Sermons tagged with Faith

All right. Thank you, band. Good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Before I just launch into the sermon and the rest of the service, I do want to acknowledge it is Memorial Day weekend, and for many it's the start of summer. And I'll tell you why Memorial Day weekend is a special Sunday here for me at Grace every year, but it's also special because it remembers the men and women who have died for our freedoms, namely, as it's relevant to us, our freedom to gather and worship and do this openly. So if you have someone in your family who has given the ultimate sacrifice and died in the armed services fighting for us, we are to you and grateful to them and so we remember them and acknowledge that this morning as it pertains to grace Memorial Day has always been a very special day for me in the life of our church Memorial Day in church world for those who may not be familiar with church world and how pastors think about Sundays, Memorial Day is a throwaway Sunday. I know that we shouldn't say things like that, but it almost doesn't count, right? Because summer has started. Everyone's leaving. They're at the beach. It's a long holiday weekend. School's almost out. And so Memorial Day, that's when you kind of mail it in. You just do whatever. But the very first Memorial Day I was here in May of 2017, and if you want to hear the story, I'll tell you in the lobby afterwards. God just provided for grace in such a way that it felt like him putting his hand on us and saying, hey, I care about this place, and I'm going to take care of this place. And I could tell you more stories about things that have happened on Memorial Day. And so to be here on a Memorial Day baptizing three of our kids, one of them is mine, is a pretty special way for God to just remind us of his provision and his goodness and his hand on us. So it's a special morning this morning because it is a special morning and we're focused on baptisms this morning. And because this Sunday falls between series, we just wrapped up our series, the treasury of Isaiah. Next week, we're going to start a series called idols where we're kind of loosely looking at a book written by Tim Keller called Counterfeit Gods that kind of walks through the sin of idolatry and how that sneaks into our life. And I've got the books ordered. They're going to be here next week. And so maybe you want to pick one of those up as we kind of move through that series together. So we're going to do that series for a little bit starting next week. And we think that's going to be good. Then we're going to roll into the summer and do a 27 and look at the books of the new Testament. But right now today, because I knew we were going to be doing baptisms, I thought, let's just pause as a church and let's talk about the two ordinances of the church, baptism and communion. Let's just take a Sunday and focus on those and talk about what they are and what they mean. So that's what we're going to do today. As we think about that, I want to kind of introduce our thought process of baptism and communion in this way with this idea. For centuries, rituals have existed to teach us and remind us of essential truths. For centuries, rituals, systematic things, traditions, have taken place in different cultures and religions to teach, to remind the current generation and to teach the next generation of truths that that value system holds essential. And I really want you to think about this and the power of ritual. I know I talk about history sometimes and you guys make fun of me, but just to understand this, that when we live in America in 2024, the idea of literacy and printed word being ubiquitous, that is not the case for a vast majority of human history. For the vast majority of time that humans have been around, the populace was illiterate, and there was, in most cases, no written words. In some cases, very few documented written things that only a few had access to and that even fewer could actually read. So they had to pass things down word of mouth. Each generation had to teach the next generation and in that teaching, remind themselves of these truths. And for the things that they deemed, that the different cultures deemed particularly important, we don't want to get this one wrong. We've got to communicate this to ourselves and to the next generation. They would form rituals around those things. We think of them as traditions, but it's really pretty interchangeable. We have traditions in America. Fourth of July, we set off fireworks. Why do we do that? I would presume to simulate the bombs bursting in air by Francis Scott Key. I don't know why Chinese people set off fireworks. I don't know what it means to them. But to us, it's Star-Spangled Banner. It's the United States. That's great. That's a tradition that we have. Fine. If you think about different religions, they have traditions. The religion that became Christianity, Judaism, has a ritual Passover. When they gather around, they have a meal, and that meal helps them to remember that their ancestors were enslaved in Egypt and that God got them out of slavery. There are specific things that they're supposed to eat. It's very detailed and regimented. It's a ritual to teach the next generation and remind the current generation of truths that we deem essential. And Christians have rituals too. Now different denominations, different portions of the church have different traditions. But no matter what part of the church you're from or in, the two most important rituals are communion and baptism. The two most important rituals in all of Christendom are communion and baptism. And there's a couple reasons why. First of all, what I think is pretty neat about communion and baptism is that Jesus himself is the one who started these. Jesus initiated, excuse me, communion. Jesus modeled baptism and what it is and then taught it, taught us to be baptized in the spirit. Jesus started these himself. And if they, and if he started these things himself, they must be pretty important. The other thing that I find hugely interesting about communion and baptism as it relates to their import within the church. A few weeks ago on March 21st, some of y'all were here, 24th rather. It would have been weird to give a sermon on like a Thursday. But on March 24th, I preached on unity in the body of Christ. And I pulled up a whiteboard. Some of y'all will remember it. And I drew a big circle. And then in that circle, we made a pie chart of all the different sections of Christendom. We had a Catholic section, an Orthodoxy, Protestants. And then we divided those up into the different slivers of the different beliefs within all of those subsections, right? And then we populated the pie chart with all these different slivers of all these different versions of church all throughout the world. And we said that there's beauty to be found in each one of them. And each one of them has their own different set of traditions and rituals and things that they do. But do you know what two rituals, every single sliver of the pie chart of Christendom has in common. I've never known a church that claims to be Christian that does not in some way observe baptism. Now, we have different modes of it. When I say when it comes to baptism, the question that Christians ask about baptism is who's it for and how wet should they get? Is it for babies or believers and should they get all the way wet or just a little bit wet? Those are the questions with baptism. And different people settle that in different ways. And we don't have universal agreement here. We don't even have universal agreement on the elder board. And that's fine. But every church I've ever heard of honors baptism in some way. Every church I've ever heard of honors communion in some way. Some call it the Eucharist, but it's the same thing. And we have different beliefs around it and what it means, but every church that's ever existed celebrates those things. Now here's what's cool about that. Those rituals come tumbling down to us through the centuries to remind us and to teach us of essential truths for our faith. And God himself started those rituals. And those rituals, this tradition of baptism that we're going to do in a few minutes, the tradition of communion that we'll do right after that, those rituals, do you realize this? They tether us, this little non-denominational church floating in complete anonymity, they tether us to our Baptist brothers and sisters down the road, to our Catholic brothers and sisters down the road, even to our Presbyterian brothers and sisters down the road, even to them and the Pentecostals too. It tethers us together. It tethers us to the ancient church that we see in the beginning of Acts and we follow through Paul's missionary journeys in the rest of the Bible. It tethers us to the church outside of Masapumaleli that I got to visit one time in Cape Town, South Africa, and to the churches that I've been to in Siguatopeque, Honduras. It tethers us to those places as we honor these rituals that spill down through the centuries to us. It holds us together as a church and they unify us no matter what our divergent beliefs are about other things. So because Jesus himself started these, because they're ubiquitous amongst any Christian church in history, and because these things tie us all together and tether us as one body. It's worth saying, okay, what do they represent and what do they mean? Why are these two things so important to our God? Why did he only give us these two rituals on which we all agree? So first, we'll answer that question by looking at communion. Communion, the story of communion, the Last Supper, is in all four Gospels. But the texts that we use where Jesus instructs communion are found in the three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I'm going to look at the passage in Mark, and we'll read it together, and then we'll talk about what that means. Verse 22, while they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. And he gave it to his disciples, saying, take it, this is my body. Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and they drank it from him. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, he said to them. So this is Jesus starting communion at the Last Supper. Jesus and the disciples are gathered in an upper room. Most of you, if not all of you, know the story. And they're celebrating Passover. They're celebrating this ancient Jewish ritual to remind them of essential truths. And it's not lost on me, and I think that this is pretty cool, it's not lost on me the symmetry of Jesus choosing to place communion and the Last Supper over top of the ritual of Passover. Because Passover reminded God's children. Passover reminded the children of God that they had been freed from slavery. And communion reminds the children of God that we have been freed from the slavery of the soul. It reminds us that we are free from sin. We are free from a more pernicious eternal slavery. And I said that Christianity is a continuation of Judaism because I believe that. And so Jesus doesn't replace Passover. He just fulfills it. And he shows us what it really means by freeing us from a different kind of slavery that is eternal. And the synchronicity and the symmetry of that are not lost on me and they shouldn't be lost on you. And then Jesus continues with the imagery. For us, most of us in the room are Christians. We know the story. We understand the symbolism. Jesus says, this is my body. It's broken for you. This is my blood that's spilled out for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And we know that that is a reference to Jesus on the cross, to what's about to happen. The disciples did not yet know that. So this was a little bit mysterious to them, but for us, they knew, or we knew rather, and we know what that is. So I will not belabor the imagery of communion other than to say, every time it happens, every time it comes back around to us. We are. We are right and good. And the thing that we should do. Is to focus our eyes on Christ. The founder and perfecter of our faith. Remember the cross and what happened there. Be grateful for the sacrifice of God. Understanding that that death. In part because we need the rest of the story. For it to matter ultimately, but that that death purchased our eternity in heaven. And so when we take communion, that's what we remember. That Christ died for my sins so that I could be free of them. So that I don't have to fear sin and death and shame. That's what communion reminds us of. It's very clear imagery. I'm not going to say too much more there because one of our elders, Jordan Shaw, is going to come and lead us in communion later, and I don't want to steal any of her thunder. Then