Bayside Baptist Church

Kipp Wilkinson: Let me ask you a question. Is there anything in your life where you know God is asking you to do something and you just keep saying, “No.” God, I'm not going to do that.

Like God's calling you to go and have a conversation with someone. He's calling you to serve in some capacity. He's calling you to give, whatever it might be. God's calling you to something, but you just keep saying, “No, God, I'm not going to do that.” Most of us, we know what God is calling us to. We know what his word says. We understand how he wants us to live, but we keep saying, “No, I'm not going to do that. I don't want anything to do with the life that you're calling me to, God.”

I know I've been walking through that recently where God's been getting a hold of my heart and wrestling me down on a specific issue and it's rest. I don't rest, y'all. I don't take time to just rest and be in God's presence. I work nonstop because I love the things that I get to do in life.

But God's made it really clear in his word that he expects his people to take time to rest, spend time in his presence. And even though he's been telling me that repeatedly, I just keep saying, “No, God, I'm not going to do that.” Every single one of us in this room, we have something like that. We have something in our life where we keep saying, “No, God, I know you want me to do this. I understand what your word says, but I'm just not going to.”

This morning, I want to talk about a passage that's a little bit heavy, but it addresses this issue head-on. And what we're going to discover along the way is that when we're willing to say yes to God, what he's doing is he's inviting us into a greater life than the one that we are currently experiencing.

So if you've got a Bible with you, go ahead and join me in Numbers 15. Yes, you did hear that correctly. Numbers, where all Bible reading plans go to die. That's where we're going to be this morning. And in Numbers 15, we find this man who knew what God wanted for him, but he kept saying no. He kept defying God. He kept ignoring God's word. And ultimately what happens in this man's life is that he faces the consequences for his opposition.

Like I said, it's a challenging text to read, but the heart of it, what we're going to discover is that scripture is calling us to live our lives for God, for his glory, from a place of recognizing who we are and the life that he's calling us to live that is different from the rest of the world around us. I want you to listen to what happens here in Numbers chapter 15, starting in verse 32. It says this: One day, while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.

The people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community, and they held him in custody because they did not know what to do with him. And then the Lord said to Moses, “The man must be put to death. The whole community must stone him outside of the camp.” So the whole community took the man outside the camp and they stoned him to death, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

Are you encouraged this morning? Right? It's such a such a light passage that we get to read together. I know I'm really encouraged by that. I know some of you guys are probably looking at the exit signs like, “I don't know if I want to be here for this particular passage.” Oh my goodness. I get it. I've been wrestling with this passage myself, like many of you when you hear that. And I'm just like, “What in the world is going on here? This is such a hefty thing.”

Like, this guy's picking up some sticks and the result is he has to be killed. What is that about? I have a small group we meet on Tuesday nights, and what we do as a small group is we just are walking through the Life Journal together. And so whatever readings fall into that day, we sit alone quietly across my house, and we work our way through God's word, write down how he's speaking to us, and then when we come back together, we have a conversation around how he spoke to us.

And a few weeks ago, we came to Numbers 15, and we all read it, and we all came back together, and there were a lot of questions like, “What is happening here?” Why is this such a big deal? Why is God so mad that this guy is picking up some sticks? If I go and camp next weekend and I get some firewood, is God going to smite me? Right? It's a difficult text to wrestle with.

And it's been on my mind for weeks ever since we had a conversation around that, and I'm like, “God, why do I keep coming back to this? God, why are you highlighting this moment of scripture in my mind and in my heart the way that you are?” And as I've wrestled through it, I've found this closeness to God that's been new and refreshing. Where God's saying, “Look at all these areas in your life that are defiant. These areas where you're excusing something small that I've called you to and saying this isn't that big of a deal. Would you just get rid of those things?”

And as I've walked through that, I've experienced this closeness in my relationship with God. And that's what I want to invite you into this morning. I know this is a tough text, but I really want you to just lean in for a second and come at this with an open heart and listen to what God has to speak into your life as well.

Because as I've wrestled through this passage, I've realized that defiance is more serious than we think. Defiance is more serious than we think. What I mean when I say defiance is that we know what God has called us to. We know what his word says. We know how we're supposed to be living our lives, but we refuse to go where he is leading us. We refuse to live the way that he is asking us to live. We refuse to speak the way he is leading us to speak.

