Bobby Bosler: Welcome to the Thee Generation Podcast. I’m Bobby Bosler, and I’m speaking to you today from Kettering, Ohio, where I’m with a good friend of mine, Josiah Kagan, pastor of Grace Baptist Church. And Pastor Kagan is someone who loves young people and who has a burden to see the next generation of young people go on for God and serve him. And so I’m going to have Pastor Kagan share something God’s put in his heart.

There have been a few things that happened here recently in this area, and I know he’s going to tie that in. So Pastor Josiah, can you please take it away?

Well, thanks, Brother Bosler, for the opportunity to be on the podcast. I’m delighted just to share my heart and try to be a help and a blessing today. If you’ve been listening to the news over the past week, you certainly heard about the shootings both in El Paso, Texas, but also here in Dayton, Ohio. And it was pretty startling to wake up Sunday morning to realize that not too many miles from my home, there was a mass shooting.

There was a pretty murderous act that went on down in the main entertainment area. Certainly good things weren’t happening down there as people were out late at night. But even worse is this mass shooter came down there and began to just spray bullets. And it was pretty horrible.

Nine killed, including his sister. That’s the thing that just shocks me. He shot his sister. That’s just amazing to me.

And there’s many people that right now are just questioning why. As you listen to the newscasts, people are asking why did this happen? And certainly there might be some specifics, but we understand that at the base level, there was something going on inside of his heart that no one saw, no one perhaps expected, but it came out and was magnified when he took a weapon and just began to spray bullets. And today, I really just want to encourage us out of this thought, out of what has happened down there, I want to encourage us about making sure that our hearts are surrendered to Jesus Christ.

Certainly, I don’t believe this young man knew Jesus Christ, and what was in his heart came out, and came out that night in a pretty horrific way. But we can take a lesson from it and make sure that our hearts are surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s really what this podcast, this Thee Generation, is all about, is having a surrendered heart, completely surrendered heart to the Lord on a daily basis. And that needs to be our daily priority.

And why so? I want to just quickly go back to something that I think is important from the book of Mark, chapter number 7. And I want you to notice the capability of our hearts. You know, the Bible tells us in Jeremiah 17 verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.

Who can know it? That’s a good question. God does. God does know our heart even better than we do.

And in the next verse, it says, I, the Lord, search the heart. He’s the one that knows the heart. He knows every aspect of it. And many people right now, when they see a grievous sin like this shooting or other grievous sins.

They try to blame their sin on culture, on family life, their upbringing, some injustices from the past, maybe even mental illness. But Jesus tells us that every sin originates inside of the human heart. And he tells us that in Mark chapter 7 verse 21, for from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, and catch that, that’s important for our culture right now, murders, thefts, foolishness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness. Now there’s a word that we don’t use often, but I like to define it as lawless living.

You’re just completely abandon yourself to just to sin and immorality of any kind. And an evil eye, just an eye that has an, has sight for evil, blasphemy, pride, foolishness, all these things come from within and defile the man. So Jesus was speaking to the religious leaders of that day and saying, listen, you know, you try to keep your outside all nice and clean and tidy, but inside is where the real battle is going on. And from your heart comes everything.

One commentator said it this way, these things have an inward origin and are vomited forth from the crater of the heart or soul. And so from my heart, from your heart comes every sin imaginable. And I like this quote, and you can jot this down. Remember, the heart of the problem is always the problem of the heart.

And so when you see sin coming up in your life, you need to go back to the heart. What’s going on inside your heart as a young person? So what’s the solution to this? Well, Jesus is.

And that’s the solution to everything. We believe that’s the hope of everything. And so notice the cleansing of the heart, not just the capability, it can do any sin, but the cleansing of the heart. And I want to bring our attention over to 1 Corinthians 6 and verse 9, where it says, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?

Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. And so Paul’s bringing back out this list and saying, listen, there’s all these sins that are going on. Yes, they originate from the heart. And these are the sins that keep people from spending an eternity with God, their creator forever in heaven.

And so he goes on to say, listen, Corinthians, some of these things that are going on in the church, they’re not good because these are the very sins that are keeping people from heaven. And he says this in verse number 11 of chapter six, and such were some of you. He puts it in the past, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the spirit of our God. And so Paul notes some facts.

