Sermons tagged with Suffering

This morning we are jumping into a brand new series simply called James, where we're going through the book of James in the Bible. The book of James is one of my favorite books, mostly because James tells it like it is, man. Like, James is blunt. He just kicks you in the teeth, and I need that. Subtlety doesn't work for me. I need you to just tell me what I need to do and tell me how I've messed up. And that's exactly what James does. So I'm excited to go through it with you. Another thing about the book of James that I like to share, because I think it's a really well-made point. It's not mine. It's a pastor named Andy Stanley. James is the half-brother of Jesus. And he ends up writing a book of the Bible and is one of the leaders, along with Peter, of the early church. He's like the very first early church father. So James believed that Jesus was the Son of God. Those of you with brothers or sisters, what would it take for them to convince you that God sent them from above and they came to die on a cross and save the whole world? Like what would it take for you to believe your brother or your sister when they said that? Because James believes that, that's pretty good evidence that Jesus was who he says he was, right? That's Andy Stanley's point, not mine, but it's a good reason to listen to James. As we approach the book of James, I'm actually going to share a video with you guys. There's a group called The Bible Project online. If you don't know about them, you should. They make tons of great videos that explain books of the Bible. You can find one for almost any book of the Bible. Just go to Bible Project. You can Google it. If you're at home right now, don't go yet. I'm about to show you a video. Please stay locked in here. But they make books, they make videos about the books of the Bible and about themes in the Bible. It's a tremendous way to begin to understand and approach Scripture. And I thought the one that they made for James was so good that as we kicked off the series, it was the best possible way to kind of prime us for what to expect. It's a little bit longer of a video. It's about eight minutes long. So settle in and buckle up, and we're going to watch this intro video to James together. Here you go. I hope that you enjoyed that. If the biggest thing that you get out of this Sunday, honestly, is to use that more in your personal life, I'm good with that. It's a really, really good resource. So I hope that you appreciated that video and how easy it is to kind of make the whole book approachable now as we read it. If you don't have a reading plan, you can grab one on the way out or we have them online on our live page. This week is set up just like chapter one is. You can see from the video that chapter one's kind of a setup for the rest of the book and the themes and the things that we need to be familiar with so that we can understand it and apply it to ourselves as we move through the book, and in this case, as we move through the series. And so that's what I want to try to do this morning, is pull out the themes and help us set up some parameters around what we're going to talk about for the remaining five weeks of the series. This is going to be a six-week series that's actually going to carry us into Advent. I'm really excited for our Christmas series that we're already working on that we've got coming up. So this is going to carry us all the way through to Thanksgiving. One of the things in the video that I wanted to point out that I thought could help us approach the overarching point of the book of James is that idea of perfection and living lives as our whole selves versus living lives, they called it in the video, as our compromised selves. I think that this is something that we can all relate to. In chapter one, they said that through the book of James that this word perfect or whole appears seven times and that James is writing to push us in that direction. And I think that we can relate to a need to be made whole in that way because many of us know what it is to live disjointed lives, right? I feel like if you're a believer for any amount of time, you know what it is to live a life that doesn't feel all the way in sync. You see a version of yourself that you know that God created you to be. I know that I can walk in that obedience. I see who he wants me to be, and yet I continue to walk in this direction and be this person that I don't want to be, but I keep getting pulled in that direction. We know what it is to come to church on a Sunday, maybe have a good experience, be moved by the worship, which I was this morning, that was great. Be moved by the worship. Be moved by the sermon. Feel a closeness to Jesus. Feel like it was a sweet moment. And then Monday morning you wake up and you go crack skulls at work. Monday morning you wake up and you forget that yesterday was a sweet moment. Maybe it doesn't even make it to the next day. Maybe you had a sweet moment and then in the car the wife says the thing that you don't want her to say and then you're off to the races, right? And there goes that peace and harmony. You know what it is to wake up in the morning, to have a quiet time, to devote some time to God, to spend time in God's Word, to spend time in prayer, and on that very same day lose your mind with your co-workers or your kids or your spouse. We know what it is to have a habit or a hang-up that we say, I'm done with this. I'm not doing this anymore. This has owned my life and has displeased God and displeased me for too long. I'm drawing a line in the sand. I'm not doing this anymore. And then maybe we added in some controls and some accountability and we asked people to help us out. And we took this stand. I'm going to live as that person finally. And then a day or a week or a month later, we do the same thing. And we live as the version of ourselves that we don't like, that Jesus died to save us from. But for some reason, we continue to go back there. I think we all relate to what I find to be one of the most encouraging passages in Scripture in Romans chapter 7 when Paul writes, he says, the things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do not want to do, I do. So he's talking about this tension. I see the things that I want to do. I see the person who I want to become. I want to do those things, but for some reason I can't walk in that life totally. And then I see this person that I don't want to be. I don't want to make these choices, but I can't stop myself from making those choices. The things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do not want to do, I do. And then he finishes off at the end of chapter seven with this great verse. He says in declaration, oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? I've taken the time a couple of times in my life to read all the way through the book of Romans from start to finish, it's great for plane rides, I always stop at that verse and just kind of go, thank you God for Paul and for his experience of this too. Oh wretched man that I am who will deliver me from this body of death? Because we know what it is to feel out of sync. The Bible calls it our new self and our old self. That our old self was crucified with Christ and it no longer lives and now Jesus lives in me and we're free to walk in this new self but there is this part of the world that continues to drag us down and make us less than whole. And it's this that James writes to address. He writes to the church, and I believe that the reason that James writes the letter is to help us pursue wholeness. James is written to help us pursue wholeness. That wholeness that is walking in the person that God created us to be, walking in the person that Jesus made it possible to be in the first place through his death, walking as that person, walking in that wholeness. He wants us to no longer live these disjointed, out of sync, incomplete lives. I think we'll see that's why he wrote the whole book. His goal is, some people call it maturity, others call it wholeness. He calls it perfection or completion. His goal is to help us get there. We understand that the only way there is through Christ, but we also understand that in this earth, on this side of eternity, that God asks us to obey. He asks us to walk and to follow. And in doing that, we will grow into mature versions of ourselves and to who God wants us to be. And so James writes to help us pursue that wholeness. And I think that's true because of this passage, chapter 1. If you have a Bible, you can open it. If you have one at home, open one there, and you should have the scriptures in your notes. But I'd love for you guys to be interacting with the Bible and with the chapter and see how it all ties together. But if someone were to ask me, point me to the synopsis verses on why James is even written. What is James trying to do? I would take you here. This is where I think he's trying to help us pursue wholeness. Chapter 1, verses 22 through 25 why James writes the book. Because he wants us to be doers who act. He wants us to persevere. He says we shouldn't be like, again, it's this imagery of two versions of ourselves. Don't be the person that looks at the law of God. He calls it the perfect law of liberty, which I love that phrase because God's word was not given to us to constrain us, but to offer us liberty. And that perfect liberty, that perfect law of liberty is Christ. He is the word of God. And he rewrote the law of the Old Testament to say, go and love others as I have loved you. Love God and love others. That's how Jesus rewrites and summarizes the law correctly. And he says that there's one version of us that we stare at the law, we see what it says, we hear it, we pay attention to sermons, maybe we listen to podcasts, we talk with friends about spiritual things, we have our ears open. We hear the word, but then we go and we don't do it. We live lives as those disjointed versions of ourselves. He says, when you do that, you're like somebody who looks at your face in the mirror and then walks away and you forget what you look like. He said, but if you'll gaze into the perfect law of liberty and persevere in doing it, then you will be blessed in your doing. And so I think the answer to our question, James says first, we say first that James writes to help us pursue holiness. So the question becomes, okay, James, how do I pursue holiness? Well, he tells us in these verses, we pursue wholeness by persevering in doing. We pursue wholeness, that complete version of ourselves, by persevering in doing. So that, I think, as a summary statement, begs two questions. Why does James feel it necessary to highlight persevering? Why does he put that out front? Why does he open up the book with it? It's the very first thing, once he starts writing. He says, hey guys, how you doing? And then he starts talking about how pain is going to happen. Why is it that James says right away, if you want to live as a whole self and you need to persevere, because he's communicating this idea of you're going to want to quit. It's going to be really hard. It's kind of a terrible selling point for James. So why does he start there? And then what does doing look like? What are we supposed to be doing? So as we answer those questions, the first question, why persevering? Well, we persevere because life requires it. We persevere because life requires it. James is aware of this reality. Like I said, it's how he starts his letter. Literally, verse 1, James, the servant of God and the Lord Jesus Christ to the 12 tribes and the dispersion. Greetings, which means the Hebrew people who have dispersed outside of Israel. You also refer to it as a diaspora. Then, verse 2, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. He says, hey, how you doing? Haven't seen you in a while. Listen, life's going to stink like a lot, and when it does, just count it joy. Like, that's a terrible opener. James, why are you doing that? But he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness perseverance instead of steadfastness. But he says, And plenty of people have pointed this out before, but just in case you missed it those times, he doesn't say, if you have trials. He doesn't say, hey, if life gets hard sometimes, not saying it well, but if it does, then hang in there. He says, no, no, when? When you face trials, plural, of all kinds, count them as joy. Why? Because they're going to bear out a perseverance and a steadfastness that's going to make us perfect and complete, not lacking anything. It's this idea of being a whole person again. So a couple things from that idea and why James introduces it as a theme that shows up throughout the book. We find it again in chapter 5 when he's talking about having patience and doing good. James knows that your faith is going to be challenged. He knows that perseverance is going to be required. He knows that there are going to be couples who struggle mightily with infertility, and all they want is to experience the joy of having their own child. He knows that. And he knows that when that happens, it's going to test their faith, and it's going to make them wonder if God is really good. James knows that we lose people too early. He knew that parents would mourn the loss of children. He knows that. And because he knows that, he knows that it's going to be really easy for those parents in that moment to cry out and say, God, that's not fair. Why'd you let that happen? And that those circumstances would conspire to shipwreck your faith. And so he says, hang in there. Have faith when it's hard. He knows that marriages will end and that diagnoses will come and that abuse will happen and that abandonment is a thing and that loneliness and depression are things that we walk through. He knows that we are going to lose loved ones before we want to. James knows that and he knows that when those things happen, we're going to want to walk away from our faith because it's going to seem like God isn't looking out for us anymore. And he's telling you when that happens and it seems like things are broken, hang on, persevere, continue in faith, Continue to obey. And when you do, it will make you perfect and complete, not lacking anything. This is the real reason for perseverance. Those of you whose faith has seen that test, those of you who have walked through a season in your life where something happened that was so hard that it made you doubt if God was really looking out for you, it made you doubt if God really cared about you, it made you question your faith, if you came out of that clinging on to your faith, you know it is all the stronger. I was actually talking with someone this last week about this idea, and we just kind of noted, I noted, I don't really trust someone's faith very much until it's been through tragedy. Until it's been hardened in that kiln, I just don't trust it yet. There is something to the people who have walked through tragedy and yet have this faith that they cling to that makes it unshakable. Isn't there? I think of somebody who's going to be an elder in the new year, Brad Gwynn. To my recollection, Brad has lost his sister and his brother and his mom. He's, I don't know, in his 60s, maybe late 50s. Sorry, Brad, I don't know. He's been through tragedy. His faith has been through the tests. But if you talk to him about Jesus and about why he believes, it's humbling. It's admirable. I can honestly tell you, I don't know if I want faith that strong because I don't want to walk through what he has to walk through to have it. But I want faith that strong. James knows, if you cling to your faith through trial, if you cling to Jesus and continue to obey him even when it's hard, that it will produce this completion in us. It will produce this firm, unshakable faith that cannot be shaken, that cannot be torn down. So he opens with, hey, hang in there. Because when you do, you're going to be stronger for it. So if we're supposed to hang in there, if we're supposed to continue to obey, even when it's hard, what is it that we're supposed to do? What does doing look like, right? What does God want from us? What does he expect from us? James is setting something up for the rest of the book to go through, like, here's some simple ways to obey. If you really want to please God, then here's a simple way to do it. If you really want to walk as that person, then these are the things that you need to be doing. These are the things that you need to be paying attention to. The question becomes, what does it look like to do? And I think he answers this question by saying, doing looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Doing, obeying God, walking as a whole person, looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Here's why I think this. Look at verse 27. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God. You want to do what God wants you to do? You want to live out your faith? You want to live as a whole person? Then here's what you need to do. Care for the widows and the orphan and their affliction and keep yourself unstained from the world. Help the needy and pursue holiness. That's a synopsis for everything that comes in the rest of the book. Everything that comes in the rest of the book is telling you, here's the heart conditions you need to help the needy. Here's why you should do that. Here's why it's near to God's heart. Everything that happens in the rest of the book is, here's what you do. If you want to pursue holiness, then here's how you do it. And this is a theme throughout the Bible. In Isaiah chapter one, we see the very same thing. He distills, Isaiah distills it all down. God says, you want to make me happy? Care for the widows and the orphans. Pursue me. That's what you need to do. Micah says that we should seek justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. It's all through Scripture. So if we want to persevere in doing, what does doing look like? Doing looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. And when I say helping the needy, I really do mean that because in that culture, you've heard me teach this before, but for those who may have missed it or have joined recently, when we see widows and orphans in the Bible, what we need to understand is that in that culture, that was the least of these. Widows were typically older women who had no way to make any money. So if their husband had passed away and now they're living as single women and they don't have families to care for them, there is very little they can do besides beg for sustenance every day. They are the most exposed and endangered and vulnerable in that culture. Likewise, orphans are the most exposed and vulnerable in that culture. There's no welfare. There's no orphanages. There's no Social security, there's no public medicine, there's none of that. They're just on their own. And God says, my people should have a heart to care for those who can't care for themselves. My people should have a heart to care for those in the greatest need. That's why at Grace we partner with Faith Ministry down in Mexico that builds homes for people who can't afford their own homes because they work in a Panasonic factory for less than a dollar a day. So we send money down there and build them homes and go down there in teams every year to love the least of these, to care for those who can't care for themselves. We heard earlier Mikey talk about Addis Jamari, who literally cares for orphans in Ethiopia. As girls age out of the orphanages and have no life skills and nothing to do with themselves, they take them into a home, teach them skills, send them back to school, and give them a path forward. And now they work with families on the front end of it so that when they have new babies and they don't know what to do and they're too poor to afford these babies, they give them materials and they give them training and they give them money so that they don't have to turn those kids into orphans but they can grow up in good solid homes. That's why we partner with them. That's why so many people at our church are all into a seat at the table downtown where it's a pay what you can restaurant so that you can go and have your meal and leave a token behind so that someone else can have a meal too if they can't afford it. Caring for the needy is near and dear to God's heart. And I would say to you this, if you're a believer and a part of your regular behavior and pattern isn't to care for those in need, then I don't think you're doing all that God has for you to do. I don't think it's possible to say, I'm walking in lockstep with Jesus. I'm being exactly who he created to me. I love him with my whole heart. I spend my days with him. I commune with God in prayer and yet still not help the needy. It's one of the first things that shows up in every teaching in scripture that if you love God, you'll help those who can't help themselves. Not only should we be about this as a church, we need to be about this as individuals. If you call yourself a Christian, if you claim God as your Father and Jesus as your Savior and that's not a part of your pattern, I would encourage you to find a way to make that a part of your pattern. There's a part of God that we find in doing that work. It's who His children are designed to be. And then He tells us that we should pursue holiness. Keep yourself unstained from this world. The word holy simply means different or other. In Scripture we're told to be holy as God is holy. And it's this command, it's this acknowledgement. Listen, you're different. You're different than the world. You're not better than the world. We're cut from the same cloth. You know Jesus, and the world doesn't yet know Jesus. That's the difference. You're not better than anybody, but you're different than them. And we're called to be different than the world. We're called to laugh at different jokes. We're called to post different political memes, if any at all, ever. We're called to argue differently in the public square. We're called to behave differently than them. We're called to love differently than the world. We're called to watch different things than what they watch. We're called to different standards than what they're called to. Personal holiness matters a lot. And James says, if you want to be a whole person, then persevere in doing. And what does doing look like? It looks like helping the needy and pursuing holiness. Now listen, we're holy because Jesus has made us holy. We're already there because Jesus has died for us and we are clothed in his righteousness. However, in this life, the Bible reminds us over and over again that we are to obey. And obeying takes our effort. So as far as it depends on us, we help the needy and we pursue holiness. And the rest of the book is about really unpacking that idea. What are the heart conditions that exist around helping those who can't help themselves? And what does it look like to live holy and unstained in this world? So I hope that that will serve as a good primer to get you ready for the rest of the book of James. Next week we come back with probably the easiest thing to do. It's why we're starting off with it, taming the tongue. And then we're going to move on to the rest of the book. I'm really looking forward to going through this book with you guys. I'm going to pray for us and then we will be dismissed. Father, you're good to us. My goodness. You're good to us and we're not good to you. You remain faithful to us when we are faithless. God, you watch us live our disjointed lives. And you're patient with us, and you're gentle, and you're loving. Father, I pray that as we go through this series, that everybody who hears it or preaches it, God would just have their heart enlivened to this idea of walking wholly with you. Of walking in lockstep with Jesus. Give us visions of actually being the people that you created us to be, of leaving behind our disjointed selves. Give us the honesty to identify where we're not obedient, and give us the courage to walk in the obedience that you show us. It's in your Son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Good morning. My name's Doug Bergeson. I'm a partner here at Grace, and I'm going to start off this morning by giving you all a very, very special treat. I'm going to sing a song from my childhood that some of you will be familiar with. Although I can't remember what I did yesterday, for some reason, this song that I learned in Sunday school when I was only four or five years old remains etched in my memory crystal clear. So here goes. You might want to say a quick prayer for me, but here goes. Oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Sing along if you know this next chorus. Oh, the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Splat! Now, if you can overlook the singing, you might be thinking, aw, that's a cute little Sunday school ditty. But of course, it's much more than that, as its lyrics are lifted directly from Scripture. And even more than that, they come straight from the mouth of Jesus. It's a reading from Matthew chapter 7. The streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and theining the way you relate to God, and we're reading this book together, to answer that most central of questions. What does it mean to build one's house on the rock? And while the book doesn't use that exact language, that's precisely what the author in this sermon series are doing as we explore the many ways in which we relate to God. How we try to build our house, our lives, on the rock. If you've heard either of the last two weeks' sermons or are reading along in the book, you know that the author sets the table for where he's trying to take us as readers by describing the primary postures that many of us adopt in our relationship with God. The four postures are life under God, life over God, life from God, and life for God. In his introduction, the author Sky Jathani describes a scene at a 1,500-year-old Roman tomb in Italy where tourists are ushered in to the dark, unable to see the reason they came in the first place. A vaulted ceiling covered in an exquisite mosaic that depicts Jesus as the good shepherd, surrounded by sheep in a starry paradise. However, if one is patient, a light will eventually come on, illuminating the mosaic for just a few seconds before returning to darkness. Each time that light comes on, the visitors are given another glimpse of the world behind the shadows. And just like when the lights come on in the tomb, each of these four postures give us one perspective, one angle of what life with God is like, but it's not the full picture. Standing alone, each of these postures will give a distorted view. This matters a lot because the postures we adopt, that lens through which we view our relationship with God, is critical. And it is that view, that lens, which drives what we expect out of our relationship. And this is where the book is dead on. As what we expect has an enormous and defining impact on how each of us experiences life as a Christian. And it's especially tricky because not only do all four postures contain elements of truth, some more than others, but all four also find some basis and support in Scripture. So unless you don't mind being surprised, disappointed, and disillusioned with the Christian experience, we need to make sure that our expectations match up with what the full testimony of Scripture teaches us to expect, allowing it to properly inform, set boundaries and limits, and provide context for when each of these postures is appropriate in some measure and when they're not. When Jesus came to earth, his message was incredibly radical and countercultural, a message which challenged everyone and flipped the status quo completely on its head. But as the author of our book points out, in the ensuing 2,000 years, we've learned to cope with that message quite well by slowly but surely co-opting Jesus and his message, making him more like us, reflecting our priorities and desires, and less like him. I'm reminded of the chorus from the old Linkin Park song, Numb. All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you. That's not a very good impression of Linkin Park, but whatever. For many, it's morphed into a spiritual Rorschach test. In determining what our relationship with God should be like, we see whatever we want to see. And inevitably, we tend to assume that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives. And this assumption that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives is especially true of the third posture that we're looking at this morning, life from God. Now let me first say that for those of us who believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, life, of course, does come from God. But what does that mean exactly? Our author defines the essence of the life from God posture as a relationship in which we are more interested in what God can do for us and how he might bless us than we're interested in actually knowing him. A relationship whose primary value is to help us solve our problems and navigate through life's challenges to achieve what we want. This posture is most often and most easily criticized when it's taken to an extreme, commonly referred to as the health and wealth or prosperity gospel. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and early 70s, I would sometimes listen on Sunday night to Reverend Ike's radio broadcast. His unrelenting and super upbeat message was that God wanted to bless each and every one of us right now in this life. His sayings included, God doesn't want you to have your pie in the sky by and by when you die. He wants you to have it now with the cherry on top. Or, he added this, you don't have to wait for the pearly gate. Reverend Ike also claimed good health is my divine right. And I remember him saying that God wanted me to have a Cadillac and that he had nine or so, enthusiastically adding, my garages runneth over. Although easy to do, it's not my intent to mock and refute such extremes because I don't think most of us fall into that camp. Furthermore, my complaint with the life from God posture isn't that it's wrong to want God's blessings. It's not. The Bible constantly encourages us to desire God's blessings. Rather, this morning, I'm going to take a different tact than our author in critiquing this posture. As I stated earlier, life is from God, but that's often misunderstood in the life from God posture in two primary ways. The first thing to realize is that God has already blessed us. An implicit premise of the life from God posture is that we have to do certain things and behave certain ways to somehow curry God's favor and procure his blessings in our lives. Whereas in fact, the Bible is abundantly clear that God's plan was to always bless us. Before the foundation of the universe was laid, God's intent was to bless us through his son, Jesus Christ. Before any of us lifted a finger or did anything good or bad, God was blessing us. As the Apostle Paul stated in Romans, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It's like a gift from Amazon that's already been delivered. We don't have to convince someone to send it. We don't have to help order it. The gift has already been given. It's already been sent. It's already been delivered. In fact, it's already sitting on our front porch. All we have to do is open our front door and bring it inside. The life from God posture assumes blessing is transactional. But it was all God. No transaction. As the disciple John wrote, we love him because he first loved us. So the first major misunderstanding of the life from God posture is the notion that we need to get God on our side, working on our behalf. Truth is, he's always been on our side. Before time began, he was on our side. Our job isn't to get God to bless us, but to trust that he already has and will continue to do so. The second big misunderstanding of the life from God posture and what I'll spend the remainder of our time on this morning is the very concept of what constitutes a blessing from God. What does being blessed by God actually look like in our lives? And it's here that the life from God posture in a community of faith like ours operates much more subtly than extremes like Reverend Ike. Yet, it can still wreak havoc by creating expectations which aren't validated in Scripture. Life from God is seductive and appealing because it