Latest / Better Preaching Podcast / BP2 Season 2 Episode 8 – Great Sermons of the Restoration Movement | Jeff Walling
Transcript
- Frank Weller: Amen, amen. And the whole church said, amen. Which church was that that said amen? Was that the acapella church that said amen? Was that the instrumental church that said amen? Bless you, was that the imperfect church that said amen? Amen, amen. It was Christ's church that said amen. Only problem is, We're not quite sure what we're amending here tonight. You see, I was so excited and honored and I stand before you so humbled and thrilled to be able to be here as part of the North American Christian Convention this year. And when Dave Faust asked and said, would you speak on together in grace? Wow, what better assignment could any preacher ever want? For there is no message like the message of the grace of God who loved us so much, he'd rather die. than have heaven without you. Ain't that good news? The only problem is after I was told about that topic, they then told me about my text. I don't know if you've looked at my text. It is not the beautiful unity passage of the beginning that Dave Foust did such a marvelous job on, or even that great stuff that brother Jared Taylor and Steve, or the wonderful passages that Prentice touched on today, the beauty of what Dave Stone brought us, all the different brothers that have spoken together and stood up here. No, I don't get to start where Jeff Fowle starts. No, no, no. This is the passage they said, preach on grace about. Open your Bibles to Ephesians chapter four and begin in verse 25 with me, if you will. Therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we're all members of one body. In your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold. He who has been stealing must steal no longer but must work doing something useful with his own hands that he may have something to share with those who are in need. Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs that it may benefit those who listen. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, brawling, slander, along with every other form Now I'm hunting grace so far. Have you stumbled across it yet? I have to ask you, how did I end up with this section? Why did I get the be no passage of the chapter? You all been to be no meetings, right? Surely your preachers have with your elders. That's the meeting where they call you in and say, brother, there'll be no more of this and there gonna be no more of that and there gonna be no more of this. This is a Be No Passage! Paul is coming down hard with both fists saying, look at this. Look at the way you've got to live. And we all understand. He takes the first half of the book to talk about how you believe and the second half to talk about how to behave. The first half to talk about your doctrine. The second half to talk about what you need to do. The first half to say, here's the orthodoxy. The second half, here's the orthopraxy. But when you read this stuff, if you're like me, you end up saying, wow, Lord, this is tough stuff. I mean, just to be able to do those two paragraphs, I pray that my children will be able to live those two paragraphs. Pieces of those two paragraphs. I'll just take brawling, Lord, that one thing. I have three sons, you understand. So this is an oft-quoted passage at our house. Stop that, not because I said so. God decreed it. Get rid of the brawling. But like a brother who used to put in the margin of his Bible, YBH, YBH in passages like that, I write YBH in the margin of my Bible. It stands for yes, but how? You got YBH passages? Someone strikes you on the one cheek, turn the other. Yeah, but how? Forgive those as Christ forgives, yeah, but how? Love your wife, even as Christ loved the, yes. But Lord, how do I do that day after day, faithfully honoring you? and then it hit me. They were right. It's sitting right there in the passage. Do ever miss the obvious? Do you ever have something so obvious? My favorite story about the obvious, one of the praise teams said, you got to tell. My favorite story is the one from Boston where the guy walks into a bar on St. Patrick's Day and says, I'll raise a Guinness in honor of Ireland with anybody here. And a fellow swings around on a stool and says, you're Irish, aren't you? He says, I am. He said, I'm Irish too. No. And they hug each other's neck and sit down. He said, where are you from? He said, I was born in Dublin. No. was born in Dublin. He said, not really Dublin, just a little north of Dublin, in a little village called Calairn. He says, I was born in a little village called Calairn. Oh, they're hugging each other and laughing. He said, no, wait a minute. What school did you go to? He said, I went to St. Mary's High School. He said, I went to St. Mary. No, what year did you graduate? I graduated in 1959. No, I graduated in 1959 from St. Mary. They're hugging each other. And the bartender at this point just walks away. Somebody said, Mick, what's wrong with you? I'm sick and tired of it. The O'Malley twins are drunk again! The reason that'll be told in 10,000 Christian churches tomorrow and a few hundred churches of Christ too. The reason that I love that story is there are O'Malley moments in my life when I'm looking at God's word and all of a sudden something springs to life that is so obvious, so right there. And it was indeed right there in the text waiting for me. For you see, I left