God has given us a clear directive in his word, and he's confirmed it through his Holy Spirit and through church community, but even though we see very clearly what he wants for our lives, we keep saying, “I'm good.” God, I don't want that life. I want to keep doing the things that I've been doing because that's what I'm most comfortable with. That's what defiance really looks like.

And when I first read this account in Numbers 15, my immediate response, like most of you, was, “What's the big deal about picking up some sticks?” I want you to read that verse again, verse 32. It says, “One day, while the people of Israel were in the wilderness, they discovered a man gathering wood on the Sabbath day.” I read that and I'm like, “That's not a huge offense, right? He didn't murder somebody. He didn't rob the First Bank of Jerusalem. He just picked up some firewood. What is going on here?”

But what we need to understand is that this was an act of defiance. The book of Numbers has a unique literary structure, the way that it's written. It's written in such a way that it's weaving together the law of scripture with examples of the history of Israelite, where we have these examples of people and the things that they did that are contrasted with God's law. In other words, Numbers is constantly going, “Hey, don't do this,” and then you see someone doing exactly that. That's what's going on there. It's a little bit funny when you dig into it.

And right before we read this account of a man picking up sticks, I want you to notice what Numbers 15 verses 30 through 31 say. It says, “But those who brazenly violate the Lord's will, that's the people who say, you know what, I know what God's calling me to, but I'm just not going to do it because I don't want to, and I'm comfortable doing the things I've always done. Whether native-born Israelites or foreigners, have blasphemed the Lord. That means they've sinned against God, they've gone against God. And they must be cut off from the community since they have treated the Lord's word with contempt and deliberately disobeyed his command. They must be completely cut off and suffer the punishment for their guilt.”

We don't defy God's word is whatever commanded to do in these passages. And yet we immediately see right after that, a man who says, “I'm just going to do whatever I want to do.” That's the way Numbers is functioning here, and that's what's happening in this moment. This isn't weakness, it was willful rebellion. This wasn't accidental failure, it was defiance. The man knew what God had called him to. He knew God had asked him to live differently than the rest of the world, and yet he chose to do whatever he wanted to do.

And the reason most of us struggle when we come to a passage of scripture like this is because we have a low view of sin. A lot of us view sin as hierarchical, like, “Hey, there are some sins that are much, much worse than others. And then there are some sins that are kind of small sins, and I don't need to worry about that.” I can kind of excuse that away and act like it's not that big of a deal. I can justify it in a way.

But all sin separates us from God. Sin has the same consequence no matter how you view it. You might see it as small, you might see it as big, but to God, all of it does the same thing. All of it separates us from God for eternity. But most of us, we tend to minimize our sin and we say, “It's not that big of a deal. I'm just picking up some sticks.”

I want you to remember what Paul wrote in First Corinthians 6 verses 9 through 10. He said, “Don't you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves, it's a bigger deal than you think it is. Those who indulge in sexual sin or worship of idols or commit adultery or male prostitutes or practice homosexuality, who are thieves, or greedy people or drunkards, or are abusive or cheat people, none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.”

Now what Paul's doing here in First Corinthians is not saying, “Hey, these are these nine things. And if you avoid these nine specific things, anything else you do is excusable.” What Paul's doing here in First Corinthians is he's mirroring what's happening in Numbers 15. He's saying, “Any act of defiance, anything that you do that goes against what God has asked of you, that's counted as sin.”

God is calling you to live differently. You have a choice to say yes or no to him. And the reason that this is so hard for us is because we continue to justify our little sins. I'm just picking up sticks. But to God, again, all of it matters. All of it separates us from him.

See, many of us, we trust God in spiritual matters, but we don't actually trust him how we are practically living out our lives. We trust Jesus for salvation, but we don't trust him with application. Like, “God, thank you so much for rescuing me from my sin, but I'm just going to continue to live my life the way that I want to live my life.” “Jesus, thank you for paying my sin debt, but don't touch my money.” “God, thank you for adopting me as your child, but don't you dare tell me how I'm supposed to treat other people.” “God, thank you through the Holy Spirit in clothing me in the righteousness of Christ, but don't tell me that I can't live with my boyfriend or my girlfriend.”