posits that Christianity is worthwhile because of the way it blesses me. Life just goes better as a believer. But again, what does that even mean? That's the $64,000 question. What does being blessed by God look like in the here and now? Particularly in more affluent societies, the tendency is to think that God wants the exact same things for us that we want for us. And my guess is that's how life from God posture subtly impacts us here at Grace. Although I doubt many of us genuinely believe that being blessed by God involves a bunch of Cadillacs or perfect health or a problem-free life, I would bet that for many of us, God's help and blessing correspond pretty closely to what we think is important. A good family, good health, happiness, comfort, professional success. I could go on and on. So in the next few minutes, I'm going to challenge our conventional understanding of blessing. And if what I have to say rubs you the wrong way, then I'm probably on to something. Although we can learn about God by observing the world he created, God's most intentional and fullest revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ. Jesus was God's best self-revelation, representing in his person and ministry the true nature of God. And as the original book about Jesus Christ, the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments together, is referred to as God's special revelation. So God chose to reveal himself through the written word. And more specifically than that, he chose to do it through a story. A great, sweeping, complex, long, and remarkable story unfolding down through the ages. And as a story, the Bible is really the opposite of a textbook or a theological dictionary. You can't go to chapter 7 and read all that is said about faith. There is no concise, complete treatment of all that is meant by salvation. We might prefer Wikipedia, where we can learn all we need to know in a few short paragraphs, and that can be helpful at times, but that's not the Bible. A story has plot and characters and a variety of storylines that emerge and develop over time. A story can capture the full range of the human experience, providing a richness and depth that simply can't be matched by a more systematic description of principles and concepts. Nuance, mystery, contradiction, paradox, tension, all are part of great storytelling and all are indelible elements of real life. Although I'd been a Christian most of my life, it was only about 20 years ago that I began viewing the Bible first and foremost as one magnificent and seamless story of God and his love for his creation. And I haven't looked back. I'd go even further and say that I believe it is imperative for all of us to approach and understand the Bible in this light. But not because that's my preference or because I say so, but because that's how God chose to do it. And in the Bible, God reveals his purposes and plans slowly and deliberately over time. A progression takes place. Concepts are first introduced in ways that the original audiences and later day readers, such as ourselves, might be better able to get their arms around and understand. But over the course of the story, a certain development, an expansion of the concept takes place until it reaches its fulfillment and climax in the New Testament. As an example, I've often thought that if you were new to Christianity and were just airdropped in on a Sunday morning and heard the story of Jesus in isolation, how weird and bizarre must it seem that Jesus had to die for us. But as you start reading at the beginning in Genesis, one is introduced early on to the idea that God saves by substitution. Something else dies for us instead of us on our behalf. It begins modestly with the story of Abraham and Isaac and is developed and expanded further in God's dealings with his chosen people, the Israelites. But it reaches its fulfillment and stunning climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. Vaughn Roberts, in his book, God's Big Picture, illustrates the value of progressive revelation in this way. A century ago, a father promises his son that he will give him a horse on his 21st birthday. Cars are subsequently invented, and so when the birthday finally comes, the boy is given a car instead of a horse. The promise has still been fulfilled, but not literally. The father could not have promised his son a car because neither could have understood the concept. In a similar way, God made his promises to Israel in ways they could understand. He used categories they were familiar with, such as the nation, the temple, and material prosperity in the land. But the fulfillment breaks the boundaries of those categories. To expect a literal fulfillment is to miss the point. Here are just three quick examples. God uses evil for good, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat to ultimately accomplish his purposes. In Genesis, Joseph's brothers can't stand him and sell him into slavery. But years later, Joseph has risen to a position of such power in Egypt that he is able to save his entire family from famine and keep alive the promises God had made to his ancestors. A fortuitous turn of events to be sure, but that's just a horse. When God's only son, Jesus, comes to earth in human form and is crucified by evil men, but through his unjust and wrongful death redeems the world for all eternity, that's an automobile. God's people wanted a king, and God gave them kings. But even the best, like David, failed and disappointed. That's a horse. But a king who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, and who will reign with perfect justice and righteousness forever and ever, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now that's an automobile. When God redeems his people out of slavery in Egypt and then promises to dwell with them, first in the tabernacle in the desert and then behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem. That's something spectacular, but it's still just a horse. But when God redeems us from slavery to sin and death, offering us life through his son Jesus Christ, and God's Holy Spirit takes up residence in the individual human heart, and we, like living stones, are built into a spiritual house where God now dwells, that's an automobile. I explain all this because it's so relevant for our purpose this morning in looking at the life from God posture. For another big concept that undergoes radical development and evolution over the course of the Bible is the idea of how God blesses us. In fact, it evolves so much that by the time Jesus comes and the fullness of God and his redemptive plan is revealed, it's hard to even recognize what God now considers to be a blessing as it's been turned completely upside down. No longer is blessing what might make us happy or healthy or comfortable or successful or respected or understood or liked or safe. Rather, a blessing is anything that moves our hearts and minds to a place more receptive to God's grace. Anything can be a blessing if it helps to convince us of our desperate need for a Savior. Virtually anything can be a blessing if it helps better prepare and position us for eternity. Now, there is no verse that explicitly says that in so many words. But as you move along the biblical narrative, as God's magnificent story of love and redemption continues to unfold, it becomes abundantly clear that this is the case. Certainly, there were times earlier in the story when God did bless his people and reward their obedience and trust in ways that they and we would clearly understand and to which we can all relate. The Israelite sandals didn't wear out in the desert. God gave them food and clothing and so many descendants that they would rival the stars in the sky. A promised land flowing with milk and honey. Military victory, prosperity, long life, and peace. And this makes perfect sense, as God had to convince a primitive people some 3,500 years ago, who had little else to go on, that this particular God was the one you wanted to hitch your wagon to. Blessing them in immediate, temporal, and tangible ways was essential in order to build trust. But as the story goes on, and as God always knew, the power of sin would prove to be too strong. God's material blessings did not draw Israel closer to him, did not make them more inclined to trust, and in fact often had the opposite effect. More needed to be done. And before too long, the entire biblical narrative starts changing from a temporal vantage point, if I obey and if I trust, I will enjoy peace and prosperity, victory and long life, to an eternal perspective and a future hope. As you read on, it's as if your eyes are forced to look up into the distance, start to realize that what happens in this life is not the goal. It's not the be all and end all. What happens is as important, but only as it impacts eternity. God's endgame lies in the future. Children, land, prosperity, and peace in the present, that's a horse. Eternity with God, that's a big old fancy automobile. And by the time we get to the New Testament, the entire tone and tenor of Scripture is remarkably unimpressed with the kind of things we typically consider blessings and focuses entirely on how this life is getting us ready and how we might help others get ready for eternity. Although we should be thankful for great relationships, loving family, friends, health, material comfort, peace and safety, it's in the absence of one or more of these things that we are most acutely aware of our brokenness, of our lack of control, of our need to build our house on the firm foundation of the one and only one who actually is in control. And because of that, God simply is far less concerned about our momentary comfort, happiness, and success than are we. We do our faith no favors when we think of blessing predominantly in terms of what our culture and our world say it is. If you think this is how God blesses you, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Yes, we should be pleased and thankful to God when things go well. But to be honest, good things seem to happen as much to people who don't follow Christ as those who do. Success, comfort, wealth, health, happy marriages, well-adjusted kids, best as I can tell, don't fall disproportionately on believers. Anything that helps prepare us for eternity, anything that helps us move to a posture receptive to God's love and grace, any circumstance that conveys to us our desperate need for a Savior, in God's eyes, can serve as a blessing. On the flip side, anything we normally would consider a blessing turns out not really to be a blessing, not if it works against God's purposes. And of course, the rub is that a great many of the things we associate with being blessed do not prepare our hearts and minds for eternity. Even such universally desirable things as good health, a good job, a good marriage, a good family cease to be blessings if they undermine our sense of need for God, if they lead to arrogance and pride, to a sense of independence and self-sufficiency. If our success and good fortune draw us away from God and not towards Him, then these otherwise good things have become, to use a good Old Testament word, snares. I'm going to read just a few verses from Deuteronomy 8. these decrees that I'm giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. And that's exactly what did happen. Sound familiar? It does to me. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul conveyed the same message, reading from 1 Corinthians 4. that we feel a greater sense of our need for God when things are difficult than when they're easy. Struggles and sorrow, tragedy and injustice are uniquely effective at disabusing us of any thought that we are in control, uniquely effective at reminding us of our insufficiency, brokenness, and desperate need. Yet so many times we question and agonize and wring our hands as to why a so-called loving God would allow a fallen world with so much sadness and evil injustice and injustice. Is it any wonder? Is it really that big of a mystery? Why are we surprised? It's my conviction that a fallen world was always part of God's plan, in part, precisely so that we would struggle. Again, it's that pattern of God using evil for good, how he uses our fallen world to accomplish his purposes, drawing a lost humanity back to himself. The pivotal question for each of us this morning is, when crummy things happen in our lives that do not look or feel anything like blessings, how do we respond? Do they move us to a place of trust or a place of despair? We have a decisive role to play if there's to be any redemptive value in our crummy circumstances. If we do not take advantage of them as opportunities to trust, we run the risk of rendering them meaningless, leaving them just crummy. So when we talk about the posture, life from God, and when we expect to enjoy God's promised blessings, we better understand in what form these blessings might come and over what time horizon they might pay dividends and how best we might respond in faith and trust so that God can actually use those things for good in our lives and the lives of others. I'm going to close this morning with the tiny book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament. Just for curiosity's sake, during these last six months of the pandemic, how many of you have read the book? Let me see a show of hands. I'm just kidding. I already know the answer. Zero. Approximately zero of you have read Habakkuk. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect example. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't been asked to preach, so I'm not casting any dispersions. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect exclamation point for my message this morning of how God blesses and how he operates and what building one's house on the rock really looks like. It's a far cry from the life from God posture as commonly understood by most of us. The book of Habakkuk consists entirely of a short dialogue between Habakkuk the prophet and God. It begins with the prophet complaining to God of how it seems that all the violence and justice and strife that's running rampant in his country of Judah goes unpunished. Why is God tolerating it? God responds by saying, No worries, Habakkuk. I'm raising up the Babylonians, those fiercest and most dreaded of peoples, guilty men whose strength is their own God to swoop in and devour Judah. Upon hearing that, the prophet is flabbergasted and even more of a tizzy, complaining even further to God. What? You've got to be kidding me. How can you allow such a wicked and godless nation to swallow up those more righteous than themselves? You're blowing my mind. Then the Lord answered the prophet a second time. Let me worry about the Babylonians. They will get theirs in due time. However, you, Habakkuk, need to be patient and wait for my appointed time. Though it may linger, it will certainly come. But as for you right now, the righteous will live by faith. It made no sense to him. Nothing he heard was assuring. Nothing seemed fair. But in that moment, Habakkuk leaned in and chose to trust. Listen to his closing words. I heard and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud, Verse 1. and no cattle in the stalls. Yet I rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights. Although he was not happy with what he had heard and thought it violent, unjust, and unloving, Habakkuk moved towards God rather than away, convinced that his God was both able and willing to do the right thing regardless of whether he himself could understand, an abiding trust that God was not only in control, but was also the ultimate victor. And in that moment, Habakkuk was being blessed, all circumstances to the contrary, prepared for an eternity with the God who loves him. That is where the rubber truly meets the road. Even when you can't necessarily see God's goodness or understand his purposes in the middle of the mess, when everything is shrouded in mystery and confusion, do you choose to trust? Do you believe that no matter what seems to be happening at any given moment in this life, that God has already won the victory and always has our best interests at heart? Building one's house on the rock is resting in that knowledge. I began this morning by singing a song about the wise man who built his house upon the rock. It's important to note that it doesn't go, oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And before I pray, I'd like to invite Steve and Lisa back up here as we continue to worship. But please bow your heads. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. I pray that you'll convict each one of us and help each one of us understand just how desperately you love us and the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours. Help us to know that despite the fact that we live in a world where sorrow and unhappiness and disappointment are part and parcel to our daily experience. I pray that we'll be grounded in the fact that you love us and always have our best interest at heart. And we thank you for making it possible for us to have an eternity with you. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