off reading just a little bit too soon. Go back there and in a second I'm gonna get you to underline something. In the meantime, I wanna ask you this question. How is it that in your life you have sought to answer the YBH question? What will move us to do the things that Paul asks us to do in Ephesians the fourth chapter? I'm afraid that in my life, duty, guilt, and fear were really good tools for that. Do what is right. Get rid of brawling and anger. You must speak truthfully. All of those things that Paul kind of hammers down on my head, I said, okay, I'm gonna do right. Now you need to understand my story just a little bit. I am a recovering preacher's son. I had a drug problem all my early life. My parents drugged me to church every single Sunday. Some of you, some of my brothers out there, and you know, you know what I'm talking about. I was raised in a fairly conservative home. In fact, mom and dad, you got that picture back there. If you got that picture, put up that picture, mom and dad. Billy, if you got it. That's mom and dad. TJ is in heaven now. He preached for some 45 years before the Lord called him home. My mom is... 89 years old. I know how I wish she could have been here tonight. She told me, a good job. Don't embarrass us. Those are the kind of words of encouragement Mom readily gives me. And I grew up in an acapella house. You need to understand that. Because you see, we were the right church who had it right and did it right. And we're praying that the rest would fall in line before judgment day. Even those who didn't have far to fall. Just across the keyboard. was a youth minister, I was a young preacher, preached my first sermon when I was about 12 years old, working in youth ministry. My first gospel meeting was when I was 17 years old. And it was a few years after that that I got a call from a group in Indiana or Illinois, I think it was the ITCT, but it was a group in either Indiana or Illinois from a Church of Christ who said, would you come speak to our youth conference? And I said, sure, yeah, no problem. They booked the day through the secretary. Then they called me back about six months before and said, I want to make sure we're the such and such Church of Christ and we want to make sure, yes, I'm happy to come. fine. Well, another three months go by and I get another phone call. This one, Brother Wally, we want to make sure you understand we use praise songs in our services. Well, I'm all for praise, know, praise God. That's fine. Praise songs will be great. Another month goes by and they call back and said, you need to know that Don So-and-so is going to be leading the praise songs. said, that's fine. mean, whoever your song leader is, that's great. It'll be super. Another month, and they finally fest up. Brother Jeff, I don't know that you understand that we're an instrumental Church of Christ. I'm sorry. I didn't understand what you just said. It sounded like you said you were an instrumental Church of Christ, but there are no such things, so... What were you meaning? I'm a West Coast kid, had no clue you guys out here were crossing the trademark lines. And so I'm... I'm holding this phone and this guy is trying to explain to me about churches of Christ and the Christian churches. Sometimes they use the same name and we use instruments. And I said, oh no, no, no, you can't. That's just not possible. And he tells me about this guy and he said, listen, why don't you talk to our worship leader? Because I was saying, you know, I'm acapella and we need acapella singing. He said, well, you'll need to talk to Don. So he gives me Don's number. Now I must have got a hold of Don before I did because I dial him up and he was already ready. I said, hello brother, my name is Jeff Walling. I'm a member of the Lord's Church from Southern California and I'm supposed to come out and speak at a conference where understand you're leading the worship and well, I understand that you're instrumental. He said, yes, I will, I'll be playing a guitar. I said, okay, I need to ask you something. Would you be willing to worship a cappella, you know, when I'm going to speak? Oh, had his line was ready. He said, in other words, you've called me to ask me to change the way 3000 teenagers worship because of your feelings. I remember taking a deep breath and saying, brother, I am sorry. I did not realize all 3,000 of them would have guitars. I thought it was just you, that you were the one. Conversation went downhill from there. just kind of got worse. I remember we talked for another five or ten minutes and we tried to end with a prayer but the line went dead somewhere in it. But he agreed to lead one a cappella chorus before I was to speak. So I flew out there ready and already determined how I would handle this. What I did not know was that instead of, you know, being able to be off in a green room someplace or maybe sitting out in the audience, they just as the service was about to get said, Mr. Walling, if you come right up here, if you'll sit right up here on stage where for 35 minutes, marvelous praise with a guitar. and I was up there in front of them all, and I did the only thing that I knew to do. I did not sing. Now the problem with this was God had put me in a place where I could watch 3,000 teenagers worship God with all their heart. Lifting hands, belting it out, praising his name with me sitting there watching them. I will never forget about 15 minutes