there's baptism. Now, baptism is a little bit less clear in its imagery if you just watch it and think about it. But there's two layers. There's multi-layered imagery happening there with baptism that I think is really neat. And I want you guys to understand it. And Kaysen and Lily and Drew, I want you guys to understand this too. So I know this is a sermon and you're bored, Lily. I know you're super bored. But pay attention to this part. This part is important. We find, I believe, the best description of baptism in Romans chapter 6, where Paul talks about baptism like life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with. That we should no longer be slaves to sin. Because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. So we have a lot going on there. In explaining the picture that baptism is. And what this ritual is supposed to communicate to us and to our children. What we see here is that the physical act of being baptized, going under the water and then coming back up out of the water, is a picture of the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It simulates and emulates that of the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It simulates and emulates that, of the burial and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then not only that, but we are told that when we are baptized, that the picture of what's happening there is that our old self is being put away. Our old self that is a slave to sin, that can't help but sin, that has no choice. The Bible teaches that if you are not a believer, if you do not believe that Jesus is who he says he is and did what he said he did, then you are a slave to sin. You have no choice but to sin. As soon as we get a cap on one sin, that sin nature is going to squirt out in some other sin and we're going to have to manage that over there. But that when we are Christians and we are raised to walk in newness of life with Jesus, we are a new creature and we are no longer a slave to sin and we no longer have to fear death. We have been released from our bondage and from our slavery. And so the imagery and the picture of baptism is to put to death the old self that has no choice but to sin and raise to life the new self that is alive in Christ. Just as he resurrected, we are alive again. We go from dead, not having any life and not having any hope to going to hope in Christ in this newness of life. Which is why when I baptize them, I will quote this passage and I will baptize them and I will say, buried with him in death and raised to walk in newness of life because that's what Romans 6 teaches. So that's the two-fold imagery of baptism. First of all, it is a physical representation and reminder of the burial and resurrection of Jesus. Second of all, it is to remind us as we watch and as we do that if we are Christians, our old self was put away and our new self has risen. We no longer have to be a slave to sin. That's the twofold picture of baptism. That's also why I believe two things about baptism are very important. I know that there's different beliefs about baptism and that's okay. I'm not here to settle it or wrestle it to the ground or to even try to convince you. But for me, when I think about baptism and when I teach baptism, I think immersion is so important. That question earlier, who's it for and how wet should they get? It's for believers, I think. People who have articulated a faith, who have experienced that regeneration of going from death to life. And it's, you should get maximum wet. You should go under the water. You should be immersed. Why? Because it's a picture of the death and the burial and the resurrection of Jesus. It's a reminder of you putting to death your old self, of God putting to death your old self and raising your new self. It's why it's worth it to go. Do you understand how much of a hassle this is? Do you know? It takes up space over there all the time. Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, is out of town. It's his responsibility to fill up the baptistry. I volunteered to do that. I forgot. I forgot. I'm sitting over there. Gibson, our worship pastor, and I, we pray every Sunday morning before he comes over here, usually about 7 o'clock. And we're sitting there about to pray, and my eyes got real big. And I go, I did not fill up the bathroom street. And he goes, yes, you did. And I was like, nope. And I bolted over here. We're stringing a hose. We've got to attach a hose to a sink in the kitchen over there. We don't have one hose. We have two. They're janky. We're stretching it as far as it could possibly go. Kyle bought a new hose and he bought, for ease of storage, he bought a stretchy one. So now we're having to play tug of war with this stupid thing so I can get it to reach the sink. And then we fill it up over here and I'm kind of panicking. If this sermon is terrible, it's because I didn't have the time this morning that I wanted to put some extra polish on it. And then we fill it up. And then we heat it. So they're not shivering when they get in there. It would be way easier to just put a little water on their head. Trust me. And if you know me, I'm a man of efficiency and ease. That is what I would prefer. But it's worth it to baptize. To go under the water because of the story it tells, because Jesus started that tradition, and because Jesus wants it to be a story that we remember over and over and over again. And this is why I believe this as well about baptism. It ought to be public. It ought to be in front of your church. When you get baptized, you are carrying the mantle of responsibility to tell that story to your brothers and sisters in Christ. Because communion, we do all the time. Communion you do every week or every month or every quarter, whatever is the pace of your church. Here we do it once a month. We do it all the time. We're constantly reminded, given the visual, as we tear the bread and we dip it in the wine or the grape juice. We don't drink wine in church services. Grape juice. We are reminded of what Jesus did for us on the cross. But you only get baptized once. At least you should. Some of you probably need it twice. Maybe the first one didn't take. But you should only get baptized once. Which means if we only do this once, then it's our one time to experience the imagery of what baptism is. And we don't do it again. So what do we need? We need other people in our family of faith to get baptized in front of us to tell the story with their baptism that Jesus wants them to tell. So it's important that we embrace the full imagery of it by going under and coming back up. And it's important that we do it publicly in front of our Christian brothers and sisters because we are taking on the responsibility of telling that story. These three brave kids this morning are doing us a service by allowing us to peek into this moment in their life because they are stepping up to tell us God's story. Here it comes. Here's the other thing, and then I'll wrap up and we'll get to the good part. These two ordinances, I was thinking about this this week, a couple weeks ago, and I've mentioned this to a couple people in passing. Whenever I mention it, the people that I'm talking to, they go, oh, yeah, yeah, that's right. As if this is common knowledge, and I'm just stumbling upon this like a dummy 20 years into ministry. But maybe I did, and maybe I am a dummy. I'm open to that, and there's a lot of objective evidence to argue for it. But the two ordinances tell two parts of the same story. These two ordinances, they're meant to go together. These two traditions, it's why they tumbled down to us through the centuries. They're meant to go together. They tell two parts of the same story. Communion tells the story of Jesus dying on the cross. Baptism tells the story of Jesus rising from the dead. If you think about it this way, if you put it on the calendar, communion points us to Good Friday at the death of Jesus Christ. Baptism points us to Easter Sunday, the resurrection, the victory that is won. We need the two of these. We need the two of these. We need both sides of the story for either one to matter. Without baptism, communion is irrelevant. And without communion, baptism is impossible. You understand that? Without baptism, communion is just celebrating someone else that was crucified by the Roman Empire. Lost to history. Without baptism, communion is neutered. Without communion, baptism is impossible. If Jesus never dies, we don't need resurrection. If we don't celebrate communion, we don't need to celebrate baptism. They tell two sides of the same story. And here's the thing. Communion and baptism tell the most important story in history. They tell us the story of the saving work of Jesus Christ. If we know nothing else about scripture, if we know nothing else about theology, if we get all the questions on the test wrong, if we can't find the book of Ecclesiastes, if this is the first time we heard that book exists, but we believe in the story that communion and baptism tell us. If we don't understand anything else, but we understand and we believe in the story that we are taught by the rituals, by the ordinances, by the tradition. If we believe the story that we're about to be told in baptism and in communion, then we are in Christ and we are Christians and we are a new thing. We're a new creature. So what we're about to be shown by these children and then what we're about to experience by taking communion is us retelling the story back to God of his saving work on the cross for us. It's us celebrating Jesus' death on the cross, knowing that with that death, he purchased for us an eternity forever in God for which we were created and intended, and we will be there with him forever. And anything that's happened here is a former thing that has passed away. And all the hard stuff is done. It is the hope to which Christians cling. It is the reason that Pope John Paul II said, we do not give way for despair for we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. It is the singular hope in this universe that will not put us to shame. The hope that when we hear the story that's told by baptism and communion, that we believe it. So that's what we're going to do. We're going to let these three kids tell us the story of the resurrection of Christ. And we're going to watch them proclaim their faith. And then, as a body, we're going to take communion together, unifying us from wherever we are and wherever we came. And as an added bonus, these families get to take their first communion, get to take these kids' first communion with them while they're still dripping wet, which is pretty neat. So I'm going to pray, and then we're going to get to the good part. Father, we thank you so much for your son, who he is, what he's done. God, as we celebrate our children today, I can't imagine what it would be to choose to sacrifice one of them for the sake of us. And so God, thank you for enduring that pain as a good father. We're grateful to your son for enduring that experience and that separation from you for our sake. We're grateful for these traditions that have been handed down to us by the shoulders that we stand on. May they remind us of how much you love us, of how you provide for us, how good you are to us. And God, I pray for these three kids, for Drew and for Lily and for Kaysen, that this moment would be one that they remember, that they cherish, that they look back on with confidence, that steals them in their moments of doubt and hesitation. God, be with them as they go. Be with them as they walk with you in this newness of life. Be with them as they seek to become who you created them to be. And be with us, their parents. Make us good guides, Father. Thank you for overcoming our shortcomings. Thank you for the stories that these things tell. May it be a special moment for all of us. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday as we continue in our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah. This week, we're going to be in Isaiah chapter 55. So if you have a Bible with you, I hope you do go ahead and turn to Isaiah 55. We're going to be looking at verses eight and nine this morning. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But as I'm trying to remind you guys regularly, bring your Bibles to church, mark them up, challenge me to point you to them, write prayers, write dates of prayers, underline things. Let's have some well-worn Bibles in here that we take home with us and use every day. As we approach the passage this morning, I was reminded of a conversation that we had in my Tuesday morning men's group just a week or two ago. This semester, we are reading through the gospel of Matthew. So a big focus on Jesus, life of Christ, his teachings, his miracles, his works, things like that. And I don't remember the specific conversation that we were having, but let's just say it was something along the lines of kind of wondering why Jesus seemed to always speak in riddles. Why he always would say one thing and then later would re-explain it to the disciples. Why he spoke in parables that people couldn't seem to understand. I mean, do you understand that Jesus had a conversation with a man named Nicodemus who was so intelligent amongst a group of learned men that he served on the Israeli equivalent of the Supreme Court. And when he pinned Jesus down to be like, what are you talking about? What's your message all about? That in that conversation in John chapter 3, Nicodemus says, I don't understand what you mean. Should I climb back into my mother's womb and be born again? Is that what you're talking about? And Jesus is like, maybe. And then the conversation's over. Like no more clarity after that Right? Obviously, he doesn't say maybe. That's a loose paraphrase. But we were just kind of discussing this as a group. And one of the guys in the group kind of, I don't want to embarrass anybody, so we'll just call him Emil. I called Emil. I have permission. He kind of raised his hand, asked a question that everybody has asked. And what I love about my boy Emilio is he's one of those people that has an incredible knack for asking the question that everyone else around him is asking, but they're just afraid to ask it, and he'll do it. And I love it. And so he says what we think too. Why didn't Jesus just say what he meant? Why didn't he just explain who he was and what he came to do? Why was he so shrouded in all of that mystery? It doesn't make any sense. And that's a fair question. That's a question that we all ask. Every single one of us has asked that exact same question. Why doesn't God do it this way? Why didn't Jesus heal more people? I wonder, why didn't Jesus just tell them to wash their hands? Listen, I'm not going to give away too much science, but just wash your hands sometimes. Why didn't he do that? Why didn't God organize things this way or that way or communicate himself more clearly? Why didn't God give us a systematic theology so we don't have to have spiritual debates? Why didn't Jesus perform more miracles or less miracles? Why was Jesus up in northern Israel in the country, in this unknown territory rather than in Jerusalem and in the epicenter. Why? Why didn't Jesus do it that way? Here's what we're asking underneath that question. Why doesn't the almighty, omnipotent, sovereign God of the universe do things the way that I would. And because of that, that's a stupid question. It is. And we've all asked it. But here's the deal. Here's how I know that that's a silly question. It's okay to ask it. But we have to be comfortable with the answer that we arrive at today. Here's why I know that's a silly question. Isaiah chapter 55, verses 8 and 9. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. God himself is speaking here in Isaiah 55. And he says, my ways are higher than your ways. My thoughts are higher than your thoughts. As high as the heavens are above the earth. As big and expansive as the universe is. That is the difference. The distance between the earth and the end of the universe is the difference between your intellectual comprehension and mine. It's the difference between your ways and my ways. It's the difference between your thoughts and my thoughts. This is what God himself explains to us and makes clear in scripture and in more places. He does it in Romans chapter 11 through Paul as well. And here he is saying, my thoughts are different than your thoughts. You will not understand me. And so what I want us to see is in reality, it is unbelievably naive and foolish to insist that God behave in ways that make sense to us. It is unbelievably naive of who God is, foolish about how we've estimated ourselves and our judgment, to expect God to always behave in ways that make sense to us. And yet we do this, don't we? Don't we shake our fist at God? This doesn't make any sense. You shouldn't do this. You shouldn't allow that. We do all the right things and we don't have the blessings that other people have. That's not fair. God, this evil, this atrocity is happening right now. I mean, look at what's going on in Israel, Palestine. God, how are you letting that happen? That doesn't make sense. That's not fair. We, at different points and at different times and in different ways, sometimes with a shaking fist, sometimes on bent knee with a tearful face, say, God, this doesn't make any sense. God, you're doing it wrong. God, why wouldn't you have just been more clear? And we insist that God help us see why his actions actually do make sense. Or we tell him that the things we see don't make sense, and then we somehow insist that they should. When I was enrolled in Bible college, as soon as I got done with my core work, and I got into, I got a pastoral ministries degree. As soon as I got into my degree work, they handed me this big thick book by, I'm assuming a good man named Norman Geisler. Systematic Theology is what it's called. It was a book about God and the Bible based on God and the Bible. And that book had more pages than the Bible, which is about God. That's a pretty good trick to do, Norman. And we spent two semesters working through systematic theology, where it takes all the names of God and explains them, and all the soteriology and homardiology and all the ologies and the study of sin and all the other things and salvation and what that means and baptism and why the Baptists are right and the Presbyterians are wrong because I went to one of those schools and all the things like forever, two semesters. Then I got into master's work. What's the first thing they do? They put a systematic theology in my hand. We got to get these right. We got to get all the boxes. We have to understand God. We have to be able, any situation, we have to be able to fit it in a box and explain it and understand it and have all the verses to back it up, and this is it. And then stuff starts happening outside of our theology and outside of our boxes, and we can't make any sense of it, and we insist that we should be able to make sense of it. God, I need to understand you. We insist on systematizing and categorizing a wild and wonderful God that does not submit himself to categories. We insist, Christians, and I know because I did it for years, and I lived under the impression that the person who had the most robust systematic theology and had successfully categorized and systematized the things of God in Scripture, the person who could do that the best was the godliest. That's what I used to think. But there's no better story in the Bible that tells you that God's really not interested in our categories and our systems than in Exodus chapters 3 and 4. My Bible scholars know that Exodus chapter 3 and 4 is where Moses encounters God at the burning bush. Moses is a shepherd. He's been a shepherd now for 40 years. One day, he's tending his flock, and he looks, and there's a large piece of shrubbery on fire. The fire's not dissipating. So he goes over to check it out. And the voice from the fire says, Moses, you're on holy ground. Take off your sandals. And Moses realizes he's in a conversation with God. This is strange. And the fire says, Moses, guy who's not important in any way, I would like you to go back to Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the world. And I would like you to tell him to release my people, the foundation of his economy, just let them walk out. And Moses says, okay, what's your name? And God says, I am. I am that I am. And Moses says, okay, when I go to Pharaoh, who should I say sent me? And God says, tell him I am sent you. The rest of the conversation is pretty remarkable. I would encourage you to read it. But it is amazing to me, equal parts that this is true and equal parts that we tend to miss it. You understand that the God we serve, the God we gather to worship and sing to, when we say his name is holy, we don't even know if that's right. Do you understand that the God we serve that many of us have devoted our lives to, we don't even know his name because he won't tell us. He's so resistant to categories and to being systematized that he wouldn't even tell us his name when we outright asked him. We're like, listen, I don't want to know for personal curiosity. I'm going to have to give it as backup when I go to Pharaoh and God's like, just tell him I am sent you. And what I love about that response from God, there's so many implications there. We could spend an entire Sunday morning on it. But what I love about that response from God with what is your name? I am. Is what he's saying implicitly is I will not submit myself to your categories. I will not submit myself to your systems. I will not be contained by the name that you give me. I will not be contained by a name that you've requested I give myself. We serve a God who is remarkably resistant to categorization and to systemization. Does it not occur to you that if God wanted to be systematically understood, if God wanted to be categorized and give us all the boxes to put all the things so we could perfectly understand life in the universe and time and space, does it not occur to you that he could have done it? He could have. He could have made this systematic theology. He could have made it very clear. He could have, Jesus could have done what we want him to do and spoken with more clarity during his ministry and left less mystery in the margins of his speech and of his stories. He could have done that and yet he chose not to. And in the face of all of this evidence, in the face of all of this evidence of a messy Bible that tells a messy story where God claims in different places, you can't understand me. My ways are higher than your ways. We want to know your name, God. I'm not going to give you that because I won't be reduced to that. Jesus, why do you speak in parables? Well, I'm not going to tell you that, but I'll explain this last one to you. We tend to sweep all of that aside and continue to grab God by the proverbial shirt collar and say, no, but make it make sense. Despite a landslide of evidence to the contrary of that possibility. Last Sunday, I had the kids on Sunday night, Jen serves in the youth, just as a way to avoid the children. She doesn't even really do anything while she's here. And so I had the kids, wasn't much in the house, so I said, let's go to Zaxby's. So I throw them in the car. Zaxby's is right down the road. That's a dangerous game for me. And I asked John, our youngest, he's three, what do you want? You want grilled cheese? You want chicken tenders? He says, chicken tenders. Great. Lily, what do you want? She says, I want a number one. I said, is that a Zax snack? She says, yeah. I said, all right. I said, I'm going to get a five piece, and then I'll let y'all split it up. And she goes, no, no, no, I want a number one. I said, yeah, baby, I understand. You're going to be taken care of. I want a number one. And I don't know about you guys that also have an eight-year-old or have had eight-year-olds, but they're insistent little boogers, you know? Really mean it. And we're kind of going back and forth. I want a number one. I said, you're going to be fine. Leave me alone, you know, really mean it. And she, you know, we're kind of going back and forth. I want number one. I said, you're going to be fine. Leave me alone. You know, whatever. And then I finally, I just said, and I knew the answer to this, but I just said, Lily, what's in the number one? And she says, three chicken tenders and a piece of toast and fries and a Zach sauce. And I said, I know when we get home, you will have all of those things in front of you. Okay? Okay. So then we get to the drive-thru, and we get to the window, and I say, hey, let me get a five-piece, no slaw, double fries, so I can split them 50-50 with the kids so there's no arguments when we get there. And as I'm ordering this, from the back, no, number one! So I struck her. I just turned around. No, I didn't. So I just said, Lily, just trust Daddy. Just trust me for just a second, all right? And she pipes down, you know. And then, you know, I did that to make it cheaper, but Zaxby's is also offering four shrimp for $3. And so if you ever wonder why, when you go through a drive-thru and they're like, hey, welcome to wherever, would you like to try our new yada, yada, yada? And you're like, no, I came here to order the thing that I want. I don't need you to suggest the thing to me. I'm the reason they suggest that to you. Because whenever they say, would you like to try our new thing? I'm like, yes, yes, I