Most of us, we begin to excuse these small acts of disobedience, the things that we say, “This isn't that big of a deal.” And we say, “It doesn't matter. I'm just picking up some sticks.” But for God, it separates us from him. And so right now, as I'm talking through this, what I want you to do is I want you to think through, “What's an area of my life where I'm being defiant? Where I'm not saying yes to God, I'm saying no to God.”

Maybe write that down on your notes, maybe type it out in your phone and pray over that, begin praying over that and say, “God, this is the thing that I need to surrender to you right now.” And what happens is God wants to redeem every single area of your life. Every area. He knows what's best for you. He knows what is good for your life, and he's calling you to experience something so much greater than the things that you've been stuck in and the sticks that you keep picking up.

So instead of living in defiance toward him, begin applying the word to your life and living differently in response to what God's word says and the life that he's calling you to live. You've trusted Jesus for salvation. Now, trust him with your life.

The next thing that we can take away from this passage is that defiance needs to be brought into the light. Defiance needs to be brought into the light. Most of us aren't really struggling because we don't know what we're supposed to do. We don't understand how God wants us to live. The reality is we're struggling because we've learned to hide what we know is wrong.

We hide it away and we excuse it and say, “It's not that big of a deal in our hearts.” We don't tell anyone about it. We don't talk about it. And this is why we read the Bible. God's word is like a mirror that I go back to time and time again so I can allow his word to speak into my life, to speak into my heart and identify areas where I need to experience life change. Right? Like if I go and look in the mirror in the morning and my hair is sticking up everywhere and I got some spinach in my teeth, it tells me I need to clean myself up, right? That's what's going on with God's word.

And it's important as well that we surround ourselves with a community of fellow believers, with other Christians who are there to encourage us in our walk with God and who are there to point out, “Hey, this is an area of your life where you need to grow and you need to ask God to change you.” And that's exactly what we see happening in Numbers 15. I want you to read verses 33 through 34 with me again. It says, “The people who found him doing this took him before Moses, Aaron, and the rest of the community. They held him in custody because they did not know what to do with him.”

So there's some members of the Israelite community, this group of people that this man is doing life with. And they are going and they're taking a leisurely stroll through the night and they realize, “Hey, this guy's doing something wrong.” They were so entrenched in God's word. They had that spiritual awareness that James was talking about last week that they immediately recognized, “Hey, something is not right here. There's something wrong with the way that this guy is living. This doesn't feel right.” And they didn't know what to do, so they took him to their leaders, the leaders of their church if you will, Moses and Aaron, and said, “How do we handle this?”

Now what this reveals to you and me is the value of having a support system. Right? We need people and resources in our life who are holding us accountable to the life that God is calling us to live. And this passage really reveals three forms of accountability that we all need present in our lives. The first form of accountability is the Bible. Right? The Bible, God's word.

Now for the Israelites in this moment, the word of God is their standard. It's their standard for living, and it's our standard for living as well as followers of Jesus. God's word is instructing us about the kind of life that God wants for us. And so God has given us his word as a gift to to help us navigate the things that he wants us to step into. And if you want to experience the life that God is really calling you to, the fullness of life, the new life that Christ offers us, the freedom in Christ that is available to us, the Bible reveals that to you.

Second Timothy chapter 3 verses 16 through 17 tell us, “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.” What's that word right there? All, all, all of scripture, the entirety of scripture. That means that I don't take the parts that I like and ignore the rest. It means I don't say like, “Hey, I really love these parts of the Bible that say Jesus loves me, but the stuff about tithing? I don't want to talk about that. I love this part that tells me that I'm adopted as a child of God.” But this part that tells me I have to stop gossiping and slandering at work, “I don't want to deal with that.” We can't do that. We don't have that option. We have to take the entirety of scripture and apply it to our lives.

That's why as a church, we put such an emphasis on the Life Journal. That's a tool that takes us cover to cover through the Bible. This is a passage I never would have touched. I never would have come across on my own. But because I'm reading through the Bible page by page, cover to cover in a community of other believers, I'm finding things like this where God's highlighting areas of my life where I need to grow. So you need the entirety of scripture.

