Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:09]
A
I did start coming here in 2019. I was introduced by Mr. Daniel Wallace, affectionately called Ambush. I love that family. I actually knew his mom and dad first. I was honored to be able to do the funeral for his parents last year and this year, both of them in March. And what a wonderful, sweet family. I don't know how many of you know personally. Ambush. You know Daniel Wallace. Yeah. How many of you knew Miss Betty Ray? Yeah. Oh, Miss sweet Betty Ray. I'll tell you what. For multiple years, I actually thought I was a good preacher because of her. She would come up to me and she would hug me, and she would grab my face and tell me how much the Lord spoke to her through me. And, man, that encouraged me more than just about anything else in the world. Having someone just love you so well, encourage you so well. And that whole family is so encouraging. I've learned a lot from Mr. Ambush. The whole eyebrows up. How many of you know that thing? Eyebrows up. Oh, man, that's helped me. Has that helped you? Eyebrows up. I look angry when I'm serious. I look angry when I'm just normal. I just look angry. I just look like, you know, I'm just, you know, I don't know what personality type that is, what the acronym is. J, E, R, K or something. I don't know. There's four letters. Usually they figure that out. Anyway, love the family. Love Gull Lake. My first time speaking here was in 2020. And oddly enough, I get ready to come here, and Daniel calls me and he's like, you're not gonna believe this. You know that whole pandemic thing? Yeah, that's still going. There's a guy from overseas that cannot get here. So can you speak for two weeks? And I was like, absolutely, I'll speak here for two weeks. And my family got to spend two weeks at Gull Lake. And it was super fun. And ever since then, we've been in love. We. We love this place. We love the people here. I know some of you. I know some of you by name. Even though this is week seven. We've never been in week seven. But I know some of you campers. Cause you've gone different weeks in different years. And this is just such a special place to us. I also have a number of families from my church that came. I don't know if you guys want to raise your hand to show them. There's, like, many people from Newton, Kansas, and. And I know all of you know tons of stuff about Kansas. You've traveled there for vacation. You Know a lot of the land. Well, we live just north of Wichita. Wichita is the largest city in Kansas and we live about 20 miles north of there. And I've been serving there on staff as the lead pastor for nine years. And man, I love it. I love our church family. It's been a blessing. I feel like I've been growing so much there with the people. We have a great elder team, just godly men, biblically qualified, great people. It's just a great. It's a great church and I'm so blessed to do it and to be a part of it. So today though, I wanted to. This is working. Oh, that's a picture of 2025. That was our Gull Lake picture shirts. I did not start out this way. One thing about me and all my friends from my church know this. My name is actually Jack Daniel Napier. I was named after a very famous drink. And I grew up under in what I would consider a non Christian home. We weren't going to church every Sunday. That wasn't the main theme of our lives. And I grew up not sure about who God was. But when I was eight years old, I went to a camp in Hawaii. And my father is a retirement. My father's actually here today. He's in the front. He doesn't want you to give him any attention. He's more introverted than Daniel's wife and so don't talk to him. But he was in the Marines for over 20 years. He retired, but when he. We were stationed in Hawaii, we were stationed on the island of Oahu. And I had this friend named Heath Nelson. And my brother's also here with his family and he had a friend, Heath's brother. Anyway, we go to this camp and at this camp, it's a Christian camp, and they ask, does anybody want to go to heaven? And you know, a lot of people are raising their hands, right? We don't know. We're kids. I was 8 years old. I don't know. Heaven sounds great. And then they were like, do you want to go to hell now? This is a camp in Hawaii in the summer, so it's already pretty hot. You know, everybody's pretty sweaty already. And we're like, no, that doesn't sound good. Well, my friend Heath is like, dude. His parents were like strong Christian people. They church every day, dressed up, the whole deal. So they're like, you know, he's like, we should go. And I'm like, I don't know. He's like, let's go, let's go. So we go up front. I'm like, we raise our hands. They call us up front, and they ask us to repeat this prayer after them. They're like, asking Jesus into your heart. And I grew up watching cartoons on Saturday mornings before you could stream stuff. And every Sunday, Saturday morning, 8am cartoons, I watched cartoons like X Men and Spiderman and all those things. And so, like, I'm imagining