into it I was thinking, what is wrong? No, not with them. What was wrong with me? And I was ashamed. Not ashamed of my heritage, not ashamed of my background, but ashamed of my stinky attitude that I had brought with me to that stage. And when he sang that acapella chorus, We all stood and I sang. I had a hard time not crying because I didn't fully know what God was doing to me those 20, nearly five, 25 years ago, but I knew something was going on here. And I cannot tell you how thrilled I have been that God has massaged and worked on my heart. not to make me think that my father was foolish or my ancestors were goofballs, but rather to get me to the place of understanding I am not going to heaven because I've got it figured out. I'm going to heaven because Jesus died for me. Yes. If that's not an O'Malley moment, I don't know what one is. But the problem is, brothers, the more I got to know you, the more I realized we both had some of the same fungus growing on us. And while you may not have had it over the instrument, you had it over other things. And I found that we shared together this got it right disease that we all thought, okay, fine, it's us and you, and we're the ones who've got it right. And legalism seemed to run deep in our veins. And when we would preach Ephesians 4 and say, get rid of all anger and malice and strife, the way we do that is we'd get up and berate and beat and guilt and drive and challenge. And man, after all of that haranguing, boy, didn't that work to get rid of anger and bitterness and brawling in our movement, amen? Amen. Somebody help me here. Brother Jerry Taylor's out there and he ain't amenin' cause he knows you cannot beat badness out of people. If we had been able to beat badness out of people, we gotta rid all of badness in our movement a long time ago. You can't drive badness out of them. That's like trying to whip badness out of a kid. That's like trying to beat badness out of a person. Because our fallen nature cannot be changed by more fallen nature piling on top of it. So what is it? What is it that will move me to grab a hold of the truth, even as I have been blessed to be grabbed a hold of by beautiful relationships in the Restoration Fellowship? My brothers at C.I.Y. have been such a blessing to me and to thousands upon thousands upon thousands of teenagers across the country. Some of the state team conferences and preachers events that I've been blessed to be part of, I go home enriched and yet I have to remind myself I'm not enriched because I'm with the folks that have got it right. I'm enriched because I'm with a bunch of folks who are trying to shout out we don't have it right and that's one thing we have got right. is that we don't have it all right. The moment we think we have it all right, we've lost it again. And that's what Paul gives us here. Take a look at the grace tucked into the passage. It's right where I left off. Verse 32, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other as in what? Christ God forgave you and it goes on into chapter 5 be imitators of God therefore dearly loved children and live a life of love say the words with me just as in loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God what Paul tucks in there is that the answer to changed hearts is not someone beating them about the head and the shoulders and saying you've got to change but about when the praise finally gets you, you'll do things you couldn't otherwise. Our slogan is like Nike. We unfortunately go around saying, righteousness, just do it, just do it. The slogan we need is, Jesus just did it. It's not just do it, it's praise God that Jesus has already done it. Because once the message that Jesus has done it gets you, stuff is gonna happen. Now. I believe there is in bread within us, at least there was within me, a natural queasiness and suspicion of this whole grace gizmo. Because if you preach too much grace, people gonna get lazy, you gonna have sloppy agape, you gonna have people... You're gonna have people just doing whatever they want to. Liberalism will creep in. Instrumentalism will creep in. All of those creepy things gonna come. That's what I remember hearing that grace scared me. And so I thought, boy, I tell you, in my preaching, I need to stay away from that. Two big things stay away from grace and the Holy Spirit. Man, did I have it right. Forgive me, Lord, forgive me. Because Paul felt just the opposite. Paul felt that if we ever get to the place where we can proclaim grace powerfully, people are gonna work harder than they ever did before. You know what he said. Turn over there. The Bible says in Corinthians chapter 15, for I am the least of all the apostles and don't even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. Look how he continues. He says, by the, say it with me, grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them, yet not I, but the of God that was with me. Paul says, let me tell you, my whole ministry is motivated and moved by grace. And I love that line. God's grace to me was not without effect. Now, this is just a horror movie moment. that you could get grace and have it have no effect? Paul, don't let me think that. And I don't believe Paul means it that way. He means if you're sitting out there thinking, well, if we preach grace, people gonna get lazy on us. Paul said, let me tell you something. God's grace doesn't come without the grace effect. Because when