Sermons tagged with Sacrifice

Thank you. Good morning, Grace. My name is Kay, and I've been a partner with Grace. Our reading today is Matthew 2, verses 1 through 6. Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he who was born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose. Verse 1. the chief priests and scribes of the people. He inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. They told him, in Bethlehem of Judea, for so it is written by the prophet, and you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. you're like, what in the world is going on? Why are all these people in their pajamas? Do they do this every week? Yeah, we do. We like it. We're the pajama church. And this is just how we do church every week. But for real, I had a change of clothes next door to put on so I could look like my normal classy self when I got up here to preach. But as I was thinking about it this morning, I thought, how many pastors do I know who get to claim and say that they preached a whole sermon in their pajamas and their slippies? So none that I know of. So I wanted to, when I'm 70, I want to be able to say that I did it. So off we go together as we do our Christmas series called Renewed Wonder, where in the series we are making an effort to see Christmas through the eyes of children again. That's why we're having a big fun festive Sunday today, and we've had a theme kind of every week. And then within the sermons, we have been looking at the story of Christmas through the eyes of different people involved in the Christmas story. In the first week, we looked at Christmas through the eyes of the shepherds, and then last week, we saw Christmas through the eyes of Mary. This week, I want to look at Christmas through the eyes of Herod and the eyes of the wise men and see what we can learn from those perspectives. Now, the background that Kay just gave us with the reading, which best reading so far, Kay, very well done, thank you. The background that she gave us with that was the wise men are out east. We don't know where from. It could be, a lot of guesses are modern day, Iran, Iraq, but it could be as far over as like Kazakhstan or Mongolia or China or wherever. But they were from the east. They had been traveling for as many as two years following the star over Bethlehem, right? And it's worth pointing out, this is just an aside, but when we go through scripture and we study God's word, we see that God's focus often is on Israel. And if we're not paying attention, it can seem as if that's his only focus, that God's only speaking to Israel and he's only speaking to Hebrew people throughout the story of the Bible until Jesus comes on the scene and then they go out into all the world. But the reality is that the Magi, the wise men who were from out east, who had no association whatsoever with Israel or Jewish customs, that somehow God spoke to them. Somehow they acknowledged that voice as the voice of God. And somehow they were able to walk in obedience to God and come and adequately celebrate the Savior as an infant or perhaps as a toddler. Somehow God was able to communicate with them, which I think is missed. We're just like, oh yeah, the wise men knew. But it's important for us to understand that God's redemptive focus and God's focus on people is always bigger than just Israel, than just his church. It's always focused on the whole world. And it's worth pointing out when people ask that question, what about someone who grows up in a cultural context where they never, ever, ever hear about Jesus or have any exposure to Christian religion at all, what happens to them in eternity? Well, I know that God is a good and just and fair God, and I know that it would be wise to look at the story of the magi, of the wise men, and trust that if God can communicate then and they can respond then, then that kind of communication and that kind of response can still happen today and has happened throughout all of time. That's an aside, but I think it's an important thing to acknowledge about the wise men. We often think that there were three wise men. There were not necessarily three. That's just cultural or traditional because there was three gifts, but there could have been two, there could have been 20, and they probably had a large caravan that was with them. And they most likely, I know this is gonna crush some of your souls, were not at the nativity scene. Most of your nativity scenes are probably wrong. Now they could have been, they could have started two years in advance and gotten there right then, or it could have been two years later, but they journeyed for a long time to come see Jesus. When they get there, they're looking for Jesus. They're following the star of Bethlehem. They're following that, and they're kind of coming across Asia there, and they get into Israel, and they start looking for Jesus. And, you know, the star is just in the sky. So now there's a lot of houses here, and where exactly is he? They don't know. But as they're going, they think, we're going to go see Herod. We're going to go see Herod the king, and he's going to tell us where this Jesus person is. Surely, if anybody knows, it'll be Herod, and it'll be his court. So let's go figure this out. So they go to Herod, and they're like, hey, the Messiah was born. This is a loose translation of the Gospels. Hey, the Messiah was born. He's here. He's going to be king of kings and Lord of lords. His name is going to be Jesus. Where is he? Surely you know. And Herod is like, oh, shoot. This guy, this Jesus guy wants to be the king. So what do we do? So he talks with his advisors and he comes back out to the wise men and he's like, you know what? I feel the exact same way. I'm looking for him too. I would love to fall on my feet and worship this new baby Messiah, Jesus. That sounds great. I've actually been trying to do that for a while. So when you guys find him, if you could, if you could share your location and just tell us exactly where you are, the minute you see him, we're going to rush over there and we're going to worship him too. But he was being duplicitous. We see the angel communicate with Joseph, the father of Jesus, subsequent to this meeting. And in what the angel says, we see the true intention of Herod and his true response to Christ and the Christmas story. We find it in Luke chapter 2, verses 13 through 15. This is what the angel says to Joseph. So in this story, we see the true intention of Herod. He did not have any interest in worshiping Jesus. He had every interest in killing Jesus. And because of the news of the birth of this Messiah, Herod issued the most evil of edicts, that every two-year-old boy in the kingdom of Israel or Judea was to be put to death by the sword, and he sent his soldiers out to do that. I have a son who's seven months old, and I cannot imagine the evil involved in actually following through with Herod's orders. Now, in our case, our son is enormous. So if we told the soldiers he's three, they'd be like, yeah, that checks out. So we'd be good. But for the rest of the toddlers, it's devastating. This is his plan. This is what he wants to do. And so the angels warn Joseph and say, take Mary and take your son Jesus and get out of here. You got to get out of here, man. You got to go down to Egypt, which last week we learned, and I think it's helpful to pause on these kinds of things. Last week we saw that Jesus very likely lost his earthly father because Joseph disappears from the narrative. So it's very likely that Jesus, as an adolescent boy, knew what it was to lose a parent. And then at some point, Jesus gets a stepdad and has stepbrothers and sisters and lives in a blended home. And I think that's good for those of us who have that experience to know that Jesus had that experience too. And this week, what we see is that Jesus was also an immigrant seeking asylum for persecution from his home country. He lived as an immigrant for two years and was accepted in Egypt, and I think that that's important for us to at least acknowledge about our Savior. So they flee and they go down there because Herod is trying to kill baby Jesus. Now, why does he do this? Well, we see it in Herod's response. I would summarize Herod's response to the news of Christmas that Jesus is coming like this. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. That was his response. Oh no, Jesus is coming and he wants to take my things. It's said about this guy that he is gonna sit on the throne of David. I sit on the throne of David. It's said that he is gonna be the king of kings. I'm the king, I don't want another king. Really, what Herod is butting up against is the fact that if Jesus is going to be who he wants to be, then Herod can't be who he thinks he wants to be. You understand? If Jesus is going to do what he says he's going to do, then Herod cannot do what he thinks he wants to do. And so Herod's response to Jesus is, oh no, Jesus is coming. He's going to take my stuff. He's going to make it so that I can't be the king. He's going to make it so I can't have those feasts with the pigs and the apples in their mouth. That's my favorite part of being the king. We all know that's part of the deal, right? Like I can't do that stuff anymore. I'm not going to be in charge anymore. I'm not going to have all the trappings of life. When Jesus shows up, I'm going to have to give up my life and give up who I want to be so that he can be who he needs to be. And I don't want to do that. So I'm going to keep Jesus from taking my stuff. And I think it's important for us during the Christmas season to acknowledge this perspective of Herod. Because I think so many of us have that perspective as well. Maybe not all the way, maybe in seasons, maybe just in categories, but I think that we've probably all responded to the news of Jesus or to the plans of Jesus, similarly to Herod. Oh no, Jesus is coming. He's gonna to take my stuff. For Jesus to be in my life, who he wants to be, I can't be what I want to be. And so we respond to the news of Christ as Herod did. I've seen this firsthand, over and over again, not in my life, but in the life of others as I've ministered. I've seen this firsthand. I'm just kidding. I do it all the time too. But in teenagers, I used to be a student pastor and I would talk with kids who believed. You ask them, is Jesus the son of God? Yes. Did he die on the cross for your sins? Yes. Is he your ticket? Did he buy your ticket into heaven? Did he pay for that ticket with his life? Yes, he did. And he covers over my sin and I get it and I believe. All right, so let's, do you want to pray to receive Christ? Do you want to claim Christianity now? No, not yet. Why not, man? Well, I'm in high school. I'm still young. I've got some fun to be had. I've got some things I like to do. I'll get serious about Jesus later. Oh, okay. So like in college? That would be ridiculous. I've got to live life in college, right? I've got things that I want to do in college. I've got a person I want to be in college. So I'll take Jesus seriously when I graduate. And then you graduate. You ready to take Jesus seriously now? Is this the threshold in your life where you want to prioritize spiritual things? Well, I mean, I'm making a couple dollars. I'm in my 20s. I need to experience life a little bit. Not quite ready to settle down. Let me just kind of search these things out. And then maybe when I get married, settle down, have kids, then I'll embrace Christ. Then I'll embrace church. Then I'll embrace spiritual help. And so you do that and you put them off and you keep them at arm's reach because if I invite Jesus into my life now, I'm going to have to give up things that I don't want to give up. I'm going to have to stop doing stuff that I like to do. And I'm going to have to start doing stuff that I don't want to do. So let's just chill out. And down the road, when that looks a little easier, then I'll invite Jesus in to take my stuff and to reprioritize my life. But not yet, because I got a good thing going and I don't really want him to mess with it. So then you have kids and this is when we're going to be serious about our spiritual health. Except when you have kids, what you realize is that before that day, you thought you understood what tired was and now you understand what tired really is. So when Sunday morning rolls around, you don't really want to get everybody ready and come to church. You kind of just want to lay there. When small group comes around, do I really want to deal with childcare and all that stuff? No. And so then we don't prioritize like we said we would. And then we kick the can down the road a little bit further. And then it's like, well, when I retire, I've got a good thing going. I'm making a lot of money. I'm putting my money where I want it to be. I don't want Jesus to come into my life and rearrange my finances and annoy me with the tithing thing and say that I have to start giving money here and there. And I'm going to finish up these last five, 10 years of my career. I don't need Jesus coming into my life telling me to move to Zimbabwe and give everything away. I'm not gonna do that. So let's just retire and then, and then you retire and you wanna experience a little bit and then, and then, and then. And in big ways and in little ways, we respond to Christ like Herod. Oh no, he's coming. He wants to take my stuff. He wants to change who I am. For him to be who he needs to be, I have to let go of who I want to be, and I'm not ready to do that. Herod was not ready to do that yet, and so we keep him at arm's length. I saw someone this week write, and I don't know who, I'm very slowly going through multiple books and listening to different things, and stuff gets sent to me, so sorry to whichever smart Christian author said this that I cannot attribute it to, but I read this week that a lot of us like to invite Jesus into our life as Savior, but not as Lord. You can save me. I'm interested in heaven. That sounds great, but I've got a good thing going. So you can be my Savior, but you can't yet be my Lord, because for you to really come into my life and be who you want to be, I have to change everything about who I am or allow you to do that, and I'm not good with it. So Herod's response is to keep Jesus at arm's length because he's not yet ready to give up his stuff. And I think we can relate to this response, which makes the response of the wise men all the more poignant and all the more encouraging and maybe convicting because they're told somehow, and the Bible doesn't record it. It's lost in the fog of history. They're told somehow, hey guys, you should follow this star because when you get there, this promised Messiah is going to be there and you're going to have the chance to worship him in person. And so they do, and they pack up all their stuff. And based on the timeline, based on Herod's desire to kill all the children, all the males under the age of two, wherever they came from was as much as a two-year journey away from Israel. And again, we don't know how many there were, but we do know that those men and whatever women were with them, those people who came, they came at great cost to themselves. If it's two years to get there, maybe they figured out a better way to get back, but it's at least a year back, right? They're gone for three or four years before they can get back to their businesses, before they can get back to their communities, before they can get back to their people, their children and their grandchildren if they didn't come with them. They left at great cost when they heard about Jesus. They let go of everything and they took their stuff and they went to worship Jesus. That was their response. And at the end of this journey, they get there, they see the star and they know they're in the right spot. And this is their response when they finally see Jesus in Matthew chapter two, verses 10 and 11. When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh. Their response when they heard that Jesus was coming was to say, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. I don't want it anymore. I don't need it. Oh, Jesus is coming. Let me radically reprioritize what I thought I was going to do for the next three years of my life. Let me take these things, this gold, this frankincense, and myrrh, the stuff that I have for special occasions, and let me take it to him. The stuff that I could likely leave to my children as an inheritance instead of that legacy, let me go lay it down at the foot of Jesus. Let me disrupt my whole life. Let me let go of who I thought I was going to be for this next period of time and let Jesus define what I'm going to be because I'm seeking him. I'm not a businessman or a magi or whatever I am. I'm a pilgrim going to see Jesus. Their response was, oh, Jesus is coming. Here, take my stuff. You can have it. I want you. And they fall on their feet. They fall on their knees and they worship him. And they praise him. And they give him gifts. And we don't really need to know the significance of gold, frankincense, and myrrh beyond the fact that they were very expensive. They offered their best to Christ. And to me, those two responses stand in stark opposition of one another. For Herod to hear that Jesus was there and immediately think about what he might have to give up. And for the wise men to hear that Jesus was coming and to immediately give up everything. So, I think it's important to point out that we should be like the wise men, not like Herod. That is the incredibly sophisticated point that I have been driving to in this sermon. That's why you guys pay me all the money you do, so that you can write down sentences like that on Sunday. And that really is the point. That as we consider those two responses, I think we would do well to identify and admit where we're like Herod. Maybe you're here and you're not yet a Christian. And it's because of that. It's because you're not yet sure you want Jesus to radically reorganize your priorities. You're not quite sure you want to start doing some things and stop doing other things. Or maybe you are a believer, but you've led him into your life as Savior, but in pockets as Lord. And we can all learn from the wise men that when Jesus shows up, we should just give him everything. But the more I thought about this and dug into these characters, I actually stumbled into a thought that I really liked and wanted to share with you. I'm nerdy about history. I like it. I listen to podcasts about history, like six-hour episodes about the Persian Empire. I'm all in, you know? I love this stuff. And so I was thinking about Herod from a geopolitical perspective of who he actually was on the world stage. And the answer is he wasn't a very big deal at all. Okay. And when he sat on the throne of Judea, it was a far flung province of the Roman empire. Herod wasn't really in charge there. Pilate was. Pilate was the Roman governor. He had been installed by the Roman emperor as the governor of this far-flung province, and it wasn't even a glamorous post. It would be the modern day equivalent to finding out that you got to be a diplomat for the United States of America and then learning that your assignment was Trinidad and Tobago. It's like, well, the weather's nice, but I don't think I'm a big player on the political scene. We're not making big world, we're not getting invited to the G8 summit over here. So you just take it for what it's worth. And then under Pilate sits Herod on the throne of Judea. And he has no real authority. He can't declare war. He can't do that. Pilate has to do that. He can't even kill anybody in his own territory. What a bummer as a king. You'd think the one thing you're allowed to do as a king is kill who you want. And Pilate's like, nope, you can't execute who you want. I have to approve that too. He's got a rubber stamp there. And then within his own culture, his voice isn't even the weightiest. Within his own Jewish culture, it's the Sanhedrin that carry far more weight than he do. Kind of the Jewish Senate, the Jewish ruling body compiled of religious leaders from different, what we would think of as denominations or parties. They carried far more weight in Israel than Herod did. And I'm convinced, I mean, think about it for real. Say you're in heaven, somehow or another in the pages that are lost, Herod has a change of heart and Herod accepts Christ as his savior and he's in heaven too. And you just run into this guy, you know, you're doing, you're golfing. You're doing whatever you do in heaven, which golf will be there. And you get paired up with him. You're like, okay, great. And you're like, well, what did you do in your past life? And he's like, well, I was the king. You're like, oh, that's cool. Where are you the king of? You're like, Judea. Oh, when they were independent before like the Babylonians and the Syrians and the Romans got in there. No, no, no. Rome was our daddy, essentially. You'd be like, oh, well, cool. I was an accountant, so let's just maybe focus on golf. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about Herod's little fiefdom. It doesn't matter. The reality is, Herod was a symbolic king who sat on an empty throne. Herod was a symbolic king sitting on an empty, meaningless throne. It didn't even matter. The life that he was trying to protect was dumb. Who cares? You're the king of Judea. You're not even a king. You're not even in control. Your own people don't even look to you. They look to the Sanhedrin. You are a symbolic figurehead king sitting on an empty throne, hollow of any import or authority at all. And I don't want to press this part too hard because I'm not here to denigrate anybody this morning. But is it possible that as we keep Jesus at arm's length, because I've got a good thing going here, Jesus, I don't want you to take my stuff. And for Jesus, for you to be who you want to be in my life, I can't be who I want to be. Is it possible that as we keep him at arm's length, that all we're really doing is being impotent, empty kings and queens sitting on meaningless thrones, just like Herod. What are we protecting that's so important? What plans do we have that are so good? What secret things do we enjoy that are so worth holding Jesus and all of his goodness at arm's length? If you could look at Herod through the lens of history and show him everything that Jesus actually did and what he actually came for, wouldn't you want to just hit him upside the head and go, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? I wonder if we'll get to eternity and feel that same way. If we could come to ourselves in December of 2021 and look at the ways at which we hold Jesus at arm's length and try to protect our kingdom. I wonder, and maybe we wouldn't, but I wonder, would you want to slap yourself upside the head and go, what are you doing? What are you holding on to that's so important? What are you not willing to give up that's so valuable? Like I said, I won't belabor it, but I wonder if we are kings and queens sitting on empty thrones, protecting nothing. And then I thought, well, what does Jesus want to take from Herod? What is he protecting? And the answer is nothing. He doesn't want his kingdom. Jesus didn't come to sit on the throne of Judea and that's it. Jesus came to be the king of kings and Lord of lords. He came to sit on the throne of the universe. He's not after Herod's kingdom. Small potatoes is a disservice to the term small potatoes. It doesn't matter to him at all. And so I thought, what did Jesus come for? Because he doesn't want your stuff either. That's not why he came. Jesus doesn't want your stuff. He wants you. He didn't come for your things. He didn't come for your 401k. He didn't come for your priorities. He came for you. He showed up at Christmas. He lived a perfect life. He died a perfect death. He defeated death. We get to celebrate that at Easter. And he did every bit of that for you. He came to get you. He didn't come to get your stuff. And if he wants to take your stuff, he's going to replace it with something so much better than what you lost. So as we think about Christmas, let us remember Jesus came. Yeah, he's here. And sometimes we want to hold him at arm's length like Herod did because we're afraid that he might rearrange our life in ways that make us uncomfortable. But let's be clear, he didn't come for your stuff. He came to get you. That's the whole reason that he's here is to come and get you and take you into heaven for all of eternity with his father. It's the whole reason that you were created. And the only reason that you're still here is to take as many people with you on the way as you go. And when we think about this, the reality of who Herod was and that he sat on an empty throne and the fact that Jesus really didn't come for his stuff, he came for him. He didn't come for your stuff, he came for you. And then we again compare that to the response of the wise men. To me, it becomes so much more pointed and poignant when we realize that surrendering our stuff symbolizes our submission to the Savior. Why did the wise men offer him gifts? Why is there a scriptural teaching to live our life as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, to pour ourselves out like a drink offering, to give him everything? Why did Jesus say to the rich man, you have to sell all your things and then you can follow me? Why do we have a Christian practice of tithing and giving and being generous people? Why do we do those things? Why is that kind of generosity and that kind of sacrifice laced throughout the teachings of scripture, both with Christ and with his followers. Why is that? It's not because Jesus needs all that stuff. It's because when we surrender our things, it symbolizes submission to the Savior. Yes, I accept you as Savior, but when I surrender everything in my life and say that it's yours, I now accept you as Lord. The response of the wise men wasn't to simply offer gifts. It wasn't to simply journey. It was to say, we are yours. We're here. We're surrendered and we're submitted. And as we, as a people, reflect on God's gift to us and the Jesus that shows up in our lives and often, as we talked about last week, simply happens to us, let us respond like the wise men. Let us surrender our life, who we want to be, our plans that we have, the priorities that we hold, the things that we want to do or not want to do. Let us surrender our stuff as a symbol of our submission to our Savior who has come to get us. This is my predominant thought as I go through this series. And it has been my prayer for you this week as I've prayed for the sermon and prayed for grace that we would be more like the wise men than we are here. That we would quit holding Jesus at arm's length and that we would choose instead to surrender our things as a knowing and willing symbol that we are submitted to Christ. Not just as our Savior, but as our Lord. Let's pray. Father, we love you and are grateful for you. Thank you for your son. God, I pray that we, I pray that we would trust that you've just got a better plan, God. Whatever it is that we want, whatever it is that we're holding on to, whatever it is that we're protecting, whatever it is we think we're going for, whatever it is we're reaching for that we think is going to make us happy or bring us joy or bring us fulfillment, whatever that is, if it's not you, would you simply give us the faith to trust that it's something better if we would simply reach for you instead? If we walked in this morning responding to you as Herod does and did, keeping you at arm's length because we're afraid of what you might ask of us, we're afraid of what you might change in us or about us. God, would you give us the faith of the wise men to say, here, take it all, I'm yours. And have the courage to let you reprioritize and rearrange who we are and what we're about. God, thank you for Christmas. Thank you for this place. Thank you for the chance to worship together. God, I pray that you would hear our praise as we continue to do that. In Jesus' name, amen.

The Good morning, Grace Raleigh. How are you doing? It's good to see you today. I'm Dale Rector, Nathan's dad, and I am glad to be with you today. Hang in there for a minute. It's going to be a journey. I've got two Bibles. It's a long sermon. So just bear with me. Maybe it'll go quickly if we try. But I want to say something to the Grace Raleigh family first, and that is thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not just for moving my son out of my basement four and a half years ago, but for loving him, loving his beautiful wife, Jen, our precious, precious grandchildren, Lily, and now John. And we are so grateful for you. Within the sound of my voice are those of you who will volunteer and step up and will do something to minister to my family and to my kids. And I can't thank you enough. You will do life together. You will laugh together. You'll cry together. You'll tell them the word of God together. You'll grow together. And I couldn't think of a better place for my family than here. So thank you very much, Grace Raleigh. When I was a child, I was given this Bible to me by my grandparents. 1969. I was 11 years old, and they gave me this Bible, and of course, this King James Bible. But Matthew chapter 24 is perhaps the most read portion of this Bible during my young adult life. In Matthew chapter 24, if any of you don't remember or recall, it is the place in which the disciples asked Jesus, what are the signs of the end times? What are those signs? And when is your return? If you pay attention and read Matthew chapter 24 this week, you will see it mirrored and imaged in Revelation chapter 6 next week with Nathan. So pay attention to that. We were crazy about eschatology. What's that? That's the study of the end times. And we dove in and we heard sermon after sermon. In fact, we predicted that Jesus would come back in 1988. There was a book that was written that said 88 reasons why Jesus would come back in 1988. And I'm like, wow, really? It didn't happen. It didn't occur. He still hasn't returned. And it seemed like over the years, the eschatology speeches and the study of Revelation got to be a little quiet and a little silent because most people were wrong. Most people, when they tried to predict something or say what this means, they were wrong. I have another Bible in front of me. This Bible was stolen by, it's not a Gideon Bible. It was stolen by my son four and a half years ago when he came up to here at Grace Raleigh. And four and a half years ago, he took this Bible that I had as a high school student, and I never had a chance to write in it and to say something in it, you know, sappy and meaningful like, you know, the greatest ever, the great Nate, you know. I love you dearly, the best dad you've ever had. Nothing like that at all. I don't have the words. Until I was preparing for this sermon, I thought, I have the perfect words. And to my son Nathan, this is true. That's it. This is the word of God. In Genesis, we see the tree of life. In Revelation, we see the tree of life. In Exodus, we see the ark of the covenant. In Revelation, we see the ark of the covenant. In Joel, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Revelation, we see the Ark of the Covenant. In Joel, we see the trumpet sounds, and the day of the wrath of the Lamb has come. In Joel chapter 2 and chapter 3. In Revelation chapter 7, we see the trumpet sound, and the day of the wrath of the Lord and the Lamb comes. In Daniel, we see the exact specific days of the tribulation period. In Revelation, we see the exact same specific days in that book as well. Over and over and over again, if you fall in love with the Old Testament, you'll fall in love with Revelation because it all ties together. It all links together. It's true. It's right. It's God's word. It's what he wants us to have. So I'm grateful for you guys and your study of the word. And I'll be going into Revelation chapter four. If you have your Bibles, you can turn there. But basically, you know, when Doug got up a couple