The second thing that you need is community. You need community. It was this man's community who addressed the issues of defiance in his life. They recognized that something in this specific man's life was wrong. And if you want to experience the life that God is calling you into, to live differently than the world around you, you need a community of fellow believers. You need other Christians to walk alongside you in this life. I love what Hebrews 10 verses 24 through 25 says. It says, “Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. And let us not neglect our meeting, what's that word right there? Together as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near.”

We need people in our lives. We need a community who's there to encourage us, to pray for us, and to mention to us, “Hey, hey, this is an area where you need to grow, where you need God's help to grow.” That's why being in a small group is so, so crucial. Lone wolf Christianity, that's not a thing. You can't do a life of faith on your own. You need other people around you. People who are going to encourage you, people who are going to lift you up, people who are going to pray for you, people who are going to fight alongside you through the things that you are dealing with in life. You need community.

The third form of accountability is church leadership. Church leadership. The man in Numbers 15 was taken to his community's leadership, Moses and Aaron, who were guiding the people of Israel at that time. And if you want to experience the fullness of life that that God is offering you, the freedom in Christ that is available to you, your church leadership is here to help you in that. We're here to guide you as part of that. I love what Ephesians 4:11 through 12 says. It says, “Now, these are the gifts Christ gave to the church, the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and the teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and to build up the church, the body of Christ.”

Our pastoral team and our elder team, we are here to walk alongside you and to invite you into the life that God is wanting for you. We're here to say, “Hey, this is what God wants for for you as an individual and for us as a church family, will you just come along with us in that?” It might be through a moment like this where someone is delivering a message. It might be through some one-on-one pastoral counseling, we're all available for that, where I'm struggling through this thing in life, I need someone to sit down and just talk with me and pray with me. It might be if you're on one of our serving teams, us working together as a serving team to say, “Hey, this is the direction God is taking our church in.”

But those three things, they're they're all there to help us. Right? His word, Christian fellowship, and the church leadership. Those are all gifts that God has given every single one of you to help you grow into the life that God is calling you into, to help you recognize, “These are the areas where I'm just going around picking up sticks and I need to stop picking up sticks.” Those are things reflected in this passage. These are the things that we all need if we want to grow in our faith.

Because the thing is, God is calling each and every one of us to something so much greater than the life that we've been stuck living in. But here's the problem. For most of us, that feels foreign and it feels unfamiliar. Because most of us aren't used to living in a community where we are held accountable. Most of us are used to living in a culture where it's easy to hide things. Right? Private browser tabs, little compromises, things stuffed into your closet that you don't want anyone to know about. We're all used to living in a society where we don't talk about the things that we're struggling with.

But if you want to experience the life that God has for you, you have to be open, and you have to be honest, and you have to say to someone else, “I keep struggling with picking up sticks, will you help me?” James 5:16 tells us, “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.” We all need that support system. We all need people and resources who are going to help us grow in our walk with God. If your sin stays hidden, it's just going to continue to eat away at your life. God loves you too much to let you stay in that place. He wants better for you. He's calling you to more than that.

Deuteronomy 32:47 tells us, “These instructions,” God's word, “are not empty words, they are your life. They are your life.” And if you want to experience the fullness of life that God has invited you into, the freedom from the struggles that you've been walking through, it starts here, and then it takes your community supporting you.

So take advantage of the opportunities that God has gifted you with to be honest about your shortcomings and your weaknesses, and when you do that, you'll begin to recognize God has something so much greater for me. I'm his child and he has a greater life available for me. The next thing that we see in this passage is that defiance carries a real cost. Defiance carries a real cost. When we choose to live in defiance to God's word, when we keep saying no to the things that God is inviting us into, there is a cost.

Now, it might not be immediate and it might not be obvious, but it does cost us something. And ultimately, what it costs us is that we miss out on this closeness with God, and we miss out on the life that he has invited us into. Now for the man in Numbers 15, he faced some severe consequences for his defiance. Verses 35 through 36 tell us what happened. It says, “Then the Lord said to Moses, 'The man must be put to death. The whole community must stone him outside the camp.' So the whole community took the man outside the camp and stoned him to death, just as the Lord commanded Moses.”

