Sermons in the Consumed Series

Good morning, Grace. If you're watching this, it's because we correctly guessed that we would not be able to have church on Sunday. So this is actually Thursday afternoon right now as I record this. That's why I'm preaching in my hat. Also, last time I preached, I preached in Crocs, so I figured to just round it out, this time I would preach in my hat. If that's okay with you guys, I didn't feel like I had time to go home and shower and do my hair. So if you can put up with a pastor and a hat, I'll do my best to share this morning's message with you on what is for me a Thursday afternoon. Before I dive into that, a couple things, by the way, of announcements that we wanted you to know about. You know, we left off asking the question, how can we be all in at Grace? Well, two ways to do that are, first of all, to join a small group. We say at Grace that if you're not in a small group, then you're simply not experiencing all that God has for you. So I hope that you'll do that. There's a link online. There's a link in the Gracevine. If you're not receiving the Gracevine, let us know. That comes out every week with all the details, all the information about what's going on with the church that you need to know. And you can go to our small groups page online, find the catalog there, and contact a leader. Or if you have questions, reach out to me, and I would love to try to guide you to whatever group might be the best fit for you. Another way to be all in is to attend the Discover Grace class that we are having next week following the service, if, Lord willing, we're able to have services. I'm going to stop assuming that we're just going to be able to meet every Sunday, but hopefully we'll meet next Sunday. I believe it's going to be January the 30th, and we'll have Discover Grace immediately following the service. That's a way for you to become a partner of grace, for you to find out more about who we are, how we tick, what makes us go as a church. There's lunch provided and childcare if you need it. So register ahead of time for that if you can, especially if you're going to need childcare, and we will take good care of you. But if you've never attended a Discover Grace, whether you're new to grace, you've been coming for years, you've never done one, we would love to see you at that one. Now, when we left off, the last sermon that I did was not an easy or a fun sermon because I had to come to you and say, hey, church, I see us sliding into a direction that's not good. And I really kind of called out the whole church, but you guys are so awesome. You're so great. You're so encouraging. I'm sure there are people who didn't appreciate what I had to say the last time I was able to preach. I'm sure that's out there, but the feedback that I've gotten has been universally positive. It's been a lot of folks going, you know what? Darn it. Yeah. I was consuming the church. I reduced it to a product and I need to be all in at grace. And I think all of us to some degree or another, we're a little bit convicted when I just kind of brought up the point that I see us sliding to become consumers of the church. That in our practices and patterns, we've effectively reduced church to a product to be consumed by us when and where and how we want it. And I talked about how that's a shame and that's unhealthy because that's not Jesus's attitude towards the church. Jesus's attitude towards the church is that it is his bride. He died for us. It is his plan to reach a lost and broken world, and there's no plan B. And we talked about if we just became consumers in our marriage, how quickly would those crumble? So why do we think that as the bride of Christ that we can just consume the church and that that identity really should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. And so then I ended the sermon with a challenge of, if you're at grace, if you call this place home, if you consider yourself a partner, then be all in. Be two feet in at grace, two feet in to God's kingdom and what He is doing here. And we left it off with, okay, well, what does that mean? And so that's what this week is. I feel like this is an important part two to that sermon. As a matter of fact, if you haven't seen that sermon, I would pause this right now and go back and watch that sermon and then come back to this one later today or later in the week. Because this sermon really only makes sense if you've heard the last one. And as I thought about how to answer this question for us, what does it mean? What does it look like to be all in? I was reminded of an idea that I presented to you guys, I think it was about three years ago when we were going through the book of John together in the spring. So if this first part of this sermon, if the first half of the sermon sounds familiar to you, that's why. I've preached this idea before. But to help us understand what it means to be all in, I want us to understand this idea or this concept. It's the concept that we are all kingdom builders. We are all kingdom builders. We are all actively building a kingdom. I don't know if you've ever thought of it this way, but every single one of us has time, talents, and treasures. We have gifts and abilities, and we use and leverage those with all that we have to build a kingdom. Now, it may be a small kingdom. It may be a humble kingdom. You may feel like I'm not really doing that. I don't have big aspirations. I'm not trying to build a big, huge company. I'm not trying to climb the corporate ladder or any of those things, but we all have kingdoms, little fiefdoms that we build, whether they're of our career, of our finances, of relationships, of friendships, and they're not necessarily bad, but what I want us to see and acknowledge is that we are all building a kingdom. We are all, all of us, kingdom builders. We leverage everything that we have to build something. There's none of you who are listening, none of us who will listen in the future, none of the children that you're raising that are not kingdom builders. So the question really becomes, whose kingdom am I building? Am I building my kingdom or am I building God's kingdom? And it's through that lens that I want us to view the story of John the Baptist. If you have a Bible there at home with you, you can pull it out and turn to the book of John. We're going to look at chapter 1 and then chapter 3. John the Baptist, to give you some background on him, was a really successful minister, prophet in the ancient world. He was the cousin of Jesus. He was prophesied about as a voice crying out in the wilderness, and it was his job to make it known when the Messiah arrived. It was his job to make it known, hey, Jesus is here. That was his job that was assigned to him by God to build his kingdom. This is how you're going to do it, John. You're going to be the one who introduces my son. And so to gain the credibility to do that so that the people of Israel would actually listen when John said it, he built up a ministry. People followed him. They waited in line for hours for him to baptize him at the Jordan River. They listened to what he said. John had his own disciples. John was essentially an ancient Israel, in our terms, a very well-known and successful megachurch pastor. John would have had speaking gigs and book deals. John had built himself quite a kingdom of ministry. But we get two glimpses, actually get more than two, but two that we're going to look at this morning of how John viewed all of these things. But I wanted us to approach these verses with the knowledge that we all build kingdoms and that John had built quite the kingdom. He was very successful and good at what he did and what he was building. But let's look at how John viewed his kingdom. First, we'll pick it up in John chapter 1. And just as a reminder, John the Baptist is a different John than the Apostle John that wrote the Gospel of John. It's a lot of Johns. But let's look at John chapter 1, and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. So John is there with his disciples, and Jesus walks by, and John goes, hey, that's the guy. That's Jesus. That's the Lamb of God. And the disciples immediately leave John and go and follow Jesus. And I kept reading to the end because we learned that one of those people was the brother of Peter. And we know that he stayed with Jesus. So when I say they left John and went with Jesus, I don't mean they left John and went with Jesus for a little while and then came back to John. I mean, they left John and they went with Jesus. So what's happening here, what we see in this verse is Jesus, in this passage, Jesus shows up and he starts skimming off the top of John's ministry. He starts taking a little bit of John's kingdom. These are not just simply followers. These are disciples. These are young men that he is pouring into and training and teaching. This is his staff. And now Jesus has just taken a couple of them. So Jesus starts to take some of John's kingdom, but we get a glimpse of John's attitude about this later on in chapter 3. Look with me, chapter 3, verses 29 and 30. John says this, So he's telling his disciples, look, the bride is the church. The bridegroom is Christ. The groom is