Sermons tagged with Promises

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.

Amen. Good morning, Grace. Good morning online. Thank you, Steve. That was wonderful. It's good to see everybody. We've got some new folks venturing in this week, Braving the Elements. My name is Nate, for those of you that I haven't gotten to meet yet or for those watching online. This is the last part in our series called A Time of Kings. And as we think about questions like that, I really believe that there's one loud message that should come from the book of Kings. And I want us to see that this morning. And as I think about Kings, and remember I call it a book because originally it was written as one big long book. So as I think about the book of Kings, I really have realized as we've studied it together that this is a tragic book. This book is really sad. It's really sad because of the hope with which it starts and the devastation with which it ends. If you think back to the very beginning of the book of Kings, if you have a Bible at home, you can flip it there. If you have a Bible with you, you can look at 2 Kings 25. That's where we're going land today, and then we're going to jump to, I think, Samuel, and then Revelation, and John. So, you know, we'll be all over the place this morning. But if you think about the way that Kings begins, it's like the climax of hope. David is the king. You'll remember in the very first week of this series, if you've been watching along or listening along, that David is the king, that the nation of Israel clamored for a king, and Samuel the prophet said, you don't need one, God is your king. And they said, we really want a king. We think that a king is going to bring about all the promises that God made to us, because they are God's chosen people. They live in an awareness of the promises that they have received, that the land of Canaan, that Israel is going to be theirs, that they're going to have a multitude of descendants, and that one of their descendants is going to bless the whole earth. And so they cling to these promises. And they don't see them coming to fruition in the time of judges. It was a dark time in the nation of Israel. And they said, you know what? If we have a king, that person can lead us into prominence and be God's chosen person. And so they elected Saul. He made the most sense. He was head and shoulders above everybody else. He was really good looking. When you looked at him, you thought, that guy should be king. If you need a good picture of who Saul was, he looked a lot like me. But that didn't work out. And David is God's chosen man to be king, and he was a great king. He established Israel into international prominence. He, in him, was this man who walked closely with God, who wrote the Psalms, who led well, who conquered enemies, who won victories, and certainly this king is the king that's going to lead us in the prominence that we have been promised. And David asks the father, can I build your temple? I want to build your home. He goes to God and he says, I want to build your home where your presence can reside with us. Because all the way back in the desert, when Moses was in charge, 450 years prior, God gave him instructions about setting up a tabernacle that could move with them. That's where they put the Ark of the Covenant. That's where they had the Holy of Holies. That's where the presence of God rested among his people. And it was time to build God a permanent home. And David said, let me do this. And God says, I can't let you do that. There's too much blood on your hands, but I'm going to make you a promise. And we're going to look at that promise in a minute. He said, among those promises, your son is going to build my house. And so the book of Kings picks up with the end of the incredible reign of David that has launched Israel into international importance. This high watermark in the kingdom. And then he has assembled all the goods and materials so that as soon as his son Solomon takes over, he can build the temple. And he does. And much of the beginning of Kings is dedicated to the dedication and construction of this temple. And there's a beautiful prayer that Solomon prays for the people then and for you and I. It's really wonderful. You should go read it. It's this high watermark in the history of Israel. It's the culmination of 450 years of hope. And you have to think, man, look at us. These kings are bringing about the desired results. They're pushing us into prominence and they're bringing about the promises of God. This king thing is really working out. Hope is high. Then Solomon's son is terrible. They descend into civil war, and the northern tribes never get a good king. The southern tribe gets some that they get to hope in. And in the northern tribes, when it looks like hope is lost and they have evil kings like Ahab, they're putting their hope in kings, and it's not going to be Ahab. He's not going to bring about the future that God desires for us. But God does bring some strong prophets into the reign of Ahab. He brings Elijah, who wins the victory on Mount Carmel, against the 450 prophets of Baal. And you read that and you go, okay, now, now God's promises are going to come true. Now we're going to have the king that