Now this is where a lot of us begin to struggle with this passage. This is where our low view of sin comes into play, why is this such a severe consequence? But what we need to recognize is that God was calling the people of Israel to something much different and something much greater than they had ever experienced. In Exodus 19 verses 5 through 6, God told the Israelites, “Now, if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own special treasure from among the peoples on earth. For all the earth belongs to me, and you will be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation. This is the message that you must give to the people of Israel.”

God was moving in these people's lives. He was saying, “Hey, come with me, I want you to experience something so much better than anything that you have ever known. I want you to be a part of my kingdom and a part of my mission to reach the world.” And he gave them as part of that a commandment in Exodus 20 to rest. And what God was doing in that is he was helping his people to be emissaries to the world around them because when they rested, it showed the rest of the world that there was rest in God.

So where the world tells you to strive and struggle and work nonstop, God says, “Hey, you don't have to do everything in your own strength and power, you can rest in me, you can rely on me.” And so the responsibility of these people was hefty, it was important. God's inviting them to be a part of his kingdom and his mission work to reach the world. So the man in Numbers 15, when we get to him, the reason this is such a big issue is because he's declaring over his life, “I don't want to live that way.”

I don't want the life that you're offering me, God. No. I want to do whatever I want to do. And that's why he has to face the consequences. Now God is inviting you to experience life change, to live differently than the world around us. But when you continue to say no to what God is inviting you to, there are consequences. Like I said, they might not be obvious. It won't be like getting stoned to death, but there are consequences.

And God uses these consequences to continuously get our attention like, “Hey, wake up. I'm calling you to something greater. I'm calling you to a better life than what you've been living in. Will you come along with me in that?” But what do those things look like? I want to give you three consequences that we can face when we say no to God. The first is relational consequences. Relational consequences.

You can't walk in defiance and intimacy with God at the exact same time. Those two things don't go hand in hand. Now that doesn't mean that your salvation is canceled, but it does mean that your fellowship with Christ is disrupted. It might look like this, you still believe in God, but you don't feel close to him. You still show up to church, but you don't feel a connection to what's going on. You pray, but it's like your words are just bouncing off of the ceiling.

You begin to avoid God and closeness with him because you're carrying around this shame of, “I know God has asked me to do something, but I keep saying no to it.” until the joy that you once felt in your faith begins to fade. Like First John chapter 1 verses 6 and 7 says, “We are lying if we say we have fellowship with God, but we go on living in spiritual darkness. We are not practicing the truth. But if we are living in the light as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.” What that's saying is, “Hey, if you keep saying no.”

If you keep saying no, you're just living in this dark place. But if you start saying yes to God, and you move away from the defiance, and you stop picking up the sticks, and you start picking up the life that he has offered you, you're going to experience something amazing. You're going to be able to experience something greater as he makes you into a new creation. The second type of consequence we face is the internal consequence. The internal consequence.

Your heart doesn't stay soft when you ignore God, it hardens. Your conviction begins to wane. You begin to justify your sin instead of confessing it. It's just some sticks. You begin to avoid people who are speaking truth into your life. You dismiss sermons that hit home. Don't forget what Proverbs 21:2 says. It says, “People may be right in their own eyes, but the Lord examines the heart.” God knows what's going on right here. This is the thing that he is most concerned with is our heart, the person that we are becoming.

And so the longer that you justify your defiance and you keep saying, “No, I'm going to keep doing this, it's not that big of a deal,” the more shame and guilt and bitterness take over your heart and begin to change you from the inside out. The third kind of consequence is directional consequences. Directional consequences. Don't forget, your life is not shaped by big moments. It's shaped by small, ongoing decisions.

And so if you keep saying no to God, what happens is you begin to choose comfort over discipline. You choose silence over speaking the truth. You choose convenience over obedience. Until one decision after another, you're going further and further away from the life that God wants for you. To quote a pastor I used to serve with, “You don't drift towards holiness. You don't just naturally go that direction. You have to fight for it.”

I love what Galatians 6 verses 7 through 8 says. It says, “Don't be misled. You cannot mock the justice of God. You always harvest what you plant. Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature, will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.” So those small compromises in our life, those are the things that we're planting, and they'll lead to something really awful that we're harvesting. Those small compromises, they become habits and those habits begin to shape the person that you are becoming.