weeks ago and he spoke, I thought to myself, Doug, it's really kind of funny and hilarious that you were given one verse. I was given the two easiest chapters in the entire book of Revelation, and you'll see how easy it is in a minute. But chapter 4 is a mirror image of Ezekiel chapter 1. And if you have Ezekiel 1 and you study it later, you'll see this same throne room of God. But John, 90-year-old John, is caught up into heaven. And he's caught up into heaven. And on the Lord's day, he's in the spirit. And whose voice does he hear? Jesus. He says, John, come up here. I have some things I want to show you. I have some things I want you to see. And he shows him where dad sits, where God the Father has a throne. And there's this throne. It's a majestic throne. And on the throne is a brownish image. It's an image of God. It is God. And it looks brown. And it's got an emerald rainbow around its head. Ezekiel says there are fire and metal around his waist. And there's lightnings and thunders that come from the throne of God and go out, and there's a brightness and a brilliance and a wonderment. The throne is set on a firmament of solid water and glass, and it looks still, Still to indicate the comfort and the sovereignty of God. And that's the picture we see of the throne room of God. And around the throne is 24 elders and four cherubims. And we get all enthralled with the brilliance, with the majesty, with the wonder, with the glorious look of the throne of God. And we forget what the point is. What is the point of Revelation chapter 4? It's so simple. It's so easy. Theologians miss it. They like to describe everything that's in here. And I'm going to tell you this, and you're going to go, well, that's not that bright. What's the point of the throne of God? God is on the throne. That's it. God is on the throne. He is on the throne. When Joseph was in prison, captive, God was on the throne. When the children of Israel spent 400 years in captivity, God was on the throne. When the first Passover came and the blood was put on the doorpost of every Jewish family and the death angel passed through and spared those children, God was on the throne. When Moses led the children of Israel out of captivity and 40 days became 40 years, God was on the throne. When Moses was put to the side and went up to the mountain and wasn't allowed to go to the promised land, Joshua went into the promised land with the children of Israel, and God was on the throne. City by city, they took over. Promised to them, to the father Abraham. And the Jews possessed the promised land, they possessed the Canaan land, and God was still on the throne. The period of judges came. We had a few good kings with a bunch of bad kings. We had a dispersion of the nation of Israel. The temple was destroyed. Again, the nation of Israel was taken back to captivity to Babylon this time, and God was still on the throne. They came back to Israel. 400 years of silence. Jesus was born. And Jesus was born of a virgin, came to this planet, and lived in the filth that Satan and we created. And God was still on the throne. The thorns were placed upon his brow. The blood came down. His hands were pierced with the nails. He was hung on the cross, and he cried out, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which means, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? God was still on the throne. He couldn't look on his son because of our sin, but he was on the throne. Remember that. At that Passover, he was on the throne. Jesus was put into the grave. Three days later, God said, come forth. He came forth. God was still on the throne. 47 days, he appeared to 500 people at one time and then ascended into heaven. And guess what? God was still on the throne. He was still there. Still in control. Still in charge. Now what happens from here? What happens from here? Well, we have 11 of the 12 apostles martyred. John sees 60 years go by. And 60 years go by and he's caught up into heaven on the Lord's day. He thought he died and went to heaven, but he didn't. He was in the spirit. And guess what he saw? Revelation chapter four, God on the throne. Now what's going to happen in Revelation chapter 6 and following is nothing more than a full court press, nothing more than a reclamation process in which God reclaims stolen property. And he comes back and he takes what's rightfully his to redeem the last person who will say yes to Jesus and to say no to Satan and to crush Satan underneath our feet is what Romans says. And guess what? During everything you encounter in the next few weeks with Revelation, as good and as bad as it may seem, God's still on the throne. He is there. He hasn't left. He hasn't abrogated his position. He hasn't vacated it. He's still there. Through your cancer, through your COVID, through your disappointment, through abandonment, through your addictions, through your loss of family, loss of loved ones, to the loss of a young child. Everything that this world can throw at us and this world system can throw at us, God is still on the throne. That's chapter four. Now you say, well, what are the four cherubims? Everyone wants to know about the four cherubims and who are they and where'd they come from? And at this point in the sermon, I would say, who cares, right? Because God's on the throne no matter what. But we've got this curiosity about us. Have we seen the four cherubims before? Yes, we have, Ezekiel 1. The question is not what are the four cherubims, but where is God? You see, when the four cherubims show up, you would expect to see God, because God made these cherubims, angelic beings, if you will, looked like a human, had four sides to their head, the one of a man, the one of an ox, the one of an eagle, the one of a lion, and they looked weird to us, but we've never seen them. And John saw them and described them is exactly how Ezekiel described them in Ezekiel chapter 1. And these are around the throne of God. They move in unison around the throne of God. They're all together, the four cherubims, angelic beings. And I've got this to say about what the faces represent. And most people are guessing. And I'm guessing as well. But the faces represent the very essence of God. You see, we are made in the image of God. When I picture God, I think of a man. The descriptions of God, he has a head and face and hands and so forth. So I think these angelic beings meant to reflect the very essence of God, which is man, which is one of the faces you see. The other faces you see is the very essence of God as creation. And I think he made what he likes. You become that which you worship. And these four creatures, these four cherubims, wherever they go, they're around the throne of God. Can you imagine someone watching you 24-7, 365? I challenge you. Follow Nathan around 24-7. You may all leave the church. I hope you don't. I hope you stay with it. Jen's got a lot of love. We were so grateful for her. But for 24-7, 365, these angelic beings are around the throne of God. And you know what they say? It's recorded in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 8. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come. What is holiness? What does that mean? Holiness is the intersection of love and justice. It is the attribute of attributes. It's the attribute that contains all the other attributes. It's where love and justice collide. Everything, God's mercy, God's long-suffering, God's love, God's justice, is all wrapped up in this perfect word called holiness. It means different, different, different. Unique, unique, unique. There's never been anything like God. There'll never be anything like God ever again. He is holy. He is different all unto himself. The perfect amount of love is sprinkled with the perfect amount of justice at the right time, in the proportion in the right way. It is God's way and he is holy. So who am I? Who am I to question the character of God? I think it's funny. Each of us periodically do this little thing, which is wrong, but we do it anyways because we're human. Well, if I were God, I would zap them. Right? I mean, just think of it. When I'm driving down the road in traffic, you know, it's like, okay, here it comes. I believe half the people on the planet would be gone if I was God. Really. My wife knows that's true. You can't, you did what? Come on, man. But we sit there and we judge God through our lenses and through our eyes and from our limited perspective and we say, God, why didn't you exercise justice quicker? Hitler. Six million Jews died. We sit in amazement and say, well, God, if you'd just zapped them a little earlier, we wouldn't have had six million Jews die. And we question God's patience and long-suffering. And then when he does zap somebody, we go, man, that was mean. I can't believe God did that. What's going on here? So, you see, we can't do that. Whenever God acts, God acts in perfectness of love and justice all the time. There's a second group of people around the throne. It was the 24 elders. People have said it represents 12 apostles and 12 representatives from the tribe of Israel. They're wrong. I'm amazed at how wrong theologians can be. And when you study commentaries, be careful. Be careful. The way I study Revelation is in light of what it says in other parts of the Bible. Because some people have a bent on how it should play out. Well, I believe in this, and I believe in that. Well, I believe in the Word of God, and I'm going to let the Word of God just speak to me and say, what does it say to you? It's not Mother Teresa, it's not Billy Graham, it's not the Stanley brothers, you know, it's not Charles Stanley, it's not Andy Stanley, it's not any leaders, it's not any brilliant, it's definitely not me, definitely not my son. We're not one of the 24. What are they? Angelic beings. Well, how do you know that? Job 38, 7, where God is basically, if you will, talking to Job and saying, where were you when I created? You remember that? And Job 38.7 says, when the morning stars were put into place, when the planets were made and the solar systems were made, The sons of God rejoiced. Yes. The angels were there during creation to prove what the Savior did in creation. And these are nothing more than angelic beings that have some authority and some leadership. Why do you say that? Well, I say it because of what is in Revelation chapter 4 and verse 11. You created all things, and by your will they exist and were created. That's what they said. They're not puppets. They saw it. They were there. Hebrews 11.3 says, You mean the law of thermodynamics is wrong? In this case, it is. God created something out of nothing. He created that which is seen out of nothing. Well, that just doesn't compute with science. I love the faith of a child. Don't you? I love my grandkids. I mean, you can tell them almost anything and they believe it, right? And some of you think they have been duped in believing that Jesus is real and the Bible is real and they just haven't learned enough yet. When you walk a child through salvation and through that experience in following God, they look at you and they believe it. They trust you and trust you what you're going to say. Then they start trusting the word of God. Then they start trusting the teacher. Then they start trusting the preacher. And it says right in here the word of God that God created. Well, you know what? That's good enough for me. I don't care if it takes you 4.5 billion years to get there. I don't care. God could speak and it could happen. Well, science says this. Who cares? I believe what it says. He made us. He created us. And the reason we don't like to believe in a creation is because we don't want to be subject to God. But the whole thing hinges on his creating us. Because he made us and therefore he owns us and we're subject to him. Now, as an older adult, and this church has a lot my age and older, we kind of return back to that simple faith. That simple time that we had as children. And we sit there and we go, yeah, okay, I get it. Scientists have changed the age of the earth 18 times since I was born. Maybe they just don't know. Maybe they weren't there. And I'm telling you, the reason I believe it is because if I believe God existed in the four walls of my brain and that was it, I'm in big trouble, buddy. I really am. I mean, really, seriously. I get up from my easy chair, I go to the other room, and I wonder why I was there. Right? Hey, honey, would you bring the crackers back? You forgot the crackers again. What about the pudding? Well, I ate the pudding in the kitchen. Did you leave the light on? I don't know. Where's your phone? I don't know. Is it on silent? I don't know. And right now, all of you are thinking, I need to check my phone. You leave the house and you say, did I close the garage? Did I close the garage? You drive back, it's closed. You didn't believe yourself. I mean, this is fun. I mean, this is a blast getting old. And the older I get, the bigger God gets. Nathan, when he was of age to go to college, and we were grateful, my wife and I were both crying. We were crying for different reasons. When he went off to college, he went to Auburn. Not my pick. I picked a Bible college. I said, you should go to Bible college for one year. He didn't necessarily want to be a preacher. And he said, no, I'm going to Auburn. Why? Why do kids do that? Because they know more than you, right? They're smarter than you. They've got this thing figured out. So he went off to Auburn and I said to him, son, I've got one requirement for you and one only. And he says, what's that, dad? This is going to be pretty easy. I said, yeah, it's really easy. When you return from college, I want you to be dumber. And he looks at me, dumber? You want me to be dumber? Yes. He says, why dad? I said, well, right now, you know everything in the world. When you finish your first year, I want you to know a little less and I want you to be dumb again. I checked with him a few weeks ago and I said to him these words, son, the older I get, the bigger God gets. The more miraculous he gets, the more wondrous he gets. And he said, dad, I think the exact same thing. And I'm like, yes, he's dumb again. I like it. John 1 says, That's John 1. The triune God created mankind. We were created in the image of God. And in chapter 5, we see a segue to the right hand of the throne of God, and it is on the right hand of the throne of God you see a scroll. It looked nothing like this. This is the best we could do. And the scroll represented the title deed to planet Earth. And the title deed would be opened one seal at a time. And you had a seal, you opened it, you read it. You had another seal, you opened it, you unscrolled what was written. Had writing on the outside and writing on the inside. The writing on the outside was a person authorized to take the scroll from God the Father, from his right hand. And on the inside was the playbook to the end of the earth, to the reclamation of this planet and us back to our rightful position where he makes all the wrong things right. It's the playbook. It's the rest of the book of Revelation, what was in the Father's right hand. And there was a search in heaven as to the person who was worthy to take the scroll out of the Father's right hand and then loose the seals that were there. And John, 90-year-old John, weeped bitterly. He wept bitterly. Why? It's conjecture on my part, but can you imagine for a 60-year period of time between when Jesus ascended into heaven and when John was called back up into heaven, 60 years had passed. When you became a believer in the New Testament church era, first and second century, it was a death sentence. It was a sentence by which you would die. So John had led and given the gospel out to the ends of the earth and basically had seen his friends die. 11 out of the 12 apostles died and John and John alone only remained. And I can imagine, because I have doubts as an old person, always I have doubts, and I sit there and I go, is this really true? Is this word of God really true? Is this right? And John, I felt like, he thought for a moment, what if Jesus is not coming back to reclaim stolen property? What if this is all in vain? What if those people died in vain? And what I've been saying for 60 years is wrong. What then? What are we going to do? The angel of the Lord said to John, John, there's no crying in heaven. We don't cry up here. Dry it up, buddy. Something like that. And the angel said, behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, of the root of David. Whoa. Wait a minute. To a Jewish boy. That meant something. That meant something. The lion of the tribe of Judah. The root of David. That was the Messiah. That was the Messiah they expected to come the first time. And rescue him for all the pain. And set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah they expected to come the first time and rescue him for all the pain and set up his kingdom. This is the Messiah. This is the one I've been waiting for. This is the guy, the lion of the tribe of Judah. And when John saw between the throne of God and the cherubims that were around the throne, he saw this figure. And it was a figure as a lamb that was slain. Wow. The lamb that was slain. Now wait a minute. Let that sink in a little bit. You mean it's not pretty picture book Jesus with the nice flowing hair, all his hair, with a nice face, a nice body, fit body? You mean it wasn't that Jesus? No. It was a Jesus from 60 years ago he recognized on the cross with the crown of thorns, the nails in his hand. It was a lamb as if it was slain. He had the scars that he got from the crucifixion. And John, I believe his countenance probably changed from tears to gladness, recognizing that the Savior he had followed for 60 years was really true. It was really right. It was the right thing. This was the lamb that was slain because he saw the marks. You see, you can debate the resurrection all you want, but it happened. You can debate creation, but it happened. You can debate how God is going to come back. It's going to happen. Jesus was around with 500 people at one time. There's no scientist on this planet that has the key for that. Nobody has the key for that except God. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ, there is no hope. Let's go watch football. Let's go play. Let's go eat. But we exist because of the resurrection. We are the Easter people. We do celebrate. Every week, the new church celebrated the resurrection of Christ because it was such a miracle. And John, 60 years later, saw that same Jesus in front of him and was just overwhelmed with joy and gladness. That is the resurrected Christ. Now, the disciples, I believe, had their marching order in a couple places in the New Testament. One is found in Matthew chapter 16. There's a location that's in northern Israel called Caesarea Philippi. And at Caesarea Philippi, there was this, what is called the gates of hell. I'm allowed to say that in church because it says it in the Bible, the gates of hell. And what was that place? It was a cave, and me and Nathan were there in 2014. It was a place where people came to worship false, dead gods. It was a place where they came to do unspeakable atrocities, things that were wrong, to try to please these false gods, dead gods. And Jesus had the boys there in such a wicked, vile place with all these gods and the pan-god, and he says to them this something very simple, who do these people say that I am? Who do they say that I am? Well, you're Elijah. You're John the Baptist. You're a righteous dude, right? You're a good person. And then Jesus stopped them and said, no, no, no, no, no. And this is the question of questions that everyone must answer. But whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? Whom do you say that I am? And I love Peter. Peter finally got it right with all boldness, with all everything in his gut. And I believe the decibel level got really high. And he said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. And what did Jesus say? Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed it to you, but my Father which is in heaven. And upon this rock moment came back in every one of the apostles' mind as the ascension of Christ occurred, as they gathered together, as Jesus conquered death, as we see him overcoming death and overcoming all obstacles. They were worried that they would die too, but now they weren't worried. Why? Because Jesus came to life. And when Jesus came to life, they approached Pentecost with a fervor and an intensity that they never had before. And that intensity, I think, they kind of looked like, after the ascension, I think they kind of looked a little like William Wallace. Braveheart. You know the story. Every time I see this, I think of Peter. That's William Wallace. What happened to William Wallace? He died. Hey, you guys don't know what I'm referring to. Google it. In Google, we trust. So just Google it. You'll find out what Braveheart is. He lost his life for the cause. And Peter died, crucified, upside down, dying for the cause. 11 out of the 12 died and were martyred because of what happened. You know what we need today in the church? We need more William Wallaces. We need people that are willing to die for the cause. You know, we just kind of want them to show up to live for the cause, let alone die for it. And why has it become so hard and so different? 2,000 years later, what happened to our intensity? What happened to our focus? I've got a hero of mine. His name is Randy Rye. Randy was a preacher. He left his church because of illness. He was supposed to have died eight times. He's got cancer. He's got organs that shut down. A couple weeks ago, he texted me and said, pray for me. I've got pneumonia. I'm hoping it's not COVID. If he gets COVID, he may die. It may be a death sentence for him. Randy, everywhere, he has no money. He has two nickels to rub together. But he loves the Lord with all intensity. And you know what he does? Everywhere he goes, he says to the doctors, to the nurses, to the patients without hope, he says, I want to tell you about Jesus. And I don't know a better place than in a hospital to tell somebody and get them prepared for eternity. But that guy, he approaches the gates of hell and he says, I'm going to tell this last person about Jesus. In our offices, God is there. Tell people about Jesus. Now, how can we do that today? How can we be the person with intensity today that lives out its Christianity with all fervor? I don't know about you. I haven't checked with this church yet. You're probably not typical of every North American church because Nathan's here. You're probably a little different. But every church I know of has a need for children's ministries. Always. Always a need. Hey man, it's the next generation in there. It's an opportunity to teach and train the next generation. Aaron should have a waiting list of names for people to do childcare. Look, you can hear Nathan on video. We know that. So go sit with the kids. Tell them about Jesus. Well, I don't know what to do. Well, Moses didn't either, but he did it. We need people to step up. What if we had twice as many people step up for children's ministries? What if we had a need come about and twice as much money came in? What about if we had a missions trip and twice as many people signed up for it as could go. What about if we asked for volunteers to serve to love our neighbors and twice as many people showed up? We've lost our intensity. John was the bishop of the church of Ephesus. And at that church, if you read the first two and three chapters of Revelation, you'll find out that the church of Ephesus lost its first love. And John was the bishop there, and he held some responsibility for losing that first love. And they were admonished by God that, hey, you need to get that first love back. Maybe that's what we need to do. I believe when John went back, he was different. And things were different from that point on. Now, if you all would do me a favor and go ahead and stand up, we're going to have the reading of the word of God, and then we're going to transition right into worship at the same time. But John went from Patmos to paradise, from paradise back to Patmos. In one year, he left Patmos and went back to Ephesus. And for five years, he lived. And then five years later, he died. In that five-year period of time, he discipled many young person. Hey, who would like to learn at the feet of John, one of the apostles, particularly after he'd been up to heaven? Well, I would. That would be neat. And so John went back to Ephesus and he discipled a young man, 25 years old, by the name of Polycarp. Polycarp became the bishop at the church of Smyrna. He died a martyr's death in 155 A.D. He had somebody else he trained, Irenaeus, which gave us all the doctrines that we preserve today. The grandchild, if you will, the spiritual grandchild of the apostle Paul. Or, I'm sorry, John. And you see, it pays to disciple one another, to disciple our kids. And I believe John's life ended well with discipling one another. He also had a song. He had a song he learned when he's revelation experience and it's found in verses nine through 13. And it went something like this. And I heard a voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000, and thousands and thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every creature, every creature, which is in heaven and on earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and that are in them, I heard saying, blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb forever and ever.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else? And what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day they're not nearly as big of a deal? What are our big rocks And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Isn't it cute in that video how I assumed that we were just charging right back into normal? And then here we are in masks again. Boy, the naivety as we roll into each wave of this is pretty funny, especially to think back. I can remember back in March of 2020 having conversations. Joe, the moderator of our board, called me in between the 8th and the 15th of March, and he said, hey, I think maybe we need to take a break. Maybe we can't meet in person this Sunday. And I was like, Joe, this is a big decision. I don't know if we should do this. And he goes, no, man, I really think we need to. And I'm like, Joe, listen to me. This is not going to be like a two-week thing. This could go well into April. So who the heck knows? But it's good to see everybody. Thank you for doing your part. And this is the last part of our series called Big Rocks, which if you've been here all four weeks or you've watched online all four weeks and you've watched that intro video of me four times in a row, good for you. That's serious partner of the year stuff right there. This week, as we talk about our priorities in life and approaching this fall, we're going to talk about the idea and the topic of community. And if you've been in church for any amount of time, you've heard a sermon on community. If you've been here, you've probably heard me talk about the importance of community. In our mission statement, we emphasize community by saying that grace exists to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. So you might be tempted when I say that the sermon this week is on community, you might be tempted to kind of glaze over and go, yep, got it. Christian community is important. I'm going to do it. Good. And then start thinking about whatever you've got going on the rest of the day, lunch plans, or if you're me trying to get the grass cut before the thunderstorm start, whatever it is you've got going on, you might be tempted to take your head there when I say that the sermon is going to be on community because we might feel like we kind of get it. But if that's you, I want to encourage you to lean in this morning. Because I hope that what we'll do is I'll leave here or I'll turn off our TVs, wherever we might be consuming this, that we will finish this experience this morning or whenever you're listening, thinking differently about the power and efficacy of community than when we started. I hope that we will be inspired to pursue it as if our lives depended on it. I think the idea of community is incredibly important. And if you read your New Testament, if you read the Bible, the New Testament that starts with the Gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ, and then on to the end of Revelation, if you read your New Testament, if you read the Bible, the New Testament that starts with the gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ, and then on to the end of Revelation, if you read your New Testament and you pay attention, what you'll find is a lot of we's and ours and collective you. Like when Paul writes in the letters that he says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. And he says, I pray for you. I thank my God every time I remember you. That's not you as an individual. That's a collective you as the church in Rome or Philippi or Ephesus. The Gospels are written to an audience, are written to a church, are written to a group of people. You find in the New Testament very few personal, singular pronouns. You find very you singular yous. You should do this, you should do that, God did this, whatever it is for just you. You don't find those in the New Testament. What you find in the New Testament is collective we and are. The New Testament assumes that your faith will be communal. It assumes that you have other Christians around you walking in the same direction you are pursuing, the same Jesus that you are pursuing. As a matter of fact, if you go to Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, that's not in your notes, so you can write that down if you want to. You can turn there if you get bored at some point in the sermon, which is likely to happen. Turn to Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, and make sure that I'm not making this stuff up. That is the quintessential church passage. There is no pastor who has preached more than two sermons on community and has not based one of the sermons in that passage. It is a quintessential church passage. It describes what the church looked like and did in its very infancy. As soon as Christ ascends and we have Pentecost and Peter and the disciples share the gospel, we see 3,000 people come to faith that day. That's the birth of the church. And then Acts chapter 2 verses 42 through 47 describes what the church did and how it behaved in its infancy. It is the barometer by which all church for the rest of time is measured. And if you read those verses, what you find is collective wheeze. It's communal. The church did this and they committed themselves to the apostle teaching. They devoted themselves to prayer. They met in one another's homes day by day. They were together all the time pursuing teaching, sharing meals, praying together, learning together, pursuing Jesus together. It is a communal activity. Your faith, if you have it, is quintessentially communal, which is why there's a little bit of an issue in evangelical churches with this phrase that we like to use sometimes. Raise your hand if you've ever heard the phrase that Christianity is about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Have you ever heard that? Now listen. Christianity is about a personal faith. It's about a personal belief that God is the creator and author of the universe, that to reconcile his creation to himself, namely you, he sent his son to die in your place, and we place our faith in Jesus' death on the cross, and we place our hope in his resurrection on Easter, that one day we will be united with our God and reunited with those who also have faith in our Jesus, and we have a hope that will not put us to shame. To be a Christian, you need to individually believe that and have faith in that, and one of the remarkable things about Christianity is that our God does offer us a personal relationship with him. But