Sermons tagged with Service

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

Good morning. Welcome to Grace. If this is your first time here and you're wondering, do these people wear their pajamas every week? Yeah. Yeah, we do. You should see us in July. It looks crazy. No, we don't. Thanks for participating in Christmas Jammy Sunday. If you did, we said we were going to do a prize or we're going to acknowledge the most festive. And I really think there's only one way to skin this cat this week. Shane, will you do me a favor and stand up? There's about four families wearing those pajamas, which apparently were on sale at Target. So if you are wearing those pajamas today, if you would be so kind as to kind of collect your kids and maybe just hang out in this area after the service, then I'd love to take a group picture of just one big church family that wore the same pajamas today. So if you'll participate in that, that would be really, really great. Next week is our holiday hoot. If you spend any time at all around Grace, you know we like a good hoot nanny. If you don't know what a hoot nanny is, just stick around, you'll find out. Next week is just our church-wide Christmas party immediately following the service. We're just kind of asking everybody, just bring something to share, doesn't really matter what it is, and we'll have some tables set up. You can drop that off, and then after the service, we'll all hang out for just a little bit. We'll provide some stuff to drink, and we'll just have a church-wide Christmas party for as long as anybody wants to, although I know some people are going to be home before the one o'clock kickoff. I get that too. This week we are in part two of our series called Not Alone, where we are looking at the different ways that God reminds us of his presence through the Christmas season. Last week we talked about the silent generations between Malachi and Matthew, the last book of the Old Testament and the first book of the New Testament. And we talked about that Christmas is a reminder that we serve a God who keeps his promises. So when we feel forgotten, when we feel alone, when we feel like we've seen God move for others and he's not moving for me, we, like they, in between the two testaments, cling to Christmas and to the promises of God. This week, I wanted to start us out by just diving right into Scripture. It's an obscure verse from an obscure book of the Bible, Micah. If you think you can find it, you can go ahead and start turning there. I see some people who are ambitious and eager. Good for you for knowing where Micah is in your Bible. The rest of you, get it together, man. This is church. Come on, memorize the books. No, I'm just playing around. Micah is tucked away in the middle of the minor prophets towards the back part of the Old Testament. And we're just going to jump right in and I'm going to the verse, and then we'll talk about it. But it's from an obscure book, from an obscure prophet, kind of tucked away, which makes it really appropriate for this morning. So this is what Micah writes in chapterah is what we call a messianic prophecy. It's a prophecy about Jesus. What Micah is saying is that God has told him, and now he is communicating to the people, and he specifically addresses it to Bethlehem, which is Bethlehem, not ham, just so you know, Southerners, it's Bethlehem, okay? So he addresses it to Bethlehem, and he tells them, from you is going to come what we know of as Jesus. From you is going to come my son. He's going to come a king and sit on the throne. It's this messianic prophecy. And he gives it to Bethlehem specifically because Bethlehem is unknown and insignificant. It says in the prophecy that Bethlehem is too little to be included amongst the tribes of Judah, which means it's really small. I probably should have gone and done the research. What did it take in ancient Hebrew and ancient Israel to become actually a clan within a tribe of Judah or any other tribe. And I just didn't do the research because if I did, the result of the research would have been that Bethlehem was insignificant and small. So I'm just skipping that part and telling you that Bethlehem was insignificant and small. One of you is going to do the research this week and be like, you were way off. I'll have to issue an apology next week. But let's go with that, that Bethlehem was just this small, nondescript, unimportant, insignificant town. And God says in the Old Testament, I'm going to use you in big ways. You're going to be really important. You're going to have a part to play in this grand story of Christmas and my kingdom. And I bring that up and I start our sermon there this morning because really and truly, Christmas has always been about the unseen, hasn't it? Christmas, the story of Christmas, maybe more than any other story, brings to light this thread throughout Scripture of God choosing the unnoticed and the unknown, the unseen and the insignificant. And in Christmas, we see this theme woven throughout the story over and over again. He chooses Bethlehem, a nondescript town from a nondescript place that hasn't even risen to the part of having its own clan within the tribe of Judah. And he says, this is where my son, Jesus, is going to make his grand entrance into the world. He could have chosen Jerusalem. He could have chosen Rome if he wanted to, but he didn't. God chose Bethlehem, this unknown and insignificant town, off to the side, in between, on the way down to the Dead Sea from Jericho. And when you think about the rest of the Christmas story, that's very on brand. Who did God choose to be the mother of his son? Somebody rich? Somebody influential? Somebody that everybody would know and trust? Somebody with a lot of clout from an important family in the nation of Israel? No, he chose Mary, a girl who was probably in her early teen years, who had not yet gotten married, who was from a small, nondescript town called Nazareth. That in the New Testament, when somebody hears that the Savior is from Nazareth, their response is, has anything good ever come out of Nazareth? They talk about it like we talk about Mississippi. Nothing good comes from there. How could that be possible? It's a little nothing quarry. It's a rock quarry town. It's a workaday town. It's in the backwoods. It's in the country. Nobody of any renown comes from there. And yet God chooses Mary to bear his son. Not somebody known. Not somebody influential. Not somebody with status. Somebody with nothing. And then to have his son born, he directs Mary and Joseph to go down to Bethlehem. They tried to stay in Jerusalem. They tried to stay in the important place. There was no room there. So God makes a way for them to end up in Bethlehem in a manger. He doesn't bring him into a noble estate. He brings him into a manger. And I don't know what you think of when you think about a manger, because we hear that in the Christmas story a lot. But I've had the opportunity to go over to Israel and to be in Bethlehem and to see what their mangers are, and they're basically caves. Bethlehem is rocky and hilly, and so on the side of a mountain, there's a little cave. They'll dig that out a little bit. They'll build a couple stables in there, and that's where they would rest. That's where the animals would be. So there's sheep and goats and maybe a donkey back there, and who knows what else, maybe a llama. I don't know. We got a Christmas llama. So a Christmas llama was in there on the sweater over there. Y'all should see it. It's great. It's got a little thing to hold water bottles. And that was the manger, just this little nondescript place where God says, this is where my son is going to come forth. And then God does a birth announcement. He has the angels go and they sing. And it was a little bit different than our birth announcements, right? We do birth announcements and he could have had Mary and Joseph hire a photographer, dress in their business casual wear, and then take off their shoes and get in their bed like they do every day, and then just have the light pouring through and post on Instagram like white people do. That's what we do when we have children. But instead, he had the angels sing. And to whom did they sing? The rich and the wealthy in Jerusalem? No, the poor and the unknown shepherds who meant nothing to anybody. That's where he announced the birth. There were some dignitaries that came, but they came from the east. That's all we know. They came from the east. And they showed up a long while later. Everything about the Christmas story is God choosing the unknown and the unseen to bring about his will. And I happen to think, I don't know if I even believe in the phrase, the spirit of Christmas, and I feel really cheesy saying this to grown adults, but if there is a spirit of Christmas, certainly it is wrapped up in noticing the unnoticed. Certainly it is wrapped up in bringing significance to those who feel insignificant. Certainly it is wrapped up in seeing the unseen. And Jesus lived his life this way. Jesus, the Son of God, born into this obscurity, lived his life noticing the unnoticed. He carried on that tradition and that ethic throughout his life. Think about the disciples that Jesus called. I don't have time to go into the cultural significance of what it was to be a disciple, but I can tell you, and you can take my word for it if you like, that to be a disciple, that was still like being in an Ivy League school. That was to really have accomplished something. Pretty much every little boy hoped to be a disciple. That's what the athletes were back then. They didn't have anything else to aspire to. That's what they aspired to. And so to be a disciple was a big deal. And so those who were in their adolescence, those who were in their late teens, like the disciples may have been when Jesus called them, and not actively following a rabbi, not actively being a disciple. And we need to understand that Jesus didn't have the only disciples in the New Testament. John the Baptist had disciples. Respected rabbis had disciples that they trained for ministry. And so to be going about your business after your education and not be a disciple of a rabbi was for the system to have told you, you're good. There's nothing left for you to pursue here. Learn a trade. We're going to train the more excellent ones. And so for Jesus to go and call his disciples the way that he did tells us that he chose people who had felt rejected. He chose people who had been told you're not gonna be good enough for this. And Jesus goes to Peter and says, yes, you are, follow me. He goes to James and John, yes, you are, follow me. He goes to the tax collector who sold out his people to make money. And he says, Levi, follow me. He goes to different people that are unknown and unnoticed that are cast aside. And he says, follow me. And I think it's really interesting because if I were trying to start a movement in the ancient world or any world, but in a small country like Israel, I would go to the affluent, right? I would go get the sons of the rich people. I would go find the sons of the ones who had the most influence and the most sway in the country. And I would try to, if I were Jesus, win them over to my cause and he saw them when they were unseen. And he noticed them when they were unnoticed, and he gave them significance when they felt insignificant. And then he modeled for them what it was to see the unseen throughout his ministry. We can think of miracle after miracle. He's walking through the pool at Bethesda, and he sees the man who's blind, who has no hope of getting into the pool before the other people do and earning the miracle. That was the myth around that pool at the time. And he goes up to him, and he heals him, and he makes it possible for him to see. I think of the woman who's caught in adultery in the act and drug through the streets to the feet of Jesus. He didn't have to have anything to do with this woman, but he chose to give her dignity. And he chose to give her respect. And he chose to defend her. And he chose to see her for who she was when everybody else just saw her for what she did. I think of Jesus' interaction with the woman at the well that Kyle preached on a few weeks back. This woman who is on her fifth husband, she's not respected in society. She's kind of ashamed of who she is. She goes to the well in the heat of the day so that no one would notice her, precisely to be unnoticed and unseen. And Jesus shows up and he sees her and he gives her living water and he speaks into her. He makes a habit throughout his whole ministry of noticing the unnoticed and seeing the unseen. Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who's rejected by everyone around him, climbs up in a tree just to get a glimpse of this savior. This famous person as he walks by and the crowds are gathered around him. And he looks up and he sees Zacchaeus, the last person anyone there wants to talk to. And he says, hey, I'm gonna come to your house for lunch, all right? I would love to know what Zacchaeus made, short notice for Jesus. At every turn in the life of Christ, you see Jesus living out this Christmas ethic of seeing the unseen, noticing the unnoticed, of giving significance to those who felt insignificant. And then he captures it for us, this ethic and this desire and this command for us to do the same thing towards the end of his life when he's speaking to the disciples in a story, in a parable, or in an example in Matthew chapter 25. We're going to put verse 40 on the screen, but I'm going to start reading in verse 35 when Jesus says this. Then the righteous will answer him saying, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you? And the king will answer them, truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did it to me. This is the Christmas ethic. This is what's woven all throughout scripture. This is how Jesus lives his life. And this is what he leaves us with as we are tasked with seeing the unseen and noticing the unnoticed and loving the unlovable. And Jesus himself tells us, whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me. And so as we sit here in the middle of festive Christmas season, I can't help but think what better way to honor the arrival of Jesus than to continue in his example. What better way as individuals, as families, to celebrate Christmas season than to honor the example of Christmas, to honor the example of Christ, and to be intentional about noticing the unnoticed and seeing the unseen, about doing for the least of these. What better way at Christmas than to do for others, right? And I think that when we think about this, when we think about this idea of doing unto others what we would have them do unto us, when we think of this idea of doing for the least of these, and in that way we're actually serving Jesus. And this is a concept that almost everybody in here knows and has heard. And I think that when we think of that concept, doing for the least of these, we tend to think of people who are down and out. We tend to think of people who do not live in our blessing. Who do not live necessarily in our financial status. We tend to think of people who are poor. I think that we tend to think of soup kitchens. Or the homeless. Or maybe that tent community that's right around the corner. And our minds say, what can we do for them? The least of these. I think that's who we think of when we think of the least of these. Or we think we can walk out and we can grab a card off of the angel tree. And these are some people who are in need. And I want them to feel seen and significant. And so we get that. And we participate. And Jen and