All right, good morning everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace, and I am so thrilled to be able to be preaching this morning to you. Before we get into it, I've got to give you a quick warning. Because of just how excited that I've been for preaching and just excited anticipation, I didn't sleep very much last night. And so I say that to say that this morning I got here and as I was going through my message, making sure everything was good, my voice started kind of cracking a little bit and got a little hoarse. And so feel free to laugh at that if it happens throughout this message. But I also did want to let you know that because of that, you could possibly hear me cough once or twice. And I just wanted you to know that it's only the annoying type of cough, not the dangerous one. But anyways, we're going to be continuing in our study of Acts this morning. We're going to be jumping into Acts 16 and really focusing on the story that starts at verse 25. And so I would love for you guys to grab your Bibles, open them up, and read along with me. Before we jump into actually the verse 25 and beyond, I want to give a little bit of background of what's going on. And so definitely be opening up your Bible as I'm doing that. And so as we start off, we see two men named Paul and Silas. We've talked a lot about Paul and Nate did a whole sermon about Paul's conversion, that the Lord brought Paul out of this place of killing Christians and brought him and said, Paul, you are going to be my tool. You are going to be the person who brings my joy and the joy of myself in Christ to the Gentiles, to all people that are not Jews. And so if you didn't listen to that, go and check it out because I think it was incredible. But here we have Paul doing just that. He's going and he and Silas are bouncing around from place to place, city to city. They're worshiping God. They're finding places to pray and worship. And even more so than that, going and finding places to preach the good news and tell people about who Jesus Christ is and who their God is. And that is absolutely awesome. And so in the middle of chapter 16, we find them coming to a river in Philippi. Now, as they go down, they encounter this group of women, and there goes my mic. Let me just pull that back real quick. They encounter this group of women that they're like, hey, these are people. And so they go up to them and they start preaching to them. They start telling them who God is and, you know, about who Jesus is and what Jesus did for them and that this salvation is offered to them, not just to Jews, all this stuff. And so as they're saying these things, a woman named Lydia is so excited to hear and so excited to learn about God and about Jesus and everything that they're talking about that she actually gets baptized on the spot. Her heart is saved for eternity. And how incredible is that? And then in the next small passage, they encounter another girl. This girl doesn't have a name. She's called a slave girl that they come in contact with. And she was possessed by a demon spirit. Now, this spirit was one that gave her the ability, or the spirit through her was able to be a fortune teller, was able to tell people their fortunes and predict the future. So this obviously made her really valuable to her owners. Her owners had used this ability and used the spirit and this demon that was inside of her to gain just a ton of money. Well, Paul and Silas encounter this girl and as she kind of follows them around, the spirit continues to call out through this girl. And finally, Paul turns around and he basically says, through the power of Jesus Christ, I tell you to leave this girl now. And the spirit immediately exit this girl's body. This girl is set free from the spirit that had taken over her entire life. And so once again, you're like, wow, look at how incredible this is. Look at the amazing things that Paul and Silas are getting to do through the power of God. And it's just awesome. And it's super exciting. But the bad part is that what made this girl valuable was her ability to tell fortunes. And so her owners were furious. And so they go over, they grab Paul and Silas, they forcefully take them to the marketplace and take them to the magistrate and say, these people are just doing all of this stuff, all of this awful stuff. What is it? They say that he, I don't know. It's funny. But they basically lie. They say these people are running amok in the city. The whole city is going nuts and they're freaking out and they're doing all of these things that Roman citizens should never do. These are Jewish people who are doing things that are anti-Roman and they deserve to be punished. And they're in the marketplace. So what happens? People start joining, and people start seeing what's going on, and they begin to get furious as well. And they're all yelling and freaking out about it as well, basically saying, these people deserve to be punished. So the magistrates say, okay, we agree with you. So they said, have these men stripped, have them beaten, and have them thrown into prison. Not only just thrown into a jail cell, but have them bound by the stocks. Have them bound by the stocks in a way that they have to be upright to where they can't even lay down and go to sleep. And this is where I want to pick up and actually just start reading through the scripture as they are beaten and as they're thrown into prison and what happens once they're thrown to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, don't harm yourself. We are all here. The jailer called for lights, rushed in, and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, Now I want to do some quick living room participation. I know that I can't ask for hands to be raised and I can, you know, call people out that are raising their hands and whatnot. So I'm calling you out to raise your hands if you've heard this story before. All right, take it one step farther. And the reason why I'm really asking is more because who has heard this story a lot? Because I know I have. I know this is the type of story that you grew up and you learned like constantly when you were a child. You know, like when you're able to look at the little cartoon drawings or watch the cartoon about them sitting in the jail, and then you hear how God brought a hurricane that was able to set them free, but they actually stayed and they saved a man's life and his family's life for eternity and all this stuff. And it's incredible. It's awesome. I absolutely love this story, and I love to hear it preached and talked about over and over again. But as I read it this time, there were a couple things that stood out to me. There were a couple things that I thought, that I thought, man, I hear this, I hear these stories preached in a way, in the same way super often. But I think that there's more here. I think that there's some underlying things within this passage that may be even bigger and more important than what we often talk about. The first thing that I think people talk about is, man, look at how great the Lord is. Look at how the Lord has worked through Paul and through Silas to save these two women. One, save them for salvation. The other, to literally get rid of a spirit, to remove a demon, evil spirit out of this woman. And then look at how big and how strong God is that he can bring a hurricane that is so big that it makes a guy say, I want to know who this God is. And let me tell you that all of those things are so right. They're so incredible. They're so accurate. And praise God for how incredible he is. And praise God that he uses his people like Paul and Silas to do his work. That is amazing and that is awesome. But I think sometimes what skipped over as I think a huge factor for why that jailer was interested in being saved is not just the hurricane that he witnessed, but what actually happened and took place in verse 25. So let's return to that. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Can you imagine what the other prisoners were thinking? Can you imagine what the prison guard was thinking at that time? Like, I'm sure they were super confused. Like, these are two guys that had just come off of getting beaten and thrown into prison. And here they are in the middle of the night, just joyfully singing praises and hymns to their God. I imagine it was shocking for a couple of reasons. The first is because I bet that it wasn't just shocking because there was like noise, right? Like, of course, people probably in jail were like, you would probably hear grumblings or people that were like aching or hurting from being beaten before thrown into prison. Or maybe, you know, probably what's more common is people are yelling at the jailer or heckling the jailer because the jailer had thrown them into prison. You know, probably a few expletives were yelled at this prison guard in his day because they don't want to be in prison. But instead, they get this joyful singing and praising, and it didn't make any sense. I'm sure it was a 180 from what they were used to hearing from two people sitting in a jail cell. And the other reason I think that probably had them wondering and listening and a little bit confused is, why are they praying to their God, and why are they singing hymns that are praising their God and the goodness of their God in the midst of them sitting in a jail cell after being beaten? What do they have to praise God about? Sure, like praise God when you saved Lydia. Praise God when you released a girl of an evil spirit. But while you're sitting in a jail cell after you had been beaten, what are you doing? And I'm sure it just confused them. And I'm sure it, like, I would probably be the same if I didn't understand who God was of just sitting there and being like, I've got to listen to this. I've got to understand what these people are doing. One, because I don't get it and I need to understand. But two, maybe even in a deeper and more spiritual sense, they've got just as much going wrong in their life that I do. How is it that they're able to have peace? And how is it that they are able to have joy in the midst of going through the same thing I'm going through, sitting in a prison after being beaten? I love the way that William Barclay puts it as he talks about Paul's worship. He could sing hymns when he was confined in stocks in the inner prison at midnight. The one thing you can never take away from a Christian is God in the presence of Christ. When God, with God there, is freedom even in a prison, and even at midnight, there is light. And bouncing off of that, the other thing that you hear when you hear this passage taught and when you hear this passage preached is how incredible it is that the Lord is always there, is always with you, is always providing this joy and this peace in your heart if you will just turn to him. That if you can learn to worship and to love God, not simply because of the blessings that he's bestowed upon you or not simply because of all the great things that are a part of your life, but because of how good he is and because he has gifted you with this eternal salvation, guess what? The joy of how great God is and the joy of an eternal salvation is never soured. It never goes away. It's never changing. And guess what? Once again, what a beautiful, incredible message that is, that we are able to experience that peace and that joy, and our hearts can forever be impacted by that love of God, not simply when things are going well, but when things aren't. But oftentimes people stop there, but I think that there is one more thing going on underneath all of this that isn't quite as talked about, but I think may be an even more valuable component of worshiping through hardship. And that is that it not only impacts your hearts, their worship didn't only bless the hearts of Paul and Silas, it didn't, the presence of God wasn't simply within their hearts, but because of their worship, because of the joy that they exuded and the peace that they exuded, it impacted the people that were around them. When we are able to worship in the midst of tragedy and hurt and anger and frustration, anybody who's around you that's able to experience it is going to be impacted. Especially, especially, especially non-believers. Alistair Begg is a pastor and he puts it this way. He says, While I think he is in general saying this, I would rephrase it to even go further. And I would say not only is praise possible when the circumstances seem to dictate otherwise, but worshiping in the midst of those circumstances can be used to evangelize in a uniquely special way. There's something uniquely special about not simply worshiping when everything is great, but worshiping when nothing is. It's special for you, but it is impactful to people who don't understand. Think again about how the jailer and how the prisoners thought. Like what must have they been thinking? All it says is they sat and they listened. I'm sure they were curious. I'm sure they wanted answers. I'm sure they wanted to understand like what is this? Why is this happening? I need more facts. I need more information, just like the curiosity within them. But underlying that curiosity, I bet it's more of a hope because though they didn't know God, they knew the exact suffering that Paul and Silas were going through. And I bet that the thought of being able to experience joy and peace like they had been exuding is something that they surely could get on board with. This reminds me so much of a story of my best friend Brandon from senior year. Brandon, super electrifying personality, just fun, energetic, funny, hilarious. Like people, like when he's in a room, people gravitate towards him. He's hilarious. He's funny. He's goofy. Just all of the above. He just has this type of energy that it's just like, I got to be around this guy because he is just great to be around. And I say all of that, but I think probably the main reason why people love to be around him and love even more than that to befriend him is because he just loves people well. He just loves people in general. He just loves people so much. And while I think that's definitely just a character trait and a characteristic of him, I think that that has been sown so deeply into him because, man, there are not many people who I know that love the Lord more than Brandon. And because he loves the Lord so much and because he also loves people so much, he wants everyone to be able to know and love the Lord the way he does. He wants people to experience the love he's received from the Lord. And so he does everything he can to be that love to everybody that he comes in contact with. Not just his family, not just his youth group, not just his close friends like me and our group of friends in high school, but every classmate, every teammate, all of these people, whether they know who God is, whether they're completely anti-God, he wants them to know how much God loves them, not simply through his words, but by his actions. That's the type of dude Brandon is. Brandon, he's got the heart of like, we used to do this thing called prayer chapel where Brandon has, he's an incredible worship leader. So he was normally the one, we would go to this small chapel just at a local