Sermons tagged with Prayer

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this June Sunday. You guys have packed it out. I thought for a second that you guys were excited about church in June, which is wonderful. But what I've realized is inflation has hit all of us. We're too poor for vacations. So it's going to be a great summer for church. Before I get started, as one of the pastors, I get the opportunity to meet with folks who are new to the church sometimes. And this week I had the opportunity to grab brunch with a couple that's been visiting for a couple of weeks. And they shared with me that on their very first, they were going to look at a bunch of churches, but on their very first visit with Grace, that they struck up a conversation with another couple in the lobby that approached them. And that conversation went so well that they just invited them to lunch. So on their very first visit at Grace, they got invited to lunch and made friends. And I thought that was fantastic. So just sharing that with you, let's be that kind of church, Grace. Now there's a couple of people here for the first time and they're like, but don't, don't be that kind this week. All right. We don't, we would like to go to our own lunch. I'm sure it makes sense in the conversation, but when good things happen, I like to share them with you guys. Last week, we launched into this series called Idols and we looked at kind of how much more given to idolatry in our life we are than we might think we are or might have thought we were. And we talked about this idea that idols can't bear the weight of our worship. And I spent a lot of time saying we shouldn't idolize our children, our families, our spouses, and our communities, different things like that. And I just want to be clear. I meant to say this last week and I didn't say it and I should have. I just forgot. Those are good priorities. It's good to prioritize family and spouse and marriage and even career. That's fine to do that. But they make terrible gods because they can't carry the weight of our worship. And then at the end, I kind of told you what the rest of the series was going to be about. I had somebody tell me before the service started this morning, she was like, I caught up online. I was serving in children's last week and you got to the end about the four source idols, the four invisible idols. And once I listened to that, I did not want to hear the rest of the series. It's like, I was tracking with you on the other ones. Those are fine. I got those in check. And then I talked about the four source idols of power, control, approval, and comfort. And she was like, no thanks. Don't need to hear that. It's going to be too convicting. But it's this idea that there are surface idols. We idolize money. We idolize success. We idolize friends. We idolize whatever. But that idolizing is fueled by a source idol of one of those four things I just mentioned. So we're going to spend the next four weeks, including this week, looking at those different source idols, how they show up in our lives, and what we can do to invite the Holy Spirit into our life to make some space to root those idols out. Five or six years ago, I went with Jen, my wife, to Washington, D.C. with some friends of ours, Heath and Ashley. They flew into Raleigh, and then we drove up together. It was a really great trip. We stayed in an Airbnb. The first night we were there, we looked out the window, and there's this little bar-pub situation going on across the street. And so we said, let's just go over there. It'll be simple. It looks fine. So we walk over there. It was crowded. There was a little bit of a wait. And so I find one of the servers, and I say, hey, how long is the wait, and can we put our name in? And he says, oh, no, we don't do that. It's just first come, first serve. I said, like, free for all? Just, like, grab a table when someone gets up? And he goes, yep. All right. And I found out later it was trivia night. So it was a busy night. So we're kind of standing there waiting for something to pop open. And I excuse myself. I'm going to walk back to the restaurant. I'm going to go use the restroom. In the restroom. Not just in the back of the restaurant. So I'm going'm walking through and I look over and there's this high top table party of three and they're starting to get up there's four seats at the table I'm like perfect so I say are you guys about to get up and they go yeah and I said I'm running to the restroom would you mind waiting when I come back y'all get up we'll take your table and they go that's fine so that's what I did I come back and they see me and they start to get up. As they start to get up, I can see two dudes from either corner of the bar start to center in on this table. Right. So as that guy's, as the dad is getting up, I'm like, thanks very much. And I'll just kind of sit down like there's stuff still on it. They're putting on their jackets. They get their stuff. They move. These two dudes come to my table. And one of them, right off the bat, aggressively says, you can't sit there. That's not your table. That's our table. And I didn't like that. I didn't like that. And so I looked at him, and I said, that's funny, because it looks looks like my table because I'm sitting here. And he said, we've been here. I've watched you walk in. We've been here 30 minutes longer than you waiting for a table. This was the next table up. The right thing to do is to get up and give us this table. So get up. And I said, I don't think so, man. And I'm kind of motioning at my party to come sit down like for in a million years Jen's walking into that situation because I'm trying to tough guy this thing these two dudes are way bigger than me if this goes down it's not going to go well for me and then as I'm doing that they're still giving me lip then the server comes over and he starts clearing off the table. And the guy that was being aggressive says, hey, tell this, words I can't say in church. He said, tell this guy that this is our table. He needs to get up. And the guy said, I don't really get involved with that. Just kind of backs away. He was like, you boys got to figure this out. So he keeps at me. And I said, listen, man, I