my rib cage opening up and like, this German Jesus head with a fog behind him coming into my heart. And I remember thinking these words, don't mess anything up in there. Don't. You know, there's probably not a lot of room. I wasn't a doctor. I was eight. So I was like, I don't know what's happening. So we pray this prayer. The next morning, they put us on a bus to go home. And they say, listen, we need to counsel you before you leave. So we get in a little group. Those that raise their hands, we're up there, you know, And I remember asking the question, hey, can you write down that prayer that we prayed, you know, for Jesus to come into your heart? Can you write that down? I want to take that home with me because I'm going to need to pray that again because I just feel like I don't know. And the guy was like, no, trust me, once you pray this prayer, you're good forever. And I'm like, no, no way. This is. What kind of coupon is this? There's no way. And he's like, this is forever. And I'm like, I don't think so. He's like, once you prayed, you're always saved. And I was like, ah, okay. So I go home. I didn't understand who Jesus was. My sister became a Christian before me. So she's like, you know, my sister was beautiful, and she was in dance and she could sing, and she was my father's favorite and not totally true. And so, you know, I was like, she was so great. She went to church and she's like, jack, you should come with me to church. You need to know who Jesus is. And she's like, he's the son. I imagine Jesus was the sun in the sky. She's like, he's the Son. And like, I go to church with her, and I'm like, this isn't for me. I lived my life as a teenager. My parents divorced or split up when I was, like, nine. We moved from Hawaii to Okinawa, Japan. Then we moved to Detroit, Michigan. I moved in with my aunt, with my mom, and my aunt's partner and their kids. And there's like 15 to 17 people living in the house in Detroit, Michigan. And I just was angry. I had so much anger in my heart. I. I just hated everything. I hated myself, sadly, I admit. I hated my mom. I just blamed her for everything. She had an affair and she got pregnant. And that's kind of what a little bit of a catalyst that started all of it. And I was just angry, angry. And I just. I hated myself because I was a chubby kid growing up. I wet the bed. I don't know if you ever had insecurities growing up as a kid. I had a thousand. I thought I was ugly, I was overweight, I wet the bed. I couldn't sing. I wasn't like anybody I knew. I wasn't smart. I had nothing. And I remember just being angry. So I was going to school, and I just thought, you know what? I'm going to figure this out on my own. And that's a bad idea, by the way. That never works. And I was so angry in my heart. I knew who God was, but I just couldn't turn to him because of anger and bitterness and unforgiveness. And I was, like, looking for male role models in all the wrong places and, you know, like gang members, that kind of thing. I was just broken and lost. And when I was 16, there was this short guy named Greg. I love Greg. Tax accountant, loves baseball. Couldn't be more different than me. Well, he was a youth leader, and he spent time with me, and he started to get to know me. And he's like, hey, I want you to hang out with our youth group. And it was a youth group that my sister hung out with. And so I hang out with the youth group. And he's like, I want you to come to my house on Tuesday nights. We're gonna study the book of Romans. And I was like, dude, I love the Romans. They're like Sparta, like, all that Greece. I didn't know. I was like, dude, Roman. I was like, this is going to be amazing. So I go. And it wasn't nothing like the gladiator movie. It was nothing like that. It was like theology and all stuff, but my mind was just so hungry because it sounded like the truth. He was sharing the gospel. Well, anyway, he started sharing the gospel. Well, kids in the youth group would come up to me and they'd be like, jack, you need to get saved. And I was like, nope. I prayed to ask Jesus in my heart when I was 8 years old. And he came into my heart. And youth groups in that day, they didn't know. They had no idea. So they're like. They feel bummed. They're like, oh, man. He asked Jesus in his heart, but we know he's not a Christian, but we can't say that because he has Jesus heart. So they just were discouraged. Seriously. They were like, we don't know what to do. It was like a total ace of spades. Well, I thought it was going to work with Greg, so. So Greg was like, man, I don't think you're a Christian. I was like, greg, where's that card? Ace of spades? I was like, ask Jesus in my heart. He's like, oh, well, what do you mean by that? I was like, what do you mean? I mean by this, like, 101 Christianity. I feel like you would know. You're like a youth leader. And he's like, yeah, I don't think it is like you say it is. I don't think that's true. I don't think you could just pray and automatically you're a Christian. And I was like, that's what