Sermons tagged with Peace

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here and happy Easter to you. My name is Nate. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I get to be one of the pastors here, and we so appreciate you choosing to celebrate your Easter here with us at Grace. For the last six or seven weeks, we've been moving through a series called The Table. The series has kind of been moving through the book of Luke. One scholar says about the book of Luke, which is one of the four gospels, and the gospels are the books in the Bible that tell the story of the life of Jesus. And one scholar said about the book of Luke that in the book of Luke, Jesus is either going to, coming from, or attending a meal. Others have called it the hospitality gospel. And so we've been looking at the different meals in Jesus's life and kind of asking, how does he use the table, right? What does he do with meals? How does he integrate those into what he was trying to do in his life and in his ministry? And we've looked at the table as a reminder for us, the table as provision for us, the table to build community. And so this week, we want to point towards what is going to be the greatest meal, the greatest feast of all time. And this series, I think, has been a good one for Grace, because I was preaching it and they were awesome. But I think that it's been a good series for Grace because Grace people, we are table people, right? We love getting around the table. Our biggest event of the year, every year, the Hootenanny, the last is now we call it the sometimes annual Hootenanny because COVID made us not have it. But the last Sunday, every September, what do we do? We have a service. We celebrate. We go outside. We sit around a table. We talk with each other. Our meals are so much a part of all of our lives. Everything we do, every activity that we do, we tend to center around food, don't we? Even when we go do something that's not about food, when we get there, we make it about food. I took Lily, my daughter, she's seven, to her first basketball game. We went to see NC State. They just eked one out against the up-and-coming Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Go Jackets. And the first thing we did, we're going to a game. There's no food involved with this. What's the first thing I do when we get there? We find our seats. Let's go get some stadium food. That's part of the experience. We need food. We include food in every aspect of our lives. I would be willing to bet that you already know what you're having for lunch. You want to get there and you want me to stop talking so that you can have it. We're going to celebrate. We're going to go eat food. When we get married, what's the first thing we do? Everybody goes to a room. We have a meal together. When someone dies, what do we do? We go to the funeral. We go to the service. And then if the family has friends, they go back to somebody's house and all their friends have provided food. Even when we have babies, what do we do? People just bring you meals for weeks. We call it a meal train. There's a whole name for it. Everything we do is centered around the table. And so we've been asking, how does Jesus use the table to impact us and to do his ministry and to execute his goals in his life. And as we've done that, we've been building towards what is and will be the greatest feast of all time. Most people call it the marriage supper of the Lamb. This is what we do when we get to heaven. I want to read about it to you so that you know where it comes from and what it says. And then I want to unpack it a little bit and tell you what's happening there. In Revelation chapter 19, beginning in verse me, write this, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God. I don't know what you think about when you think about heaven. And I don't know what all is going to be there and how it's all going to work. But I know that when we get there, the first scheduled group activity God has for us is to eat together. When we get there, the first thing he wants us to do is come around the table and celebrate the marriage supper of the Lamb. Now, the language that we read there in Revelation is a culmination of much of the language throughout Scripture, where Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God and where the church is referred to as the Bride of Christ. And one day, Jesus has promised us that he's going to come back crashing through the clouds and he's going to take his church and sweep us up into heaven, the church as his collective bride, and it will be the marriage of the church to the Lamb. Jesus will claim his bride, and then when the marriage is there and done, and the wedding has happened, we're all going to sit down, and we are going to have a feast. And like I said, it's the first scheduled activity in heaven. I don't know what else we'll do there. I would assume after this one particular session, maybe we'll have some breakout sessions, like some free time. The optional, I think they'll probably, it is Master's Sunday. So I think they'll probably, I don't think, I think God probably looks at Augusta National and says, yeah, that's as good as I can do. And he's just going to take it. That's why it's called Amen Corner. He's just going to take it and just put it in heaven and then we all get to play it, right? But before we do that, we're going to sit down to this meal together. We're going to have a feast. And I love to think about what will be at that meal. I love to think about who will be there. Easter is the holiday that gives us hope. Easter is the holiday that makes these promises. I love, and I share this quote every year from John Paul II. We do not give way to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. And one of the things that we hope to in the promises of Easter, or cling to in the promises of Easter, is that when we sit at that marriage supper of the Lamb, the people that we have loved and lost to know Jesus will be there too. I lost my pawpaw when I was 19. He's my favorite human that's ever lived. Because of him, I know that there will be fried catfish at that supper of the Lamb. And I can't wait to have it with him. I've sat with people, some in my own family, some of you, some friends, who are sitting in the wake of the loss of their parent or their child or their husband or their wife or their friend. And the only thing that you can say there is that there is a hope in Christ that you will be reunited for them. It's the only thing that begins to take away the sting of death is the knowledge that one day at this great supper, I will see them again. So when we think about what's there, the people that we have loved and lost and who know Jesus are there. And they're saving you a seat. But I also like to think about what's not there. You know what's not at the marriage supper of the Lamb? You guys are going to meals later, right? There's going to be family there. For some of you, it's going to be weird. It's going to be tense. You can't laugh right now because they're sitting next to you. You're not sure if you're really looking forward to it. It might even be one of these deals where you kind of be glad when it's over. None of that will be there at the marriage supper of the Lamb. There is no tension there. Nothing but love. And I love to think about this too. The people that you have loved and the people that you have lost and that you will have lost are imperfect people, right? You know that old saying, hurt people hurt people? The people who loved you and hurt you, because it's confusing sometimes, when you see them in heaven, they don't hurt anymore. They will be able to love you perfectly. They will be the best possible versions of themselves. That father figure that you grew up with, who you know they loved you, but they never said it because they weren't the type to say things like that. He's going to tell you when you see him again because whatever emotional crud that they taught guys in the 1930s and 40s won't be there anymore. That mom or dad that you watched age, whose memories, your memories of them, the most clear ones are sometimes the ones that you want the least, that person's gone. It's the best version of themselves. We love you most. You know what else isn't there? Your crudud. You're sins. You're guilt. Chasing you and hounding you when there's worship songs singing and when you walk into a church and when people talk about Jesus. When you're in heaven, none of that's there anymore. It's done. I don't know what song it is that we're singing this morning, but there's a line in one of them about when that final battle against pain is done. We don't have to fight ourselves anymore in heaven. You know what else isn't in heaven? Faith. Hope. We don't need those anymore. Romans 8 says that you don't hope for what you can see. In heaven, we don't have to hope anymore. We don't have to choose faith anymore. We don't have to wrestle with complicated doubts and issues anymore. It's just peace. It's just love. It's just joy and exuberance. It's just purity. And I'm talking about the marriage supper of the Lamb this morning. I'm trying to paint a picture for you of what it could possibly be. Because Easter is what secures our ticket to that meal. You understand? Easter, what we're celebrating today, the empty tomb, is what secures our ticket to the marriage supper of the Lamb. It's what we can place our faith in to know that we are invited to. And I love Easter, and I love the promise of Easter. And Aaron, in one of the songs, read one of my favorite passages in the Bible, and probably my favorite group of words in the Bible. It's my favorite statement in the whole Bible. We actually, this morning, I'm getting emotional. I'll calm down. Just hang in there. This morning, I was able to, I was home for Easter bunny stuff. And one of the things that Lily got this year, and Jen made sure, Jen's my wife, not just a lady I talk about. Jen made sure to tell Lily that we gave you the Bible. The bunny did not bring that, okay? So we gave you the Bible. And the very first thing we did is I opened up to Luke chapter 24, and I said, can you find verses four and five? And she read the Easter story, which is the only sermon I needed today. But in those verses, Mary, Magdalene, and a couple of the other ladies have gone back to the tomb to dress the body of Jesus with spices. And when they get there, the stones rolled away. The tomb is empty. And they're looking around. And the angel says, the best sentence in the whole Bible, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Do you understand that if that verse isn't there, if that tomb's not empty, and if that never happens, that none of this matters? Do you understand if Easter isn't true, that we're all stupid? Like Paul says, if Easter's not true, then Christians are to be most pitied of all people, because we just parade through life trumpeting this hope that's hokum. If Easter's not true, then we're just coming here and we're singing songs that make us feel good and we're leaving with our morals so that we can feel like we have something to teach our children and we can feel better about ourselves and our neighbor. And that's all we're doing if Easter's not true. If Easter's not true, then you will never conquer your sin. You will die fighting it and your crud will exist forever. If Easter is not true, then when you lost that person who you love, who believes in Jesus as well, then it was goodbye, and that's it, and death is final, and there still is sting, and we should not have hope. If Easter is not true, then all that's left is eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you die. Everything hinges on Easter. And what I love about Easter is it brings everything together in our faith. I say often that to be a Christian, you need to believe Jesus. You need to believe that he was who he says he was, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. We need to believe that he was who he says he was. He's the Son of God who came to take away the sins of the world, and who else but the Son of God could raise himself from the dead? We need to believe that he did what he said he did, that he actually died, and that he actually rose again. And that there was actually an empty tomb on the outskirts of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. And then we believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which is to come crashing back through the clouds to claim his bride and take us to dinner. And to secure for us a perfect eternity. It is the hope to which we cling. And Easter is an invitation from Jesus himself to that marriage supper of the Lamb. So I would tell you this morning that if you want to be at that supper, if you want to go to the marriage supper of the Lamb, the greatest feast of all time, if you want to exist in this perfect eternity where you see your lost loved ones who also know and love Jesus, if you want to exist in this perfect eternity where all of your crud is gone and people can love each other perfectly and we get to see the face of our Savior and we get to cry out