can acknowledge that you were here before me. I can acknowledge that you probably deserve this table more than I do. And I'll be happy to give it to you if you ask me nicely and say, please. And he said, excuse me and threatened me one more time. And I said, all you got to do is be a nice guy and say, please, and I'll give you this table. And finally, his buddy goes, dude, just say please. And he goes, he goes, all right, would you, would you mind giving us this table, please? And I said, sure, that'd be great. Here you go. Happy to give it to you. Walked off. Jen's shaking her head. Now, now listen, if you listen to that story and your internal monologue was, God, I don't really know if that's how a pastor should be acting. That's kind of, probably should have just had the grace in the moment to get over being slightly offended and let that person have the seat and maybe, you know, like be a grown up. If that's your internal monologue, that there was a better way to handle that, you're right. There was. And I agree with you. I do think, I can admit that story is funny. I am not proud of it. I wished I would have handled it differently. I do not think anyone is listening to that thinking, and through Nate would spread the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ in that particular instance. If you listen to that story and you loved it, and you were like, yeah, tell them, don't move, make them say please, make them pay you for the table. If you're thinking about what you would have done in that situation and you would have been equally upset, you need to pay attention this morning as we explore the idol of power in our lives. This idol of power, I told you last week I had to admit that it was mine. I didn't want to admit it. Because it sounds like you want to be in charge of everything all the time. And that's really not what it is. That's part of what it is. But what it's really about is we just don't want to be told what to do. Just don't tell me what to do. If you know anything about me, you know I do not want to be told what to do. Karen Lotta got me a mug. I drink out of it at least once a week that says, I was going to do that. And then you told me to. All right. If that's you, then like me, you struggle with the idolatry of power, of being in charge, of being the guy, of being respected. It doesn't mean you have to be the boss everywhere you go, but there's certain pockets in certain places where you're just not going to put up with it. And here's how you can really tell if power is the idol with which you struggle deeply. The manifesting sin of power is anger. The manifesting sin of power is being angry, is having these flashes of anger that cause you to do and say things that you wish you could take back. I acted that way in that restaurant in D.C. because I was made angry, because he had the guts to tell me what to do. And until he acknowledged who had the power, I was not going to back down. It was immature and gross, but that's what was happening there. The besetting sin of power is to be someone who is angry whenever that power and that license and that freedom is threatened. And anger, we know, is a terrible thing to have festering in our lives. If you are someone who struggles like I do with being more angry than we should be sometimes, then you know experientially and intuitively that what James says about anger in chapter one of his book, I believe verse 16, is true. When James says about anger in chapter one of his book, I believe verse 16 is true. When James says, my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. Everyone, oh 19, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. And then in the next verse, he tells you why. Because anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry because anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. Now listen, most of you in this room, because I know you, I know that you've been Christians for a while. And so a lot of the big sins, the big stuff that we shouldn't do, you've got that in check, and that's good. But for some of you in the room, maybe even most of us, if I were to ask you, what moments in the last month or two do you wish you could get back? What moments in the last year or two or decade do you wish you could have back and redo them and get again and do them right? If I were to ask you that question and you go to those moments that you wish you had back, I'd be willing to bet that for most of us, what flashed in those moments was anger that we didn't handle well. For most of us, what happened in that was we became angry and then we acted out in a way that we wish we could go take back and have a more level head about. I know that that's the case for me. And see, here's the thing about anger, and this is why we're told to avoid it at all costs. Because unchecked anger will unravel your life. Unchecked anger that you are not dealing with. Listen to me, if you are a person who is prone to anger, who just snaps, and you'll snap at your kids, you'll snap at your co- coworkers, you'll snap at your spouse, you'll snap at the guy driving down the road, and you'll stop singing a praise song to cuss at that person. If that's you, you deal with anger. And I know because I am one, and I have to keep a check on this. But let me tell you something. If you deal with anger in your life, unchecked anger that we don't allow the Holy Spirit to root out of our life will absolutely cause our lives to unravel. How many of us know a dude, it's almost always a dude, who has a power idol that manifests itself in anger? And because that anger is always brimming under the surface, his kids have distanced themselves from him. His wife has distanced herself from him. His coworkers or his employees do not trust him. And sometimes that unravels into alcoholism to mitigate the anger. Sometimes that unravels into divorce or separation. How many of us can tell a story of a life that unraveled because there was unchecked anger there? So if this is us, if this is our besetting sin, we need to listen and pay attention. I think there is no better example of an angry life unraveling in Scripture than that of King Saul. So if you have a Bible, I want to encourage you to open to 1 Samuel 