everybody's been saying. I mean, I didn't really go. I would go to church on Sunday mornings, and I would fall asleep every Sunday morning. I mean, without fail, even during some of the music. I wasn't into it. I was like, I wasn't into it anyway. So I was like, no, I'm pretty sure you just asked this. And then everything's cool. He's like, no, that's not how it works. And he turned to James, chapter two, and he goes to verse 14, and he's like, listen. What. What good is it if you have faith? But it has nothing. No fruit, no works. There's nothing that comes out of it. He's like, what good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but does not have works, can such faith save him? Now, I didn't know this when I was 16, what I'm about to tell you, I have since then studied that term, can such faith. That word such is actually connected to a Greek term that's used in this sentence that means, can this kind of faith. Can this kind of believing, where you say, I believe, I believe, but it doesn't change your life. It doesn't change your heart. There's nothing that comes out of. Can that kind of I believe be the kind of saving belief that Jesus and his apostles talked about? Is that really working? And then verse 18, it's this correspondence of, but someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without works, and I will show you my faith. I will show you faith by my works. You believe that God is one good. Even the demons believe, and they shudder. And Greg showed me that I had a demonic faith. He was like, listen, is Satan going to heaven? And I was 16, Detroit, Michigan, not raised in church. And I'm like, listen, everyone knows there's two people not going to heaven, right? Hitler and Satan. Everyone knows this. You're asking the worst question in the world. Everyone knows. He's like, well, does Satan believe that Jesus is God's son? And, well, he's been teaching me in Romans. He's been talking about the gospel all month, all summer long. I was like, well, no, I think Satan was there, right? Wasn't he, like, a big part of this plan of, like, crucifying Jesus? So I think Satan knew that Jesus is God's son. He's like, did he know he died on the cross? I was like, dude, he was there. I'm sure he saw it. He's like, okay, does he believe that he died for sins? I was like, yeah, I'm pretty sure he's mad about that, actually. Is Satan going to heaven? I was like, no. And he's like, well, Satan believes everything you believe. Satan believes exactly what you. As a matter of fact, demons have zero doubt. There is zero doubt in a demon's mind about Jesus being the son of God and the king. Zero doubt. They don't doubt that. They know that beyond belief. They know that. And that was challenging to me. I was mad. I was 16. I knew more than Greg. And Greg's trying to tell me something that I didn't already know. I was so angry, I got mad. I was, like, trying to convince Greg. Listen, because he was trying to convince me I'm not a Christian. I was trying to convince him DMX was a Christian because of a prayer song on a tape that I brought to his house. I played a DMX song at Greg's house on a cassette player to convince him DMX was a Christian. He's like, nah. Anyway, he didn't. He loved me. He's like, listen, man, I don't think so. Long story long. I ended up believing that the gospel was true, that Jesus is God's son, and that I couldn't keep going like this. I remember walking home one time from Detroit. I was at a party I shouldn't have been. You know, one of those houses where there's really no furniture in it. There's Like a kitchen table, a couple chairs, a mattress on a floo in one of the bedrooms. I was in one of those houses, shouldn't have been there. Hanging out with friends, something goes down. We had to leave immediately. I walk home. It took me two and a half, three hours to walk home in the middle of the night. I never got stopped by the cops. It was amazing. I've gotten stopped by the cops so many times. I actually would pull out. I had a military ID when I was younger. I'd pull out my old ID and I'd be like, do you know? My name is Jack Daniel. My dad's a retired Marine. I would go through this whole spiel. They would put me in the back of the cop car. One time, the cops drove me home. I was high. Drove me home and I was high. They were going 70 miles an hour down the road to be cool because they thought they were cool. And I was in the back seat. Dropped me off at my house. I walked right inside the door. That was the kind of life that I was living. I had no idea about real truth. I'm walking home, never got stopped by a single person. And I remember thinking the whole time, God, I know you exist, but Greg's right. I have a demonic faith. I don't have a saving faith. I don't love you. You know the difference between a faith of a demon and the faith of a Christian? A Christian knows I'm wrong and he's right. A Christian believes Jesus is not only just the son of God, but Jesus died for me. He loves me. And from that love you just. My eyes were open. I got home, I