hallelujah to the face of our God and we get to experience perfect joy and bliss and peace. If you want to experience that, then all you have to do is accept God's invitation. If you want to go to the marriage supper of the Lamb, all you have to do is accept the invitation sealed through Easter and secured through the death of Christ. If you haven't done that, I'm not going to try to bring you to a point of decision right now. Because frankly, after doing a life of ministry, I just don't think that's quite how it works. But what I would invite you to do is to consider it. If this is true, then it's worth considering. If the marriage supper of the Lamb is real, I want to go. And I want to meet my Jesus. And if that tomb really was empty, and everybody who trumpets that hope isn't just faking it, then it's the most important thing that's ever happened. And you know, as Jesus extends that invitation to his supper, to the marriage supper of the Lamb, I think another reason that this series resonates with grace is because we think of ourselves as a table too. We're not a cruise ship or a battleship. We don't talk about being on mission. We consider ourselves a banquet table. And everyone's invited. Broken people. Hurt people. People who don't believe people who simply want to experience community and I think that every time we gather and we think of ourselves as a family gathering around a table and and every time we sing, and every time we raise our voices, and every time the Spirit stirs our affection for Jesus, that it's a whisper of what it will be like at the marriage supper of the Lamb. So I just wanted to finish today by inviting you to that whisper every week. If you're someone who churches in a regular part of your life, I hope you'll find a church that speaks to you. And if you think that could be grace, then we'd love to see you back next week and a lot of weeks after that. But I'm going to pray now and we're going to move into our last time of worship. And I'll just say this. It's good. It's real good. Let's pray. Father, thank you for sending your son. Thank you that he lived and that he died and that he rose and that he invites us to heaven with you. God, we look forward to that marriage supper of the Lamb, to being claimed back to you by Jesus. We look forward to the eternity that you promise and secure. And God, I pray for us in this room that we would make it a habit to gather with your family for the weekly reminder and promise of what's to come. As we close in song, God, I just pray that it would be sweet and that the Spirit would move and that we would turn our hearts towards you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Good to see everybody. Thank you for being here on Palm Sunday as we catapult into Easter. Easter is just about here. It feels like this year is going by so very quickly. And I love Easter. This Palm Sunday is part five of our series, The Table, and we're going to be looking at the Last Supper, the most famous of Jesus's meals at the table. And then next week we get to Easter. For me, Easter is my favorite holiday. Easter is victory holiday. Easter is when Jesus wins and death loses its sting. Easter, to me, for a Christian, is the best. It's the greatest holiday. I know Thanksgiving is great, and I know that Christmas is fantastic, but for me, from a spiritual perspective, Easter is the one that I most enjoy celebrating. Although Christmas is tough because Christmas is pretty good, and one of the things I really like about Christmas and the celebration of Christmas is how understated it is, how understated the arrival of Christ is. I know that's funny, but when it's understated in the Bible, not understated in our culture. Okay, sorry about that. That's less than clear. That also should have been read as a joke. But no, no, no. The arrival of Jesus is incredibly understated. And as a people, I think we are drawn to humble, understated things. When you consider it, the entire Old Testament points to this coming Messiah. God sends his son to earth to reconcile us to him. We're going to talk about that more in a little bit. And Jesus shows up. And when he shows up, when this great Messiah shows up from heaven, we would expect him, I think, to show up like he does in Revelation 19 with just armies of angels behind him and trumpets sounding. And in he thunders to the world. And that's not how he arrives. He arrives as a helpless baby to a nondescript mom in a nondescript town in a nondescript country. And it's just like, ta-da, he's here. And I think that's a really neat part of the Christmas story, and it's a really neat part of how our God works. Our God is remarkably understated, leaving us often to find the impact and the largesse of the things that he does. Similarly, I believe that the Last Supper is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. This is Palm Sunday. Palm Sunday launches us into Holy Week. Palm Sunday signifies the arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem. If you've read your Gospels carefully or closely or paid attention over the course of your life as you've interacted with the stories of Jesus, you'll find this peculiar thing that Jesus does whenever he performs a miracle. It feels like he's always like, okay, I'm going to heal your leprosy, but don't tell anybody. Okay, I'm going to heal your mom, but don't tell anybody I did it. And you're like, why is he doing this? This is weird. Isn't the point to tell other people about Jesus? Because Jesus knows that if too much fanfare gets out, that certain things are going to be set in motion that cannot be undone that will lead to his crucifixion. So when he goes into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he is knowingly setting in motion the wheels of events that will lead to his crucifixion. That's what Holy Week is. On Friday is the crucifixion of Jesus. It's called Good Friday. We're going to have a service here, and we're going to reflect on that. But I wanted to take some time this morning to reflect on what the Last Supper was and why it is so very significant. Because I think the Last Supper, this last Passover meal, the institution of communion together, again, is every bit as understated and significant as the arrival of Jesus himself. And I want to tell you why I think this, and I want that to allow us to kind of reflect on the significance of what the Last Supper represents. So before I continue, let me just read you the account of the Last Supper from the Gospel of Luke. It's in all four Gospels, but we've been going through the book of Luke, so I'm going to read from the Gospel of Luke in chapter 22, verses 15 through 20. He said, And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant of my blood. We'll stop right there. It's easy to just be reading this story, to read the Gospels, get to chapter 22, read this part. They're having dinner. They break bread. He says, this is a symbol of my crucifixion. If you continue to read the story, by the way, one of you is going to betray me, and then move on. But I want us to understand what's happening here. Because, again, the Passover, the Last Supper, immortalized by Da Vinci, is one of the most significant, impactful nights in all of the Bible, what he's talking about here. Do you understand that the whole Bible points to this night, to this weekend, to this death, and to this resurrection? Do you understand that the whole Bible points to the illustration of bread and wine that Jesus is using here? Even the night on which he chose to do it, they're celebrating Passover. Passover is a Hebrew celebration that is a celebration and reminder of the grace that God gave them when they were in Egypt to set them free from slavery. If you turn to the very beginning of your Bible in the book of Exodus, what you find is that God's chosen people are slaves to the Egyptians. And that God raises up a man named Moses, and he gives him the instruction, go to Pharaoh and set my people free. Pharaoh does not like this idea. God sends 10 plagues to change Pharaoh's mind. And the last one that he sends to break his will and to change his mind once and for all is the death of the firstborn son by the angel of death passing over Egypt. And the plague is this one night, the angel of death is going to pass over the nation of Egypt. And if you do not have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on your doorpost, on your doorframe, then that angel of death claims your firstborn son. If you do have the blood of a spotless lamb painted on the frame of your door of your house, then that blood is sufficient for the death and your firstborn son is not claimed. That is a very clear picture of the death of Jesus on the cross. I'm not going to go through the whole thing and make you work with me, but if you were to be a Hebrew person at that time and you heard that you needed to sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on your doorpost, you would paint it in the top center and you would paint it at about the height of your shoulder on the two frames. And that would form the shape of a cross on your door, the blood of a spotless lamb. What was Jesus called years later? Behold, the lamb of God who comes to take away the sins of the world. We just sang about the lamb of God. Jesus is the lamb of God who was sacrificed, who died a death so that we don't have to. And even though they didn't realize what they were doing when they were painting the blood on the doorframe, they were painting a picture of the crucifixion of Jesus. They, without knowing it, were pointing you to this and pointing all of history to the cross. They were painting a picture of what Jesus is depicting in the Last Supper, and then they go into the desert. And in the desert, some scholars say they could have been about 500,000 strong. However many it was, it was too many to feed off of what they could find to eat in the desert. So what did God do? You know. He sent manna. He sent the daily bread. He sent the daily sustenance for what they needed. He sent them enough for that day. We hear echoes of this in the Lord's Prayer. When the disciples look at Jesus and they're like, you pray different than anybody we've ever heard. Will you teach us how to pray? Jesus prays in part. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us our manna. Give us what we need for today. Give us the Jesus that we need to get through today. Give us the grace and the peace and the mercy and the love and the kindness and the persistence to get through today. What happened in the desert, in between Egypt and Israel, every day is God providing enough for that day. It is a picture of his provision of Jesus later. Manna is most closely associated with bread. It is the picture of the bread that Jesus would break at the Passover meal. It's a picture of who Jesus was. In the book of John, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. When you eat of me, you will hunger no more. He says, on the living water, when you drink of me, you will thirst no more. Jesus says, I am the bread of life. I am all that you need. And then as I was thinking about this and just, and there's more to do, I just don't have time to tie together all the symbolism in scripture that points us to the Passover meal and what that symbolizes. But even as I was thinking about last week's sermon on the feeding of the 5,000, there was five loaves of bread. And Jesus took them and he began to break them. And he began to feed everyone who was there, maybe about 20,000 people. And I wonder if there is a point, like bread number one. This one's good for about 3,500 folks. Oh, that one's done. And then he goes to the next one. I doubt that. This is just a guess. Okay, this is just a hunch. This is not in the Bible. This is just Nate talking to you. I wonder if he didn't take the first bread and break it, put it in the basket and the second one and break it and put it in the basket and the third and then the fourth and then he got to the fifth. And I wonder if that was the one that just kept breaking. I wonder if that was the one that had enough. And I wonder if the first four loaves weren't a picture of the Old Testament sacrificial system and the temporary sacrifices that we make. They only work for a little bit and then they run out. And then if that last piece of bread wasn't a picture of Christ being broken over and over and over and over and over again for all the people there so that they had more than what they needed. Even if it didn't go that way. And he dispersed the breaking equally over the five. It's bread being broken over and over and over and over again for all who were there so that all could have their fill. It is a picture of the crucifixion. Of Jesus. The bread of life being broken for us to give to all who have need. So much so that there is plenty of Jesus left over to go around for everyone. All of the Bible points to this night that is a picture of what happens in the hours to come. What I want us to understand is that what's symbolized here at the Passover meal, at the Last Supper, our entire history points to this singular act. Our entire