Until before you know it, you're not becoming the person that God has created you to be. Instead, you're far from God and you are hard-hearted and you are cold and you are bitter because you just keep saying, “No, I want to pick up the sticks.” So when you live in defiance to God's word, there are consequences. They might not be as obvious or immediate as getting stoned, but there is fallout in our lives.

And the greatest consequence is that we miss out on the greater things that God has planned for our lives. Defiance distances you from God, it hardens your heart, and it redirects your life. Now, whether we like it or not, everyone listening to this message right now, we've had moments where we have lived in defiance. Every single one of us, we've had something where we have said, “No, God, I'm not going to do what you want me to do.” Every single one of us have been just as defiant as this man in Numbers 15. We've all picked sticks up off the ground and shaking our fist at God and saying, “I'm going to do whatever I want to do. I don't care what God says. I don't care what the Bible says.”

Now when I read this passage, it hit home for me, like I said, I've been thinking about it for weeks. Because I've been guilty of the exact same act of defiance that this man was. I don't rest. A few weeks ago, I came home from a student's baseball game. And it was late and Aaron was in the kitchen, and I walk in and I said something about, “Hey, I got I got to go ahead and go get ready for bed because I'm going to wake up in the morning. I'm going to go to an FCA huddle pretty early.” And Aaron looked at me and she just said, “When are you going to rest? You've been going nonstop for weeks.”

And I hadn't really realized that, but I'd been going nonstop for almost two months. Where I was out late every night doing ministry work or I was getting up early to go and do things. Even at home, I was working away on things. Because I love what I get to do. I love student ministry. But I also know what the Bible says, and the Bible says very clearly that God wants for his people to take moments to rest, to rest in his presence, to rest in his strength.

And I know that that's what God wants for me, but I kept saying no to it. And I had people in my life, my small group, my friends, my family, who kept telling me, “Hey, you got to you got to rest, you got to stop at some point. You got to catch your breath.” Even Pastor Jason has told me that a couple of times where he said, “You got to figure out what it looks like to rest.”

And what I began to notice is that I was feeling a little bit cold towards God. I didn't feel as close to him as I was at one point. But I kept saying the same thing, “It's fine, it's just another day. I'm just picking up some sticks.” But that night that I went home, and Aaron and I had that conversation, she said something that changed everything. She said, “You're going to have to figure out how to rest because I need my husband to be more present. You're going to have to rest because our son is going to need to be have a father who's more present.”

See, because I was living in defiance to something that God asked me to do, it was affecting the person that I was becoming. So, you know what I did yesterday? I went fishing. Instead of running through this sermon a hundred times to make sure that I had everything exactly right, that I was saying things exactly the right way, I was nitpicking it and spending hours anxious over it, I chose to rest.

And while I was standing in a river, not catching any fish at all. Thank you. The Holy Spirit reminded me of something. As I'm out there, he reminded me that that God isn't waiting for me to fix myself, to to work more and try harder. He's inviting me to rest in what has already been done through Christ. He was inviting me to experience something so much greater that he had for me than the things that I was trying to do to prove myself. I just had to stop running away from it.

There's a desk in our garage where I keep all my fly fishing gear. And as I was getting ready to go out, I was sorting through some things and I found a post-it note. And I'd written a quote from Warren Wiersbe on there from some sermon that I was doing for students. And it says this: “We do not behave in order to go to heaven as though we could be saved by good works. We behave because our names are already written in heaven and our citizenship is in heaven.”

See, that's what God is inviting us to, to live differently because we belong to him. To live differently and say yes to him because we are children of God, to live differently, because I'm a co-heir with Christ. That's where that yes comes from, is my identity in him.

We've all lived in defiance to God. We all deserve to be taken outside the camp and stoned. But Jesus was taken outside of the camp to bear the punishment that we deserved. Not so that we could continue to live the same way that we've always been living, but so that we could experience the new life, the fullness of life, the changed life that he has offered us.

So if you've been living in defiance to God, maybe for your entire life, I want you to know this: He has grace for you. He's waiting for you to just run to him and he's inviting you to a much greater life than the one that you've been stuck in. You just need to stop picking up the sticks and turn to him.