Gates of Hell | The Pursuit | 03.08.26 | Russell Johnson

0:00Welcome to Church. Happen to be here. I just got back from Greenville, South Carolina, which is just about as close to a different country as you can be in from the Pacific Northwest different people, different climate, different culture, but happy to be back home here in the tsunami of whatever's happening here in our weather, but do appreciate you being in church. I know that a lot of the roads is closed and you know, they've got like really two seasons here in the Northwest. It's like road construction season and then more road construction season and we're in one of those seasons now, but do it do appreciate you make it a commitment to be here in the house of God. At nearing the end of his public ministry six months prior to his crucifixion, there is a turning point in the ministry of Christ where he transitions his teaching to preparing his disciples for his soon-to-happened death and

1:06resurrection for for for for three years he has primarily instructed the crowds done miracle after miracle taught in the synagogue and three years into his three and a half year public ministry there's a transition in his teaching to now privately preparing the twelve disciples for what is about to happen. The death and the resurrection of the one that they have followed and that conversation is hosted in in Matthew 16 where Jesus pulls the disciples aside at our particular geographic location and has a conversation with them that really functions as like a card turning on the blinker. I'm switching lanes this is like a watershed moment for the ministry and I'm now preparing you in my narrative for my my soon-coming betrayal crucifixion, resurrection and ascension. That all begins in Matthew 16

2:10and I wanted to share that story with you today starting in verse 13 the Bible says this when Jesus came into the region of cesarea philipite he asks his disciples saying who do men say that I the son of man am and they responded to him some say you're a John the Baptist some Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. For three years a Ragtag group of twelve men have followed Jesus as he travels around Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria with one central message the kingdom is coming the kingdom is here and the kingdom is advancing all at the same time in fact the most talked about topic in the New Testament is the kingdom of God. Watch some of the things that Jesus says about this reality unless you have faith like a child you cannot enter the kingdom you have been entrusted with the mysteries of the kingdom seek first the kingdom it is your father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom unless you were born

3:14again not a flesh but of spirit you cannot enter into the kingdom blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom. Jesus preaches praise and teaches and builds the kingdom of God but but a kingdom cannot exist without a king who rules and reigns supreme and for three years these disciples have heard these rumors for for three years the crowds have seen the miracles and for three years the religious leaders have been all but outraged by the audacity of Jesus to renegotiate the mosaic law and center himself as the fulfillment of everything the law and the prophets hangs on but not until Matthew 16 does Jesus begin to address the elephant in the room which is this if there is a kingdom there must be a king so where is that king when will he appear and how will he save his people for a moment today think about the

4:22type of of men who are following Jesus Matthew is a tax collector the most hated job back then and also the most hated profession today Simon was a political zealot Judas was a crappy bookkeeper who stole money from the ministry of Christ he got Andrew Peter James and John who are blue collar fishermen that none of these men are theological experts or religious scholars and three years into the journey of following this man named Jesus that they're beginning to get a little anxious you know sometimes we think that as soon as Jesus called these men to be disciples they had like an instantaneous revelation of the fullness of who Jesus was but that's not the case they like Jesus and they followed Jesus but they were not entirely sure what they were signing up for or who they were committed to following they seen the miracles

5:25they know he teaches with authority they know that he rebukes the religious leaders but who exactly is this Jesus in Luke 7 the disciples asked Jesus are you the one or should we wait for another and Matthew 13 the disciples tell Jesus we don't understand what you're talking about when you speak in parables so please tell us plainly who you are and what you're about in John 13 the disciples are confused about why Jesus would wash their feet because this is not the normative behavior of a religious rabbi so Jesus tells them this what I am doing now you don't understand but later you will and if you want to grow in your relationship with Lord you ought to get a tattoo of that verse on your body everybody loves Jeremiah 29-11 for I know the plans and purposes get that one you don't understand what God's doing now but later

