is giving him circumcision as the token of the covenant.

The sign of the covenant, verse five. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make nations of you and kings shall come from you and I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you and their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you.

Also, I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession and I will be their God. Why is he changing his name? Because the name Abraham meant father of many nations. And so that's who you are, Abraham.

You are the father of many nations. So every time Abraham heard his name, it wasn't just something to recognize him by, it was a description of who he was, it meant something. And we know from reading scripture, Abraham was the father of many nations.

It wasn't just Israel, he was actually the father of a whole bunch of nations. That name came true in his particular life. Sarah's name was also changed to mean princess in Genesis chapter 25 and verse 25.

And the first came out red. He was like a hairy garment all over. So they called his name Esau.

Afterward, his brother came out and his hand took hold of Esau's heel. So his name was called Jacob. The name Esau means hairy.

So in other words, it meant something. The baby comes out, the baby has a lot of hair on it. And so they wanted it to mean something.

And so they said, let's call him hairy. You've known anybody called hairy? I don't, probably wasn't because he came out looking hairy. I don't know, but hey, that's hairy.

We're going to call that baby hairy. And then Jacob, the name Jacob means supplanter or deceitful. If you remember, he was, that's what he was grabbing the heel.

He was meant, it was named for that reason. It meant something. Esau's name was changed to Edom, which means red.

So Esau, his whole life, he was just called things that reminded him of what he looked like. Hey, there's the hairy guy. Hey, there's the red guy.

Maybe they put both names together. There's a hairy red guy. That was just a description of who he was.

I don't know that I would like that. I don't know if I would like every time you guys saw me, you came up with a new name or just gave me a name. This is what he looks like, so let's call him that.

But that was what he went through. All of Jacob's 12 sons were named and those names meant something. If you go back and read the account there of all the names of Jacob, you'll see, if you read the footnote, this is the name and this is what it means.

Their names tell a story. Their names tell a story of the conflict between the two wives. They're just one upping the other by the name.

All right, you named your kid this. Well, now I have a kid, I'm gonna name it this. When I have another kid, I'm gonna name it this.

And Levi means attached because Leah thought that since she has given her husband three sons, that he would be attached to her. So every time Levi heard his name, he recognized I was the third son, my mom was desperate to get the attention of my father, and so named me attached, hoping that that would make a difference in her relationship with my father. Names used to mean something on a more serious level than they do today.

So when we read a verse that says that we are to do everything in the name of Jesus, if we don't understand the importance of names in general, we're not gonna understand the importance of what that means. In Exodus chapter two and verse eight, another example of a baby being named, and that name was describing their birth. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, this is after they find Moses, go, so the maiden went and called the child's mother.

Then Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him, and the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. So she called his name Moses, saying, because I drew him out of water.

So the name Moses means drawn out. So every time Moses heard his name, he recognized there was a story at my birth. The story of my birth is that I was drawn out of water by Pharaoh's daughter, and I was raised by her.

Most of us remember that the name Peter means rock. Jesus himself changed Simon's name to Peter in order to describe who he wanted him to be. There are a lot of Simons.

I think there are seven or eight, maybe even more than that Simons in the Bible, but how many Peters are in the Bible is just one. So he gave him an identifier that was going to describe him and be different than everyone else, and that was an important part of who Peter came to be. But Jesus also was given names at his birth, and the names Jesus was given at his birth will help us understand why he is the authority behind everything that we do.

So let's read a few of these. Matthew chapter one and verse 18. Matthew chapter one and verse 18.

It says, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was mindful to put her away secretly.

But while he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And you shall bring forth a son and you shall call his name Jesus. Well, why? There were other Jesuses, other Joshua's.

But why are you calling his name Jesus? For he will save the people from their sins. So the name Jesus means savior. And I would desire for all of us to get back and recognize when we say the name Jesus, we're calling Jesus our savior.

It's not just a name with no meaning at all. His name had a lot of meaning and the meaning that God gave him, the name that God gave him was savior. Now, what's wrapped up in this idea of savior? Well, one, we realize we were lost.

We needed a savior. And what does the savior have over us? Authority, right? He saved us. We should be grateful that he saved us.

And because he saved us, we pledge ourselves to him as our savior. God used that over and over and over in the Old Testament when he says, I brought you out of Egypt. What's God saying? I'm your savior.