listen to me closely. We must have an individual faith, but your faith is not about your personal relationship with Jesus Christ because your relationship with Jesus Christ is not personal. It is communal. We see it over and over again in Scripture. It is a communal faith. It is not just your business. It is our business as a church. We don't see that phrase, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, pop up in the Bible. We see a necessity for an individually claimed faith. But make no mistake about it, your faith is quintessentially communal. It is, I would argue, it is impossible to grow close to Jesus and have a vibrant walk with him totally by yourself. To take your Bible and a prayer book and to wander off in the desert like these mystical people who have existed before us that we somehow, we look at and we think that they were the ones who had nailed faith. And I don't think any of those existed, but the people who just go off by themselves and just totally ensconced in God's word and in prayer, and it's just them and God. you can't have a vibrant walk with Jesus doing that because loving Jesus requires you to love others. If your love from Jesus does not cause you to pour out love onto other people, then you are not expressing the love that Jesus has lavished on you. You are bottling that up. You are keeping that to yourself. To live a non-communal faith is fundamentally self-centered. And we miss out on who Jesus is by not lavishing his love on others in the same way that he loves us. John tells us in his letters at the end of the Bible that if we love Jesus, then we will love others. The Christian faith was not designed to live alone. I think that there are parts of Jesus that you find in loving other people. We cannot come to know Christ in the way that he wants to be known if we are trying to do it void of loving others and serving others and doing his work. This is why the mission statement at Grace is connecting people to Jesus first, but also connecting people to people. Because your walk with God will not be as vibrant and as healthy as it can be if it is void of community as you share your faith. So community and our faiths is vitally important. It's why I think that community is God's primary tool for tethering, comforting, and sustaining his children. Community is God's primary tool for tethering his children to him, for comforting his children in their time of need and for sustaining them in their walks and in the commitments that he's led you to make. Now, I would offer you a caveat here. I need to, if you have notes, if you're a note taker, please write this in your notes. Community is God's primary tool dash outside of heaven. It's God's primary tool this side of heaven to tether us and to sustain us and to comfort us. Because he tethers us with his son. He sustains us with his spirit. He comforts us with Jesus as he weeps with us. But these things, this community I'm going to show you is the way that God gives himself time to work in your life to bring you to a place where you're walking with him. It's the way that God the Father throws his arms around you in times of trouble. It's the way that God comes beside you and sustains you when your faith and your commitments are faltering. So I do not at any point want to replace the work that the Holy Spirit and God the Father and Jesus are doing in our lives and moving in us, but I do want us to see that community is often the tool that they use to work powerfully and effectively in our lives. I say that it's the primary tool for tethering, for kind of keeping us attached to the faith, even at times when we might be wandering off. With that in mind, I'm going to share something with you that I really am not sure that I'm all the way ready to share, because if I share it and then I don't do it, I'm a failure and a quitter. But last week, I committed with some friends of mine to run a half marathon at the end of February. I committed to do this because I'm fat now, and I need to. Somebody asked me before the service, why is your shirt tucked down? Like, are you being serious today? I'm like, no, no, I'm fat. I need to be able to blouse a little bit for the camera, you know? But I'm sharing that with you because if you know me well, you know that I've got a group of really good buddies. One guy I've been best friends with since I was five years old, so we've been friends for 35 years. And then there's eight of us total. We've been friends together, all of us, for at least 20 years. And we talk on this app called Marco Polo. It's probably for high school girls, but we love it and we use it to talk back and forth. We talk every day. And so there's eight of us and we legit, we talk every day. Whatever's going on in the world, whatever's happening in sports, whatever's happening in our lives, we talk about it. Just this morning, I was watching my friend, he dropped his daughter off at college yesterday and was telling us how emotional he got about it. And I'm in my office getting emotional about Lily starting kindergarten tomorrow. And if I talk about it for too long, I'm gonna get emotional in front of you. So we talk about stuff all the time. And then we have different threads for different topics. You know, different things that some of us may wanna talk about, but not everybody does. Anyways, we've got one for exercising. I can't tell you the name of it. There's a cuss word in it, but we've got one for exercising. And I started it. I started it back in January. I was like, guys, I'm fat now. I think I want to start eating well. I think I want to start exercising. Is anybody with me? And seven of them were like, yeah, let's do it. My one buddy, Tim, God bless him. He does not care. And I wish I could be more like Tim. But the rest of us were in there. And so we're encouraging each other every day, right? But eventually, I just stopped caring. I kind of fell off the wagon. Having a nine-month-old or an eight-month-pregnant wife will do that to you. And then so will having an infant and a three-month-old. It kind of takes you out of your regular rhythm. So it's been more difficult, and I kind of just lost my desire to do it, and to the point where they were daily talking about their workouts and the stuff that they're doing and yada, yada, yada. And I would just skip. Like, I wouldn't even listen. I would just fast-forward to the last one, hit play, skip to the end of that one, and so that those didn't show up as new, because I don't know. You people that just leave notifications on your phone, I don't know how you live with yourself. So I would have to go and just skip all the way through it, right? Ignoring it. And then I even became the devil on the shoulder of the people. They would share sometimes when I would listen, like, I didn't do anything today. I've been eating like crud lately. I just don't feel good about myself. And then I'd go out there and be like, come on over. It's great over here. There's barbecue and sweet tea. This is wonderful. Just buy larger fishing shirts and you're good. Like you can just let it all hang out. It's really, really great. It's good over here. But somewhere in that week and a half ago, my buddy got on there and he said, hey, I found a half marathon in Greenville and I think it would be fun if we would train for it together and try to run it together. And something about it, I don't know what it was. I don't know. I had some weakness that day and I said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Like it caught me on a good day. And I said, let's do this. Let's do it. And they were all very surprised that I was into it. But now I think there's five or six of us who are going to do it. And I'm only a week and a half in and I'm just a slow lumbering mess. As a matter of fact, if you live in my neighborhood, Falls River and then Bedford or whatever, and you see me running, can you just do me a favor and avert your eyes? And we'll just both pretend like that never happened. Do not honk at me or wave. I do not want to know that you saw me. I'd just like to live in this world where no one can see me lumbering down the road. But it's been fun to get back to it and to begin to train and begin to exercise and share that with my buddies. And I feel more inspired now to do this than I have in a long time. And I really think it might stick. So barring injury, which is more of a factor than it's ever been in my life, Lord willing, I'll run that thing in February and I'm looking forward to doing that. I share that story because I believe that this is what Christian community does with us for the church. To be a Christian for any amount of time is to go through a season of wandering. It's to go through a season where I was once committed, I once cared very much about my spiritual health, I was once very consistent in going to church and going to small group and reading my Bible and praying on my own, and I can remember seasons of vibrancy in my life, but now I'm just, whatever you want to call it, I'm in a rut, I'm wandering off, I don't feel it right now, I just am not, I'm going through some things and I just not sure that I can really connect with God. I'm not really sure that's a thing that I want. To be a Christian is to have gone through a season of wandering and probably not just one. And what community does is it keeps us tethered to our faith, even in times when we're not necessarily very committed to our faith. I didn't leave that thread because I like my buddies. I wanted to know what they were talking about. I wanted the community there. Even though I wasn't engaged in what they were engaged in, even though I wasn't pursuing what they were pursuing, I didn't want to totally detach myself because I thought maybe one day I will. Plus, I want to know what my friends are talking about. I don't want to have FOMO. So I stayed in there. And then one day, because I was tethered to that group by the community in that group, something caught me right. And I said, yeah, I'm going to make that choice for my health or for my children. Church community does this too. As we're going through a season of wandering, maybe we're not feeling faith right now. Maybe we're not super committed to it. Maybe we're not doing the things in private that we know we ought to be doing, but we keep showing up because we love the people in our small group. We keep showing up because we love to serve on Sunday morning. We keep showing up because that's our community and we don't want to miss out and those are our people. And then one day when you're at church or your small group or you're having a conversation or one day God speaks to you. He shows you something. You have an experience that moves you. Something catches you right. And that's what clicks and you re-engage in your spiritual life and you begin to pursue Jesus again. Our community tethers us to God in a very real way. Don't raise your hand, but I would ask you, those of you who are Christians, has there been a season of your life where if you didn't have Christian brothers and sisters who loved you and who just accepted you, not who came after you and got onto you and tried to convict you for the decisions that you were making, but who simply loved you, have you had seasons in your life that if it weren't for your Christian community tethering you to your faith, that you would have walked away from it entirely? Yeah. Or you're not being honest. God places us in community because he knows there will be times when we wander, and when we do, he's tethering us about this wandering at the end of his book. he writes this, my brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. Not only do we have brothers and sisters who love us as we begin to wander and tether us to our faith and kind of draw us back to God as God works on our souls to soften them back to himself. But we also have the opportunity in Christian community, in church community, to be the one that pulls back a wandering brother or sister. To be the one who just consistently loves, who just consistently shows up for, who just consistently says, I'm not here to judge you. I'm just here to love you. I'm here to enjoy you. Not a project friendship, deep, meaningful friendship. When we express that with one another, when we express the kind of community that I've seen at Grace, we are used by God to tether people to their faith and draw them back towards him. You are a tool in his hand used to draw back a wondering brother or sister by simply maintaining community with people even if it feels like they're wandering. So those of you who have wandering friends, which, has there ever been an easier time than now to wander away from the church? Continue to love them. Continue to be that tether that lets them know anytime you want to come back, we're here, we love you. And you can be a brother or a sister that is blessed according to James as we do that. The community here is absolutely a huge way that God keeps us tethered to him and to our faith. Community is also an enormous tool in the hands of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit as they seek to comfort us. We're told in Psalms that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, that he saves those who are crushed in spirit. It's this idea that when we're at our lowest, God is at his closest. I've preached from stage many times, John 11, 35, the miracle of that verse. It's the shortest verse in the Bible that says that Jesus wept when he met Mary in her sorrow at the loss of her brother Lazarus. Jesus' response was to weep with her. And we get to preach and we get to claim and we get to know that we have a Jesus who weeps with us. And that's wonderful. But have you ever thought about how he does that? Have you ever thought about how God brings himself close to the brokenhearted? Will he bring his presence and his spirit close to the brokenhearted? Yes, absolutely he will. And he will speak into difficult times. Just yesterday, I was sitting on my porch swing and we've had a difficult couple of days and I felt pretty stressed. And I was just sitting there in the rain because that's what I love to do. And it was a good storm yesterday. And there was just this moment where God spoke some encouragement into my life. And it instantly gave me a peace. And so God will absolutely do that and comfort us in that way. But have you ever considered that the church community itself is also how God wraps his arms around us? Have you ever considered that our church community crying with us is also how Jesus weeps with us? Have you ever considered that that might be why Paul tells us to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn? Because that is the expression of the very body of Christ hurting with those who hurt. Jen told me as I was talking through this sermon with her, she said, you got to tell the Lisa story. And I'm actually glad she's not here. Jen's not here this morning, because we'd be a sobbing mess. But if you've been going here since the end of last year, at least, then you likely know that in December of 2020, December 29th of 2020, just to cap off a real humdinger of a year, we lost Jen's dad, John, to pancreatic cancer. That's who our son is named after. And so in the months prior, Jen had been down there a lot. They're located in Athens. Jen had been down there back and forth a lot. And at some point she came home. After Thanksgiving, she came back with me and we were home. And John has a brother-in-law named Edwin who's a doctor. And Edwin and Mary stayed with John. And Edwin told me, Nate, go back home, take your family. We don't really know what's going on with John. But when you need to be here, when it's time for family to be around him, we'll call you. I said, all right. So we came back. We were back for about a week. No, it was just a couple days. It wasn't even a week. And it was the Sunday of December 6th. And at the time, we weren't meeting in person because we'd had a COVID flare up, and so we were just chilling out for a little bit. And so I had to come that morning on