I, we've participated. And those things are good. And they should be done, and those are the least of these, and we should love them, and we should see them, and the church should be first in line to go love on those people, all the people that come to mind when we think of, quote unquote, the least of these. As a matter of fact, just as an aside, parents in the room still have kids at home. And I have to be careful here because I'm perfectly happy to share with you the things I'm terrible at. I'm perfectly happy to tell you what I'm bad at and to run myself down because we're all bad at something. I don't really have a lot of insecurities around that. Everybody stinks, so get on board. I never want to run down my kids, right? But I think that this issue is so ubiquitous that I'm really not running her down. All I'm doing is saying that Lily is seven. One of the things that we're starting to notice in Lily is this entitlement for Christmas, right? What she wants for Christmas. She starts working on her Christmas list in like May. She'll just tell us what it is. Like it's just gonna arrive. And you with young kids like yours do this too, I'm pretty sure. They all do it. They all go through it. And we start as parents to think like what can we do for the entitlement of our kids? How can we kind of show them so that they can be more grateful? And then we all toy around with that idea, don't we? Like, this is the year. I'm not getting them anything. Then they're going to learn. They need to learn some gratitude. But you don't because you're chicken. You're totally chicken. You're not going to do it and scar them for life. They're going to be in therapy because of it. But I do think that a good way to chisel away at some of the entitlement of our kids is to expose them to the least of these. I remember going down and serving in downtown Atlanta around Christmas season, I believe with my dad, but I know with folks from my church. So just as an aside, those of us with kids still at the house, it's probably not a bad idea to take a field trip this year somewhere and go help in a way that exposes them to another portion of life that they may not see in the circles that they run in. So I do think that when Jesus talks about the least of these, he does mean those people, people who are in different socioeconomic categories than us, people who have less than us, people who need in different ways than we do. But I also believe that the unseen are in and around our lives every day. The unnoticed, the unseen, the people who feel insignificant, I think they're on your row. I think they work in your cluster at the office. I think they're on the Zoom calls and in your neighborhoods. I think those people are everywhere. And I think that we should ask God for eyes to see them and hearts to hurt for them and wills to do for them. I think of my mother-in-law, Terry. Many of you know that part of the story of our family is that now two Christmases ago, December 29th, we lost Jen's dad to cancer. And Jen's dad was highly involved in the church. John and Terry went to church every week. Jen's dad was really, really close with his pastor. The pastor is a good family friend of theirs. And so the church was a big part of John and Terry's life. And because of that, it was really difficult after John passed for Terry to want to go again because it was such a painful, difficult thing. The idea of going to church just made her want to cry because she'd have to do it without John, and she wasn't sure if she would be strong enough to do it. And so a few months go by from essentially January to Easter, and Terry decides, I need to go to church. I need to go to church. Those are my people. I need to go. And so she gets up on Easter, drags herself out of bed, gets herself ready, and she drives there. And she's terrified. She's terrified because she's going to be sitting alone. She can't even bring herself to go to the side of the church that they normally sit on. She goes to the opposite side. And she knows that people are going to see her. She knows she's going to be sitting by herself. And she can already feel the pity in the stairs as she sits down as she's going through this. And she hates all of it. And she's scared of all of it. But she knows she needs to go. So as she's sitting down, a good friend of theirs sees her and says, hey, gives her a hug, tells her he's glad to see her. And he wasn't going to be sitting in that service, but he knew some people who were. And so he introduced this couple over here to Terry, and Terry and this couple had met before. They weren't friends, but they had talked. They were friendly. And they got to talking to Terry. And that couple invited Terry to sit with them at Easter. And as soon as they did, all the tension left Terry. She was good. She was comfortable. She was safe. And she felt seen. And she felt loved. But she was also going to get up from there, and she was going to go home to an empty house with no Easter celebration. And at the end of the service, the couple looked at her, and they said, hey, we're going to go to lunch. Would you like to come with us? And so she went to lunch with this sweet couple, and they talked for hours. And as soon as Terry got done having lunch with this couple, she called her girls. She told them all about this couple that loved her so well, that made her feel seen and made her feel important. I don't know who that couple is, but I know that they rescued Easter for my mother-in-law. I know that they made church a safe place for my mother-in-law. I know that their act of just simple hospitality and inclusion. Let her know God sees you. God loves you. God cares about you. He's going to take care of you. And even you can extrapolate that out to this path theory that you have to walk is difficult, but I'm going to send you little angels along the way. And I can't tell you the difference that it made for her to be seen that day, to be loved that day, and to be noticed that day. And you have those people in your life too. You have people who this year, their life changed tremendously. A diagnosis, a loss, a divorce. And you know that they're facing an uncertain holiday season, or maybe it's certainly going to be very difficult. You have them in your life. You have people in your life who are hurting, who are lonely, who are struggling with mental illness or newfound depression. You have folks in your life who have been praying for something and they don't have it yet. You have people in your life who on their social media feeds, there's less and less pictures of them with their spouse. And you see less and less of them at church. And you can read between those tea leaves. And we know that a phone call would probably be really good. We know that a lunch would probably be really timely. I could make a longer list, but we all have those people. We all have the people in our lives right now who are unseen and unnoticed and hurting. What better way to honor Jesus at Christmas than to make sure those people know that they are seen? Than to make sure those people know that their God loves them, that their God sees them. So why don't we do that? I was talking to Jen about it this week, and she made the point, and I think it's a great one, that we all think it, but it only matters if we actually do it. We all think about the nice things to do, don't we? We see them, we know we should call them, but it only matters if we actually do it. We can't be like me and Kyle. Kyle, our student pastor, we joke around a lot, but neither me nor Kyle really love pranks. We just love the idea of pranks. And so very often, with some degree of regularity, like at least weekly, somebody will do something and the other one of us will be like, dude, I was going to when you left, I was gonna do this to you. I thought to do this. Wouldn't that have been funny? And then we laugh at it. Yes, that would have been funny. Like a couple weeks ago, staff was going to Gonza for lunch because we take about three and a half hour lunch every day. So we're going to Gonza for lunch and we were supposed to leave at a certain time, and I just, to be an idiot, because I'm like this, I just walked out of my office. My door had been shut all day. I hadn't talked to anybody all day. I was writing a sermon, and then I just, I left, and I walked out the door, and as I opened the door, I said, later, losers, and I got in my car, and I drove to Gonsa's, knowing that they would have to drive together, right? So then they all arrive at Gonsa's a few minutes after me, and Kyle comes up to me, sure enough, and he's like, dude, I really thought it would have been funny to convince everybody not to come to lunch with you and just leave you here by yourself. And I was like, I know. I was actually pretty worried that's what you guys were going to do. And then we laughed about it, but we don't actually ever do anything to each other. We just joke about how it would have been, right? We can't do this when it comes to loving people who need it so much. What if that couple, months later, the next time Terry went to church was like, Terry, listen to this. We thought about inviting you to sit with us, but, you know, we just didn't do it. And then we thought, we should invite her to lunch, right? This is her first Sunday back. It's Easter. I don't know if she has any plans. Let's just invite her. But, you know, Terry, we just, we had stuff going on, so we decided not to do it. It doesn't work the same way, does it? We all think the things. We need to do it. I was talking to a dear friend of mine yesterday, who when I think of people who see the unseen and notice the unnoticed, I think of her. And I was talking to her about the sermon. And I made the comment to her, I bet the more you do it, the more you see. And the more you see, the more you want to do. And she said, yeah. And I thought about it more. And it really is true that when we become those agents, God's hands and feet, God's hugs, God's presence, God's attention, God's smiles for the people who need it so desperately. We really do meet Jesus there. We really do find our Savior there in those moments. We really do get a glimpse of what it's like to love like he loves. So that when Jesus says, whatever you do for the least of these, you do it for me, it's not hyperbole. It's just true. And so my simple encouragement for you this week is to go do it. Let me just challenge you to think of one person, one family, one neighbor, one coworker, one person sitting on your row right now who might feel unnoticed or unseen, who might be hurting. And allow God to use you. And maybe you get to be the angel that rescues Christmas for them this year. Maybe God allows you to participate in his good and perfect will in that way. Maybe you'll be the one that other family members that you don't even know will be telling stories about to their friends two and three and five years from now because of a simple act of love this December. And I'll be the first to admit I'm the king of thinking about things I should do. I'm just letting them float off and not do them. So when I say do it, like actually do it, I'm talking to me more than anybody. But what could happen in our little community? What stories could come out? What ways could God be seen if just everybody in this room decides, you know what, when I go to school, when I go to work, when I get home, I'm going to make it a point to ask for eyes to see and ears to hear and hearts to feel. And I'm going to love somebody that needs to be loved. I'm going to notice somebody that needs to be noticed. I'm going to see somebody who doesn't feel seen. What could God do with that in just this room right here? Let's find out. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. Thank you for always seeing us when we feel unseen. Thank you for always loving us when we feel unlovable. And God, thank you for the opportunity to participate in your word and in your will. I pray that you would give us eyes to see the people around us who need your love. And that you would give us the will and the courage to express that to them. Let us this week, Father, write the email, make the phone call, extend the invitation, buy the gift, reconcile. Give us your heart for the unnoticed and for the unseen so that when we go and love them, we might find you there. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you. Hi, good morning, friends. My name is Yasmeen Reese, and I'm a partner here at Grace Raleigh, along with my sweet husband, Brandon Reese. Had to give a shout-out. Today's reading comes from Matthew 28, 18 to 20. I can confirm Brandon is lovely. We do miss him this week. We remember Brandon's with our team down in Mexico right now, so we remember them and keep them in our prayers and hope that the Lord speaks to them as they go and encourages our partners in Mexico while they're there through Grace Raleigh. This is the fifth part of our series called Traits of Grace. The genesis of this series was last fall, when as a staff, we began talking about what makes grace, grace. And as we want to define what it means to be a partner of grace, which we don't have partners we have, or we don't have members, we have partners. When we talk about what it means to be a partner of grace, a person who calls grace home, what do we expect of grace people? What do we want to be as a church? And so we kind of threw a bunch of stuff on the whiteboard, and we ended up with these five traits that we've gone through these last five weeks. And I would tell you that we want you, I know that this is a lofty goal, but we want you to know all of these. We want you, if you call grace home over time, to be able to say all of these, to understand what these are, to be able to explain them to people. If they say, hey, what's your church all about? We can tell them this. Our mission statement is to connect people to people and connect people to Jesus. But the ways that we do that are in these five traits. So in the first week, we'll see if I can remember them. In the first week, we talked about the fact that we are kingdom builders, right? We're all building a kingdom somewhere. We're either building God's kingdom or our own kingdom. So we asked, whose kingdom are you building? At Grace, we want to build God's kingdom. And then in the second week, we talked about being conduits of grace. This is where we get our authenticity. This is where we're kind of real. This is how we can be accepting of others and loving of others who come in here because we receive God's grace. We know that we're messed up. You're messed up too. We love you too. We are conduits of God's grace as we receive it, we offer it. And then we talked about how we're people of devotion, that the single most important habit anyone can have in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. And so we are people who believe in that devotional habit and pursuing God on our own and allowing the Sunday morning experience to simply be supplemental to what God is doing in our life every day as we pursue him. And then, which one have I forgotten? Did we do last week? You're nodding your head at me. You're like, yeah, you got the first one. Now you're not there on the fourth one. Okay, last week, partners. We talked about being partners, right? We're not just partners at the church, but we're partners in ministry and what we do at Grace. We're partners in life. At Grace, no one should walk alone through any season of life. And then we're partners in faith. We hold up one another. We help each other cling to faith as we move through life. And so this week, our last trait, we are step-takers at grace. We are step-takers. And I'll tell you what that means. This is really a Sunday morning focused on our discipleship model at grace. When we talk about discipleship at grace, this is how we talk about it. We talk about it in terms of being step-takers. And as I was preparing this sermon, it occurred to me that this is really more of a seminar than a sermon. This is really more informative where I teach you than it is about being a sermon. A sermon kind of changes us and inspires us and teaching informs us. And so this morning I'm teaching you and I want to teach you about what discipleship is because I don't know if you've realized this or not, but discipleship is the goal of every church. Every church ever, discipleship is the goal because of the verse that Yasmeen read to us just a few minutes ago. Because when Jesus is leaving the disciples, going back up to heaven, he gives them his final instructions. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the job of the disciples of the church that Jesus left behind. He says, my work here is done. I'm going to go to heaven. I'm going to sit at the right hand of the Father. I'm going to intercede for you. I've done what I came to accomplish here on earth. And now I am going to, I'm going to heaven and I'm leaving you with your instructions. I'm leaving you with the keys to the kingdom. I'm leaving you in charge. The church is my kingdom here on earth and you are going to be in charge of it. And here's what I want you to do. I want you to go make disciples in every nation. And so those instructions are not just for the disciples, but for every church and every body that would follow the disciples, every body of believers that would follow the disciples. So that commission is called the Great Commission, and it is our commission. And so every church ever has the goal of making disciples. They say it in different ways. We want to produce multiplying disciples. We want to produce disciple-making disciples. We're a discipleship-focused church. We want to produce disciples. Like, whatever it is, this is the goal of every church, and it's the goal of every church that I've ever been a part of, except, and here's the thing, this is a well-kept church secret that you probably only know intuitively, but you've probably never heard a pastor admit it, we're not very good at it. No church is really super great at making disciples. And I learned that this was true at my last job. My last job, I was at this church outside of Atlanta. It became this big three-campus church where when you preach, you're simulcast out to all the people and whatever, whatever. And because I was a part of a big growing church like that, I got to go to church conferences. So for seven years, I would go to church conferences, and I was the discipleship pastor, right? Now, it was small groups, but my job was to think about the process by which Greystone Church made disciples. And so we're getting into the weeds a little bit in here, but if you've been a part of church for any number of years, you've heard language like this before. You know churches are trying to make disciples. You know what small groups are all about. So this is what we were doing, and it's what I was tasked with. I was in charge of thinking through and implementing the discipleship process at Greystone Church. So I would go to these conferences where other big churches with big staffs would go as well, and there would be breakout sessions. I don't know what happens in your different industries, but in my industry, there's breakout sessions where you choose different things and you go to what's most applicable to your particular position. And so I would always find myself in rooms about this size with round tables, sitting around with other small group pastors or adult education pastors or discipleship pastors or associate pastors that were in charge of these things. And we'd sit around the table and we'd listen to the guru up in front who had small groups and discipleship all figured out and he would tell us exactly how he did it or she did it. And then we'd sit around our table and we'd have some time to talk to each other. And I'm telling you, without fail at these tables, somebody every time, every conference would say, what are you guys doing for discipleship? Because we're rethinking our model. It's not working, right? I don't know in corporate terms what it means when you rethink a model, but in church terms, it means we are totally messing this up. So we're rethinking our model. What do you guys do for discipleship? What we've been doing is not working. We're not really producing disciples. And the answers, I listened to them for seven years. I offered some of them when I thought I was smart. I'll help you guys, you ministry veterans. Let me tell you how we're doing it at Greystone. But the answers were always the same. Well, we're trying this for these reasons. We hope it works. If it doesn't, we might pivot to this, which means nothing. Nobody said, we've been doing this program for years and it's working. Because what churches are looking for is a funnel to put people in. When we put you into this funnel, small groups, volunteering, men's Bible study, women's Bible studies, whatever it is, when we put you into this funnel, you're going to go through these systems and you're going to bounce through these walls and you're going to come out the end of the funnel, a disciple, a mature believer in Jesus. That's the goal. We're giggling about it now, but that's the goal. And that was my job is to design the funnel. What do we put people in so that when they go around, when they come out, they're mature believers in Jesus who are now producing other disciples in their life? And there's all kinds of ideas for this. Some of you have been, I want to ask you to raise your hand. I don't want to delineate good Christians and bad Christians, but some of you have been in discipleship programs. You've been in discipleship groups. You're serious. Some of you have had people disciple you. Some of you have even, and you're the big dogs. Some people have come to you and said, will you disciple me? And here's the thing. I would bet my next paycheck that when someone asks you, if you've ever had someone come to you and say, hey, would you disciple me? That your very first thought was, how? I don't know how to do that. But you don't want to let them down. Clearly they think you're somebody. You got stuff figured out. You're like, yes, I will. I will do that. I will disciple you. Great. How do you want to disciple me? Let's meet for breakfast. I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to meet for breakfast once a month, and I'm going to find a book, and we're going to read it. And we'll probably miss a month or two. So in a year, we'll meet like 10 times, finish that book up, and chip, chop, chip, you're going to be a mature believer. This is going to be great. Let's do it. You're giggling because you've done it, man. And here's what you know. Here's what you know is that it didn't work. It didn't work. I've asked poor men over the years to disciple me. I remember, I'm just gonna say his name publicly. There was a facilities guy at Toccoa Falls College that I worked for when I kept the grounds named George Champion, who was just a phenomenally good man. And I worked for him and I asked him, will you disciple me? And he said, sure, let's have breakfast. I thought we had, in Toccoa, we had the huddle house. We weren't even big enough for a waffle house. We had the huddle house with literal bullet holes in the hood vent. There was three of them, but I only went during safe hours. It was fine. And Mr. Champion said, let's meet at hud House, but I got to meet there early, so we'll meet at five. I said, okay. Old college Nate made about two of those. And then I slept through the next two, and I couldn't look George in the eye anymore, so I bailed out on discipleship. There's been others through the years. Maybe you've tried that too. And we're taught about this thing when you try to figure out how do you make disciples? I could ask you to raise your hand. Who's heard of life-on-life discipleship? Don't raise your hand. But there's that phrase because in the Bible, that's how Jesus makes his disciples. They live together. I used to listen to the teachings of this guy named Ray Vanderlei, who's great, and I would highly endorse his teachings. But his teachings is called the dust of the rabbi, or his website's like the dust of the rabbi, because there's this phrase, may you be walking so closely behind your rabbi that as he kicks up the dust from the trail that is getting on you, that you're around him all the time. And in the first century, that's great, man. In the 21st century, that's not super practical. I had people at student ministry conferences tell me, when you're discipling high school guys, you just invite them into your life. Invite them over to dinner. Let them see how a godly man talks to his wife. Let them see how a godly man buys milk. Take them to the grocery store. Just let them see how you do your life. Like I've heard that phrase before. Like let them see how a godly man grocery shops. I'm like, I don't know, probably the same as a nice atheist, I would assume. I don't know how that's helpful. And so if you've been in church world, what you understand is that all the discipleship models that we work with haven't really worked. And you know how I really know that's true? Because of this question. Those of you who've been in church a while, those of you who have grown in your faith and consider yourselves to have a mature faith, who discipled you to get there? Who is it that's been meeting with you regularly, speaking into your life? What book studies have you gone through that produced you into maturity? Now, some of you lucky ones, you have a girl, you have a guy, and they've been guiding you well. And God's been using that relationship in your life in remarkable ways, and that does happen. But for a vast majority of us, like me, who's discipled me, it's just a hodgepodge of people that move in and out of my life as God directs. There's no single program that I went through to grow in my faith. There's no single relationship that I would say that man discipled me. Besides maybe my dad. But that's what dads are for. So those programs, they don't really work. And we're still left with this task, this holy task from Jesus to make disciples. The question becomes, how do we do it? It's this question that I had in my head when I went to another conference. I'm talking a lot about conferences today. I'm painting this picture like all I do is go to conferences. I'm going to a conference this week. So maybe that's what I do. Maybe I just go to a bunch of conferences. I don't know. I have no idea. But I went to a conference back in, I think, 2019, 18 or 19, in the fall. And it was a pastor's conference out in San Diego. You guys paid for it. Thank you so much. And when I went out there, I went to see this pastor named Larry Osborne, who's written a couple of books, who thinks about church in this really practical way that resonates with me and that seems in line with grace. And we've gone through some of his books and stuff at the elder level and the staff level. And I was tired of just big, huge conferences. This one was 25 senior pastors in a room with this guy, and he just taught us for two days. And it was really, really great. It was so good. I took copious notes. And then our elder meetings are structured as such that we have a business meeting on the first Tuesday of the month where we just make decisions for the church. And then on the third Tuesday of the month, we get together, we fellowship, we have fun, we enjoy each other. Sometimes we'll do communion, we'll pray together. And we have something that we're kind of going through just to edify one another and learn more about church in general. And so for seven weeks, we walked through the notes that I took in this conference. It was really valuable. But the most valuable thing I took out of there was the way that Larry thinks about discipleship, and it shaped the way that we as a church at Grace think about discipleship, because we're all called to be disciples, and we're all called to make disciples. So how do we do it? And if it doesn't work to get in the programs, and if it doesn't work to read the books, and if it doesn't work to do life on life, all those things are good and can supplement, but what is it that we need? Well, the way that Larry explained it was that if we really look at Jesus and his life, what we see is that Jesus is always equating our spiritual maturity with the degree to which we are obedient. Jesus is always telling us over and over again in scripture, over and over again in the gospels, we can see Jesus point to this idea that if you love me, you will obey me. And so when Jesus offers us discipleship, when he says he wants to make disciples of us, really he's beckoning us into obedience. Look at just a couple statements from Jesus. We see this, John 14, 15. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you love me, if you want to walk with me, if I'm really the Lord of your life, then you will obey me. He says it more pointedly in Luke. Listen to this. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Gosh, that one cuts, doesn't it? This is not the point of the sermon, but just as an aside, how many times could Jesus whisper that in our ear and it bring conviction? Why are you singing this song if you don't obey me? Why are you acting holy in small group if you're acting unholy everywhere else? Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you? Why do you call me Lord and yet not let me be the Lord of your life? And so what we see all throughout the gospels is Jesus teaching us, if you're mature, if you're walking with me, if you're abiding in me, you know what you'll do? You'll obey me. You'll do what I say. You'll follow my commands. And this made such an indelible impression that 30 to 60 years later, one of his best disciples, the apostle John, who may have been as young as 10 when he was following Jesus, is writing letters to the churches, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. They're called general epistles or general letters, which means they were for all of the churches in Asia Minor around the Mediterranean at the time. They were written to be circulated amongst the churches. And so at the end of his life, when John has now made disciples in Erasmus and Polycarp, the early church fathers who carried on after the disciples had all left, John was the last living disciple. So he had successfully made disciples. He had handed the keys to the kingdom to other mature believers. And at the end of his life, writing on the topic of spiritual maturity, because I'm not sure they would have called it discipleship. They would have called it growing in faith. But at the end of his life, when he's writing about this to tell people, how do we know if someone has a genuine faith? John says this in 1 John 2. And by this, we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Listen, whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. So John, discipled by Jesus, having produced disciples in his own life, says, if you know Jesus, you'll obey him. Whoever says they know Jesus, whoever says they love Jesus and isn't increasing in their obedience is lying. The truth is not in them. That's pretty stark. But what we see is that Jesus and then his disciple John equate spiritual maturity not with theological acumen, not with acts of great service, not with piety and prayers, not even with effective ministry or charismatically drawing other people. What we see is that Jesus and John equate spiritual maturity with increasing levels of obedience in someone's life. So here's what we understand, that we are growing as a disciple when we are growing in our obedience. So if we know that we're called to be disciples, we're called to grow and mature in our faith, and we've been in discipleship groups, and we've read the books, and maybe we've asked somebody to disciple us, maybe we've met with somebody, maybe we have a mentor. Here's how we are disciples. We grow in our obedience. As we grow in our obedience to God, we grow in our maturity with Him and are being formed into more godly disciples. And so the way we think about it at Grace is to be step-takers, to simply know what our next step of obedience is and be working towards taking that step or being in the process of taking that step. So to define it, when you say, what is a disciple? Here's what it means at grace. At grace, being a disciple means we are someone who is seeking out and taking our next steps of obedience. At grace, how do we define what a disciple is? When Jesus says, go and make disciples. If you're a small group leader and you're trying to figure out, do I have disciples in my group? Am I a disciple of Christ? The easiest way I know to think about it is, is your obedience to Jesus increasing or decreasing? If you're gradually giving Jesus more and more bits of your life, more and more of your submission, more and more of his lordship, and taking steps of obedience whenever he puts them in front of you, then you are growing as a disciple. If there is a step of obedience in front of us and we have not taken it, as a matter of fact, we step back from it, then we are probably fading as disciples. And it's interesting to me that this is really the process that Jesus took his disciples through. If you think about it, yeah, he taught them all along the way, but if you read through the gospels, what you'll see is that Jesus simply put steps of obedience in front of them. He says, here you go, here's the next thing I want you to do, do it or don't. If you do it, we'll grow. If you don't, you'll stay. If you flip through Luke, and I put these references in your notes there just parenthetically so you can make sure I'm not making stuff up. Luke chapter 5, he goes to Peter. Peter's just got done with the day of fishing. He's not Jesus' disciple yet, but he says, hey, he goes to Peter and he says, hey, go back in the water and cast your nets in the deep part. Now, that's a hassle. And Jesus knows it's a hassle. Jesus grew up around Galilee. He knows fishermen. He knows they just got done. They've been out there all day. They've been casting the nets. They've been reeling them back in. They've been casting the nets. They've been waiting. They've been mooring. They've been doing all the stuff they're supposed to do. And now it's the end of the day. They've worked a long shift. They haven't caught anything. They're discouraged. They're looking forward to whatever the rest of their night holds. Maybe some falafel. I don't know if they had it back then, but I've had falafel over there. And if I were there, I would be looking forward to more falafel. So I don't know what they're looking forward to, but they're on with their day, right? And then Jesus sees them at the dock, and he's like, no, I want you to go get back in the boat. I want you to go back out, and I want you to cast in the deep waters. That's the step of obedience. They do it. They have the greatest catch they've ever had. Jesus rewards their obedience with faith. He meets them where they are, and they become his disciples. A few verses later, Jesus calls Levi, or Matthew, the tax collector. And his step of obedience is different. He says, I want you to pick up and follow me. I want you to follow me. And Levi gets up from whatever he's doing, gets up from his desk, leaves his office behind, and he goes and he follows Jesus. He leaves his old life behind, and he goes and follows Jesus. Now, the first step that Peter had to take, get back in the boat, go back out, cast the net, that's annoying. That's not what Levi had to do. Levi's first step of obedience was leave that life behind, follow me. Jesus is always beckoning us with steps of obedience. Down the road, he's trained the disciples a little bit. They've seen him teach. They've seen him cast out demons. They've seen him heal people. And he looks at them and he says, all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. I want you to break off two by two. I want you to go into the surrounding towns and I want you to cast out demons and I want you to heal people. Go. That's your next step of obedience. That's your thing to do now. Go. The great restoration of Peter. Oh, that's Jen's ring. Did you comb it? The great restoration of Peter. Peter, at the end of Jesus' life, fails him, denies him three times as Jesus is being tried. It's a great failure of Peter. I love this passage, and I love the sermon that you get to preach out of it, and I need to revisit it sometime soon. But this restoration of Peter, he goes to him. Jesus has died. He's resurrected. The last time he saw Peter, Peter rejected him three times and then ran off, brokenhearted at what he had done. Jesus raises from the dead. He shows back up. Peter's on the coast. He's getting ready to fish again because he's disqualified from ministry. He can't do what Jesus asked him to do. And Jesus goes to him and he says, Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Then feed my sheep. Obey me. Do what I've told you to do. Go take the next step. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Then obey me. Then go do what I've told you to do. Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Why do you keep asking me? Obey me. There's three times you denied me. There's three times I've restored you. Now go and do what I've asked you to do. Go walk in obedience, Peter. Go feed my sheep. Go be a pastor, what he says. And then the last one, the last step of obedience. Yasmeen read to us, go and make disciples. Do it. Go. What we see in the life of Jesus, when we ask, looking at Jesus' life, how do we make disciples? How do we become disciples? That what we need to pull out of him, out of his life, is not this impractical, clumsy, mysterious, life-on-life discipleship that we need to basically live in a commune with each other and learn from one another. It's we need to take our next steps of obedience. And here's the thing about these next steps of obedience. I don't know what yours might be, but I do know that we all have one. And some of yours are pretty scary. Some of you, if you're thinking about it, if I were to ask you, what do you think is your next step of obedience? Some of it, it's, hey, go back in the deep and cast again. For a lot of us, it's become a person of devotion. Get up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. Just do it. I say it a lot. You hear it a lot. Just do it, man. That's your next step of obedience. Quit worrying about the other stuff and take that one. That's an easy step. That's go back and cast in the deep. I know you're tired. I know it's a hassle. Get up, do it, okay? Maybe that's your step. Maybe it's forgive my mom. Maybe it's confess the sin. Maybe it's seek to restore a relationship that's been broken. Maybe your next step is to get help. Those are hard next steps. Those are the kinds of next steps that we don't know what's on the other side of them. But what we know is that if Jesus is asking us to take it, he will be there to meet us when we do. Which is why we know that the scarier the step, the deeper the faith. The bigger the step in front of you that God's asking you to take, the greater your faith will grow when you're met there. And this is how we become disciples. Not because we become obedient robots to Jesus, but because with every step we take, our faith is deepened, our trust in him is deepened, and we are less hesitant to take steps in the future. Because all we have to do is look at our past and see every time Jesus met us when we took that step. To know that if he's beckoning me to this again, I can take it. So that's how we become disciples at grace. How do we disciple others? If that's how we become disciples, we just increase in our obedience. We take our next step of faith. That's what discipleship looks like. God, what would you have me do? What's the step of obedience you would have me take in my life? And then faithfully take it. And then once you do it, do it again. And once you do it, do it again. If that's how we are disciples, then how do we make disciples at grace? Here's how. We disciple someone by helping them identify and take their next step. That's it. That's it. Maybe their next step is to read a book. For some of you, it's been a few years. You should just try it on. Just read a chapter of something. Maybe the next step is to read a book. Maybe the next step is to start listening to sermons. I don't know. Maybe the next step is to get into a discipleship group, but that's not how we make disciples. We make disciples by helping other people identify their next step and then encouraging them to take it. Small group leaders, you ought to know the next step of everyone in your small group. Or at least know that someone knows what their next step is and that they're being encouraged to take it. This also opens up the doors of clumsy one-on-one discipleship to be discipled in segments or areas of our life, right? Instead of one person just telling us all the things we need to know about everything, we can identify a woman who has a good marriage and ladies, you can go to her and you can say, you seem to have a great marriage. You seem to love your husband well. You seem to honor Jesus in your house. Can you teach me how to do that? Here's some struggles we're having in my house. How would you deal with that? You're more seasoned than me. Your kids are older. You've managed to produce children that like you and that love Jesus and that you like too. How'd you do that? That person, you have that conversation enough times, that person is discipling you in motherhood. You're a young entrepreneur. You're starting something out. You see somebody, you see a guy who's been running his own business for a while. His employees like him. He seems to run it in a godly way. And you go to him, you go, hey, I'm starting a business. Will you help me run this according to the standards of Christ? Can I ask you questions about how to do my business? That man is now discipling you and how to be a godly employer and how to have a Jesus-centered career. You're struggling with an addiction. You're struggling with a particular sin. You're struggling with knowing the Bible. You can go to someone and you say, hey, listen, I've heard you talk. You lace it into conversations. You seem to know the Bible really well. Can you just help me learn it better? Can you tell me what you do? A person's discipling you in your knowledge of Scripture. This allows for communal discipleship, discipleship by a body instead of an individual that we all need to find. This allows people, and this is what's in line with our life experiences, to come in and out of our life and push us towards Jesus in different ways and in different avenues and in different areas of our life without being the person who's discipling us. And I think that this is how Jesus has been shaping his church all along, is by different people being placed in our life that show us our next step of obedience, and then it's up to us to have the willingness to take it. So here's the commission at Grace. Here's what we would ask of Grace partners as we understand what it means to be step-takers. We should all have someone in our life who isn't our spouse, who knows what our next step is and has permission to encourage us to take it. We should all have someone in our life who knows what our next step is and has permission to encourage us to take it. Now, this is important. Now, here's why it can't be your spouse. I'm not anti-marriage, okay? I just know I'm married, and I know that if you added that layer to what Jen and I manage already, and now, in addition to, hey, did you remember to take out the trash and lock up the door? Also, did you have your quiet time this morning? That's not good. That's not helpful, right? That's probably not going to go great. So we find someone outside of our marriage, if we're married, who knows our next step of obedience. We've confessed to them, this is where I think God is pushing me, this is what I need to do. And that's a good step. But the next step is probably even more important. And has permission to encourage us to take it. Someone who's invited into your life to say, hey man, have you done that yet? Have you had that conversation? How is your relationship with so-and-so? How are those safeguards that you put in place? Have you messed up? Is it going okay? How can I encourage you there? That's how we are step-takers at grace. That's how we think about discipleship, not as a program, not as a funnel, not as something that you enter into and then you get spit out as a mature believer, not even necessarily this life-on-life idea that someone would mentor you through all the stages and phases of your life as you work towards maturity, but this communal idea of discipleship, that it's simply framed up exactly as Jesus framed it up, that the more mature we grow in our faith, the more we will grow in the consistency of our obedience. And so to be a disciple means to be someone who is constantly aware of and taking their next step of obedience. And to disciple, to make disciples means to know what someone's next step is, to help them identify it, and then consistently and lovingly encourage them to take it. So at Grace, we are step-takers. And what that means is we understand to grow in maturity, we grow in obedience. So we all have someone in our life who knows what our next step is and has permission to encourage us to take it. Let's pray. Father, I pray that grace would be a church that's full of disciples. That it would be a church that's full of disciple-making disciples who are passionate about you, who are grateful for your son, who want nothing more than to know you better and to know you deeper. I pray that there would be fewer and fewer times that Jesus would need to whisper to us, why do you call me Lord, Lord, if you don't do what I say? Jesus, simply help us to do what you say. Help us to be disciples who take steps of obedience towards you and let us experience the goodness that we're met with as we take steps of faith. God, give us the courage to invite people into our life who know our next step. Give us the humility to invite them to encourage us to take it. If someone entrusts us with that for them, God, make us good stewards of your disciple for that season. Be with us as we go through our week. Be with our team in Mexico as they do your work down there. May they minister as they are ministered to. In Jesus' name, amen. If you guys would stand with me as we depart. I thought it appropriate to end this series, the five traits of grace, with this little stanza that I wrote for the sermon on conduits of grace that kind of captures who we are and what we believe. So I would bless you with this as you go into your week. At grace, we understand. We are yet forgiven. We are broken yet restored. We are deeply flawed and yet deeply loved. We are only good because of the Father. We are only righteous because of the Son. And we are only wise because of the Spirit. And all of this is grace. Go, have a great week. We'll see you next week.