we are waiting for that's going to set everything right. It seems like the tide has turned and the hearts of God's people are going to be turned towards him, but they're not. And then God sends Elisha to secede Elijah, and he does twice the miracles that Elijah does. And it's this glimmer of hope that maybe the hearts of God's people will be turned to him, but they're not. And then God sends sporadically these good kings, Hezekiah, who defeated the armies of Sennacherib through prayer, by taking the threatening letter and laying it down before the Lord in the temple and saying, God, please protect your people. And God does because of Hezekiah's faithfulness. And you think, maybe this is a good king. Now, as you're reading the narrative and you're following along and it's just bad news, bad news, bad news, this is when there's going to be good news. And by the end of his life, he's no good anymore. We wait for some generations and Josiah, this glimmer of hope that we talked about last week, comes along. And he eradicates all of the idols and he turns the hearts of the people towards the Lord. But God says, you know, it's too late. My people are already turned away from me. I'm going to take the kingdom from you in four kings. And sure enough, he does. Jehoahaz and Jehoakim and Jehoachin and then Zedekiah and then it's done. Four generations. And the very end of Kings, this book that began with so much hope, a king is going to come and he's going to set everything right and the world for God's people is going to look exactly as God intended it to look. The book of Kings ends like this in chapter 25. I'm going to read you a summary of what's happening in verse 8. This is pretty much what they're looking at. That's the scene as we finish this hopeful book. We watch king after king come in. Maybe he's the one. Maybe the prophet's the one. Maybe the tide is going to turn. And we're waiting for the hero. We're waiting for the uptick. We're waiting for the climax. There's going to be a resolution to this. And at the end of the story, King Nebuchadnezzar sends in his army. They burn down God's temple, Solomon's temple that he built. They burn it down. They burn down the palace. They burn down the homes of all the prominent people in Jerusalem. And they tear down the walls. It's left in shambles. It is an ash heap of a city, and they take all the richest and wealthiest and most capable with them, only leaving behind the most impoverished and the most destitute. That's the picture of God's chosen people at the end of the book of Kings. It's utter devastation. It's utter and complete devastation. And you're reading this book and you're waiting for someone to come along. You expect to turn the page and then it's like, but then this happened and it's not. It's just somebody else telling the story, telling the same stories in Chronicles. There's no page turn here. You're expecting the hero to come. You're expecting the king to come, the right one to come along and restore everything, and it doesn't happen. As I'm studying in my office this week, I'm going, man, this really stinks that the book of Kings ends this way. Really find another story to just talk about and maybe we'll just let them discover this on their own, their own leisure. But it dawned on me that the devastation in Kings is very purposeful. This is really the point of the book. It's meant to end this way when we place our hope in earthly kings. The devastation is designed to display the reality that an earthly king will never be enough. The devastation in kings is designed to display the reality that an earthly king will never be enough. They kept waiting on an earthly leader. They kept waiting on someone to come and sit on the physical throne and usher them into prominence and make them a great nation, and it just wasn't going to happen, and God was letting them slowly, painfully realize the thing you're hoping in to fix your lives is not the thing that's going to do it. Boy, that's a whole sermon in and of itself, isn't there? How many slow, painful lessons have we learned putting our hope in the wrong thing? But it's meant to show his people an earthly king will never be enough. And if you're paying attention to the Old Testament, if you're paying attention to the things that God is saying to his people, even in the time of kings, when their hope is placed in an earthly king, if you're listening to what he's saying to his people, you will hear that he is telling them you are looking for the wrong kind of king. I referred earlier to 2 Samuel 7. This is where God made David a promise. It's referred to as the Davidic covenant. It's where he doubles down, he triples down, he reminds the people of his promise to them. And he promises that he's going to send a king to sit on David's throne. And these are the words of God. Look at what he says in verse 14. He says, So he's talking about Jesus here. He's going to be a son for me. He is going to pay a penalty for you. And then when he does that, he's going to sit on the throne forever. This is kingdom language. This is king language in the middle of the time of kings that they're not listening to. And then God sends prophet after prophet that we have in the major and the minor prophets in the rest