would. Say no more. You don't have to tell me about it. Because you don't get to look at it like this by stopping at one sandwich. You know what I mean? So I threw on the shrimp with the free Zach's tail sauce, and it was great. We get back to the house. Lily's brooding the whole way home. She's so upset because I haven't gotten her the dinner that she wants. We get back to the house, set them down. I break up everything. I put in front of her exactly what a number one is. I said, do you see? And she goes, oh, thanks daddy. And just eats. And I'm like, I am convinced as silly as this is that one day, one day, when we sit down in the great banquet in heaven, we will find that the whole time God has been preparing us a number one. And we will go, oh, thanks, Abba. I know that that's silly. I know it is. But I think it means something. We in this life insist so hard that God would make sense to us and that we would understand why he does all the things that he does. And I think, comparatively speaking, we are a petulant child sitting in the back, insisting that God has got our order wrong. And one day, we will sit down with him, and we will go, yeah, this makes sense now. I get it. I understand. I'm sorry. And here's the thing. If there's ever been anybody who had the right to insist that God start making sense, it was Job. Okay? When we think about grabbing God by the lapels and make this make sense for me, I've got a number one. Why aren't you ordering me a number one? This is what you should be doing, God. If there's ever been anyone in history that had the right to ask that question of God, it was Job. Now, if you don't know off the top of your head the story of Job, I'm sure you know bits and pieces of it. The book of Job is the first book of wisdom. It's probably the first book of the Bible that was ever written, the book of Job. God and Satan are having a conversation, and Satan tells God, the only reason your servant Job honors you is because you bless him. And God says, okay, take his stuff away. He will not renounce me. And Satan proceeds to systematically take everything there was away from Job. He loses his children. He loses his wealth. He loses his land. He loses his health. He even loses the peace of his wife, who at one point in the story advises him to curse God and die. His friends come to him in three different cycles of advice. And they tell him, Job, you're clearly hiding a secret sin, and God is punishing you for it. And he says, I tell you, I am not. I have done nothing unrighteous. Because God actually says about Job, he is the most righteous man on the planet. Until Nate gets there. And then, at the end of the advice, Job's had it. And he says, you know what? I'm going to go to God. I'm going to go to God, and I'm going to demand answers. And there's a sense in which all of humanity goes with Job. We're putting him in front of us. Excuse me. Yeah, you do it. We're kind of hiding behind him. Because Job has every right to confront God. God, I've done nothing but serve you with my whole life and you've taken everything away from me. And now I'm riddled with boils and everyone hates me. This does not make sense. This is not fair. God, make it make sense. Why didn't you do things the way I think you should do them? So he goes to God and he's demanding an answer. And anyone that's ever thought something happened that was unfair or unjust on God's watch is behind Job going, yeah, what's the deal? And here is God's response to Job and all humans in chapter 38. You will not be surprised to learn it's one of my favorite passages. Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said, who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? The ESV is even better. It says, who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Whoops. I have a professor who said that Job demanded a man-to-man conversation with God. The problem was he was one man short. Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man. I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation a little bit. Verse 8. Job goes to God, insisting a great injustice has done. And in that moment, I want God to pull Job aside, put his arm around him, and gently lay everything out. Let me help you understand this, son. That is not what God does. God says, Job, I believe you've forgotten your place. Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? And God goes on for three chapters. At one point in the middle, sad, pathetic Job, the sacrificial lamb for humankind, says, I repent in dust and ashes. I have spoken once. I will speak no more. And God says, I'm not done. And he keeps going. And what God is saying here is, Job, I know you have your questions. I know you want to understand me and what I've done. But until you can answer what I'm asking you, until you can explain to me how I hung the world in balance and tilted it at such an axis that it exists in harmony with the sun to allow your life. Until you can understand that, you can't possibly understand the answer that I would need to give you to explain myself to you. Do you see? Until you can answer my questions, you can't handle the answer to your questions. So I'm not going to explain it to you because it would be a waste of time. It would be, Rachel Martin is over here with a newborn baby. How old is that baby? Six weeks. This is her third one. They don't even care. They bring him like right from the hospital straight to church. God can no more explain to us what he's doing and how to make his decisions and his actions make sense then I can explain this sermon to that child. It's just not going to work. So God says, Job, listen, man, I'm not going to answer your questions because you can't answer mine. And until you can, you can't handle the answer that I would give you. So until then, this is the beckon from God. Until then, I just need you to trust me. I'm in the front seat of my car. Lily insists she wants a number one. I tell her I'm going to take care of it, but I need a number one. I need you to be quiet and trust me. Sometimes God needs us to be quiet and trust him. And in that trust, acknowledge. We can't know his thoughts. We can't know his plans. We can't know his ways. They are as far from us as the universe is from the earth. And this really ought to comfort us. This ought to be seen as a good thing. We can take great solace in the grandeur and mystery of our awesome God. We are in the back seat, insisting that God make it make sense. And God is telling us, will you just trust me? Will you just trust that I'm good, that I'm lovely, that I'm wonderful, and that I love you? I don't know if you guys have noticed this or know this, but almost every time our worship pastor, Aaron, prays, he finishes the prayer with God, we need you, we trust you. And do you know that that's an intentional choice? That he and I have actually had a conversation about that. And that the reason he ends his corporate prayers with we need you and we trust you is because it's a reminder to him and a reminder to us that we choose to trust in the goodness of God, that we acknowledge that we will not always understand him. We acknowledge that his ways are higher than our ways, but we know God to be good and we know God to be just and we know him be lovely, and we know him to be merciful and gracious and kind and faithful and hopeful and holy. We know those things about our God. So even when life doesn't make sense, even when we look at the way he does things and we think, gosh, I would do this in a different way. Stories like the conversation with Job. Inter interactions like those at the burning bush, declarations like those found in Isaiah 55 should ring in our ears and remind us, yeah, you serve a God that's too big for you to understand. See, what we want, what we want is a God that's just like a little bit smarter than us. So eventually, if we work hard enough, we can understand him. And that's not who God is. He is light years apart from us. And this should give us great comfort. There's actually a book I would recommend to you guys called Wisdom and Wonder by a man named Abraham Kuyper. Abraham Kuyper was a scientist, and then I believe he was the Danish prime minister at the turn of the 19th century. And he wrote a great book called Wisdom and Wonder, and it's all about this. The fact that we serve an unknowable, unsearchable God. Now listen, I'm not saying that systematic theology isn't important. I'm not saying that seeking to understand God is an absolutely futile exercise. There's great progress to be made there. We should spend our lives searching out and seeking out the character of God and seeking to understand him to the absolute best of our capacities. It's okay to understand theology and to talk about those things. But what I see in so many Christians is a forgetfulness and a naivety to the unknown nature of God. So we don't throw out theology as if it doesn't matter, but so often we hold to it and insist that God fit inside of it, and then when he doesn't, we seem to forget that he's unknowable and unsearchable and his ways are higher than our ways. We should hold those things in tension together, seeking to understand God, knowing that we won't always. And in those times when we don't understand him and he doesn't make sense and we wouldn't do things the way he's done them, or they seem to be contrary to what we think, in those gaps of unknowing, we fill it with faith in who God is and the promises that he's made and who he says he is. We fill it with his goodness and his grandeur. And in that way, we are allowed to marvel at a marvelous, miraculous, wild, unknowable God who allows us to see parts of him that we can't know. And this is the God that we worship and we sing to. So again, it's not wrong to ask that God would make sense. It's not wrong to seek to understand. But it is wrong to insist. Because when we insist, we forget what God declares in Isaiah 55. As we close, as we close this morning, I came across this prayer in my devotional and I thought I would end the service or end the sermon this way. We praise you, O God. We acknowledge you to be the Lord. All the earth worships you, the Father everlasting. To you all angels cry aloud the heavens and all the powers in it. To you cherubim and seraphim continually cry, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of your glory. The glorious company of the apostles praise you. The good fellowship of the prophets praise you. The noble army of, we love you. We trust you. We thank you that your ways are higher than our ways. We thank you that your thoughts are as far removed from us as the end of the universe is from earth. God, we are sorry where we've tried to fit you into our intellect, into our boxes, and into our categories. We are sorry for failing to allow you to be wild and wonderful and grand and awesome. But Lord, would we be people who take strides to celebrate that, your bigness and your wonder. God, help us trust the parts that we can know. Help us to have faith in the parts that we can't know. And help us to look forward to one day when you shed light on so many things for us. And until that day comes, help us to cling to you in faith, finding comfort and solace in how big you are and how wonderful you are and how far beyond us you are. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. I wanted to say a special thank you to, I think, the one person that was near this side of the room that clapped when someone said I was preaching. Thank you. all the way back to the beginning. This morning, we look at the Lord's commission of Isaiah to become a prophet. Isaiah, this prophet who, as we learned last week, his words and his ministry was one of the cornerstones of faith for generation upon generation of people. And so this morning we have the opportunity to look at his commission, look at his call into that ministry that was so beneficial for so many people. And so if you would like to read along with me, we're going to be in Isaiah 6. And before we get into it, one reason why I'm somewhat drawn to the story is not simply because, wow, what a beautiful thing to see a call of someone, but it's truly a narrative. It's a story. It has a beginning, a middle, an end, and it's a pretty unbelievable and pretty glorious story at that. And so what I would like for us to do, because we're going to read this together, what I would like for us to do, if you can commit to this, would you mind throwing on your imagination caps for me? Because as we read this, I think that this story possibly can take on a deeper meaning and maybe a more personal meaning if we allow ourselves to put ourselves within the shoes of Isaiah as he is being called into obedience. So do you mind doing that as we read through this? Can you at least do your very best this morning when it's cold and a little bit yucky outside to lean into imagination? All right, sweet, thanks. I see none of your heads nodding, so I imagine that's because your imagination caps are far too heavy for nods. So let's go ahead and jumpalted, seated on a throne, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim. Now, pause real quick. Seraphim is a form of an angel. It is one of the angels of heaven and one of God's angels. So just a quick clarification there before we continue to roll. Above him were seraphim, each with six wings. With two wings, they covered their face, and with two, they covered their feet. And with two, they were flying, and they were calling to one another, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. The whole earth is full of his glory. Now, to pause again, Isaiah has been invited into, this is a vision, but I think the experiences and the feelings are completely real. Isaiah has been invited into the throne room of God, into this room where the presence of God is overcoming and overwhelming the entire space. The same glory of God that these seraphim are singing fill the entire earth. He is experiencing that full weight of that glory inside of a room in the presence of God. So, And my eyes have seen the King, the Lord God Almighty. Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it, he touched my mouth and he said, See, this has touched your lips. Your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for. I told you this was a pretty wild and glorious story, huh? He is able to be in the presence of God and experience the full and utter weight of his glory. He hears the voices of angels. He's overwhelmed and overcome by that glory, and he's redeemed in that glory. This is a big and a wild story that even as we try to put on our imagination hats, it's hard to imagine what anything like that would be. But if we take a closer look at what he's experiencing, I think it's a story that becomes a bit more familiar. Ultimately, he comes face to face with God's glory. He's face to face with the glory of God. And because of that, he feels the crushing weight of the sin that led him to fear the wrath that was before him. I cannot possibly be in the presence of this much glory, of this much perfection, because I'm unclean. I'm sinful. He was fully anticipating his life just being done and over, experiencing the full wrath of God. But instead, he was met with God's glory, God's mercy, and God's goodness. He's offered a forgiveness and he's offered redemption that he could have never earned. And he's offered now the ability to live in connection and the ability to abide with God. He experienced the gospel that all of us cling to in our own faith. The gospel that says that in light of the glory of God, our sin is too great to ever get to know him, to ever get to experience him, to ever get to experience anything outside of the wrath of God and eternal separation from him. But the Lord offers us forgiveness instead. Out of the goodness and the love of God, he offers us, he offered us Christ and his perfect death, life, and resurrection. And this is the same gospel that Nate talked about last week that Isaiah already foreshadowed. That through Isaiah's life as a prophet, he penned and spoke and told of this great king that was to come that we know to be Jesus. And as this king comes, he comes to save and to redeem. And so ultimately, Isaiah didn't simply foreshadow the gospel that our hope and salvation rests upon. He experienced the full glory of it. He experienced the full glory of God and was met with the mercy and goodness of God that allowed him to be in his presence and allowed him to know him and to abide in him. And so this is important. It is only after experiencing this redemption that the Lord turns and calls him into his ministry. And so, if you will, we're going to read back into verse 8. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? And I said, Here I am, send me. Notice there's an exclamation point there. So ultimately it's more of a like, who can I send? And Isaiah seemingly in his excitement says, here I am, send me, send me God, I'll do it. I'll do it. Hey, if I get to do it for you, I'm gonna do it. I'm in, let's do this thing. I imagine it kind of similar to like a football player, like at the end of like a big arousing halftime speech of like, you know, screaming like, the who can I send out there? That's going to give us two quarters. You know, that kind of thing that you either have experienced or watched in a movie. It's like, I got this coach. You know, and then you go out into the glory and the whatever. But with our imagination hats still on, I want you to take a second to imagine what Isaiah might have been thinking. Because we don't know. Ultimately, this story doesn't give us the thought process that Isaiah is going through. It doesn't tell us what he was anticipating. It doesn't tell us, hey, I bet God has blank for me. But if I'm thinking about it, then I'm, if I'm in Isaiah's shoes, I'm probably starting to compare this interaction and this experience maybe with Moses's, you know, Moses, he didn't get the throne room of God. He just got like a bush that was on fire. You know, like awesome. Moses, super happy for you that the Lord revealed himself through a bush that was on fire, which is cool, I bet, probably. But the Lord brought me into his throne room. And so if Moses got to free an entire people from slaves, from slavery, then I imagine that probably what the Lord has in store for me is just a little bit grander and just a little bit better. You know, I don't know what that means. I don't know what that looks like. Maybe it means bringing Israel to prominence, whatever it looks like. But I bet he's probably like, man, not only does he have something great for me, but man, because of how awesome I'm going to be at this, because I've said yes, because I've said, hey, send me God. I'm the one. I'm your guy. I bet I got some blessings coming. I bet he's going to bring, I bet he's going to reward me for this and it's going to be awesome. I can only say that because normally when I obey, that's kind of what I'm looking for. What good is going to come my way if I can say yes to God? But if any expectations of grandeur entered into his head, they were immediately put to rest because the Lord continues. The Lord does not simply say who, the story does not end with him saying yes, with him saying send me. The Lord then asks him what he wants him to do and what he wants his life to be about for the rest of his days. And so we're not going to read the rest of the passage, but I want to just give you a brief look inside what God calls Isaiah to do. Essentially this, tell the people of Israel, tell your people, the people that you live amongst, tell the people of Israel that they have strayed too far from me to save their land and that I will send them into exile and continue to bring this message to them until they have been scattered and the cities lie in ruin. My words through your prophecies will lay a seed for future generations, but this one is lost. That's not great. That's not quite freeing an entire nation from slavery. It's honestly kind of the reverse. It's kind of the opposite. It's, hey, your words are going to kind of send people back into the exile that I originally saved them from. Your role here is to bring terrible news to people who are uninterested in listening to you. And you're to do so until all of them have been scattered into exile and it is a direct quote, until the cities lie in ruin. Yikes. If it's Kyle in that situation, I might have responded with, oh, did I say here I am, send me? Because what I meant is, here's Nate right over here. You should send him. He's awesome. He's a great dude. Awesome beard. You'd love him, God. And here's him. Send him. He's awesome. He's a great dude. Awesome beard. You'd love him, God. And here's him. Send him. He's perfect for this. I'm not interested in that. Sounds terrible. It sounds awful. It's like, not only does it sound like I'm going to become unbelievably tired and weary as I try to say yes to this every day, but all of the people that I'm bringing this to are not even listening. I don't even get to see any fruit from my labor. I don't even get to see on the other side what the Lord is going to do as I say yes and as I obey what he is calling me to do. And look, we already talked about it. Isaiah's ministry was great. Isaiah's words and the prophecies of Isaiah were, like I said, the cornerstone of a faith of generations of people. Generations upon generations of people held to the promises that Isaiah brought to these people who would never hear him. And so we know that the Lord did unbelievable and great things through Isaiah, but here and now, the whole entirety of his calling was simply tell people of the destruction of Israel and any hope that you speak to is being saved for the generations to come, what he's telling them is, hey, look, you're not going to get to say anything of hope to these people. And all hope that it will ever come as a product of you obeying me is going to come in generations that you will not get to experience. So I'm asking you to live a life of obedience where you won't get to see or experience any or nearly any fruit or joy. And yet, Isaiah receives this seemingly joyless and seemingly fruitless call to abide, and he chooses to answer it faithfully. We know because there's not just six books in Isaiah that he didn't walk away. He didn't point to Nate and say, hey, he's your guy. Remember the beard thing that I said? He stepped up and he said yes. And so the question that I'm left asking when I read and I encounter this story is this. What compelled Isaiah to abide? What compelled him to say yes with seemingly little to no reward on the table? What sustained him to continue to say yes even as times got hard and he was overcome by weariness? When it was difficult, when it was frustrating, when he didn't see any joys or any fruit coming from his obedience, how was he sustained? How did he continue to abide? What compelled Isaiah to abide? The more I thought about this question, the more it brought up a different question for me that I think helped me to understand maybe why he was compelled. And that is to ask the question, what compels someone to be a parent? What compels someone to become a parent? And what compels someone to wake up every day and continue to walk into the obedience of being a parent? Because let's give this timeline. Right now, I'm getting to just walk through a lot of different things you know I work with kids and students so I get to experience parents of of those children I have I am a I am a person myself that has parents and so I get to see them continuing to be parents it's also a fun and joyful time as friends and family are having children or or are announcing I mean, we have like four or five babies coming in October. So like, it's been fresh on the brain. I promise you, I'm not like using this as like our like, hey, we have an announcement for you. I'm not doing any of that. But because in light of so many people becoming pregnant and so many people having children that are in and around our lives, I've just been thinking a lot about this and a lot about this question of what compels them to become parents. And then separately, what compels someone who is a parent to continue to walk in the obedience of being a parent. And so as a timeline, you've got, you find out, you and your husband, you and your wife, you find out we're pregnant. There's excitement, there's popping balloons that have a specific color in them, pink or blue, you know. Gender reveal parties is, you know. I saw no one seemingly understood that, and I was like, well, yeah. It's like, oh, yeah, you pop balloons? Yeah. Different than when I was younger. But your excitement and all of that, it instantly and immediately turns to kind of thinking and dreaming, all right, what's this going to be like? What's this kid going to be like? You're anticipating, man, I think these are probably universal, so I'll just give a couple. Probably going to be a huge Atlanta Hawks fan. And it doesn't matter how little Trey Young passes the ball, we're going to support him as long as he's there. Me and my son or my daughter that I'll have. You know, we're going to pull as hard as we can against Boston sports teams. We don't like them, and my kid's not going to like them, you know, because if the Lord gives me a child, that's what they're going to be like. They're going to love ping pong. We're going to both cry watching Bluey because of how moved we are by it. And the child's going to hopefully be as much like Ashlyn as they possibly can