Thank you. Well, good morning. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Before I launch into the sermon, just point of clarity, when Mikey was doing the announcements earlier, there was some pictures of Grace Serves, and there was one picture that one of our elders, the esteemed Doug Bergeson, was in. And in that picture, he appeared to be just leaning up against his rake and resting. And I would love to tell you that that was not typical for the morning, but it was. After that, he was sitting, and that was it for the whole morning. So anyways, we're launching into this new series called Traits of Grace. And this is a series that has been a year in the making, and it's one that I've been very excited to share with you. So I thought that it would be helpful for you to understand how we came about this series and how we arrived at a need for the series and a need for the traits of grace and what they even are so that as we go through them each week for the next five weeks, you'll have an appreciation of where this comes from. So a year ago in our staff meetings, we have staff meetings on Tuesday afternoons, and this is when we talk about things like this. A year ago in our staff meetings, I kind of brought to the staff that I wanted to start doing some more liturgical elements in the church service, which if that's a church word that you're not familiar with, that's kind of from high church, from old school church that's fancy and proper and has an order of service that they go through. There's reading. Sometimes you stand and read. Sometimes there's prepared benedictions. But some of those elements can be really good and really helpful and really encouraging. And some of you come from backgrounds with those liturgical elements. And so we wanted to try to serve everyone in the church and bring those into our service. But as we were talking about what elements to add and what to do, I think it was Kyle made the point that, you know, we really can't just start adding things to Sunday morning services willy-nilly. We really need to know, like, what is the goal of a Sunday morning service? How do we determine if it's good? Is it when people sing loud and the sermon ends on time and people seem to get five or more compliments in the lobby? Is that what a good service means? I heard a snicker over here. I get compliments sometimes. Like, what denotes a good service? And so we started talking about that. What's important to us? What do we want to do? What is the goal of a Sunday morning service? And as we started having discussions about what the goal of a Sunday morning service was, we realized we really can't adequately talk about that until we understand who we are as a church. So what defines us as a church? What are we trying to do as a body of believers? What makes grace, grace? And then let's work backwards to that. And then let's work back into what we should include in our services. And so as I enjoy doing, I pulled out the whiteboard in multiple colors and so that it can all be color coordinated and clear for me up there. I pulled out the whiteboard and I said, that it can all be color-coordinated and clear for me up there. I pulled out the whiteboard, and I said, okay, and this is over the course of several weeks. I said, okay, what makes Grace Grace? Who are we? Like, just throw out things, our traits, our characteristics. And I started to throw them up on the whiteboard, and we got them up there, and there was some that were true but maybe not as true or maybe not us or whatever it is. And there was some that's like, well, those three kind of seem similar. I think we could combine those into one. And after talking about it for a couple of weeks, we arrived at these five traits. And we said, these things we feel as a staff are the things that make grace, grace. It's what we feel we are as a church. So as I put these in front of you, as we put these in front of you, this is not a new direction for grace to go in. These are not new directives for us to walk in. These are putting words around things and around values and around passions that I hope you all share. And this just gives us common language for them. So this is a process by which we are defining the church and who we are. And before I could just come out with it and say, these are the new five traits of grace, I had to take these to the elders because the staff doesn't decide who grace is. I don't decide who grace is. Our elders do. So I typed these out and I presented them to the elders and I told them the process that we went through. And I said, what do you guys think? Do you want to add to or take away? Do we want to tweak some descriptions? What do we, what do you think of this? And the elders were actually excited about it. I was a little bit surprised. I thought they'd be like, all right, great. You know, run with your traits, buddy. But they were, they were actually a little bit animated by it, so animated that they put it in my yearly goals. At the end of my work year, I'm going to get assessed, and when I do, part of the assessment is how well did we begin to integrate these traits into the culture of the church. So my goal is that all the partners of grace would know these five traits, at least like two or three of them, okay? Just like we all know that our mission as a church is to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people, we want us to start understanding these traits and to start understanding this common language. So much so that when we build a new building, which I'm going to talk about at the end of the service today, when we do that, because that looks like that's what we're going to be doing, we're going to put these in the lobby in some decorative way so that we can see them and be reminded of them and who we are and what makes us us. And I kind of think about it like this. I think it's important for us to have these traits and for us to know what they are because I think it helps us stay focused as a church on what we do. And I think that this is important because I'm not going to belabor the story. This story is not the point of the sermon, but there's this great story in the Old Testament, the book of Nehemiah. A man named Nehemiah, he's a captive of a Persian king and he is higher up in his kingdom and he hears that his home city of Jerusalem has been laid to waste and that the walls are no longer standing. And he begs the king for the opportunity to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. And the king gives him that permission. So he goes back to Jerusalem. He gets a lay of the land for a little while. And then to rebuild the walls, he looks at the families that live in Jerusalem. And he says, okay, you guys, you build the wall from here to here. And then you guys, y'all build it from there to there. And then you build it from the gate to that post. And he assigned portions of the wall to all the families of Jerusalem. And every family had their portion that they built. And I think it's a great picture of what the church is. That in church, we all have our portions of the wall that we're supposed to build. Your family's assigned to these things. Your family's assigned to these ministries and those tasks. But I also think that that's a really good picture of how God builds his kingdom in the cities, how God builds his kingdom in communities. I personally believe that there's plenty of great churches that you could be at this morning. There's plenty of churches that you could be at with good worship, with likely better preaching, with better looking people. I mean, the whole gamut. You could go out and you could find other churches and they would be good churches. I would never argue to you that Grace Raleigh is the one church nailing it in the city. We're just doing great. And everybody else is apostate and they need to get on our level. Like that's ridiculous. There's Catholic mass happening right now where Jesus is being honored. There's other Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, Methodist churches all over where Jesus is being honored and that's good. And so I think that God designed and gives a DNA to churches and assigns them portions of the wall to build in his communities. And I think that there's a portion of the wall in Raleigh that's been assigned to Grace Raleigh. And there's a portion that's been assigned to Summit. And there's a portion that's been assigned to Providence. And go on down the list, we all have the portion of the wall that we're supposed to build. And so as a church, as we think about it, these traits are how we build our part of the wall. This is what we do. This is what we focus on. This is not a statement of faith. This is not a statement of what we believe. That's on our website. That's a different thing. This is believing that Jesus is the son of God and that he came to save us and that we love him with all of our heart. What should we do in light of that belief? These things. So the first trait that I would talk with you about, it's what all the songs are about. You ought to be able to guess it by now, is partners of grace are kingdom builders. Partners of grace are kingdom builders. Now, these traits define us as a church holistically, but they also should define what a partner at grace does. I've actually shifted in our Discover Grace class that we do for people who are coming here and are newer to the church. We spend more time on the five traits than on the old boring stuff we used to focus on. So if you came in previous years and it was boring, come again, maybe it's better. But partners of grace are kingdom builders. This is based on a principle that I've shared with you before. And I would say, if parts of this sermon sound familiar to you, they should. I preached a very similar message to this back in January when I talked about what it meant to be all in at grace in our Consumed series. It was the one that I had to come in and film early, so I was actually wearing a hat for the sermon for the first time in my life. And then a couple of years ago in the spring, we went through the book of John, and when we got to the story of John the Baptist, I talked about this, about building kingdoms. So if this sounds familiar to you, it should, if you're a partner of grace. If you're not yet a partner of grace, this is a great series for you to go, for you to know good and well what you're getting yourself into. But when I say that partners of grace are kingdom builders, the idea behind this is every one of us, every one of us to one degree or another is building a kingdom. Every one of you is building a kingdom. It could be your kingdom. It could be God's kingdom. You could be a real sucker and it's someone else's kingdom. You don't even get any of that. But every one of us is, we spend our lives building kingdoms. We go through adolescence. We grow up. We're told somewhere around college age that we've got to make a way for ourselves. We get a degree or we learn a trade and we jump right into it and we just start building our kingdom, right? I had an old pastor that would use the phrase, the American dream is to get all you can, can all you get, and sit on your can. That's what we do, man. We're just building our kingdom. Look at all my stuff I got. Look at my, I'm the king of my quarter acre lot, right? And now some of us have big dreams and build huge kingdoms. Bezos has got himself a big old kingdom. But compared to God's, it's a little baby kingdom. We build our kingdoms too, and sometimes we have big dreams, and we want to build big kingdoms, and we got big goals, and they include multiple vacation houses all over the world. And sometimes we have smaller goals, and our kingdom is our family, and that's what we pour our lives into. But I want to turn, I want to open our eyes to the idea that every single one of us invests our life building a kingdom. And so the question becomes, whose kingdom are you building? And to answer that question, we define kingdom builders like this. A kingdom builder is one who realizes that all the talents, gifts, abilities, and resources they have were given to them by God for the purposes of building his kingdom, not their own. I know it's a longer note than we normally put up there, but I wanted to be very clear. A kingdom builder, someone who's not building their kingdom, someone who's building God's kingdom, is one who realizes that all of the talents, gifts, abilities, charisma, resources, finances, everything that I've been given or the tools that I use to acquire the things that I have are not mine. I am a steward of those things. And God gave them to me to build his kingdom, not my own kingdom. Many, many, many, if not a vast majority of us in church and outside of church go through life believing that all the talents that we have and all the abilities that we have and all the ways that we can find to build relationships, power, money, whatever it is that we're after, that we just came by those by hard work or luck or some combination of the two and that we're supposed to employ those for our benefit. But to be a Christian, to be a believer, to be a child of God is to understand, no, no, he didn't give you those things to build your kingdom. He gave you those things to be a part of building his, which is a much more thrilling invitation than building our paltry kingdom that will all fade. They all will. I remember when this clicked for me for the first time. I was about 28 years old, and I was taking kids to summer camp. And I had always been marginally athletic growing up, all right? And that's not false humility. I really was. I was good enough. I was marginally athletic, although I don't think I really need to claim that. No one's looking at me going, I don't believe you, man. You were apex predator out there on that soccer field. Yeah, all right. So we're all on the same page here. And I don't, I mean, I don't know if you know this, but you are looking at a member of the 1998 Georgia Association of Christian Schools All-State Soccer Team. So, yeah, I know. I know. I don't want to intimidate people, so I don't bring it up a lot. There was like four schools in that association. I really thrive in low-bar situations. It's been a theme of my life. But I was marginally athletic. I was athletic enough that I could get in just about any game, any sport, and jump in and participate and not embarrass myself and sometimes do well and usually not get picked last. And so that served me well in high school and college and particularly growing up in my culture in the, where you, as a dude, your worth was your ability to play sports. And so I had that ability, and I could jump in. Clearly, I'm no longer in a position where that attribute is relevant. So that is atrophied greatly. I'm not a marginal athlete anymore, but I used to be. And I remember I was going to summer camp, taking these kids, and I had just been hired by this church. It was a larger church with a youth group of about 200, 225. And I was hired as the middle school pastor. And when we went, we had a high school pastor who was a friend of mine. But I knew that when we got back, they were going to fire him, which was an