Sermons tagged with Conviction

Good morning, Grace. I'm loving getting to share these times with you on Sunday morning. I hope you're watching along with us live. This morning we arrive at the end of our series called Storyteller, where we are acknowledging that Jesus was the greatest storyteller to ever live. And one of the main ways he taught was through parables, short fictional stories that are used to make a moral point. And this morning, we arrive at a parable that has confused me and dumbfounded me my entire life. Every time I come across this parable, I read it and I go, God, I don't know what that means. I don't know how to make sense of that. I don't know how to apply that. I don't understand it. I even have a note in my Bible. You can't see it, but there's a note right here that says, Lord, help me see this. Help me understand this parable. And that's why I put it in this series, because I wanted to force myself to dig in and do the work and understand this part of God's word that has always eluded me. So this morning we're covering the parable of the shrewd manager. You can find it in Luke chapter 16 verses 1 through 13. So if you have a Bible there at home, I want to encourage you to open that up. Again, if you have family around, open that up and look at God's Word together. Go through it together. It's always a great practice and habit to interact with the text as you're being taught the text. So open up Luke chapter 16, look in verses 1 through 13, and you'll see the parable there that has eluded me for my entire life. As I dug into the study this week, I became more and more grateful that God kind of pointed me in this direction because I love the message that comes out of this parable, and I find it to be an incredibly challenging one for us as believers. And I say as believers because that's an important part of this parable. If you'll look at the beginning of chapter 16, it says, Meaning Jesus has now turned his attention to just his disciples. Previously, he was addressing the crowds, the tax collectors and the religious leaders and the lay people and just the people in and around Jerusalem or Galilee. And now he has turned his focus directly to the disciples. And there aren't too many parables that are addressed just to them. Most parables are told to the crowds, are told to everyone who can hear, and there's this layered meaning. And sometimes Jesus will go back and explain the parable to the disciples later, like the parable of the sower that we covered weeks ago. But this one is just for the disciples. This one is just for an audience that has claimed with their life, Jesus, we are following you and our lives are about your agenda. We have committed to serving you. So if you're a believer this morning, if you would call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, then it's my firm conviction that God's called us to be disciples, and therefore, as Jesus addresses his disciples in chapter 16, he's addressing us, you and I, as believers. He's addressing an audience that has committed, and this is what we do when we accept Christ as our Savior, to following Jesus and to use our life serving him. That's our commitment. It's the same commitment the disciples made. And Jesus is saying, okay, in light of that commitment, let me tell you something. So if you're watching this morning and you're not a believer, you wouldn't yet call yourself a Christian, I'm so grateful that you're doing this and investing in your spiritual health in this way. And I hope that this helps move you down the road a little bit spiritually. But I want you to know that this one doesn't apply to you yet. This is one that you can just kind of stand back and consider if you want to be a part of that. But if you're a believer, then Jesus is speaking directly to you. And the parable goes like this. He says there was a master who had a manager in his employ. And the manager's responsibility was to manage all of the accounts, all of the wealth of the master. And the master finds out that the manager's not doing a very good job, that he's squandering his wealth, that he's managing it poorly. And he realizes it's time to fire the manager and bring in somebody new. And the manager gets word of this. He realizes that the master is going to fire him. And he's smart. He starts to look out for himself. And he starts to figure out, what can I do to take care of myself after I get fired? And I love the discussion that he has internally. In scripture, we see that he says that he's too weak to dig and he's too proud to beg. So he's got to figure something else out. And I love that because I think a lot of us, if we were put in this situation, we would go, gosh, I am not in good enough shape to do manual labor. And I'm way too proud to go out there and ask for a handout. So I better figure this out. And he gets the idea that what he's going to do is he's going to go around to the people who owe a debt to his master, and he's going to forgive them a portion of that debt to curry favor with them to kind of create his own golden parachute so that when he loses his job, he'll have somebody that'll give him maybe a place to stay or maybe a couple days worth of food or maybe they'll actually give him a job. So he comes up with this plan to curry favor amongst the debtors to his master to take care of himself in his own life. And so he calls the people who owe his master money, he calls them in and he looks at one and he says, what do you owe my master? And the guy says, well, I owe him 100 measurements of oil. And he says, tell you what, take your bill, write down 50 really quick, go ahead and pay it, and we'll call it even, okay? He gives him 50 measures of oil for free. Then the next guy comes in, he says, what do you owe the master? He says, well, I owe him 100 measures of wheat. And he goes, tell you what, sit down, write on your bill that you only owe 80, and we'll just go from there. And he's forgiving them of their debt to curry favor with them. And that's all the way down through verse 8. And I would expect, if you've read other parables, if you've followed along, I would expect at this point for Jesus to use the master to drop the hammer on the manager. And the point would be that you need to settle up your debts. The point would be like, now you have to pay tenfold what you gave them because it wasn't yours and that we shouldn't steal. I would expect Jesus to really give this manager what for. But that's not what he says at all. As a matter of fact, in verse eight, it says that the master commended the manager for his shrewdness. And I've always gotten to that part of the parable and gone like, what? It feels contrary to everything that Jesus teaches. It was dishonest. It was slick. It was sly. It was icky. Why would the master, who in this case is holding the place of God in the parable, why would God, why would the master commend the manager? And it only gets weirder from there. Listen to what Jesus says. Pick it up in verse 8. It says, What? And then he says this. What? What does that mean? My whole life. I mean, I read that when I was a kid. I'm in high school and I'm reading that and I'm like, yeah, I don't understand that one yet. And then I go to Bible college and I encounter it again with all of the classes that I've taken. And I'm going, yeah, I'm not really sure. That's very clear. And then I go to grad school, and at some point or another, I got this Bible. I got this Bible as an adult. In my 30s, I wrote this note, help me to see this. Still, at every stage of my Christian walk, I read this story. I'm dumbfounded by it. I put it down, and I go, yeah, I don't see it. And so as I dug into it this week and looked at what other people said about it and thought about it, and as I prayed through it, I think I came to the conclusion that there's these two clarifying questions that can help us understand the parable. That if we'll ask these two questions about the parable, I think we can begin to understand it better and then apply the challenging message from it. The two questions to help us understand the parable better are what ability is Jesus acknowledging and with whose wealth is the manager being generous? What ability in this parable is Jesus acknowledging with the disciples and to the disciples and to us, and with whose wealth is the manager being generous? I think if we'll answer those questions, we can arrive at an understanding of this parable that is really very helpful and challenging. To that first question, what ability is Jesus acknowledging? I believe as we look at this, he's acknowledging within all of us the ability and the knack and the knowledge to play politics. Now, no one says that they like politics, right? No one says that they like playing politics. You'll never meet anybody who's like, you know what I love? I just love kind of sch it. We know how to do it. How many of your boss's jokes have you laughed at that weren't funny? How many times do you share a story just to get the reaction in the room that you need so that people will look at you and think you're great? How many of your father-in-law's jokes have you laughed at that are not funny? Now, I know that my dad is going to be watching this sermon, and dad, you need to know that 100% of Jen's laughter has been authentic over the years. Every bit of it, you're hilarious. But for the rest of us, how many times have we laughed at our father-in-law's jokes when they're not funny? How many times have we said nice things that we don't mean because it's the right thing to do? Parents, we play politics with our kids. We know how to ask them to do certain things to get our way so that they don't resist us, so that they just go along with us. Wives, you know how to do this to your husbands. You know exactly how to frame up a suggestion so that the big weekend project is his idea and not yours, right? Even our kids know how to do this. My daughter is four and she knows how to play politics. She knows how to use everything at her disposal to further her agenda. There have been nights when she'll get up out of bed and I'm the first person that she sees and she knows she's supposed to stay in bed, but she'll hug me and she'll say, Daddy, will you lay down with me? And I'll say, sweetheart, why do you need me to lay down with you? You need to go to bed. And she says, because I'm lonely. She's not lonely. She sleeps in that bed by herself every night. She's not lonely, but she knows that I'm a sucker. She knows that I'm going to have sympathy for her. She knows I'm going to feel bad for her and that I'm easy to take advantage of in that state. So she says, Dad, I'm lonely. Will you please lay down with me? She knows what she's doing. And what Jesus is saying in this is that we all know what we're doing. We even have words and phrases for it. We know what it means to grease a palm. We know that we're not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth. I don't know what that means, but I know that I shouldn't do it. We know that we're not supposed to bite the hand that feeds us. We all do this. We all have used our own shrewdness, our own ability, our own wit, our own charm, our own whatever innate abilities that we have to advance our own agenda. And he's telling the disciples, you know how to do this too. I think what Jesus wants us to see in part of this parable is that we all have a little bit of the shrewd manager in us. We all do. What that manager did is he marshaled the resources available to him, both internal and external, to further his own agenda. He used his own talent and his charm and his wit and his intellect and in concert with the wealth of the master to further his own agenda, to build his own kingdom, to serve himself. He made it about him. And what Jesus wants us to see and wants his disciples to see is that we all have this ability. We all have certain gifts and talents and innate abilities. We all have internal and external resources that we use at different times to build our kingdom and to further our agenda. We are all shrewd like the manager. We've all done it. Because we've all done that, because there's a little bit of that manager in all of us, the second question is hugely important. And answering this question is really when the light bulb started to go off about what this parable is about to begin with. The second question we asked is, with whose wealth is the manager being generous? With whose wealth is the manager being generous? And the answer is the master's. It's not even his wealth. It's the master's wealth. And again, I think this is where the disciples started to realize what Jesus was talking about. And this is where I started to realize what Jesus was talking about. He's trying to get the disciples to acknowledge, listen, the resources that you have, the money that we have, it's not your money. It's God's money. He gave it to you. Everything that you've been entrusted with, the resources that we have, the money that we have, God's made you a steward of that. That's his money. That belongs to him, and he's entrusted it to you. And I think we take it a step further, and we look at the shrewdness of the manager and what that requires, and we acknowledge that the gifts that we have, we didn't earn those gifts. We didn't place those gifts in ourselves. We didn't give ourselves those things. God did. And so I can almost see Jesus looking at the disciples and going, Peter, your courage and your willingness to be the first one out of the boat, your willingness to say the difficult thing, I gave that to you. That's not your resource. That's mine. John, your empathy and your love for others and your depth of knowledge and insight, I gave that to you. Matthew, your knack with money, I gave that to you. Those are all gifts that were given to them by the Father. And I think what Jesus wants the disciples to see and in turn us is that everything that we have, everything that we have was given to us by God. It's not our resource, it's his. And just like we marshal our resources and our abilities to build our own kingdom, what Jesus wants the disciples to see is that because the gifts that we have are his, it is his expectation that we would use those and leverage those to build his kingdom rather than our own. I remember when I understood this for the first time, when that particular light bulb went off in my life. I was 28 or 29 years old. I was a student pastor at my previous church. And that church had a pretty big youth group, and the youth group, it had cool kids in it. The kids were athletes. They were funny. They were charming kids. They were sharp. And I started in April or May and took them to camp in the summer and remember thinking,, how am I gonna win these kids over? How am I gonna get them on my side so that I can minister to them? They really liked their previous youth pastor and I was kind of stepping into his shadow and it's like, well, how am I gonna win them over? And that first day, that Monday afternoon, we had free time and as was my habit, I went to the ball courts. And you grab a basketball, and you throw it out on the court, and everybody comes running. And for a few hours, I played basketball with my guys, with the guys in the youth group. And God, for whatever reason, blessed me with a modicum of athleticism, not a lot. And if you think I'm bragging about being athletic, I can remember the specific moment in my life when I realized I was not an athlete. It involved an African soccer player in college running over me, putting me on my chest, scoring a goal, and then jogging back while he winked at me, okay? So I can remember the exact moment in my life when I realized, dude, you are not athletic. But I did have some ability to hang in there with the fellas. And so we played basketball all afternoon. And simply by playing basketball and by being competent and by staying on the court and staying on teams and doing the right thing, I was able to win them over. That afternoon changed things. The months previous, it was really hard to have conversation with those guys. And after that, it was easy. Something clicked. And I fell into place as a student pastor. And it dawned on me there at Look Up. You know, my whole life, I had been reasonably athletic. Not very athletic, but enough to get by. I had been at least a little bit funny. I knew how to kind of charm people. And my whole life, I just assumed that I had those gifts to build my kingdom. Remember in high school, I used those things. I leveraged everything that I had. I leveraged all my resources to get people to like me, to get girls to like me, to get guys to think I was awesome, to get people to want to be my friend. It was all about Nate. I used it to build my kingdom. And it wasn't until look up at the end of my 20s with the new youth group of kids there that I realized, oh my goodness, God didn't make me serviceable on a basketball court for my own good so that I could get people to like me. He didn't give me the ability to come up with a joke or to say a funny thing in the right moment to win people over to me. He has tailor-made me for this season in my life. He knows that the way you win over high schoolers is to be able to run around with them. He knows that the easiest way to connect with any group of dudes is to throw a ball out there and run around and get to know them that way. That's worked on the mission field. When I've gone to Honduras, I can't even speak their language, but I grab a soccer ball and I throw it out on the field and I run around with them and suddenly there's a connection. And I realized in that moment, my goodness, God didn't give me these small gifts so that I could get people to like me for the reasons that I've always used them. He didn't make me kind of funny so that I could win people over to me. He gave those things to me. He tailor made me so that I could connect with these guys that I was going to be ministering to. God knew in my future, he is going to have to connect with high school students, so let me gift him and enable him in such a way that he's going to be able to connect with these kids. And I realized, my goodness, my whole life I've been like the shrewd manager and leveraged all the resources, internal and external, to further my own agenda and to build myself up when God gave me these things to build his kingdom. God gave me these things, not to draw them into myself, but to draw them into God. And since then, I've become increasingly convinced that the Christian life is a gradual realization that all I have is God's, and I'm expected to leverage everything to build his kingdom. I really think that's true. The Christian life is this gradual expectation, this peeling back of the onion of one layer and then the next layer