history, the entire history of the world culminates and points to this singular act. What happens, what Jesus is depicting there in Luke 22 when he says, this is my body that's broken for you. Speaking of his body hanging on the cross. This is my blood that's poured out for you. Speaking of his blood that is spilt from the cross. All of history points to that singular act. It is the denouement of human history, what we see happen on Good Friday and then subsequently on Easter Sunday. And this Passover meal is a picture of it. Not only that, but all of our human history and all of our present traditions point back to what happened on the cross. So all of human history points to the singular act. And then everything that happens from then continually points us back to what happens on the cross. We're going to celebrate baptisms next week. Those are made possible by the cross. We're going to celebrate communion this week. That's made possible by the cross. Everything, everything, everything in history points to the crucifixion of Christ. Which begs the question, and it's really what this morning needs to be about, why is the crucifixion worth all of history's focus? Why is this one singular act worth all of the organization and the pointing and the pictures and the imagery that we find in the Old Testament pointing us to the crucifixion? Why does all of history reflect back on and reliant upon the crucifixion? Now, I know that we're in a Bible-believing church, so this seems like an obvious question. Why is the crucifixion such a big deal? And many of you know the answers. But I did think it was worth taking a Sunday as we barrel into Easter to reflect and to consider what is won for us at the death of Christ? What exactly happened on the cross? I think for many of us, if not all of us, we go to this place in our mind, well, that's how we're saved. And that's fine. That's a good start. But I would encourage us to reflect much more deeply on what is actually happening in the death of the Son of God on the cross. I'm not sure that you can make an exhaustive list of all the things that the crucifixion does, of all the things that it wins, of all the things that it stands for, of all the things that it symbolizes. I'm not sure that you can exhaust that list, so I'm not going to attempt to do that. But I do have for you this morning three things that I think that the crucifixion does for us. The first is the crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. The crucifixion exhausts God's wrath for his children. Now, this is not something we talk about a lot. It's not polite dinner conversation, God's wrath. How have you experienced God's wrath in your life lately? That's not something that we do. And we don't really like to reflect upon it. Matter of fact, I have some people in different Bible studies and just in different conversations that I'm in, in and around church, who almost have a problem with God's wrath. Where we'll see passages in Scripture that indicate that God's angry with sinners, that God does have wrath for us, and they'll kind of ask a question, which is it? Do we serve a God of love or do we serve a God of wrath? And you just kind of have to go, yeah. No, you take 40 years and figure it out. But let's talk just a little bit about the wrath of God so that we can see that it is an earned wrath. I happen to believe that the Bible is true and that we can trust what it says. And if we will accept that the Bible is true, then what it tells us is that there is a perfect creator God. And that that perfect creator God, out of His goodness, created us so that we might experience Him. He literally said, what we've got going on here, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is so good that I'm going to create a whole race of people so that they can share in this. And so he created the earth. And at the very, very beginning of the Bible, we see that he created the Garden of Eden, and he put Adam and Eve there. And when he was done with creation, he looked at it and he says, it is good. It is very good. It is perfect. This is exactly what I wanted. And we learn later that in that perfect utopian world that God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. That in this perfect place, all that God wanted was to be with us and all we wanted was to be with him. And it was everything that God had intended. And God was perfectly happy to live, to exist in this way with us for all of eternity. The only rule was from God, I get to be God and you don't. That's it. I get to be God, you don't get to be God. As long as you're good with that, we can exist like this. And Adam and Eve said, yeah, it's not going to work. We need to be equal partners here. And when we sin, that's what we say. You realize that's what all sin is? Any sin you've ever committed, all you're doing is saying, for now, you're a wise, trusted advisor, or you're a father figure I resent, whatever you want to pick. But you are not God. I am. I'm going to make my own choices. That's all sin is. So we collectively, at different times in our life, look at the creator of the universe who placed us here to experience a relationship with him, and we said, nah, I'm like you. I'm as good as you are. I'm going to follow my own rules. I don't trust your rules for my life. And when that happened in the garden, everything broke. They corrupted God's perfect creation. When sin entered the world, creation broke down. Things entered into creation that God did not intend for his creation. Things like cancer and abuse and hurt people who hurt other people and on and on and on the list goes. That was not in the Garden of Eden. That was not what God intended. When we sinned, when we declared that we were God too, we broke it. And we broke that relationship with him. The one thing that God wanted for us to be with him, we broke that. And God looked at us in love and he knew that we cannot fix this. We are powerless to repair that relationship. So what does he do to repair that relationship? Genesis chapter 12. He enacts this grand plan through the line of Abraham to bring us a Messiah who will die a perfect death on the cross so that we don't have to. He will be the blood of the Lamb on our doorframe so that we do not have to die. So that we might be reconciled back to Him. He says, I created a perfect world. I made it just for you. I made it so that you could experience relationship with me. You messed it up. You can't fix it. I'm going to fix it at great cost to myself. And then we do one of two things. Either we never at all accept that gift. I heard a quote from Ted Turner years ago. This is a very loose paraphrase because I don't remember it wholly and it wasn't worth looking up because I can get the point across to you. He basically said, why did Jesus die for me? I never asked him to do that. I don't need it. When we in our life do not become Christians, do not at any point express a faith in Christ and a gratitude for his death on the cross for us and a repentance of the sins that necessitated that death. We are essentially saying what Ted Turner said. Who's this Jesus guy? Why did he die on the cross for me? I didn't need that anyways. Now tell me that an all-powerful, perfect God who created us to exist in relationship with Him, who built a bridge back to Him at great cost to Himself, you explain to me why He shouldn't be rightly offended at that disgusting attitude. And then for the Christians who have accepted the love of Christ, who have accepted His sacrifice, understanding that it covers over our sins, what do we do to inflame and deserve the wrath of our God? We cheapen Christ's blood by presuming upon God's grace. With every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every willful act of reclaiming the God role in our life, with every determined break from God's will and choosing our will, with every knowing sin that we commit, we cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. I know I shouldn't do this, but I'm a sinful person. God has forgiven me. I'm good. I've prayed the prayer. I've repented. I go to church. I believe in Jesus. I know I shouldn't do this thing, but also I know that I'm good. God's got it. As if we're at some corporate dinner and we opt for another glass of cheap wine because we know that God is footing the bill. Every time we willfully sin and act discordantly with God's will in our life, we cheapen the blood of Christ that he spilled on the cross because we presume upon the grace that it signifies. And you tell me, if you're in heaven watching us trample the blood of your son with our willful sin, would you not be just a little ticked? Would you not be just a little annoyed? So yes, we serve a wrathful God. But yes, that wrath is earned. But, this is the beautiful part. When Jesus is hanging on the cross and he utters, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? It is in that moment that our earned wrath is poured out on his son on our behalf so that we don't have to experience that. God's wrath is exhausted in that moment on his own son so that we live life exempt from God's wrath, only experiencing God's love. This is why it's so puzzling, I think, for Christians when we encounter the wrath of God in scripture to be told that it exists because we don't experience that God. We experience a loving God without acknowledging that the wrath that he has for us was already poured out on his son so that we don't have to experience it. So what does the crucifixion do? It saves you. Sure, fine, use that language. But what it really does is it exhausts the wrath of God for you so that all that's left for you from the God of heaven is love. So we can sing our songs and so we can live in peace and so that we can be reconciled back to him. That's what's won on the cross is we don't experience God's wrath. People who never come to faith do and it's terrible. But lest we make the cross, as we often do, about our personal salvation project, which is not its intent, let us also acknowledge what else the crucifixion does. Because the crucifixion reconciles all of creation. It reconciles all of creation back to God. I love Romans 8, and I quote it often when it says that all of creation groans together for the reconciliation of us back to our God, for our adoption as sons, for the forgiveness of sins. All of creation groans to be reconciled back to the perfect utopia that God intended. When we get the call that someone is very sick, that someone found a lump or a mass somewhere, and the results of the scan come back and it is not good. That is creation groaning for a return back to Eden, for the return of the King. That is creation groaning for Jesus to come make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. When a marriage breaks down and children are left being shuttled back and forth, that is creation groaning for the way things are supposed to be. When a husband is abusive and a wife feels that shame, creation is groaning. When the leaves fall off the trees and die, and winter is barren, and the days are short, creation is groaning. When COVID sweeps through and shuts us down, creation is groaning. It is telling us, this is not right. This does not feel right. When tragedy strikes and we're sitting in the middle of it, creation is groaning with you for the reconciliation of God's children to himself, for the forgiveness of sins and the restoration of Eden. Creation is groaning for the promises in Revelation. And those groanings are only fulfilled through the cross. Through Jesus reconciling not just us back to our God, but creation back to its creator. On the cross, we are promised that those things will not always be true, which begs us to discuss the last thing I want to say about what the crucifixion does, which is the crucifixion gives us hope for the future. We're told in Romans 5 that we have a hope that will not be put to shame. And if you have lived life for any amount of time, you know that everything you hope in eventually puts you to shame. Everything that you've ever placed your hope in has hurt you. Everything that you have ever placed your hope in has let you down. Except God. There are times, I will admit, when He feels like He has let you down. But what we have in the crucifixion is the promise that ultimately he did not. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion of Jesus and the subsequent resurrection, that all there is is careening through life from tragedy to tragedy? Do you understand that if there's no crucifixion, then all we have is Ecclesiastes, where the wisest man in the world at the time wrote, with much wisdom comes much vexation. The smarter I get, the sadder things are. Do you understand that if we don't have the crucifixion, that all there is, it's just eat, sleep, and be merry for tomorrow we die. If today happens to be a good day, well then bucko, buddy. Good job, because tomorrow's going to stink. If there's no crucifixion, then when we lose a loved one, it's just goodbye. That's it. Death is final. It wins. It will claim us all. And we live with that cloud over our head for our whole lives. And the best we can do is stave it off. But because of the crucifixion, when we lose a loved one who knows Jesus, it's simply goodbye for now. And frankly, I don't know how a hurt world, how a lost world makes sense of tragedy without the crucifixion and the hope that one day these sad things will be made right and untrue. How do you cope with what happened in Nashville without the crucifixion? How do you watch your dreams crumble around you in the marriage that you thought that was going to work and hasn't without the crucifixion? How do you deal with miscarriage and loss and illness without the crucifixion? How do you find any hope that anything gets any better without the crucifixion? Without the promise that one day our God will be with his people and his people will be with our God and there will be no more sin and no more crying and no more death anymore for the former things have passed away. How do you have hope for that without the crucifixion? That's what's won there. That's what the crucifixion means. It's not just our personal salvation project. It exhausts the wrath of God. It reconciles all of creation back to Him. And it gives us a hope that this world can't touch. We asked earlier why our entire history looks to this moment and it's simply this. Our entire history points to this singular act because our entire future relies upon it. Everything in human history is marshaled to focus us on the cross because all of the hope of the future of humanity rests on the cross. So when we celebrate communion, that's what we celebrate. In just a little bit, I'm going to pray, and then the elders will come forward, and we'll move into a time of communion together. And when we do that, remember these things. Remember that as you break that bread, that it symbolizes Christ's body breaking for you on the cross. As you dip it in the wine, that symbolizes his blood poured out for you on the cross. And that on that cross that day, the wrath of God, the earned wrath of God was exhausted on your Savior so that you might experience the love of a good God. And that on that day, there is a promise made that one day He will reconcile all of creation back to Himself exactly the way He intended. And that on that day, the pain that you feel right now, the hard things that you are walking through right now will be anathema. They will be no more. It is done. There is a hope that you can cling to. So I'm going to pray, and as I do, I would like for you to pray too. Pray with me or pray on your own. But allow God to prepare your heart to take communion. Carry to that communion table whatever it is you need to carry. Carry to that communion table whatever brokenness it was that you walked in here with this morning. If you walked in here in a good space, if life is good, if you're in a sweet season, then praise God for that sweet season as you break the bread that earned you that season. If you're in a time that makes you need hope, then break that bread for hope. That God sees you, that God knows you, that God loves you, and that God has made promises to you and that you can hope in those promises and that they will not be put to shame. As I pray, spend time preparing your heart for communion, and then I'll give you some instructions as the band comes up. and over again in my life. I know that the chances are high that I will presume upon your grace this week. And the week after that. Thank you for loving me anyways. For pursuing me anyways. Thank you for loving us despite our willful disobedience. Thank you for exhausting your wrath on your son on our behalf so that we might experience your love. I pray that we would walk faithfully and gratefully in that love. And God, to those who need it most, for those who are hurting, I pray that communion this morning can be a symbol and a reminder of hope. That not all days will be like today. It's simply creation groaning for you. And that in your perfect time, in your perfect way, you'll send your son back to get us and make all these wrong things right and make all these sad things untrue. Thank you for everything that was won on the cross. Give us a fresh gratitude for it that we might walk in that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, my name is Nate, and I say I get to be the pastor here, although that's less convincing since I just said I don't want to preach to you guys. I still like to be the pastor. I just want to sit in the service, too, you know? And if I haven't gotten to meet you, I really would love to do that in the lobby afterwards if that's something that you would like to do as well. We are in the last part of our series called The Blessed Life, where we're looking at the blessings that come at the beginning of Jesus' first recorded public address, the Sermon on the Mount. You can find it in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. That's where we've been looking at the blessings. But it's also recorded in Luke chapter 6, so you can find it there as well. As we've looked at the blessings, we've looked at three of them. Last week, Doug looked at poor in spirit, did a phenomenal job. Thank you once again, Doug. I told Doug after the service last week, and I would say publicly, that I think the church is so very blessed when we can just kind of give him this little idea or verse or thought. I think one time I allowed him like a part of one sentence, please preach on just this part of one sentence. And he takes that into his laboratory for like six months and just thinks on it and then just says, here you go. And we all just kind of walk away going, I think I should listen to that three or four more times, but we're so blessed by that. So thank you. This week, I want to look at the final blessing that we have selected. And when I say we, I mean me. There's nine blessings, and I picked three of them to talk about. Doug picked the other one. And as I chose them, one of the ones that I wanted to talk about as we moved through this series was this one found in Matthew chapter 5, verse 9. And it simply says, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be the children of God, the sons and daughters of God, which is quite the blessing for this one. The others, you know, theirs is the kingdom of heaven, that they will be, their hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied, that will be filled, they will inherit the earth. But this one, God literally says, if you are a peacemaker, I will adopt you as my child. That's the blessing that flows from being someone who seeks to make peace. And for most of us, this is not the first time we've encountered this blessing or beatitude. Blessed are the peacemakers. And so when we think of it, we probably think of peacemakers. What I think about peacemakers, I had an experience a week, 10 days ago, where I met a buddy of mine in the afternoon just to chit-chat and catch up, just kind of like you do sometimes. And we got to talking, and he asked me about a mutual acquaintance of ours and how my relationship was with him. And I said, well, it's not super good. There's really still kind of a lot of hurt and anger there, so I wouldn't say that we're actually talking very much. And he said, well, why is that? Why is that bad? And for eight to ten minutes, I kind of enumerated my sob story of why I'm angry at this person, why I'm holding a grudge against this person, and why I'm not really too keen on cleaning that up. We don't really run in the same circles. We don't really run into each other. So it's not something that's in my face all the time. And I'm perfectly happy just floating through life, never forgiving them, never talking to them, just making them anathema to me and just moving on down the road. And I enumerated to him all the reasons why I'm justified in this hurt. And he responded with, you're right, that makes sense. And I would be angry too. You know you need to talk to him and forgive him, right? Just like flippantly, as if he hadn't heard the methodical case I laid out for 10 minutes so that he would know, yes, God does tell us to forgive, but surely this, Nate, is the exception. You were so deeply wronged. You do not have to forgive this person. He said, you know you have to forgive him, right? And I was like, eh, I mean, I think we're good. And he was like, no, you're not. You know you need to talk to him. And I'm like, yeah, but I don't want to. And he goes, okay, but you should. He's really stubborn, and he's not very smart. So this was really annoying. And I finally looked at him and I said, yeah, I know, you're right. I do. I don't want to, but I'll pray that I want to and that I can. And that was two weeks ago. I've thought about that person and that conversation every day since. And choosing a sermon on being a peacemaker doesn't help with the conviction that you have in your life that you've not made peace. I don't hold a lot of grudges, but apparently when I do, I hold them pretty tight. And so I thought, what a well-timed sermon for me. I don't know if it's going to help you guys. I'll just preach to myself. None of y'all hold grudges or mad at anybody. But I thought, what a well-timed sermon for me. I'm going to need this. This is going to be one of those ones that I'll be freshly convicted as I go through it. And it is. But as I approached the topic and began to read up on it, began to think through it, it actually came out in my studies that that sort of peacemaking, person to person, is not really what Jesus was talking about when he said, blessed are the peacemakers. See, to Jesus, a true peacemaker is one who reconciles someone with their God. So a peacemaker is someone who seeks to reconcile someone else with their creator God, which is different than horizontal peacemaking. A peacemaker is one who makes peace vertically between a person and their God. And so I kind of came into the week loaded for bear on why peacemaking is so important, why it matters so much, why we need to pursue it, and even the active part of peacemaking, how making peace isn't just staying quiet and simmering with anger and never saying anything to someone else to kind of not disturb the peace, but sometimes making peace looks like the exact opposite of peace for the sake of peace, right? Sometimes making peace looks like getting involved in World War II for the sake of making peace. And so sometimes in our lives and in our relationship, we can't just sit back. We can't just idly stand by and try to keep the waters calm where there's tension simmering underneath it. We need to actively pursue peace with difficult, challenging conversations. And I was ready to preach this because that's something I don't mind doing. And I felt like I was preaching from a strong suit. And it turns out I'm not. It's funny how God works because that's not really what this sermon is about. It's about the fact that making peace in the eyes of Jesus, first and foremost, means reconciling people to their God. And so really, as much as my buddy was a peacemaker that day, and really ultimately pushed me closer to my God in reconciliation with others, a true peacemaker is more like my friend who's a pastor. I have a friend who is a pastor and his gift, he's got this gift of evangelism. He shares Jesus all the time everywhere he goes. He's one of those guys when you go out to eat with him and the waiter or the waitress brings the food to the table, he'll say, hey, we're about to pray. Is there anything going on in your life we can pray about? And if you're like me, that makes you just a little tense. It's a little bit uncomfortable, but I can't tell you how many times out of that simple question people have broken down, people have shared things, people have wanted to talk. He'll stay after the meal and lead them to Christ right there in the restaurant. He likes to golf. He'll go golfing and he'll witness to his caddy for 18 holes when he goes on trips. And by the end, he's posting a selfie next to his caddy who just accepted Christ. And like, if you're next to him on an airplane and you don't know Jesus, you're at least going to fake like you do before the end of that flight. He is going to share his faith with you. He is going to share it all the time, and he is constantly, constantly helping people reconcile themselves with their creator. That's what a peacemaker does. A peacemaker helps someone see there is a creator God of the universe who really loves us, as we just sang, and pursues us and comes after us when we are the prodigal son or the prodigal daughter. He chases after us. He waits for us eagerly. He desires us. And we were made, Garden of Eden, perfect creation, perfect relationship. God walked with them in the cool of the evening. God designed you to be in relationship with him. It's the only reason you exist. It's the only reason he wanted to create you is so he could share himself with you. The problem is when we sin, and the easiest way to understand sin is when we assume authority in our life. When God is here and we are here and we go, gosh, I don't like this arrangement. I'm going to start making my own decisions regardless of what God wants me to do. Those decisions are sin. And that