18. We're going to be in 1 Samuel 18, 19, 22, and 28. We're going to hit some highlights here. So if you have a Bible, be flipping with me so as I give a little bit of context, you can see that context as well. If you're a note taker, there is a point in your notes before the verses start. I'm just going to move that point down below the verses. So we'll get to it. We'll jump back and fill that out. Don't freak out. But let's look at the life of Saul. Now Saul is one of the most tragic figures in the Bible, I think. Because Saul was the first king of Israel. He was anointed by God through the prophet Samuel. And he had the whole world at his feet. If you really think about it, it should be the star of Saul flying over Israel now. It's not. It's David. It could have been the throne of Saul that Jesus would ascend to. It's not. It's David's. Because Saul's life unraveled. And I would contend with you that it unraveled because of anger produced by his idolizing power. So we pick up the story in chapter 18. Chapter 17 is David slaying Goliath. Then the story kind of picks up and people have started to really like David. He's coming to national prominence. And Saul one day hears this song. Saul has slayed his thousands. David has slayed his tens of thousands. It's always a joke. I'm sure in Hebrew it flows better than that. But that was the song. And this really angered Saul. And here's his reaction and he hurled it saying to himself I'll pin David to the wall, but David eluded him twice Saul was afraid of David. What else could he take but my kingdom? This is my kingdom. This is my identity. I'm in charge here. That's disrespectful to me. This is mine, mine, mine. David is not going to come tell me what to do in my kingdom. I will not give up this rule. I have to protect my power. You see? And so he tries in a fit of rage to kill David. Doesn't work. David eludes him twice. And then he does what kings have done for millennia. He kind of exiles him for a period of time. Leaders of countries have been doing this for centuries. Someone upsets them. Someone in their court is causing too much trouble or noise. You're now the ambassador of Croatia. Go have fun. Get away from court. You're now going to lead these troops in this far-flung territory where we will forget about you. Go. And so his anger caused him to exile David to remove the problem. Well, the problem was David kept having success. And so we see the next highlight in chapter 19, verses 9 and 10. Saul has decided by now he's going to kill David. Jonathan, Saul's son, the heir apparent, is very good friends with David and talks Saul out of trying to kill David. David's a good man, don't kill him. And Saul says, I promise that I won't. But then this happens in verse 9 when David comes back. But an evil spirit from the Lord 20, you see that Saul becomes determined to kill David. Now it's a cold-blooded plot to kill him. It's not in the heat of the moment. It's not just, I'm so mad right now. It's no, no, no. I am going to end this threat to my reign and to my power. And so he begins to pursue David through the wilderness. In chapter 20, what we see is that Jonathan and David have worked out this scheme where Jonathan's going to give David an indication, you have to flee. My father is dead set on killing you. And so David flees and he goes. And in this fleeing, Saul spends the rest of his adult life pursuing David. We're talking about a 10, 15, 20 year period of time where Saul's rage and anger is fueling his life. He is on a singular quest to kill David. It's like one of those dumb movies with Liam Neeson where something bad happens to his family, and the rest of the movie is just rage-filled revenge. He said, this is bad and actually happened. So he's chasing David all through the countryside. And at one point, David goes into this temple, and the priest at the temple helps David and his men, feeds him with the bread that was supposed to be given to God, but it was okay in that instance. I won't get into why. And then he gives David Goliath's sword, and they move on. Well, Saul is hot on the trail of David, and he goes in there, and he finds out that this priest has been helping him. And you can imagine how he responds in chapter 22 verses 16 and 17. But the king said, you will surely die Ahimelech, you and your whole family. Ahimelech was the head priest in this particular temple. Then the king ordered the guards at his side, turn and kill the priests of the Lord because they too have sided with David. They knew he was fleeing, yet they did not tell me. If you keep reading, what you see is that the king's officials didn't want to have anything to do with that. They did not want to kill these defenseless priests. So Saul turns to someone who would, apparently, Doeg the Edomite. If you're pregnant, you're looking for a boy name, Doeg. Great. Doeg, I don't know, kills in cold blood 85 priests at the word and the bidding of Saul. His rage has now spilled over where he's killing 85 innocent men because they sided with his enemy. And we can see his life spiraling towards unraveling. And then in 28, we have one of the most curious conversations in scripture where Saul goes to see the witch of Endor, a medium, and somehow or another has a conversation with the soul of Samuel. Now, what I'd like to do is spend the next 12 minutes explaining to you exactly what happened and that I understand it. I'm kidding. I have no idea. I don't understand this chapter. I don't know how we talk to mediums and how he's talking to the soul of Samuel. But this is what happens. And's this powerful king. He goes to see a witch, and he's laying prostrate on the ground with nothing left in him, so much so that his men worry about him and have to carry him out. The next day, he dies on the battlefield along with his sons, just like Samuel said he would. It is a picture of a life completely unraveled because he allowed his anger to exist in him unchecked. And what I want you to see from the story of Saul that we can relate to is when power is our idol. Being the king of our kingdom becomes our identity. When power is our idol, when you will respect my authority, you will respect who I am, you will not tell me what to do. When power