and then the next layer until we gradually understand that everything that we have has been gifted to us for the purpose of leveraging it to build God's kingdom. Yet so often we don't realize that and we use those things to further our kingdom. And Jesus wanted the disciples to see this reality. That if you don't pay attention, if you don't listen to me, you're going to have these gifts and these talents and these resources, but you're just going to be like the shrewd manager and you're just going to use them to build up your own kingdom, and there's something bigger than that going on here. This is why he makes the point that he makes. He says, listen, unless I can trust you with little things, to be shrewd in little things, how can I give you more? Unless you can take that shrewdness and that resources that I've given you and apply those to building my kingdom in little ways, how can I entrust you with bigger ways? If you won't leverage everything you have on this side of eternity, how can I welcome you into that side of eternity? Suddenly, that portion of the parable makes sense. And you know, I see people at Grace doing this in so many ways. I think of somebody at the church who's become a really good friend of mine, who is fortunate and is in a spot in life where they don't have to work. But recently, he had an opportunity come up, like a contract-type deal, a temporary agreement, where he had the opportunity to generate some more income for himself. And he told me, you know, I think I am going to pursue that. But recently, God has laid on his heart just the important work that some nonprofits are doing. And so he told me that he is going to pursue that opportunity to make that money, not to keep it for himself, but so that he can funnel that into the nonprofits that he believes are building God's kingdom and doing God's work. That's a man whose eyes have been opened to the gradual realization that everything he has in his life, his ability to close the sale, to do the deals, to manage the relationships, to play the necessary politics within those kinds of deals and structures, that everything that he's been given, he's now marshalling to build God's kingdom rather than his own. I think that that is the surest sign of someone in whom the gospel has taken root is that we realize what Jesus is trying to communicate to us in that parable, that, oh my goodness, everything I have is not about me. It's about building God's kingdom. I think about Rob Hounchell. In just this small way, a couple years ago, he realized the church didn't have a bassist. And apparently God has gifted him with some musical ability, so he bought a bass and he taught himself how to play it so he could serve the church in that way. And he stands right back there with no light on him, half the Sundays, and he plays the bass for the sake of the church to build God's kingdom rather than his own. I think about Elaine Morgan, who just quietly behind the scenes does so much. Unless you're an elder or part of the missions committee or in the children's ministry, you don't see everything that a woman like that does. And we have a bunch of people like that who show up at all the events and all the things and self to see that, hey, everything we have is God's and we need to leverage it to build his kingdom. But I think we need to see the layers of that unfolding more and more and think to ourselves, God, how would you have me use my resources? How would you have me marshal my abilities to build your kingdom? We need to begin collectively asking questions like, Father, my money is not my money, it's your money. How would you have me deploy it to build your kingdom? Father, you've made me good at building things. You've made me good at starting things. You've made me entrepreneurial. How can I use that to further your kingdom? God, you've given me a business acumen. How can I use that to further your kingdom? God, you've made me diplomatic. I'm a good people person. How can I use that to draw people towards you? God, you've given me a heart of care and of concern and of empathy and passion. How can I use that to express your love in the community and draw people to you and not to myself? We need to begin to ask questions like that and learn the lesson from this parable that everything we have is from God. And it's with his wealth and his resources that we are to be generous and we are to be shrewd and we are to deploy those to build his kingdom. That's why Jesus finishes the parable the way he does. It's the only way that he can finish it. He says, listen guys, now that you understand that I have given you everything that you have and my expectation is that you would use that to build my kingdom and further my agenda rather than your own, you need to understand that no man can serve two masters. There's no possible way you can further your agenda and my agenda simultaneously all the time. Sometimes they're going to conflict. He says at the end, no man can serve both God and money, which I think is another way of saying no man can serve both God and himself. We can't further God's agenda and our own agenda at the same time. They are going to conflict, and eventually we will love one and hate the other. And I think so often in life we straddle the fence where in this way I'm furthering God's agenda, but in this way I'm looking out for myself. And Jesus says, no, I need you all on team Jesus here. Marshall everything you have, all the resources, all the gifts, all the abilities to further his kingdom, not our own. And as we sit and we think about that, what it would look like to use every last square inch of our life, all of the resources available to us to further God's agenda and not our agenda, to build God's kingdom and not our kingdom, I think it can feel pretty intimidating. Almost like sitting at the bottom of a mountain going, gosh, I've got to climb that? How in the world? I don't even see a way to the top. I'm so far from marshalling everything I have to serve God. I'm so invested in building my own kingdom that I don't even know what to do to begin to build God's kingdom. And because it feels like such a lofty goal, I think sometimes we might shy away from it. But if we think of it as a mountain to climb, we don't have to know every step along the way. We just have to know the next one or the first one. And back in another lifetime in February, when we met in person, I shared a sermon about discipleship. I said, at Grace, we're going to define discipleship by simply taking the next step of obedience. So this morning, I would ask you in light of this parable, in light of the reality that everything we have has been given to us by God and it is his expectation that we would leverage that with all of our shrewdness and ability to build his kingdom rather than our own. What's the next thing in your life that you can leverage to build God's kingdom. Not what are all the steps, what's the next step? Not how are we going to climb the whole mountain, just how are we going to take this first step? I hope that you'll discuss that this week in your families and in your small groups. What's the next thing that you can give over to God that you can begin to leverage in your life to further his agenda rather than your own. And maybe we can continue to learn from the parable of the shrewd manager. Let's pray. Father, first we thank you. We thank you for the gifts that you've given us. Now, give us the courage to acknowledge them. Give us the courage to acknowledge that you made some of us smart and you made some of us charming and you made some of us good with people and you made some of us humble. You gave us each gifts and abilities, God. Let us embrace what those are and acknowledge that they are from you. And let us leverage everything that we have, both internal and external, to build your kingdom rather than our own. Let us not serve ourselves so often and so diligently that we grow to hate you as a master. But let us serve you so much that we fall more deeply in love with you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. I'm just so excited about this morning. I met somebody before the service started, and they said it's their first time at Grace. They've been hearing about Grace for a little while. They thought they'd check it out, and I said, well, you picked both the best and the worst Sunday to try this. This is the fifth part of the campaign series that we've been doing, and the first Sunday in February, I came out and I said, hey, we've decided that it's time to pursue a permanent home for grace. And here are the reasons why we want to do that. And then we spent the rest of the series saying, the question that we are collectively asking now as a church body is, Father, what would you have us do in health? What would you have us do as a healthy church? And we said that that was to grow deep by making disciples and to grow wide by reaching other people and evangelizing. And so we took two different weeks and said, what's Grace's plan for those things? And then last week, one of our elders and partners, Doug Bergeson, did a phenomenal job of framing up generosity and stewardship. He did such a good job last week that as I was preparing this week, I thought, this is no good. Like, I'm not going to fall down. I don't have any theatrics. I'm not going to be as funny. Now, I was intimidated this week preparing to preach at my own church. He did such a good job. I was so grateful for that. And so this week, as we sit on Pledge Sunday, and at the end of this service, we're going to celebrate and worship together, and I'm calling it worship because that's what it is, and we're going to make pledges together. That's been the invitation over the last five weeks, is as a church family, let's consider and pray how we want to be involved in the campaign moving forward. And so we're going to make our pledges together. And as we do that, in part we're pledging to a home, to a building of some sort, to roots in the community that we own that belong to us, and that's important. But I really feel like we're pledging to this place. We're pledging to grace. We're pledging to what we hope grace will be. We're pledging to the future of grace. And so in that vein, I've had conversations with leaders in the church, with staff and elders, and I've said, when you dream about grace, what do you dream of? When you think about the future, what do you want? And for me, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I want church to look like, what a church should look like. If you were to ask me in private conversation, Nate, what are your goals for grace? What do you want grace to be? As you think about leading it, what do you want for grace? I would say to you, I just want to do it right. I want to be there for like 30 more years, and when I get to the end, I want to look back, and I want to be able to smile and say, we did it right. We did it the way that we felt we were supposed to do it. But the question becomes, well, what does right look like? And so as I thought about this and tried to distill down probably 20 years in ministry, I've thought about this question, what does a church that's healthy, what should it look like? And different churches should take on different tasks and different roles. Each church has a different DNA. So this is not a prescription for what every church should be. This is what I feel like grace can be. And so this morning, I've got seven statements on the bulletin there. And they're prefaced with, we want grace too. And when I say we, I believe that this is a reflection of not just me, but the partners and the staff and the leaders and the core of grace. So as you pledge, this is what you're pledging to. As we commit, this is what we're committing to. As we hope and dream, these are the things that we hope and dream about. So these are the seven things. Incidentally, seven is the number of completion in Scripture, so I couldn't add any more. I had to reduce them down to seven. These are the seven things that we want for grace. So the first one right out of the gate, these are in no particular order except the first one and the last one. The first one is there because these are drums that I beat all the time. The first thing that we want for grace is to relentlessly foster an affection for God and His Word. I want this to be a church that relentlessly fosters an affection for God and His Word. And I'm starting out with this, and I use that word relentless because it's important to me. I'm starting out this way because this is how I start with couples who are about to get married. One of the things that I get to do from time to time is counsel with couples who are about to get married, and it's one of the great privileges I'm afforded in my role. It's such an exciting thing to walk through that season of life with people. And on the very first night, I always say, hey, listen, this is my best marriage advice. I'm not saying it's good marriage advice. It's just the best that I have. So you probably have better advice than this. But I say, this is my best marriage advice. If you will be relentlessly committed to two things, you're going to be fine. There's no way I can prepare you for everything that we're going to encounter in marriage. But if you'll do these two things, you're going to be okay. If you'll be relentlessly committed to communication and to pursuing Jesus, you're going to be all right. That's what I tell these married couples, because I believe I can't prepare them for everything, but if they will communicate about everything, so often when we end up in counseling, when our marriage feels broken, it's because somewhere along the way, communication broke down. But then part of that has to be supplemented with the pursuit of Jesus. And so I tell these couples, if you'll be relentlessly committed to talking and to pursuing Jesus, then whatever you encounter, you'll be okay. And I feel the same way about these two directives for a church. If we will be relentless in our pursuit of God and our affection for his word, Everything else, we don't even need the rest of the list. You guys will be good. You guys will be walking with the Lord. And this is a reflection of Paul's prayer. I've preached on this prayer two separate times. So I felt like we had to start here. The prayer in Ephesians chapter three. If you want to look it up, it's in verses 14 through 19. I'm not going to pull out my Bible and read it to you, but that's where the prayer is. And it's a similar prayer that he prays for all the churches, that Paul prays for all the churches that he's planted in Colossae and Philippi and Thessalonica and Ephesus. He does, he prays in Galatia, he prays this prayer. And the prayer is essentially that you would know God, that you along with all the saints would know the height and the breadth and the depth of the love of God that surpasses knowledge, that you would be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul's prayer for the churches is that no matter what you would love God, no matter what happens in your life, whether it's triumph or tragedy, that those things would conspire so that you would know God more. That's what Paul prays and that's our prayer. And I've preached that two different times, that that's my prayer for grace. And so I had to lead with our goal. And what we want is that we would know God. And in knowing God, that we would be fostered by an affection for his word. You've heard me say a half a dozen, probably two dozen times from this stage, that the greatest habit that anyone can develop in their life is to spend time every day in God's word and time in prayer. It's the best possible habit anybody can have. And if there's nothing else that we do, I want to foster an affection for God and his word. That's why when I preach and I tell you stories from scripture, I try to make them come alive for you. I try to help you be there so that they're not just descriptions of what's going on, but that you see yourself in those stories. That's why I try to compel you to go back and read it on your own. I want you to fall in love with God's word too. I want you to have an encyclopedic knowledge of God's word and realize that it's not for people who went to seminary, it's just for people who love God's word. So as I think about grace, we wanna foster an affection affection for God and his word. We want to do that relentlessly, constantly pointing to God. The next two things that we want grace to be or we want for grace are things that were in place when I got here, and we want to simply continue them. We want grace to maintain generational diversity. I think this is hugely important, and it's a distinctive of grace. In 2017, the church was about one-third the size that it is now, maybe even a little less than that. And it was mostly people in their 50s and 60s. And those people in their 50s and 60s said, we want to hire a younger pastor. Which, all joking aside, it's going to sound like I'm making a joke. I'm not. This is not self-deprecating to get you to laugh. This is true. It takes some humility and some guts to hire a guy that's younger than you and invite them in to come and lead. That's an opportunity that people my age don't often get. That's a trust that's placed that's not easily placed. And so I've been humbled by that task, and I'm grateful for that. And in doing that, they said, we want to get younger as a church, and we have. And we've grown in our 20s and our 30s and our 40s demographics. And so we are a church that is uniquely generationally diverse, and it is to our great value that it is. One of my favorite things that I get to do in the church is lead that Tuesday morning men's group. It meets at 6 a.m. here in the church. If you want to come, we're meeting this week. Come on. Also, you have to be a guy. And in that group, we have people who are in their mid-20s and people who are in their 60s and everybody in between. And I think it's incredible that the guys in their 20s and in their 30s can say, hey, we're dealing with this with our four-year-old. I'm thinking about this in my career. What do you guys think? And then the older guys can give wisdom to the younger guys. I think it's incredible that the older guys can catch a glimpse of the enthusiasm and the faith and the questions that the younger guys are willing to ask. I think it's a phenomenal setting. It's one of my favorite things that we do. And Timothy talks about this. I preached on this passage a while back, that we should treat younger men as brothers and sons, and older men as fathers, and older women as mothers, and younger women as daughters and sisters, that the church is designed to be a family. We live in a culture where there is tension between