sin wrecks our relationship with God. And we cannot be reconciled to him. There is nothing we can do to reconcile our relationship with our creator God. And God in his goodness, because he loves us, sent his son to die for us and create a path of reconciliation back to him so that all we need to do to be reconciled to our creator God is open up our eyes to the fact that he created us, that he loves us, that our sin has distorted our relationship, but that he sent his son to die for us so that that relationship might be restored. And that's what heaven is. It's to exist in eternity in a perfect relationship with God. When we think about heaven, we probably think about the pearly gates and the golden streets and seeing our loved ones and the marriage supper of the lamb and all the things that heaven is going to be. But what heaven really is, the real draw, is to exist in right relationship with our God for all of eternity, exactly as we were intended to do that. And so a peacemaker is someone who opens up the eyes of others that they might be reconciled with their God. Do you understand that the teachers who are in that room right there teaching the fourth and fifth graders and who are on the other side of the aquarium supply store down the dark hallway. Teaching our kindergarten through third graders. And the teachers all down this hall who are loving on our children. Do you understand they're making peace? But slowly by slowly, brick by brick, seemingly innocuous lesson plan by lesson plan, they're helping our children make peace with their God. Do you understand that our teachers are peacemakers? Do you understand that the people who come on Sunday nights and volunteer to be small group leaders for our students, who make awkward small talk with seventh graders so you don't have to. Are slowly by slowly, bit by bit, helping open the eyes of those students to their creator God who loves them and sent his son for them. That bit by bit, those small group leaders are helping those students be reconciled to their God. Do you understand that small group leaders who open up their home and their schedules and facilitate those conversations are peacemakers who are reconciling others to their God? Do you understand that when in a small group setting you share something from your journey, something from what God has shown you that can help somebody else, that in that small way, way in that moment that you too are being a peacemaker? That really we are being peacemakers anytime we help someone take a step towards God. Anytime we help someone reconcile themselves back to their creator, when we help someone make vertical peace, we are being peacemakers. And so Jesus says, blessed are those who help others make peace with me. Blessed are those who help others see themselves as I see them and see me as they should see me. And so in this way, not only is it volunteering in the children's and the students' and small groups and conversations, but it's also being willing to have those difficult conversations. It's also my friend who said, you know you need to forgive that person. And it's not because they were trying to help me make peace with that person. It's because helping me make peace with that person will help me make peace with my God. You're a peacemaker when you sit down with a friend who you love and you care about and you say, hey man, I don't want to be in this conversation right now any more than you want to be in it. But I've noticed this habit or this hang up or this addiction or this sin that's in your life and it's not helping you. It's hurting you. And I love you. And I want to see what you look like on the other side of this sin. That's making peace. When as a spouse, you look at your husband or your wife, and you say, hey, you're acting this way, you're doing this thing, you're developing this habit, you're developing this hang-up, and it needs to end where this does. When you put your foot down and you say no more, you're making peace. You're pushing them towards their creator. And in those moments when it's really difficult to make peace and yet we pursue it anyways. Vertical peace. Jesus says we are blessed because we're helping people to be reconciled to their creator God. And it occurred to me as I thought through what true peacemaking was that Jesus is the great peacemaker. He offers the great peace out of which all other peace flows. Jesus himself is the great peacemaker, and he offers the great peace out of which all other peace flows. I'll tell you what I mean, but he's the great peacemaker as he hangs on the cross, reconciling us back to our creator God. He did not have to do that. His relationship with his God was fine. His relationship with his father was fine, but he did it for me and you. So as he hangs on the cross, he is the great peacemaker, creating the great path of reconciliation and providing us with the great and perfect peace. And it makes me wonder, how could we ever seek to be at peace with ourselves if we are not first at peace with our creator? And as I thought about this concept, and I thought about the great peace that Jesus offers, it occurs to me that I should mention this. I'm going to move over here. I'm going to be in this portion of the stage, because this is not the sermon proper, okay? This is not what I'm driving at, but I do want to tell you this. So allow me a parenthetical portion of the sermon, okay? We live in a culture that is increasingly aware of mental health issues, anxiety and depression in particular. And it's not like these issues didn't exist before. We just didn't have words for them or labels for them. We didn't really understand them or know what to do with them. We just called it being sad or being discouraged or worrying too much. I was actually talking with a guy this week who has a daughter in college who's struggling pretty big with anxiety and depression right now. And he mentioned to me that as she's going to counseling, they're doing all the right things, and they're being really diligent about it. And she's been sharing with him some of the stuff that she's been learning in counseling, some of the symptoms and some of the things and some of the stuff that she sees manifesting in her life. And he's realized, oh my goodness, I've walked with that my whole life too. I shouldn't have a name for it. I just thought I was sad. So we live in a culture with an increasing awareness of these things. And I want to be really careful because I would not for a second try to be one of those pastors who says we pray away the depression. If you're worried, you just don't trust God enough. If you're depressed, you're just not experiencing the joy of Jesus and you need to pursue him harder and pray and sing more. Could be part of it. But probably that there's a legitimate chemical imbalance that needs counseling and that needs some drugs maybe even for a short time. And so I do not for a second want to say that we pray the depression and the anxiety away all the time as a first measure. There are some things that require actual treatment. I don't want to be ignorant about that. However, if it's true that God created us, if it's true that he fashioned your soul to crave him, if it's true that we, along with all creation in Romans 8, cry out for the return of the king, that creation groans for the return of God, for him to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, if we claw for Eden and the perfection that he created, if it's true that there's a creator God and that creator God made you and he made you to crave him and to need him and to only find satisfaction through knowing him and being reconciled to him, how could we possibly seek our own peace without being at peace with our creator? It's not the whole measure for mental illness, but it's got to be one of them, doesn't it? It's got to be a part of it, doesn't it? So I would simply say if you were one who struggles in that way, man, we want you to get all the counseling. We want you to get, if you need prescriptions, we want you to do those. We want you to be diligent about those things. But there's not enough therapy or prescriptions in the world to reconcile you to your creator. And there's not enough treatment in the world to give you the peace that he offers first. And even if that's not what you deal with, even if that's not your struggle, I would still ask you, how can you possibly be at peace with yourself and at peace with those around you if your soul is out of harmony with your creator God? So for many of us, the first peace we need to be making is with ourselves. For many of us this morning, and here at the end we're going to take communion, we're going to have an opportunity to do this. If you get nothing else from this but to leave here with the desire to be reconciled with your creator, this morning is a win. If there's sin in your life that's keeping you from having a good relationship with him, fix it. If you're like me and there's a relationship in your life, if there's a grudge that you're holding, if there's forgiveness that you need to extend and it's prohibiting you from having a perfectly peaceful relationship with your God, then fix it. If there's a habit that you're missing, a discipline that you lack, if there's a desire that you don't have, pray to God earnestly that he would speak into those things, that he would give you that desire, that he would give you that discipline, that he would supply you with that habit so that you might pursue him. But let's leave here determined and hopeful that we can be reconciled with our creator. God, let us first make peace with ourselves and in that way be peacemakers. But it does, to me, come full circles to reconciliation with others because how could we possibly be at peace with others if we are not at peace with our creator. If there is someone in your life that you're angry with, if there's someone that's angry with you, if there's someone that you're frustrated with. If there's a relationship that isn't right. No matter what the dynamic is there. They wronged you years ago. You can't let go of it. You wronged them and you've got too much pride to go to them. There's a misunderstanding. Whatever it is that's causing you to lack peace with a brother or a sister, instead of sitting back and expecting them to act, can I just encourage you to seek peace with your creator, God? Can I encourage you, instead of focusing on that broken relationship, can you focus on this one? And as God repairs this one, look what would happen. How could you possibly be at peace with our creator and not desire peace with others? Why do you think God has reminded me of this broken relationship I have every day for 14 days and he will not let it go? There's other things I'd like to think about. There's other stuff. I mean, listen, I've got plenty to be convicted about, but that's the thing right now, and it's not going anywhere. Why do you think that happens? Because my soul longs to be at peace with Creator God, and this horizontal relationship is messing up this vertical one, and so I need to go fix it to be back in right relationship with my creator. Those of you who have broken relationships in your life, someone that you haven't forgiven, someone that you haven't spoken to for years, someone that has something against you or you have it against them, how could you possibly be at peace with your creator and not seek peace with them? Not seek to be reconciled with them. So when we do this, and this is, I think, the really cool part, when we are peacemakers, when we first make peace with our God and ourselves, and then we make peace with others, we seek reconciled relationships, we encourage others to reconcile their relationships. When we make true peace, we are imitators of Jesus. When we make true peace with ourselves and with others, we are imitators of Jesus in the way that he is the great peacemaker, that he made the great path to reconciliation with our creator God. When we do that, we are imitators of Christ as we make peace with ourselves and others. And this is why the blessing is so profound. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the sons of God. They will be called the daughters, the children of God. Because we are imitators of Christ. Of course. Of course when we make peace with our creator God, we acknowledge that we have broken our relationship and that he sent his son to reconcile that relationship and we claim the death on the cross as our reconciliation. Of course we are called sons of God. That's the promise throughout the whole scripture. It means we're believers and he claims us. And of course as we seek to reconcile other people with their God and they come to know God in a profound way and they become believers and they become sons and daughters of God. Of course we are imitating Christ and then called sons of God. Of course that's why this is the blessing. Maybe this is why scripture prioritizes peace so profoundly. Paul writes in Romans, as far as it depends on you, seek peace. As far as it relies on you, make peace. No matter what, Paul ends all of his letters with grace and peace to you. And I've always wondered why Paul made such a big deal out of peace. Because he wasn't talking about this peace. He's talking about this peace. Maybe this is why Jesus prays the high priestly prayer, John chapter 17, his longest recorded prayer. You know what he prays for? He prays for unity. Here and there. Peace. It had never occurred to me before how all of these themes are woven throughout Scripture. This use of the word peace that we see over and over again, God's encouragement through the different authors to pursue peace, to be people of peace, to lead quiet and peaceful lives. Jesus opening up the Beatitudes with blessed by the peacemakers. It had never occurred to me why peace was throughout all scripture. Because peace means this peace. Reconciling with our creator God. And so my prayer for you this morning as we worshiped, this week as I prepared, is that you will seek peace with your creator. You will acknowledge he is the creator God who loves you. Your sin has distorted that relationship and broken it irreconcilably. Accept that Jesus died for you and created a path of reconciliation. Pursue that peace. And in your pursuit of that peace, look around you and help others pursue that peace as well. And in doing so, we are imitators of Jesus. And God will call us his children. Let's pray. Lord, I know there are plenty of us here, me included, who do not feel at peace with you, would you help us? Would you wrestle with us? Would you remind us of this lack of peace and the gentle way that you do it over and over again until we pursue it. Father, if there are people here who have never made peace with you, whose souls have never found rest in you, who have wandered from one thing to the next trying to find the peace and the satisfaction that only you offer. Would this morning be the morning that they rest easy in you and reconcile themselves, claim the reconciliation that you offer, and make peace with their creator, God, finally. Father, for those of us who need to make peace with others, would you give us the courage and the strength to do that? For those of us who need to pursue peace with you through eliminating things that are in our life, would you give us the courage to do that? If we need to pursue peace with you by adding things to our life, would you give us the desire and the discipline to do that? God, this morning, we simply pray for peace with you and with our brothers and sisters around us. Let us be peacemakers. In Jesus' name, amen.

I was so caught up in worship and prayer that I forgot I was supposed to come up here while she was praying. Whoops. Hey guys, I'm Nate. I'm the normal pastor here. I'm just bad at stuff sometimes. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to get to do that in the lobby afterwards if you're up for it. Also, after the service today, we're having Discover Grace in the kids' room next door, which is an opportunity just to learn more about who we are, what we do, what makes us tick as a church. If you're new here or you've never done that and you'd like to, even if you haven't signed up for it, you're invited. We've got space for you and snacks for you. We'd love to see you over there. This morning, we are launching into our new series called The Blessed Life. I always have to double check what the title of the series is because I always tell Carly and Aaron, here's what I'm going to be talking about. In my head, I'm calling it this, but do whatever makes the most sense graphically and then just tell me what you've called it. And then I always call it the wrong thing and they always make fun of me. So this morning I looked, it's the blessed life. I see it there and that's what we're gonna go with. This is a look at the Beatitudes. Jesus's first recorded public address is the most famous sermon ever given. It's the greatest sermon ever given. As a matter of fact, a few years ago, we did a series called The Greatest Sermon, where we looked at the Sermon on the Mount. He begins the Sermon on the Mount with this series of blessings, nine blessings that we refer to as the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are Georgia Tech fans, for you understand suffering. Things like that. I went to the NC State game yesterday with Lily and watched Georgia Tech play NC State in regular season college basketball. And my biggest takeaway from going to my first NC State basketball game is, everybody just calm down, all right? Just take it easy. A, it's middle of the season. B, you're NC State. Like, nothing's going to happen. What are you going to do, win the regular season? Who cares? Just relax, people. Just get a Coke, watch the game, talk to your friends. I don't understand what all the noise is for. Anyways, and I'm wearing NC State colors, incidentally. Yeah, yeah. I don't know why I told you that. But we're getting into this series, The Blessed Life. And we're looking at these blessings that Jesus opens with. And I think it's so interesting and poignant and worth pointing out that for the very first time that Jesus addresses the public that we see, he meets them right where they are. He blesses them. He offers them comfort. And he basically says through his words, hey, I see you. I understand your struggles. But as we look at the Beatitudes, and it says blessed are these nine different groups of people, we've got to wonder what it means to be blessed. What is it to be blessed? What is it to be blessed by God? This is something that can be misconstrued in terrible ways, and we can warp our entire theology out of a pursuit of a misunderstood blessing. So when I've understood being blessed historically, normally I kind of think of it as a time in life when you receive unreasonable favor or unreasonable access, and you didn't earn it. Someone just gifts you with it, gifts you with their favor, gifts you with their access, gifts you with this special portion of joy that you would not have otherwise experienced. I kind of think, when I think of being blessed, I kind of think of the spring of 2013. I was on staff at a church called Greystone. I had a really good friend on staff who's still a good friend to this day, a guy named Heath Hollinsworth. And Heath and his family, they have tickets to the Masters and they go every year. Now in 2013, I was not a golf fan. I didn't really keep up with it. This is to my detriment. I missed all the good Tiger years focusing on Peyton Manning and football in general. But I missed some good years, and I wasn't really a huge golf fan at the time, but Heath, in late March, picked up the phone, and he said, hey, I've got some tickets to the Masters. I'm going to go Friday of the tournament. Do you want to come with me? And now, like I said, I wasn't a golf fan at the time, but I've always been a sports fan, and I knew enough about the Masters that if someone says, hey man, you want to go to the Masters with me? You immediately answer yes. Okay? Just life advice for all of you. If you've never heard of it before, if you don't know what it is, and someone says, would you like to go to the Masters with me? Yes, immediately I would. Cancel whatever you have. I'm getting married that day. Doesn't matter. Postpone it. Go to the Masters. You can get married any day, okay? You're not going to get invited back to the Masters again. And so I'm like, yeah, I'll go. And I said, dude, are you sure, though? I don't deserve this. We have friends who are going to be really angry when they find out that you invited me. They deserve to go. They've been watching. They love the Masters. They know the lore of Augusta National, the whole deal. I do not deserve this. He's like, no, I want you to go. I like taking people who have never been before, and I really want to see you just experience it with fresh eyes. I'm like, all right, cool. So we go, and for those of you who don't know what the Masters is, it really is the greatest sporting event on the planet that you can attend in person. It really is. Maybe Wimbledon, I would put up there as like maybe that's neck and neck, but going to Augusta National and experiencing what it is to be a patron, not a fan, is amazing. And if you've seen it on your TV, on CBS with Jim Nance's soft voice, hello friends, and the birds chirping in the background, whenever they start to play the promos in like February, I get all nostalgic in my living room. I'm like, oh man, this is going to be great. And it's a beautiful, beautiful course. I just spent so much money on making it look good. It looked so good that when I got there and I stepped onto the course, I literally had to bend down and touch the grass to make myself believe that it was real. It looked that good. And you walk around all the places and you see all the things. And holes 11, 12, and 13 are called Amen Corner. And when you see it, you understand why. And I'm telling you, it looks like walking around in a painting. It's just, it's unbelievable. And the whole day I'm thinking, I don't deserve this. This is as close to heaven on earth as it possibly gets. When we get to heaven, I'll be like, this feels like hole number eight. This makes sense. The front of Augusta National, there are pearly gates. Do you understand? It's an amazing place. And I couldn't believe that I got to go there. And ever since then, I've loved golf. I play golf. I thought for the rest of my life, I want this to be a part of what I get to experience. And it really did impact me in a great way. But when I think about being blessed, I think about opportunities like that where you're walking around and I'm realizing in every moment, I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be here. This is amazing. But then I started to dig into what being blessed really means, because I think that we probably all think about blessing being that way. When we have some unearned favor in our life, and we go, gosh, I don't deserve this, but this is great. And there's a part of that that's absolutely true and absolutely is reflective of what it means to be blessed. But when you actually study the words that Jesus was using here, and if you've been a part of Grace for a while, you know I'm not like an in the Greek pastor. That's not really my deal because what that really means is on the Google because people don't know Greek. They just Google it and then they sound smart and be like, the original Greek word is this thing I read this week. But this time it's important because the word that Jesus chose to use there really means fully satisfied. So to be blessed is to be fully satisfied. It's not to experience undue favor, although that is a part of it. It's not to experience unearned access, although I'm sure that is a part of it as well. To be blessed, and this is really how we need to understand it as we move through the series. To be blessed, according to the words that Jesus himself chose, the best we know, means to be fully satisfied. And when you think about it that way, it's a hugely powerful concept. It's a hugely powerful concept that to be blessed means to be fully satisfied. I have a friend who we make fun of for this, but he is never satisfied. We can be having the most fun. I've got this group of eight friends that I've been friends with for over, some for as long as 35 years, some for 25 years. That's still the new guy in the group. And we go on trips, we talk every day. We do all kinds of stuff. And we've had a lot of fun together. We can be in a moment where we are having apex fun. We're at the golf course. We're goofing off. We're around a lake. We're on a boat. We're in Vegas. We're wherever we are. We're having apex fun in the middle of Wrigley Field. And my buddy, Trip, will look at us and he'll say, is there anything we can do to make this more fun? And we're like, no, shut up. Like this is, what you're doing right now is making it less fun. Just soak in the moment, man. This is great. But his mind is always going, is there anything that we could be doing that would make us more satisfied than we are right now? Like, no, man, just chill out. Just enjoy it. That's what being blessed is, is to realize in this moment, in this season, in this time, I don't need anything else to be completely satisfied, to be completely happy, to be completely fulfilled. And when you think about it that way, you see that God has blessed all of us tremendously no matter what season we're in. That more often than not, if we'll just stop and look around, what we'll see is that God has given us everything we need for happiness, for peace, for contentment, to really feel as though we're experiencing blessing. I'll have these moments with Jen where we're sitting in the house and the kids are being sweet. No one's whining. No one's complaining. She and I are joking back and forth. We're laughing at something that Lily or John are doing. Those are our kids. And I'll look at her and I'll just go, who's got it better than us? And she'll go, nobody. And I'm like, no, nobody. This is so happy. This is so great. There's nothing else that could be added to this moment to make me feel more blessed. I have all the things I need in life to experience your blessing. That's