6:27you will and here's what I found God doesn't owe any of us an explanation none of us will ever develop until we learn to trust him in the dark and the longer you walk with God the better he gets when you don't understand what God's doing or when that resolution is going to come full circle or when that breakthrough is going to happen on your behalf the best thing that you can do is keep walking because the longer you keep walking the better that he gets I have never met somebody at the end of my life who said hey you know pastor my number one regret is that I walked too long with the Lord I wish I would have gotten saved later in life wish I would have spent more time in protocol living no typically people at the end of their life are thinking man if I just had one

7:29more day one more week one more month if I could just go to church one more time now I know to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord but if I just had one moment longer to worship this God on this side of eternity it has been worth it to follow Jesus all these years the disciples on the road to Emmaus they had to keep walking if they wanted to see Jesus the blind man in market had to walk out of the village if he wanted his sight to be restored when Jesus healed the layme often told them to pick up their mat and to start walking see when when when when you quit walking you quit learning when you quit learning you quit growing when you quit growing you start dying and when you start dying you start sinking are there things that we don't understand today about the way in which Jesus works yeah absolutely but the best thing that you can do for your faith

8:31to keep going and to keep working keep giving keep attending keep praying keep knocking keep worshiping because the longer you walk the better that he gets the disciples are in this type of stage of relationship with the Lord we don't understand what you're doing we don't understand what you're saying are you the promised Messiah or should we wait for somebody else and the response of Jesus for three years has been like yeah you ain't go understand but just just just keep following me and and that leads us to the conversation in in Matthew 16 Jesus knowing the anxiety that troubles the disciples heart knowing that his time is short knowing that his betrayal and and crucifixion are right around the corner he walks with his disciples into a region named Cessaria Philippi and uses the landscape as the backdrop for his grand reveal

9:36and what a place Cessaria Philippi was the Greco Roman culture is spiritual the problem is they're just spiritual in the wrong direction the citizens of the empire worship the gods and goddesses of their pagan mythology they got gods for war gods for sex gods for the air the water in the land they got gods in the underworld that must be appeased gods in the sky that they must fear and Cessaria Philippi was the ultimate example and expression of a pagan people worshiping pagan gods and it seemingly makes no sense why Jesus would reveal himself here why not in the temple why not in Bethlehem where he was born why not Nazareth where he did his miracles why not near the sea of Galilee where he walked on water why not in Bethany where he raised his friend Lazarus from the dead why would Jesus make the most crucial announcement of his entire ministry in a place that he had never visited before that was known for pagan idolatry

10:39Cessaria Philippi was a cesspool of spiritual darkness demonic resistance on a level so profane it was even shocking to the people of the first century let me show you an artistic rendering of what this city would have looked like during the time of Jesus in total there would have been 14 temples built into the landscape of Cessaria Philippi because Cessaria Philippi is located on the highest mountain in Israel it was seen as an intrinsically spiritual place where pagans would gather to conduct their sacrifices this was like the Costco for pagan worship in the first century this would be like if I were on stage today and saying hey guys we're so excited for our Easter services we're actually going to be holding it at the Mormon tabernacle down the street this year

11:42it's going to be incredible it's it's called brand confusion uh what don't you think if you're going to be like making maybe the most important announcement ever in human history that you are the son of the living god that maybe that would happen and a little bit more of a religiously appropriate place and and and and and and and and Jesus goes to the epicenter of pagan worship 14 temples built into the mountain of the highest peak in that region and Jesus is like yeah here would be a perfect place for me to forever change world history through one revelatory word that will finally reveal to these disciples and by virtue to the entire world that I am who the Bible says I am and I have come to do exactly what the Bible says I have come

12:47to do now every region in the ancient world had achieved deity that it worshipped but in cesarea philipite they worship the greco roman god pan pan was a half man half goat god who oversaw nature shepherds flocks fields music and fertility and played a weird little instrument that today we call the pan flute and I know you're looking at this picture today and you're thinking this is weird and odd and I cannot believe that there would have ever been people on the planet who would have thought that a god like that existed and not only that but made a journey up a mountain to offer sacrifice in a temple to honor this god and it does seem ridiculous it seems like this cannot be true but if the Lord were to carry for a thousand years and he won't but if he were an archaeologist were to dig up our culture today our gods would look just as stupid