December 6th, and we did a live service. So we had worship worship and then I was to preach, right? And five minutes before the service started, my phone rings and it's Edwin. And he says, you need to get down here. So I said, all right. So I called Jen. So we need to get down there. I'm going to go ahead and preach this sermon. And then we'll hop in the car and we'll go home. Let me tell you something. I have no idea what I preached December 6th. I have never been less present for a sermon in my whole life. If you watched it and got something out of it, the Holy Spirit is good, okay? Because my mind was not on that sermon. And I got done and things felt so urgent that I literally, and I never do this, I just pulled off my mic and everything. I set it down. I got right in my car and I drove away. Steve was still playing. The band was still going. Folks were still here. I just got in my car and I left. And when I got in my car, I texted Steve and Kyle because they were both here that morning. And I said, hey, I'm so sorry for leaving so quickly. Here's what's going on. We got to head home. And I go home. I get Jen and we're scrambling to get out the door. We scrambled to get out the door so quickly that to pack for this trip, I just opened up the biggest suitcase I have and dumped all my dirty clothes in it and then grabbed clean clothes and threw them in there, zipped it up, and we headed out the door. I can do laundry where I'm going. I don't know how long I'm going to be there. But that's the kind of urgency that we were trying to get out the door with. In the middle of that, somebody rings our doorbell. And we're like, who's ringing our doorbell on a Sunday morning? And we look, and it's Lisa Goldberg, Steve's wife. And she's at our door, and clearly Steve had called her or texted her and told her what was going on. And see, Lisa's mom passed away of pancreatic cancer a few years prior. Actually, right before, right as Steve and Lisa were moving here to become a part of Grace. And she knew the road that Jen was about to walk. So Jen goes and answers the door. And Lisa has a little gift bag prepared for her and hands it to her and just gives her a hug and starts crying. And Jen was telling me about it this week, and she said she can't even remember Lisa saying any words. Maybe I'm sorry. They just hugged for a really long time. And then we got in the car and we left. And that hug and those tears meant more to Jen in the following weeks than they did in the moment. Because in the moment, she didn't know the hell that she was about to walk through. But Lisa did because she had walked it. And so that provided her with comfort as she walked through that period. You can't tell me that that morning wasn't Jesus coming to our door and wrapping his arms around my wife. He did. That's how he weeps with us. That's how he comforts us. That's why he tells us to weep together. Because when we do those things, we're the hands and feet of God. We're the hands and feet of Jesus wrapping ourselves around people who are hurting. That's how God expresses his love to us. That's how we express ourselves as the body of Christ. He places us in community so that our community can comfort us when we need it. So that he can be close to the brokenhearted. So that we can experience having a God that weeps with us. That's what community does. And it also sustains us. And this is my favorite. Community sustains us. There's this great picture in Exodus. Exodus chapter 17. I'm just going to tell you the synopsis of it, but the story is in verses 8 through 16. I'm going to be a mess. David, can you go get me a tissue? Do you mind doing that? Thank you, sir. Oh, Wes is on it. Thanks, Wes. That's why Wes is an elder, because he does things like that. Oh. That's why Cindy's a resting elder. Thank you. All right, give me a second. I'm sorry. Especially if you're watching online. You're just going to watch me turn my back. All right. Does anybody else need some of these? I saw a couple of tears out there. In Exodus 17, there's a guy named Amalek who's brought his armies against Israel. Moses is the head of the nation at this point. Joshua is his general. Moses is too old to lead people into battle. And so Moses tells Joshua, you go down into the select some men, go down into this valley and you fight Amalek. And as you fight him, I will be up here and I will have my hands raised to God. And as long as my hands are raised to God, then you will win the day. And Joshua says, okay. So he goes down and he begins to fight Amalek. And as he's fighting Amalek, Moses is on the top of the mountain with his hands raised. And as his hands are raised, then what he said comes true. And God is with Joshua and Joshua is winning the battle. But battles are long and Moses is old. And I guarantee you, he had lived a life of shepherding for 40 years. If you wanted to have a hold your hands over your head contest, he would crush everybody in this room. But at one point or another, no matter how strong you are, you'd get fatigued. And he needed to take a rest and let the blood get back in his shoulders. And when he would rest, the army would begin to be defeated and the battle would go towards Amalek. And so he's in this struggle of trying to hold his hands up, but not having enough strength to do it. And they're losing the battle if he can't hold his hands up. So what happens? Well, his brother Aaron and his friend named Hur, H-U-R, are next to him and they find a rock and they put a rock behind him and they tell him to sit on it and then they stand. I love this picture. They stand next to him and they hold his hands up so that he doesn't have to anymore. That's the best picture of community in the Bible. Because each of you, your husband, your wife, your friend, your Christian, your son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, if you're a woman in this church who's married and you have children, you've got a marriage that you're holding up, that you're offering to God. You've got children that you're trusting to God. You've got concerns in your own life. You've got your own faith that you need to carry. You've got your own stresses and your own anxieties and your own worries, and you're facing those battles. And life is long, and I don't care how strong you are. At some point or another, your hands get tired. At some point or another, you think, I don't know if I can do it with this marriage. I don't know if I have the energy it takes to make this thing go. I just don't know if I can pick my hands up anymore. I don't know if I can continue to love these kids the way they need to be loved. I don't know what to do. I can't pick my hands up anymore. I don't know if I can walk in faith. I just can't see it. I have so many questions. God's disappointed me in these ways. I just don't know if I can keep doing this anymore. And when you're on your own, you're right, you can't. This is why we're placed in community, for our friends to come up beside us and grab our hands and say, hey, buddy, I got you right now. I will fight for your marriage right now. I will hold your hands up and fight for your faith right now. I will stand beside you and hold your hands up for your children and for your business and for your health and for your love of Christ right now. I will stand in this gap for you, and I will be the strength that you don't have. That's what community does for us. Our friends come alongside us, and they hold our hands up, and they give us the energy and the strength for the battle that we can't fight right now. And that's what community offers to others. This is why I think that community, this side of heaven, is the most powerful and effective tool that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit use to tether us to him, to comfort us, and to sustain us in our faith and the commitments that he's led us to making. And I'll end with this because I think this is important. Community is a choice. It's a choice. That kind of community, that kind of community where someone shows up at your door just to wrap their arms around you because they know what you're about to walk through, that kind of community that grabs your hand and holds you up when you can't do it, that kind of community that loves you when you're wandering and keeps you tethered to your faith so that you can wander back. That kind of community, that doesn't happen by default, man. We don't just stumble into that. That kind of community we show up for. Sometimes in small groups, I'll talk about it in a second, we sign up for. And then we let the Lord do his work in bringing us together and knitting lives together. We have to choose that community. Just last night, some friends of ours had a birthday party. And our childcare fell through, and so we had to figure out what to do. And so we decided that Jen was going to go to dinner, and they were going to go to drinks afterwards. Jen was going to go to dinner, and then when she got home, I was going to go and have a drink or two with our friends and then come back. That's what we decided we were going to do. Well, Jen stayed at dinner until like 9.15. I needed her to be back at like 6.15. Do you think, listen, I don't know how well you guys all know me. You think I wanted to go anywhere at 9.30 on Saturday night? No, I was in my gym shorts with paint on them and a big baggy t-shirt and Crocs and I was unshowered. I didn't want to go anywhere. But I also knew that I couldn't get up here today and preach about community if I wasn't going to prioritize my own. So they got Saturday night and ate and I showed up just how I was dressed. And we had ourselves a grand old time over at, I think, Tonic in Wake Forest. We have to choose community. It's not always convenient. You're not always going to want to go to small group. You're not always going to want to prioritize it. Parents of elementary and middle school age kids, you'll never be in a busier season in your whole life. It's so hard right now to prioritize small group. Do it. Community is a choice. It's an essential tool that God has placed in our life to bring us closer to him, to experience his love of us. In a minute, I'm going to talk more about small groups. But I want to encourage you here at the end of the sermon to sign up for them. If you're not in one, join one. Step into this community and let's begin to pursue it together and let's let God use this place to further connect us to him. Let's pray. God, thank you for you. Thank you for how you love us. Thank you for who you are. God, thank you for our friends. Thank you for the people who love us, who we get to share life with. Thank you for our brothers and sisters who draw us back in our wandering. Thank you for the ones who comfort us. Thank you for the ones who sustain us and hold up our hands when we are too weak to do it. God, give us the desire and the conviction to choose community. To choose to live our faith with those around us. Remove any obstacles that we might have, whether fabricated or real, and knit us together, God, as a church family, that we might love one another well, that we might express your love for one another well. That we might support and sustain one another well. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, Jeffy. I can tell you've been paying attention. That's fantastic. That's great. I don't know if y'all noticed, that was all guys up here. We've got a new boy band at Grace, so submit the names for that band online, please. The best one we'll put in lights next week. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. If I hadn't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that. Particularly, I've kind of noticed every week as we gather in person that there's some folks who moved to the area or just decided that they wanted to find a church sometime in the last year and found us online. I've had a conversation a lot where I say, hey, I'm Nate, and they go, yeah, we know. We've watched about 10 of your sermons. I'm like, oh, gosh, well, God bless you for being here. But if that's you and you come through the doors, I would love to meet you. So let's make sure we do that in a Sunday here very soon. This is the last part, as Jeff said, in our series called Greater, where we're moving through the book of Hebrews together. For context, just so that we all know, we've kind of begun each week this way. Hebrews was written, we don't know by whom, to Hellenistic Jews, Jewish people who grew up outside of Israel as practicing Jews and at some point in their life converted to Christianity. Because of that conversion, they are facing great persecution from the Romans and from the Jewish community. And the author writes the book of Hebrews to encourage them to hang in there, to persevere in their faith. And so he does this by comparing Jesus to different facets of the Hebrew faith. And that's why we've called this series Greater, because he goes to great lengths to show us how great Jesus is. And we've said it's the most soaring and lofty picture of Jesus in the Bible. And that's important because of where we arrive at today. Today, we arrive at Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 and 2. Probably two of my favorite verses in the Bible. If you've been going here for any time, you know that I say that about a lot of verses. I don't know which ones are my favorite, but I love these two. And these two, to me, to someone who grew up as a Christian, I don't have any memories before my family was involved in church. These are two of the most life-changing verses I've ever encountered. They changed the way I went about my faith years ago. And so my hope and prayer for you this morning is, if you're familiar with these verses, if you understand them the way that I do, that this can be a good reorienting or recentering for your life and for your heart as you move throughout your weeks and your months ahead. My sincere hope and prayer is that for some of you, this might be the first time you've heard the verses looked at in this way, and that they can be similarly life-changing for you. I think they're life-changing and hope-giving. And it's important to note that they follow this long dissertation, right? 