generations. We have phrases like, okay, boomer, that frankly are stupid. Because it's a way that millennials dismiss older people for being antiquated or out of touch, and we devalue the wisdom of the previous generation. And then we have older people who make fun of millennials for all the silly things that they like. And they may be silly, but you like silly things too. Quit being a jerk. We don't need to do those things. It's not healthy. It's not good. Older people need to value the enthusiasm and the fresh ideas of the younger generation and view them as sons and daughters in this family of faith. And the younger generation almost said, we, I don't want to lump myself in and call myself young. I have a lot of gray now. We need to look to the generations that preceded us and value their wisdom and understand that their perspective, even when we don't understand it, is hard earned. So we want to embrace all generations. I don't want anybody to feel left behind. I don't want anybody to feel like they're not cared for. Because if we do this well, then our children who are growing up in the church will see other people like them when they get into their college years and their 20s and their 30s. And then we can do this miraculous generational ministry where we can see families walking together. I get to look out sometimes and see three generations of family sitting in the audience. And I love that. But we only get to keep that if we're a church that maintains our generational diversity. It's a distinctive of grace, and we want to be careful to maintain it moving forward. The next thing that I saw when I got here, and this is so important to me, is that at Grace, we want to be defined by courageous honesty and generous grace. We want to be defined by courageous honesty and generous grace. And here's why I'm saying it this way. A big value in our culture now is authenticity, honesty, transparency, someone who's authentic, someone who's real, however you want to phrase it, that's what we want. That's what we want in our friends. There's actually research out that says churches are wise to knock it off with the smoke and light show and just keep the overheads on the whole time because that feels more real and authentic and less like you're trying to entertain me, which I'm about that life. We want transparency and authenticity everywhere. We want it in our churches. We want it in our businesses. We want it in our politics. We want it in our friends. We want it in our relationships. That's what we want. We crave this authenticity. But the more I thought about it, the more I didn't think it was helpful to put up there on the screen that we want to be authentic, that we want to be real, because everybody does, so who cares? But these are the things that it requires to create an environment of authenticity. Scripture tells us that we're to bear one another's burdens, that we're to walk with one another, that we're to rejoice with those who rejoice and we're to mourn with those who mourn. Those require an environment of authenticity. And authenticity can't come out unless there is courageous honesty. There has to be courageous honesty in our small groups, in our conversations, frankly, from stage with what I'm willing to share about myself and admit to you. We have to be courageous and be able to say to one another, I'm broken and I don't work. We need to be able to say to one another, have the courage to go, I don't have this figured out. I don't understand this part of scripture. I stink at this part of being a Christian. We need to have the courage to be able to say those things because those require actual vulnerability. And I get frustrated with fake vulnerability. When people confess things that seem like a big deal, but they're no longer dealing with them or they no longer matter. Someone says, I used to be an alcoholic 10 years ago. Okay, it doesn't require much vulnerability to say that. Tell me you're an alcoholic right now. That's vulnerable. Tell me, I used to be terrible at reading the Bible, but I've kind of figured it out. But yeah, I've walked through that season too. All right, that's not very vulnerable. Tell me right now you haven't read the Bible in months. That's vulnerability. It's when we risk something by sharing it. So authenticity requires courageous honesty. But if that courageous honesty isn't met with generous grace, it's the last time that's going to happen. If I'm supposed to bear your burden, but I judge you for carrying it, I can't bear it with you. If I'm asking you to share with me, we're told to confess our sins to one another. And if you confess your sins to me and then I make you feel bad for your sins, you're not going to do that again. Put yourself in a small group. But somebody has some courageous honesty and they share something that makes them vulnerable to that group. And they're met with condemnation or apathy, when's the next time they're going to actually be courageous and share something or not? So we need to be defined by both courageous honesty, but understand that we facilitate and cultivate that honesty and authenticity by offering generous grace, by looking at the burden people are carrying and saying, yeah, man, if I were under that, I would need help too. That's how we continue to be authentic. And frankly, I'm not trying to make it about me, but that's how I get to continue to be myself. That's how we get to continue to be ourselves is only by courageous honesty and generous grace. We have to continue to offer that to one another. We want grace to be a safe harbor for the unchurched, the de-churched, and the over-churched. We want it to be a safe place for the unchurched, the de-churched, and the over-churched. If you ask anybody who's a part of any church and you say, what do you want for your church? Eventually, and it came up a bunch of times in the conversations I had, eventually they'll say, we want to reach the lost. We want to reach the unchurched. And that's absolutely true. Two weeks ago, I did a whole sermon on evangelism, on what our plan is to reach people with Jesus who don't yet know Jesus. So that is a directive in Scripture, and it is near and dear to our heart. And so we don't want to neglect that. We absolutely want to be a safe place for the unchurched where you know you can invite your friend who doesn't know Jesus and thinks church is weird, and you can bring them here, and maybe they'll go, that wasn't so weird. We want to be that place where they can see Jesus. But the other thing I know, in our culture, where we're at geographically, where we're at historically, there are a lot of people in Raleigh who have been hurt by church. There are a lot of folks that are carrying scars that were given to them by the churches that they went to. For some of you, that's your story. We've probably, all of us in one way or another, been burned by church before. And to this, Jesus says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And it was to virtually the same culture. It was to a religious culture. And what he was saying to them is, if religion has hurt you and scarred you and worn you down and made you feel like you're not good enough and made you feel like you can't carry the weight, then come to me and I will give you rest. I'll be a safe place for you. We want to be a safe harbor for the unchurched, for the de-churched, and for the over-churched. So that when someone who's been hurt by church in the past comes here, they experience a service with grace. They experience community at grace. They experience one of our big nights out or something like that, and they take a deep breath and they go, this place feels safe. This place feels real. I feel like I can heal here. I feel like I can trust myself to this place. I want to be a place where we heal faith, where we restore the belief that church can be done right, where people are made to feel welcome and loved and offer generous grace when they offer courageous truth. We want to do that right. We want grace to be a place of flourishing faith, whether discovered, reignited, or sustained. It's easy when someone first comes to Christ, when their faith is discovered. It's a really great time. That's an enthusiastic time. That's a time in life when everyone experiences faith like Kyle gives the announcements. It's just like out of a shotgun, here we go. And that's fun and that enthusiasm is wonderful. And for reignited faith, for people who wandered away from the faith and then have come back to it and their faith has been reignited and been restored and they move from cultural Christian, from just passive Christian to culturally conservative to like actually on fire for Jesus. Then they're on fire for a little while, but we want faith to be sustained as well. We want flourishing faith at all ends of the spiritual spectrum. That's actually one of the things I pray for most for you. One of the things that I do semi-regularly is I come into this space when there's nobody else here, and I just sit in the seats and I pray. I did it this morning. And when I sit in the seats, I've been your pastor long enough, I know where you sit, man. So when I sit in the seat over there, I know in my head in the first service and the second service who normally sits there, and I pray for you by name. And I move through the auditorium, and man, this is a good place. We have good families here. I love y'all. As I did it this morning, and I rattled off names of sitting sections and just everybody that sits in that section. I couldn't believe that I get to be the pastor of people who love God and love one another so well. And when I pray for you, I pray a lot of things, but mostly I pray that your faith will be ignited. Mostly I pray that Jesus will get a hold of you and that we'll see radical change in your life and that we wouldn't be a church full of people who are cultural Christians who come to church because that's what we're used to doing and we're checking it off a box. But we come here because we're excited about Jesus and who he is and how he loves us. And we're excited about spurring one another on in that walk. So we want to be a place of flourishing faith. We want to be known in the community for our generosity and for our commitment to community. I just want, if I'm honest, I just want grace to be known. Most of the time when I'm out in public and I meet somebody and they say, what are you doing? I say, oh, I'm a pastor. They say, what's your church? I'm like, it's Grace Raleigh. Oh yeah, where's that? I'm like, well, it's behind the Panera on Capitol next to the fish store. You may have heard of it. And I'm like, no, I don't know. And I'm like, well, we used to be Grace Community Church. And then sometimes we're like, oh yeah, okay. And that's it. Listen, I'm not here to make our name great. I don't really care about that, but I want us to be a church that's known in the community because we serve it so well. We partner with Fox Road because they have the most kids, I think in the state, it's either in the state or in the city, who are on lunch plan, who get free lunch by the government because they're below the poverty line. And that's why we're doing the food drive. I want to partner with more schools. I want to do more things. We give 10% of our budget to ministries going on outside the walls of grace. I want to see that grow. I don't know if we can do it, but I want to do it. I want us to be defined and known in the community by our generosity and by our commitment to community, our commitment to one another, our commitment to the places that we live, our involvement in our various circles of influence out in the community. Different churches are known for different things. I don't want us to be known at being really good at a particular ministry over another ministry. I don't want us to be known for our pastor. I want us to be known for our people, that we're generous, that we're committed to one another and that we're committed to the people around us. So we want a reputation in our community to be. This last one is one that I love so much. It means so much to me. I want Grace to be a place where people see Jesus because we listen for and participate in his sweeter song. Now, every church would say that we want people to walk in and see Jesus here, and that's true of us too. And I believe that Jesus tells us that this is what we should do. He tells us that we should let our good deeds be seen before others, that our, let our light shine before others, that they may see our good deeds, and so glorify our Father who is in heaven, that they will see us, and as a result of how we act and how we love, that they will glorify our God, that we will almost passively evangelize. That Paul says, and I said this a couple weeks ago, that we are a processional led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. People should see Jesus. They should feel Jesus when they come in this place, when they are around grace people, they should say Jesus was there. But the bigger question is, how do we get that done? And I think we get that done by listening, by being a people who listen for the sweeter song that Jesus is playing us. And in listening for it, we play it along as well. And here's what I mean. In Greek mythology, there's this hero named Odysseus. Odysseus, he was clever. He wasn't stronger or more athletic than everyone, but he was clever than people. I like Odysseus. And he thought his way through things. And they were sailing home. I think he was from Ithaca, but I wouldn't, you know, bet money on it. I mean, I would bet five bucks for fun, but they're going towards Ithaca, going home. And on the way home, they had to pass the island to the sirens. And the sirens on that island, they were these women that sang this song that was so beautiful that once a sailor heard it, he could not help but divert his boat to that island. It drew them in. And it would draw them in so deeply that they would shipwreck into the island of the Sirens and they would waste their life there and they were never seen from or heard from again. And Odysseus knew that they had to make it past the island. And so he brought with him, because he's clever, beeswax. And he told his men as they approached the island, I want you to put this beeswax in your ear so that when we pass the island of the sirens, you're unable to hear their song. And so the men agreed and they put the beeswax in their ear and they couldn't hear anything. And as they were doing that, he said, but I'm not gonna do that. I want to be able to hear the song of the sirens. So I'm gonna lash, I want you to lash me to the mast, tie me to the mast. And no matter what I say or do or scream at you or threaten you with, do not go there. And they said, okay, deal. So they go past the island of the sirens and Odysseus is lashed to the mast. And the men can't hear a thing and Odysseus begins to hear the song of the sirens. And it is so compelling. And it is so beautiful. He wants to go there so badly. And he is yelling and kicking and thrashing and threatening, but the men can't hear him. And he wants to go over there so bad. He doesn't want to go home anymore. He wants to go over there. What's over there is better than home. That's where I want to go. But he can't because he's lashed to the mast and his men sail him home. And so often I feel like that's the picture of spirituality that we have. That's a picture of faith that is painted. That we're trying to stay on the straight and narrow. We're trying to do the right thing. We're trying to go home. We're trying to follow God. But there's an island over there and it's got some temptations for us. And man, I really want to go there. And what's happening there is a lot better than what's going on here. And that looks way more fun, but I know I'm supposed to go this way. So we do things and we lash ourselves to the mast and we be the good soldiers. And even though I don't really want to go there, I really want to go there. I know that this is the way I'm supposed to go. So whatever I say, whatever I do, we put accountability in our life and we get other people and we go, gosh, I don't want to do that. I really want to do that, but I'm a good soldier and I'm lashed to the mass and this is the way I'm going to go. And if we do it for long enough, then we can get home and be good Christians. But there's somebody else who had to sail by the island, Jason and the Argonauts. And when Jason and the Argonauts went by the island, he didn't give any beeswax to anybody. He just let the song start. And when they got in range of the song and all the men's attention began to be diverted, he called on a guy named Orpheus, who was a legendary player of the lyre. And he said, Orpheus, will you play your lyre for us on deck? And Orpheus began to play the lyre. And the song was so beautiful and so compelling and so lovely that the men on the boat no longer cared about the song and the sirens because Odysseus was playing them a sweeter song. And he played that song for them all the way home. That's the version of spirituality that I want to live out. I believe that Jesus plays for us a sweeter song. I believe that when Jesus says that he came to offer us life and offer us life to the full, that he meant it. I believe that God wants what's best for us all the time, and that if God is asking us to do something, and it seems like it would be more fun to do that, it seems like it would be better to do that, I think that I would be happier if I would go over there and not go the way that God wants me to go. I want to be people who believe and listen for the sweeter song that Jesus is playing us that's going to bring us home. I want us to be people who listen for and believe that God really does want what's best for us. And if we'll just listen for it, if we'll just think about it, that we'll know that guilt shouldn't compel us and a sense of odd shouldn't compel us and that we don't need to be a church full of good soldiers who are lashed to the mast, and even though their heart is really over there, they're going to go there anyway. No. I don't want to be a church full of good soldiers. I want to be a church full of people who are in love with Jesus because of the sweeter song that he is playing for us. The sweeter song of fidelity in marriage and the love that's shared when we make wise choices. The sweeter song of discipline in our life and the joy this experience is a result of that discipline. The sweeter song of the habit of waking up and spending time in His Word and the wisdom that we gain is a benefit of that discipline. I never want to compel us with guilt. I never want to compel us with ought. I always want to look at what God is asking us to do as we preach and we teach in our student ministry and our children's ministry and our small groups, our individual conversations. And let's be people that don't look for because we said so, but let's be people who look for in Scripture and in the motivation and in the very heart of God. And no, He wouldn't ask me to do this if it weren't what's best for me. So why is this what's best for me? And let's listen for that sweeter song. And as we listen for it, we begin to participate in it. And then when people come around a community that's listening for that sweeter song of Jesus, and we're playing it too, that's how they see Jesus in us. And then before you know it, they start to sing along as well. That's the kind of church that I want to be. That's where I want us to go. So in a few minutes, we're going to hand in our pledges. We're going to worship together as we do that. And when you pledge, if you do, that's what you're pledging to, to be that kind of church and to see where it goes. I believe that the best days of grace are ahead. I believe that some of the people who will be the most influential folks who come into grace are folks that we haven't even met yet. I think God's going to write a really great story with us. So let's pray, and then we'll worship together. Father, we sure do love you. We sure are grateful that you love us. Thank you for caring about this place. Thank you for putting your hand on it. Thank you for gently convicting and guiding and loving us. God, we pray for big things today. Pray for big things today in the pledge and in what happens and in the future that you write for grace, but we pray for bigger things than that. Pray for flourishing faith and strengthened families and a church that continues to pursue after you. May you foster in us relentless affection for you and for your word. May we constantly listen for your sweeter song. Make us that kind of place, God. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. I'm thrilled to be here this morning to be able to kick off our joy series that we're going to be going through throughout December. To start out, we're going to be in John 1. And so I tell you that right now because I would love for you to be able to open up your Bibles with me if you've brought them or if you can get the one out of the back of the seat. We're going to be reading out of John 1. And as you're turning to that, I wanted to make a quick shout out to my younger brother, Jay, who's also a student pastor and who is also preaching at his church this morning. And so I say that one to say, Jay, we're thinking about you and we're praying for you. But also as a public service announcement to you that if you leave and you say, man, that sermon was not good, then I assure you, you can go to his church's website and listen to his recording tomorrow and it will be much better than what you have this morning. Anyways, let's go ahead and let's jump into scripture. We're going to be reading that light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. Let me reread 6 through 8 real quick. Let's pray real quick. God, thank you for bringing us here this morning. God, thank you for allowing me to come and just get to share my joy in you. Allow that joy to radiate through me, and please speak through me this morning and into the hearts of the people who are here. God, we love you so much. Amen. So just a quick background before we really jump in and before we really dive into these verses, I want to give a little background behind the John that is being talked about in here. This is not the titular John of the actual book. This is talking about John the Baptist. John the Baptist is someone who's also referred to as or known as John the Forerunner. He was basically the forerunner for the Messiah that he was actually prophesied about saying there will be a man who comes. He will come and he will make way for the Lord. He will make way for the light for Jesus. This man, he's going to come and he is going to make it known that Jesus was on the move and that Jesus was on the way. He lived in the woods. He was kind of a gross dude. He ate bugs. His entire purpose, his entire life's mission and life's goal was just preaching to these people. What was he preaching? He was preaching, get ready, get prepared, repent, because the Lord is coming, Jesus is on his way, and he is about to rock everyone's world. He was Jesus' cousin. He had a similarly miraculous birth, just as Jesus had. He had all of this awesome stuff. He had these things that made him special, so he should be in the Bible, right? He had a miraculous birth. He was prophesied for that literally people hundreds of years before had said, this guy is going to come, and he's going to signify the coming of Jesus. And all of these things are incredible. Maybe more notable than all of those things is that Jesus himself said, John is the greatest of any man who's been born of a woman. That there is no one greater than John. And that is high praise. That is the highest praise. That is coming from Jesus' mouth. And you think about it, it's like, that makes sense, right? There's a lot of special and there are a lot of miraculous things. But what I think is that Jesus said that not simply because he was somebody who was prophesied about, not simply because he was one who came and fulfilled a prophecy and had this miraculous birth and experienced these miracles, but because he was someone who understood his calling and understood his life and how he stacked up against Jesus and his entire life was motivated by that. I think what made him so great and why he was so notable and noteworthy and standoutish in Jesus' eyes was because he understood the claims of seven and eight. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light so that through him all might believe. He himself was not the light. He came only as a witness to the light. And so I stand here this morning with my ultimate goal and my ultimate message being that I think that it is attainable for us to be seen in the light and to be seen in the light of Jesus' eyes as the same type of person as John the Baptist. No, we are not going to be the named fulfillment of prophecy. And no, we are not. Most of us probably didn't have this miraculous birth, but every single one of us can live that passage out. Every single one of us can live the calling of John's life, of that we realize and we understand that we are not the light. But boy, do I know the light. And I think why John stood out in this time was because I think better than any person who walked the earth prior to Jesus's death and resurrection, I think John understood why Jesus was there. And when you understand why Jesus is there, how could you do anything but proclaim what he was coming to do? This man that you've been looking for, that you've been searching for, this king that us Israel Jews, that we have been searching for and that we've been excited to come and so ready for so he can come and save us. I'm here to tell you that he's here. And I think John knew that he wasn't meant to be an earthly king like a lot of people thought. I think John understood that it meant that he was going to solidify our eternal home in heaven. And that meant that he had this joy in Christ and this passion for Christ that allowed him to preach in such a way that as he preached in the back of these woods and ate these things that all of these people, thousands of people in Israel had to come and hear what he had to say. Because he had a message worth hearing and he was preaching it out of the joy that he had found through knowing and understanding that message. And so when he was asked, when people came to him and he said, are you this person? Are you this light? Are you the savior that is coming and the king that is going to come and save us? He said, no. There is one that's coming that is far greater. And I guarantee you, I promise you, he is going to be far more than anything that you could ever understand. And so now, repent, give way to him. John was a huge deal. He was a biblical hero. But what I'm here to tell you is I think at his base, he understood that he wasn't the light and that he understood who the light was. And because he came in contact with him, it changed his life forever. And it built up this joy in him where he had to let it out to everyone he possibly could. As I was thinking about this, and as I was thinking about John and his life and what that looked like, and as I was thinking about how that connects to our life and maybe what it looks like in our life, I was reminded of an episode of one of my favorite shows. Now, if you ask any of my students, if you ask any of my friends, if you ask my small group, if you ask my family, hey, what do you think the over-under for how many sermons it'll take Kyle to come to a TV or to a movie reference? Every one of them would say probably one, and it'll be within the first two minutes. I love TV. I love movies. I watch it all the time. I make way too many quotes and references. I've got students up here laughing because they know it. I've got small group people that I see in the back laughing because they also know it. Yeah, hey, I got a fist bump in the back, so I know I'm saying something that someone agrees with. They would all say one, but hey, I'm here to tell you. I mean, hold your applause, but I'm here to tell you that it is now my third sermon here at Grace, and this is only going to be my first TV reference. But I just think it's perfect. This reference is going to be from a show called The West Wing. I don't know how many of you guys have seen it or know of it or whatever. It's an older show. It's a show that's on Netflix that I have watched. I'm actually currently re-watching it on Netflix because I just think it's that good and because, as previously stated, I love watching TV. In this particular, well, let me give you a background behind what the West Wing is. If you don't know what the West Wing is, it is basically giving a peek behind the curtain at what the West Wing of the White House looks like, of the offices and the president and the president's staff and them working and running a country. And this particular episode that I'm thinking about is actually a flashback episode. And so we know that these people are in the White House, that there's a president,b Bartlett, and then he has this staff that is working, and they've done this. This episode in particular is a flashback that talks about how the staff came to be on staff for President Bartlett. And so it opens up with this guy named Josh Lyman. He's basically, he is running the campaign for this other presidential candidate named John Hoynes. They basically have it sewn up. This guy is going to be the next Democratic presidential candidate. He's got the whole thing sewn up in the bag. Everyone else is a far distant second, and they know that it's going to happen. It opens up, though, not really as exciting, as joyful as that sounds. This opens up. They're sitting in a circle, and Josh is going off and arguing and fighting against all of the other people that are at this table. And it ends with John Hoynes. The candidate walks him out and says, Josh, dude, you've got to chill out. You've got to get off of my back. You've got to get off of these people's backs. To which Josh says, sir, I don't know what we're about. I don't know what we're for. I don't know what we're against. I don't know what we believe in. All I can really tell is that we're for winning and that we're against losing. And you see the guy who is destined to become the chief of staff to the president, one of the highest jobs that you can hold in this country, and yet you see in his face, you hear in his voice the discontent, that it's not enough because he's working for this guy that he doesn't see is the real deal. That conversation ends, and one of Josh's dad's old buddies comes up to him. His name is Leo. He says, Josh, can I talk to you for a minute? So they walk outside, and Leo says, Josh, I'd like for you to go see a guy named Jeb Bartlett speaking in Nashua in a few days. Josh is like, why would I do that? Like, not only, like, I know that he is a presidential candidate, but I'm already working for a candidate. And not only am I working for a candidate, I'm working for the candidate, right? I'm working for the candidate who is about to win. Why would I go and check out this guy who has absolutely no way of winning? And Leo says, I just think you should check him out. If not for me, just do it because I'm an old friend of your dad's. And he walks away. And you see in Josh's eyes, and you see this glimmer of hope that this is probably a task that is not going to produce any fruit. He's probably going to go, be like, all right, I did it. You're welcome, sir. But you can see that there's some type of intrigue because what you realize is he realizes this could be the real thing, that just in case I want to go check it out. And so he books a trip to go there. On his way there, before he goes, he hits up New York City. He hits up this guy named Sam, one of his buddies who's working in this law office. Basically, Sam is this brilliant lawyer that what he does, in probably his words, he works for the bad guys and makes sure that he insures the bad guys to where they don't lose money if they skimp in ways when they buy boats and ships in case they have some type of oil spill or whatever. Like, not good dudes. Like, can we all agree? Nods all around the room, not good dudes. And so you can see within Sam's life before Josh comes into it that Sam is pretty discontent as well, right? He's not happy there. He doesn't really want to be there. It's basically just a job. It's a law firm that's about to make him partner. Josh shows up. They go get a hot dog, 9.30 a.m. I don't know why I said that, but it's a funny fact, and so I said it. They go, and basically Josh says, man, I'd love for you to come work for us. You're a great writer. Come write some speeches. Come be a part of our campaign. Make it better, and you can work for the next president of the United States. Sam pretty quickly turns him down. And you understand that, right? Like, you understand, like, he's got a life in New York. He's got a job who pays really well in New York, and he's happy, and he's satisfied there. Or he may not be happy, but he's satisfied there. And that makes sense until you see, until you peel back the curtain as to why he really turned him down. He says, Josh, Hoynes isn't the real thing, is he? The guy that you're working for that's about to be the president, he's not the real thing, is he? Josh stumbles and he fumbles around for his words until finally Sam cuts him off. He's like, dude, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? And Josh, I don't know. Before he leaves, Josh says, hey, Sam, I'm going to see this guy speak in Nashua. If I see the real thing, do you want me to come and tell you? Sam says, you won't have to because you've got a terrible poker face. So Josh heads over to Nashua. He listens to this man. He's sitting in this like half-filled VFW room with these old families that are there, and he's giving this speech. Josh is chilling, whatever. At the end of the speech, they take questions. Someone raises his hand. He stands up. He says, Mr. Bartlett, I voted for you three different times. And you have continued to choose to hurt me and my family and my crops and what I do. You are taking money out of my pocket. How whatever he can to where even if he's lying, he's telling them what they want to hear because he needs their vote to win a presidency. But instead, he stands up, he says, you know what, you're right. I got you pretty good there. And I'm sorry that you lost money, but I am standing here and telling you that I did what I think is right. My goal was not about the money in your pockets, but to make milk more accessible to all people. He stands in front of these farmers and tells them, yes, I have made movements that have hurt you, that have taken money from your pockets, but I'm telling you that I stood up and I did what I believe is right. And if you're asking me to tell you something different now that I'm standing here in front of you, I'm not going to do it. And if you don't think that that's a value that you want in your presence, then do not vote for me. He stood up for what he believed and for what he knew was right in his eyes instead of telling these people what they wanted to know. He wasn't running an election. He wasn't being a politician. He was just being someone who said, I want to stand up for what I think is right. And it pans to the back of the room to Josh. And he doesn't go and talk to anyone. He doesn't go and talk to Leo who invited him. You instead just see a guy who just looks up and you see just this wonder and this awe in his eyes as he's listening to this president talk. And he's like, are you kidding me? This is it. This is the real thing. This guy's not trying to win an election. This guy's trying to do the right thing. And if he can do that, he would love to win an election so he can continue to do what he thinks is right. He realized that he had spent all of this time with John Hoynes just trying to win an election. And now here is this guy standing up for what he knows is right. Speaking truth to that power, standing up for his convictions. And you can see in his face that his life is about to change. Just in his face and just in the joy of his face, you can tell this guy's all in. So what does he do? He goes right back to New York. He's so excited that he forgets where Sam works and he forgets the name of the law agency. And so he's standing out in the middle of the pouring rain on this payphone and he's talking to the operator saying, ma'am, what are some of the law agencies? I don't know how to call. I want to call ahead, but I can't remember his law agency because he's freaking out because he's so excited. He goes, but ma'am, you've got to help me out. I just saw this guy and I just, you got to help me. He can't get the words out because he's so overjoyed that he's finally found the real thing. When he finally finds Sam's law office, Sam is sitting there with his clients and he's sitting there with the rest of the people that are on the staff. Josh comes up to the window. He knocks on it. Sam looks up and you see Josh grinning ear to ear, soaking wet, doesn't say a word, points at his face. And Sam knows that is joy. That's what I'm looking for. That's the face I was looking for. And that's how you're going to get me to come with you. He stands up. He walks out of the room. And that is that for Josh and Sam working for President Bartlett. And this was a flashback episode, so we already know how it goes. We know that their life becomes fixated