13:48see we're we're looking at a god like pan through the lens of enlightenment and the digital age and technology and wisdom and education and academia and we think we are so smart and so educated that none of us in this room would ever and I don't know why the great gods are always missing their shirts but wait at all the gods that ever be tempted to worship it's not this dude it's it's not this guy but the only reason that our gods today don't look this foolish is because they are our gods and we build gods in our own image and idle is anything that you put your trust in more than the god of this book and in a thousand years if archaeologists were to dig up

14:53our civilization and see a bunch of people staring at phones for 18 hours a day or capitulating towards all the different things that compete for our time money and affection in the modern world I promise you there would be some young preacher who would stand on a stage and say can you believe how ridiculous they were in the year 2026 that they put their faith and their allegiance and their fidelity and a god that looked like that it's interesting the great god pan is where we get the english word panic because according to the legend of the first century pan would strike irrational fear in the hearts of people that would cause them to flee at random times for no apparent reason therefore the word panic was used to describe the behavior that the god pan would induce and to be completely honest that's pretty fair because if you were ever minding your own business and all of a sudden heard a weird flute behind you and turned around and saw that it wouldn't do some panic in your life as well

15:59so he became known as the god who was associated with irrational fear and when people would be dealing with those types of feelings they knew it was time to go to the mountain to offer our sacrifice to the god pan the cesarea philippa is ground zero it's the most central and concentrated place of demonic authority activity and worship that exists in its day the disciples are probably elbowing each other as they walk into this destination city for witches and warlocks thinking to themselves man Jesus is really lost his mind this time doesn't he know what this place is known for what on earth are we doing here and what does Jesus do he he gathers up the team for a quick huddle and he says guys this is the perfect place to make the most important announcement that you have all been waiting for since the day I called you by name and here it is who to men say that I am now by the way Jesus doesn't ask

17:00questions for his benefit he asks questions for yours when you sense like gods asking you a question it's not because he's looking for advice or doesn't know the answer it's because you don't know the answer and through iterative dialogue with the Lord all of a sudden you begin to discover truly that which is in your heart so the disciples begin to offer up answers that they're hearing from the crowd well some say you're John the Baptist you know his head was cut off maybe you've come back from the dead others say you're a large of the prophets some say you're a good teacher others say you're Jeremiah reincarnated you know I mean everybody's got a different opinion about who you are they they know you're from God but they don't know if you are of God they they they know you're a good teacher but they don't know if you are v teacher they they know that you're religious they know that you're holy they they know that you communicate with authority but they don't know who you are their best guesses are just that guesses

18:04grasping at straws we know there's something different about the way that this rabbi walks but we're just not able to put our fingers on exactly who he is I think the people were hoping for an Elijah to rescue them from their problems but they weren't so ready for a Jesus to save them from their sins Jesus is asking them who who to who to men say that I am as a setup for the next question which will be who do you say that I am but I think it bears mentioning in this context that your life is not transformed by virtue of somebody else's declaration of who Jesus is you you do not get into heaven based on somebody else's revelation of who Jesus is you can sit in this church every day until kingdom come but until you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that Jesus is Lord and God raised him from the dead you are on your way to a Christless eternity you don't stand before the great white throne of judgment and say,

19:06my grandma went to church every week I mean she had to be religious enough for our entire family don't I kind of get in by default no because the only question that will matter when you see him face to face is not who did Russell say him to be is not who did your spouse say him to be is not who that Sunday school teacher or that sober coach or that AA counselor or the last psychologist you saw or that college campus professor that you that that you really appreciated it's going to be who did you declare this Jesus to be you are not saved by anybody else's confession except your own who who did you declare you know it was funny after the hawks went to Super Bowl and everybody's down and downtown for the um Super Bowl parade and the news cameras is interviewing a bunch of people on the streets and I