of the Old Testament to tell them of their coming king, of the coming Messiah, most pointedly in the book of Isaiah. When Isaiah tells God's people, Isaiah is a prophet during the reign of Hezekiah, one of the good kings during this time. And he says that God is going to send someone and that by his stripes we will be healed and that he will be Emmanuel, God with us, and that he will be the King of kings and the Lord of lords. What God is trying to communicate to them that they can't seem to capture is that what they really need is a divine king. What they need is Jesus. What they're waiting on is the Messiah. They continue to look to an earthly king to make their problems right, to make things go away, to confirm and restore the promises of God. And what God is trying to tell them all along, through his promise to David, through the voice of his prophets, is, hey guys, you're looking for the wrong king. You're not paying attention to the right things. You don't need another earthly king. You need a divine king. You need Jesus. And this language isn't just in the Old Testament. We see king language throughout the Bible. You'll remember, if you were here in the spring of 2019, we went through the book of John for I think 12 or 14 weeks. And one of the themes we see is the people of Israel when they meet Jesus continually clamoring to make him king. He had to disappear from their midst so that they wouldn't start a revolution too early. He had to heal people and say, but don't tell anybody because he didn't want word to get out that the Messiah was here. He didn't want to foment revolution. This is why he did his ministry in the far-flung corners of northern Israel rather than coming down south to the capital of Jerusalem until later in his life because he knew that it would set into motion a series of events that he could not reverse because they were clamoring to make him king. They were clamoring so badly to make him king that at the end of his life when he was on trial with Pilate, the Roman governor, Pilate, he was accused by the people who were trying to kill him of being someone who was leading a revolution, who claimed to be the king of the Jews. And he's trying to overthrow Roman rule. And Pilate, you should care about this deeply. And so Pilate asked him, they say you're a king. Is that what you? And Jesus says, yeah, but not of this. You can have this. This is too small for me. I don't want this kingdom. I have a kingdom, but it's not here. If it were here, my angels would come and defend me, but they're not, because my kingdom is eternal. My kingdom is divine. My kingdom is universal. And with his death, he bought our citizenship into that kingdom. And then, as the narrative of the Bible continues to press forward, and we continue to wait for our king, along with the children of Israel, when is our king going to return and set things right? When is he going to restore things to the way that he intended them to be? And we fast forward to the book of Revelation, where we see more king language. In Revelation chapter 6, we have the cries of the martyrs. It's are the exact cries of the hearts of the saints in 2 Kings 25. And God's chosen people are in the middle of total devastation. Their hearts cry out, God, when will you make this right? How are you letting this happen? Why are you letting King Nebuchadnezzar do this? This is evil, God. This is not your plan. This is not your promise. Why is it going this way? Why are you allowing this devastation? It's the same cry that was in the hearts of the martyrs in Revelation 6. God, how long will you let this happen before you avenge what they've done to us? How long will you watch devastation occur in your creation? It's the same thing. It's the same cry of the hearts of the people who had to witness the terror of slavery, who had to endure the persecution of Nero, or the persecution that continues to happen in closed-off countries to this day. It's the same devastation that cries out to God in our own lives when we have a diagnosis or we have a loss or we exist in the rubble of a relationship. And we say, God, this doesn't feel right. How much longer will you let this happen? We need our king to make it right. And in Revelation 19, we get it. It's the most hopeful chapter in all the Bible when we see the king that we've always wanted, that we've always hoped for, that the nation of Israel longed for without realizing it. I love this passage. I always get emotional when I read this passage. Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. This is the appearance of Christ as king as we finish the Bible. The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True. and fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written King of Kings and Lord of Lords. That's Jesus. And when he comes to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, when he comes to fix the devastation, when he comes to restore his creation and claim his throne, he is no longer coming as the Lamb of God. He is coming as the Lion of Judah. And he's going to answer those cries of our heart. And he's going to respond to the devastation. And he's going to speak right to the hearts of the people in Israel, watching their loved ones be carried away as slaves. As the palace burns and the walls lay in rubble, he is going to speak directly to their hearts as he establishes his divine eternal kingdom. And so what I want us to see as we think about the book of Kings and the lessons that we learn from it is that the entire book is meant to end in devastation and allow that devastation to point God's people for their need for Jesus so that they can see that Jesus is the hope of God's people in the midst of devastation. Kings ends that way on purpose. It's not a mistake by God. It's not like God was watching history and go, well, that didn't work out as expected. I was really hoping one of these kings would be the guy. He knew that it would end bad. He told Samuel when they were clamoring for a king, he says, you give them one, but it's not going to end well. And it didn't. He knew this was going to happen, but he let it happen so that his people would see their need for a divine king, and that devastation would point them to Christ. Jesus was their hope in the midst of devastation. And in the same way, our lesson from Kings is that Jesus is our hope in the midst of our devastation too. When things aren't going right, when we identify with the martyrs crying out to God, how much longer are you going to let this happen? You've made me some promises, God. You've said that everything I pray will be yes in your name. You said that if I ask for things that you will give them to me. You've said in Romans 28 that one day everything's going to work out for the good of those who love you and are called according to your purpose. When's that coming, God? Because this stinks. That frustration and devastation is meant to point you to Christ and remind you that we all collectively are waiting for Revelation 19. We all collectively are waiting for the return of our King who will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, who will sit on the throne of David forever, who will restore his creation to exactly what it is meant to restore, who will bring about the reality of Revelation 20 where it says God will be with his people and his people will be with their God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things. All the things that caused devastation, all the things that caused us to cry out with the martyrs, those things have passed away because Jesus has won a victory over them. And for all of eternity, we exist in a perfect kingdom with our perfect king. Kings is designed to help us anticipate that future and cling to that hope. And when we experience devastation in our own life, that is there to point us to our need for Jesus. Sometimes it's a simple devastation of our souls. We come to the end of ourselves, and we realize that our way is not working. We realize that there is something about this life that is making me unhappy. There is something that is missing. There is something that I need. That devastation is designed to point us to our need for Christ. If you're here this morning or you're watching online and you're experiencing that devastation of your soul, you need Jesus. You don't need another earthly king. You don't need another earthly fix. You don't need to read another book or a new regimen of discipline. You need Jesus. The devastation of our relationships points us to our need for Jesus. When people disappoint us, it points us to a person who won't. When we lose someone that we love so much and we cry out and we say, God, this isn't fair. Why'd you take them? It was too early. Our King has died for us and conquered that death to assure us that we will see that person again one day. So we turn our eyes with hope to Revelation 19 when faithful and true comes out of the sky. When Jesus comes as the Lion of Judah to restore his kingdom and restore order to the way that it should be. And the devastation of finances and the devastation of just life events and the devastation of disappointment, big and little. Little disappointments are meant to turn our eyes to Jesus and say, yeah, this place isn't perfect. We need you to come make it perfect, God. We usher in, we pray for your return. Come soon, Lord Jesus. Big devastation, huge things from which we don't know if we will recover are intentionally designed to point our eyes towards Christ and say, yes, Jesus, this stinks. We are waiting for you. We are yearning for you. We are inviting you in. Come soon, Lord Jesus. The devastation in Kings is intentionally left in the Bible and is allowed intentionally to occur so that it will forever point God's people to Jesus in the midst of their devastation. If we remember nothing else from the book of Kings, remember that the whole book is designed to point us there. And remember that if you are experiencing some form of devastation or disappointment or disillusionment in your life, that the point of that, just like the point of it happening in Kings, is that you would point your eyes towards Christ and eagerly anticipate the return of your King, who is going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. We are grateful for you. Jesus, we need you. Come soon to get us. God, you have watched from your throne all kinds of devastation. You have watched all sorts of divisiveness and violence. You have watched evil. And you are as fed up with it as