you internalize God's grace, the grace effect begins to take place in your life. You say, what is the grace effect? Paul talked about it. He says, I am what I am because of the effect of grace on me. Are you struggling with trying to keep your kids out of bed with each other? Are you struggling with husbands who are walking out on wives or wives who are leaving husbands? Paul says, yeah, teach about holy living. But before you do that, make sure they get grace. Because if they don't get grace, they won't have the ammo to fight Satan. they won't have the ability to love one another. If they don't get grace, they won't have the courage and the moral strength to be who God calls them to be. You've got to get the grace effect. And what is it? Well, let me give it to you this way. First off, God's grace, when it hits you, when it gets you, when it grabs you, will humble you. Can I get an yeah on that? You see, in our movement, humility, I'm afraid, has been at times in short supply. And that's partly because we work so hard at being so good, at getting it right, at doing it right. And I was convinced for so long that we knew better than everybody else about that. But then, you get to know us. And when you do, then you know the truth. And you have one of two options. You either jump up and yell, the emperor has no clothes. Or you get church clothes. You know church clothes. That's what we all put on on Sunday. Now back when I was a kid we had three kinds of clothes. Play clothes. What were the other kind? School clothes and church clothes. And you wore your church clothes to church. Of course we all know that's out the window now, you know. Here I am. preaching in my play clothes up here. But be sure whatever they may put on on Sunday morning, a bunch of us are still in there putting on our church clothes. You know what it's like. Because I don't want to show anybody all my junk. I want to show you my baggage. So when the grace is trying to get through, I think, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, got it together. Don't worry about it. And so what's it like at your house? Let me just do this. Good Christian folk here, what's it like at your house 38 minutes before church starts? Get out of that bathroom and hurry up and get in that car. We are leaving, I'm telling you. Five more minutes and I'm gone. Get in, no, you are not wearing, you ain't wearing flip flops to church. You get yourself back in there and change those clothes. Will you just get in the car? I'm teaching Bible class and I'm leaving now. And by the time you get everybody out in the car, mama, he's touching me. Ma, I will pull this car over, I promise I will. Daddy, that light was yellow, hush up. Mama, will you please, Daddy, by the time you get to church, everybody's hair is standing straight up on end like this. And then you get out of the car. Brother Bob, how you doing? Come on, children, let's go praise the Lord together. Now you tell me we don't still have church clothes. You tell me we're struggling against the reality of walking in and saying, I don't know about you, but our family's really messed up. And we're here because we desperately need the grace of God. And sometimes it breaks our heart what we can do to others when we pretend we don't need God's grace when humility isn't there. preaching years ago in a church in Dallas, doing a gospel meeting there when, and it was a beautiful church, one of those gorgeous churchy looking churches, you know what I mean? I you come in, you know you're in church. pews, chandeliers, and I was wearing a three-piece suit, and I looked back and then he came and sat on the second to the back row. Jeans with holes in them and a t-shirt, and he looked so out of place and he looked like he felt out of place, and I thought, God, is this a person you brought here for me to speak to today? So man, I preached God's love at him as hard as I could. Offered the invitation. Some folks responded, but he was heading for the back door. I slipped out and met him as he was heading down the steps and never forget, Hey man, my name's Jeff, what's yours? It's Dennis. I said, Dennis, thanks for coming. Hey listen, this is going on tonight and tomorrow night. Please come back. And he said, I don't think so. I said, man, why not? And at this point, all the people were pouring out of the church into the lobby. I mean, they all look so good, know, righteous, look good. He said, look at them. He said, my life is a mess. I don't think I could cut the mustard here. I'm sorry. What was I to say to him? No, Dennis. They're all really messed up, too. Just get to know them. They just know how to cover it. Brothers and sisters, if there are no messy people in your church, where are they? Are you hearing me on this now? If we get rid of all the messes, we're either in heaven or denial, one of the two. And the challenge is so many of us are used to covering our messes up so well that we can actually fake some people out. You need to walk through the front door of your church to be humbled by grace. And the place you start with Paul is saying, I don't deserve to be here. I don't deserve to be called a Christian. I am a mess. Somebody says, I feel so uncomfortable saying, I am a mess. Let me tell you what. Jesus was drawn to messes. Jesus was drawn to messy people. think that's why we call him the messiah is because he was drawn to messy people. He came to save the If you ain't got