Christ. He's here. And the marriage is complete. I've done my part. I've introduced him. Now it's time for me to step aside. Now it's time for me to fade away. And he says one of the greatest lines in the Bible, he must increase and I must decrease. It's like if you were able to go up to John in the moment and say, John, Jesus has taken your kingdom, man. He's taken your stuff. He's shaving off the top of your kingdom. How do you feel about that? I believe that John's response was essentially, man, I was never building my kingdom. I was always building his kingdom. Those disciples were never mine. They were always his. This following, this ministry, this has never been my ministry. This has never been my following. This has never been my kingdom. It was always his. It was always his ministry. It was always his following. It's my job to simply point the way back to him. And now that he is here, now that I've announced his coming, now that I've handed over the keys of my little fiefdom, my little kingdom to his eternal kingdom, I'm done. I'm out. And what we see from John, and I don't think John understood it at the time, but God mercifully calls him up to heaven a lot sooner than he would have had to go. He gets arrested and beheaded by the king. And it's seen by John as a sad thing when he's arrested, he wants to be freed. But I think God was just bringing him up to heaven a little earlier because his job was done. And I think John got a very hearty, well done, good and faithful servant when he arrived. Because John understood, this isn't my kingdom. This isn't my stuff. God didn't give me the gifts and talents and abilities that he gave me so that I could amass people to look at me. He gave me any gift that he gave me so that I might be used to grow his eternal kingdom, not my temporal one. And so if you ask me, what does it look like to be all in? I would answer it this way. We are all in when we acknowledge and embody the mindset of John the Baptist. When I say, what does it look like to be all in at grace? Because I challenge this, if you're at grace, be all in, man, let's go. What does that look like? Well, it looks like acknowledging and embodying the attitude of John the Baptist, which is to say, I was never building my kingdom. This was never about me. This was always about Jesus. It was always his kingdom. And everything that I've been given by God, it was not to be used to build my own kingdom. It was to be used to build his kingdom. I remember when this light went off for me. I was in my late 20s, and I had just taken over as a youth pastor at my last church at Greystone Church. And I had only been there in a full-time capacity for a couple of weeks, and it was time to take all the kids to summer camp. And so I'm going to summer camp with these kids. I think there's about 150 kids there, and I didn't know them, and they didn't know me. And yet here we are spending a week together, and I've got to prove myself to them. I've got to win them over. I've got to be able to do ministry to them. And listen, I'm beyond this now because I'm not in student ministry anymore, but anybody in their 20s who's a student pastor who tries to tell you that there aren't times when high schoolers can be the most intimidating people on the planet, they're liars. Sometimes they can be. And we got a bunch of kids. We got a bunch of older kids. They don't know who I am. They don't know me from Adam. And they're kind of arms folded skeptical. This is our new youth pastor, huh? Let's see if he's any good. And I know I've got to win them over. And so one day, the first day of camp, it was wreck time, free time. And a bunch of the guys go and they play basketball, the hard top, the black top. And I thought, I can play basketball. I'm serviceable there. Let me just go play with them. So I go down to all the upperclassmen and just start playing ball with them. And for about two hours, we're playing basketball. I was able, I know you're not gonna believe me. Maybe they were all terrible athletes. Actually, some of them were really good athletes. One of them is playing for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays right now. But I was able to hold my own. They wanted me on their team. My team usually won the games, and so we had a good time, and suddenly I'm feeling a camaraderie with them that I didn't expect to feel so quickly. And that's when it dawned on me. It's like God whispered into my ear, because I've always considered myself to be a little bit athletic. I know now that the better word for it is probably coordinated. In my youth, I was coordinated in such a way that I was able to not embarrass myself when I engaged in athletics. I played in college. I played against actual athletes and realized I am not one of those. But I've always known that God made me just a little bit coordinated, and I've always kind of been able to make people laugh. That's just been a thing that I could rely on. And up until that moment on the basketball court with those kids from Greystone, I always just assumed that God made me athletic and funny to get people to like me. I was just thankful that he gave me those wonderful gifts. But in that moment, it was as if God whispered into my ear like, yeah, dummy, this is why I gave you the gift of coordination. This is why I've made you funny. Not to win people over to yourself, but to win them over to me. I gave them to you so that it might open doors so that you can do my work in the lives of people. Now go minister to these kids. Use those gifts, that's fine. But use them to build my kingdom, not your own kingdom. And that's the collective eye opening that I want us to have. That God has given each of us gifts and abilities. He's given each of us time, talent, and treasure. And it is our job to first open our eyes to the fact that he didn't give you your gifts to make you good at your thing so that you can build your own kingdom. He gave you those gifts. He made you funny. He made you caring. He made you smart. He designed you to be good with numbers. He gave you musical talent. He gave you the ability to make friends. He gave you the ability to write and to think and to be magnanimous. He gave you the things that he gave you so that you might get to experience the incredible privilege of being invited in to being a part of building his eternal kingdom and so that you wouldn't experience the devastation of realizing you've spent your entire life piddling around building your own kingdom that no matter how great will end. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. No matter how great of a temporal kingdom we build here on earth, one day Amazon's not going to matter. As we sit here today, the Roman Empire doesn't matter anymore. The Babylonian Empire doesn't matter anymore. These great kingdoms of their day where people were actually successful in building kingdoms that we still read about today, they don't matter. Who cares? So God in his goodness invites us into the incredible privilege of building an eternal kingdom that will echo throughout eternity and matter for the rest of time. Do you understand? That's why he's given you your gifts and abilities, to leverage everything that you have, not to build your own kingdom and draw people and things into you, not to amass your own wealth, not to amass your own followers, not to build your own brand or business, but so that you would turn people to him. He gave you your gifts and abilities so that he might use you to build his kingdom. And so we come back to our question. Whose kingdom are you building? The gifts and abilities, the time and the talent and the treasure that you have, what have you been using it for? Are you using it to build your kingdom or God's kingdom? Are you using it to make your name great or his name great? And what it looks like to be all in at grace is to say, hey, you know what? I have these gifts and abilities. I have this time, talent, and treasure, whatever it is. And I want to apply that to grace in whatever way I can to see God's kingdom move forward through this church. And some of us have special giftings of time, talents, and treasures. And I want that to be acknowledged. Some of us have the special gifting of time. I think of Ron Torrance. Ron is one of our favorite people at Grace. Everybody loves Ron. If you've come to Grace here in person, he has greeted you at the door and he has learned your name and the name of your children. He is a wonderful man. And I'm told that Ron's turning 80 soon. So happy early birthday to you, Ron. I've been told that 80 is the new 70. So, I mean, live it up, pal. It's going to be great. Ron is retired. He has the gift of time. One of the things he does with that special gifting is he comes in on Fridays and he cleans the church. He vacuums the office. He takes out our trash. Do you know, and this is so humbling to me, Ron washes my mugs. If he decides that the mugs on my desk are too dirty, he'll wash them. He'll fold up a nice, neat paper towel and he'll lay them on top of the paper towel. Nice and clean for me when I come back on Monday, and every time I see it, I'm so humbled by that service. But Ron has a gifting of time, so what does he do? He gives it to the church and to