be. Because otherwise, uh-oh. But as silly as some of those are, like, in all seriousness, every parent-to-be, I know it. I've talked to you. I've heard your experiences. Every parent-to-be has anticipations and has expectations of what life is going to be and the joys and the blessings that are going to come on the other side of life with a child. But here's what else I've learned. It doesn't take very long of being a parent to realize that almost all of your expectations were wrong. A child's a lot different than you ever thought it would be. And if we're being honest, oftentimes it's a lot less full of blessing than it is just incredibly difficult and oftentimes incredibly thankless to be a parent. We anticipate the glory and the joys and many days we're met with something that's much less glorious and much less joyful. I see based on like the age of the parents there's like bigger nods and less big nods but we know this. We've experienced this. Even those who didn't have kids we we know how we were growing up. And we know that we sometimes were the reason why it was a lot more difficult for our parents than probably they anticipated. And yet, parents, as each day comes, they continue to serve and to love their kids. They continue to step into the obedience of their call to be a parent, even while knowing and being completely aware of the fact that it might be incredibly difficult and you might not experience a single reward for that day. And so I ask again, what compels you to be a parent? Clearly it's not the hope of what's to come and the joys that each day brings. Because if it were, on those difficult days, you would just throw in the towel and be like, well, this isn't what I was anticipating. And since the only reason I'm doing this, the only reason I'm compelled to do this is what it brings for me, I think I'm done. But you don't do that. Day in and day out, you love and you serve your child regardless of what comes of that day. The answer seems to be pretty universal. I'm sorry, I lost my place. Here we are. The answer seems to be universal. What seems to be the truth that I have continued to understand and I've continued to hear, regardless of the age of the parent or the stage of life they're in, is this. What compels you is your child. What compels you is your children. It's that first moment that you encountered them. That first moment in the hospital when you held that baby in your hands and you looked at him face to face and you experienced the depth of a love that you never knew was possible or could exist. And in that moment, you were just so overcome with that love and so unbelievably just mind-blown that you could ever have been a part of something so beautiful and so magnificent. A love that doesn't feel like you deserve it, but nonetheless a love that is wholly and completely yours. And as you gaze upon the face of that child for the first time in every time, all hopes of future glory, future blessings, future joys, all anticipations of what this kid is going to be like and what my life is going to be like while I have this kid, all of those things fade away because there is no hope of future joy that could ever compare to the joy that is in this love that I have for my child. And so regardless of how good or bad, how easy or how difficult, every day I am compelled to love and serve my child. Because I have been given a love by their existence that is different and deeper than any love I've ever experienced before or after. And that love is what compels you the first time, the 50th time, every time. And as you know, especially in the parents in the room, as you know and understand, yep, he's right. I know the exact depth of that love. I think if we turn that around, what we know and what we recognize and what we understand is that it's a similar experience to what Isaiah experienced. Because Isaiah experienced the fullness of God's love and the depth of God's goodness. The creator of the universe made a way for Isaiah to be in his glorious presence, free was the glory and the goodness of God that compelled Isaiah to abide. And not only that, it sustained him in his obedience in good times and in bad. The glory and goodness of God both compelled Isaiah to abide and sustained him in the obedience and good times and the bad. If I can borrow and switch up a quote that I read actually this morning on a t-shirt from Timothy Keller, Isaiah may not have seen the fruit of his obedience, but he saw God, and that was enough. And so, as we come to a close, my question for you is this. What compels you to abide? Like Isaiah, are you compelled by the goodness and the glory of God to continue to walk into obedience? Or are you compelled by the blessings and the joys that you hope come as a product of your obedience. Just as anyone who has been a parent for any length of time knows, you can't lean on anything except for the love of your child because there's too many tough and too many difficult days and there's not going to be enough rewards each day to sustain you. Anyone who has been a Christian or who has walked with Christ for any length of time knows, you can hope and you can anticipate and you can expect as much as you want. But almost never does life turn out the way that you anticipate. And unfortunately, maybe, at times, it's a lot less glorious. At times, in our obedience, we don't get to see their fruit. As we try to share Christ with a friend, they never want to come to our church. We don't get to walk them into the salvation that we were hoping would be our call. Sometimes the blessings we hope will come as a result of our obedience don't come. We don't get the job that we prayed for. Another month comes and we're not pregnant. Sometimes we still feel the weight of depression and anxiety. And if we are compelled only by the product of what God gives us, if we abide, then we'll simply find ourself wanting and weary and probably just compelled to walk away. But instead, if our affection is set upon the glory and the goodness of God, and our hope is rooted in our salvation in Christ, then like Isaiah, we can declare, here am I, send me in any circumstance. And when we do so, we enter into the will of God, his good, pleasing, and perfect will, and the eternal joy that he offers us freely. And so I just want to, I'd like to just close with a send off. Grace. Seek the glory of God and marvel at his love and the goodness of his salvation today, tomorrow, and every day you're given. Let's pray. God, nothing compares to the goodness and glory and love that you've given us. Lord, I just come to you now and say I'm sorry that I looked for more because there's none to be found. Lord, as I take steps of obedience, as I grow in faith, as all of us walk in our faith, allow us to rest our hope not in what you have in store for us, but the fact that you have forgiven and redeemed us and that we can have an eternal connection and relationship with you and compel us to abide. We love you. Amen.

All right. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. First things first, to my Wolfpack friends, no jokes this morning. Well done. That was a fun run. You guys should have enjoyed that. I hope you had fun. I'm sorry it ended with an 8'11 buzzsaw yesterday, but that was a good run, lots of fun. I tried, just so you know, I pulled out, I have one shirt that's Wolfpack colors, a black and red flannel. I pulled it out this morning, and I'm fat, so I had to switch it out to the big boy shirt, but I was with you in spirit, I promise. Also, before I jump into the sermon, I don't normally do this, but there's something coming up I want to tell you about, and I want to tell you about it because of what's been going on, excuse me, kind of behind the scenes in discussions with our missions committee and on our elder board. So you probably heard Aaron say a few minutes ago something that we say regularly, which is 10% of everything that's given goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. It's our conviction to be generous as we ask you to be generous. And so the missions committee, which predates me, that was here before I got here, is the group of people from the church with a heart and experience in missions who determines where that 10% goes. They determine who we partner with. So we have three local partners and three international partners, and they're the ones that make sure that we're partnering with the right people in the right ways. And one of the things that they've been talking about, and one of the things that the elder board has been talking about, and so as two separate bodies, we've been talking about this together, is how can we get the partners of grace, you guys, more involved with our ministry partners beyond just passively giving and seeing 10% of that go to ministries outside the walls of grace. And so we've been actively looking for opportunities for our partners, church partners, to get involved with our ministry partners outside the walls. And so we've got that opportunity coming up next Sunday. Addis Jamari is one of our ministry partners that we support. They're doing wonderful work with families and orphans in Ethiopia. The thing that's near and dear to my heart is poverty is so pressing there that when a young family or a young mother has a child, she's very often faced with the decision of, do we give this baby up for adoption because we can't afford it, or do we lose our home or lose something else? Do we keep this baby because we're not sure that we can feed it? Which, to my knowledge, no one in faced that choice that's an excruciating decision and so by supporting them we're able to provide those mothers the resources they need to to keep their babies at home and not have to give them up for adoption which is a huge huge deal so to that end as we seek to continue to support at a story there's a trip this summer some of the teens are going and beyond the teens we have three adults from our church who are also going and so there's a fundraiser for that trip and it's a trip this summer. Some of the teens are going. And beyond the teens, we have three adults from our church who are also going. And so there's a fundraiser for that trip, and it's a way to get involved. There's a barbecue next Sunday. Wes, where is the barbecue? It's at Falls River Slim Club. That's right. Okay, so Falls River, the Greenway Club over at Falls River. There's a barbecue. You can go there. You can get some food. You can take it home, watch the Masters. You can also contribute food to that, and you can just show up and volunteer. It'll probably be a good place to hang out. There's more information about that in the Grace Vine, and you can talk to Wes after. He's one of our elders, and he happens to be married to the lady running the joint, so he knows more answers than I do. So I just wanted you guys to be aware of that as an opportunity for us to begin to partner with our ministry partners. Now, as Mike alluded to, this morning we are starting a new series called The Treasury of Isaiah. I am particularly excited about this series because I think this series was Jen's idea. Jen's my wife. I think it was her idea back in the fall when I was asking her what we should talk about, and she said you should do some stuff out of Isaiah. And that's tough because Isaiah is 66 books. It's a book of prophecy in the Old Testament. It's got all the themes of prophecy in it, and it's 66 books long. And if I tried to preach through the book of Isaiah, you guys would probably find another church, and I would probably find a new job. So I don't think that's what we can do. But there's so many wonderful, rich texts in this book that what this series gives us an opportunity to do is to dive into those and begin to learn them and see them and appreciate what they are because we don't often spend time in Isaiah on a Sunday morning. So we're going to do that for the next seven weeks. Now next week, I'm going to work to give you an overview of the role of a prophet and prophecy and what it is. And we'll look at a big sweeping view of the messianic prophecies in Isaiah, the prophecies about Jesus. But before I can even do that, I have to jump into this text in Isaiah chapter 1. If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I hope you're bringing your Bibles, I hope you're marking them up. This is a mark-up passage. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. In Isaiah chapter 1, we have these nine verses in Isaiah 10 through 18. And I know that I say that things are my favorite, but this is, and I mean this without equivocation, my favorite passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah. Okay? Maybe in the Bible, but definitely Isaiah. And I'm not even interested in approaching the rest of the book before we talk about this because I love the deep conviction of this passage. This passage kicks you right in the teeth. If you didn't come for that this morning, I'm sorry a little bit. But we see God speaking to his people in this passage about as harshly as you see him speak. And I'm the kind of person that needs you to do that to me or I'm not going to listen. So I love this passage. I love the conviction of it. I love the challenge of it. I love the relief of it. And in this passage, we find the very nature of the gospel. So my hope and prayer is that this passage can become for some of you what it has been for me for so many years. This is a hugely important passage. For just the slightest bit of context before I start to read it, this book is written to God's people, to the Hebrew people, to the Israelites. It is written to them at a time when they are spiraling morally away from God, when they have lost their way. And the role of the prophet Isaiah is to convict God's people. And that will become a very clear goal of his as we read this text. But God's chosen people, they have every reason to be following God. They know are they to me, says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of your blood? Listen. your worthless assemblies, your new moon feasts and your appointed festivals. Listen, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Yo, God is big mad at his people. He's incredibly angry at his people. You can tell it with the way he starts off because he says, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, you people of Gomorrah. Listen, Sodom and Gomorrah to the ancient Hebrew mind were synonymous with evil. Those cities represented what evil was. It would be like calling a conservative Southern Baptist the mayor of Las Vegas. All right. It's it's when they think of that place, they think of sin and evil and debauchery. And they think of themselves as a shining people city on the hill. We are the chosen people of God. And guys go, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen, you sinners. Listen, you evildoers. You've lost your way. And then he goes down and he details for them. Here's what's interesting. He's not mad at them for the traditional sins that we would think of God being angry about. He doesn't say you're debaucherous, you're gluttonous, you're filled with lust, you're sleeping around, you're selfish, you're greedy, you're hoarding, you're oppressing the poor, you're mean and unkind to one another. He doesn't say those things. He actually gets onto them for doing things that he's asked them to do. Did you catch that? Look. He says, God, you asked us to give these sacrifices. The blood of bulls and lambs and goats, they mean nothing to me. God, you asked us to do that, he says, I detest them. They are a burden to me. It wears me out to have to deal with you when you show up on Easter. These are harsh words from God. And the question worth asking, if God is this angry with his people, then why does God hate the very actions he's prescribed? They were told to do those things. There's a whole book, the book of Leviticus, that details in painstaking detail exactly what they're supposed to do. If you've ever tried to read through the Bible in a year, two-thirds of you stopped in Leviticus. And it was because the book of Leviticus is laying out all of these things. When do we offer incense? When do we offer prayers? When do we offer sacrifices? What kind? When? Bulls and lambs and goats. When do we do that? When are the calling of convocation? New moons, new Sabbath, all the festivals? How do we do those? That's all in Leviticus. God has given them in detailed instruction exactly what he wants them to do. And now here in the book of Isaiah, he is raining down fire on them for doing those things. So why is it that God hates the very actions that he's prescribed? Because what God wants is the heart behind those actions, not the letter of the law and the actions themselves. We are told by David that God can despise sacrifices, but a fearful and contrite heart he will not despise. That God requires mercy and brokenheartedness, not sacrifice. God is interested in the heart behind the actions and the motives behind the obedience. He wants to see day in and day out that they actually love him and care for him, not just when they show up at church and go through the motions. I think of it like this, how the people of Israel were acting and what God was frustrated about. When I was in college, I think Jen and I started dating when we were, I was 20. So somewhere around the age of 20, 21. We're dating. And I had not really been in a serious relationship before this. I had been in relationships, but they weren't serious. And I didn't really know how to be in a relationship. I'm still not positive that I do. I think it involves vacuuming. And so we're dating. She knew how to be in a relationship. And she looked at me one day and she said, I can tell something's wrong and I'm kind of probing. And eventually she just says, I just don't feel very special to you. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. You are. So I don't really know how I handled that conversation. But we parted ways. She went back to her dorm, and I went back to my dorm. I lived in an on-campus house named Beulah. She lived in a small women's dorm named Troy Damron, and they were kind of reasonably close to one another. I went back, and I thought, gosh, my girlfriend doesn't feel special to me. I need to figure something out here. So I came up with a plan. I went to Walmart, and I bought a king-size bed sheet. And this is not going where you think it's going. This is a Christian college. So I got a king-size bed sheet, and I lay it out on the living room floor. And my roommates are watching me do this, and I trace out in big block letters, Jen, you are very special to me. Love, Nate. I draw it out, and then I get the Crayola markers, and I'm coloring it in. I went through a whole pack. I was up to like 2 or 2.30 a.m. This is painstaking work here that I do, and then I sneak over to her dorm. We still have the sheet somewhere. I know that we own it. It's somewhere. I went over to her dorm and I tack it to the pillars on her front porch. So it's facing the front door. So everyone who comes out that door, the seven or eight girls that live there, they will see that clearly Jen is special to Nate and she will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what she means to me now. Let me tell you something. That did not get the response I thought it would. It turns out that what Jen wanted was for me, through the little things of day-to-day life, to indicate to her that I cared about her, that she was special to me. What she didn't want was a big, dumb, grand gesture with block letters that would provide sermon illustrations for decades to come. What they were offering God is the block letters. You are special to me, God. Happy? And God says, no, absolutely not. And what they were guilty of doing, and this is why God is coming down on them so hard, is they were going through the motions. They were going through the motions of their faith. They were doing the bare minimum required of them to be seen as in the faith. We're still good. I'm doing my sacrifices, God. I'm coming to the special assemblies. You know, can't make it every week, but Christmas and Easter, I'm your guy. And they were just going through whatever they decided was the bare minimum of what their faith required of them to prove to God and whoever else that they were in. And it's interesting to me that in the corporate world, we now actually have a term for this. It's a new term that we've been blessed with by the Gen Zers called silent quitting, where people who have corporate jobs understand that HR, God bless them, can sometimes make it really difficult to fire your butt when you deserve it. And they realize that they have some job security, not going anywhere, so they make a conscious decision to put in the minimal amount of effort possible that will still allow them to keep their job and collect a paycheck, while fairly clearly communicating to everyone around them, I couldn't care less about this job. Just in it for the check. Doesn't mean anything to me. Now, I know that's a harsh way of depicting that, and I do actually see some positives to it, but I'm not making a joke. I think work-life balance got ridiculous, and the next generation is course-correcting for us a little bit. It's just going to be wonky. Anyway, sorry, that's social commentary. What God is telling the Israelites is, you're silent quitting on me. You're putting in the least amount of effort possible to still appear as if you're a people of faith. But you don't really care about me and what I've asked you to do and where your heart should be. And if you are at all like me, in my old Bible, I had a note next to these verses that said, Dear God, please don't ever get this angry with me. I never want to give God a reason to be this frustrated with me. That he says to me that when you bow your head to pray for me, to pray to me, I will not listen to you. When you come to church, you are trampling my courts. When you get up on Sunday and you put on your church finest and you show up at church, it is a burden to me. I am weary of your hypocrisy when you show up and pretend like you love me. And I want to write, God, please never be this angry with grace. And if you're like me, you're wondering, when and how do I go through the motions? When and how in my faith have I simply been giving God lip service? When and how have I silently quit on my faith? When the things I'm doing are just to be seen, are just to be considered in. I thought about enumerating the ways we can go through the motions. But I really think the more interesting thing to bring up when we consider how we might do this is to think about two things. I know for me, if I want to be honest about examining my life, about when I'm going through the motions of my faith, when I'm giving God the actions but not my heart, is to think through what motivates me when I do spiritual things. When I get up in the morning early to read my Bible? Am I getting up to read it so that I can check a box and say I've been spiritual today? Or am I getting up to read it because I just want to know the heart of God more? Because I'm curious about the scripture and I want to dive in in a fresh way. Do I get up to read it so that my Bible can be on my desk and my daughter can come down the stairs and see it there and I get the good dad award for today? Or am I doing it because I want to pursue the very heart of God? When I listen to worship music in the morning with Lily in the car, am I doing it so that she thinks daddy listens to worship music in the morning? Or am I doing it because that's what sets my heart right for my day? When we go to Bible study, we attend small group. Am I doing that because I want the people around me to think that I'm spiritual and I'm the kind of person who reads my Bible and attends small group? Or am I doing it because I want to be spiritually nourished by my community of faith? When you come to church, are you doing it because you're supposed to and there's somebody that you want to see and you want to keep up appearances? Or are you doing it, are you getting out of the car with the thought, God, speak to my heart and move me closer to you today? When you perform spiritual actions, prayer for a service, prayer before a meal, leading a small group, attending a small group, showing up and partnering and serving with something in the community, what is motivating that service? Is it the way that service will make you appear? Is it how it positions you in the eyes of others? Or is it because you can't help but serve your God? Let me tell you. When we do spiritual things for the way it makes us look to other people, we are going through the motions, and our hypocrisy is burdensome and wearying to God. The other thing that we think about to assess if we're going through the motions. Can I say with authenticity that I'm the same person on Friday night that I am on Sunday morning? Is there one version of me that everyone in my life sees? And you see it on Sunday morning. You see it on Monday afternoon. You see it when my kids are driving me nuts. You see it on Friday night and I've got some freedom and I can cut loose. You see it on Saturday at the tailgate. Am I the same person everywhere I go? Or do I put on different faces for different people to appear in different ways at different times? Because if we are not the same person in all of the pockets and circles of our life, then somewhere we're going through the motions. Either we're faking being like the world, and we don't really mean it, or we're