no mess, what do you need with a messiah is what I wanna know. And if you come through the door saying, I ain't got no mess, we got it all together, we're just here to watch the messy folks, give me a break. Because brothers and sisters, there's not a one of us in here that didn't a mess. Can I get an oh yeah out of you? Would you take a second and turn to person next to you and tell them you're a mess and I know it? Go ahead, just lean over and tell them. Some of you sitting next to somebody across the keyboard, you're loving saying that too much. I mean, that's why here at this conference, up on the board, that's why we don't put names by the children when it says child ID. We put a little... kids aren't here. I have no children here. I'll get you later, Billy. That's why we have this anonymous way of signaling. Because none of us want anybody to know it wasn't my child. Must have been one of Dave Stone's kids, I'm sure. I'm confident of that. How would our communities change if our church just hung out a sign and said we're a mess, but we have a messiah who loves us? Come on in, check it out. Someone said, maybe we just need to have Mess Sundays. Someone said, you've been to our church, haven't you? Brothers and sisters, until we are willing to stand up and say, we're a holy mess that God is working on, but we are saved by grace and not by our performance, we'll never be able to love each other like we need to love each other. But you see, here's the strange thing. Grace not only will drive me to humility when I understand that I'm not going to get up there and have God unroll the scroll and say, whoa, Jeff Walling, wow, look at you. You spoke at the NACC. Enter ye in. He's not going to say he's going to unroll my scroll and say, whoa, Walling, you did that. You did that. Yes, Lord. And you didn't do that. Yes, Lord. What have you got to say for yourself? This is my friend Jesus, and he'll explain the whole thing. And that's the only way I'm getting through the door. But what rides right behind that is that as grace strikes me and then the truth of grace makes me humble, the truth of grace then grabs me and makes me holy. It drives me to choices that I never would make otherwise. how we need this in a world, in a world that has thrown holiness to the wind, in a world that says who cares what you do. Somebody said that the new law of relativity is there is no law. There's no law. Do what you. one two. Now in a world in which things are as serious as they are morally, I want to be careful about this topic. I pulled up behind a van and sat at a red light a while back that tested me. For someone had gathered every double entendre, smutty, nasty, mocking of God bumper sticker and put them all on the back of the same van. and I sat at a red light reading and seething. in the big middle of it. God is dead, deal with it. And on the left hand side, if it feels good, do it twice. And after a moment, I rammed him. twice. No. I wanted to. I wanted to have him run around and say, why did you do that? Felt good soon. Actually, I'd said, felt good. I'm from Central Christian and then drove away. But then it hit me. Because God is grace, that guy's breathing. Because God is patient, that guy has another heartbeat. Because if I were God and looked down and saw God is dead, I would be saying, no, I'm not, but you are there. That's that. You see. When God's grace starts grappling with me, it says to me, Jeff, you can't smack that guy. You can't smart back off to that brother you disagree with. You can't speak in that malicious tone. You can't let those offensive words come out of your mouth. You can't steal from that brother or sister or man or woman because God has been way too good to you for you to behave in that fashion. It is not duty that drives me to do good. It is how good God has been to me because I'm left flat-footed saying, Jesus, you love me. this much? How dare I not do what you want me to do? Do understand? Grace will make your church, if you're a preacher, grace will make your family, if you're a mom or dad, grace will make you do way more than duty or guilt ever could. And you'll do it with a different attitude. Let me try and convince you of this. I come home and my wife is waiting for me at the door. And when she throws the door open, she says, give me your satchel. She takes my satchel, hands me a glass of iced tea, leads me to my favorite chair, kisses me on the cheek and says, baby, I love you. Sit down and relax. Dinner's gonna be ready in about 15 minutes. And she walks away with my satchel. I get up, I go, I check the address. I drink my iced tea and I think, bless your heart, baby. Yeah. In a minute she calls me to the table and it's all my favorite food all the way down to the pecan ice cream with the French, the pecan pie hot with the French vanilla ice cream cold right on top of it. And I'm sitting there eating and she's smiling and then it hits me. what is today? I'm thinking birthday. No, no, no. Anniversary. I don't think so. And finally, I just have to say sweets babes. What's today? And she says, Tuesday. doll I love you. She says I love you too. Honey what did I forget? She said baby you didn't forget anything. I just got to thinking today. I am blessed and I love you and I don't tell you that often enough in our busy world. Sweetheart, I love you. And she walks around behind my chair and starts massaging my neck. Honey? Is there anything I can