And because I'm your savior, you should respect my authority over you. So God had inherent authority because he created us. And just because he created us means he has the right to tell us what to do.

But then when you add another layer of that, not only did he create us, but yet he saved us from our own sins, a double layer of authority why we should submit to him. So when we say the name Jesus, let's remember we are saying every time we are saying savior. The name Christ means anointed one.

Well, what goes along with that? Kingship. And this is maybe a challenge for us in our country and the way that we've been brought up because we've not been brought up thinking that one particular political person has all authority over the kingdom, right? We just don't think that way. And so when we come to the Bible and we see Jesus is king, he's Christ, he's the anointed one, we sort of have to learn to shift our mindset from the way that we think about politics and three equal branches and they all keep eye on one another.

Just say, no, no, no. In this realm, in authority, in God's church, in this church is that God has all authority through Jesus Christ because he is the king. And when we say Jesus, we're saying our savior and we say Christ with it, our savior and our king.

Now, how are you not going to obey him? How are you not going to say, I wanna make sure that everything I'm doing has his approval. He's my savior and he is my king. Another name given to Jesus was Emmanuel and that means God with us.

So when somebody would call Jesus Emmanuel, hey, God's here, that's who Jesus was. Jesus was God in the flesh. It was a reminder of who he was.

So there's so much about names that we have to learn before we can understand why it's so important that everything we do in word or deed is done in the name of Jesus because Jesus' name has a lot of meanings. Names mean something, that's our first point. Our second point is names represent a person.

There could be other Jesuses. There were Joshuas, right? And if someone's name today was Jesus, what would that mean? It would mean nothing because it's not attached to the one who has all authority over us. A name represents a person.

Why is the name Jesus so powerful? It's because it represents Jesus Christ and it's not powerful unless it represents him. So if you say something is done in the name of Jesus and it's not, there's no power in just saying the name Jesus. It's only if it's linked to the one who has all authority over us.

Let's look at Acts chapter three and verse 13. In Acts chapter three, Peter and John are going into the temple and there's a guy there begging for money and they bring him there every day and as Peter and John walk in the temple, they see this guy and they make a special effort. Look at me.

So the guy looks up at them and he says, silver and gold I don't have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk. And if you look at chapter three and verse 13, this is his description of this because after this, everybody's like, in the name of Jesus, well, how's this man made to walk again? It says after he was made to walk, he was leaping around.

When someone leaps, does that draw attention? If you saw a grown man leaping, you know, you would say, oh, what's going on with that guy? And so that's the guy that was paralyzed. The begging, whatever. And he was paralyzed and so now he's leaping about and that drew attention.

So a crowd gathered and this is what they said in chapter three and verse 13 of the book of Acts. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers glorified his servant Jesus, whom you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate when he was determined to let him go. But listen to this.

I mean, this would be such a powerful statement to this group of people who are assembled here. He says, but you denied the Holy One. That's a pretty powerful description of Jesus, right? You denied the Holy One.

If somebody told me I denied the Holy One, I'm now saying this isn't just any Jesus, this is the Holy One and the just and asked for a murder to be granted to you and killed the Prince of Life whom God raised from the dead of which we are witnesses and his name through faith in his name has made this man strong whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which comes through him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all. The name of Jesus is what made this man well.

But it was because it was Jesus, the Christ, that made him well. It was the real Savior that made him well. There was power.

This man was hailed because of faith in Jesus, not just his name. So in other words, some people might like to just throw the name of Jesus around, thinking that just the name itself has authority, and we're gonna see that in another example in just a few minutes. Now, if you continue this story, they're brought in.

They're called in by the Pharisees and the Sadducees and they explain yourself. You're causing quite a stir out there. You have to tell us who gave you the authority to do this because you can't be doing this on your own.

So in chapter four in verse seven of Acts, it says this, and when they had set him in the midst, they asked, by what power or by what name have you done this? I wanna stop there just to link these two ideas together. There is power in the name of Jesus because of who Jesus is. And so power and the name go together, just like power and authority go together.

That's why we don't like authority very much because if we recognize someone having authority over us, we recognize they have power over us. And we're Americans, we don't like that idea, we don't like that concept, we wanna be powerful ourselves. But in God's kingdom, being a church of Christ, we're saying, you have all power, Christ.