faking being godly, and we don't really mean that. And normally, people who are walking with Jesus and zealous about him don't bother faking it for the world. What motivates your spiritual actions? How consistent is your character with the people that you see? Are there different versions of you? Because if there are, you might be going through the motions too. And this temptation to go through the motions of our faith without meaning it with sincerity, without being properly motivated, is a trap into which the historical church has fallen in over and over again. There is not a single person here who's been a Christian for more than three days who has not at some point gone through the motions. You may be sitting right now in deep conviction, thinking, Father, I've been going through the motions for years. And if you are feeling that, good. I'm not going to disavow you of that. Sit in it. It's helpful. And we should be asking, if all of those things are simply going through the motions, then what things does God want from me? What does he want me to do? What actions does he require of us that can begin to shift our heart towards him and prove to him that we're in this for him? What does God actually want from us? I'm glad you asked because Isaiah answers that question. In verses 16 and 17, he says this, wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. What does God actually want me to do? If he doesn't want me to go to church and pretend, if he doesn't want me to just do sacrifices and tithe and go to small group, what does he actually want me to do? I'll tell you what he wants you to do. He wants you to stop doing evil. Learn to do right. Defend the cause of the oppressed. Seek justice. Defend the widow and the orphan. Care for those who can't care for themselves. That's what he wants his Christians to do. That's what he wants his children to do. He wants you to go do the things you can't fake. Go do the stuff you have to really mean. And listen, this verse 16 and 17, this resolution, stop going through the motions. Stop faking your faith. Stop being insincere and burdening me with your hypocrisy. Go and do what I actually want you to do. And what is it that he actually wants us to do? It's to defend the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow. It's to pursue justice and correct oppression. And I don't know of sitting with a group of men Friday morning talking about this topic and I became so frustrated with how I was taught my faith because I don't know where we decoupled justice and defending the cause of the fatherless and the widow and caring for those who can't care for themselves. I don't know where we decoupled that from the message of the gospel, but somewhere along the way in our churches, we made it optional and it's not. James tells us at the end of the Bible, true religion that is pure and undefiled before the Lord is to do this, is to take care of the widows and the orphans. Why is it widows and orphans? Because in the ancient world, those two were down and out. If you're an orphan, they did not have orphanages that you could go to that would feed you and care for you until you were 18 and send you to college. You begged in the street until you died. If you were a widow, your husband had died, and you did not have children to care for you and bring you into their home, you begged until you died. There's no social safety net. So when God says care for the orphan and the widow, does he mean specifically them? Yes, and he still does. But what he really means is those who can't care for themselves. That's why in the laws in the Old Testament over and over again, we see this principle of gleaning. When you're plowing your fields, leave the corners of them unharvested so that the sojourner, the alien, the homeless, the oppressed, the marginalized, the widow and the orphan can eat off of your field. That's theirs and it actually belongs to them. And if you harvest all of your field, then you're actually stealing from the oppressed and participating in the oppression. I'm not going to belabor this point too much because we may have a whole series about this coming up. But whenever we see the heart of God revealed, it is always for those who have less than us. When you see the idea of giving in the New Testament, it is almost always associated with giving to the poor. When you see Jesus handle the poor, he says, whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me. When Jesus begins his ministry, he goes to the poor, blessed the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. You see him caring for the oppressed. So if we want to do the things that God really wants us to do, then we have to, in a non-nebulous, very specific way, get involved with caring for those who can't care for themselves. Go to the Ades Jumari thing next week. Dip your toe in it. See what it's like. Start to talk to people in your community and find out how you can be a part of that. This is not a theoretical, metaphoric instruction. This is a literal instruction. That if we are guilty of going through the motions and the thing that God wants us to do is to care for those who can't care for themselves. So let's get active about that. Now here's the thing that I love about this passage. Because you might be thinking to yourself, why is this one your favorite? This is a little rough. Here's why. Because it doesn't end in verse 17. In verses 10 through 15 we have this tremendous conviction. You're going through the motions and your hypocrisy is burdensome to me. I'm weary of you. And then in 16 and 17, we have this very high challenge. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Stop being dumb. Learn to be good. Go and do it. What do I want you to do? I want you to care for the poor. Go care for the poor. Go. But then we get verse 18. And verse 18 is the best. And verse 18 kind of, to me, feels like this. Sometimes in my home, my daughter Lily and I can clash. We're very similar. And that means that sometimes our words get sharp. And sometimes there's a little battle of will about whose words are going to be louder. And I win those. But sometimes I wish I hadn't. And whenever we clash, whenever she's gotten in trouble and she feels bad, I always go find her or she'll come to me and I'll pull her alongside of me and I'll hug her and I'll kiss her little head and I'll say, I love you. I'm proud of you. It's going to be okay. You're going to do better. I'm going to do better. Because I don't want it to end with the conviction and the challenge. I want to call her alongside and I want to comfort her. And when I read verse 18, to me it has the tone of God coming alongside us, putting his arm around us, and telling us it's going to be okay. Here's what he says in verse 18. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. I love that verse because we experience the conviction of 10 15. And the challenge of 16 to 17 to go make it right. But then in 18, God sidles up next to us, puts his arm around us, comforts us and says, but hey, this isn't all on you. You've messed up, sure. But though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. How does he do that? Through shedding the blood of his own son that's prophesied about later in this book. So that when God looks at you, he doesn't see all the times you've walked through the motions. He doesn't see all the times you've failed to help the poor. He doesn't see all of your shortcomings and misgivings. And he is not burdened by you or weary of you. He sees you clothed in the righteousness of Christ and he is happy to pull you up alongside him and put his arm around you. So really, this is the reason why I love this passage. Because Isaiah 1, 10 through 18 is the gospel. It is the gospel. Do you see this? See, I think a big problem with the American church is that we start the gospel message at verse 18. We start the gospel message at verse 18. We begin it right there. Hey, guess what? Jesus died on the cross for you, so you're not accountable for your sins. Hooray. Just accept him and walk with him. And I think that's the reason why we have people going through the motions in their faith. Because all they need to know is, what's the minimum amount I have to do to stay right with God for that salvation to count for me? What are all the things I can do over here that I'll be forgiven for eventually? What's the minimum amount of the things that I need to believe so that I'm in and God loves me and that salvation accounts for me? And what do I have to do? What's the get in the door price for this salvation? Because we started the gospel at verse 18. But when we do that, we cheapen the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel operates in direct proportion of our realization of our need for it. The power of the gospel resonates more deeply with you the more deeply your own sin resonates with you. The more deeply your own shortcomings resonate with you. And that's why we experience the relief of verse 18 because we have the conviction of 10 through 15. Oh my goodness, God is so angry. And then we have the challenge of 16 and 17. Go and start doing right, but God, that's so hard. And then we have the relief of verse 18. And so what I want us to do now is I'm going to read all nine verses in the tone and inflection in which I think they're intended. And we're going to collectively feel the relief of verse 18 when we get there. And you in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who asks this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing me meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. New moon Sabbaths and convocations, I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your new moon feast and your appointed festivals, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. Though they are like crimson, I will make them like wool. That's the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel is to feel deeply the conviction in 10 through 15. And if you're here this morning, I've prayed that you would feel the necessary conviction. If you have been going through the motions, in part or in whole, it's not news to God. Confess it to him. If you're challenged by 16 and 17, and you think honestly about your life, and you go, gosh, I don't know what I'm doing for the poor and the oppressed. I don't know what I'm doing to correct injustice. Then let that conviction determine you to find ways to get involved in that. And then, and then, once we've sat in the conviction and we've sat in the challenge, then sit in the comfort of verse 18 and the gift of the gospel and allow that gratitude from his fullness. We have all received grace upon grace. Allow that grace that has been poured out from you from his fullness that it's not all on you to go do all the right things, but that God is already working in and through you and you are forgiven for the times when you've fallen short. Let the gratitude of that motivate the right behaviors and let the things that look like going through the motions be an outpouring of the faith that you've expressed through helping the poor and seeking justice for the oppressed. But we will never do those things if we do not allow God to bring us to a place of tremendous gratitude and comfort of the words of the gospel and the promise that we can reason together and though our sins are like scarlet, he will make them as white as snow. So I'm going to pray. And as I pray, if you need to pray to God on your own, do that. If you need to confess to God that you've been going through the motions of your faith, confess it. If you need to confess to God, I'm not doing anything for justice or oppression, confess it and ask that he would show you what to do. And if you are not overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the gospel and him covering over your shortcomings, ask God to fill you with gratitude. And if you are filled with gratitude, express that to him. As I pray, you pray, and then we'll have a chance to sing together. Father, thank you for your servant Isaiah. Thank you for the power of your words through him. God, we know that at different times and in different ways, our hypocr forget the conviction, but that we will allow the power of your word to rest on us. Father, I pray for myself and openly confess I go through the motions all the time. But Lord, I pray that you would imbue my actions with a sincerity filled with gratitude. I pray that for the people here as well. God, give us the courage to be convicted and to confess. Show us ways to get involved with what matters most to you. And Lord, would we leave here with just a deep gratitude for your sending your son to cover over our sins. And though they are like scarlet, you will make them white as snow. In Jesus' name, amen.