why Jordan jokingly pointed to me and said, hey, you love this song. I will build my life upon your love as a firm foundation. But I do, because it reminds me that the foundation of love that God gives us in our life is a foundation of everything that we need to feel blessed, to feel fully happy and fully content and fully satisfied. Our problem is we start to look outside of the blessings of God to experience a joy that we don't need to grasp for, and we just don't see ourselves doing that, which is why this first beatitude this morning might be so helpful for us in how we frame up our thinking around blessing and around what God provides for us. So now that we understand what it means to be blessed, I want us to look at this, the fourth promise. It's the fourth blessing of the nine that Jesus gives when he says this in Matthew 5, verse 6. By the way, if you want to read the Sermon on the Mount, you can find it in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. But it says this in verse 6, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, can mean some different things. In most New Testament contexts, what that means is right standing before God. But in this context, really what it means is, I believe, it's a placeholder for God himself. God bless you. I need the Spirit today. Would you fill me for this conversation? Blessed are those who literally hunger and thirst for righteousness, for God himself, for you will be satisfied. And this beatitude and this idea in scripture is always particularly challenging to me because I'm not one to read this and think to myself, oh yeah, that's me. That's me. When I read through the beatitudes, blessed are those who mourn. I can relate to that. That one's fine. But when I see blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. I don't read this and be like, I'm blessed because I hunger and thirst. I always feel challenged by that. Don't hunger enough for God. I'm not thirsty enough for his word. And I would bet that you feel similarly. This beatitude always reminds me of a psalm, Psalm 42, where David writes, as the deer, and I memorized this when I was young, which means I did it in the King's English, not the ESV, I did it in the KJV. As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longs for you, O God, the living God. And it just makes me wonder, have you ever pantethed? Have you ever just panted because you were just so thirsty? If I don't have a drink, I really might fall out right here because I have, and I'll tell you where. I was in Johannesburg, South Africa. And some of y'all, if you were around in the fall, you know that I had the opportunity to go to South Africa and that part of coming back was I had to make a difficult decision to leave my luggage behind in Johannesburg. That particular piece of luggage had my Crocs in there, and some of y'all know that those have kind of become a part of Grace's subculture. My toothpaste-colored Crocs have been on multiple continents. Jen was elated that those were over in Africa and will never be seen again. But the good African people sent me my bag. I fetched it at RDU and the Crocs live on, baby. So you may know that I went through a couple of tenuous days there where I really thought I'd lost something special. And then the Lord in his goodness brought them back to me. But you may not know why the bag was in Johannesburg. So that's what I'm going to tell you this morning. We go to catch the flight out of Cape Town. And as we get to the Cape Town airport, we're told that our flight is delayed and we're not going to get to Johannesburg at the time that we think we're going to get there. And so we start to do the math and we realize that the window is pretty small because the two flights are not associated with each other. We're flying from Cape Town to Johannesburg on some local South African airline, and then we're flying back on Delta. So they're not associated. So I'm going to have to land in Johannesburg, go to baggage claim, get my baggage, then go back through security and whatever else, and get on the plane and recheck my bag. And that takes a long time. And so we're looking at this window and we're like, we're barely going to make it. And then the flight gets delayed and then it gets delayed and then it gets delayed. And my buddy that I was traveling with looks at me and he's like, how much do you care about what's in that bag? And I said, I mean, it's just clothes. So I guess not very much. And he's like, because you can spend the night and get a new flight or you can make this flight, but you can't do both. And I'm like, I guess we'll just leave it. So it keeps getting tighter and tighter. We are going all over the Cape Town airport to every ticket booth that they have, asking if there's a flight, if we could get on it to get to Johannesburg 20 minutes sooner, because we're starting to worry that we're going to miss our flight back home too, and now we're going to be stuck in Africa for another day. There was talk of just bailing and flying to Amsterdam and spending a day there and then flying back and then telling our wives, like, it's just how the airlines worked out. But we didn't do that. But we're very, very stressed about whether or not we're going to be able to make it home. So we get on the flight and the flight attendant walks past me and I get her attention and I said, ma'am, this particular airline I knew from flying in, they just dismissed you row by row and they asked you not to even stand until you got dismissed, which is an incredibly un-American, non-aggressive way to exit a plane and I hated it because it takes forever, you know. But I know that we're in the middle of the plane. It's going to take a long time to get off this plane and we need every second. So I grabbed the flight attendant and I said, ma'am, could you, here's the situation, could you please help me and my buddy get off the flight first? And she said, what time is your flight? And I said, I'm making these times up, I don't know. I said 9.15 and she goes, we're supposed to land at 9.05. I said, yeah, it's going to be tight. And she goes, listen, you're probably not going to make your flight. And I said, I know, but we've got to try our best, right? She's like, yeah. So she goes, tell you what, will you write down your name and his name and the flight information that you're going to be catching, and I'm going to take it to the pilot. So I'm like, yeah, sure. Here you go. So I write down her name, flight information, the Delta flight, and she takes it up to the cockpit. I'm like, oh, we're getting serious now. So she comes back, and she kneels down next to me, and she's like, okay, listen, I don't want to give you false hope. You are not going to make this flight, but we're going to do everything we can. The pilot is going to radio the pilot of the Delta flight and let them know what's going on. And if they have an extra staff member, they can send that staff member to our gate. And if that staff member wants to help you, then they can try to get you through the airport quicker so that you can get to the Delta flight. But we can't guarantee that any of this is going to work. And I'm like, all right, works for us. So the flight lands, we get to the gate. She does not help us get to the front. So we just get up and walk to the front. And everyone's staring at the Americans like, what's the matter with you? We're like, I know, we're the worst. I get it. And we stand there. The door opens. There is an African angel standing in front of us named Masi. I will never forget this in my whole life. She looked like she was early 20s. She was like 6'2". And she goes, are you so and so and so and so? And we go, yes. And she goes, come, we must hurry. And I'm like, yeah, no kidding. So she takes off through the Johannesburg airport and she is wearing heels, those kinds of heels that the flight attendants wear that are like block heels. And she's taller than both of us. And she's just gliding through this airport. And we've got our bags, and we're stubby Americans who are out of shape, and we're like just fighting along, and I'm looking at my buddy. We're laughing. I'm like, I can't keep up. I need to jog. And he's like, I know, I can't. So we kind of break into this slow jog, and we're going through these back tunnels, and she's scanning things, and people are waving at us, and I'm seeing areas of the airport that I'm not supposed to see, and we're just weaving and going through this, and I'm like, this is amazing. I can't believe this is going to work out, and then we get to security, and security's like, we need your boarding pass, so he hands the phone to her. There's the boarding pass. They scan it in, and I'm like, I don't have a boarding pass. I tried to check in when we landed. It's too late. It will not let me check in. I don't have a boarding pass on my phone. And the lady at security is like, I can't let you through, sir. And I'm like, please, can you just let me through the ticket booth? I know it's right there. I can get a boarding pass. I have one, I promise. And so we're going back and forth. And eventually, a large man walks around the corner. And he looks at me in such a way that told me very clearly, this conversation's over. And I'm like, my buddy's already through. And I look at Masi, and I'm like, Masi, is there anything we can do? And I can see the hurt in her eyes. She hurts for me. And she's like, no. And I'm like, well, what if I give you my passport and my cell phone, and my buddy checks in for me at the gate and gets the boarding pass? Can someone bring that back to me? And she goes, that might work. And I'm like, all right. She goes, give me your phone. Gave her my phone, gave her my passport. They go checking through security. And it occurs to me. And I yell at my buddy, hey. He looks at me and I go, she has my cell phone and my passport. I have nothing. And I'm in a back hallway in the Johannesburg airport. Do not leave me. And he's like, I got you, man. Okay. Little detail about the guy I was traveling with. I had only talked to him like four times in my whole life prior to it. We both went on a whim. I don't even know if I can trust this guy. He takes off, but clearly I can't. So I'm sitting there for about 15 minutes. It's like the loneliest 15 minutes of my life. I'm going through, like, I've still got my wallet. I have an ID. I can go to the U.S. consulate. Maybe I can get some money wired to me. I'm not just totally stranded. As I'm sitting there, another dude comes walking around the corner, and he says, what's your name? And I tell him, and he goes, like that. And so I get up, and I'm going through security, and he literally grabs my bag, shoves my computer in it as I'm going through security, throws it to my chest, and goes, we must run, brother. And I'm like, okay. So we take off. I strap up. I've got my belt in my hand. I'm wearing pants that are intentionally too big because I've got a 19-hour flight. I don't need the belt tucking into my belly, you know? They're a little bit bigger than they need to be. And I'm running through the Johannesburg airport, and he is just gliding, and I am not. It is everything I can do to run behind this guy. And I'm trying to keep up. I'm trying to keep up. I start to huff and puff. I'm, like to keep my pants up and I'm holding my backpack together. And I realized that I might die right here. And I'm regretting every hamburger and every day that I haven't run and every poor choice that I've made for the last two years of my life that led me to this moment of my imminent death. And he keeps stopping and turning and like waiting for me to come around a corner. And I'm, you I'm just terrible, just clotting along. I'm breathing so heavily. We finally make it to the gate. I swear it was a half mile away. On my life, I swear there was the largest distance between the two there could possibly be. We get there. I'm huffing and puffing. I'm giving people stuff. I finally get onto the plane. I get onto the plane, and my buddy's drinking champagne already. He's just standing there. Oh, hey, welcome. I'm like, what in the world's going on here? He's been on the plane for 20 minutes, I guess. First class sees me. They've kind of been alerted to the story. So they kind of like, hey, the dummy's here. And then I go and I sit in my chair and one of the flight attendants brings me this thimble of water, right? I'm huffing and puffing. I can barely breathe. I'm trying not to cough. She gives me a thimble of water. I said, you're going to need to bring me more than that. She goes, she brings me a bottle of water. I pound the bottle of water. Between that bottle of water and takeoff, I'm just trying not to cough. I can't catch my breath. I literally can't breathe. I'm sweating. I feel like the fattest oaf that everyone is staring at. And I'm just trying not to cough because I don't want to be the American that has COVID and is giving it to everyone. And all I could think about was how badly I needed water. And as soon as that plane took off, I went to the galley and just started pounding Dasanis, right? Until I couldn't drink