uncomfortable week. But I also knew that these high school kids are really close with him, and they're going to be bummed when we get back from intense relationship building camp. And then they have to say goodbye to their buddy, and they're not going to understand why. So I knew that I needed to create relationships, bridges with these high school guys as quickly as I could, because I was going to need to be there for some conversations when we got back home, but they didn't know that. So I'm racking my brain, how do I even get these guys to talk to me? They don't care about me. I'm the middle school pastor. They don't care about the new guy. They have their relationships. But every day during free time, they'd go down to the ball courts. And so I would too. And we'd roll the basketball out on the court, and I'd get to playing with them, and I'd spend two hours every day playing basketball with these guys. Building rapport, making jokes, and whatever, whatever. And it built a bridge for me so that when we got back and everything hit the fan, I was able to lean on some relationships that I had begun building. And that's when it dawned on me, oh my goodness, God did not give me marginal athletic talent so that I could get people to like me in high school. He gave it to me because he knew that I would spend 15 years of my life in youth ministry and that it is an essential and crucial part of building necessary relationships with the people around you. And I thought, oh, getting to be on the All-State soccer team in 1998 was a happy byproduct to what God really cared about, which was putting me on the courts with those guys in 2010 so that I could build some rapport with them as their pastor. That's the first time it really clicked with me that everything I've been given has been given to me to build his kingdom, not my own kingdom. And that it is so easy to get caught in the pattern of putting our head down and building our own kingdom without remembering regularly that we are to be stewards of the gifts and abilities and the resources that we have. And Jesus actually preached this in the Sermon on the Mount. He addressed this. He talked about it like this. that we can build here on earth. And how eventually, no matter how big we build them, they will fade. The moth and rust will destroy. They will be corroded away. And what we build will not matter. Rather than investing your life in something that ultimately doesn't matter at all, invest your only finite resource in eternal things, in God's kingdom, and things that will matter for eternity. That's the invitation that God gives the Christian. I think it's one of the greatest apologetics for the Christian faith. Where else in this world, where else in our lives can we be imbued with purpose that great as to wake up every day and have the opportunity to build something that will last forever? And yet that's the invitation that God gives us, to be kingdom builders. So how do we build kingdoms? What does that look like? I hope by now you're asking that question. Yeah, Nate, I get it. We're supposed to leverage our gifts and abilities to build God's kingdom. But what does it mean to build God's kingdom? I think this is how we build God's kingdom. We build God's kingdom by adding and strengthening souls. Supposed to be a souls there. Sorry. I must've been moving fast when I put in the slides. We build God's kingdom by adding and strengthening souls. And here's how I know that's true. Because this is what Jesus told us to do. The very last instruction he gave the disciples. He's trained them for three years. He's died. He's resurrected. He's heading back up to heaven to be our high priest and to leave the Holy Spirit with us to guide us as we go. And he gives them final instructions. What does he tell them? Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He says, go, build my kingdom. I'm giving you the keys. You're the only pastors the world has. Now go and tell everybody what you saw for the last three years. Go and make disciples. And because Jesus says go and make disciples and not simply go and make converts, that I know that Jesus wants us to build the kingdom not only by adding souls to the kingdom, by sharing our faith and seeing people come to faith and seeing people trust in Jesus. And again, just so I can be clear, what it means to be a Christian, as I understand it, is to believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He's the Savior and Son of God. He did what he said he did. He died. He conquered death. He rose on the third day. And he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which is to come back and make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You believe those things about Jesus Christ, you're a believer. But it's not enough to just bring someone to the point where they believe those things and we so add them to the kingdom and make the kingdom grow in number. We are commissioned to strengthen those souls that are converted. That's why Jesus says, go and make disciples. So not only do we build the kingdom by sharing our faith and adding people, adding numbers to the kingdom, but we build the kingdom by walking with one another, by helping one another deepen our faith and grow in our spiritual life and become more vulnerable with one another as we share this journey together. We add to the kingdom. We strengthen the kingdom by discipling one another. And that's one of our traits. That's step-takers. We're going to talk about that one. But if you're asking, how do I build the kingdom? You build it by adding and strengthening souls. And so our job is to set about with our lives doing that the best way we can. And I think when I think of people who are building God's kingdom, I can think of so many people at Grace who are kingdom builders, inside and outside of Grace. I think of a man that I deeply respect who's a business owner. And within his business, he has the opportunity to develop leaders. And he sends those leaders out and they start their own businesses. But they grow up within his culture. And his culture is founded on Christian principles and Christian values. And the people that he leads are almost always believers and creating work environments where people are treated rightly and justly and fairly and they're loved. And all the people under the umbrella of his business are people who are loved well and led well. And then he develops people within that and sends them out so that they love and they develop well. Adding and strengthening souls to the kingdom by simply doing. Everybody from the outside would look at him and say, well, he's doing his job. But what he knows is his job is boring. What's fun is developing leaders and sending them out and watching them replicate these cultures. That's what my life is for. I think about Lynn Lemons, who's been given a gift of organization and been given a heart for missions. And she uses that as the chair of our missions committee, who, I don't know if you know this, decides what happens with 10% of our budget and how we partner with ministry partners outside of the walls of grace, using gifts and abilities that she's been given to add to and to strengthen God's kingdom. I think of Phil Leverett. Y'all probably don't know that Phil is our head usher, which is, I hate to say it publicly because it always goes to his head, but he is. He's our head usher. And he shows up early almost every Sunday. And he makes sure everything's in line. If stuff needs to be on the seats, he'll double check that. He'll make sure everyone's scheduled. He's just faithfully devoted to doing that, to building God's kingdom, strengthening souls, adding to the kingdom by making everything in the church work. I think of Debbie Bergeson, who sits in the COVID baby room and just holds a screaming child once or twice a month, just completely nonplussed, shuts the door, just sits there, the kid screams, and mom and dad just hold on for dear life, hoping they can get an hour to themselves and enjoy church and enjoy one another. Just silently, thanklessly doing that week in and week out. I think of some of the moms we have in the church who are devoted to homeschooling. And they get together and they teach their children. And they build them up and they make disciples and they form them and that is their ministry and that is how they build the kingdom. I think of somebody who had an opportunity to become an elder, and he said, not right now. It's not my season to lead the church in that way. We're so busy with all of our schedules. I need to focus on my children and be the husband and the father that I need to be. And he's going and building God's kingdom that way. But I happen to believe that all of us are given gifts and abilities and talents that God intends for us to use to build his kingdom. And I believe that not only because I've seen it, but because it's in the Bible. It's in the verse that Tamara read to us during the worship this morning. Ephesians 2.10, I don't know when or how I stumbled upon that verse, but it was in the early years of me at Grace, 2017, 2018. I was just reading my Bible, and the all-star verses in Ephesians chapter 2 are the two that precede it and talk about salvation. It is by grace that we are saved through faith, that not of ourselves, that it is a gift of God, so that no man may boast. And you always read those, and you're like, yeah, and you highlight those, and those are the important ones. But this one right after it, for the Christian, who understands the doctrine of salvation, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. You know what that verse tells us? Whether you believe it or not, God created each one of you with a design for good works that you would walk in, that he's laid out for you with the sincere hope and with the will and with the desire that as you move through your life and as you move through your faith, your eyes would be opened to what those good works are and that you would walk in them. I believe that this is true of every human that's ever lived, that God has created them and imbued them with certain gifts for a purpose so that they might deploy those to build his kingdom. I think of my uncle, Uncle Deg. Those are his initials, but everybody knows him as Deg. If you knew him in the 80s, you knew him as Flash, so that's the kind of dude he was. There was Camaros and motorcycles involved. Deg is a militant atheist. It breaks my heart. But when he was growing up in the 70s, he went to a hyper conservative independent Baptist church that just ruined his faith. And I don't really blame him for walking away from that God, because I would have too. And I'm grateful that my mom didn't introduce me to that God that she met when she was growing up. But Deg, Deg can tell a story, man. That guy can own a room. He can take over a dinner party. And people follow Deg. People listen to him. And he's smart. And I just know he would have been a great pastor. I just know it. I'd love to go to his church. I think when God formed him in my grandmother's womb, that that's what he purposed him for. But Degg's just lived a life and he hasn't been able to have his eyes open to see his good works. And so he doesn't walk in them. But if you're at grace, let's have our eyes open to that. Each one of us, no matter how talentless, talentless, or insignificant, or unimportant we might feel, your God doesn't think that of you. We don't think that of you. We think that Ephesians 2.10 is true. And that when God formed you in your mother's womb, that he laid out for you good works that you should walk in until the day that he takes you back up to heaven to be with him. Because we believe that, and because we believe, and this is so important, and I'm so glad, Aaron, that you referred to this in your prayer earlier today. When you are walking in God's purpose for your life, when you are walking in obedience, when you are walking in the good works that God has prepared for you, there is no greater happiness or peace. To walk outside of those, to build our own kingdom, to refuse to walk in the good works that God laid out for us, that's where life feels disjointed. That's where we feel out of whack. That's where we beat our heads against the wall trying to find a sense of purpose. But when we walk in the good works that Jesus laid out for us before time, there's no greater peace or joy than being exactly who God created you to be. Parents, while we're here, do you know what you're raising? Kingdom builders. You're raising humans that God formed, knowing the good works that they should walk in. And it is your primary job as a parent to help them love Jesus and be able to identify the good works in which they are called to walk. That's what a successful parent is. Parents of adults, you get to help coach them through it. But because that's what we believe, because at Grace we are kingdom builders and we believe that everybody has a portion of that kingdom to build, I want to leave you with these two questions. I want you, honestly, I want you to think about these, talk about these with your spouse or with your small group people or with some friends at the church. And I would really love it, small group leaders, if we could spend a portion of our small group time this week in our groups talking about these two questions. Not all the time, but just give folks who heard the sermon a chance to respond to these a little bit. Five, ten minutes. Here's the two questions I want you to go thinking about this week. Whose kingdom are you building? And what is my good work? Whose kingdom am I building? Am I building my kingdom or am I building God's? Have I rallied all the resources in my life to make my name great or am I doing it to make God's name great? And then what are my good works? What can I walk in right now? If you don't know, ask somebody who loves you and knows you. But everybody has them. And we all should walk in them. I hope you'll go and you'll think about those things. Whose kingdom am I building? With the time I have here, whose kingdom do I want to build? And what is the good work that God has prepared me to walk in. Let me pray. Father, we thank you for who you are and for how much you love us. God, I just pray particularly right now for folks in the room who just really might not know. Maybe their heart position is, God, I want to serve you. I want to do what you want me to do. I want to build your kingdom, but I don't know what. Lord, would you please show them? Would you have someone who loves them speak into their lives and in their hearts this week? Would you show them the good works that they could walk in, that they might experience your joy as they do it? Father, if there are those of us here this morning who have had our heads down building our own kingdoms, would you convict us of that? Would you show us that in ourselves? Would you help all of us be people who are zealous to build your eternal kingdom? And God, as we do this, I pray for courage and I pray for strength and I pray for the peace and joy that comes with taking the steps of obedience and faith as we begin to live out the purpose that you've given us. In Jesus' name, amen.