we are. God, now in our time, it's hard to turn on the news or pick up your phone and not see something that disappoints us, something that breaks our heart, something that seems evil. God, you see it too. We need our king. Would you send him soon to rescue us? And God, while we wait, would you set our eyes on him? Would you set our gaze on you? Would you fill us with your spirit and give us the peace of hope? May we be a people who continually turn our eyes towards you. It's in our king's name that we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to be here with you in this way again. This week, we're jumping into a new series called The Time of Kings. You should know by now, if you've been a part of Grace for any period of time, that I love the Old Testament. I love the stories. I love the characters. I love the nuance. I love the way that diving into the Old Testament not only makes the Bible come alive, but sheds new and helpful light on the Old Testament. And whenever we do a series in the Old Testament and tell some of these stories from that period of time and that portion of the Bible, one of my hopes is that if nothing else, the Bible will come alive for you and you'll enjoy diving into it on your own. I hope that this whets your appetite or inspires you to dive into Scripture and read these stories on your own. We're going to be looking at the books of 1 and 2 Kings. We have a reading plan to go along with this series. That's on our website. So if you'll go there, graceralee.org slash live, you can find our reading plan. Many of you are on it right now and follow through the books of 1 and 2 Kings with us. It won't be exhaustive, but if you want to get ahead of it, then you can try to read in the margins and read through those books as we do this series for seven weeks. I'm excited about this series because the first and second Kings kind of covers a large narrative arc in the Old Testament. The Old Testament from Genesis all the way up through Ezra kind of tells the story of the nation of Israel. And then the books that come after that, the wisdom books and the prophecy books, the major prophets and the minor prophets kind of give us details of different portions of that story. And a large swath of the story is covered in the books of 1 and 2 Kings. And there's all kinds of good things tucked away in these books. And we're going to highlight some of those over the next seven weeks. But by way of background, so that we know where we are in history and in the life of the nation of Israel, I wanted to kind of give you a very quick overview of how we get to the book of Kings and what's going on around the story that we're going to focus on today. So if you go back all the way to Genesis, there's a guy named Abram who lives in Ur, a Sumerian city. God comes to Abram and he says, I want you to go to this place that I'm going to show you that we know is the modern day nation of Israel. Then it was the land of Canaan. But he says, I want you to go to this place where I'm going to show you. And he makes Abram three promises for land, people, and blessing. He says, I'm going to give you this particular plot of land, which we know is modern day Israel. I'm going to make your descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And the Messiah is going to come from you. And then he changes his name to Abraham. And Abraham goes and he takes his family and he goes over to the land of Canaan. And Abraham finally has a son named Isaac. Isaac has sons named Esau and Jacob. Jacob is the one through some finagling that inherits the promises of Abraham and the blessing. Jacob has 12 sons, one of whom is Joseph. Joseph is kind of pushed out of his family. They sell him into slavery. He ends up in Egypt. Fast forward 30 years, there's a famine and Jacob's 11 sons, the rest of his family moves down to Egypt where they're reunited with Joseph and they exist in prosperity in Egypt for a long time. That's pretty much the book of Genesis. Then the book of Exodus starts, the second book of the Bible. We fast forward 400 years. Moses is there. He's a descendant from Abraham and a claimant to the promises that God made to Abraham. And he's adopted into Pharaoh's family. He spends some time in the desert. God appears to him in the desert and says, I want you to go free my people. And Moses does just that. He frees slaves from the most powerful nation in the world by the hand of God. And while they're wandering around in the desert, the people of God, the Israelites, the Hebrew people, are clamoring for rules. They're like, it's not enough to just follow you, to just kind of loosely obey you. We need some policies here. And so God gives them the Ten Commandments. And then on to the Ten Commandments adds more laws through the book of Leviticus. Until in the desert, we have developed this now formalized religion that we know is Judaism. That would later become Christianity. Then while they're wandering around in the desert, Moses passes away. Joshua raises up to take over leadership in the nation of Israel. They cross the Jordan River into the promised land of Canaan that God promised Abraham. They fulfill that promise. They slowly conquer it and take it over. Once they conquer it and take it over, Joshua