10 chapters, 11 chapters long of this lofty view of Jesus. To compel these Jewish Christians to stay in the faith, to hang in there, he paints this incredible picture of Jesus. And every week we've gone through and we've done our best to point to Jesus as well in the different comparisons. And as Jeff prayed as the great high priest, and last week we looked at him as the sacrifice. We see him as the greatest messenger. We see his law is greater than Moses' law. And we talked about how all streams in the Old Testament converge on Jesus. All hope in the New Testament remembers back to Jesus and the promises kept and anticipates the promises that he will fulfill. Everything culminates on Jesus. And last week we even talked about how everything we do as a church and as individuals and that the Bible admonishes us to do really is to point ourselves and others to Christ. So that's kind of where he's been driving to in the book of Hebrews. And then we get to chapter 12 and chapter 12 starts out with the therefore. And I've told you guys that whenever we see one of those, we have to ask, what is this therefore, therefore? And in this case, it's because the preceding chapter is Hebrews chapter 11. Hebrews chapter 11 in theological and Bible nerd circles is called the Hall of Faith. It is a who's who of the Old Testament, where the author is trying to explain to them, to this audience, really how faith works and what faith looks like and what faith does. In chapter 10, he tries to define faith. And then in chapter 11, he says, let me show you what faith does. And he just goes through these Old Testament heroes. And he says, by faith, Abraham, by faith, Moses, by faith, Rahab, by faith, David, by faith, Solomon. He just goes down the line. So it's the hall of faith. And then the end of the chapter, he's talking about all these other saints that suffered. Actually, in the first week, I referenced chapter 10 and read about some of the persecution that they were going under. And then we know that that could continue for the rest of history, right? John Wesley and John Calvin and all these other great heroes of the faith that has come, Billy Graham, that have come through the years. And so chapter 12 starts off like this, and to me, it's a verse that really resonates. I've always really loved it. He writes this. I love the imagery of that verse. There is this sense that all of the saints that came before us are in heaven. And they've run their race. And now they're watching us. They've done their part. They lived their life for better or worse with regrets or with pride. They lived their life. They played their part. They turned in their time. And now they're in heaven and they're watching us. I kind of even get the sense, if you take this verse a step further, it's not just the heroes of the faith. It's not just the hall of faith, but it's every saint that's come through the centuries. Every Christian that's lived and died and is now in heaven, you get the sense based on Hebrews 12 that they're looking down on us since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses like there is this heavenly arena and earth is the playing field. And you get this real sense from Hebrews 12, one, that it's our turn to run, right? It's our turn. It's our generation's turn. It's our turn to live our life. You know, when I was growing up, this has kind of struck me all freshly. We're going to have a son here in four or five weeks, Lord willing. And when I was growing up, my whole life was sports, man. That's all I cared about. I played sports all the time. I watched SportsCenter. I memorized the statistics. I went to school and I talked about sports. I came home and I played sports. I got done with those and I watched sports. Like that's all I care about. The measure of a man was how good you are at the sport that you chose. And I didn't understand anything beside that. Now that's antiquated and silly, but that's how I grew up. And when I was 18, 19, 20 years old, I played a little bit of soccer in college. When I was doing that, like I couldn't wait to have a son and train him in sports. And now at 40, I've moved much farther. I've moved past that. And I'm like, I don't care if this kid throws a ball. Do whatever you want to do, man. Just be comfortable with yourself. Just learn to love yourself in your own skin, and that'll be half the battle. Be good at sports if you want to be. But if he does play, and if Lily takes up sports, that's my daughter. My time is done playing. I'm not going to go play competitive soccer anymore. I did it for one season in my 30s and thought this was a huge mistake, and I will never do it again. Like I'm out, okay? I will go compete against average to below average golfers. That's the height of my competitiveness. My time is done. As a parent, you know this. When you do your thing, when you go through your adolescence, and then you're a parent and you have kids, it's their turn to run. It's your turn to watch and spectate and cheer on. And that's one of the things I love about this verse is this picture that it gives us of living our life, of running our race. It's our turn to run. From the youngest in the room to the oldest in the room, it's still our turn to run. And there is a sense that heaven is watching and cheering for us. And one of the things that I like to think, now listen, I like to think this. I don't know that it's true. I hold this with a very open hand. If I get to heaven and God says, you weren't right about that one, I'll be like, yeah, I wasn't really sure. But, and I'm not going to quote a verse to help support this, okay? I just think that this could be true. I think it's entirely possible that the people in your family who came before you are made proud and joyful by what you do here. I think it's entirely possible that my papa still smiles in heaven every Sunday morning when I get to preach. I think it's possible. I like to think that could be true because in Hebrews it talks about this great cloud of witnesses watching us from heaven. And we acknowledge that it's our turn to run our race because of that, because they're watching, because God has commissioned us to run this race. What should we do? Well, it tells us that we should throw off the sin and the weight. This translation I read from the ESV and it says that we should lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely. I think it's the NIV that phrases it like this and I kind of like this phrasing better. It says that we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. Because it's our turn to run, we should run the race that God has laid out for us. Because we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, including God himself, we should run the race that he has laid out for us. And to do that, to run that race effectively, we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And I love that there's two things included there. Because as Christians, we kind of know the deal, right? We kind of know as Christians, no matter where we are in the theological knowledge spectrum, we know that when we become a Christian, we should try to not sin. I think we get it. Even if you're here, you're a brand new Christian. You're here, you wouldn't even call yourself a believer, you're spiritually curious. One of the things that you're loosely aware of about the Christian faith is, if you want to sign up for Christianity, we should try to not sin. I think we all know that, right? But here he says we should throw aside the sin that keeps us from running our race and the weight. So verse one introduces the idea that something might be prohibitive rather than sinful. It introduces the idea that something in our life might be prohibitive of running our race rather than simply sinful. A good example of this, this isn't true anymore because I'm just not in this rhythm of life, but an example of something that if you would ask, is this sin, you would say no, but is it prohibitive? Well, probably yes, is for me in years past, the NBA playoffs. When Lily was born five years ago, I was in the habit of waking up every day, and I still am. I just come down and I do it in the office. But at this point, I was in the habit of waking up every day and spending time in reading and spending time in prayer. But when we had Lily, she started waking up at like six o'clock in the morning every day. So I realized if I wanted to get that time with God, if I wanted to have my quiet time and do what I say is the most important habit that anybody can form is to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, spend time in prayer. If I wanted to do that, then I needed to get up at five. And so I got in a rhythm of waking up at five, having an hour to myself and God, and then Lily, I'd hear a little wah upstairs. I would read my Bible, I would pray, and I would read a spiritually encouraging book until I heard Lily. That was my rhythm. And then when I heard her, I'd put that down, I'd go upstairs, I'd be ready to be a dad. But when the NBA playoffs rolled around, I wanted to watch those things, man. I love the NBA playoffs. I don't care for the NBA regular season. There's 82 games. There's too many of them. It's a waste of time. Half the teams are going to make the playoffs anyways. We all know which teams are going to be at the beginning of the year. What's the point? But the playoffs are fantastic. I love watching those. The problem with the playoffs, especially in the early rounds, is there's three, four games a night. The last one will come on at 9.45 or 10.30. They're every night. So if you want to watch all the games, and I do, you would stay up, I would stay up late watching those games. And you say, is it a sin to watch the NBA playoffs? I mean, I can't point you to a Bible verse that says yes. But here's what I knew. Here's what I saw in myself season after season. I would watch these games. I would stay up late. And suddenly, I'm like getting up at five every day. Suddenly, I'm getting up when I hear Lily's voice. Suddenly, I'm out of sync in my walk with the Lord. I'm falling out of that daily discipline. Or if I could make myself wake up at five, how good do you think my prayers were after four and a half hours of sleep? Not very coherent. Not really giving God my first and my best, right? So for me, what I learned, was it a sin for me to watch the playoffs? I don't know. Was it prohibitive of me running my race? Yeah, it was. So that was a weight, something that was prohibitive, that was preventing me from being as effective in my life as possible that I had to lay aside. So what I started doing is recording the late game, then I would get up at the normal time and then just watch and then just fast forward through the breaks while I was holding and tending to Lily, which is kind of a better way to watch a game anyway, so I've kept that practice. But I love this idea of something that can be prohibitive and not simply sinful because of that. It's important that as we consider running our race and as we consider, as we calibrate our own morality for what our soul and our spirit can handle, for what's good for us and for what's not good for us, I want us to actually move away from asking a certain question. Let's stop asking, is this sin? Don't ask, is this sin? Ask instead, is this helpful? When you're thinking about allowing something in your life, or you're thinking about something in your life that you have, don't ask, is this sinful? Ask, is this helpful? I don't know about y'all. I don't know how often you talk about this. But as a pastor, I get this question pretty frequently. Is it a sin to blank? Is it a sin to binge watch Breaking Bad? Is it a sin to watch the playoffs? Is it a sin to just have maybe more drinks than I should on like a Friday when I don't have any responsibilities the next day? Is it a sin to do blank? Can I just tell you something? That's a Bush League question to ask, man. That's a little baby Christian question to ask. Is this sin? And I don't mean to be too mean about it, but really what that question implies is, what's the bare minimum I have to do to keep God happy with me? Is it a sin to do blank? Like, how does God feel about this? Are we still good if I do this? This is us admitting when we ask that question. It's us admitting, what's the least amount of effort I can put into my faith so that I'm still keeping God happy? And here's the thing. The least amount that you can put into your faith to keep God happy is to accept Christ as your Savior. And the good news is that's the only thing you can ever do to keep God happy. It's to simply believe in the sacrifice of His Son. Once you do that, you are as loved and as accepted and as approved of, and God is as proud of you as he will ever be. After that, it's simply about living in his goodness. But when we ask questions like, is it a sin if I blank? That's Bush League, man. That's small thinking. We need to ask instead, is this helpful? Is it a sin for me to stay up late and watch the NBA playoffs? Probably not. Is it helpful in my race? No, it's not. Is it a sin when I get my screen report back at the end of the week and I've looked at my phone for four and a half hours a day? I don't know. Did that help you run your race? Is it a sin to watch this particular show? It's got a little bit of nudity and a little bit of violence and a little bit of cussing, but I think it's okay. I think it's all right for me. I think I can watch that. And what I've noticed over the years is as Christians decide whether or not a show is appropriate for them to watch, that the scale of their morality operates in direct proportion to the quality of the show, right? The better the show, the more okay things get, right? Because we really want to watch it. Is it a sin to watch a show that may be borderline? I don't know. Is it helpful to you? How does your soul feel after you watch it? You feel like you need a shower after you finish watching the show? Then maybe, yeah, I mean, it's not helpful, right? I think we think about morality like people who are trying to cheat on a diet. Like if you could go over to the Olympic Village when Michael Phelps is swimming in his 11,000 different events that he does for every Olympics. He's won like nine gold medals in one Olympics, I think. If you go over there and he sits down for dinner one night knowing that he has a big race the next day, he's not looking at a steak with crab meat on top of it and some sort of cream sauce going, is it bad for me if I have this steak? No, he's thinking, is this going to help me win my race tomorrow? I don't want anything entering my body that's not going to help me accomplish my goal. We need to stop thinking like Christians trying to cheat on our diets and start thinking like athletes trying to perform in the race that God has set us about. So let us, in our moralities, stop asking, is something a sin? And start asking, is this helpful? Does this help me run my race? Now listen, this idea, this admonishment from, in this particular case, the author of Hebrews, to run our race, to let us lay aside all the weight and sin that entangles and run the race that is set before us, that's an idea that's common throughout scripture. That means live the life that God wants you to live. That means be the person that God created you to be. It said this way in this chapter, which happens to captivate me because I'm a competitive guy and this stuff resonates with me, but maybe it doesn't resonate with you. Maybe the way that Paul says it in Ephesians resonates with you more. When Paul says in Ephesians 2 verse 10 that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. This idea that the creator of the universe designed you very intentionally, created you in Christ, he purposed you, he set you down, he wound you up, he set you down, and he faced you towards some good works that he designed you to do. So go walk in those good works. Or maybe we like the imagery that we find in Timothy when Paul again explains that God is the master of the house and that we are all vessels. We're all utensils within the house and he's going to reach in the cupboard and he's going to pull out the utensils he needs to get the things done that he wants to get done. So just be ready to be a vessel. Maybe we like the way that Jesus tells us to do this. When he says that we are to be a city on a hill, or a light to the world, or the salt of the earth, maybe we prefer that imagery. Or maybe we like it when Jesus just comes out and just says it flat, straight up in the Great Commission, going to all the world and preach the gospel, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. It's all the same idea, guys. It's all the same stuff. It's just repackaging to try to connect with us in different ways based on different personalities that shared it when they wrote it in the Bible. But it's all the idea of we run our race. We live our life that we've been designed to live. And this idea is not a new one to us. Again, even if this is your first view at Christianity, if you're not very familiar with it at all, one of the things you know fundamentally is that if you are going to sign up for this life, then you're committed to trying to get your act together so that you can follow God better, so that he can use you more. That is a ground level foundational understanding that all of us have of the faith. So we can add to it that we shouldn't sin and we shouldn't allow things in our life that are prohibitive from running this race. But this effort to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles and run the race that is set before us, walk in the good works that God designed us to do, be the city on the hill, make disciples of all the world, however we want to phrase it, this idea that that's what we should be doing is one that we're familiar with. So the more interesting discussion is how. How do I run my race? How do I do that? How