is our idol, we take on the identity as the king of our small kingdom or the queen of our small kingdom. And so when someone comes into your workplace and they threaten your expertise, they question you. They think you don't know what you're doing. No, no, this is my kingdom, and now we're mad because you're threatening me. When someone's hired and you think they're going to take your position, and so you become adversarial with them, that's you being the king of your kingdom. If you run a business, you have employees, and one of them gets out of line with you and you take personal offense at that. It could be you just being angry because you're the king of your own kingdom. And we see and saw what he was really mad about was David was threatening his identity. He was threatening who he thought he was. And when you have a power idol, when people question you in your kingdom, that really makes you mad. Let me tell you how I know this is true. This has been something for me and parenthood that's become so important. So parents, if you're in the thick of it right now, if you have children in your home, I'm speaking specifically to you. I would like to share with you something I've learned about my anger and frustration towards my children. There are times when your children say disrespectful things to you. Things that you don't deserve. They say things in anger. They flash hot. They lash out. They disrespect. In southern terms, they show their tail. And let me just tell you, when my kids get mouthy with me and start saying stuff that I would never say to my parents, I get real hot, real fast. I start to do the, hey, uh-uh. You will not talk to me that way in my house. What does that even mean? In my house. Oh, tough guy. It's the banks, dude. For like 27 more years. To come off it. But I flash hot. And I get mad. And I put them back in line. And I think back to my childhood. Because in our house, we don't spank. Maybe I'll regret that choice. But we don't do that. We just try to go about things in other ways. But growing up, they did not share that policy. And if I said some of the stuff that my kids say to me, to my dad, my tail would have been worn out. My dad was the, he was, he perfected the slap and grab in the four seat car. The no look, slap and grab right on my thigh, slap it, squeeze it as hard as you could. I'm writhing in pain. And you know what I did? I shut up, is what I did. It's masterful. But here's what I would ask you, parents. When your kid says something disrespectful to you, bosses, when your employees say something disrespectful to you, and you get hot, you get angry. What's fueling that anger? Is what's fueling that, because for me, when Lily says something to me that she shouldn't say, and I get hot, I'm not angry because, oh, baby girl, I just want you to grow up to be better than that and manage your emotions, and I've told you this so many times, and I really want to help you manage your big emotions. I know you have big feelings, but you've got to learn to manage those. And it's fueling my anger because I'm just so frustrated with watching you trip over yourself like this and you don't have to do that anymore and there's a better way. Is that what's fueling my anger? No. What's fueling my anger is you better get right because I'm the boss here. You're not. My voice is louder than yours. You want to find out? I'll make it. Parents, how hypocritical is it of us to yell at our children for not managing their emotions well? What the heck are you doing? You verbal bully. That's what I do. When anger flashes like that, it's really helpful to stop and go, where is this coming from? Am I angry because I want them to do better or am I angry because I've been disrespected in my kingdom? And if it's the second, grow up. Get over it. Give grace. Let them have the table. When you're an employer and an employee says something to you that you don't care for, are you upset because they had the audacity to question your authority at work? Probably so. And that's not good. That's us protecting our kingdom. When your spouse asks you a question and you flash hot at them, a lot of times it's because they're questioning us and we don't care for it in our kingdom. And so if that's you, if this is something that you struggle with, if anger is a part of who you are, what do we do? How do we allow the Holy Spirit to begin to remove this idol of power in our life? I think it's as we can't just say, hey, just stop being mad. That's not going to help. So what do we need to do? How do we think about things? I think we think about it like this. Just let Jesus be the king of his kingdom. Just let Jesus be the king of his kingdom. You don't have to be the king of any kingdom. Just let Jesus be the king of the kingdom. Just acknowledge it's not yours anyways. You don't have one, and you're never dead. And when you die, poof, it's gone. His kingdom exists for all eternity. Just let Jesus be the king of his kingdom and you gleefully serve Jesus. You humbly serve Jesus. Can you imagine? Imagine the different story that is written with Saul's life if he simply would have done that. Let Jesus be the king of his kingdom. And understood, Israel's not mine. It doesn't belong to me. It didn't belong to me when I was born. It will not belong to me when I die. And if Jesus wants to give his kingdom over to another person, fine. It's his. I'm here to serve. And what's remarkable about that is that was the attitude of his son. There's a part in the narrative where Saul says, don't you know he's going to take the kingdom from you? And Jonathan's essentially like, I think that's great. David's a great guy. He's going to make a good king. That's awesome. Can you imagine how much different the story is that is written with the life of Saul if he simply would have let Jesus be the king of Jesus' kingdom. Moms and dads, especially dads, you're not the kings of your house. Jesus is. Let him be the king of it. Your authority doesn't need to go unquestioned all the time. It's not your job to keep everybody in line. It's your job to point everybody to Christ. And when we respond, dads, in anger that's unwarranted, then the only way that's left to point our children to Christ after that