get in my room, I shut the door. I'm listening to a Leakin park song. I'm replaying this song. I repeat, I'm hitting a white laundry basket with two plastic hangers. I'm a big drummer wannabe. Wish I could do it. I'm hitting this basket and I remember saying over and over, God, I'm not good enough to become a Christian. I will never love you. I will never do right. I'm such a broken person. There is no way that I will become a Christian. There's just no way. I don't wear khaki pants. I don't like Christian music. I'm not. And I was thinking cultural things. I was thinking what I saw at these churches that I went to. And I'm like, I'm just not like that. And I just. I hate myself. I'm angry, I'm unforgiving. I'm mean. I'm a liar. I want to manipulate. I'm trying to gain my way into something. I'll never do it. And I flipped open the Bible. I flipped open in the middle of the Bible. I didn't know anything about the Bible at this time. I flipped, it opened the middle of the Bible. I go to Psalm 94, and it reads, when my foot was slipping, your love, O Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul. And I read those words and I realized that's what I'm missing. I don't have joy, but I believe he loves me. So I bowed down and I was like, God, please forgive me and save me from me. I need to be saved from my sin, from my bad, for my wrong. I will never be a good enough person to become a Christian. Please save me. And that night, God saved me. I was 16 years old. My life has never been the same since that day. I went to church the next Sunday and stayed awake the entire Sunday. It was the craziest thing. The preacher wasn't even that good. He was kind of boring, this old Baptist preacher. And I was like, wide eye. He gets done, he prays. I'm like, looking around like, we're done. I didn't even get my nap. What's going on? But I was so hungry. I was so hungry for the Word. I didn't want to do anything else. I wanted to know God. And ever since then, God has changed my life in ways it's hard for me to articulate. I could never tell you the whole story. I became a Christian. I felt called to ministry. I went to my youth ministry. I was like, hey, I think I need to take the Bible and share this with other kids like me that don't know you. And he's like, I think you're called to ministry. I was like, where's that? You know, let's do that. And then he's like, yeah, he's from Mississippi. So he's like, there's this Bible college, went to Bible college, met my wife, started growing, got discipled, like, started studying the Bible for the first time. Changed my life. I say all that to say God is in the business of calling people to himself, but there's only one way to come to God. There's only one way that you can come to God before you're a Christian and even after you're a Christian. There's only one way that you approach God. And there's a story I won't be able to share all the Details of the story. But there's a guy named Levi that I relate to. It's in Luke chapter five. If you want to go in your Bibles to Luke chapter five, that will be the main text. But In Luke chapter 5, verse 27, Jesus calls a man. And it reminds me of the way that he called me. Same way he called me in Luke chapter 5, verse 27. After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax office. And he said to him, follow me. Now, how many of you watch the Chosen right? And we all now see autistic Matthew in the booth and we see him and we know, like, this is okay. Matthew in this day, this tax collector, this guy. I love the chosen, by the way, I got the T shirt and the sweatshirt and the hat. Love watching those Matthew as a tax collector or Levi. His name's Levi. And I'll get to the name change. Levi is there, he's doing his work. He's in the middle of his shift. Jesus comes by and he calls out to him. He says, follow me. Now I didn't know this when I was younger, but God had been calling out to me, asking, inviting me to follow him ever since I was a kid. Follow me. I'm real. Follow me. But he calls out to Levi and he says, follow me. So leaving everything behind, he got up and began to follow him. Then Levi hosted a grand banquet for him at his house. Now there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others who were reclining at the table with them. Those others are other sinners, mainly verse 30. But the Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples. Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? Why would Jesus hang out with these sinful, dirty, non churchy, non religious, non spiritual, immoral people? Why would he do that? Jesus replied to them, it's not those who are healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. And every single one of those words are important. The difference between righteous and sick, what repentance means, all that's important. So Jesus calls Levi a tax collector. Now you probably know what a tax collector is. Oh, maybe I went too far. Levi calls, or Jesus calls Levi the tax collector. A tax collector was a man who collected taxes for the Roman government. But to really understand Levi's story, he was Jewish. His name was Levi, which means he came from the tribe of Levi. So there's 12 tribes in the Old Testament. The 12 tribes you have the 12 tribes of Israel. They each all have, like, a head of the tribe, the sons of Jacob. And Levi was one. And the Levites are very important because this particular family, this particular group of Jewish people, the sons of this group, were all called to a certain kind of ministry type life. Now, there were two different groups of Levites. They were the Levites that were the son of Aaron. So that's a very particular line within the tribe of Levi. And then there were Levites, not necessarily the tribe of Aaron, but they would work outside of the tabernacle or the temple. So Levi is a Jewish boy growing up in his family. He was called by birth to work in the temple, the religious temple. Like, if you go to Jerusalem today and you see the Temple Mount, that kind of temple, that's not the same exact temple during this time, but similar. So he's working in the temple. That's what he should be doing. We don't have his whole backstory, but for some reason, Levi ends up being a black sheep, a runt of his family. Someone like me who just hated and left rebelled. I don't want to do anything with anybody. How many of you are rebels in the room, right? You would expect more rebels to raise their hand because they're rebels. If I was like, how many introverts are there in the room? Nobody. Anyway, how many rebels? Right? Levi somehow became a rebel. I don't know what his story was. We don't know his backstory. But he decided, I'm leaving my mom and dad. I'm leaving my family. I'm leaving the occupation that was set for me by birth. I am totally abandoning everything, and I'm becoming a tax collector, which is despicable in the eyes of the Jews, right? It was just like brokers who rely on commission or credit card companies that rely on interest. Or tax collectors had to add fees to make a living. So they would go to Rome. Basically, you could buy positions because you ended up becoming wealthy as, like, an investment. You had to go to the Roman government, be like, hey, I'll collect taxes in this town for you. I'll collect. I'll say, $5,000 for you. I'll collect this much. Is this enough? And they'll be like, sure, we'll commission you. You know, you're great. We're gonna do it. We'll give you a Roman soldier. You'll be protected. You're a tax collector. So they will do that for the tax collectors. But the Jewish people hated tax collectors because you had to turn on Your people. And you had to collect interest from them. You had to overcharge them so that you could give money, so that you can gain money. Jesus referenced tax collectors and outsiders. In Matthew, chapter 5, verses 46 and chapter 18, verse 17, Jesus referenced tax collectors as outsiders, outcasts. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don't even the tax collectors do the same? So he's using that. Not fully derogatory, but he's using that to say, hey, even the people that you think are totally bad, they love people that love them. In chapter 18, verse 17, if he doesn't pay attention to them. This is the section in Matthew 18 about church discipline. You know, if someone sins against you, go to them in private. If they don't listen to you, bring someone else. If they don't listen to that person, bring the church. If they don't listen to the church, then consider them this way. If he doesn't pay attention to them, tell the church. If he doesn't pay attention even to the church, let him be like a Gentile and a tax collector to you. These are Jesus words. So Jesus even taught that tax collectors were total outsiders, outcasts. They're considered despicable in the eyes of the people. They were traitors. There's two main passages of Scripture that speak about why tax collectors are sinners. In the law you have, if you lend money to any of my people, that's the Jews with you who is poor. You shall not be like a money lender to him, and you shall not exact interest from him. Tax collectors had to break this law. Then in Leviticus 25, do not profit or take interest from a fellow Jew, but fear your God and let your brother live among you. You are not to lend him your silver with interest or sell him your food for profit. So Levi the tax collector was hated by his neighbors, his people, his family. He abandoned his name. He abandoned his tribe. He was a sinner and a traitor. And that's when Jesus came to him and said, follow me. The worst of sinners, follow me. In Luke and Mark's accounts, his name is Levi. But in Matthew's Gospel, in Matthew 9, 9, as Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And he said to him, follow me. And he got up and followed him. Why did Matthew change his name to Matthew? Why does the Matthew? Here's what's crazy. Luke and Mark. Mark was not one of the 12 disciples. Mark was a disciple of Peter. I think it was Mark's house that they were in the upper room in. But that's church history and we