other places. There's some stay-at-home moms who have volunteered their time during the week to come in and help Aaron get everything set and ready to go for children's ministry on Sunday. So if you have a special gifting of time, and I do think about stay-at-home parents who have kids who are in school, and so during the day you have this special gifting, this special season of time that has been given to you, I would encourage you and ask and implore you to ask God, God, what would you have me do with this time? You've given me this special gifting of time. Father, what would you have me do with it? This is your time. How can I use it to bring glory to your name? How can I use it to build your kingdom? How can I use it to get involved and do whatever it is you're doing, wherever it is you're doing it? See, if you have a special gifting of time in this season of your life, it's right and good to ask God, what do you want me to do with this? Why did you give me this gift? Some of us have a special gifting of talents. I think about Dylan who plays the drums. You know, God didn't give him rhythm much to his chagrin to get him chicks, right? God gave him that gift of rhythm that he might use it to usher God's children communally into praise together. And what a beautiful thing it must be for God to sit in heaven and watch Dylan use his gifts to draw other people closer to his throne. What a thrill it must be for God, our Father in heaven who created us and loves us, to have given some of us good voices so that they're beautiful to listen to. I wonder how much it pleases him in heaven to hear his children, whom he's gifted in that way, sing out to him as they lead other people into praise to him as well. It's got to be just this special joy that God experiences. If you have been given a special talent, if you've been given a musical ability, if you're exceptionally good with numbers, if you're exceptionally good at gathering people, if you are exceptionally good at something, man, God didn't give you that gift to build your kingdom. He gave you that gift because he's inviting you into being used in his kingdom. And it's worthwhile to ask God, how would you have me use this gift? You might have a special gifting of treasure. I think about some people that I know in my life, and I've talked to other guys and women like this, who are basically saying they're towards the end of their career, and they basically said, you know what, I could retire. We've hit whatever the number is that I set with my financial planner. We've hit it. I'm there. I'm good. I could retire. But, you know, I'm making more money than I've ever made, and I'm trying as little as I've ever tried, so I don't really want to shut off the faucet. You know what I mean? Listen, that's great. That's wonderful. I'm legitimately happy for you that that's your situation, but you now in that situation, you have a special gifting of treasures and resources. And I think it's worth asking yourself between you and God, God, have you given me this special gifting of resources to build my 401k and make me wealthier? Or have you given me this special gifting so that I might get to experience what it is to be a conduit of your generosity to others? Have you given me this special gifting in this season of my life, if you're married, in this season of our lives, so that you might use the treasures that you've entrusted to us to make your kingdom grow in other places. It's worth considering and asking, God, you've put me in this place where I have more than what I need. What would you have me do with this special gifting of treasures? I saw the switch go off in a friend of mine in the last couple of years, and it's been really, really cool to see. A few years ago, we had the opportunity to go over to Ethiopia and visit Addis Jamari, which is a ministry that Suzanne Ward, one of the women who goes to the church, she started it with another lady who goes to another church down the road. Her church is not as good. But they went together and they started this ministry called Addis Jamari, which ministers to orphans and families in Ethiopia. And I've been over there to see it and it's incredible what they're doing. We had the opportunity to take a trip over there a few years ago, and my buddy came with us. And he got over there and saw the ministry and saw the people, and God just touched his heart, and he was so moved by it. And he's in a great situation financially. He's in a position where he was really good at his job, and so he was able to retire early. And then he takes consulting gigs on the side whenever he feels like he wants them, and he does those, and that's a couple extra bucks, and that's great. Well, after coming back from Ethiopia and experiencing God touching his heart in that way, he had the John the Baptist epiphany, and he said, wait, I can get these consulting gigs that I don't need. I don't need that money, but Addis Jamari does. And so now the dude takes consulting gigs, makes the money, and then turns around and he gives it to Addis Jamari so that they can build God's kingdom in Ethiopia. And to me, it's a beautiful, beautiful thing when God's children open up their eyes and see that everything that God has given me is to be used for his glory and his name and his kingdom, not my own. And I know plenty of people who would be listening to this sermon thinking, you know what? I don't have any special giftings of any of those. I am as average as average gets. I would say to you, if that's how you feel, that's fine. But someone else who used to say that to me was my mama, my grandmother on my mom's side. She always felt like she was in the background. She always felt like other people were more gifted than her. She always felt like she didn't matter very much and that her voice shouldn't really be considered very much. She spent her life quietly serving in the background and would have sat in the sermon and felt like, I don't have any gifts or abilities to offer to anybody. But when I preached her funeral, there were 500 people there. Do you know why? Because she loved them well. Because her gift, her ability, was to be an encourager, was to love and to support and to be consistent. Things that might feel so plain and mundane to us and things that felt very unspecial to her. But God used her in so many lives and in so many ways that when she passed away, 500 people showed up to honor her. So even if you think that you don't have much to offer, if you offer it to God, he will double and triple and quadruple whatever impact you think you might be able to make. So as we finish, I would simply finish with this question. What's my next step? What's the next thing for you to do? Do you want to email me and say, Nate, dude, I'm all in. What can I do? Do you want to email one of the staff members and say, I'm all in. I want to help you. Kyle, I want to see the youth group grow. I'm in, what can I do? How can I help? How can we build God's kingdom there? Do you have some musical ability? You need to stick your hand up and go, you know what? I can actually sing. You know what? I can actually play and I've been scared or hesitant, but I think that God's given me this ability so I can use it for him. So I want to do that. Do you have a gifting of time that you can offer? But I think everybody's got a next step. Everybody's got a thing they can do to say, you know what? I'm all in. I'm all in at grace. And listen, it's not about grace. It's about God's kingdom. That's why I shared the Addis Jamari story because he's building God's kingdom outside the walls of grace, and that's wonderful. I'm not trying to get you to invest yourself in grace. I'm trying to get you to invest yourself in God's kingdom wherever he is building it. And also saying that if you believe that God is building his kingdom here, then yes, ply your hand here. Leverage everything that you have here. Leverage your time, your talents, and your treasures here at Grace that we might see God's kingdom advance. But as we think about that, I wanted to put it in very simple terms. And maybe you can talk about this with whoever you're watching this sermon with if that's what's happening. If there's people around you. But I would ask you to prayerfully consider if I'm going to be all in at grace, what's my next step? What's the next thing that God wants me to do to be obedient to what I've just heard? Let's pray. Father, you're good. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for gifting us. I pray that each of us would see that you have gifted and purposed us to be used by you. That we might experience the thrill of building your eternal kingdom. That we might avoid the devastation of spending a life building a kingdom that will ultimately fade away. God, I pray that you would give us courage to take the next step that you're placing on our heart. God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would make that very clear. If there's anybody listening to this prayer and they're thinking, God, I really don't know what to do. I just give them ears to hear your spirit as he whispers into their ears what it is they want, they need to do. Because I know that you will guide us and direct us and show us where to apply our hand. God, be with us as we enter 2022. I pray that you would do amazing things here at Grace. We ask that you would build your kingdom here, God. And we are grateful that we get to be a part of it. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here as just a little point of order. If you received a bulletin when you came in and you're someone who fills out the notes, I would direct you to the back of the bulletin. In the middle of the notes is a point that starts out. I think the local church is the blank thing to which we are all called. You can cross that out. Okay, I'm not going to get to that. The word there was bigger, so if you really just want to fill it in, there you go. But we're not going to include that. So I don't want to get to that point of the notes and you guys think, oh, no, he forgot it. No, I didn't. I'm leaving it out on purpose. Also, some of you have asked, Nate, why are you wearing your Crocs? Do you have a gout flare-up? No, jerks. I know that you would love that, but I did not. I did not. I also, before I'm telling you why I'm wearing them, have promised my sweet wife that I would communicate to you that she loathes them. They are the least favorite thing of hers that I own, and it is to her great dismay that I continue to wear them every day. I'm wearing these because these are my friend's shoes. These are the shoes that you only see when I am your friend. If you come to my house, and I knew you were coming, if you come to my house and I didn't know you were coming, come on, man, what are you doing? But if I do know you're coming and I'm still by choice wearing these, it's because I'm totally comfortable with you and we're friends. If you invite me over and I'm wearing sweats and Crocs, it's because we're pals, all right? Only my close friends see these because they are shameful. And when I come to church early, I get here early on Sunday mornings, and usually I just throw these on just to be comfortable until I need to put on my church shoes, my preaching shoes. And as I was pacing, thinking through what I was saying this morning, I just realized that what I'm going to say to you this morning is hard. It's hard for me to say. It's going to be hard for some of y'all to hear. And as I say it, I want these to remind me and you that I'm coming to you as a friend. I'm saying these things to you because I love you. Because I feel like Grace is collectively my pal. And so I want you to know up front that I have been praying this week and this morning for courage and gentleness. And so these Crocs are a little bit more gentle than my preaching boots. So I'm wearing these today. Years ago, there was a show called 24. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. If you have, your life is better for it. But 24 was released, I don't know if you remember this, right on the cusp of like DVD series and then live series. For those of you, I don't know how young you have to be to appreciate series that are on DVDs, but we used to buy whole volumes of series that now you get on Netflix. But 24 is right on the cusp of that. And so when I heard about it, my friends were watching it and they were like a couple seasons in, I think they were on season four. And they had this tradition of every Monday night, they would go over to my one friend's house and they would all watch it with rapt attention and then talk about it during the commercials. And then when it started again, total silence and they were very committed to it. And then they would kind of talk about the episode afterwards. And I really wanted to go to this. I was having serious FOMO, which for old people, that's fear of missing out. I was having some serious FOMO of my friends are having this fun and I can't have this fun because I'm not caught up on the series. So I tracked down the DVDs and got caught up on the series. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience. Raise your hand if you watch 24 on DVD. Okay, you are my friends and you know what I'm talking about. The end of the episode always, without fail, ends on a cliffhanger. And then there's that countdown, the beep, boop, beep, boop. And you're like, no, I got to know what happens to Jack. So then if you're watching the DVD series, it's like play next episode. Yes, of course. And you play the next episode and you just binge that thing. This is when binging started. And it was so satisfying to be able to watch. And this was, let's see, I was probably 19 or 20. So I could watch an ungodly amount of uninterrupted TV at a time. And I mean the word ungodly because it was not spiritual to do what I was doing, but I could watch a ton at one time. And so you power through these seasons, man. And I got through them and I got to go watch with my friend. Now this is the big night. I get to go to my friend's house. There's like 15, 20 of us there. This is great. I'm going to consume this content this way. And as I was doing it, I was like, this stinks because it ended. First of all, I had to watch commercials. That's a bummer. I don't want to watch commercials. I'm into the story. I don't want to hear about Claritin again. And then it ends. There's the beeps. And it's like, let's watch the next episode, guys. And you can't. You've got to wait a whole week. And by the time the next week rolled around, I really wasn't very much into it. And I realized within a couple of weeks, you know what? I don't really like consuming this this way. I like it better on the DVDs. So I waited and just watched it all at once on the DVDs. And I bring that up because this is when content really began to make it very clear that it was a product and we are the consumers. We can watch whatever we want to watch. We have all kinds of streaming services. We have everything available at the tip of our fingers. We can choose the content that we want to watch whenever we want to watch it. This is 24 to me illustrates when it became very clear in our culture that there's all kinds of content out there that we can consume when we want it, where we want it, and when we actually have a desire for it. When we think it's what's going to be best for us, when we feel like it's what we want in the moment, it's right there and we can consume it. I'm bringing that up because I feel like I've seen church become that for many of us too. I feel like in Christian culture, in church people, and then most pointedly at grace, I have watched a slide over the years that the pandemic has accelerated where we are now in ways consumers of church. Church, to some of us, in our mindset and in our families, has become a product that we consume. Sunday morning is something that if I have time, I'll go. If we don't have other plans, I'll attend. If there's not just one more inconsequential thing, and when I say inconsequential, I mean something that we allow to take Sunday morning away from us that isn't gonna matter one little bit in 20 years, then we'll just do that thing and I'll catch up with church during the week. I'll watch it on Tuesday. I'll binge it. I'll listen to the whole series. And it's not easy or fun to say this because normally when I come to you as the church and I say convicting things, I'm right there with you. I always put myself first and say, this is my conviction, join me in it if it applies. Well, this one's different because I get paid to do this. I don't have the perspective that church partners have. But I do have the perspective of a pastor. And I can tell you what I see from my perspective. And what I see from my perspective, as someone who leads a church, as someone who I think is pretty tapped into Christian culture, as someone who talks to other pastors regularly, I see a slide in our culture towards consumerism as it relates to churches. That for many of us, church has become a commodity or a product that I will include in my life when and where I want to, when and how I want to. And I know that none of us would cop to that out loud. None of us would say, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a consumer, church is the product, that's how it is. But in our practices and in our patterns, that's what we make it. I'll get to it when I can. I'll include it when I want to. I'll catch up with it on my jog. Revelation really is not very interesting of a series for me. I'll catch it at Christmas. Or, Revelation is super interesting to me. I'm going to totally pay attention to this one. Last one, I wasn't really there for it. I've seen us become consumers in the way that we volunteer, which is less and less, which is a good indicator that in my mind, church exists for me to make my life better. It's a product that's there for me to grab and to consume when I want it. And this is something that I have seen and noticed for several months. And something that I've wanted to put in front of you for several months. But I didn't know the best way to do it. I didn't know how. And I wanted to be really sure when I did it. Because I know that I'm stepping on toes right now. And here's how I've been complicit in it. Is I've allowed that mindset to reduce my role to a producer of content. There are many a week in the last two years when I viewed my role as literally nothing more than just giving you