20:07kept hearing folks say this we won I said we didn't do nothing we bought tickets we watched from the safety of our living rooms but we didn't actually do anything they don't even know we exist they won we're here to celebrate that they won but you don't get access to any of the benefits that they've secured by virtue of watching them win from the safety of your living room you get the benefit if you're on the team now you don't have to be the starting quarterback in order to get a Super Bowl ring you could be a bench player that maybe hasn't barely seen any action all season but as long as you're on the team you get recognized what a ring once the big game is finished you don't have to be a superstar

21:09in Christianity name in the bright lights in order to make it into heaven but you got to be on the team and the way that you get on the team is is is is is is is is not by virtue of the religious nostalgia of great Grammy or Grampy who would pray for you before you go to sleep at night if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart Jesus is Lord you're on the team and the devil can't take you off the team and your name is written in the lambs book of life I'm not here to ask you what does the world say what are your friends say what are your parents say what is your Sunday school teacher I'm asking who do you declare this Jesus to be and they're probably thinking themselves Jesus this is a weird place to interview us you know behind us there is 14 temples offering sacrifice to pagan gods feels a little non religiously

22:10respective to be hosting this conversation in cesarea philipi in verse 15 the Bible says this he said to them but but who do you say that I am son and Peter answered and said you are the Christ the son of the living God now you probably already know this but you know when we talk about Jesus Christ that's not like talking about Russell Johnson it's not first name last name Christ is a title it's a messianic designation Jesus the Christ the son of the living God and this kind of comes out of Peter's mouth and Peter should just feel blessed that he's even included in the 12th he's always sticking his foot in his mouth and hey I want to be the one who walks on water ends up denying Christ three times trying to kill a soldier servant with a sword I'll never let you go to Jerusalem you're never going to be

23:12crucified get behind me say in I mean you know God bless Peter for swinging at every pitch that gets thrown his way but he's got more strikeouts than homers at this point and when Jesus turns to the 12 and is like all right I've heard what other people's opinions are but at the end of the day those are just that opinions they're like armpits everybody has them they all stink who do you say that see there's a difference between having an opinion and having a declaration now I'm switching it up first I was asking who do they say I am now I'm asking who do you say that I am and I feel like when Peter opens his mouth the other 11 are kind of grown and like here we go again this is not going to be great and Peter responds he says you are the Christ you are the Messiah you are the promised one you you you you are the one that the

24:15prophets told us were coming but they died not yet receiving their promise you are the one that the patriarchs left what they knew to a land unknown because they attached themselves to a covenant keeping God you are the very fullest expression of everything that the last covenant looks forward to you are the Christ and on the backdrop of all these dead gods you're the son of the living God watch watch I think the reason why Jesus has led his disciples all the way to Cecilia Philippi in order for this revelation to be had and this announcement to be made this because when Peter says you are the Christ it serves as a prophetic indictment against the rulers of the air and the principalities and powers of darkness Jesus goes to the very doorstep of rank paganism and says this is my kingdom I am its king and my father is the living God so so so watch what happens so Jesus answered and said to him blessed are you Simon son of Jonah

25:20for flesh and blood had not revealed this to you but my father who was in heaven and I also say to you that you was Peter and on this rock I'll build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it our friends in the catholic church would look at this as the moment that Jesus makes Peter the chief apostle of the church and that every leader in kind of apostolic succession that has followed him has been in like the direct spiritual lineage of Peter and is the victor of Christ to oversee the church and here in Protestant world we don't think that's the case not because God doesn't use Peter Peter preaches the message on the day of Pentecost that plants the New Testament church church history records that he becomes the bishop of the church in Rome it's not that he is unimportant in the first century but when Jesus says to him Peter um that's right and and upon that rock I'm I'm gonna build my church