do for you? And she says, well. You know your sister and husband are gonna come and stay for next week. They're gonna be here traveling through town and that upstairs bathroom where they're gonna stay is a mess. There's a ring in that tub, but baby, you know what? Forget that. You've had a long day, long week. You go read your paper and drink your iced tea. When I finish cleaning up the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen, I'm gonna get up there and take care of that bathroom. You don't worry about it. Now what am I gonna do if I am worth my salt? I'm gonna sneak down the hallway and get the Ajax and I'm gonna get upstairs and while she's in the kitchen I'm gonna clean that bathroom to a fair they will I'm gonna get the baseboards I'm gonna clean the mirror I'll get the toilet when that thing's gonna gleam and then I'm gonna stand like a Boy Scout at the door waiting for her to come up love you baby take a look My hands will be raw and my knees will hurt but I'll be grinning and happy when she walks up the stairs. Now she could have gotten me to clean that bathtub by beating me at the door and saying, give me that satchel, I tell you one thing, I've had it. I have had a long week and you're the one that invited your sister. So you get yourself up there and you clean that bathroom because I've done all the cleaning I'm gonna do this week and there'll be no dinner until that bathroom's cleaned up. yeah, I'd have been up there cleaning that bathtub but I'd have been saying, I will not live like this anymore. Now my question to you is, which way do you worship God? Do you sit there on Sunday morning and sing? How much longer is this going to be? my. Do you sit there saying, man, I tell you what, I don't know why they sang those songs. It's just so loud in here, or they don't have enough drums, or man, they don't do enough. What is it you whine and gripe about? Brothers and sisters, hear me on this. If you clean in the tub that way, you may not be working based on grace. You may think you've got to clean the tub to get to heaven, and you can clean tubs all day long, and it will not get you there. but praise God, Jesus cleaned your soul. And if it dawns on you that he has put the feast before you and he has blessed you and he has given you freely, freely, freely salvation, then we rush to the bathtub and knock each other out of the way and say, let's clean it together. Let's serve together. Let's do this together. used to think, man, I gotta do this so fast, I used to think that holiness was something that you got through some mystical thing. And I gotta be careful here, because mysticism is really cool and really sweet and hot these days. My son would say, it's fat, know, it's fat, or it's sick. He told me the other day, sick dad, that's cool, sick. And we wonder why we can't communicate with them, sick. I understand this desire to somehow get this knowledge of God through some mystic wonderful emotional experience. But folks, the truth we need is simply God loved you so much He gave His boy for you, period. He loves you and gave His life for you, which will spring me out of my lethargy. I used to think holiness was something you got from communion as a kid watching people drink the communion. used think, oh man, oh wow. And I was a preacher's kid, so I even knew where they kept it. And I snuck back there one day. It's confession time. I opened that fridge in church down in California, a little church of Christ. I opened that fridge in there by myself. The light, it was like Indiana Jones reaching in, taking the lid off. Because this was holiness. This is how I was going to get it. And man, I thought the holy juice. I remember it was those gold glass cups. You know what talking about? I mean the heavy glass ones, it's cold. When I drank it, that cold just, it went down and I thought, that's the holiness. It's going in me right now. And after holiness came a wave of guilt because I was not baptized. I was like second or third grade and I cleaned the cup and I put it back and I went outside and Brad Hennig said, what's wrong with you? And I said, oh nothing. He said, what is it? He said, I told him what happened. I drank some of holy juice and he I want some. said, oh, no, no, no, no, Don't go down that road brother. Don't do it. Come on, come on, all right, fine, meet me next Sunday right after church in the cat. Next Sunday he was in there in the kitchen, we both got some. It was the second week I had two, they were kind of small and we finished it up. I told him, Brad, tell no one but loose lips sink ships. Ricky Wright walked up the next week and said, I want some juice. I know you have the juice, I want some juice. I promise, within a month time, we had the entire second and third grade Sunday school class sneaking in there after, we called it Second Communion, and they'd all meet in there. Then we had to do it right, because somebody found the bread, and so Brad would say the prayer for the bread, and I would say the prayer for the cup. And on one particular Sunday, some woman, some mother in the lobby went, Where are all the children? Moms and dads panicked, began to search everywhere, thought some van had pulled up. Get in kids. You know, I they were freaked out. I guess God would have it. It was my mom, the preacher's wife, who went tearing through the kitchen, heading for the education wing, threw open the door, and there are about 26 second