on getting this guy elected. And that once he becomes elected, you're able to see over and over again that because they love this man and because they believe in this man, because he's the real deal, they are happy and proud to say, I serve at the pleasure of the president. Now this is a human and worldly example, but is that not what it looks like to be someone who believes this passage? This is the real deal. I've experienced this, and because of that, I am overwhelmed with joy and excitement. And I'm so passionate about this now that I have to let people know. Josh had seen the real thing. And because of that, his joy was uncontainable. He had to let it out. He had to let his buddy know. He had to let the world know of who this guy was because this guy was the real thing. And it was unmistakable. There was no way to of passion and the type of joy that John had experienced and why he had made such an impact in Israel. Oh my gosh, look at this Jesus that I get to tell you about. I cannot wait to tell you what he's going to do for you. And I think that is where the impact came from. Because he himself was not the light. He came only to be a witness to the light. And I believe that this is what our lives are meant to look like. Not only do I believe it, I think that throughout the Bible, everybody is caught like there's just this huge, giant call of your life should reflect Christ. Your life should build up Christ. Your life should make Christ known. Your words, your actions, everything should make Christ known. In John 20, 21, Jesus says to his disciples, one of the last things he says before he's raised up to heaven, he says, peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. The Father has sent me. I'm going back up to heaven. You are now my body. It is now your turn to go and be a witness to me. Unlike John, guess what? We've got the rest of scripture. Unlike John, who is so overjoyed and so impassioned by this is the Jesus that is coming, this is the Jesus who's coming to win, this is the Jesus who's coming to save, we have the joy and the passion of this is the Jesus that we live in. Not simply the expectation of the light that is to come, but as the result of the light that has come. The joy that John was promising through Christ has now been seen. It has been delivered to us and we live in a time where we are able to point to Christ in all of who and what he was and is. We're able to see his life on earth and be able to read and say, oh my gosh, look at the way that he loved. Look at the way that he served. Look at the way that he healed. We look at his death and we realize that this death, that his ultimate reason for coming was to die for us, that he took our sins and he said, I am making a way for you to enter into eternity with your father and with my father because I'm going to die for you. He was raised to life signifying the end of death for anyone who would believe. And he was raised up to heaven, sitting at the right hand of God, constantly, every day, every minute, every hour, interceding for us with the Father, that we forever have access directly to the Father because of Jesus. This joy is no longer living out of the expectation of who will Jesus be, but the reality of who Jesus is forever. And so I ask you, how much worse should our poker face be? How much harder should it be for us to contain this joy? John the Baptist was called to witness, and he witnessed the light. Not in the way of Josh going to Sam in the first time, where he knew it was out of obligation. He knew it's what he should do. Sam immediately saw through that. He could tell that Josh didn't truly believe what he was asking him to do. No. How did John the Baptist do it the way that Josh did it the second time where all it took was one look to see that something about Josh was different because he had encountered the light. John the Baptist encountered the light and he was never the same because of it. And just as he was called to witness to the light, so are we. And so this Christmas, I urge you to seek after this joy. If you just started coming to church or if you've been around church for a while but you've never truly found or experienced this joy, I ask that you would pursue that over anything else this Christmas. Pursue the real thing. And if you have found it, allow this to serve as a reminder to how good, how great God is, and allow this Christmas season that every time you think about, you get so overjoyed at the fact that we are celebrating not only that Christ is coming, but that Christ has come. And let this joy radiate from your lives in a way that is unmistakable. Let's pray. God, thank you so much for all that you are. God, the more I learn about you, the more overjoyed I am because I just realize how far from you and how distant from you that I should be, but because of all that you've done, because of your love and because of your sacrifice, that God, I'm able to have access to you and to your Father. Lord, I pray that our lives radiate your joy, that as we witness, it's not out of obligation, but it's out of a joy and a passion of something that we cannot hide. God, we love you so much. Amen.

I hope that you guys are getting excited about the holidays as they are coming up. I know that we are decorated at my house and we've got big plans here at Grace. I'm really excited about the Christmas series that we have coming up and all the things that we have planned for you in December. So I hope that you and your family will be a part of that. I'm very excited for our December series. This week we are in the fifth chapter of Ephesians. Technically the fifth chapter, but the fourth and fifth chapter, you'll see why in a minute as we move through this letter from Paul to the churches surrounding the city of Ephesus. As we jump into this week, I wanted to start at a book that was written a few years ago. There's a guy named Charles Duhigg that wrote a book called The Power of Habit. If you're a reader, you've probably heard of it, and you may have even read it, and you know that it's a good, interesting book where he says a lot of things about the habits that are in our life, how we can harness them for good. I really enjoyed the book. I didn't implement any of the things that he told me to, but I acknowledged them as very good ideas that seem wise. One of the things that he noted that he presents was the idea of what he calls a keystone habit. He says a keystone habit is a habit that you can adopt that if you will just focus on this one small change in your life, that it's going to manifest itself in other areas of your life. That kind of one habit can be get disciplined in other areas. It'll have almost a trickle-down effect if you pursue it as a foundational habit. And he says the best example of this, of a keystone habit, is exercise. In his research, he found that people who exercised regularly were people who tended to be more disciplined in what they ate. They were better at managing their time throughout the day and focusing on home and focusing on work, maintaining a better work-life balance. They were overall more disciplined people because the discipline of exercising on a regular basis kind of spilled into other areas of their life. And I really identified with this because like a lot of you, I've had seasons in my life where I have been regularly exercising. Clearly, I'm not in the middle of one of those seasons now, but I've had them before. And I've noticed that when I'm in those seasons, I am more disciplined in general, that that habit kind of spills over into others. And so as I encountered this idea, of course, because of the way that I'm wired, I thought, I wonder if this has spiritual applications. I wonder if this can help me in my walk. The way that we're phrasing the question this morning, you have it there on your notes, says, I wonder if there is a habit that can change the way that we obey. I wonder if there's one single habit, if there's a keystone habit, if there's one small thing that we could do, that if we'll just focus on this, that what happens as a result of that habit will manifest itself in other places in our spiritual life, and it will change the way that we obey. This morning, I want to propose to you that I think that there is one. I think that there is a keystone habit given to us in the text in the middle of Ephesians chapter 5 that we can kind of latch onto and seek to implement in our life. But to properly appreciate what it says in the middle of chapter 5, we have to really appreciate what's going on in the book of Ephesians. And what's happening in the book of Ephesians is you can really kind of divide it right in half. The first three chapters of Ephesians are establishing the idea that we are saved, that we have the gospel. Chapter 3 is the mystery of the gospel. Paul prays that we would know Christ more deeply. We spent time a couple weeks ago on that beautiful prayer beginning in verse 14, going through 19 of chapter 3. In chapter 2, we're given the most succinct yet complete explanation of salvation that I think there is in the Bible in Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. Then we're told in verse 10 of that same chapter that we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that we might walk in them. We have purpose for our life. So he spends the first three chapters invested in this idea that like, hey, we are believers now and the gospel is for everyone. So now that you have the gospel, now that you have faith, the back half of the book is committed to answering a question that we all have. It's a question that we've all asked, whether you're a believer or a non-believer, it's a question that you've asked about the Christian faith. And that question simply is, it's a common question that we've all asked, how should I live? How should I live? You might ask it like this, in light of the fact that I'm saved, in light of the fact that I know Jesus, that I call God my Father and Jesus my Savior, what does God expect of me? Because we approach the text with this question, but there's a lot of stuff in here. It's confusing, at times intimidating, at times it seems impossible, and sometimes it feels contradictory. I'm supposed to do this in this situation and this in this situation, and I don't know how to tell the difference between the two. And so we always come back to this question, how should I live? I think if you're not a believer this morning, but you're here at church, you're kicking the tires, you're trying to figure out faith and how you feel about spiritual things, I think one of the questions you would be asking is, if I do become a believer, how do I live? What's expected of me? What am I supposed to do? To be a believer is to wonder, am I doing this right? How should I live? I think we would all like to get a little bit better or maybe a lot a bit better at obeying God. How should I live? I think that's the common question that we ask after we realize that we are believers. And so Paul dedicates the back half of Ephesians to answering this question. Ephesians 4, 5, and 6 are Paul's answer to this question. I truly believe that if Paul were here this morning and you could ask him, hey man, I'm a believer, how should I live? Like, what should I do? If we could ask this common question to Paul, I honestly believe he would say, well, it's funny that you asked. I actually addressed that in chapters four and five of the book of Ephesians. So let's look. And as I was studying, you might be wondering, why are we in chapter four if we're supposed to be in chapter five this week? As I was studying last week, I realized I was going through chapter four and I'm just, I always open up the Bible when we're going through a book like this and I kind of go, okay, God, what do you want us to know? There's so many things that we could highlight. What's the thing that you want us to know? And so as I was praying through chapter four, studying chapter four, I realized that four and five really go together. That from 417 to 521 is really one big long thought that I'm thinking of as the conclusion discourse. He's been building to this question, how should we live? And he even opens that question in chapter 4. Chapter 4 starts out with a verse that tells us that you should live a life worthy of the calling that you have received. So the question becomes, how do I do that? And beginning in chapter 4, verse 17, he answers that question. So I want you to do this. I want everybody in the room, if you'll do me the favor, of going ahead and opening your Bible. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Grab it and let's go through it. Open to Ephesians chapter 4. If you don't know where Ephesians is, just wait until the person next to you opens their Bible to it and then then take it, all right? They're going to love you and be gracious, and they'll get another Bible, and they'll open it there. So that will be fun. But open to Ephesians chapter 4, beginning in verse 17. 417 through 521 is one long continual thought, one long discourse, and we're going to be interacting with the text today to see how does Paul answer this question of how should I live? How does he back up what he says at the beginning of 4, that we should live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? What's his answer to this question of how we should live? And I want to propose to you this morning that there's two answers, one in chapter 4 and one in chapter 5. The first answer that he gives us in chapter 4 is by walking in our new identity. That's the first answer that we see in chapter 4 of Ephesians. How should we live? We should live by walking in our new identity, and here's how I know that's true. We're going to put up on the screen verse 22, but I'm actually going to start reading in verse 17 so we can understand what's happening in verses 22 through 24. Paul writes this, now this I say and testify in the Lord. Oh, I will also say just by way of, I don't know, being nice that if you have a blue Bible, that's NIV. I'm reading out of the ESV. It's not going to word for word match up, but you'll be able to follow along. Verse 17, now this I say and testify in the Lord that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. All right, it's worth some clarification here. When he's saying that you must no longer walk, the you there is the church, anyone who calls himself a believer. And when he says Gentiles, that's his way of saying outsiders, people who don't yet have faith. So it's basically, you shouldn't walk like people who don't know Jesus because you do know Jesus. That's what he's saying. So when we see the word Gentiles, just think people who don't know Jesus yet. Verse 18, they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They have become callous and they have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. But this is not the way you learned in Christ. All right, let's pause right there. He says, you must not think and act like the Gentiles do. You must not think and act like someone who doesn't know Jesus. And then he gives us the characteristics, some of the defining characteristics of people who don't know Jesus. And it's a pretty rough list. He says some harsh things about people who don't know Jesus. And so I want to be very clear that people who don't know Jesus are not worse people than people who do know Jesus, okay? The people in your life that you know that are not yet believers, we're not calling them bad people. Paul's not calling them bad people. And I don't want anybody in this room thinking that you're somehow better than the people outside of this room who are still in their sweatpants because we're not. We're all broken and we're all bad at this, okay? So we're not calling ourselves better than them. The difference is people who don't know Jesus are blind to their sin. They're sinning, they're acting outside the will of God, and they don't know that they are. And when they're acting outside of God's will and they don't see their sin, they perpetuate that sin, their consciences get seared to that sin, and eventually they end up encouraging that sin. That's the pattern. And it's not because they're bad or a different kind of person than you. It's simply because they are living in the dark and they do not yet see their sin. And what he is saying is, that's not how you live. That's not you. If you know Jesus, you've seen your sin, you acknowledge Jesus for who he is, you realize your need for him and how he cleanses you of your sin, and so you were taught a different way. Assuming that you have heard, I'm in 21, about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self. This is where we're getting our answer to walk in our new identity. To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. So he presents this idea, don't walk like you used to when you didn't know Jesus, walk like you do know Jesus. He actually talks about this in a lot of his letters, the idea of an old self and a new self. In Romans chapter 6 and 7, he talks about it at length, and he actually, Paul paints for us the picture of baptism, the video that we watched of Jim being baptized. In that baptism, what Paul says in Romans 6 and 7 is that when we are baptized, we are buried with Christ in death. Our former self, our old self who didn't know Jesus, who was blind to sin, is buried with Jesus in the burial and then raised to walk, come out of death into life, raised to walk into newness of life. The very act of baptism is an acknowledgement that the former self is gone and the new self is here. And so if we are going to live life as Christians, then we should walk in our new identity. Romans 8 tells us that our identity is adopted sons and daughters of the king. We're told that we are loved as much as we can ever be loved, that we no longer have to perform or clamor or stretch or claw to get anyone to affirm us, to get anyone to love us, to make ourselves good for anyone, because God fills us with affirmation, tells us that we are good, tells us that we are loved, and then invites us to operate out of that love as we serve as a conduit of his love to the people in the world. We walk in this new identity. In our new identity, Romans tells us that we are no longer a slave to sin. Before we know Jesus, we have no choice but to do evil things because we're blind to them and we don't see them as evil. But as believers, we now have a choice. We're separated from that. And then to help us walk in this new identity, he gives us some behaviors that we should embrace and some behaviors that we should avoid to kind of say, this is what a new life is going to look like. And so he says this on down through the chapter, picking up in verse 25. Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor. 26, be angry and do not sin, which is really hard. I don't know about you, but that's not really how my anger works. Like when I get angry about something, that's not generally the time when I'm making the most rational choices. But what he's saying is there's a way to get angry. And the other thing about anger is you usually don't deserve it. You usually don't have a right to that anger. You think you have a right to that anger because you're being, in my case, a selfish jerk. You usually don't even have a right to that anger. But it is possible to get angry about the right things. And when we're walking in our new identity, we're angry and we do not sin. No more stealing. You guys, in your new life, you can't do that anymore. And then he goes, let no corrupting of stuff. As I read this stuff this week and I realized, okay, I'm supposed to walk in my new identity. What does it mean to walk in my new identity? What are the things that are going to characterize me beginning in verse 25? And I read through that list. I kind of got done reading it and thought like, well, gosh, I don't know if I should be a pastor. I'm not very good at those things. Those are really hard. Those are really challenging things. I mean, to read through that list, man, I do a lot of stuff I'm not supposed to do, and I don't do a lot of stuff I am supposed to do. That's challenging. But Paul doesn't stop there. He gives us the next way that we're supposed to live, because there's two answers. There's one in four, and there's one in five. The first answer is that we should walk in our new identity. And then he gives us a list of behaviors that we should embrace or avoid because of our new identity. And then at the beginning of chapter five, he gives us the second answer. How should you live? You should be imitators of Christ, is what he says at the beginning of chapter five. Be imitators of Christ. Just however Jesus would act, you act like that too. Look at what he says. Therefore, chapter 5, be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Then, just to add some detail, this is what somebody who is imitating Christ looks like, but all sexual immorality and just all impurity in general or covetousness must not be named among you as is proper among the saints. So he says, okay, how should we live? Walk in your new identity. Once you're walking in your new identity, be an imitator of Christ. And so I was thinking this week, what does it mean to be an imitator of Christ? What did Jesus do? How did Jesus love us? Well, Jesus offers us a sacrificial love. Constantly putting others first and himself second, he offers us a sacrificial love. He condescended, he gave up his heavenly form, came down to earth, lived a perfect life on our behalf, we need to love others sacrificially, and we need to forgive others faultlessly, and forever, by the way. And if you want more details on what it means to live as an imitator of Jesus, just keep reading chapter 5, and you'll see more behaviors there that you should embrace and others that you should avoid. And listen, it's entirely possible to get bogged down in these different behaviors and a very worthwhile study. If you know your Bible well, you know that Ephesians five is chock full of things that are tough for a pastor to preach through. I even got texts and emails this week like, hey bro, you doing Ephesians 5? What are you gonna do? Somebody said, somebody emailed me and they said, Ephesians 5 this week, I'm really looking forward to what you have to say about it. And I thought, please don't email me that. I don't need that kind of pressure in my life. And while it's absolutely worthwhile to drill down into these different behaviors and into these different stances, I didn't want us to miss the forest for the trees. The trees and the minutia are worth examining, but if we only have one week to look at Ephesians 5, I don't want us to miss the overall point that Paul is trying to make, which is to answer the question, how do we live? And we answer that question by saying, walk in your new identity and then be imitators of Jesus. Offer other people sacrificial love and faultless forgiveness forever. And here's a list of behaviors that can help you live that way. So at this point, I think we should arrive at our common response. We ask the question, how should I live? Paul answers that question by saying, walk in your new identity, not your former self, walk in your new self, and then imitate Jesus as you live. And I think that we all have a common response. If you're thinking along with me at all, this has to be what you've concluded too. How in the world do I do that? How do I do that? That's a tough list, man. That's hard. Like, I'm not, listen, I'm telling you as a pastor, as your pastor, for most of you, I'm not good at this list. I violate something on this list. I want to say weekly and be nice to myself, but that's probably daily. That's a hard list, man. That feels impossible. And we can treat it lightly and say, surely God doesn't expect me to do that. I mean, He knows that I can't be perfect. In another place in Scripture, Paul tells us, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. And I think we're tempted to read this and go, there's no way I can do that. But I don't think the Bible lets us off that hook. I don't think it makes that space for us to just kind of partly try. I think this is the standard, to walk in our new identity and to be imitators of Jesus. And the great part is this, getting better at these things, to more regularly walk in our new identity, to more regularly be imitators of Jesus, that is a process. It's a lifelong process. I hope that in 2019, you're a better imitator of Jesus than you were in 2018. And I hope in 2025 that you're a better imitator of Jesus then than you are than you're going to be in 2020. I think it's a progressive thing. This progressive growth towards becoming more like Christ is actually called sanctification. It's a biblical word that Paul uses, and it means the process of becoming more like God in character, which is to be better at imitating Jesus. So this is a process that we move through in our, through our whole life. And I think our goal should be that every week we're a little bit better at it than we were last week and be sensitive to the spirit and what we need to do to be better imitators of Christ and to walk more confidently in our new identity. But as we try to answer that question, how do I do this? That's a tall order, man. That's a big task. How am I gonna do that? I think that this is where the keystone habit comes back into play. I think this is where having a keystone habit, if I'm trying to get my life healthy, what's this one thing that I could focus on that might have some spillover into all the other areas of my life that I want to kind of fix or allow God to move in and repair? What's one keystone habit? What's one thing that I could focus on that might help me start nailing some of this other stuff down? I think our keystone habit is our first step. Our first step in this process is to lean into what I'm going to propose to you is our keystone habit that we find at the end of the passage in verse 21. So Paul writes this passage. He writes what I'm kind of calling the conclusive discourse on answering the question, how should we live? He says, walk in your new identity, be an imitator of Jesus. Here's some behaviors to help you know what it is to live that way that you should either embrace or avoid. And then as he caps it off, he says, finally, do these things. And he lands the plane at a really peculiar place, I think. He lands the plane in this verse, in verse 21, because after 21, there's a transition. After 21, he transitions and he starts to give us specifics of how to live. He says, this is how you should organize your home life and your marriage and your work life. And then this is how you should arm yourself for the spiritual life that is a battle. There's a transition after 21. So at 21, he's concluding a thought and this is how he concludes it. Pick it up in verse 15. He says, And then here we have it. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. He lands the plane on submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. And I want to propose to you that our keystone habit as we seek to be imitators of Jesus and we seek to walk in our new identity is simply chosen submission. I think the common conclusion of our question, how should I live? How do I do that? I think the common conclusion that we have this morning is chosen submission. And that word submission simply means to submit to somebody is to say that when our wills clash, I'll choose yours. When you have a different will than I do for a certain situation, I will submit to you by choosing your will. I at this church am submitted to the board of elders. The elders might not feel that way sometimes, but I promise you that's technically the case. I'm submitted to the board of elders, which means if I go to the elders and I say, hey, I think we should do this thing, and they go, we do not think you should do that thing, then their will is different than my will, so I choose theirs and I submit to it. That's what submission is. And I want to propose to you that this is a keystone habit that unlocks how we can obey in all of those other areas. I think this is the one habit that can change the way that we obey. And we don't just see it here. At another place, we're told to outdo one another in honor, to honor other people more than ourselves, to outdo one another in honor. At another place, we're told to consider others better than ourselves. So this is not just a one-time principle in the Bible. It's something that's woven throughout the New Testament. Jesus says that the greatest among us must be the least, that the greatest comes to serve. So there's this constant idea in Scripture of considering others before we consider ourselves. And the reason I think that this is a keystone habit to unlock obedience in the rest of our life is this. Go back through four and five. Look at the behaviors that are listed there. Look at the behaviors that are listed in chapter 5, the ones that we should avoid. Sexual immorality and covetousness and all impurity. And ask, would it be easier to avoid those behaviors if I lived every day submitted to the people around me? Would it be easier to avoid sexual immorality if I considered other people's needs more important than mine? Would it be easier to avoid coveting things, wanting things for myself, if I considered other people's needs more important than mine, if I were mutually and had chosen to submit to the people around me? Blaise Pascal had great insight on this passage. He was a French philosopher, and I wondered why sexual immorality and covetousness are paired up together in chapter 5. And he says it's because they fall under the umbrella of lust. Lust is to want things for ourself. And he says that lust tethers us to ourselves. It makes us relentless me monsters. And so the antithesis of sexual immorality, the antithesis of covetousness is selflessness. The antithesis of this is mutual submission. We said earlier that we should be angry, but we should not sin. And I kind of presented to you the idea that there's some things that are okay to be angry about, good, righteous anger, and that's a good thing. And then there's other anger that just results in our selfishness or just reveals our selfishness. Is it going to be easier to become angry about the right things if we live our life mutually submitted to other people? At the end of chapter four, we're told to be kind one to another, be tenderhearted, gentle with one another. If you get up every day living your life for the people around you, is it going to be easier to be kind to them, to be tenderhearted towards them? Pick any of the behaviors in four or five, any of the things that we're supposed to embrace and any of the things that we're supposed to avoid. And for the ones that we're supposed to avoid, ask, would it be more natural? Would it be easier to avoid these behaviors if I were living a life of chosen submission to the people around me? And then look at the behaviors that we're supposed to embrace and ask yourself, would it be easier to embrace these behaviors, to incorporate those behaviors in my life if I were living a life of submission to the people around me? I think it's a keystone habit. I think if you're here this morning and you feel like you're in a spiritual rut, you feel like 2019 has been a little tough. I'm not growing like I should. I wish that I were closer to God. I wish that I could get some traction in my spiritual life. My quiet times have been a little bit difficult or maybe even non-existent. I wish I were closer to the Father. Can I just suggest to you implementing this keystone habit in your life? Can I just suggest to you waking up tomorrow and saying, I'm going to do my best to consider the needs of others as more important than mine. I'm going to do my best to have chosen submission to the people around me and that when our wills clash as best as I can, I'm going to choose theirs. Can I gently suggest to you that if you feel spiritually stagnant, that maybe, maybe, maybe it's because you've been living tethered to yourself and we should live for others. And if we'll do that, the rest of these behaviors will naturally flow out of a heart that now belongs to God and is in tune with Him. Can you imagine the beauty of a church that's mutually submitted to one another? It would be an oasis in the community that it would be the only place on earth that didn't have a caste system. Do you understand that? If we came in mutually submitted to one another, it wouldn't matter how much money you make. It wouldn't matter how old or young you are. It wouldn't matter where you got your education. It wouldn't matter what degrees you had. It wouldn't matter what you've accomplished. It wouldn't matter how charismatic you are or are not. It wouldn't matter how attractive you are or are not. It wouldn't matter how capable you were or you are or are not. All that would matter was that we showed up and we loved one another because we were told to in Ephesians to consider others better than ourselves and to live a life of chosen submission out of reverence for Christ. This is impossible if we don't know Jesus. We cannot just decide to do this and fuel the submission ourselves. We have to have the love of Christ flowing through us so that we can be conduits of that love to others. But if we'll acknowledge that Jesus died for us, that Jesus offers us sacrificial love and faultless forgiveness forever. And he submitted to me when he didn't have to. And out of reverence for him and who he is and how much he loves me and how I love him in return, I'm going to choose to submit to the people around me. We say that our mission is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. How in the world could we be more effective at that than if we simply chose to submit to the people around us and considered what they needed more important than what we needed? How contagious would that be when people would come and be with us on a Sunday morning? How wonderful a testimony would that community be to people who see all the wrong things going on with Christianity and in the media world to come in here into an oasis of submission where they see a fresh version of how Christ's people love one another. How beautiful would that be? How contagious would your faith be if you carried the submission back into your workplace and back into your circle of friends and simply considered other people as more important than you and simply chose this submission as a keystone habit that would unlock our ability to obey God throughout the rest of our life. I pray that we'll do that this morning. I pray that grace would be a church that's defined by obedience to this verse. And I pray that you would choose to be obedient to that. That you would submit to the people around you in your life even this week and experience the power of this chosen submission and watch as it unlocks your ability and God's ability to work in your life as we seek to walk in our new identity and be better imitators of him. Let's pray. God, we love you. You love us for reasons that we genuinely don't understand. God, I'm so grateful that church can be a place where we can just admit that we don't have it together, where we can admit that we're not good at things, where we can admit that we constantly fall short of who you ask us to be, and where we can be met with your grace and your love and your affirmation that that's okay. And you pick us back up and you send us back out. Lord, if there are people here who are far from you, I pray that you would draw them in. If there are people here who are caught up in sin, I pray that you would just bring your gentle, healing conviction. If there are people here in situations that feel impossible, God, would you show them a light? Would you remind them that you make new paths, that you make streams in the desert? God, would we not shy away from the enormous task that it is to be a Christian? Would we not excuse away what you call us to? Simply have the faith and the courage to try to be a little bit better today than we were yesterday. Help us experience the power of choosing to submit to one another, Lord, out of reverence for you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