He says, this isn’t you anymore. This be dreaming up in your heart and acting out in your behavior. Notice these three facts. He says, you’re washed.

The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sin, our past sin, our present sin, our future sin, from all our sin. You’re sanctified. You’re set apart to God. And yes, that has, there’s a positional truth about that.

We are sanctified. We’re set apart to God, but that’s being acted out. That’s being played out in our daily lives, a progressive sanctification. And I’m thanking God even right now for his work in my life to set me apart more and more to Jesus Christ every single day.

And he says, you’re justified, declared righteous before a holy God. And what an amazing thing. I love what one commentator said, such a fathomous death of grace is not to be recrossed. Wow, just the grace of God to do that in our lives.

And he says, you’re Corinthians, he goes on, and he helps them understand you’ve gotten lax. You’re going back into things you should not be involved in. You’re doing things you should not be doing. You’re cleansed.

Live that way. And so he says in verse number 15, know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid.

And in verse 18 says, flee fornication. So they had gotten involved in all sorts of sexual impurity. And he’s saying, listen, this is not right. This is what unsaved people do.

This is what people who are not going to heaven do. You should not be living this way. You have been cleansed. Live like it.

What I find so sad, even as a pastor is oftentimes seeing Christians live in sin that unsaved people are characterized by, and it ought not be. And all over the Bible, whether it’s Romans 6 or here in Corinthians, we hear words like, God forbid. We should not be living that way. So what’s the key?

How can you and I, how can you as a young person in this increasingly godless society, live in a way that pleases God live in a way that promotes him and is pleasing to him what’s the key it’s daily surrender it’s daily surrendering my heart to the Holy Spirit of God and so notice the consecration of the heart in first Corinthians 6 19 and 20 what know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you he dwells in you which ye have of God and you’re not your own for ye are bought with a price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God’s you’ve been bought with a price the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ bought your soul he redeemed you he bought you back from sin and he’s given you a place in the family of God a place that can never be taken away it’s an amazing truth there’s security in that he has purchased that and now he’s saying listen I want you to glorify I want you to exalt I want you to magnify God in your culture in your community in your church in your family not just in your body not just in the externals but also in the internals in your heart too so I’m to glorify God from the inside from my spirit to the outside my body I am to let it start in my heart I’m to allow God to have control of my heart is to be surrendered to him and allow him to change my actions as I go forward. And I love what one man said, head, think of him whose brow was thorn girt. Hands toil for him whose hands were nailed to the cross. Feet spread on speed to do his bidding whose feet were pierced.

Body of mind, be his temple whose body was wrung with pains unspeakable. When I think about what Jesus Christ did to go through, to change me from being a hell-bound sinner to being a heaven-bound saint, I need to just stop and say, God, I’m all yours. Whatever you want from me, I’m all yours. And I find, and I’ve even heard this week, some say, I could never, I would never do such a sin.

Friends, I want you to understand that the unsurrendered heart is capable of any sin, any sin. And maybe that shocks you, but if it does, I hope you’ll chew on that for a little while. Because my heart, when it’s not surrendered to the Lord Jesus Christ on a daily basis, is capable of doing anything. And so maybe here’s a rule that you can think of for each day.

Surrender your heart before you ever start. Surrender your heart before you ever start. Before you go off to school, school starts here soon, before you go down and meet the rest of your family for breakfast, before you do anything, before you get on Facebook, before you get on Instagram, start talking, surrender your heart before you ever start. Make it not my will, but yours, Lord.

Surrender your heart before you ever start. And so thanks for the opportunity to be on the podcast

today. I hope that’s a blessing. Amen. Thank you so much for that, Pastor Josiah.

You know, young people, the solution is Jesus. The access is total surrender to him. I love that. Surrender your heart before you ever start, you know, young people, the shooting in Dayton would have never happened if that man had been saved and surrendered to Jesus Christ.

And there are plenty of things that might happen this week if your heart is not surrendered to him. So this is what we’re all about. You hit the nail on the head. This is total surrender to God.

And you know, not just total surrender to keep us out of sin, but God has a positive will for our lives and total dependence on his power to turn the world upside down with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thank you so much for listening.