I wonder, pals, how long has it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along, and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks mailman Kyle. This week, it's getting hot in here, the story of the fiery furnace. All right, nice. Good morning everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here. You can see me in films such as that video you just watched, most notably. But I am so excited this morning to be continuing in our series, Kid Stories for Grownups. In the next two weeks, we're going to be in Daniel, and we are going to tell two of the great kid stories of our faith. You know, I see a lot of people who grew up in church. These are stories you probably know back and forward, not only because you grew up listening to them, but you probably grew up telling them to your own kids as well. These are fun ones. As I was reading through here and as I'm prepping, I feel like I'm prepping myself to give a message that's basically just like a series download or like an episode download of VeggieTales. These are two of the great VeggieTales films, episodes of all time. But this morning, we find ourselves talking about the fiery furnace. But before we actually dive into the fiery furnace, well, before we actually dive into the story of the fiery furnace, I feel like it's important to have a little context, a little background of what is going on and how these men have found themselves being thrown into a fiery furnace. And so we open up in Daniel. We're going to be reading a decent amount in Daniel. So if you would be interested in opening that up, I actually am using this Bible, so I can tell you that you can find that on 873. And it's going to be on the screen as well, but like we're going to be reading a decent amount, and I would love for us to be able to open up our scripture together. But we find some background and some context that we need at the very beginning of Daniel chapter 1, verses 1 through 2. It says, That gives us some background because we see this nation, Judah, which is a part of Israel, and they are being taken away from Israel and brought to Babylon. They are becoming exiles to Babylon. Now, the reason for this, we find had a covenant with his people. The people of Israel, if you will serve me and love me and worship me as the one and only true God, and if you will live up to the Ten Commandments that I've given you, the laws that I've given you,. And they turned against him. They began worshiping themselves or worshiping other gods or other idols. They began to seek after self-satisfaction instead of the satisfaction of the Lord. The kings became power hungry and wanted them to be the most powerful as opposed to seeking the guidance of God, who they would have to argue is somebody more powerful than them, and they didn't want to deal with that. And so now we find ourselves at this moment where the Lord has allowed these people, Babylon, an enemy of Judah, to come and to take over this nation. Now, when we jump in here, we see that there's kind of, when we look at Daniel, there's kind of a decent summary that I can give you of Daniel, and it's this. One, God is in control. And two, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have complete faith and trust in that truth. We see it from the very beginning. God's people are being taken over, but they're only being taken over because the Lord is allowing it to happen. And so they begin to bring people. So what happens is, because King Nebuchadnezzar is a smart king, as they take these people over, what he doesn't want to happen is, hey, we have now taken you over. And so now you are like our servants, or now you guys living in exile are now enemies of us. He doesn't want to take over nations and have an entire nation of people hating him, and so he starts to try to work on his cultural appropriation. And so what does he do? He reaches out and he says, hey, will you bring to me from the nation of Judah, people in the royal family, people of nobility, of high birth, will you bring to me some of these men so that I can start bringing them in to my council? Maybe putting them in my armies or putting them as wise men in my council in different places and in different areas in different ways like that, which is a smart move, right? And you guys will never guess what four men were part of the group that they invited to come up. Yeah, right? Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I know it's crazy, but just bear with me. And so they get brought in, but the problem is that even though they were welcomed in as friends, they were welcomed in upon conditions because ultimately the goal is, let me build these people up. If they're going to be in my armies, they need to be well-fed and they need to be of right stature to be able to be in an army. And along with that, I'm going to teach them our ways. I'm going to teach them our culture so that they can dive into it and they can be a part of our culture. It sounds great, except for there are different cultural things that are against what Daniel and his friends think are true and accurate and right with the God. One of those is the food that they were being asked to eat and the wine that they were being asked to drink. They found that if they were to partake in those things, that it would defile both them and their God. And so they go to a guard, a servant who's bringing them the stuff and says, hey, here's the deal. We feel like we're defiling ourselves and we're kind of like making a mockery of God or whatever it is. By doing this, do you mind if you just gave us water and vegetables? That's all we want, and then we'll be good to go. And so it says, once again, the Lord is in control. We've talked about this. The Lord softened the heart of the man that they asked and allowed him to hear them out. And so he's like, yeah, but like, here's the problem with that. If you do that and then you don't build up and if you don't grow up to the stature that all of the rest of these men grow up to, then not only are you in trouble and probably going to get killed for doing the wrong thing, but so will I, because I gave you the wrong nutrients that didn't allow you to grow. But Daniel and his friends, they stand together and they say, if you give us 10 days, I promise you, our God is good and he's going to deliver. He's going to allow us to be in the same stature. And he was right. At the end of those 10 days, when they took stock of, hey, what do all of these men look like? Here are these four men that looked most ready and most nourished by what they had eaten. The Lord had provided for them. they were given the name Shadrach, Meshael, and Azariah. Background, those are the three names of the men that they were given. But when they moved to Babylon, they were given the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So we'll go back to that. So they entered the king's service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus. They chose to serve God because they knew that, and they had faith that the Lord would pull through. And so here they are. Now they're brought in, and they are a part of the council of the king. Now they are within the king's inner circle, which should mean that they're set now. They're good to go. They are separated now from harm's way. But there's two problems with that thinking. The first is that King Nebuchadnezzar is like pretty unhinged. He's a pretty unhinged guy. He flies off the handle pretty quickly, gets pretty angry. And two, once again, they still find themselves within a culture that is polytheistic, that though they're totally fine with, hey, you guys are welcome to pray and serve and love your God, as long as you pray and serve and love these other gods. It's too narrow-minded of you to think that the God that you serve is the one true and only God. Well, that presents some issues. So we then go into chapter two. And in chapter two, what we see is Nebuchadnezzar has this dream. This dream is very troubling for him. He's very, he's upset. He's figuring it out. And so he goes to his wise men, the wise men closest to him. And he says, here's the deal. I need you to tell me what my dream means. But, but here's the kicker. I need you also, because how do I know you're not just making up, how do I know you're not just making up your own interpretation as opposed to the correct interpretation? The only way I'm going to actually trust that you're telling me the right thing is if beforehand you also tell me what my dream was. So not only do I want to know what my dream meant, but you have to tell me what I dreamed. And if not, I'm going to get angry. Well, the men naturally say, King Nebuchadnezzar, that is literally impossible. There is no way for us to tell you what you want. Sure, if you want to tell me your dream, I've got wisdom for you. I've got wisdom for days, but we don't have this. Well, the king, as we previously discussed, becomes unhinged. He becomes so angry at the fact that these people are acting like they can't tell him. He's like, okay, fine. It's time to clean house, find some new people. So he says, okay, all of the wise men that are here, all of my wise men in my council, I'm making a decree. I'm going to kill you all. You're all meant to be put to death. Well, Daniel hears this. It upsets him. But he goes and he says, can I have some time with the king for tomorrow? Whatever. And after he does so, he goes back. He goes back to his home. He finds Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And he urges them, he says, guys, right here, right now, we have to come together and we need to pray and just beg God for God's grace and God's mercy that he will show and reveal to them this dream so that they might be saved. Faced with a problem and his solution is, let go, find my friends, sit together, pray and praise God, and hopefully the Lord will reveal. And the Lord does. The Lord reveals the dream. They respond by praising God for his goodness, and then he goes and he talks to King Nebuchadnezzar, and he makes it very clear to the king. He says, no man, no man could ever do this, but the Lord, our God, has revealed the dream. Back story of the dream, basically the point of the dream is God has put Nebuchadnezzar in charge for now. God's in control, but right now he's allowed Nebuchadnezzar to be in control of this place. At some point that will end, and at some point the Lord will take back over. But the Lord will take over Nebuchadnezzar's reign and for the Lord's people. But nonetheless, Nebuchadnezzar is through the moon. He instantly falls to the ground. He falls at the feet of Daniel and basically just starts praising Daniel's God. Your God must be the God of gods. It must be the king of kings. And he just begins to worship and finally begins to understand how great Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's God is. And that is where we come to chapter three. And that is where we finally get to turn to and talk about the story of the fiery furnace. This isn't the first time that these three men, the story that a lot of us know so well, this isn't the first time they are standing up for their lives or standing up for their faith, even if it means their life. This is now going to be the third time that they get to do so. So it's been a few years, and certainly the king now understands that their god is one of the gods, but he doesn't quite understand yet that he's not, he doesn't quite understand that he's the one true god, and the only god. And so a few years pass, and as these men have been elevated, Daniel is now separated from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And so this story just includes the three. And what happens in this story is the king goes, and he basically has this giant golden statue idol made, and he puts it down. It's, let me make sure that I've got the name of the area correct. Oh yes, the plain of Dura in Babylon. The reason why I wanted to make sure of that is that's the same place that years before they had tried to build the Tower of Babel, trying to put themselves on a level playing field with God. And so here they are back in the same exact area, creating this giant idol to serve and to bow down to. And the decree is, hey, when all of the music, you can worship whatever God you want to, but when all of this music starts playing, you must fall down and you must praise and you must worship this idol that I have placed in the center of this town. Well, I think you can probably imagine what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did with that, and that was absolutely nothing. The kicker was, a part of that decree was not simply, hey, you have to do this, but if you don't do it, we're going to throw you into the fiery furnace. He said the title. They didn't care though. They went about their business. They served and they loved and they praised their one God. Well, some of the other people in the council of Nebuchadnezzar were not too thrilled about that. So they go to Nebuchadnezzar. they say, hey, the three Jewish men that you have in your wise council, not only are they not falling down and praising this golden idol that you've given us, so whatever, they don't pray to any of your gods. None of your gods they pray or praise to. And Nebuchadnezzar gives way to his being unhinged and gets furious. But as he calls them in, he reels it back in a little bit, and he offers them this. If you'll just pray to this idol the next time that the instruments play, if you'll now begin to praise and pray to these other gods, I'll let you walk. And almost in a way of cutting them off, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego respond this way in Daniel 3, 16 through 18. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. We have full faith and assurance that God is strong enough to deliver us from this. But we also have full faith and assurance that even if he doesn't, we're still going to only serve him because our God is not the God of right now. Our God is the God of eternity, and that's all that matters. So you can give us whatever deal you want to. We're not going to abide by it because our God is the only God. And so Nebuchadnezzar, as you can imagine, was very cool and understanding. He was furious. It says that he ordered the flames to be elevated to seven times as hot, like I guess the flames to elevate to his level of anger, which I think is funny because if you're burning people alive, then like, it seems like fire would be fire, but whatever, he decides to do that. So here we are. What's a few extra degrees, but you know, he wanted it, so they did it. And that's where we come to the rest of the story. That's where we get to close out. And I would love for us to be able to read the rest of the story together. And shouted, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, come here. So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the fire, and the satraps, prefects, governors, and royal advisors crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair on their heads singed. Their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them. Then Nebuchadnezzar said, Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses to be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way. Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the province of Babylon. That's good stuff. That is an incredible story. So far, we're three chapters in. You feel like it holds up to the bill that I delivered of a summation of Daniel is the Lord is in control. And that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have complete and utter faith in the fact that the Lord is in control. Every step, every moment, every discussion, all orchestrated by God to reveal his glory, not only to his own people, but to these other people, to show himself to these people who don't know him. And that's worthy of praise, man. It's worthy of praise, and it's worthy of excitement to say this God who's completely in control throughout these stories is the same God who is completely in control right now over every one of our stories. It's why we come and we stand and we sing and we raise our hands talking about the goodness of God, that all of my life you've been faithful, all of my life you have been so, so good to me, and I know that you will continue to be so, and I know that forever I have you because I've given my heart to you. That is worthy of an amen. That is worthy of praise. That is worthy of excitement. But that second part of the summary sometimes becomes hard for me. I look and I go, you know, I have an easier time putting my feet in the shoes of some of our other people in this series. I see myself more, and I can take more, I feel like, from the stories of Thomas and Peter when they doubted, but then in their doubt, the Lord pursues after them and shows them great love and grace in their doubt and still continues to use them in spite of it. I feel much more connected to the story of Jonah that Aaron Winston talked to us two weeks ago about, or last week about. Someone who loves God, certainly, and has a complete faith in God, but sometimes his selfishness got in the way, and sometimes his fear got in the way of what he knew the Lord wanted him to do. But in spite of those things, the Lord still works through him, works through his heart and he allows his glory to be revealed through a man who has a faith that isn't perfect, I feel more comfortable there. I see myself in the fear and in the doubt, in the selfishness. And I feel uplifted that in those things, the Lord still uses me. But man, to continue to look in the face of danger and evil and death and to unwaveringly say yes to Christ and to stand in faith and to stand in the glory of God and no other, it feels too big and too much. It feels like this story is one where I go, that was so nice. I love that so much. How good is God? Amen. Now let me go back to my broken faith. Good for them for being heroes. That's not me. And so as I'm thinking through this, then the question, the impossible question that I'm asking myself and presenting to myself is, okay, so then how do you attain an unattainable faith? This feels completely unattainable for me and for most humans. And as I continued reading and as I continued to dive in and dig in, what I realized is, ultimately, the product of these men's great faith was huge and feels unattainable. But when we leave here and we come back to here, when we come and look at the root of these men's faith, and we look at the characteristics of what drives these men to have such great faith, I think we begin to see roots that are far more attainable than what we see on the surface. The first one that I see is that these are men that compare their circumstances not to their own power, but to God's. If that sounds familiar to you, it means you've been keeping up. That was Nate's point when he talked about David and Goliath. This tiny, young, teenage kid looks at this nine-foot giant or however big and says, who does this guy think he is? He's disrespecting our God, and God will not stand for this. And so while an entire army looks and says, there's no way we can fight this man because there's no way I'm strong enough to do this, this kid doesn't look at the circumstance that he's in and say, I can't fight this. He looks and says, God can fight this. This is what these men do. They say, God is in control of all this. God wants his glory to be revealed. If it was left up to them and if it was left up to their power, there's nothing. But left up to God's, never any doubt. We can be people who are reminded that it's not about our power, it's about God's power. The second one I see is they have their ark. This is a little insider language, but Aaron Gibson, when he preached on Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho, he talked about that these people were asked to do something that seemed pretty insane. Instead of trying to take hammers and all this stuff to these walls that they're trying to take down so that they can fight Jericho, God says, I'm going to take care of the wall. I need you seven days to walk around this wall. They're going seven days, and it doesn't talk about on day three, wow, look at all the bricks who have fallen already. Wall is standing up tight. Doesn't feel like anything's moving. Why would they continue to go? Well, because when they look back, they see that they have the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant holds the Ten Commandments and it holds these different treasures of their faith that are reminders to them that God provided for us then, and God was good then, and so therefore now, even though I don't quite see him, and even though I don't quite understand why he's asked me to do what he's asked me to do, I know that he'll provide for me again, and I know that he is still good because he was good then. And ultimately, like they say, they say, but even if he doesn't, even if he doesn't save me, what they ultimately know is the Lord is good for eternity. And they can get on board with that. But the problem becomes, once again, we're still left at a place where if you're telling me these things, then I'm saying, yes, I agree with both of those. But I think a lot of us have this. We know. We know the Lord is in control. We know that he is stronger than we are, and we know he's been good in the past. So why is it, Kyle, why is it that I still can't stand? Why do I still choose myself over my faith? Why do I still not do this? Well, that is where I come to a third characteristic that I see that I think kind of drives the point home a little bit better, not only for these people, but for us. And that's that they grow and that they stand in their faith together. I think a lot of times we find ourselves feeling the same way that Paul does. When he writes in Romans 7.15, bear with me here because this is a lot of, there's a lot of do's in here, so just bear with me. I do not understand what I do. Amen, right? For what I do, or excuse me know full well what is good and what is right to do, but then when it comes to actually doing it, we do something else? I mean, I know that is for me. The last time I was consistent in working out and lifting weights and stuff was ninth grade. I know full well how important that is and how valuable it is to be healthy, to eat healthy, to work out, all that stuff. But ninth grade was the last season I played a football. And when the weightlifting coaches are football coaches and the other people in the weightlifting class are football players, everyone is pushing each other because ultimately you are going to that same goal because we are best if you are at your best. And so I'm going to make sure you do what you need to do. You're going to make sure I do what I need to do. And the coaches are going to make sure that it all gets done. But then when I was away from that team, when I wasn't on football team anymore, then it kind of was up to me. Do I want to continue doing this? Do I want to continue this hard work and this hard grind? I know I should. It'll be best for me. It'll be best for all of the things. But when it's left up to me and I feel like it's up to my own devices, a lot of times it just doesn't happen. I mean, gosh, even in my relationship with Ashlyn, man, like, I see the way that she, like, the way that she values health. I see the way that she values loving and caring for people. I see the way that she values building up and encouraging people, random encouragements to friends, friends that are close, friends that are far away, valuing getting on the phone with friends that I have fallen far from connected to, even though I love them so much. All of these things I know to be true and good and right. I should love people. I should serve people. I should be more connected to the people around me and the people that I love that are not currently around me. But man, until I had somebody that I could see doing it with me, it was a lot harder to do it. And until I had somebody who encouraged me in those things and in those ways, I had a hard time figuring it out. And look at how these guys handle all of this. They come together, and together they stand and say, we're not eating these things. We're only going to eat these things. Daniel finds out about this, and instantly he goes to his friends, and he says, guys, we need to sit together in a circle right now, and together we have to pray to God. These three guys say, we're not going to serve this God, even if it means we're getting thrown into the furnace. And if we are going to be thrown into the furnace, we're going to be thrown in together. They stand on top of what they believe in, and they stand together, which gives them the power to do so. It is very hard, I would say nearly impossible so you don't need to find it, but will you just read it with me as you see it on the screen? Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promises faithful. What is he saying there? Let us hold without, like unswervingly. Let us never veer away from loving God and holding to our faith. How? How are we going to be able to do that unswervingly? That's why we have 24 through 25. And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day approaching. We spur one another on towards our love, towards the good deeds that we do in our faith. We don't give up meeting together, but we encourage one another. We uplift one another. In here on Sunday mornings, we stand and we praise together. In small groups, we're vulnerable. We talk, we discuss, we sit down in prayer with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We encourage, we love, we hold accountable. That is how we grow, and that is how we build up this type of faith. Because ultimately, our goal is this, to have a faith like Martin Luther discussed when he says, Because of it, you freely, willingly, and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love, and praise God. It's not just about looking death in the face. It's about looking every single person you see in the face and showing them love and serving them however you possibly can. That's our goal. And how we accomplish it is together. Let's pray. Lord, I'm so thankful that you have your hand on us and you are completely in control. Lord, I pray that I consistently remember that and that we consistently remember that. But God, I pray that as we try to build and maintain our faith, Lord, and as it gets hard, allow us to realize and remember that we have each other. God, I thank you for giving us such a beautiful and wonderful community as you've given us in grace. God, I pray that we are a people who love and meet together and serve each other, uplift and encourage one another so that we can do your will to the fullest effect. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.