something worth consuming on a Sunday morning and forgetting about the pastoring and the leading that has to happen during the week. I have been complicit in reducing my own role as the pastor of a church to simply producing content that's good for you that you'll choose to consume again. And I'm just, I'm telling you guys, we're wrong about that. It is a dangerous thing when church gets reduced to a commodity to consume. And I'm convinced that that's true and that it's right and good for me to take a Sunday morning and talk about it and that it's worth stepping on some toes because Jesus's attitude towards the church is so vastly different than the attitude of someone who consumes the church. Jesus didn't for one second think that the church was a commodity to be consumed. Jesus for one second was not interested in putting out a product that people would want to come back to. He wasn't interested at all in commodifying and making us comfortable in the way we choose to consume his body. The New Testament does not talk about the church as something to be consumed. It does not talk about the church as if it's something that's optional for us, that we can include in our life when we feel like it, that we can include in our life when we feel like we have time or effort or energy or space. And so for me as a pastor to watch this slide in my church and say nothing about it is a dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible. So we've got to talk about it. Again, we've got to talk about it because as I thought about communicating this idea this week and what passage to use, I was thinking through the New Testament and how the church is talked about and it dawned on me, there's not like a single passage to use because the whole New Testament is about the local church. The whole New Testament assumes that you are a part of the local church. The New Testament teaches us that the moment you get saved, that when you accept Christ as your Savior, that you are now a member of the big C universal church. And it is incumbent upon you to express that membership within the body of the local church. The one book, the biggest portion of the New Testament that's written to an individual is written to a guy named Theophilus by Luke, probably on behalf of Peter. And he writes to Theophilus so that he can understand who Jesus was and what he came to do, which is to begin the local church. The one big major book that's written to an individual to explain things in the New Testament is written so that that individual could understand the local church and how it came about. Then Paul writes letters to churches. And every directive in the Bible that's given is given to us communally. There is nothing, nothing about individual spirituality in here. It all, the whole thing, cover to cover, assumes that you know and understand that you are functioning within a body. That you are functioning within the local church. And so it's difficult to pinpoint one place where this is clarified because it's assumed all throughout the New Testament. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but do you realize, and I believe this with all my heart, that the local church, this expression of grace that we sit in this morning, is the reason that Jesus stayed some extra years to do ministry? I don't know if you've ever wondered this, but Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. If all he came to do, if all of his marching orders were to become flesh, live a perfect life, die for the sins of the world, why didn't he just get crucified at 30? Or 25? Or 17? What was he doing? Hanging around, putting up with us? He was building the church. He was training the leaders. He was preparing the world for his kingdom. Jesus stayed those extra years and put up with us so that he could call the disciples to him and train them and show them. He taught them how to teach. He taught them how to perform miracles. He taught them how to cast out demons. He taught them how to lead. He taught them how to love. He showed them how to do ministry to one another. And then he died. And then he came back and he left. And when he left, he said, now go do all the things that I've been showing you to the ends of the earth. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, go and do what I told you to do. And how did they respond to that? They huddled up in Jerusalem. And they said, what do we do? And then they got the gift of the Holy Spirit and they started a church, man. And its numbers grew day by day. Acts 2, 42 through 47, you can find it there. And then the rest of the book of Acts is about the disciples' effort to go and to plant more local churches. All of Paul's life was dedicated to planting local churches. When Jesus left and said, you, I've given you the keys to the kingdom. I've spent these years and I've trained you and now I'm going to leave and you've got the Holy Spirit. Go do my ministry. What did lost and broken world, and there is no plan B. That's not my idea. I stole that from another pastor. I don't remember who. But the local church, this expression, this Grace Raleigh is God's plan to reach this community. And there's no plan B. We have got to do our part. We are a part of God's divine strategy, of God's divine plan. This is not something to be flippantly participated in. That's not the point. There's something bigger going on here. The New Testament teaches us that we are the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're the body of Christ. We are his different members. We're going to talk more about this next week. But the New Testament also preaches this. And this was one of the more convicting things to think about this week as I think about our attitude with how we approach church. It is admittedly an odd passage to land on for the sermon this morning, but it's Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 through 32. This is a marriage roles passage. This is usually talked about in weddings. And when we read it, that's where our mind goes. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would love to walk through this passage with you as a church body and walk you through kind of how my understanding of this passage has changed over the years. But this is not what I want us to highlight this morning. As I read it to you and you read along with me, I want you guys to pay attention to the relationship between Jesus and the local church. I want you to notice the dynamic that's going on there, and then we're going to talk about it just a little bit. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. and cherishes it just as Jesus does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The church, Christians, we are the bride of Christ. That is our divine identity. We are the body that he came and died for. We are the body that he's going to come back and rescue. We are the body that he intentionally started. We are the body that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. We are the love of Jesus's life. We are the bride of Christ. And what I'm saying to you this morning is being Christ's bride should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. Being the very bride of Christ should be an identity that is wholly consuming to us, not flippantly consumed. Nothing about that passage and nothing about that role says to us that there's any space whatsoever to simply be consumers of the product that church puts out. No, we are called to be a part of what the church is doing. This is where the whole idea of this series came from when I was thinking about it last fall, is this idea of doing what I can to transition us from sliding towards consumerism and push us back towards being consumed. The church was not created for us to consume it. It was created so that it could consume you. It was created for your whole devotion. It was created for you to be all in. It was created to give you a new life completely separate from your old life and give you something bigger to be a part of that we all long for. Being the bride of Christ deserves our full attention. It deserves our fanaticism. It deserves to consume us. To drive this home just a little bit, I want you to think about something with me. What would your marriage look like if you decide that you were simply going to be a consumer of it? What would my marriage with Jen look like if I decided, you know what, I know she wants to talk about her day-to-day, but I'm not really feeling it. I don't really want to do that. I want to watch football. And also, I've never done this. What would it look like if all the time my interactions with her, I only thought about, well, how does this benefit me? Is this something that I really want to do right now? Why don't I just schedule something over what's happening? What would it look like if in our marriages we simply became consumers and when we were asked to volunteer our time to make the house better, we said, what's in it for me? What are you gonna do if I clean clean the garage? You make meatloaf? All right, I'll clean it. How dead would our marriages be if we became consumers within them? And we saw our marriage as something that just produced a product that was there for me to consume if I wanted it or not. If