divides the land amongst the 12 tribes of Israel and they set up shop. In this time, immediately after taking over the land of Canaan and dividing up the land into 12 territories, they don't have a king. They're ruled periodically by judges. What would happen is God's people, Abraham's children, would periodically rebel, forget about God, do whatever it was they wanted to do, ignore God's laws, and God, to get their attention, would allow them to be oppressed, sometimes enslaved, sometimes heavily taxed, sometimes kidnapped, sometimes at war. And when they were oppressed, they would cry out to God, please save us, we know we did wrong. And God would raise up what we call a judge, and the judge would free Israel of oppression and restore them back to sovereignty, and everything was good until the Israelites forgot again and they began to sin again, forgot about God, lived how they wanted to. God would allow oppressors to come in and then God would raise up a judge when they would cry out. And this is the cycle that we're in. One of the last judges was a guy named Samuel. There's two books in the Bible named after Samuel, 1 and 2 Samuel. Samuel was born to a woman named Hannah who was barren, who prayed and committed to God, if you'll give me a son, I'll commit him to you. So as soon as Samuel was able to eat solid food, probably at about four or five years old, his mom Hannah takes him to the temple, gives him to the high priest Eli, and says this is God's son, that he belongs to God. And Samuel grows up in the temple and eventually becomes the high priest, the prophet, and the judge of Israel. And this is where we pick up the story. If you have a Bible there at home, you can actually go ahead and turn to 1 Samuel chapter 8. 1 Samuel chapter 8. Now, I know that this series is over the kings and first and second kings, and it's weird that I'm diving into Samuel on the first day. But first of all, we're going to get into kings a little bit. Second of all, this story has more to do with the meta-narrative of the story of kings. This story is how Israel got their very first king. And I think that there is a cautionary tale that comes out of this story in 1 Samuel 8 that sheds a light on the rest of the time of the kings that's important enough for us to stop and focus on this morning. So in 1 Samuel 8, Samuel's getting old. He's appointed his sons as the next judges of Israel, and they're not good at it. They're taking advantage of their position. They're corrupt, and the people of Israel are upset about this. So they come to Samuel, and they say, hey, we want a king. And listen, it's important. if you have a Bible at home, please go ahead and open to 1 Samuel 8, because I'm going to summarize a lot of this chapter, and I really want you interacting with the text and following it along and making sure that I'm not making stuff up. But the children of Israel, the people of Israel come to Samuel, and they say, hey, we want a king. And Samuel says, why do you want a king? And Israel stomps their foot and holds their breath until their face turns blue and responds like a petulant middle school child. And they basically say, because everybody else has a king and we want one too. Jordan gets to have a king. Lebanon, they get to have a king. Egypt, they get to have a king. The Babylonians have a king. We want a king too. It's not fair. Everybody else gets a king and we don't get a king. And that stinks, Samuel. Please go to God and get him to give us a king. It's really an incredibly immature attitude from a whole nation of people, which is basically, why do you want a king? Well, everybody else has a king, so we feel like we should have one too. It's the same reason your fifth grader is demanding a cell phone right now. So Samuel is troubled, and he's angered, and he goes to God. And he says, God, they're clamoring for a king. What do I do? And he's clearly taking it personally. They've rejected me and rejected my leadership. They're asking for a king. Help me squelch this. Help me quell this. God, what do I say to them? And God responds this way in verse 7 of chapter 8. Listen to this. So Samuel goes to God and he says, God, the people have rejected me. They don't want me to be their ruler. They want a king. They're not happy with the judge. They don't like the current system. They've rejected me. What do I do? And God says, Samuel, Samuel, give them what they want and understand that they're not rejecting you. They're rejecting me from being their king. God says, Samuel, listen, man, I set it up this way on purpose. I directed Joshua to set up the nation exactly as I wanted it to be established. The way that things are currently orchestrated, that you're a judge and that you represent me and that my nation, my people, Israel, is different than the rest of the world in that they don't have a king. That's on purpose, Samuel. And if you think about it, it's not like God didn't know what a monarchy was when he set up his nation. It's not like the idea of kings hadn't occurred to him. It's not like he thought it was a great idea and just thought, nah, I want my people to just be confused for a long time. No, his people didn't need a king because God was the king and the judge was his representative. I mean, the