26:30we wouldn't view that through the lens of Jesus saying Peter you have performed so well over the last three years that you have finally passed the test of who I am and because now I fully trust you with this thing called the local church I am making you the first Pope and all popes who will follow you will now be within the successive spiritual lineage of what I'm establishing here in Matthew 16 the way that we would view that is that when Jesus is saying to Peter upon this rock I'm gonna build my church the rock is the revelation that Peter has not Peter as a person just like in this church the rock of this church is not my ability to preach and it's not my personality the the foundation of this church is Jesus the Christ the Son of the living God Paul says it this way Christ is the stone that the builders has rejected that has become the chief rock or the chief cornerstone or the chief foundation for our faith everything that is built on the chief cornerstone of Christ can survive the wind and the rain

27:34and the storms that come against it everything that is not built on the rock is built on the sand and at the first sign of trouble it gets washed away and that's why you know even in church world even in this church as we're growing and God's expanding and He's giving us grace as it pertains to our influence at the end of the day you ought to remember like that your hope and your faith is not built on what the leadership of this church is able to provide for you it's built on something way more sustaining in its power and its authority than my ability to exegete the text if your eyes are on me it's only a matter of time before you get disappointed with something I do or something I say or how I preach or the cause I wear I mean I go out of my

28:35way to try and disappoint religious people on a regular basis but it's only a matter of time before you feel that way too I don't know people are still offended at helicopters from the Vietnam war you know I just woke up Monday morning and all of a sudden things are going viral and all these messages and people are like I hope this helicopter crashes we're so bad we can't cheese I you know just another fraud another you know this is and this is why I don't go to church you don't go to church because the pastor is in a two-seat two-seater yellow helicopter looks like it was built out of a cracker jack box that's why you don't go to church like like you you think you're gonna casually stroll into eternity and look into the face of the one whose eyes burn hotter than 10,000 sons and you're gonna say the reason I didn't go to church and live life as a

29:39faithful Christian is because I saw a pastor on Instagram once get in a yellow helicopter and I didn't like it stupid dumb your eyes are on the wrong thing your foundation is built on the wrong thing you you you're gonna get disappointed in people you're gonna you're gonna hear stories and see things and get hurt one way or another and that is part of what it means to be human it means that the capacity to feel things that you often don't like it it's it's you know you ever heard somebody say I didn't know if it was a dream or not so I went to pinch myself they don't pinch themselves because it feels good they pinch themselves because pain is an indicator that you're alive what happens is people get propped up in an environment people put all their faith in that person and then as soon as that person falls off a pedestal they get mad at God

30:46the the foundation of the churches and Peter else we're all in trouble the foundation of the churches Christ the God man the one who was perfect the one who death couldn't kill because on the third day God raised him by his own spirit and now he's seated in heavenly places and he is soon returning for his bride the church is not built on man it's built on God so when Jesus says Peter flesh and blood hasn't revealed that to you what he's saying is that this is not by virtue of human reasoning you did not like reverse deduce this from some sort of like philosophical equation and then figure out that I'm the Christ this is revelation from heaven that God's placed in your heart and by the way this revelation that's the foundation I'm building everything on from this moment forward that I am the Christ the son of the living God and then and then Jesus says and from now on by the way I'm calling you Peter change in your name

31:46why because in the ancient world people's names were often changed after significant spiritual encounters happens to Abraham happens to Sarah happens to Jacob now happens to Peter he's like nah Simon bar Jonah I'm switching your name from here on out you're going to be known as Peter why because when you come to Jesus you don't become like an improved version of who you were before you found Christ you don't go from Diet Coke to Coke you're not going from generic to name brand you are a new creation the old you is dead it's gone it's over the new creation has come so so Jesus is saying to Peter like in this moment everything's changing for you in fact it's so changing that I can't even call you the same name that I used to call you and it's going to represent that everything in your life has shifted you got to remind yourself today God doesn't God doesn't call me by my past mistakes God doesn't call me by my greatest singular moment of