that analogy holds true, and Ephesians tells me that it does, is it any wonder why some of us just don't feel like our spiritual life is clicking like it should be? Is it any wonder why we just don't feel like we're in sync with God? Is it possible that maybe we don't feel a spiritual vibrancy in our life because we've reduced the things of God to things to be consumed to improve our life when we feel like we need them? You know, it's funny, and it's worth mentioning. Over my years as a pastor, and Grayson at previous church, I've sat down with parents of teenagers, and they've said, we just can't get our kid to come to youth group, and we don't know what to do. And I can't say it, but I think it. Well, if you want to do anything right now, you need to get in the time machine and go back 10 years and quit treating the church like it's something to be consumed for you. You have modeled this method of consumption to your children for 10 years and now is it any wonder that when they get to make their own choices, they're consumers too? Is it any wonder that maybe we don't feel as close to God as we could when we don't treat the things of God as they deserve to be treated. I thought of this as well. Paul is at the end of his ministry and he's writing a letter to Timothy. It's one of the few things written to an individual in the New Testament. And guess what? It's about how to lead the local church. Anyways. In already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. What a remarkable statement to make. Now I'm about to ask you a question. It's an unfair question. It's a gotcha question. And I'm admitting that up front. So this isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is just to help you think along with me, okay? Did any of us on December 31st, a few days ago, kneel and pray and say, God, thank you for 2021. I was poured out for you like a drink offering. Now, listen, you may have gotten to the end of 2021 and felt like you were poured out like a drink offering. We may have gotten to the end of that year and said, I got nothing left. But were you poured out for the right things? Were you poured out for the things of God? Were you poured out because you were consumed with your identity as the bride of Christ? So, either you're just mad at me and you want the sermon to be over. I get that. Or you're with me and you're okay. I want to be all in. I want to be consumed by the church. What do I do? Well, the very simple answer is this. You give of your time, talents, and treasures. A very simple answer to think about how can I be consumed by the local church is to give of your time, talents, and treasures. And as I was prepping this sermon, I lamented that when I got to this point in the sermon, I've been preaching for too long to really adequately do justice to what that means to give of our time, talents, and treasures. And then it occurred to me, dude, you're in charge of the series. You can do whatever you want. So next week, we're going to talk about that in detail. We're going to come back. Those of you who remain with us are going to come back and we'll go, here's how we can be all in together. Here's what it means and looks like to give of our time, talents, and treasures. But for this morning and for 2022, this is the message and the challenge that I wanted to issue to us as a church. If you're at Grace, be all in. If you're here, mean it with everything you got. You'll notice through this whole sermon, I've not talked about grace as far as what God calls us to. I've talked about the local church. And so I say this with all humility and candor. If you can't be all in at grace because you're not all about what's happening here, that's fine. There are a lot of churches. And with only kindness and love in my heart, I'm admonishing you that if grace isn't it for you, find a church you can be fanatical about. Find a church that you love what's going on there. Find a church that you can be all in, and that you can be consumed by, and you want to pour yourself out for. I hope that's grace, and I hope that what we're doing here is something that matters deeply to you. But if it's not, as just your friend, as a pastor, as a Christian, I'm telling you, we need to be consumed by the local church. So find one to consume you. And this is why I think it's so important to preach this message. And why I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year. Because I know that the cloud of the pandemic still looms over our culture. But I've got to believe that the sun's going to break sometime soon. And I don't want to tread water in 2022. I don't want to just cling on and try to exist this year as a church. I am praying and hoping that Jesus will eagerly and earnestly move in this place. I want to see Jesus show up this year. I want to see children fill that baptistry. I want to just dunk them and I want their friends to be in here celebrating it with them. I want to baptize you guys. I want to see your friends and your family and your coworkers begin to come to church with you and for you to experience the joy of watching them move into a faith because God used you in their life. I want to see you guys take steps of obedience that are far beyond what you thought you would be capable of sacrificing before. I want to see a church with their hair lit on fire for Jesus and begging him every week that his kingdom would come here and that he would move here and that he would do great things here. And that starts with our individual decision to be consumed by the body of Christ and by the identity of being his bride, and then it culminates in a corporate culture of pursuing him and of prizing him and of doing the things of Jesus because we love him and because it's our identity and because we're consumed by him. I don't want to tread water anymore. I want to move. I want to do ministry. I want to see salvations. I want to see people come to know Jesus. I want to see marriages rescued. I want to see children discipled. I want to see hurt people cared for. I want to see people prayed for. I want to see small groups blossom and multiply. I want to see discipleship happen intentionally. I want to see the great friendships that God has planted in this church do more than just make us feel good about ourselves, but point us back towards our Father and enhance our spiritual walks. And how can any, and here, you're all looking at me and I know that you want that too. And how can it happen if we're consumers? If we continue to just slide towards thinking of church as a commodity to be consumed? It can only happen if we say, here I am, Lord, and allow ourselves to be consumed for His purposes. So if you're at grace, be all in. And listen, I say that knowing and being humbled by the fact that we have a bunch of people who are all in. I know that we do. I'm humbled by your service every week. And we have people who have watched online faithfully for two years who simply have health issues that will not allow them to come and be a part of us. And I know you're all in. I know it. And so my prayer has been that the Holy Spirit would be whispering in each of your ears. And if you are someone who is all in, and if you are someone who has been consumed by the local church, that the Holy Spirit would be whispering into your ear right now, and he would be telling you, hey, this is not for you. This is to bring you some help. You don't need to feel convicted by this. Similarly, my prayer for the rest of us is that the Holy Spirit would whisper to us too. And he would be telling you right now how you need to listen. You need to hear this. For the sake of your marriage and your kids, you need to hear this. For the sake of your anxiety and your peace and your joy and your angst, you need to hear this. For the sake of being swept up and knowing how much I love you and experiencing my goodness as being part of a kingdom, part of my kingdom on earth before eternity, you need to hear this. So next week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about what it looks like to be all in. I hope that if the Holy Spirit is telling you right now, hey, this is not you, that you will pray with me this week. For those to whom it may apply a little more. If the Holy Spirit is talking to you right now and telling you that you need to listen, I pray that you will. And if any of you are mad at me, my door is open. I'd love to chat. But next week, we're moving forward with who we got and we're gonna do some cool things this year. I believe it with all my heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church. Thank you that we are invited to participate in it. Thank you for the way that it wraps its arms around us. Thank you for the way that it is your presence in our life. Thank you for how it trains our children. Thank you for how it strengthens our marriage. Thank you for how it points us towards you. God, we pray that grace would be the church that you want it to be. We pray that we would be consumed by building your kingdom here. We pray that we would understand in our bones what it means more and more to be your bride and to be your body. God, if I've said clumsy things, I just pray that you would grant grace and forgiveness where it's needed. God, we offer you ourselves. We offer you this place. We thank you for creating it. And we just ask that you would give us the faith and courage to serve you and to be consumed by you as we move through this year. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, and I'm so excited to once again be able to be up in front of you getting to preach. I hope you had an awesome Christmas. I hope you had an awesome New Year. Shout out to everyone who's in the building right now. It's January 2nd. We are on the back of the other side of two pretty big holidays. So the fact that you're here, even though it's quite icky outside, shout out to you. But also, good morning or good whatever time of day it is that you may be watching online, whether it's live or whether you're watching it sometime in the future, or everyone in here who loves it so much that you're going to go back and watch it later on. Shout out to you as well. But it's also particularly exciting this morning because we're kicking off a new series that we are calling Consumed, and the ultimate goal is to take a look at where in our lives we might be able to transition from being consumers to being consumed. And so this morning, I have been tasked with diving into what might it look like for our lives and our hearts to be consumed by Christ. Now that sounds like a very easy topic to preach on because it's like, hey, that's kind of the point, Kyle. But I felt myself a bit overwhelmed by this because as I take a look back and as I was thinking through this, what I knew was this, that the last series that we just did was a Christmas series. The entire goal of our Christmas series all through December was to take a look at Jesus and to make much of what Jesus came on earth to do. We celebrated for four weeks or however many weeks or however many Sundays we had, literally going through and talking about, look at this Jesus who came down from heaven to earth. And we celebrate the fact that he came to earth for us. That ultimately his goal and his mission was to live a perfect life as a human and eventually take and bear a cross, dying to put our sin to death. Later being raised to life, signifying that as our sin has been put to death, that death will not be the end of us, just like it was not the end for him. And as he's raised to life, signifying that one day we will be raised into eternity, into heaven. That as we come to the end of our days on earth, that that is not the end, but instead, just as Jesus was, we will be lifted up into eternity. And so that's a lot of really good news to be talking about. That's a really great way to talk about Jesus if I want to talk about being consumed with Jesus. But we just did it for an entire month. Not only that, but if you look even further, it's like, okay, let's look at a different picture of Jesus. Well, here's another picture of Jesus as we went through Revelation. And in Revelation, the ultimate goal of Revelation is as much as it is to learn and to gain knowledge about what does all of this mean, ultimately the purpose is to look and to see how unbelievable, how incredible our God is and how incredible Jesus is. It was to make much of and to bring as much glory as possible to Jesus. That not only in the past was Jesus this human who made himself like us in order to save us, but in the end, ultimately, he becomes this great and mighty and glorious warrior who is coming down to, as Nate likes to say, to wreck shop, to make the sad things untrue, to make the wrong things right, all of those things, that is another picture of Jesus that might be able to go, hey, we should be consumed by this Jesus. This Jesus is awesome. This Jesus of eternity that one day he's going to come down and he's going to get his people. And even if we don't get to experience that from heaven, ultimately at the end of our days, we look forward to eternity where we get to meet that Jesus and be in the presence of that Jesus. And so basically for the past like two or three months, we have been going through the premise of uniting with Christ, of making much of Christ, of giving pretty good descriptions as to why we should be consumed with Jesus. And so here I am sitting and I'm like, what in the world am I supposed to be talking about this morning that is at least anything different than what we've been doing for the last 10 weeks? Well, as I was sitting and working on my sermon and tasked to do so, I was also working on a devotional. I was writing a little devotion and it was actually for something for grace. So get excited. I'm not going to tell you about it right now, but to come, there's going to be some awesome devotions and mine won't be one of them, but some other people wrote some great ones that you get to read in the near future. But as I was writing this devotion, the premise behind it was a role of Jesus that I feel like often gets overlooked. Or maybe not even overlooked, because I think overlooked may be on the side of people who are teachers or preachers that maybe we don't talk enough about it to where maybe some people don't even know about this role of Jesus. Because if I were to sit down with you guys and I said, hey, what is the role of Jesus? Or what are, what were, what will be the roles of Jesus? I imagine that most of our answers would look similar to all the stuff I just got done talking about. He came to earth. He left heaven being fully God. He came to earth to be fully man, to sacrifice himself for us, ultimately buying our salvation and buying our entrance into the promise of salvation that we get to have eternal, we get to be in an eternal relationship with God the Father. Maybe you'll quote me John 3.16 because that's a great way to do it. For God so loved the world that he gave us one and only son, whosoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life. God sent his son Jesus to die for us. That was his role, was to bring about our salvation. And then his role is eternity, right? He gets to be in eternity. And one day we get to spend eternity with him. One day we get to see and rest in his glory. Or one day he gets to come down in his glory and bring us up to him and win our salvation once and for all. That's what I was trying to say. Once and for all of our faith. Our faith is in the fact that we are nothing, we deserve nothing. Our sin makes us in this place where we deserve nothing but eternal separation from God. But because Jesus came to earth, made himself man, and was killed on a cross, that his perfect sacrifice gives us eternal salvation. And I have to be honest with you, when I used to read this verse, the other thing I would have said is, hey, you know what Jesus gets to finally do? He had to endure the cross. He had to do all this stuff, but what does he finally get to do? He finally gets to sit at the right hand of God, the Father, who sits on the throne. He gets to rest, and he gets to wait to just get to meet his people. And I love how it says, for the joy that was set before him, that it's his joy to take on the cross. And therefore, it's his joy to be able to be in heaven, seated at the right hand of God, simply waiting to welcome his people into eternity. Waiting to welcome these people who he died for by name and by sin. But as I've done a little bit more research and as I've dived a little harder into Hebrews, what I realize is that is a very inaccurate reading of what it means that one of the joys set before him is to be seated at the right hand of the throne of God. As he is seated at the right hand, he's not being inactive. He's not sitting lazily by. He's not waiting expectantly to meet his people. Is that ultimately true? Yes. He can't wait to welcome you in. But while he is there, he right hand of God, is not twiddling his thumbs. It says that he is our high priest. Now, I know some of you guys are like, oh yeah, high priest, that's great. Other of you guys may have no idea what a high priest is. So the short version of what a high priest is, is he did a couple of things. He was this person who was appointed to be able to go into the presence of God and offer sacrifices for his people. Before Jesus, before the ultimate and perfect sacrifice, he would go and he would provide these sacrifices to God saying, Lord, let these sacrifices be enough so that my people can remain in your glory and in your presence. Well, we know and we just talked about that we don't do that anymore. And we don't do that anymore because we don't need to do that anymore. Because Jesus came down and was the perfect lamb that was sacrificed. That because of this perfect sacrifice, we don't need these small, insignificant sacrifices anymore because Jesus bought our salvation through his sacrifice for eternity. Well, the other thing, and what's basically completely linked to the first thing that a high priest does is he intercedes for his people. Basically, he is a go-between between his people and God. He was appointed to this place so that he could go into the presence of God, and while he's giving his sacrifices, he's also bringing about the pleas of his people. He's bringing to the Lord our sins, the things that we have told him, the ways that we have fallen short in the sight and in the eyes of God. And our high