and third graders doing this. She said, what in the world? And I promise a little girl leaned up and said, shh, he's saying the prayer for the cup. My mom said, what are you doing? Kids looked up and it was like a drug raid. Out the windows, out the doors. She caught Brad and I and sat us down and we were saying, we just wanted holiness, that's all we wanted. And my mom had explained to me, holiness does not come in a cup. It does not come in a piece of bread. It doesn't come in the way you worship. It does not come in the size of your building. It does not come in the way you hold the bread or fold the bread. And it does not come in the way you perform. Holiness comes when God, through His grace, gives you righteousness you did not earn. And then it pours out of your life because you love Him so much. That's where holiness comes from. And I gotta quit by saying this, grace ultimately will make me do, not only will grace make me humble and grace will make me holy, grace will make me do the hard work. And here's the uncomfy moment in this lesson. see, hard work means different things to different people. And it is time for me and I believe you to do a little hard work. Paul said, I worked harder than all the rest of them. I need to confess. that I'd rather go on a four-month Nairobi mission trip than deal with some of the narrow-minded brothers that I know. But grace will drive me to be more patient than I ever thought I could. I'd rather work with VBS whining second graders than work with a bunch of whining brothers and sisters, but grace says, Jeff, that's the hard work. You see, the thing about this conference is not that we all get it right and we all get fixed. The thing about this conference is that we're here saying, God, we're ready to do some hard work. Do understand what I'm saying? My mama always taught me, be nice. Be nice to strangers. So for years, that's what I've done with folks in the independent Christian churches. I was nice to you. The time for being nice is over. It's time to be family. It's time to be family. We have been born of the water and of the spirit. The time for nice is over. But the reason I say that with not a big smile on my face is because that's harder. Nice is easy. Family is a mess. Family is loving and sacrificing. Family is trying to compromise without being compromised. Family is having compassion and forgiveness. Family is being willing to admit it. Family is not being able to say, am done with you. You're my son. I can't say I'm done with you. You're my sister. I can't say I'm done with you. And so instead I have to say, we got to work together. We got to deal with each other. We got to live with each other. I got to live with you and all this stuff. What's up with all this stuff? and you gotta live with me and all my stuff. Wouldn't it be easier just to be nice? Sure would, but it didn't what Jesus prayed for. Jesus didn't say, Lord, may all those that believe in me through a message be nice to each other. May they tolerate each other. May they try and stay out of each other's way. He said, no, may they get in each other's lives and father, even as I am one with you in a way that the world can't even calculate, may they be one. So I've got to do something a little hard. I've preached out of this Bible for over a decade. I like it because I know where stuff is on the pages. I even like it because there's some places where if I don't like a particular passage, just, it just comes out. lot of sermons from Galatians and Ephesians through the years. And in the front of this Bible it says, presented to Jeff Walling by your mother in memory of your earthly father, Thomas Jefferson Walling. This has a lot of meaning for me. Dave Stone, where are you? Brother. You stood on this stage and you preached last night and as I heard you talk about your dad, I thought we are twins. Yeah. Twins who had dads who loved Jesus and who preached and who gave us the blessed opportunity of being ministers. And I need to tell you that there have been times when I have judged you and people you worship with even though I did not know you, really. There have been times when I have been haughty and I have thought I had it together and somehow knew God in a way you didn't because you saw some scriptures differently. But the thing that frustrated me was that you preached the same stuff I did. and you loved this book like I love this book. And I want to tell you tonight, you are my brother, not because I decide you are, but because I need to say it out loud, because Jesus said you are. I don't want to ask you. to have that and I want when you see it on your desk and when you notice it, I want you to know this is hard work for me but this is what grace does and will you pray for me and for my congregation that I serve with, it's Jesus is not mine and for my brothers and sisters in our part of the fellowship. because you're my brother. I'll be glad to do that and I'll do more than that. Every time I preach on grace, I will think of you. I'll think of Christ more than that, but I will think of you and I will think of this night. And I've got a Bible that I want you to start preaching from and the great thing about these Bibles, they're exactly the same. They're the same translation. They're God's word. And we're preaching the same thing, and our hearts are beating as one, just as it has for this entire room for the past three days. And this is representative