32:49failure I'm not who I used to be I'm everything that God declares me to be you know you have permission today to operate under a new identity if you belong to Christ you have permission there might be people in your life who remember the old version of you okay fine fine let people say whatever they say or talk however they talk at the end of the day is what God has established the name he's written on your forehead the spirit of adoption that he's given you in your soul you're a new creation whether you like it or not so watch what happens I'll finish up here and watch what Jesus says he says I'm going to build my church on this revelation and the gates of hell will not prevail against it I want to show you the gates of hell today because I'm sure some of you in your mind have a real dramatic picture and this is it it's like a grotto you might be looking at that today going that don't look so scary and it's not looks relatively

33:54peaceful maybe something you save as a screensaver on your laptop rather innocuous the gates of hell really Jesus is talking there well you know the gates of hell wasn't just some like spiritual allegorical language Jesus was using it was like a geographical location if you had to your Google maps you could have put in gates of hell it would have taken you there it was a name in the culture used for this location right here and let me tell you why it's because at this grotto here where this water is in that cave this is where sacrifice and offerings were made to the Greek God pan and here was the sacrifices that were offered to him young animals or infant children were thrown alive into the caves pool of turbulent water as an act of sacrifice because pan was in charge of fear and anxiety when people were feeling anxious they would travel to cesarea

34:54philipi and offer sacrifices to alleviate their fears so when they were feeling anxious instead of like you know running to the medicine cabinet to pop a pill they would take the journey to cesarea philipi to offer something of value to the Greek God pan to alleviate their fear and anxiety hear me what you run to when you're afraid actually reveals the God that you worship most now they believe that if the offering sank and disappeared into the depths it was interpreted as a positive sign that pan had accepted the sacrifice by taking it into the underworld but if blood appeared in a nearby spring it would indicate that the victim was rejected and dashed against the rocks not accepted by pan and in doing so the family would have to go back

35:57home find another sacrifice and journey back to cesarea philipi on another day and today people line up to gaze upon which that which used to be a gateway to the underworld which is now just a monument to a time when Jesus declared over darkness you have lost your grip on the city's you torment meet me and lighty have been there um we actually led a worship set there and then I preached right right out in front of the gates of hell and cesarea philipi as like all these tourists with selfie sticks are taking pictures um they actually made uh cesarea philipi a national park in israel it's like people travel there today um because uh you know as pilgrims they're interested in the places that Jesus went and the real regions and cities that that that the bible talks about and cesarea philipi is one of them and today like people are taking like family pictures

37:04think about it they're holding children taking family pictures in front of what used to be the gates of hell where families would take their children and throw them into the water to drown to be taken into the underworld by a demonic half goat god that they worshipped and two thousand years later it's selfie sticks acoustic guitars and worship songs why because the gates of hell did not prevail against the advancement of the church do you know that in 2020 this was just six years ago in 2020 there was an archaeologist team working in cesarea philipi and they uncovered uh remains from a church that was built in the fourth century exactly over where the temple to pan stood in cesarea philipi 300 years after

38:04Jesus is telling the disciples in this moment i am the christ like christian crusaders are building churches on the rubble of the roman temples i want you to think about this concept as it pertains to your life is some of you had this experience you're flipping through your phone you're looking at your photos and you eventually find your bc era before you met jesus or you're flipping through that photo album you found in the attic and finding a bunch of polaroids of before you met jesus and you're thinking to yourself man i can't even remember what life used to be like back then i feel like a different person feels like a different world feels like a different time even look at it and you start to chuckle man i can't believe that that's the way that life

39:10used to look before i met jesus what is that a living breathing example of the gates of hell not being able to prevail against the advancement of king jesus in your life and in your sphere of influence so what jesus declared two thousand years ago in matthew sixteen is still the declaration of the church today why because the foundation hasn't changed and if the foundation hasn't changed and only the methods shift from time to time then the message remains pure and the message for this region is no matter how nasty norly or demonic the gates of hell look like in the pacific northwest or in your family or in your generational line is not more than a couple interactions with god before that which used to terrify you is now like a tourist destination for people who don't even have a frame of reference for what this place used to represent jesus is here telling his