priest, and a high priest is to go in between us and God, praying to God and saying, Lord, as I sacrifice this, will you please forgive my people? Well, once again, what we know now, post-Jesus, is that since we have the Holy Spirit inside of us, when we say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit enters inside of us. What that means is we no longer have to have a go-between. We no longer have to go to this person on earth and say, hey, here are these things. Will you please take these things up to God? Because I could not be caught dead trying to talk to God because he's too holy. No, because we have the Holy Spirit within us, that means that we have the right and that we have the ability to go before the Father. But what gives us that right is Jesus. What gives us that right is not simply what happened in the past, not simply the fact that Jesus was sacrificed for us, but because Jesus is now sitting at the right hand of God. And what is he doing? He's our high priest. He's not currently living idly by. He's actively living as our high priest, actively pleading for us, is interceding for us, that he is always living to take our pleas to the Father, that his entire goal and his entire existence in heaven right now is to do everything he can to bring joy, to bring peace, to shower upon you hope and grace and mercies every single second of every single day. As we go to him, as we ask, Lord, please forgive me for this, or Lord, I just want to give this over to you. Jesus's joy is being able to accept that and to look to the father and say, Lord, that one's ours. And so he is forgiven. Lord, I died for that person right there, and therefore they are holy and they are blameless in your sight. Every single time we go to the Father, Jesus is interceding on our behalf saying, hey, you remember when I died? I died for that one. And as Hebrews 12, two says, it is his joy to do so. His joy is not simply his sacrifice in the past, but it is the current ability to be able to shower these mercies upon his people. Any person who is drawn near to his father. I love the way that Thomas Goodwin puts it when he says, Christ's own us, as he is able to comfort us, as he is able to relieve us, as he is able to comfort us, as he is able to shower grace and mercy upon us at every single turn, every second, every minute, every hour, every day. It is his joy, it is his comfort, it is his happiness, and his glory is ultimately greater and higher if his people would come to him for those things. And guess what? If you've drawn to him, if you have drawn near to God, if you have said yes to this faith, yes to this salvation that was authored by Jesus, then not only are you unlocking this eternal redemption, this eternal redemption that is brought to you by Jesus, but you are unlocking this ever-present redemption while you're here on earth. And that's good news. And the goal of this morning isn't simply for you to add to your checklist, oh, here's another role of Jesus. The goal is that it might impact us because I think that oftentimes when we look at Jesus, if I were to ask you to look at Jesus, then we would look at him as somebody of the past, somebody who was a human and died for us and died for our sins. And then, therefore, we look for him for the future. Because since he died for my sins in the past, that means my future is secure in eternity. And when we do that, and when we skip the middle part, when we skip the fact that Jesus is currently living and active as our high priest, consistently doing everything he can to draw us closer and closer to the Father, when we forget that step, I think that our faith starts to look about the same. When we begin to look at our faith, I think we look at it as an event of the past, that over here, we said yes to Jesus. We were bought and we were redeemed by his blood, and we've said yes to Jesus. And that is an incredible thing that we did in the past. And therefore, we get to go all the way over here to the end of our days and in eternity, we get to be with Jesus forevermore. We have this eternal, indescribable joy that we get to experience for the rest of our days. But when we forget the middle part of who Jesus is and what Jesus is doing, then we go from here and saying, you know what, for the rest of this time, I'm just gonna struggle through the rest of my life by myself. And then I'm gonna experience this incredible joy that I'm super excited about. And the problem is we fail to recognize that Jesus's current and active role is to make it to where that eternal joy is being realized in new and different ways every second of every day in our hearts while we are living on earth. That we don't have to wait for this joy. Jesus is just sitting at the right hand of God saying, why don't you just turn to me? I'll give you this joy right now. A quote that Nate has used a few times in his sermons that I'm gonna use again is by C.S. Lewis when he says, we are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea. We are far too easily pleased. To put it a different way, imagine that you're living in poverty and you win the lottery one day. And this winning of the lottery is the amount of money that's not going to run dry. It's going to be there as long as you're using it. And so you have this huge celebration, this huge party. I did it. I won the lottery. I am victorious. And then you live the rest of your life out in the same poverty, never using any of your winnings to bring you the joy that it could bring you. And then the end of your day, as you start using it, and you're like, this is unbelievable. I love this. I love this so much. This is awesome. That's not a one-to-one comparison, but I mean, in the same way, when we simply see Jesus and celebrate Jesus as someone who saved us in the past, and we look forward to say, hey, at some point he's going to bring us joy in eternity, and that's what we're doing. When we forget that his current existence is literally consumed, he is wholly consumed with bringing us this indescribable joy more and more every single day. And we're just chilling with mud pies. And like, you know what, this is fine for now. I'll get the real joy later. Jesus just wants to grab you by the shoulders and shake you and say, what are you doing? I have this joy for you now. I would have called you later if I wanted you to experience the joy later. And when we shift our understanding of Jesus' role from one of the past and the future to one that is current and one that is active, then I believe that our faith begins to shift as well from a faith that is simply looking upon the past and looking upon the future into a faith that is current and active. And when we recognize and we understand that Jesus is wholly consumed right now with bringing about the greatest possible joy that you can experience on earth, not simply of the past, but of something right now, always. Bringing about new mercies and new joys and a new peace every single morning. That is his role. That is what he is consumed with right now. Why would we not want to consume ourselves with those joys? When we read Hebrews 4, 14, I want throne of God through Jesus. And we have a complete freedom to come exactly as we are because Jesus knows exactly what we went through because he experienced it on his time on earth as well. And the sins, the ugly stuff, the bad stuff that we don't want God to know about, the ugly stuff that is within our lives is the exact reason why we are welcome to come to Jesus. Those are the exact qualifications that allow us to get to come to Jesus, because Jesus only came to heal hurting people. He only came to redeem a fallen people. And it's his joy to redeem. It's his joy to be able to redeem you, to make you new, to make you whole, to shower upon you joy and grace and mercy and peace and forgiveness every single day. And so I want to return to Hebrews 12. We read Hebrews 12 too, and this time we're looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that is set before us. Today, may we not be a people who settle for mud pies. May we not be a people who have won the lottery but choose not to cash in on the joys that it produces. Let us run our races. Let us be consumed and let us step out into our faith, drawing closer and closer to Jesus as he is drawing us closer and deeper into the ever abounding peace, joy, and love of the Father. As we close out our service, we're gonna sing a song. And the song was placed here for a reason because the words are absolutely beautiful and do far more than I could ever do on this topic. But I just wanted to read a couple verses for you of the song, and if you will read with me before we sing it. The second verse actually goes, when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there who made an end to all my sin. Because the sinless Savior died, my sinful soul is counted free. For God the just is satisfied to look on him and pardon me. The first verse says this, before the throne of God above, I have a strong and perfect plea. A great high priest whose name is love, who ever lives and pleads for me. My name is graven on his hands. My name is written on his heart. I know that while in heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart. Amen.