is to go humbly apologize for not pointing them to Christ in the first place. Try to do better the next time. Bosses. Where you work, your department, your company, that's not your kingdom. That's Jesus's. You let him worry about that stuff. You're his servant there. If we would simply let Jesus be the king of his own kingdom and acknowledge that it's not ours, how much different will you handle the disrespect of your children? How much differently, how much more grace will you give your spouse? How much more grace will you give your coworkers, your employees, your boss, if you'll just acknowledge this isn't mine anyways? I think if we can bring ourselves back to this thought, just let Jesus be the king of his kingdom. That we can allow the Holy Spirit to begin to slowly chip away and show us where we hold these idols of power in our life that are manifesting themselves in unchecked anger. So I would encourage my angry brothers and sisters, the ones of you who really liked that opening story, let anger be a warning light that flashes in your life. And when it happens, take a step back and ask yourself, am I angry because Jesus' kingdom has been threatened or am I angry because mine has? And then remind yourself, I just need to let Jesus sit on his own throne and I'm gleefully here to serve him. Let's pray. Father, give us open eyes, minds, and hearts. Let us see how these different idols and really sources of sin work their way into and manifest themselves in our lives. Help us see ourselves as you see us, as broken, sinful, but yet loved and clothed in your righteousness and value. Help us understand, God, that our power is pretty useless when we don't have a kingdom we're worried about protecting. And God, remind us as we go through our days and our weeks and our months that all we need to do instead of trying to protect our kingdom and our identity is to find our identity in you and to simply let you sit on your own throne. God, I pray that we would do that and I pray that for those of us who are prone to become angry, God, I pray that we would know that, we would acknowledge that, we would take steps to keep that in check so that you might bring about in us the righteous life that you do desire. 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.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Some mornings worship is so sweet that I feel like I ruin it by getting up on stage, and I just want to keep doing that. That was one of those mornings. So thank you, best band in the city of Raleigh, apparently. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. It's a good day to celebrate moms. I hope that you are married to a mom worth celebrating. I hope you have a mom worth celebrating. I hope it's a special and happy day for you. And for many of us, it is. But I would be remiss, and I don't let a Mother's Day go by without acknowledging that for some, Mother's Day is very hard. For some, Mother's Day is mixed. It's exciting and it's painful. For some of you, it reminds you of a mom that you had, and she's not here now. For others, a mom that maybe you never had a great relationship with. For others, as it did for Jen and I for so many years, it just reminds you of what you don't have yet and what you hope for and pray for. And so if that's you, and today is hard, we see you. We love you. We care about you. And I'd like to start the sermon by praying for you, and then we'll move on with the sermon. Father, thank you so much for those who, like me, are fortunate enough to have a remarkable mom who loves you and shows us you. Thank you, God, on behalf of the men like me who are married to remarkable mothers that outpace us and cause us to marvel with their patience. But God, I also know that among us are people who are hurting because of loss, because of want, because of hurt. And I just pray, God, that they would feel your presence in a special way today. I pray that you would use your body, use the people, your children, to wrap their arms around them and comfort them and let them know that they're seen and cared for and that you are caring for them. So we pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Now, as we begin and we jump into the sermon, I just want to give this disclaimer. I know that we have an unusual population of people who are here who do not normally go to Grace because you're here to support your families and people getting married. There's also another demographic. You're here because your mom asked you to come to church with her once a year, and so you're going to grit your teeth and do it right now this morning. So I'm aware that to many of you, I exist as a speed bump to babies and brunch. So we're going to try to get you there quick. All right. I'm not long winded today. I just have just a short, simple message to the people of grace and what I consider to be the family of grace. So as I was planning out this sermon and this service or the series, rather, excuse me, as I was planning this out, this whole series was my wife Jen's idea. She's in there momming the fourth and fifth graders right now. This was her idea. She loves the book of Isaiah. And so I kind of sat down and I mapped it out. I looked at the passages that I wanted to cover while we went through Isaiah together. And then I went to her and I said, hey, here's what I have. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that you love that I haven't seen, I haven't thought about? And she pointed me to this verse. She said, I've always loved, especially as a mother, I love this verse in Isaiah. So I want us to look together at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 11. It's a short, simple verse. And it simply says this, he being God, he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. I love that verse. That's a verse that I had read before, but I had never noticed before until Jen pointed it out to me that day. And I love the message for the moms on Mother's Day. I particularly love the message for the young moms on Mother's Day. That God is a good shepherd and he leads gently those with young. And I was thinking about why this is special. And if you think about, I mean, I'm clearly not a shepherd, all right? I don't know anything more about shepherding than you do. I didn't even do any research to make this point. I'm just guessing that when a sheep herder is trying to move the herd from one field to the next, the young moms go slower than the rest. They can't keep up with the herd in general because they have babies that they're trying to herd themselves and they're trying to watch after and they're trying to go and they're trying to bring along. So young, young moms in the herd cannot move as efficiently as they would like to, as quickly as they would like to, because the demands of motherhood, and for fathers, the demands of fatherhood, cause them to lag behind and try to keep up as they wrangle their babies that are inefficient and slow and needy and disobedient and mouthy. I don't know if the lambs are that way, but I have personal experience with children. And it occurs to me, and I see it all over our church. I see it in my life. Right now, I don't mean to be myopic in the presentation, but we're in the thick of it. We have a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. And as I reflect on what it is to have young children, one of the things that I realize is when you have young kids, and I really want to talk to the moms, and I specifically want to talk to the mamas that have children in the house right now, especially if they're young and they're needy. Listen, when you have young children in your house, you are not as efficient as you would like to be. You fall behind. Nothing, the house is never as clean as you want. It never looks the way you want it to look. The meals are never as high quality and as nutritious as you want them to be. There's going to be a mom in the PTA that's going to bring better looking cupcakes than you. Your kids, there's somebody else who's making more money and they're going to throw a bigger party and someone's yard is going to look nicer than yours. Dads, that's a tough one for me. This is a season of life when you have young children where you simply can't keep up the way that you used to. And that's okay because you're tending to your kids because you're giving them the care that they need and they will slow you down and they will make you inefficient. And that's all right because God even makes an allowance for it in this verse. Why else would he gently lead, would he isolate and specify that particular demographic that he gently leads those who are parents of the young, because he knows that's a challenging season in life. And so God sees you and he leads you gently. Now, how does he do this? I think he does it in myriad ways. I think he whispers encouragement to you. I think he brings people around you. But one of the ways that I'm certain that he does it, and we talk about this here at Grace sometimes, is that he surrounds you with a spiritual family. One way that God gently leads young mothers is through providing a spiritual family for you. One way that he gently leads young mothers is by providing a spiritual family to come around you. So I want to say this. I'm going to talk about the familial nature of church. I'm going to talk about how we all fit into, I'm going to break us into three categories today, children, parents, grandparents. You're going to assign yourself into a category. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put an age threshold on it. Although I'm 43, so grandparents probably started like 45. You put yourself wherever it is you fit. But as we talk about this spiritual family that is the church, I want to be very clear. For those of you longing for a biological or a natural, even adoptive family that you call your own, I am not trying to replace your family that you desire with the spiritual family that you have. Those of you who long for children but you don't have children yet, I'm not about to tell you, but listen, great news. My son John is your spiritual son, so you should feel fulfilled there. That's not what I'm telling you today. But rather, as a family of faith, we have familial responsibilities to each other within our family of faith. And I would also say this. I know that many of you are here this morning, and you don't come to Grace regularly. I'm so glad that you're here. Maybe you're a part of a family of faith. What I'm going to say to you this morning, maybe you have your own churches. What I'm going to say to you this morning is applicable in those places too, and you can carry out those roles there as well. And I know some of you may not have a church home. You don't go to church regularly. And if you don't, what I would tell you is I'm very sure you have a good reason for that. But I also believe that God designed you, that we have a creator and he designed you to be inside of, thrive within, flourish within a spiritual family. So if that touches something in you, if you've been thinking about that, I hope you'll accept this morning as a nudge to consider being a part of a spiritual family. With that preamble, how can I be certain about the familial nature of church? It's all throughout scripture, but one of the first places my mind goes is to some instructions that Paul gave Timothy in his letter to him when he sent Timothy to take over the church in Ephesus. And Paul writes this to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He's giving him instructions about how he should relate to the people in the church. He says this, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but extort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So he's sending, Paul is sending Timothy to the church in Ephesus. He says, you're going to take this over. Here's how I want you to relate to the people in and around your church. Treat the older men like fathers with respect. Treat the younger men like brothers, mutual encouragement. Treat the older women like mothers. Love them, be devoted to them, honor them. Treat the younger women like sisters, total purity. Encourage them in their spiritual walks. And so he introduces into the thought process this familial nature of what church should be. And so it makes me conclude this. We come to church not for ourselves, but for something bigger than ourselves. This isn't the only bigger thing we come for, but we come to be a part of a