do I throw off the sin and the weight? That's to me where the rubber meets the road because none of you came in here this morning thinking in your lives that I have nothing in my life that I need to get rid of. I have nothing that I need to add to my life. I'm doing pretty good. If you did, email me. You're the new pastor. I'm going to sit down for a few weeks and listen to you. None of us came in here thinking that. The real interesting question, especially for Christians, is how do we do it? Okay, there's some stuff in my life that doesn't need to be there. I know. How do I get rid of it? There's some things in my life I need to start doing. I know. I've been trying. How do I actually get that to take? And I think that this question resonates with us so much because for most of us, if not all of us, for all of our lives, the answer to this how, okay, how do I get rid of things so that I can run my race? The answer to that question has been white-knuckleled discipline. It has been try harder. Draw more lines. Make more declarative statements. Double down on it. Last time I tried to beat this, I failed, but I didn't do this. I didn't take this step, so this time I'm going to draw the line here, and I'm never going to cross it again. And we try to eradicate sin from our lives with white-knuckled discipline. And we could use any sin here as an example. Anyone would fit. I'm going to go with the sin that is very common now, something that a vast majority of us have dealt with, or at least a majority of us have dealt with, which is this idea that we can pull out our phones and we can look at anything we want to at any time. And a lot of times, in a lot of days, we look at things on our phone that we ought not look at. But you could pick worry. You could pick gluttony. You could pick selfishness. You could pick greed. You could pick any sin you wanted to and place it here. But by way of example, let's choose the sin of pulling out our phone and looking at stuff on there that we ought not be looking at. And maybe this has been a habit in our lives for a long time. And we hear a sermon like this and we go, yeah, I'm going to throw off that sin and that weight. I'm going to stop doing that. I don't need to do that anymore. I want to run my race. How do we do it? And this is a sin that you've tried to beat before. And you do it by white knuckle discipline. God, I swear I'm never going to do this again. We put timers on our phone. We set it aside. We call our friends. We ask for some accountability. We commit to a new regimen of quiet times. We're going to do whatever it is we have to do. This is the time I'm going to beat this sin. How'd that go for you before? If you have ever drawn those lines in your life before, then I know that you have also failed. White-knuckle discipline, maybe because we're dumb Americans, is the only thing we know to try to get better at things. But when we're talking about sin, that doesn't seem to work, does it? And when we try to white-knuckle our way to holy, what we end up doing is failing. And when we fail, one of two things happen. Either we think we are not good enough for our God or our God is not big enough for our sin, right? We read these passages that we're no longer a slave to sin. I can walk in total freedom. And we're thinking, well, it certainly feels like I'm a slave because I don't know how to stop picking up my phone and looking at stuff I'm not supposed to look at. I don't know how to not have that drink when no one's around. I don't know how to not think those thoughts when no one knows what I'm thinking. I don't know how to not gossip about people when I know I should just keep my mouth shut. I'm told I'm not a slave to sin, but it doesn't feel like it. White-knuckle discipline leaves us in this place of disillusionment where we're disillusioned with ourselves and we're disillusioned with God. So just doubling down on effort, leaving here and going, I'm going to try really hard to run this race. You will for a couple days. If you have really good discipline, you might even do it for a couple of weeks. But eventually, and you know this in your soul, you'll be right back to the same stuff that you've already been up to. So then, how do we do that? How do we run our race? How do we actually succeed in throwing off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles? Hebrews tells us how, and it's beautiful. Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2. Here's the answer. You want to know how to throw it off? You want to know how to finally get over that sin? Look. Verse 2. You want to know how to defeat sin in your life? You want to know how to throw off the sin and the weight that prohibits you from running the race? Then listen to me. Your soul was created to and yearns to run. You want to know how to do that? Focus your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. Doesn't that make so much more sense? Focus your eyes on Christ, on the single one, on the Messiah, on whom all the streams in the Old Testament converge, on whom all the hope in the New Testament relies, on whom all the hope in the New Testament church looks forward to. Focus your eyes on Christ, your high priest sitting at the right hand of God in his majesty in heaven who's going to come back on a white horse and make everything right again, who by his death and by conquering the grave and by ascending back up to heaven has won for you redemption so that you can look forward to an eternity where there's not any more stuff that doesn't make sense, where the weeping and the crying and the pain are former things. They are not a part of reality anymore. We focus on that Jesus, and when we do that, we throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. How do we get rid of the things in our life that we don't want in our life? We focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We do what we've been doing for the past five weeks in Hebrews, coming here every week and going, hey, Jesus is a pretty big deal. And you might say, okay, that's moving, that's good. How does that actually, how does that work? Well, I think it works like this. Jesus says in the Gospels to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. And at first read, it kind of seems like God is saying, prioritize me first and I'll give you all the things you want. Focus your eyes or seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and I'll make you a billionaire if that's what you want. But that's not at all what that verse means. What I've come to understand that verse to mean over the years is when we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, that our hearts start to beat in sync with the heart of Jesus. Our heart begins to be enlarged by the things that move Jesus' heart. The things that Jesus celebrates become the things that we celebrate. The things that grieve the soul of Jesus become the things that grieve our souls. And the more we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, the more our heart beats in rhythm with God and the things that we want for others are the things that he wants for others. And the things that we want for ourselves are the things that he wants for us. And so in Hebrews, when we're told to focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith, we're being told that because as we focus on Jesus, as we fall more in love with him, as our heart begins to beat in rhythm with his heart, then our interest in the other things, our interest in the sin and the weight that so easily entangles, they simply fade. They simply go away. If you want to focus on not looking at your phone, then don't think about not looking at your phone. Think about Jesus. And what you'll find is the more you focus on him, the less interested you are in whatever's on this stupid device. We think that to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us in our life, that we need more discipline. We don't need more discipline. We need more Jesus, man. We don't need more discipline. We don't need more strength. We don't need more American cowboys running around there trying to white-knuckle their way to holiness. We need Christians who admit that we can't do it, who know that our strength is insufficient, who have had plenty enough life lessons in however many years we've been trying to walk with the Lord to know good and darn well that we don't have the strength to will our way to holiness. That our only hope for any of this is Jesus anyways. Let me show you what happens when you focus your heart on Christ. When you focus your heart on Christ, he so fills you up that you don't have room in your heart for things that he doesn't want. When you focus your heart on Christ, you don't have to ask yourself, is it a sin to watch this particular show? You just have to ask, does my soul really want me to consume that? We're so focused on Christ that our heart is beating with us. The things that we shouldn't watch or shouldn't participate in aren't nearly as tempting anymore. If you've ever had the experience of being on a diet and really sticking with it and learning how to eat right, it's amazing to me how a month into a diet, stuff that you used to go nuts over, you're now looking at that going, oh, I know what that's going to do to me. I don't want to touch it. Just give me the salad. And six months ago, Nate would be like, salad? What's the matter with you, man? And now I'm like, I don't want to deal with all the stuff that's going to happen if I eat that big hamburger. Just give me something light. I've got things to do. The more we focus on health with Christ, the less interesting other things are to us in our life. And here's the other thing. A heart that is growing in love towards Jesus does not have space in it to grow in love for other sins. A heart that is growing more and more in love with Jesus every day, a heart that is waking up and spending time in God's word and time in prayer. A heart that is coming to church and taking in the message and singing exuberantly to God when given the opportunity. A heart that is embracing small group and talking about spiritual things in small group and finding other outlets, other things, other things to consume during the week and turning off the radio if you still have a commute, if that's a thing that exists in 2021 and just taking some quiet moments between you and God, a heart that wakes up thinking, how can I begin to pursue Jesus better today, does not have space in it for the sin and the weight that we've been carrying for years. So let us not focus on the sins that we need to eradicate. Let us focus on having hearts that are so full of Christ that there's no space for the other things in our life. And then here's what it does that I think is really, really practically valuable for us as we think about getting rid of the sin and the weight in our lives. Focusing on Jesus creates an untenable tension in our hearts. Focusing on Jesus creates an untenable tension in our hearts. Take whatever sin you want. We've been using the sin of looking at your phone, of looking at things you're not supposed to. And I'm going to skirt the line of being too liberal and casual with sin here, but if we could sit down in my office and you would come to me, whatever your deep, dark sin is, whatever the thing is that eats your lunch that makes you think that I wrote this sermon for you, that thing, whatever thing that is, if you could come to my office and sit down with me and you say, Nate, I've been struggling with this for a long time. I want it out of my life. What do I do? I would tell you, listen, take that sin, whatever it is, and set it aside and acknowledge that it has become so ingrained in you and who you are that there are parts of your psyche that you don't even know that whether it's a dopamine hit or whatever it is, that you're going to rely on that as a crutch. That's going to continue to be a sin for you. And I would even encourage you, don't think about it. Don't think about trying to stop it. Just think about more Jesus. Just focus on Christ. And if you wake up in the morning and you have a quiet time, and you focus on Jesus, and then at night you do the thing that you're not supposed to do, but you know good and well that you're going to have that quiet time in the morning, and you make yourself get up, and you make yourself have that quiet time, even though you feel like garbage for what you did the night before, and you keep doing that, eventually you will create an untenable tension in your heart where either Christ or the sin is going to win, but you can't keep straddling the fence like you've been doing. Either I'm going to keep having my quiet times and keep focusing on Jesus and keep pursuing him on a daily basis and stop doing the other things that make me feel like a hypocrite when I do this, or I'm just going to walk away from Jesus entirely and I'm going to embrace this sin. And you're here this morning because you don't want option two. You want option one. So quit worrying about the sin that we need to get rid of in our life. Start worrying about consuming more Christ, and that will naturally eradicate the other things in our life by creating an untenable tension in our heart where we say to ourselves, if I'm going to get up tomorrow and pursue Jesus, I don't want the feelings of what this thing is going to give me when I do that. So no thanks today. And if we can do this, simply focus on Christ rather than focusing on our sins, I think what we will find on the other side of that focus is a freedom that we've never had before, is a belief and a hope that we've never experienced before. There's a picture in Malachi when it says that a forgiven person skips like a calf loosed from his stall. I want you guys to run through life like that. I want you guys to run the race that your soul yearns to run, and I want you to acknowledge with me that we don't do it by white-knuckle discipline and trying harder. We don't will our way to holiness. We admit defeat. We admit that we need Jesus. We focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. And we allow his enlarging of our heart to eradicate within our heart the desire for anything but him, slowly but surely over time. That's how we deal with sin. That's how we throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that we were designed to run. So my prayer for you is that you will run it. My prayer for you, after walking through Hebrews together, is that our hearts will be so enlivened by Jesus, so impassioned for him, that we will continue our pursuit of him to the expense of everything else in our life so that as a church, as individuals, we will skip like calves loosed from our stall, that we will run the race that God created us for, that our souls yearn to run. That's what I want for you. And that's what I'm going to pray over you right now. Father, would you please help us to run our race? We, all of us, have folks in heaven who are cheering for us, who I believe are made proud by us. God, we hope that the way we live our life, that the humble decisions that we make, not the great grand things that we do, but the daily decisions to pursue you and the results that come from that. God, we hope that those would make you proud. God, give us not the strength, not the discipline, not the determination to run our race. Give us the focus. Give us the humility. Give us the passion. Give us the desire for Jesus that we need to run our race. God, if there's someone who can hear me who feels like they have a sin or a weight in their life that is just dragging them down, I pray that you would breathe that fresh air of hope into them this morning for the first time in maybe a long time that it might be possible to live life on the other side of that sin. That it might be possible to run with you without that encumbrance wrapped around their ankle. Father, would you focus us on Jesus and captivate us with who he is so much so that our hearts have no room in them for anything but him. It's in his name, our high priest, that we pray. Amen.