of what we hope will take place in churches across this country, and you are my brother. Thank have some sermons in here for a minute. need you to know something. I need you to know that if you thought for one second that Dave and I were the only people in here that felt this way. We're the young guys, really. We've been blessed by people who have been willing to teach and lead. On my left is Jerry Taylor. Jerry has been an example and an encouragement as a preacher and teacher of God's Word. And on my right is Marvin Phillips. Marvin, where are you? Come here. Marvin is like a father and a mentor to me. And he challenged me about grace long before I knew how to spell it. But Marvin and Jerry, you're not going to stand here alone tonight. Steve White, would you come up? Steve White is a faithful proclaimer in the Midwest and one of most respected in our Christian churches. And Alan Dunbar, come up as well. You all know Alan and have fallen in love with him in recent years. His ministry was in Canada for a number of years and God's used him to faithfully proclaim the word of God. Marvin, go over there. Have you got a Bible with you? put you on the spot. you got any sermons in it, they're gone. Jerry? Steve, would you? As these brothers exchange Bibles with one another, they can do that because they've been preaching and teaching out of the same Bible for a long, long time. As they pledge to pray for each other, will you pray for them? Will you pray for our movement? Will you pray for these faulty, messed up, preachers who all preach for the same Jesus out of the same gospel for the same God's glory. Amen. And they, they do not stand here alone either. On my far left is Dr. Royce Money, a good friend who is also the president of Abilene Christian University. And on my right is Mike Westerfield, the president of Rochester College. And let me tell you, college presidents don't lightly do what these men are doing tonight. These two brothers from the Acapella Fellowship standing on stage to stand by good friends. On my left and your right is Don Jeans. Don has served for a number of years at Milligan College as the president. And on my right is Dr. David Eubanks, who's led Johnson Bible College for number of years in Tennessee. These two men have preached the truth and held high the truth as they have taught students and they have encouraged students to follow in the pathway of what these words teach. What they are doing tonight as they exchange Bibles one with another is saying not we're joining our institutions, but our hearts have already been joined. Because as young men and women learn to preach and learn to teach and learn to grow in their universities, they serve a single God and a single Christ. One faith, one Lord, one baptism. And they're raising up the next generation. Let us pray for them. And man, this week, what better sweet sound could we have than the sweet sound of the praise team from the Richland Hills Church of Christ, who sing each week, lifting up God's praise. And the praise team from the church in Florida, where Eli and Ruth are from. Where are Eli and Ruth? Where are you guys? Come here. You guys have done such a beautiful job blending with Ryan and Jennifer and all the other team. And they too are exchanging Bibles with one another. Amen. Amen. Alright, here's the deal. Time to be nice is over. We are done playing nice. We are going to act like family. And here's what that looks like a little bit, folks. You don't need a stage and a convention to do this. You can go home and do this at your congregations and in your communities. You say, well, the people in my community, the a capella fellowship, instrumental, they may not react right. That is not your job to worry about. They belong to Jesus Christ. Hello. They do not belong to you and they don't belong to me. What I challenge all of us to do in the spirit with all of these brothers and sisters is you call them up and you take them to lunch and you bring a Bible and you push it right across that table and you say, I want you to take this. Now they may think, yeah, that's what I thought you brought me here for. Go home, read that, straighten up. But when you push it across, you have it open to the place that says, don't deserve to be called an apostle. And can we look each other in the eye and say, we do not deserve to be part of this movement. Folks, this is not the restoration movement where we're gonna go restore the church. It's where God is restoring us. That's what this is about. So I ask you. I ask you to do a very simple thing. Sit down. Because in a moment, we're going to sing. And when we sing, I'm going to ask you to respond if you're serious about going home and stop being nice and being family. And if you are, then I invite you to stand up when we sing. Now, there's a danger you'll stand up because Ethel and Bob are standing. But from my old guilt tradition, God knows your heart. You cannot deceive him. So I'm going to give you a moment of silence to contemplate this question. Are you? willing to go home and shape the future of our brotherhood for our children by reaching out because of grace to say, I love you in the name of Jesus Christ, brother. And if somebody says, well, he's a brother in error, you tell him, do we have any other kind? We are all in error. That's why we come every Sunday to say, forgive us. And he says, I love you. Let's begin again. Will you bow with me?