anymore. I panteth. I was that thirsty. When is the last time you truly hungered and thirsted for righteousness? When is the last time you needed Jesus as badly as I needed water on that plane in Johannesburg that day? When is the last time someone gave you a little bit of God? You hear a Bible verse, sing a song. Somebody says something encouraging to you. You're scrolling through social media. Somebody posts something that you find spiritually nourishing. You have a small group or a church service or a good conversation. And it feels like that thimble of water they brought me. And you look at whoever gave it to you and you're like, you're going to have to give me more than this. That ain't enough. When's the last time you just took it all in as much as you could where you needed, geez, my soul longs for God. It pants for him like a deer pants for the water. When is the last time we wanted God that bad? Which is why this beatitude and verses like that always convict me. Because I rarely feel like I need God as bad as I needed water that day. And so my reaction to this beatitude from Jesus, my reaction to the psalm from David, is to just pray for a greater hunger, to pray for more thirst, to pray that I would want it more, that my soul would only be satisfied in Jesus, and to just kind of want it more. But as I thought about it this week, for me and for you, I realized something that I've never really thought about before. The body has ways of telling us when it's hungry and thirsty, right? Our body will let us know, hey, it's time to drink something. It's time to eat. Remember the last time my body told me I was hungry without me really realizing I was hungry. We were driving down the road. Jen and I were running errands, and it was getting a little bit into the early afternoon. I hadn't had lunch yet, and I hadn't had breakfast that day. And I hadn't really thought about it. I was just kind of focused on the things that we were doing, and I'm driving down the road, and all of a sudden, every restaurant looks good, right? I'm like, oh, I wish we could stop there. Could really go for whatever, marinara sauce. And then the one that got me, the one that I realized like, whoa, buddy, you're hungry, you've got a problem here, is when I saw Burger King. And I was like, I could go for a chicken sandwich. I mean, it's been a while, but they get long and flat and they kind of taste like salt. Give me some onion rings and some zesty sauce. I'll be a happy camper. And then I was like, whoa, buddy. You got an issue. There's something else going on here. You're real hungry. And I told Jen, I'm very hungry. Let's get home quick before I stop at a Burger King and make decisions I'm going to regret for a few days. Your body has ways of telling you that you're hungry, right? Sometimes it'll be the middle of the day and I'm just focused on what I've been doing and I'll start to get shaky and feel weak. That's my body saying, hey man, you're hungry. You need to eat something. Sometimes we get a headache in the middle of the day. Two or three o'clock in the afternoon, we get just a little dull headache. Maybe it's our body telling us we haven't had any caffeine. Maybe it's our body telling us, hey, you've had too much caffeine, you're dehydrated. You need to drink a little something. Our throat will get dry. It'll get scratchy. We just won't feel good. We won't feel energetic. We'll feel like we just need a little something. Our body has ways of telling us, hey, you're thirsty. You need to drink something. Hey, you're hungry. You need to eat something. And sometimes we misread the signals and we cover over them. Sometimes we're dehydrated, so we have a headache. And instead of doing what our body needs, instead of drinking water, because we have a headache, we'll take an ibuprofen, or we'll take an Aleve, and we'll make the symptom go away, but we haven't treated the problem, right? Or you hear those terrible stories of people who are lost at sea, and they're thirsty, and the only option they have is to drink the ocean water, so they drink the ocean water, but the salination in the water only makes them thirstier. And so they essentially drink themselves to death because they're drinking the wrong thing. Or we're hungry. And because we're so hungry, we lose our judgment and we eat whatever we eat, Burger King. We eat whatever we can get our hands on. And it's not really what our body needs and it's not really helping us, but it makes it go away in the moment so we can focus on other things. And at its worst, I think this is interesting. When we're starving, when we're experiencing literal famine, when our body hasn't had something to eat in such a long time, it will literally start to eat itself. It will literally start to harm itself. And in thinking about this, how God equipped our physical body with warning lights that tell us that we are hungry and we are thirsty, so did he equip our soul with the same thing. If you listen and you watch for it and you pay attention, your soul tells you when you are hungry and when you are thirsty for righteousness. We just have to learn to see the signs. If you're someone who struggles with anger, you're frustrated all the time about something. And that anger begins to leak out on the people that you love the most who are supposed to love you the most. And you're frustrated at your kids and you're frustrated at your wife and you're an ogre to be around and you're hard to keep pleased and you just think everybody around you is dumb all the time and if they could just get on your level, then life would be so much easier and you start, that anger starts to spill out on the people around you in such a way that the next morning you think to yourself, that's not who I want to be. That's not who I am. I see the way my kids cower from me. I see the way my wife or my husband tries to tiptoe around me and say just the right thing, and I don't want to make the people around me live in discomfort. What is my deal with anger? That's your soul telling you you need Jesus, that you're not living out the passage in James that says that everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry because anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. If you're revving, if you're redlining on anger in your life, if you're frustrated with everybody all the time, that's your soul telling you there's a check engine light going and it's saying you need Jesus, man. You need his peace and his patience and his grace in your life. You need to calm down. There's something going on in you, not everybody around you, that needs to push you closer to Jesus. If you're someone who struggles with anxiety, and I don't mean clinically diagnosed anxiety where there really is a chemical imbalance that needs to be corrected medicinally, but I mean someone who is just prone to worry. And you found yourself in a season of life where you constantly scan the horizon for the next thing to worry about, for the next thing to keep you up, for the next thing to Google, for the next lead to make you end up on WebMD. That's a warning light going on in your soul that's been calibrated to tell you, hey, you need Jesus. You've forgotten Philippians 4, 6, and 7 that says, be anxious for nothing but in everything with prayer be anxious about all the things that you were anxious about when you came in here. You don't have to let them keep you up. You don't have to let them drive your thoughts and chase you like shadows. Jesus offers you peace. That anxiety is your soul telling you that it hungers and thirsts for God. It's your soul telling you you need more of the Spirit and His peace and His presence. Those addictions that we develop, we develop an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. We have some pills that we've been prescribed, and we take them whether we need them or not. And sometimes we take them when we know we don't need them, we just want them. What can that be but your soul telling you, hey, things aren't right. You need more Jesus. You need more righteousness. And the thing is, we know it. We know we need something. We know it's not right. We know life isn't good. We know that we're not doing the right thing. But instead of listening to our soul and giving it what it needs, we do the same thing we do when we get a headache. And what we need is water, and instead we take ibuprofen. We can do the same thing with our souls, where the check engine light is going off, and it's going, hey man, you need Jesus. You need more God in your life. You need to pursue him. You need to experience the peace of the Spirit. And instead of doing that, we salve the wound with the wrong medicine. We pour another bourbon. Or we cut the grass again when it doesn't need to be cut. Or we indulge ourself. We just fall headlong into the hobby that doesn't matter because in the hobby we can escape life. If the thing you want, let me just say this, because I've walked through it and I know, if when you wake up in the morning, the thing you want most in your life is to escape your life, that's your soul saying, hey, you need Jesus. You've lost your way. You need to come back to me. What I want us to see this morning is that our souls were created to hunger and thirst for righteousness. You were made to desire God. You were made to long for him. You were made to need him. Things happen all the time in your life that ought to alert you to, oh my gosh, I need more Jesus. I'm hungry for him. I'm thirsty for him. But we've forgotten how to read those signs. And we're told this throughout scripture that our souls were made to hunger and thirst for righteousness, that our souls were made to hunger and thirst for God. I just have one example for you here, but there's myriad others. In Isaiah, he writes in chapter 26, my soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you, for when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. We don't have to pray for more hunger and thirst for God. We have to pray that we would recognize it, that we would see it, that we would acknowledge it for what it is. I do not think that anybody came in this room not hungry enough for God, not thirsty enough for Jesus. I don't think anybody came here not wanting righteousness enough. I think we all came in here not realizing how badly we need it and what our souls are screaming to us. C.S. Lewis sums it up this way. I thought this was a very appropriate quote. He's a theologian and author from about the World War II period. He says, meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. I think you and I have warning lights that go off throughout our lives every day that remind us, hey, your soul was created for Jesus. Your soul was created to commune with God. And you're hungry, man. You're thirsty. You're famished. And the thing that's the hardest is when we don't recognize it for what it is, when we don't see those indicators for what they are, when we misread them and we misappropriate them, we end up handling them in some of the most damaging ways possible. We're drinking salt water, making it worse until we drink ourselves to death. At its worst, when we are most famished, the body begins to do things that harm itself just for the sake of what it believes will be survival. And really, your soul is just saying, hey, I'm in atrophy here. I have nothing. I need Jesus desperately. So my prayer and hope for you this morning is that rather than praying for a greater desire, let us learn to listen to the hunger pangs of our soul. When our soul is crying out for more Jesus, when our soul is crying out for God, and we're just drinking more salt water, we're just taking more medicine, we're just avoiding more signs, let us not pray in those moments, God, give me a greater hunger and thirst for you. No, he's given it to you. Let us pray that we see it and that our souls will only be satisfied in him. And when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, when we see what it is that our souls are telling us, what does God promise? You will be filled. What does it mean to be blessed? You will have all that you need to be fully satisfied. Let us be fully satisfied in our Jesus as we go. Let me pray for you. Father, we love you and are grateful for you. Lord, we need you. We acknowledge that you created in our very souls a hunger and thirst for you, and I pray that we would realize more and more that that can only be filled by you. I don't pray, God, that you would give us a greater desire for you, but we acknowledge that you have intrinsically written that onto our souls, and so I simply pray that we would acknowledge it, that we would see our longings for you as what they are, not salves or substances or substitutes, but that we would see the longing of our soul for exactly what it is, a longing for you. Let us run to you and seek you this morning. Let us run to you and seek you this week. Let us acknowledge that our souls do pant for you whether we realize it or not. And would you please fill us, satisfy us, bless us so that our souls will find rest in you. We ask these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.