We submit to your reign, your rule, in everything that we do. In verse eight, then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, rulers of the people and elders of Israel who thought they had power, if we this day are judged for a good deed done to a helpless man by what means he has been made well, let it be known to you all and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Savior King of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man stands here before you whole. This is the stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.

Nor is there salvation, nor is there Jesus, nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. Now, when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled and they realized that they had been with Savior. I mean, just think about them saying this.

They weren't getting the connection, right? They could say Jesus without getting the connection of who he was. And seeing the man who had been healed standing with them, they could say nothing against it. But when they had commanded them to go aside out of the council, they conferred among themselves.

So the disciples are out, they're coming together. We are in a pickle here, we are in a bind. They have healed this man, we can't deny that.

And they're preaching it was Jesus of Nazareth, which we just killed that guy trying to get rid of this whole thing. And so they're having this discussion among themselves with the disciples of the apostles laid out. In verse 16, what shall we do to these men? For indeed that a notable miracle has been done through them is evident to all who dwell in Jerusalem, and we can't deny it.

But so that it spreads no further among the people, let us severely threaten them that from now on they speak to no man in this name. All right, the power in the name, right? So we don't want you even bringing this guy's name up anymore because it causes a distraction. So they called them and commanded them not to speak at all or teach in the name of Jesus.

That didn't work. They left thinking, we're gonna keep preaching in the name of Jesus, because he's the savior. We're under his authority.

And he has commissioned us and given us authority to go into the rest of the world and do what? Teach about him and to baptize people so they can be saved as well. So when the Jewish leader asked by what name have you done this, Peter responded, by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, this man was made whole. The name of Jesus had the ability to heal people.

You recall the Lord told Ananias to tell Saul, you are a chosen vessel to bear his name to the Gentiles. So Saul, who later became Paul, known as Paul, says here's your mission. Your mission is to take the name of Jesus to the Gentiles.

There's this very interesting story in Acts chapter 19. There were people, there were exorcists, and they saw what was happening when Paul would use the name of Jesus over people. Power, healing.

As a matter of fact, God gave Paul so much power that they could take a handkerchief from Paul, they could take that to their parents or their loved one who was sick, they could wave the handkerchief over them and that person would be healed. And they wanted that power, they wanted that authority even though they didn't have it. And so what they started doing is they would go to sick people and they would say, in the name of the Jesus Paul preaches, evil spirits come out.

And if you recall what happened, the evil spirit did come out and it said, Jesus we know, Paul we know, but we don't know you. And those evil spirits came upon those guys because what happened? They thought they could have authority just by saying Jesus. And here's the point, we're gonna come back to this over and over and over again.

You can't just claim authority if it hasn't been given to you. Jesus I know, he had authority. Paul I know, he had authority.

Jesus gave it to him. I'm sending you to bear my name to the Gentiles. These other guys didn't have authority and so they paid the price for this.

That is true today. Do you know how much power I have? Phil knows. Phil's shaking his head, you ain't got none.

You don't have any power. That's exactly right. And so if I claim to have power and I'm claiming to tell you something that Jesus didn't tell you, well don't listen to me because we have to listen to Jesus.

He's the one that as the power. So you can't just say I have power or authority. It doesn't work that way.

It has to be given to you by someone who has the power. And the only one that had all the power was God. He gave it to Jesus.

All authority be given to me in heaven and on earth. And Jesus commissioned his apostles and they wrote this. And another song that Phil led for us is there's power in this word.

When we, why do you think one of our keys is we love God, we worship God, we study his word. There's power in his word because it comes from God. And we wanna make sure that everything we do is backed by the authority and the power of Jesus.

So third point. First point was names mean something. Our second point was names represent a person.

That's where the true power comes in. But oftentimes, names represent a person's quality, who they are. We say something like live up to your name.

We're saying live up to the quality behind the name. You know, whether it's our last name, whatever, live up to your name, that means something. Now, I can't tell Anne Marie to do that, okay? So don't name your kid the Sea of Bitterness and tell him to live up to the name.

It's just not a good idea. Luke chapter one and verse 49 says, for he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name. See, holy describes the quality of God, who God is.

It's God is holy. He is separate from everyone else. And so when you call God holy, that means something.

He is the holy one. When Jesus is described as holy. As a matter of fact, if you recall, when God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh, what does Moses want to know? I need to know your name because they're not gonna listen to me unless I know your name and I can tell them who it is that sent me.