spiritual family. So what I want to do this morning very simply is talk first to the children, then to the parents, and then to the grandchildren, and say within this family, what are your responsibilities? What does God want of you? This is not an exhaustive list. This is one simple idea that we're going to carry through the service. There's more things to say here. We could do a series on this. But very simply this morning, I want us to think about our roles within the family that is the church. So first, the children. I had the idea in this part to bring in the kids, the kids K through 5, because I wanted them to hear what I'm about to say. And I pitched it to Erin Winston, our children's pastor. And she said, it's very nice that you want to do that, but none of them will care. And they'll just be a distraction to the church. And which is funny because I told Jen what I wanted to do, and she said, I don't think that's a good idea because nobody's going to care what you have to say. And I went, no, no, they will. I'm their pastor. They want to hear from me. And then Aaron said the same thing. I was like, okay, loud and clear, God. Nobody cares. Which may be the general ethos right now. I don't know. But I do have middle schoolers and high schoolers in the room. I do have college students in the room. And to you, I would say this when we think about our roles within our spiritual family. Do you know that the Bible that I'm aware of only has one instruction for you? One instruction that's specifically for children. We find it all all over scripture but the first place we find it is in Exodus chapter 20 in the middle of commitment 10 commandments when he says this honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right the only instructions that are given specifically to children in scripture are that we would honor our father and mother. We do all the other things, but while we're kids, we do that. We honor our father and mother in the Lord for this is right. So listen, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, your responsibility is to first honor your father and mother. And then horizontally, it's to help your friends live lives that honor their parents as well. That's your responsibility to each other. We've got a great group of middle school guys here. I can see two of them right now. Three of them. They're a good crew. Hang out all the time. They're good boys. Kyle, our youth pastor, spends a lot of time with them. I love that they're a part of our church. Your responsibility to each other is to encourage one another to live in such a way when parents aren't around and no one can see you that you are honoring your parents. We've got a great group of middle school girls. Same thing. Your responsibility is to encourage one another when no one's around and no one can see, to live lives in private that honor your father and mother in public. That's our role as friends and as peers, as children, to help each other live out that commandment. Now, here's the challenging part. Implicit in that commandment, parents, I'm going to shift to the parent demographic here. If you feel like you're there, then you're there. If you don't, then you're not. The people who are of the age to be parents. Implicit in this commandment to the kids, if all God is ever telling the kids is, hey, honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. If that's the instruction to your children, then implicit in that instruction, like it or not, is by honoring you, they will de facto honor God. If your children grow up in your home and they honor you, what that means is they are by default honoring God because that's the way in which you are leading them. What a shame it would be, what a tragedy it would be for children to grow up in a home with parents that come to church and are spiritually minded people and value Jesus in the home. Your kid grows up and honors you and yet fall short of honoring God because the example that you set for them was insufficient. So parents, it's our job to live lives worthy of emulation and worthy of honoring. So that as our children grow up honoring us, they by default honor God. We are to show them that path. I skipped a point here. I'm going to go down to the verse. This is the verse that I have for the parents. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Parents, with that in mind, that our kids should grow up in our home and by default honor the God that we serve, then our responsibility, our familial responsibility to our brothers and sisters in our generation is to help one another live lives worthy of honoring to encourage one another to live lives worthy of emulation by our children to make sure that one another for the kids growing up in our homes that I know that a kid growing up in your home is going to grow up to honor God. It is my responsibility to my brothers and sisters in this family to make sure that happens. It's why a couple of months ago in January, I talked about this idea, and I talked about the idea of sacred spaces. We have our small groups, and our small groups are wonderful. We've got two really vibrant small groups for young families. And then we've got another, we got another ladies group as well for moms. It's wonderful to have those groups. Those groups exist, not just to connect us to the church, to the church, not just to make us feel friends, feel like we have friends, but they exist so that we can sharpen one another. But a few months ago, I told you those are insufficient for that task. We can't get into the deep heart work that we need to get into and a big co-ed small group. There's just sins. I'm not going to confess in front of your wife. Sorry, man. So we need sacred spaces. We need two or three people in our life that know us intimately, that are safe places for confession, that are safe places for weakness, where we can encourage one another. I'll tell you transparently, I sat on Thursday, my sacred space met, three of us. And we sat around, and not every time we gather is it like this, but this one was a special one, and it lasted for four hours. God bless our wives. And there was tears and prayers and hugs and a deep, deep level of sharing that is not accomplished in small