All right, well, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. But thanks for being here on this September Sunday. I'm excited to be back in the fall in two services and to be in our new series called Feast. What's going on here is that God, using Moses, carrying the Israelites out of Egypt. They were a nation of slaves. The Israelites are God's chosen people. They're living in the desert. And we see this in the first five books of the Bible. And the books of Leviticus and Numbers really kind of give us the details of God's effort to help Moses kind of construct a civilization or a society. If you think about it historically, it's about 500,000 people coming out of slavery. It's all they've ever known. Now they're an independent nation or group of people, and they're trying to figure things out. So God gives them laws and the Ten Commandments. He gives them religion. They assign a priestly class, the Levites, to set up the tabernacle and put expectations and provision around how these people are supposed to interact with their God. They install a government. Moses names elders and everybody looks out for their tribes and it works kind of like that. And one of the things that God does for this new society is he gives them six festivals or six holidays, and he says, every year I want you to celebrate these six events. And last week we talked about this idea that really what a holiday does is it stops us in the midst of our year, in the midst of our crazy life, as everything just kind of gets going and blowing and we focus on all these other things. What a holiday does is it stops us and it narrows our focus in on things that are important to us. And so to me, it's really interesting to look at the six holidays that God installed in the Old Testament for his chosen people and ask ourselves, what is it in these holidays that God wants us to remember? What is it that he wants us to celebrate? What was it that he wanted his chosen people to stop and slow down and focus on for a little while? And so as we approach the holiday this week, last week was Feast of Trumpets. It kicks off the Jewish New Year, and I had a good time. We kicked the service off with a shofar. I thought it was a really fun service. I really went home last week going, man, this fall is going to be really, really great, really, really fun. As we approach this week and the festival that God had, I wanted to go back a couple of weeks to a podcast that I was listening to. There's a guy that does podcasts. I think it's called Armchair Expert, a guy named Dax Shepard. He's an atheist. He's not a believer. It is not a church-friendly podcast. I'm not like, go listen to this and you'll be spiritually enriched. But what he does is he talks to other people and he has these actual meaningful, vulnerable, deep conversations. And I've found in my life that conversations like that, where you can just really get down to things that matter and learn about people and be honest and vulnerable with people, those kinds of conversations really kind of give me life. I like those. And so I like listening to his podcast. And he had a guy on named Danny McBride, I think. He's an actor, comedian, whatever. And they're talking, and they were talking about growing up being forced to go to church. Danny grew up in the South, I think maybe even in North Carolina. And he was forced to go to church, but he never wanted to. And so as soon as he was old enough, he quit going. And he really doesn't claim to have much of a faith now. Dax grew up, sometimes his grandparents would make him go, but he is a devout atheist now. He's very open about his atheism. But they got to talking about going to church when they were young. And then one of them made the comment when they were old enough to not have to go anymore. I think it was Dax. He was like, you know, I kind of missed it. I liked having to do something, being made to do something that I didn't want to do. And Danny said, yeah, you know what? I found that I kind of missed it too. I wonder why that is. And Dax said this thing that I thought was incredibly interesting coming from an atheist. He said, I think that there is a human need to repent, a need to make ourselves right with our Creator. There's an author named C.S. Lewis who was around in the early 1900s, World War II. He was an English professor at Oxford and was an atheist as well. But he made this intellectual journey from atheism to theism to eventually Christianity. And he wrote a book that chronicles that journey called Mere Christianity. It's a Christian classic. If you've never read it, it's absolutely worth the time. The language is a little bit tough. It's hard to understand. Sometimes you're going to have to reread passages. If you're like me, you're going to have to really reread them a lot. But eventually when you understand it, man, it is one of the best books I think ever written. And in his argument for God and explaining how he arrived at a belief in the Christian God, the first thing he does is talk about, lay out some proofs for God for himself. Not trying to convince you, and I'm not going to go through those proofs this morning, but he starts making the case for why he came to the conclusion that there has to be a God. And then after he concludes that there has to be a God, he makes a reasoned argument that he has to be a perfect God. And then he says this, and it stuck with me. I've always thought it was so interesting. He said, and since there's a God, and since he is perfect, we have no choice but to conclude that he is offended by us, that he's angry with us, because we're not perfect. And we know intrinsically that there's a God who created us and that we have displeased him in the way that we've acted because we haven't lived up to his standards. And I just think that these two different thought processes by people who were or are atheists coming to the conclusion that, you know what, and they wouldn't say it like this, but I say it like this, written on the human heart is a longing to be made right with our creator God. I think it exists in each one of us. I think if you're here this morning and you're not even a believer, somebody drug you here or you're kicking the tires, I think that you might even agree with me that there is something that wants us to be right with God, right with the universe. If you're a believer, you know this feeling very well. And it's for this need, it's to address this feeling, this thing that was written on us, this need to repent that God placed on the calendar the holiest of holidays that we now know as Yom Kippur. And that's what we're going to look at this morning. Now, Yom Kippur is what it's called in the Hebrew culture. And those words together, Yom means day and Kippur means atonement. So it's become known as the day of atonement. But Kippur can also be translated as covering, the day of covering. And so it's the day on the calendar that God provides for his people so that you can be sure, so that the Hebrew people, the Israelite people can be sure that they are right before their God. It addresses this intrinsic need within us to repent and know that we are right before our creator God. And so it's on this day that all of the sins of the priesthood, of the high priest, and of the Hebrew people are atoned for in a ceremony that we're gonna go through that occurs at the temple in Jerusalem. It's the day of atonement or the day of covering. It's the provision that God makes so that his people can be right before him. And to me, it's a remarkable day. Most of you have probably heard of it before. Most of you who pay attention to cultural things probably know that it's a Jewish holiday and it's the holiest, it's the highest of the holidays. It's celebrated so reverently that every 50 years, the day of atonement becomes a year of Jubilee. And on the 50th year, on that year of Jubilee, all debts are canceled and all land is given back to the family. It's a really important holiday in the Hebrew calendar. And on this day, everybody went to the temple. So to help us as I kind of walk us through what happened at Yom Kippur, we have to kind of have a working knowledge of the temple. So I actually found this picture that I wanted to show you. This is the temple. If you go to Jerusalem right now, in the city is a museum that I've been able to go to. And in the middle of that museum is a replica that's probably about as big as this room of ancient Israel at the time of Solomon and immediately following. And in the middle of the city is the temple complex. And this is the temple complex. And so what you see here, I just kind of want to walk us through there for a couple of things. That big building in the middle, the tallest part of it, that is the holy place and the holy of holies. We're going to talk about it in a second, but that building was basically divided in two by a curtain. The front portion of it was the holy place. The only people allowed in the holy place were Jewish priests. And then the other side of that is the holy of holies. The only person allowed there is the high priest. And then outside of that through the door, you see the inner courtyard. The only people allowed there are Jewish males. And then outside of that building and more of the space is the outer courtyard. Only Jewish people are allowed in the outer courtyard. And then this roofed area to the left of the screen, that's where the Sanhedrin met. That was like their senate. That's where the government met. All the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Zealots, their representatives would meet there and decide on things. So that's kind of, when I talk about the temple for the rest of the morning, this is what I'm talking about. And it's important for us to know that on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, the focus of all of God's people was on the temple. On the Day of Atonement, on this day, on the holiest of holidays, the focus of all of Israel, of all of God's people scattered wherever they were, was on the temple. And so what they would do is they would come from all over the country. And having been there, it's not super far. You can get there in a couple of days if you're walking from the top of the country to Jerusalem in the center or from southern Israel to Jerusalem. So everybody has the chance to come and gather in the holy city at the temple, the holy place where the presence of God is. The presence of God was said to be in the holy of holies. And so on this holiday, the highest of days, all of Israel would gather and clamor into Jerusalem. And then on the Day of Atonement, as many people as could fit into that temple complex would fit into that temple complex and wait for the priest to perform the ceremonies and the rites and the duties that went along with Yom Kippur. And the priest was also a focal point of this day. And as I learned this stuff, I'm going to walk you through kind of what that day looked like. I was fascinated by all of these things. I hope that it doesn't bore you, but for me, I'm kind of a history nerd, so as I was reading this stuff, I really, really ate it up. But the priest would come out. First of all, he would start to fast the day before. Everybody would fast the day of. Every good Hebrew would fast the day of Yom Kippur, but the priest would fast a day early, and then he would stay up all night. Members of the Sanhedrin were assigned to watch him and make sure he didn't fall asleep, because he was likely an older guy, and our population of people who are the age of what the high priest would have been know that it's kind of hard to stay awake during one of my sermons. So I can't imagine staying awake all night. So the Sanhedrin would kind of watch him and poke him and make sure he didn't fall asleep. And then after that, they would hand it off to the priestly elders and they would make sure that he would stay awake. And then very early in the morning, the ceremony would start and he would go into the temple, I would assume surrounded by thousands of people, and he was wearing his traditional priestly robes, which were laced with gold as is detailed in the book of Leviticus. And he would go behind a curtain to like a bath and he would ceremonially bathe himself, which I'm guessing wasn't awkward for them. They would have been like, yeah, I mean, he's just taking a bath. For us, that's weird. But for them, he would take a bath behind the curtain and it was fine. And then when he was done, he would put on white priestly garments specifically for Yom Kippur, for the Day of Atonement. And he would begin to perform the ceremonies and the rituals of the day. And the first one was he would go to the altar in that outer courtyard in front of the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, and he would take a bull. And he would place his hands on the head of the bull, and he would repeat this prayer of repentance because this bull was dying for the priest and for his family. This was his personal atonement and the atonement for the rest of the priesthood for all of the sins that had been committed in that year. And so he would atone for his sins, and his sins were symbolically transferred from him to the head of the bull, and that bull would die in his place and in the place of his family. It's a sacrificial system. And then the blood of the bull would drip into a bowl, and he would hold that, and that would be prepared for something in a second. Then, in this really kind of interesting ceremony, there would be two goats that were brought to the high priest. And he would take one goat, they would draw lots, which was their way of playing paper, rock, scissors. And he would decide which goat got designated as for the Lord and which goat got designated as the scapegoat. And the one that was designated for the Lord, they put a white cord around its neck. And the one that was designated as the scapegoat, they put a red cord around its neck. And then after doing that, the priest would then say a prayer. And in this prayer, the name of Jehovah was elicited. And I think it happened like eight times throughout the day. And every time the priest would say the name of Jehovah God, the entire assembly would fall on their face and worship God. And then stand back up and he would continue. to God, and then you would walk through this curtain. And this curtain I always heard about growing up separates the Holy of Holies from the holy place. And I always heard in Christian school and in Bible college that if you put a team of oxen on either side of that curtain and they pulled against one another, that they would not be able to tear that curtain. It was an impenetrable layer. And in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. It was a box that you weren't allowed to touch. Inside this box was the stone tablets that God gave Moses the law on and the staff of Moses. On top of this box were two golden angels. And it's thought that their wings were pointed out and their heads were bowed and that their wings were touching each other at the tips. And where they touched would create what was called the mercy seat. And it said that the very presence of God rested on that mercy seat. And there was only one person alive allowed to go in there, and that was the high priest. Because it was the very presence, the holy presence of God. And if you went in there and were impure, anything about you was imperfect and not worthy of God's presence, then you would fall dead in an instant. They were so worried about this. This was so sobering and such a concern that in the white priestly garments of the high priest, they wove bells into the hymns so that when he would move, you could hear him moving. And before he went into the Holy of Holies, they would tie a rope around his ankle so that if the bells stopped, they'd just start pulling. That's how serious it was. Can you imagine being guy number two? And they had to pull him out and be like, well, you've got to put on that robe now. That would be really scary. But that was the seriousness and the sobriety that surrounded going into the Holy of Holies. And it's only the priests that even saw the high priest enter. The Jewish males are outside. Maybe if they have a certain vantage point, they can peek in and see. But the other, the people, the throngs up on the walls and on the roofs, they can't even see him going into the Holy of Holies. And that's where the presence of God rested. And when he got in there, he would take the blood of the bull and he would sprinkle it on the mercy seat and he would sprinkle it on the curtain and he would say a prayer and that was for his family and then he would step out. And when he stepped out, he went and he took the goat that was designated as for the, and he sacrificed that goat. And this was the beginning of the atonement of the sins of the people of Israel. He would take the blood of the goat, he would pray a prayer, he would read a scripture, people would fall on their face and worship God, and then he would go back into the Holy of Holies, and he would sprinkle the blood of the goat on the mercy seat and on the curtain, and this was the atonement for the people. Then he would step back out and he would take the scapegoat. And there was a designated priest in a particular causeway of the temple. And he would send the scapegoat to that priest. And that priest would then walk that goat out of the city limits into the wilderness, traditionally 10 to 12 miles. I don't know how long this took, but I do know that if I were an ancient Hebrew person, that waiting for the goat to get to the place would be my least favorite part of Yom Kippur. I'm not a man of a lot of patience, and that's 12 miles away with an old priest. I would get pretty bummed out about that. All along the way, there was 10 stations, 10 booths where they would eat and drink and then move on. And once the scapegoat got far enough away, the priest would then sacrifice that goat. And then he would camp there overnight and not come back into the city until the morning. And it said that that scapegoat is the goat that died for the sins of the people of Israel. And it would cover over the sins of Israel. That's where we get the kippur, the covering. It would serve as the covering of the sins of Israel so that when God looked at the people of Israel, he didn't see their sin. He saw the covering. And this particular death was for sins of omission because all of these people, listen, if you're at Yom Kippur, if you've got prime seats and you're watching this, you probably have been going to temple every week and you've been doing your sacrifices every week and you've been making sure that you and God are good throughout the year. But this particular sacrifice were for the sins of omission of the people of Israel throughout the year. And we can relate to this. Those things that you didn't know were wrong until later, that thing that you've been doing for years, and then you find out like, oh my goodness, I shouldn't do that. That's not really pleasing to the Lord. I guess I should stop. Sorry, 2012. Like we know those things, or maybe those little like attitudes that show up, the little flecks of racism that we find in ourselves. And we go, oh my gosh, I can't believe that I used to think that way. These things where we've displeased the Lord and we don't even realize that we have. That's what the Day of Atonement was for, was to say, hey, everything is covered. Everything is taken care of. Once the goat had been sacrificed, there was a series of flags that would be waved by centuries all the way back to Jerusalem. And then once the word got back to the high priest, he would burn the remaining parts of the bulls and the goat that were sacrificed earlier. He would read three scriptures and say eight benedictions. He would invoke the name of the Lord and the crowd, the thousands of people would worship along with him each time. And when he was finally done, after a whole day's worth of ceremony late in the afternoon, he would ceremonially bathe one more time and