don't know if that's absolutely true. Technically not in the scripture. But you know the guy who ran away naked, I think it's Mark. I think Mark was a boy during this time and I think that's how Mark, John, Mark ended up being a part of the group. Mark writes his gospel based on Peter's account. Peter calls him Levi. Luke, the doctor who is friends with Paul calls him Levi. Sorry, the other one calls him Levi too. But Matthew, who is one of the disciples, said Jesus called the tax collector named Matthew because Jesus changed Levi's name. Levi was his birth name. Jesus changed his name to Matthew. Does anyone know what Matthew means? Gift of God. A gift from God. Jesus saw Levi not through the lens of his entire life and his worst mistakes and all his sins and what he had become. Jesus saw Levi through the eyes of grace and mercy, calls him to follow him. Levi. Matthew drops everything, follows him, repents. Obviously from the context of the passage, he's repentant, invites his other sinner friends and is like, you've got to meet Jesus. You've got to know the real Jesus. You don't need a religious Jewish faith that also doesn't save because the law is not going to save you. You don't need a demonic faith, one that says, sure, I believe, but you don't really believe. You believe he exists, but you don't love him. You don't hate your sin. You know, demons, when they see Jesus, even in the Gospels, they shudder. They don't love him, they're afraid of him. Non Christians who say they're Christians, they talk a good game in front of people. But when it gets down to the deep spiritual things of loving Christ, it is the most awkward thing to see a non Christian kind of back up and be like, I don't understand any of this. It's because you're missing love and you will never love Jesus until you receive his love for you. Like Matthew did, whose name is ironic. He used to steal from God's people and Jesus made him into a gift of God. One who gifted people, gifted us with the whole gospel, changed his name, changed his life. God has a way of changing people's life as they turn to him and follow him. And that's the invitation anybody in this room, if you are not a Christian or if you are second guessing whether you're a Christian, there's nothing wrong with working that out. Maybe you are a Christian, but Right now, you're not sure. Turn to Jesus in repentance. Repentance of God. I am not right. You're right. I'm not. Good. You're good. And just like First John says, we did not love him first, but he loved us first, we love him because he loved us first. The only way to come to Jesus is it was with the heart receiving God's love. If you don't believe that Jesus suffered and died in your place for your sins, that he bled for you out of his love for you, you're never going to love him. You can't manufacture worship. You can raise your hand. You can dance around. You can sing real loud. You could smile. You can't manufacture love. You will love him when you receive his love for you. And this week, starting tomorrow, I have five sermons with you in a Q and A. I want to show you one of the clearest pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament, of how you can know his love for you. I don't know if they've ever done a series at Gull Lake Ministry out of the book of Leviticus. And right now, all the people that have gone to my church are feeling a little. I spent 25 weeks in the Book of Leviticus at our church this past year. I want to go through just the first chapters of Leviticus. A book maybe you've never studied or you've read and thought, this is really bloody and weird. Let me just move on. I want to show you how in Leviticus, the tribe, the book attributed to the tribe of Levi, where Matthew comes from, that book is the clearest picture of Jesus and who he is and what he did for you. And I want to share this week what the first five sacrifices in the first seven chapters of Luke or Leviticus demonstrate who Jesus is and what he wants for your life right now. I want to do that this week, and I hope you guys come to the adult sessions. If you're willing to study Leviticus with me, you're welcome to come. I would love to pray for you. And then I think I'm handing over to Matt. Father, thank you for this day. I thank you for Matthew and the way that you changed his life and called him to follow you. I pray that you would help us during this vacation time to be with you, to have sweet moments with you, to come to you, to hear from you. We pray that you would speak through your word, that as we study your word, that you would do a supernatural work in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives, with our families. With our friends in our own communities. Our prayer at Gull Lake is that you would be honored and glorified. That our kids would be able to see college students who love you, have fun with them and invest in them and love them. That your word would be taught and that we would be able to have fun. Be with us. Give us the joy of your spirit. We pray in Jesus name, Amen.