group. If you are here in the generation of parents, I believe it is your spiritual responsibility to have those spaces in your life so that we can sharpen one another and we can be sure that our children are growing up in homes whereby honoring us, they honor God. Parents, that's our responsibility to one another. That's what we must do to make sure that, I mean, think about it. The kids that are about to be dedicated at the end of my sermon. What can I do to make sure that these kids grow up knowing Jesus in exactly the way that God wants them to grow up? I think about that verse in Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. I have a God's son in Chicago, and they asked me, the church reached out and asked, is there anything you'd like to contribute to say, would you like to write a short note to Tucker? And I said, Tucker, we're told in Ephesians, he's five, so he might be able to gather some of this. Tucker, we're told in Ephesians that we are created by God and purposed for good works. So my prayer for you is that you'll find your good works. And my prayer for your parents is that they will help you find those and that you'll walk in them. If we are to look at the kids that are going to be dedicated, if we are going to think about the kids littering that hallway and ask ourselves how we can honor them, how we can partner with them, how we can surround them, what's the best thing we can do? The best thing we can do is to partner with their fathers and mothers to make sure that they're living in houses so that when they grow up honoring their parents, they will by default grow up honoring God. That's our responsibility. Grandparents, your responsibility is even harder because you should have figured this out by now. So Titus chapter two, I'm going to look at verses two through four and then seven and eight. Here's what it says to the older generations. Grandparents, your job is to show us how to be honorable. If you are in the demographic where you would consider yourself a grandparent or of that age, it is your spiritual responsibility within the church to show us what it looks like to live honorable lives. We need your example. I don't know how to be more clear about this. I'm a pastor. Traditionally, I'm expected to have it figured out. I do not. And I make no bones about that. Jen was telling me just this last week that I do an exceptional job of living a life that makes it hard to put me on a pedestal. That's my spiritual gift to you. I think about it this way, and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but most Sunday mornings, we have a phenomenal covenant group that sits back there. If they have hair, it's gray. And then we have a young small group. Both of our young small groups sit over here. I'm not speaking only to the covenant group. I'm not speaking only to the young small group. But I am speaking to everyone that fits in those places. As clearly as I can say it, I don't know why I'm getting emotional about this, but, you know, stuff happens. You guys, they need you. They need to look at you, and they need to know what it is to weather the storms of marriage loving God well. They need to look at you and know what it is to have an eight-year-old that won't listen or a college student who wanders or adult children that disappoint. They need to know what it is to face the slings and the arrows and the storms of life and to watch you walk through it well. We need you. I have wonderful parents that I can learn so much from. But Jen and I need to be able to look at the people in our church and learn from you and hear from you and ask you and watch you and know what it looks like to be honorable. So grandparents, keep it up, keeping each other honorable. Keep it up, sharpening iron with iron for the sakes of your families and your walks. But please know that those of us who are younger than you are watching you to learn from you and to see what it looks like to live lives that are honorable. So show us that, please. Those are the roles of the families within churches. That's what we are supposed to do. Children, honor your father and mother. Children, hold each other accountable to honor them. Be a good friend. Help your friends honor their parents. Parents, be a good friend. Help your friends lead households that are worthy of emulation so that if children grow up in this church, they grow up and they honor their parents, they by default honor God. Grandparents, continue to encourage and walk with one another and please know that we need you. We need to look at you and see what it looks like to live lives that are worthy of emulation. This is how God leads young mothers gently, by surrounding them with that sort of environment. Young mothers, go get your kids. We're going to dedicate them. It's Graham. Get out of here. I'm going to pray, and when I'm done, we're going to invite those families up. We're going to say some words about what it means to dedicate children. And then we're going to pray. And y'all are going to brunch. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the good moms that we have. We thank you for days like today that we can stop and pause and reflect on what's really important. God, I thank you for the spiritual family that you've given us, for the way that you've surrounded your people with your children. Lord, I pray that the kids in this church would hold each other accountable, would encourage one another to honor their parents and in turn honor you. Father, I pray the parents in this church would sharpen one another and be actively involved in helping their peers have homes that are worthy of emulation and honor. And God, I lift up our grandparents. I ask that you would move in them, work in them, and that you would use them as examples in the lives of those watching to know what it is to honor you with their lives. God, we thank you for the joy and the privilege of making the dedication that we're about to make. We thank you for the young babies and the families that you've blessed these families with and in turn blessed the church with. And God, we pray that it pleases you to see these moms and dads offering their children back to you. 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.