put his personal clothes back on. And tradition says that he would go home and have a feast with his family to celebrate surviving that day because it was a stressful time for his family. And I do think it's interesting that after the high priest performs all of these duties on a somber holiday, the first thing he does is he goes home and he has a feast. So even on a holiday that's dedicated to fasting, there's still a feast to cap it off at the end. And so as I learned about these things this week and this process and this ceremony, I just began to think, man, what would it have been like to have been in the ancient Hebrew world? And watch this. What would it have been like to grow up with this tradition? What would it have been like to bend one of the throngs of people in the temple watching or listening or waiting and seeing the reaction of everybody else? At a time with no internet, at a time without published books, at a time where the only way you learn is through rote memorization, whatever the previous generation tells you, that's what you retain, and then you teach it to the ones who follow you. And for thousands of years, that's how it worked. What would it have been like to take in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as an ancient Hebrew person? What would it have been like to just be surrounded, to be from the countryside of Galilee and to come in and be surrounded by all these people? To have grown up and have your grandpa or your grandma explain to you every year, Grandpa, we know the bull, like we get it, we know what it means. What would it have been like when you came of age and it was your responsibility to explain it to the younger generation and keep them along? To have grown up seeing this every year, to watch the same high priest perform the same rites every year. What would it have been like to have fallen on your face? Really picture it and worship at the name of the Lord every time. How totally separate and other must the high priest would have been? Don't think about it from the perspective of the Sanhedrin looking down from their VIP seats or from the other priests who would watch the high priest and think that might be me one day and kind of peek out of the holy place and watch his back as he performed in front of the crowds. But what would it have been like to be in the crowds, to be separated and other, to even be a Hebrew woman and not even be allowed in the part where you can see the priest and all you can do is listen. How distant would the priest have felt to you? I know over the years I've gone to different Christian conferences and in Christian world there's these celebrity pastors that write books and do podcasts and have thousands of downloads and tens of thousands of people that go to their church and they feel like little celebrities and you them down there on the stage, and you're like, oh, that's so-and-so, that's so neat. I'm really glad that I'm here, and that's as close as I'll ever get to them. And I imagine that at the best, that that's how the high priest felt, is so different and so other and so separated from you. What would it have felt like to know that he was going into the Holy of Holies on your behalf? To know that in the Holy of Holies was the presence of God, and we're so fearful of the presence of God that the holiest man among us, the most righteous among us, the high priest, is fearful that he might die. He's barely qualified to walk through that curtain. I know that I could never walk through that curtain. What kind of mystery surrounded the holy of holies? What kind of separation must they have felt from the high priest who was arguing to God on their behalf, who was interceding for them, who served as their intermediary? What kind of separation must they have felt from God? What kind of fear must have surrounded what they interpreted as the presence of God? Can you get yourself into the mystery and the wonder and the pageantry of Yom Kippur and what it must have been like to take that in as an ancient Hebrew person and pass that down from generation to generation? And I ask that because I wonder what it would have felt like to be one of these people at the time of Jesus. And to be a devout Jew, to celebrate Yom Kippur every year, it's the highest, the holiest of holidays. And the temple, the focus of all God's people is on the temple, and that's where the presence of God rests, and that's where his people work, his representatives, the priests work and intercede for us and serve as intermediaries for us. What must it have been like to be sitting there and to be a devout Jew and to watch this man who claims to be the Son of God die on the cross, and the moment he dies, you can look across the valley there from the eastern side and see into the Holy of Holies and watch that veil tear from top to bottom. Which is what the Gospels tell us happened when Jesus died. That veil was torn in two. How earth-shattering must that have been for a Hebrew people who grew up believing, rightly so, that the presence of God was on the other side of that veil. Something that was different and other and we're fearful of it and we're separated from it. How earth shattering would it have been for that veil to tear as the Son of God dies on a cross. What I want us to see is that Jesus' death on the cross was the final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur. Jesus' death on the cross, our God sending His Son to die for us, who lived a perfect life, who died a perfect death on the cross as our eternal sacrifice, is the final atonement. They needed this atonement every year. They needed the high priest to go through it all every year. They needed all the pomp and circumstance and pageantry and majesty and mystery every year to make sure that they were right with God. And then Jesus dies on the cross outside the city as a final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur. And what I want us to see here is, I said that for all of history up to the point of the death of Christ that the focus of Israel had been towards the temple. Did you know that even all the synagogues built in Israel are built so that they are facing Jerusalem, facing the temple? And that all the synagogues throughout the world and whatever other nation that exists, they are built facing Israel, facing Jerusalem, facing the temple. All of the Hebrew world, their focus is on what happens at the temple. But at the death of Jesus, at the final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur, there is a seismic shift in focus. There is a seismic shift in the focus of God's people because the focus of God's people no longer needs to be on the temple and what happens there. There's actually several shifts in focus and I want to walk us through them very quickly. Maybe the most significant one is there is a shift in focus from the temple to the cross. All of Israel, all of God's people, all of those who would declare faith and believe in God the Father are to shift their focus from what happens at the temple to what happens on the cross. And the cross becomes our focus. That's why we don't place any priority on the temple. That's why we don't have to go there because of what happened on the cross. That's why our church doesn't face Israel. It faces the parking lot. Because the focus is on the cross. So we shift our focus, God's people, from the temple to the cross. We shift our focus from an annual sacrifice to an eternal sacrifice. The book of Hebrews tells us that in this ceremony, in Yom Kippur, that all of the sacrifices are shadows that are cast by Jesus on history. That the bull represents Jesus and the goats represent Jesus. And particularly the scapegoat that was led outside the city into the wilderness to die for the sins of the people. Jesus, thousands of years later, was led outside the city on a hillside in the wilderness to be crucified for all the sins of the people. He is the scapegoat. He is the goat that is for the Lord. He is the bull. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. And so our focus shifts from annual temporary sacrifices to eternal ones, we're told in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews also tells us that Jesus is now our high priest. And so we switch our focus from a human priest to a holy one. We had a human priest who was fallible, who had ego to deal with, who had all the sins that we have to deal with, to a holy priest who is divine, who intercedes for us. And what I think is amazing about this priest is he's not other. He's not distant and far. He holds us and he weeps with us. And the Bible says he stands at the door and knocks and waits to come into our life. He dies for us. He serves us. He washes our feet. He walks amongst our poor. The high priest that we have doesn't sit and wait for us to come to him at a temple. Surrounded by all the other priests in the pomp and circumstance, he comes to us and he beckons that we come to him. And he offers us an intimate relationship. Not only that, but he advocates to the Father on our behalf. No longer is there this wall of separation between us and God, where the only way to approach the presence of God is to go to the priests, his intermediaries, other people who are our peers. You guys get to bypass me entirely and go right to God, which is good for you because I've got my own issues to deal with. We go right to Jesus and he advocates to the Father on behalf of us. So our focus shifts from a human priest to a holy one. Maybe most interesting to me is our focus shifts from covering to cleansing. Do you realize that in the Old Testament, all the language used to talk about us no longer being guilty of our sin is covering language, that the blood of the sacrifice covers over our sin. It makes us outwardly appear righteous as God looks at us. Even as we go back to the very first sin, the sin in the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve. What is God's response to that sin? What does he do? He takes animal skins and he fashions them and he covers over their shame. He doesn't cleanse them. He covers it. But in the New Testament, there's a shift in language. He cleanses. He removes it from us. Because when it's just covered, it's still there. We're still sinful. If you get up on a Saturday and you go out and you work all day and you sweat in the yard and you're gross and you come in and you take off your yard clothes and you don't shower and you put on your nice going out clothes, you'll look nice, but you stink. When our sin is covered over, we are acceptable to God, but we are still sinful. And the miracle of Jesus on the cross is that he cleanses us. This is what Hebrews says. This is why the author writes this. Chapters 9 and 10 of Hebrews are really a statement on Yom Kippur. And what they're saying, what the author is saying is that whole deal was a big shadow cast by Jesus on history. It was a road sign pointing to our need for Christ. And what Hebrews 9 and 10 tells us is that Jesus is the sacrifice. He is the high priest. He is, like I said earlier, the final atonement and the perfection of Yom The Bible tells us that he removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. We are clean and invited to walk with the Lord. And finally, and I love this one, our focus shifts from separate to intimate. Again, take yourself back to the place where you were the Hebrew person and you're watching all of this take place and you see the very holy priest, very pompous and pious, and I'm sure he was a righteous man, but he must have felt just very separate and other. You could never even approach him. And then he would walk into a holy place and then a holy of holies and you're three layers removed from the presence of God. And it's only once a year that you go into God's presence. And it's a fearful thing and an awe-inspiring thing. And then in an instant, the veil tears. And when that veil is torn, the separation that was felt between the people and God goes away. And the very presence of God rushes out of the Holy of Holies and into the lives of those of us who would believe. And Jesus becomes our high priest who begs for intimacy with us, who wants to know you. This presence of God that feels different and other and fearful and unapproachable, now we're told he knows the very numbers of hairs on our head. We're told that he weeps with us. We're told that he touches us when we are sick. And I don't think we have an adequate appreciation for what it must have felt like to feel so removed from God and his people to immediately transition into this intimacy that we're invited in so that this God that we would die if we went into his presence undeservedly because Jesus' blood now cleanses us. Romans tells us that we call that same God Abba, Father, Daddy, or Papa. The kind of intimacy that we are invited into. And so as I looked at Yom Kippur and just kind of reflected on what it means, it became very clear to me that what Yom Kippur really is, what we're really celebrating, what God is really doing here, Yom Kippur is God's ruthless and relentless effort to remove all the barriers that exist between He and us. You see? In the Old Testament world, there was priests that existed between us and God. There was sins that existed between us and God. There was sins of omission that we didn't even know about that existed between us and God. And Yom Kippur is when he gets everybody together and he says, look, look, everyone, I am putting things in place so that there is nothing between me and my people. I'm putting things in place so that you know that I want to be with you, so there is nothing that can separate us. There are no barriers between us now. And then when he sends Jesus, who is the perfection of Yom Kippur, he removes all of the barriers and his presence rushes into the lives of those who would believe. And Yom Kippur is God's relentless and ruthless effort to remove all barriers between you and him. He wants nothing to exist between you. And knowing that we are impotent to remove those barriers ourselves, he installed a celebration once a year to tell us, hey, there's nothing between me and you. There are no barriers. There's nothing keeping you from my presence. You are welcome here. And then by sending his son the perfection of Yom Kippur, he says eternally once and for all, you are invited into my presence, so much so that I am preparing a place for you in my very presence for all eternity. And as I thought about the spirit of Yom Kippur and this God who ruthlessly removes every barrier between he and I, what I realized is I am impotent to remove the barriers that are placed between me and God, but I am very capable of putting them there. And as I reflected on myself, it occurs to me that any barriers that exist between me and God are ones that I put there. They're man-made. I built them myself. Sometimes with doubt, because I walked through that. Often with faithlessness and inconsistency. The feelings of guilt that he's ridden me of that I still cling to. Because I can't understand how he could still love me. Oftentimes it's my sin that puts a layer, puts another veil between me and God. And then I got to thinking about you as your pastor and would submit to you. If you feel like there are barriers between you and God, things preventing you from being as close with him as you would like and he would like? I think it's very likely we put those there ourselves. I think based on the heart of God, I see in Yom Kippur that any barriers that exist between us and God are ones that we built. Because he removes all the ones he can. So maybe we have doubt. But we haven't asked God to remove that. So here's what I want to do. In a few minutes, I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band is going to be playing through a song. And I want to invite you while they play to just stay in your seat and be quiet and pray and reflect. And invite you to pray a prayer for yourself that I've been praying this week. And ask God, are there any barriers between you and I? Ask for the faith and the courage to see those. And then if he's gracious enough to point them out to you, maybe you know them right now, maybe they're blaring in the back of your mind, then pray that God would give you the courage to take the steps of faith to remove them. And so, as we pray together, I want you to have this opportunity to ask God, God, are there any barriers between me and you? Have I hung any veils in my life that need to be torn down? And give him permission to do that. Give him permission to bring down those barriers. Maybe you came today and you don't know Jesus. Maybe you wouldn't call yourself a believer. And so the barrier between you and God is faith. If you're here today and you want to become a believer, you want to accept this atonement, you want to be made right with your creator, that human desire to repent and be made right resonates with you. Then maybe today is the day that you become a child of God. To be a Christian, all you do is admit that I've sinned. I've acted in ways that have displeased my creator. And my sin has placed a barrier between God and I. And because of that, I need the death of Jesus on the cross to atone for me. It's not just cover over my sins, but cleanse them. You pray and you tell that to God. And then you say, from this point forward, I'm no longer the Lord of my life. I'm no longer the decision maker in my life. God is. And I'll do my best to do what he says. Many of us in here have been Christians for a long time, but over the years, we've allowed barriers to develop between us and God, and we don't have the intimacy with him that we want. Take a few minutes and have the courage to allow God to point those out, and have the faith to ask Him to remove those, whether they be doubt, bitterness, or sin, or habits. And on the day that the church looks at Yom Kippur, God's visible effort to remove barriers between he and I and restore the intimacy that we both long for. Take a minute and approach God for that intimacy as well. I'm gonna pray and then you guys sit and pray. And when Steve thinks it's the right time, we'll all stand and we'll finish singing together. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We are floored and humbled that you have so intentionally removed all the barriers between us and you. God, we thank you for the day of atonement for Yom Kippur and all that it represents, for all the symbolism there. I ask that we would be touched by it, that we would be moved by it. God, I ask that for those of us who came in this morning with a veil that we hung ourselves, with a barrier that we built ourselves between you and us, God, give us the faith to see it and the courage to ask you to remove it. It's in your son's name we pray.