And that is when he says, I am sent you. There's power in that. When Jesus claimed that I am, when he was talking to the Pharisees and the Sadducees, they picked up rocks ready to throw it to him because he was claiming deity here.

Exodus chapter six and verse one, it says, and the Lord said to Moses, now you should see what I will do to Pharaoh, for with a strong hand he will let them go and with a strong hand he will drive them out of this land. And God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, Lord, I was not known to them.

I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage in which they were strangers. So God says, now I'm known as I am, but before I was known as Almighty. It brought out a characteristic of God.

Who God is, who is God? Is he just some Lord or has some authority? He is the Almighty. And the fourth point that I want to get in this introductory sermon is a name represents oftentimes a person's position. In Hebrews chapter one, one through four, it says, God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son.

There's power there, right? There is a difference between angels and the Son. That's the whole point he's making here. There's a difference in how he's described.

Who he has appointed heir of all things through whom also he has made the world who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power when he had by himself purged our sins and sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Look at all the power there. Purged our sins and where did he sit down? At the right hand of the majesty on high.

Having become so much better than the angels as he has inherited a more excellent name. The name itself was more excellent because of who he was, and what he did. He purged us from our sins and is set down by the right hand of God.

Therefore, when we're talking about Jesus, he has the ability to tell us what we need to do and we have, we should not only have, we have more than an obligation to do it. We should have a pleasure, it should be a pleasure for us to do what God tells us to do through his son Jesus. We desire to do it because we know who he is.

If you read Revelation 19, we'll just drop down to verse 16, Revelation 19, 16. It says, and he has on his robe and on his thigh a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. What does that name mean? It's a position, isn't it? Who are you? I'm a king.

No, I am the king of all kings. I am the Lord of all lords. It shows a rank in all of this.

So when we look at the name Jesus and we call him savior, we call him king, we call him Lord, why do you call me Lord, Lord and don't do what I say? When we use those terms, in those terms is an admission that we submit to you. You are the authority. You are the head of this church.

You are the savior of this body. And therefore you are the one that we are gonna follow. And that's why it's so important that we come here on a regular basis and we study this book to know what we need to do.

I'm just gonna read you the answers for these next. I implore you to read the verses in Ephesians and Philippians. But the name of Jesus is above every other name.

It's ranked, right? When someone says Jesus, there's no greater name than that. At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Not just Lord, who is he? We already looked at, Lord of lords.

He has authority over our life. In Philippians chapter two, verse seven, at the end of time, every knee will bow to the name of Jesus. He is above everyone.

So in a couple weeks, we're gonna pick back up on the subject of names and find out what it means to do something in someone else's name. What does that mean? And how serious should we take it when we say we are doing this in the name of Jesus? That should be pretty serious. You don't take that lightly.

So what we looked at today, just in this foundation, we looked at how important a name is. A name means something. A name represents the person behind the name.

A name represents qualities, holiness, rulership. And then a name also represents a position or a rank. King of king, Lord of lords, every knee bowing to him.

Those of us who are part of this church recognize Jesus as our Lord. And we recognize this book is where we go to find out if we should be doing something or not. There's not, hey, what's your opinion? What's Dwayne's opinion? What's Brian's opinion? What's the opinion of the elders? We go back to this book to find out what Jesus wants us to do.

And there's no other creed, there's no tradition even. Tradition sometimes, we can start bowing down to tradition, holding tradition above Jesus, and we don't want to do that. We want to be part of it.

And when Jesus commissioned his disciples, he tells them, go into all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing people, and teaching them everything that I have commanded. So if you were to come to me and say, Dwayne, what do I need to do to be right with God? I would tell you to do what Jesus commissioned his apostles to do. And what, when Peter, on the day of Pentecost, when they said, men and brethren, what shall we do? Peter knew, why did he know? Because that's exactly what Jesus told him.

Baptize them for the forgiveness of their sins. And when you do that, they're submitting to the name of Jesus. Baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That's why we say these things, because there's a power in that. So if you need to become part of God's family, and if you're willing to submit to his rule, and have all of your sins washed away by being immersed in water, you can do that right now. But everyone in this building today, and everybody who's watching on livestream, this is the commitment I want you to make.

I want you to think about this for a second. You don't have to make this commitment out loud right now, but I want you to make this commitment. I will live my life under the authority of Jesus Christ.

And that's how I'm gonna live this week. And if we can help you, we ask you to come as we stand and sing.