church and we would just take some time where normally it'd be Brandon. He would just sing and lead worship and we would sing and worship with him or we would pray silently or pray for people, read scripture. It's basically just a time to come and to celebrate and worship God. And we all loved it. It was just kind of our group of friends that went and did it. But man, every single week, Brandon would go all through classes and invite everybody to come and do it with us. Or he would throw it on Facebook or he'd send texts to all of these people. And not just like believers, like people who weren't believers, people who he just like was friends with in class. And he just wanted everyone to come and do it. And people didn't really come, you know, like it wasn't a thing people did, like, you know, which kind of makes sense. Like going to something called prayer chapel, that's just kind of this intensive type worship type thing is probably not the most like exciting thing for someone who doesn't, you know, believe in God or is not a Christian. And so, you know, but it's just kind of the guy that Brandon was. He wanted anyone who, he wanted everyone to know they were welcome. And more than that, he wanted everyone to just have some opportunity to get to know who God was. So fast forward to the end of senior year. Only a few weeks left in the school year. And Brandon feels a lump on his lymph node. And so he goes to the doctor and obviously he gets it tested. And so you have the kind of limbo, the amount of time that you kind of sit and you wait before you get any results. During that time, Brandon had really devoted himself to just praying, devoted himself to really like going to the Lord and saying, you know, like, God prepare me for this. And as he did so, two things he said were just very clear and very evident to him. The first is that God had him. He said more than ever before, he felt the presence of God and he felt, he heard God's voice in a sense and just felt God saying, Brandon, you are in my hands forever and always. I love you. I've got you. We're going to get through this together. And so because of that, he was able to experience the same type of peace and the same type of joy that Paul and Silas had even when they had been beaten and thrown into prison. The second thing, and I think probably because of his experience and how vastly he was able to experience God and God's protection over him, is he knew for sure he had cancer. He didn't need to hear the results. He didn't need to get them back. He knew. And so that whole time while people are sitting and praying and waiting in fear, Brandon was pretty certain of what was to come. He was pretty certain of the result. And the Lord had prepared his heart in a way that he was completely at peace about it. So the day comes that he gets the results and it hit us pretty hard. And by us, I mean me, his close friends, I mean his family, my family, a lot of grief, a lot of hurt. But I also extend that to say kind of the school. It kind of just hit the school really hard, all grades, but especially seniors and the people that were in his classes, because this is the same Brandon I was just talking about that is just so loves people so well and so therefore is loved by so many people. And so when this happened and when people heard this, there was just utter grief and hurt and like this sense of just like sadness and melancholy and depression within the student body. People were mourning because guess what? At the time, not many of us even understood cancer in general anyways. We didn't know what it meant. And so we were like, we've heard of what cancer does to people. And so everyone's just kind of terrified and freaking out. Well, guess what? In the midst of that, in the midst of people reacting in that way and reacting out of fear and sadness and just overwhelming sense of just like, what is going on? Guess who's not responding that way? Brandon. Why? Because Brandon had trusted in God and Brandon had the heart to go to God in worship and in prayer, knowing that this is the same God it had always been. And the same Jesus had died for him now, just like he had before Brandon had cancer. And within that, Brandon said, you know what we need to do? We need to have a prayer chapel night. I want to do prayer chapel tonight. Why? Because I want to worship my God. I want to lead a time of worship and I want to lead a time of just getting to pray to God and praise God with the people that I love. So I wish I could say I had the same type of faith, but obviously I was going to be there for him for that. But I was not excited about that. I was pretty frustrated with God at the time. But anyways, we do that. You know, he does all the same stuff. And you know, hey, we're doing prayer chapel tonight, whatever, on Facebook, text, all that stuff. And we show up to about 90 to 100 people in this small little chapel. Not just family, not just close friends, not just people in the youth group, people in the church. I would say the vast majority of these people are these classmates and these teammates and these people who Brandon had spent his life loving, that though they had been turned off or though they had been closed off to Brandon's faith and to Brandon talking about God and all of those things, they still loved Brandon so much because he just loved them so well. And so at this moment, I think they thought two things. One, I think they thought, man, I want to be there for Brandon. Brandon has loved me so well, and he's been there for me for anything that I needed. I want to do the same for him. But you know what I also think? What I also think is these people for the first time were asking the question of, what? Are you kidding me? Are you serious? Why in the world would you want to put together a night of worship where you stand up in front of everyone, the person who just got the news that he has lymphoma, you stand up in front of everyone playing piano and singing praises to God. Why in the world would you want to do that? And I think they needed to find out. Because it made sense to them before. While they didn't believe in God, they fully understood that somebody who did believe in God would just absolutely radiate joy and absolutely praise God just with all of his might. While he's got just all of great friends and great family. And he's an excellent tennis player who's going next year to play tennis in college on a scholarship. He's got his health. He's got all of these incredible things. And guess what? It makes a lot of sense to worship God when all of those things in your life are going well and going right. But when Brandon wanted to worship, when Brandon wanted to praise his God for how good his God was when his whole life had just fallen apart. When he went from going next year to play college tennis to now not in a month, his whole body is going to just break down because of chemotherapy and he's clearly not going to be able to do that anymore. Fear of losing his life, fear of what's to come, fear of next steps, all of these things. Now this doesn't make sense. Brandon, how are you still worshiping this God for being good? I don't get it. I've got to come and I've got to figure it out. And so they came. They showed up. And boy, did they witness the presence of God. I talked to Brandon a couple weeks ago on the phone as we were kind of reliving that night and as I was talking to him about the sermon and stuff. And we just both agreed that there was maybe never a time before or since then that the presence of God was so prevalent and so present in a room. Filled with people who didn't know the Lord, filled with people who didn't know about Jesus and about Jesus's sacrifice. And there they are sitting in this room, listening and witnessing people worship and people give their lives in worship to God, talking about and just praising how good he is and experiencing for the first time how incredible, how amazing, and how immaculate the presence of God is. Nothing changed. Nothing about Brandon changed. Nothing was different about him. He loved God the same way. He treated all of those people the same way, And he worshiped the exact same way. He didn't make the night anything special. He simply just wanted to have another prayer night. He just simply wanted to have another night to do prayer chapel. The only difference was his circumstance. And that circumstance led to such a large, more vast audience and in such a larger space for God to impact people's hearts and to impact people's lives. There's simply an aspect of worshiping in the midst of tragedy that captures the attention of non-believers who otherwise might just be completely indifferent. I can't stand in front of you and say that there were tons of people who gave their lives over to the Lord. I can't tell you that all those people became Christians. Unfortunately, I would say a lot of them didn't. But for the first time, they were willing to be open to hearing it because they saw something that didn't make sense and they had to figure out what it was. And that was somebody who had just received the worst news in their entire life saying, I want to praise God for how great he is and I want to show my love for him. And it was the same with Paul and Silas. Paul and Silas had experienced the goodness of God. They've experienced God doing great, incredible, powerful things. seen, as soon as the jailer found out that Paul and Silas were still there, he sprinted to them. He fell at their feet and he said, how can I be saved? Was that because he witnessed the amazing size and power of God who had just brought a hurricane? Yes. But I think it was also because prior to that, he had found and he had been able to hear that this is clearly a God that loves his people so well that even in the midst of brokenness, even in the midst of bruises, even in the midst of prison, they would still praise his name. That power mixed with that love is something he needed to know and needed to be a part of. And because of that, he and his entire family heard the gospel that night and were saved. Not only is praise possible when circumstances seem to dictate otherwise, but worshiping in the midst of those circumstances can be used to evangelize in a uniquely special way. Worshiping amidst tragedy, amidst heartache, failure, isolation, struggle, not only impacts your heart, not only does it provide joy to you and peace to you in a time where there might not be either on earth, but it impacts the hearts of the people around you. It impacts the hearts of people who don't understand and want to. It piques the interest of people who cannot understand why you would be praising God for his goodness when everything is so bad. And it impacts them because while not everyone knows they need Jesus, that they need a Savior, pain, struggling, hurting is universal. And intrinsic to that pain is the longing for peace and the longing for joy that seems absent within it. Everybody who hurts wants to feel peace. Everybody who's feeling pain wants to feel joy in the midst of that peace or in the midst of that hurting and in the midst of that pain. Intrinsic to that pain is the longing for peace and the longing for joy that seems absent within it. And so when non-believers catch a glimpse of someone whose faith leads them to joyful worship in the midst of pain and in the midst of suffering, they want to know more about what it takes to experience the same, to see that joy, to feel that peace, to know those in the midst of anything that life throws at them. And what a beautiful way to share with someone the goodness of God. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you, God, that you are the same today, tomorrow, forever. God, thank you that your blessings, that though they come at times and at other times we maybe feel like there aren't so many around, that the blessing of you and that you have saved us forever is the only one we need and therefore the only one that should provide us with the joy and peace we need to roll through this life. God, I pray that you give us the faith to be able to praise you in the midst of anything going on. Give us that joy and give us that peace in our hearts, God. Even more than that, God, allow us to share that with people around. Allow us to never miss an opportunity to praise you, not simply when things are going well, but when things are going poorly. Because it's noticed. Because you can't fake praise and you can't fake all glory to God when not everything is going well. Allow us to be your vessels in this way, God. Allow us to show people what your joy looks like regardless of circumstance. We love you so much. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace, and happy Father's Day to all the dads. This is a special day for those of us that have great dads to get to honor them, so I hope that you're able to do that today. And dads, I hope that you get to spend the day however it is that you want to spend it. This Sunday, we are in our series called Still the Church, where we're looking at the book of Acts, the story of the fledgling church and how it started and all the things that went into the beginning of this institution getting off the ground. It's the institution that 2,000 years later on another continent we participate in. It's the institution, the thing that is the bride of Christ that Jesus died for, that he came to start, that he left the disciples in charge of. And so we've been moving through the story, unveiling and uncovering the practices and the principles and the philosophies of the early church that we can still apply to our church 2,000 years later here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Today we arrive at the conversion of easily the most influential follower of Christ who's ever lived. A man who grew up by the name of Saul of Tarsus, and God changed his name to Paul. Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. He did a lion's share of the missionary work immediately following the birth of the church. It's Paul that we look to who's responsible for spreading the gospel all over Asia Minor, who gives us a lot of our theology and the things that we understand about Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit and how they relate and how salvation works and what exactly it is we're all doing here. He's a hugely influential figure in the church. I would argue one of the most influential figures in history. And so today we arrive at his conversion. It's an important point in the book of Acts. It's an important story in the book of Acts. After his conversion, the rest of the book really mostly just details his ministry. That's how important and influential he was. So it's right and good that we stop and we go, what was it that converted him? And I think that there's a special insight that we can get in the events of his conversion, in the events of his conversion, that can apply to us right now. I believe that we're invited into the same thing that Paul was invited into, and I want us to see what that is this morning. So as we approach the story, you can find it in the book of Acts chapter 9. I hope you have your Bible with you there at home. I hope you guys are in the habit of watching these sermons with your Bibles open, of interacting with the text. There's nothing that can replace opening up God's Word and interacting with the text on your own, particularly if you have family and children around to go through it with them, because I want you to go through and pull out your own nuances and your own details from the story. More importantly, I never want you to accept what I say about the Bible at face value. I want you to do your own work and do your own thought and read it for yourself and make sure that what I'm saying is true to what God is communicating in here because I'm trying my best to communicate to you clearly what Scripture says, but I'm also human and I'm going to mess up. And I'd love a church full of people who are going to catch me when I do that because we're all reading our Bibles too. I would also love a church full of people who are gracious when they send me the email about catching me. But I hope you're following along in Scripture. In Acts chapter 9, we see Saul of Tarsus, who's a young and upcoming Pharisee, who's been given permission, special instructions from the high priest in Jerusalem to go to Damascus. The church was blowing up in Damascus and it was starting to cause a ruckus. And so Saul gets commissioned by the high priest to go to Damascus and snuff out Christianity. And we'll see later, we're going to look back at a verse in chapter 8, that Paul was ravaging the church. He was arresting people. He was putting people to death. He was pulling them out of their homes and throwing them in prison. He was doing everything he could, Saul was, to stamp out the church. And so he's on his way to Damascus to stamp out the new movement there. And Jesus appears to him in the clouds, knocks him to the ground. And he says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And Saul says, who are you? He says, I'm Jesus. I'm the one that you are persecuting. And after seeing Jesus, Saul converts. He believes. He realizes that he's been spending his life trying to stamp out this movement that God himself appeared to him and said, hey, stop doing that. I want to use you to grow the movement that you're trying to stop. And it must have been an incredible scene because he had an entourage with him. And it says that they could hear the voice, but they couldn't see what Saul could see because he could see Jesus. And as a result of that, something like scales went over his eyes. And the text tells us that though his eyes were open, he could no longer see. And he went and rested in a place in Damascus for three days. And scripture tells us that it was three days without eating or drinking. So he is weak, he is feeble, he is blind, he is scared, but he's converted. And after this conversion, we see in Acts chapter 9 that the Lord appears to a man named Ananias. Now, Ananias was a righteous man who lived in Damascus. He was a devout follower of God. And the conversation that they have is incredibly interesting to me. I want you to look at it with me if you have your Bible. I'm going to pick up the story in Acts chapter 9, verse 11. In verse 11, the Son, or the Holy Spirit that appears to him. Scholars are unclear. But the words in my Bible are red, which indicates that at least the editors of the ESV think that it's Jesus who's speaking to Ananias. We hold that loosely, but that's probably a pretty good guess. So Jesus is talking to Ananias. And I just want you to pick up on this. This is one of those details that we're likely to just breeze right by. Ananias is just chilling out, and the Lord appears to him in a vision. And Ananias is apparently so used to discoursing with the Lord face-to-face in a vision like this that he just responds to him. He just talks right back to him. God says, hey, Ananias, there's a guy named Saul of Tarsus. He's in Damascus. I've blinded him. He's expecting you. I want you to go heal him. And Ananias responds. Ananias says, hey, listen, what he said is a very nice way of saying, I know who that is, and I don't want anything to do with him. You can find some other sucker. I don't think so, God. So let's just get together on this. Ananias is so righteous and so devout and so faithful that when the Lord appears to him in a vision, he just responds right back to him as if it's casual conversation. I don't know about you, but if the Lord appeared to me in a vision, I would spend the next 12 to 24 months trying to figure out if I really saw the Lord in a vision and what to make of it and what it meant and if I could trust it, and then I would write a book about it and start a ministry. If the Lord appeared to me in a vision, I would be terrified. And Ananias just talks right back to him. He says, yeah, I don't think so, God. I can't do that. Are you kidding me? I know who that is. He's going to kill me if I go. And God's response is profound. To me, this statement is so packed with truth that it's one of the most profound statements in the whole Bible. Look at what God says to Ananias. When Ananias hesitates and says, I don't think so. I know who that is. He's going to kill me. This is how God responds to him. Verse 15. Whoa. Ananias says, no, I don't think so, God. I don't want to do that. That's dangerous. I know who that is. And God says to pause. I want to pause this sermon right here. I'm going to leave that sermon here, and I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to talk about something else. Okay, so let's pause on this sermon. I try to do the best I can usually to follow one thread and not get sidetracked with other things, but this is such a big deal that I wanted to pause and say it and preach it for a second and then jump back into this sermon. So pause with me right here if you can, and we're going to talk about, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Okay, I'm over here different. This is parenthetical, okay? I'm within some parentheses. I just want to say this. There exists in Christendom, in faith, this insidious doctrine, this harmful and hurtful belief that to be a faithful Christian is somehow an insurance policy against pain and suffering in our life. Somehow or another, and I'm not exactly sure where we developed it. We assume that because God is love, that a loving God would never allow me to hurt in a way that is profound. And by the way, I am the sole arbiter of how much pain is too much pain. And so we walk through our lives with this erroneous and harmful belief that because I'm faithful, because I follow the rules, because I do my part, because I play my role, and I'm faithful to God and I live for him, that because of those things, he is going to insulate me and protect me from pain in my life. That because I'm faithful, God will navigate me through the raindrops of tragedy. And I think it's worth it because it's so dangerous and so damaging because what happens is people believe that and then pain happens in their life, tragedy comes into their life, and it shipwrecks the faith that they built on false assumptions that God never promised. Nowhere in the Bible are we told that when we follow God, our problems go away. Nowhere in Scripture does he promise that when we love him and obey him, that we won't encounter pain and hurt in this life. Paul, one of the most faithful people who ever lived, one of the most passionate people, most purpose-filled people for the gospel who ever lived, easily the most influential Christian who ever lived on the Mount Rushmore of faith, that there is anyone who deserves the blessings of God and the protection of God and to be able to circumvent tragedy in his life, it's Paul. If there's anyone who deserves God's protection, it's Paul because of service rendered to God. Yet Paul himself in one of his letters details his suffering for God. He details the times that he was beaten to within an inch of his life with the same punishment that Jesus received before he was crucified, the 39 lashings of the cat of nine tails. He details the times that he was mocked and that he was persecuted. He details the times that he was stoned and left to die on the ground. He details the times that he was shipwrecked, the times that he was so sick that he was sure he was going to die. Does it sound like based on Paul's life that Christians get to dodge the raindrops of tragedy? We don't. They're a part of life. They're a part of this fallen creation. And the more quickly we can move away from that expectation, the more holistically we can offer our faith to God and the better understanding we can have when tragedy and pain do befall us. Back over here in this sermon. Thank you for allowing me that freedom. The phrase that I really want to key in on in God's response is not, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. The phrase that I want us to let ring in our ears today is that God says about Saul that he is my chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles. And in his sovereignty and in his great sense of irony, God had even prepared Saul for this moment. See, Saul of Tarsus grew up in the religious system. He grew up as the star student. He went to the Ivy League equivalent schools. He was a young, up-and-coming Pharisee. He was going to step in and be in the Senate and lead the nation. He was very likely a future high priest of Israel. He had all kinds of potential, and God had prepped him and groomed him for this moment. He had prepped him and groomed him to lead. Saul grew up exposed to the best possible training. He grew up learning the Old Testament inside and out, and he didn't know it, but he was learning it inside and out so that when Jesus appeared to him, he was able to uniquely connect all the dots from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And we see him do it in remarkably succinct and accurate ways all through his writings. God was preparing him for what was ahead. He exposed him to leaders and leadership. He learned how to peddle and exchange in the respect of men. He learned how to commandeer a room. He learned how to orate. He learned how to do all of these things for what he thought would be the sole purpose of stamping out the very movement that he was going to take those gifts and use them to advance. God and his sovereignty knew this. And if that's not enough to see that even when Saul thought he was preparing himself to do the exact opposite of what he was going to do, God was already using him. This is remarkable to me. This is something that I discovered years ago and I've been wanting to preach about it ever since. I'm so thrilled to get to share this with you this morning. But if you look back at chapter 8, beginning in verse 1, it says, Last week, we look at Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who with boldness and faith stuck his face in the wood chipper and spoke truth to power, knowing that they were going to kill him for it. And while they killed him, there was a young man named Saul of Tarsus who held everyone's coats and approved of what they were doing. And after that, he began to ravage the church. There arose this uprising from within traditional Judaism to stamp out this new movement of believers. It says is in trouble. Stephen has just been martyred. The powers that be, the authorities have decided that they do want to actively stamp out this movement. They're not going to be patient with it any longer. And Saul becomes the epicenter of this persecution. And as a result of this persecution, the church scatters. They leave Jerusalem. In fear, they flee from Jerusalem. And this is the part that I think is fascinating. What is Saul doing? Saul is doing everything he can to stamp out this new movement. And as he seeks to stamp out this new movement with arresting and with cruelty and with beatings and certainly with some violations of some rights, the Christians in Jerusalem grow fearful. And what do they do? They scatter to the surrounding regions. And I read one time, what do they do when they scatter to these surrounding regions? When a family of Christians flees to another city in these surrounding areas, to Damascus or to Ephesus or to wherever else, and they get there, and they're in this new city, and they don't know anybody, and they're trying to figure out life. Who are they going to look for? They're going to look for people that have something in common. Who has something in common? Other Christians who just fled Jerusalem because of persecution. And in these cities that they scattered to, they began to band together in these small groups of believers. And what do these groups of believers do? Well, they're from the original church in Jerusalem. They devoted themselves to the apostles' preaching and to the breaking of bread and to prayers. And they invited one another in one another's homes and they took care of one another as any had need. They began to be the church. Don't you see that when Saul applied pressure in Jerusalem in fear, the Christians scattered to surrounding cities. When they got to those cities, they band together with other Christians that had things in common and began to exercise and express the church as a body there. And in doing so, started all these little churches all over Asia Minor that were there as seeds for Paul to come and water later when he's preaching the gospel willingly. Isn't that cool? Saul was doing everything he could to stamp out the church. And God said, great, I'm going to use your efforts to grow it. The very thing he was trying to avoid is the very thing that he caused. And God in his sovereignty knew that if the Christians are comfortable in Jerusalem, they're just going to keep the word there, and the spread of this gospel is going to be slower. So he allowed Saul to apply a little bit of pressure so that they might scatter and plant churches in the surrounding areas so that when Saul later became Paul and went out to preach willingly, that there was seeds planted and the churches that he was sent to grow were ready for it. What we see in chapters 8 and 9 of Acts and what was before the conversion, and in God's purposing of Paul after the conversion, is that God was going to do what God was going to do, whether or not Saul chose to do it. God was going to do what he was going to do, whether or not Saul chose to do it anyway. It was going to happen. Let me tell you something. If somehow Paul manages to reject the conversion, he sees Jesus, he's healed of the scales, and he still says, no, I don't want any part of that. I'm going to continue to persecute the church. If some reason Paul rejects that invitation by Jesus himself, do you know that the church is still getting built? Do you know that God's word and God's love is still going to prevail? Don't you understand that if Paul turns God down, that there's still a church today in Ephesus and Thessalonica and Galatia and Philippi and Tyre and Sidon and all the other places. Don't you understand that? The church existing wasn't contingent upon Paul. God simply invited him into the purpose of doing it. He didn't need him. If Paul doesn't rise up, then he rises up Barnabas or John Mark or Luke or Peter or James or John or some other unknown hero that gets to play that part. God didn't need Saul. He didn't need his talents. He invited him in to the joy of purpose. He invited him in to a life of meaning. He invited him in to a life of service that would matter for all of eternity. He invited him into this incredible joy. And the same is true of us. God's created us and designed us and purposed us in ways seen and unseen for things in his service and in his kingdom. His desire for all of his children is that we would be used in mighty ways to grow his kingdom. He's designed you and purposed you for that. In the same way that Saul was being prepared to go out and lead the church when he was growing up, not knowing that's what the preparation was for, so has God laid those tracks in your life to uniquely prepare you for what's ahead when you didn't even know what you were being prepared for in the past. I want you to understand that when God offers an opportunity for you to serve, for you to be used, for you to obey him, for you to walk with him, for you to live in submission to him, that he's not asking you to do this out of a sense of duty. He's not guilting you into it or twisting your arm so that we serve out of this sense of ought. I want us to realize that when God invites us into service, that you are invited into the joy of purpose. You're invited into this joy of purpose. God doesn't need you to do these things in his kingdom. He's inviting you in so that you might participate and sit on the front row and see the joy of people coming to know God. Paul himself is a testament to this. Paul suffered mightily in this ministry, yet he was invited into the joy of purpose. And he was able to write one of the most famous verses and misused verses in the New Testament, Philippians 4.13. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Preceding that verse, he says, I've learned how to be joyful when I have nothing. And I've learned how to be joyful when I have plenty. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Paul said, he's the one that said, to live is Christ and to die is gain. To live is purpose and great and wonderful, and to die is to be in the very presence of God. The only reason to be alive is to execute God's purpose for my life. He found great joy there. He found so much joy there, and we're going to actually preach a sermon on this in a couple of weeks. He found so much joy in the purpose of serving God that when he is arrested and in a prison in shackles in the middle of an earthquake in Philippi, he is singing praise songs to his father. That's how joyful Paul was, walking in the purpose of his God. And that's the joy that you're invited into. And listen, I think that the same is true today. God doesn't need us to get things done. He's going to do them regardless. I came to Grace in 2017, April of 2017. And when I got here, it really didn't look like the church was going to be a church for very much longer. But in God's goodness and in His sovereignty, according to His plan, He's flourished, Grace. Even in COVID, even in quarantine, we continue to flourish and just do remarkably well. I can't get over it. It's so amazing. But I firmly believe that God's hand is on this place. And that if I didn't raise my hand and say, yeah, I'll go, that sounds great. I'll do that, God. That if I didn't get to come up here and do this, that somebody else would have gotten to do it. If me and Jen didn't move up from Atlanta to become a part of grace and get to sit on the front lines and see everything that God's doing here, then somebody else would have had that experience because make no mistake about it, God was going to grow grace. God was going to flourish grace. God was going to do with this place exactly what he wanted to do with this place, regardless if I decided to come or not. I just got invited to participate in what's happening here. And it's a tremendous source of joy. For years, Grace has been building homes in Mexico. We send a couple teams down every year and build multiple homes every time we go almost. We've built dozens of homes over the years because God cares for the people in Mexico that they're getting built for. You know what I believe? Those homes get built with or without grace, man. Those homes get built with or without our teams, with or without our money. God's gonna take care of those people. You know what he let us do? He invites us into the joy of purpose. He invites us in to see and to build relationships and to be a part of what he's doing for our sake, not for his sake. He doesn't need us. He doesn't need our money. He doesn't need our teams. He doesn't need us to go down there and build the homes. We don't even know how to lay cinder block anyways. You know what he's doing? He's inviting us into the joy of purpose in Mexico so that we can experience a full life in him. Think of Steve and Lisa. Steve is our former worship pastor and our current technical director. And Lisa's his great wife, and they have a ministry called Side by Side where they partner, they come alongside couples who are struggling in their marriage and they seek to restore them to wholeness. And over the years, they've had the opportunity to walk many couples through that and see them restored to fullness in their marriage. But here's the truth. God loves those couples. And if he can't direct them to Steve and Lisa, he's going to direct them somewhere else. God's going to rescue those couples. He's simply inviting the Goldbergs in to participate in the joy of his purpose and what they're doing. That's what service is. That's what the Christian life is. God's going to do what he's going to do regardless of if we want to do it or participate. The invitation of the Christian life, the invitation of a life of service like Paul lived, is to simply participate in the joy of purpose. It's an invitation that I hope that you'll accept. I hope at Grace that we don't serve out of a sense of ought, that we don't obey out of a sense of duty, that we don't resentfully go along with these things that we don't desire, but that we would see in following God as an invitation to experience the joy of purpose. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for the story of your servant, Paul. We thank you for his humility and his service and what he left us and what we learned from him. Father, I pray that each of us would experience the joy that is found in serving the purpose that you created us for. May we walk in that joy. Let us throw off senses of duty and senses of ought and embrace this desire to experience what you're doing, to see it firsthand. Thank you for inviting us into what it is that you're doing. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Grace, this week there's a man named George Floyd who was killed by a police officer. George was a black man, and you can't help but think that his race was a white woman who, in a racially fueled fear, weaponized the black man's race against him in a threat. And those instances are the most recent that have come into the national conscience. But there are just more instances in a long string of events that have happened that have pointed to the fact that we live in a culture with simmering racial tension. We live in a place where racial inequality is real. And I didn't think it would be right to get up here and just start preaching about Acts as if those things hadn't happened this week. I didn't think it would be right to meet together as together as we can be on a Sunday morning now and not acknowledge those things and pray for the racial divide and the wounds in our country to heal. And I didn't think it would be right to start this Sunday as a church and not earnestly ask our God together, what can we do, what can grace do to be a part of healing this divide? What portions of it as a greatly and majorly lily-white congregation can we own? And how can we contribute to closing the divide that exists in our culture? So I wanted to take a minute as we begin and pray for George Floyd and his family and pray for the racial divide in our country and pray for wisdom, for grace, as we seek to find how the Lord would have us be an active part of the healing of these wounds. So would you please pray with me? Father, our hearts are broken that we live in a place where things like this happen. Our hearts are broken that these incidents are not isolated. They're just the ones that we see. We know that you see all the incidents. We know that you have seen all the injustice. And we know that your heart breaks over injustice far more than ours ever could. So Father, first we pray for your heart in the face of these things. Break ours with yours. Father, we pray for the family of George Floyd. We ask that you would bring a healing that only you could bring. We pray for the attitudes that underlie the fear of Amy Cooper. And ask that you would solve those and bring those to the fore so that we might confront them and deal with them with equanimity and with justice and with grace. And Father, we ask that you would guide the partners and the leadership of grace and show us how we are to contribute to closing this divide and healing these wounds. Show us the path forward as we grieve, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. This morning is part two of a sermon that I'm calling Early Church Distinctives. Last week was part one. Hopefully you have your notes and you've got them numbered one through three. This week is going to be four, five, six, and seven. And last week I opened up with a short fictional story, really a parable, about a boy that was firing arrows at a barn and the arrows would land in the midst of a sea of red and then he would walk up and paint a target around the arrow and go, look, I hit the bullseye. And we talked about how, you know, this happens and this is applicable in a lot of organizations and institutions. It's a good parable about the dangers of mission drift. And often we start things without even knowing what we're going for, without even knowing what the goal is, without even knowing what the target is. And so we are asking last week as a church, how do we know that we're hitting the target? Another way to think about it is if Jesus and Paul were to come into the church on a Sunday morning when that's allowed, would they look around grace and everything that we're doing and say, yeah, you guys are nailing it. This is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. This is the target that we painted for you. So last week we asked the question, how do we know that we're hitting that target? How do we know that what we're doing as Grace is right? That Sunday mornings and small groups and children's ministry and student ministry and the philanthropic ministries that we do, how do we know that all that is right and good? Well, in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, we have a seminal passage that defines the early church. It paints the target for us. It shows us these are the things that the early church was characterized by. What's going on in the passage is Jesus has gone into heaven. He's left the disciples with the keys to the kingdom. They've received the Holy Spirit. They went out and they preached to thousands of people this gospel of repentance. Repent of who you thought Jesus was when you killed him and accept and walk in faith in the fact that Jesus and when he challenged them to repentance, it says about 3,000 were added to their number. And then those 3,000 formed the church. And right after that, we get Acts 2, 42 through 47, and it tells us the very things that defined the church. So last week, we looked at the first three distinctives that we see as defining the early church. This week, I want to look at the next four, four, five, six, and seven. And we said last week, there's different ways to group these together. You could pull out four distinctives or nine, but we're doing seven. And so last week we talked about the fact that they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, meaning they were eager learners. They were devoted to fellowship, meaning they were devoted to Christ-centered time together, and they were devoted to prayers, meaning that they were committed to the spiritual disciplines that they expressed in that day. So this week, as we continue to ask, how do we know if we're doing it right? What does God expect of his church? I want to continue to look at these distinctives that define the early church. By way of review, I wanted to take a minute and read the breaking of bread at the prayers. This week I want to start out by looking at that phrase that they sold all that they had in common and gave to any who had need. And we want to sum that up by saying that the fourth distinctive, if you're keeping your list there, is that they were known for generosity. They were known for their generosity. And it's interesting what's happening in this passage because what's literally happening is as the church is formed, everybody is selling whatever they have and giving it to the church leadership and saying, here, this is for the greater good. You guys use it for whatever you need to use it for. Obviously, my family's going to have some needs, but we trust you to provide for those. Here's everything that we own. Please use it to provide for everyone here, which is a super high bar. That's really daunting. Can you imagine if when we had our new members class at Grace, when we did Discover Grace and we talked all about Grace and who we are, and then we got to the end of it and it was like, okay, if you want to be a partner, here are the requirements. You know, you need to commit to Sunday morning attendance. You should be a believer. We'd like to see you in a small group. Also, small thing, if you could just kind of sell everything that you have and write a check to the elders, we'll take it from here. That would be a pretty tough sell. That's a pretty tall order. But to understand what's happening here, we need to feel the freedom to apply the principle and not necessarily the practice, because the principle is far more important. First, we need to understand what's happening in ancient Israel, in Israel at the time of Christ. Israel is what we would think of as a third world country. There's lots of joblessness. There's lots of poverty. There's lots of hunger. There's lots of suffering. There's no medical system really to speak of. And so suffering and need and want in Jerusalem was great. And while it was great, there was no infrastructure to provide for those who had fallen through the cracks of society. And what we understand is that God has intentionally designed the institution of the church to undergird society as a safety net to catch those who have fallen through the cracks of familial care. God first assigns to care for others. He first assigns family to care for family. This is why over and over again in Scripture, God makes a point of saying that if you love me, if you want to express true religion, then you'll care for the widows and the orphans. We see this in James in the New Testament, that true religion is to care for the widows and the orphans. We see it in Isaiah in the Old Testament, where God says, if you really want to please me, then plead the cause of the fatherless and take up the case of the widow. And what he's saying there is, and even in Deuteronomy when he says, look out for the sojourners, for the aliens, for the ones that don't have a family and can't support themselves, what he's saying in all that is, the church needs to serve in society as a safety net to care for those who fall through the cracks of familial care. We're supposed to be there and be helping them. And when there is a need, we are supposed to meet it. God has designed the church as an institutional safety net for society. And so in that time, there was no government. There was no Medicare. There was no welfare. There was no food stamps. There was no health care. There was none of that. And so the church was the only hope for the person who didn't have a family and was in need and couldn't support themselves. But now in our culture, thankfully, we have another safety net, which is the government. We do have a societal infrastructure to watch out for people who fall through the cracks of familial care. But still, the church undergirds all of that, and people who cannot be cared for by their family and cannot be cared for by the government, God looks at us, the church, and says, now you, you care for them. So we're still there, and it's still our responsibility, which is why the point from this part of the passage is that we need to be generous. We need to be conduits of God's generosity. We need to have a grieving heart for those who hurt and reach out to help those who can't help themselves. We need to be glad providers for those that are not provided for by their family or provided for by the government. We need to rally around them and be generous in spirits and be conduits of God's generosity. Another way to think of it perhaps is like this. When I became a senior pastor, I learned eventually about a thing called a designated giving fund. I'd really never heard of that before. It might shock you guys to know that I'm not a financial titan. I don't really know all the ins and outs of all that stuff. It's all news to me. I just try to spend less than what I make. That's pretty much it. But I found out that there's these things called designated giving funds. And how this works is you have money and you give a portion of that money to this fund that a company or an individual manages. And a lot of people will give money to this individual and they manage all the money in a fund. And that money is earmarked for charitable donations, charitable causes. And whoever you give your money to, they just sit on it and they hold it for however long you want to. And then when something pricks your heart, when something touches you, when you see a need that you'd like to meet, you pick up the phone or you type the email and you let the person managing your money know, hey, I would like you to send this much money to this person because they need it. This matters to me. I'd like you to allocate my resources to that person or that institution for those people. That's how a designated giving fund works fundamentally. And what it's made me realize is that we're all God's designated giving funds. That's what stewardship is. We've heard about this idea of stewardship before, that everything we have is God's and not our own. We've heard about that. But the more I thought about it this week, I've realized we're all God's designated giving funds. He allocates a portion of money to us. He entrusts it to us. And every now and again, he picks up the phone or he writes the email and he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this thing matters to me. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to them. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to these people. That's the principle of what's happening here in Acts chapter 2, is they're expressing the Lord's generosity. And I think increasingly, and I know that that's a tall order, and I know that you may be very far away from viewing everything you have as really belonging to God. And that's, I think, a progressive revelation as we understand God. But I think one of the marks of spiritual maturity in a church and in an individual is when the church and when the person understands that we're really just designated giving funds for God. He's allocated a portion of his resources to us as individuals and to us as a church. And every now and again, he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this matters to me. I'd like you to shift some of those resources over there to them. And that's how we're to serve. It's the mark of the church to be generous. The fifth distinctive that I see in this text is that they were committed to gathering. It says they gathered day by day in the temple courts. It's this old school way of church. You know, when I grew up, we were there every time the doors were open. We went Sunday morning, we went Sunday night, we went Wednesday night, every week. That was the deal. The doors were open, we were there. That's kind of old school church. Now, increasingly, if someone is a regular church attender, it means they come to church maybe twice a month. But the early church was committed to the gathering. It mattered to them. It mattered to them to come together when they were able to be in the temple learning and praising and fellowshipping together. The early church intuitively and instinctively understood the power and efficacy of being around one another, the power and the efficacy of the gathering. This is why in Hebrews we're told to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Because there's something special about being in the same place. And if nothing else, that's what this time of pandemic and isolation has taught us. Across the board, across the country, almost universally, church engagement and virtual attendance is declining. And as we've talked about that as a staff, and I've talked about that with the elders, I've just made the point that, you know, online church, this ability to participate in church in our sweatpants and the comfort of our own home, that's been a thing for at least 15 years, maybe longer. And there's a reason why it hasn't taken off. There's a reason why it hasn't overtaken in-person church. Because even now in the 21st century, we understand that there's a power and an efficacy that's difficult to capture in simply being together, in experiencing the teaching together, in laughing together, in and worshiping together and sharing together in the lobby, we understand that that is important. It's why at Grace, if you do come to a Discover Grace class, that one of the things we do ask our partners to commit to is to prioritize Sunday morning service. Because we believe that the gathering matters. And I can't wait until we are able to gather again. It's a distinctive of the early church and it ought to define our church. The sixth distinctive is the one that, of all of them, probably fires me up the most. I get so excited about this, and I think that it defines the early church. They were defined by communion and community. They were defined by communion and community. We see in verse 42 that they were devoted to the breaking of bread. And then again in 46 that they gathered in one another's homes and they broke bread together. It happens two times. And then all throughout this passage, we see they, they, they, collective, collective, collective. It's always about others. And the church is a fundamentally communal institution. It is fundamentally involved with others. I've said often it is impossible to live out the Christian life on an island. It is impossible to grow closer to Jesus void of the influence of others in your life. We absolutely, our souls need to be surrounded by godly Christian community. That's why at Grace, our mission statement is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people because we believe that we cannot deepen our connection with Jesus void of connections with others. And I believe this so fervently that I would say to you, if you're listening this morning and you're not sure that you have Christian community in your life, ignore everything else that I'm saying. Put it all on the back burner. Just take it and set it aside for a later date and get Christian community in your life. Stop right now. Quit listening to me and pray that God would provide for you a community of faith who supports you, who love you, who have permission to tell you the truth about yourself and to tell you what Jesus says about you. We desperately need Christian community in our life. And the early church was a communal thing, and that persists to this day. But it wasn't just about community. It was about communion. We see that phrase, the breaking of bread, and we automatically think that this is an expression of community and hospitality, and it is. And for all of history, for all of history, that has been how we've expressed hospitality. Food has been the fundamental way that we've expressed community. Once you get to know somebody a little bit, maybe you have a common activity or something, but eventually you're going to say, hey, let's grab lunch. Let's get the wives together and let's go to dinner. Let's get the families together and y'all come over. And increasingly that means we go somewhere and we experience a food together, but the most intimate time, the most special times are when people are invited over to the home. When you invite people into your home, there's a special care taken. You clean up the house. You let them know that you care about them, that they matter to you. You try to think of the special thing that they like, of the appetizer that they went nuts over the last time, of the dessert that you can remember in conversation that they said they like. If you're making steaks and there's somebody who doesn't like steak, you make sure and you have chicken to make them feel thought for and cared for. You make sure that there's something for their kids so that they know that their kid is important to you as well. There's this special power of hospitality, of welcoming people into our homes and expressing community in that way. And when the tradition of communion started, that's where it started. It started in someone's home as Jesus and the disciples sat around and broke bread together. They sat around and they were having a meal together. They were expressing community. It was the Passover supper. And you know, we observe communion in our churches. Most churches observe it like grace does. At grace, we do it once a month in the service. The elders stand on either side at the end of the sermon. I'll go through the story of communion and when it started and we'll have a particular thought that we go with. Then we spend some time in prayer and then we line up and we get we get the bread, and we dip it, and we go back to our seats, and it's an austere, respectful time, and that's right and good. But communion didn't start that way. Communion started in community. Communion started around a table. When Jesus took the bread, and he looked at the disciples, and and he broke it and he began to hand it out. And this was not an unusual practice. Every home didn't have a knife. The way that you serve bread was to take the loaf and tear off a portion of it and give it to your guests. So what Jesus did was not a new thing. This wasn't unusual to the disciples or anyone else who could have seen it. It was a ubiquitous, common part of the meal. And in this moment, Jesus takes the thing that we do every time we express community and he imbues it with purpose. And he says, every time you do this, do what? Line up in church and get in the line and tear off the bread and dip it in the wine and spend some time praying? No, not that. Every time you do this, every time you gather in community with me as your focus and you break bread, you serve the bread to the people who are in your house. This common activity that was mundane until this moment. Jesus says, every time you do this from now on, I want you to remember me. I want you to remember that I'm the bread, that I'm the bread of life, that my body was broken for you. Similarly, he takes the wine and he pours it. It's a totally common mundane activity. It happens in every dinner party ever where the host takes the glasses and pours the drink. And Jesus says, whenever you do this, whenever you do what? Gather in church and dip the bread in the wine? No, whenever you experience community together and when you serve the drinks, I want you to stop and remember me and feel that and see that as my blood that is poured out for you. Remember my crucifixion and that I am the tie that binds here and that I am what brings you in common with one another and that I am what reconciles you with the heavenly Father. Remember that. Communion didn't start in church buildings. It started at dinner tables. It started in community. And Jesus took these mundane expressions that are a part of every communal gathering around the table, and he said, from now on, when you do these things, don't just let them be a passive thing where you just serve the bread and you serve the drinks and you move on. I want you to stop and I want you to remember me. That's communion. Communion is always an expression of community. Communion always draws us into community and community should always focus on communion. So I think the challenge for us at Grace, who love community very much, we're real good at community. That's one of my favorite things about this church. We love having people over. We love getting together. But the challenge for us is when we do, when that bread is served and when it's broken, when the drinks are poured, it is right and good and obedient to pause and to pray and to say, Jesus, thank you that you are this bread. Thank you that you are this drink. Thank you that you make tonight possible and that you make our relationship with you possible. We're having fun here tonight, Jesus, but we want to pause and we want to say thank you for making this possible and we want to remember you because that's the instruction of communion. Not once a month when you're in church, come to the front and take the bread and dip it in the wine. That is a shadow. That is a mimicry of the actual communion. And it is right and good to do it in church. But it is forgetful and wrong if we don't do it together in community. So let the challenge be to grace as we commune, as we gather, as we express hospitality and we all begin to fling our doors back open and have people over. Can we please take a moment in those times and do things in remembrance of Christ and make communion more a part of our community. Finally, the seventh distinctive is that this church had a contagious joy. I want to read for you the last portion of scripture so that you kind of know what I'm talking about. It says, They gathered together every day. They invited people into their homes. It's not a stretch to think that they would just invite their neighbors in too because there's a meal and you should come have fun with us. They gathered in the temple courts. They pooled their resources and gave to anyone who had need. No doubt that brought people in who had need, who experienced this genuine community and love for the first time in their life. And then in all of that, as they met with glad and happy hearts, they praised their God and it said that they won favor with all the people. Not just the people of the church, but the people around them, which means that the people of Jerusalem at large began to take notice of this infectious community of joy that was the early church. And because they began to take notice of that, because they won favor with the people surrounding them simply by being an expression of the church and exuding that contagious joy, because people saw that, this passage ends with, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Their contagious and infectious joy led to the salvation of souls. It's really interesting to me that two weeks ago I talked in Acts 2 about the fundamental and foundational repentance of the church. It's a confession that I've been wrong about who I thought Jesus was and I'm going to walk in the belief that he is who he says he is. And out of that confession and repentance, 3,000 people were added to that number. And now in Acts 2, 42 through 47, we see more people being added to their numbers. And the confession and repentance is what drew people in at the beginning, but now at this point in the church, what's now drawing people in? Now what's drawing people in is the favor that their infectious joy is winning with all people. Now what we're seeing is the church cranking on all cylinders. We're seeing the results of what happens when people are devoted to the apostles' teaching and are eager learners, when they're devoted to fellowship in Christ and their time together, when they're defined by community and communion, when they're known for their generosity, when they're experiencing joy, and all of that is working together to cause the people of Jerusalem to look at the church and go, what's going on over there? That's different. I want to be a part of that. That's why when we have Grace's big night out, whenever we can do that again, I cannot wait. I always tell Compass Rose where we have them. They say, do you want to just rent it out? Should we shut it down and just invite Grace people? I always say, no way. I want the other folks of Raleigh to see our community because I believe our community is infectious. This is how the church ought to work. This is how we draw people in. And I believe, Grace, I absolutely do, that even though we are in a time of trial right now because we can't meet together, that as soon as we can fling the doors open and as we move forward, I think grace is going to be stronger than it ever has. And I think if we will commit ourselves to these seven distinctives, that if we will be eager learners, that if we will devote ourselves to Christ-centered time together, that if we will be known for our generosity, committed to spiritual disciplines, if we will be committed to the gathering, if we will see the importance of community and communion, I think if we will do all those things, it will produce in us an infectious and contagious joy that the people of Raleigh will notice and come to. And I hope that's what we will be. I hope that we will be a church in the 21st century that embodies all the distinctives of the church of the first century. And I'm so excited to see where we get to go from here when this season of quarantine is over. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so good to us. We can't fathom how you love us. We can't fathom how you look out for us. We are collectively thrilled that we get to be participants in your church, in your kingdom, in your bride that you came to rescue. Thank you for Jesus, who is the tie that binds us together and reconciles us to you. God, I pray that we would be every bit as unflinchingly the church in the 21st century as they were in the first century. Give us boldness to go where you would have us go. Give us zeal and energy to get there. Give us a devotion to you to sustain us. Give us an infectious joy to draw others in. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.