40:10disciples uh i'm the son of the living god and parents behind him are screaming grieving and travailing as they're casting their infant children into the water to appease god and on the backdrop of that chaos it's like jesus is telling his disciples um i'm not that because i as the son of god will be put up on a tree and offered for your life but you won't ever have to take your kids and throw them away so that you can appease me it's my life that will appease the wrath of god and in doing so give you life and give you righteousness and give you blessing i am not like the gods of this pagan culture for my kingdom will destroy these rituals in in doing so replace it with an invitation uh in in in to new life you know

41:11there's gonna come a day where where where the gates of of hell in the pacific northwest or nothing more than like plaques that talk about a time where this stuff used to be true if you all have never done it you should do it but they they have this thing called the underground tour in Seattle you can actually see that Seattle has been built layer over layer over layer and back before they had that great fire you know they have built out Seattle but it was a layer now and now the only thing that's left is a bunch of plaques we we was down there taking taking that tour and they said well this is where they were running prostitutes and this is where they were making illegal whiskey and this is where the you know child labor and this you know they had all these plaques and in in in the underground tour about all these places that used to represent all these types of different things and and and and i thought to myself the only thing that's left is a little plaque and a fifteen dollar ticket that you have to buy to see a time where these things were true now we got trouble up on surface level as well but i'll tell you there will come a time in this region where the only thing that is left of the kingdom of darkness is a plaque to

42:16memorialize where it used to stand but it stands no more because the kingdom of God has advanced and hell has not been able to prevail against it that's what's happening in your life right now the kingdom of God his imperative it's grown within you it's expelling every last framework of your old life is leaving no stone unturned in your sanctification and in your turn around maybe you'd be here today and in your recognizing i don't know if there's ever been a time like in public where i've had that confession of faith where i weren't not nobody else for me but me i've declared this is who Jesus is to me is the son of a living God he is the Christ i want to give you that opportunity today because it's never too late to begin again and your turn around can happen now and you don't have to run to what the world provides to appease

43:17the feelings of fear panic or anxiety in your life today you can have power love in a sound mind you can get rid of the spirit of fear and you can stop sacrificing to what the culture says will appease your pain there's a great physician whose name is Jesus who says come unto me all who are burdened and heavy laden and i'll give you rest that that Jesus is here today in a real way his kingdom is still advancing his kingdom is advancing in this we we are not losing this battle we are winning this battle the gates of hell they're creaking they're shaking they're like we we haven't seen this type of thing before we didn't know we thought we dominated this we thought this was our Caesarea Philippi we thought this was our ground zero for pagan idolatry but God never leaves the story halfway done and the future belongs to the people of God it belongs to the brave and we're here to serve notice on the gates of hell it's it's time for you to pack up and

44:17and head somewhere else because this place belongs to God and i want to give you an opportunity today friend if you don't know this God you don't you don't you don't have to spend the rest of your life wondering questioning not knowing where you'll spend eternity i hope i make it in by some sort of default or revote or no no you can have certainty today that i belong to God and my name has been changed we're at the Spokane campus last week and after the service had a young man come out to me and he said uh pastor um this building is really important to me and you don't even know why i said tell me he said a couple years ago i was strung out on fentanyl heroin doing drugs dealing drugs robbing people a wife had just left took the kids my whole life was destroyed and i found myself in this parking lot like wanting to just be done with it all in it all i never thought my life

45:25could improve i never thought it could turn around i never thought i could get back what i lost and he goes tonight i stood in your sanctuary here in Spokane raising my hands and worship next to my wife and next to my kids because God has turned around the gates of hell there there's not one person too far gone that God in this moment can't stand on the backdrop of your darkness and declare that there is a better day that's coming because there's a new king that's in town and that's what happens in Matthew 16 and i believe that that's what God's going to have happen for for you today but watch you stand with me as we close