Israelites had the best setup in the history of history. The most altruistic, selfless, powerful, loving, gracious, forgiving being to ever exist was their king. The king of kings was their king. There could be no better ruler than God. And they had him. But they wanted a physical king. They wanted to be able to see and touch him. And so they weren't happy with what they had because they wanted it so badly they couldn't see what God did for them. Israel's desire made them blind to God's provision. Israel's desire, their earnest want for a king made them blind to God's provision for them. Because they had an expectation that led them down this path, that made them expect this thing, they didn't see what was provided for them over here in such a deep and wonderful and profound way. Their own desire made them blind to God's provision. And so God says to Samuel, listen, give them what they want. Give them what they want because they're going to keep clamoring and they haven't rejected you, Samuel. They've rejected me. I've tried to provide for them as their king and they don't see it. So don't take this personally, Samuel. This is an offense to me. And Samuel warns them. Samuel warns them. He goes back to the people. He says, okay, God says that you can have a king. God says that you can have a king, but listen. Listen to what happens if you're going to have a king. I'm reading in verse 10. He says, so Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking from a king, and God's going to let you have one, but you need to understand. You need to understand, listen, this is not going to be a good thing. He's going to take your sons from you and he's going to put them on the front lines and they're going to die for him. He's going to take your daughters out of your home and he's going to take them to his palace and they're going to serve him there. He's going to take a tenth of what you own. He's going to tax you. He's going to enslave you. He's going to impoverish you. And eventually you're going to regret this choice and you're going to cry out to God and he's not going to hear you. Just so you know. It's such a stark warning to these Israelites who are crying out for a king because they want one so badly. You know, it reminds me of something that I've thought for a long time. It's not all the way true, but it's mostly true. You win every argument you get into with God. There's a couple examples where that's not the case. Jonah lost the argument. But for the most part, if you want to argue with God, you win. He tells the people of Israel, you don't need a king, you have me. And they go, but we really want one. And he goes, it's going to be terrible for you. You're going to hate it. And they go, we don't care. We really want one. And God says, okay, if that's what you want. You might remember the story of Jacob who wrestled with God. God comes to him in a vision at night. He wrestles with God all night long. And do you know who won that wrestling match? Jacob did. Is that because God's not powerful enough to defeat Jacob in a wrestling match? No. It's because when we argue with God, we win. God says, hey, I really want you to do this thing. And we go, oh God, no, I don't want to do that thing. But I really, I think it'd be best for you if you did the thing. No, God, please don't make me do the thing. I don't want to do the thing. I'll do anything but the thing. Please don't make me do the thing. And God says, okay, it'd be best for you. It'd be best for your family. You're going to find joy and contentment there, but I'm not going to make you. Or God says, hey, you know, your life would really be better if you didn't do the thing. Your family would be stronger if you'd stop doing the thing. And we go, but God, I really like doing the thing. One day in the future, I'll stop doing the thing. but right now I'm gonna keep doing the thing because I'm finding joy there. And God says, you know what? You can keep doing the thing, but you're only gonna find wreckage there. You're already walking in hurt and damage and leaving a terrible wake, and you're only gonna leave a greater one, and you're only gonna end in more damage and more death, but you keep doing the thing if you want to do the thing. Go ahead. When we argue with God, we get our way. He's going to let us win. But I think what we see out of the story of how Israel got their first king is that sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. Sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. Sometimes getting that thing that we desperately want, that we petition God for, we need it, we're praying for it, we're begging for it, we're asking for it, and we don't, God hasn't given it to us yet, but finally he gives it to us. And that's not the best thing. Sometimes God won't give it to us. So we force it and we find our own way to make things happen. And that's not the best way. Sometimes we argue with God and we say, I don't want to do that thing that you want me to do. And he says, okay, you don't have to do it, but just know you got your way, but that's not the best way. A big warning that I think that echoes through the centuries of how Israel got their first king is that sometimes getting your way isn't the best way. And it turns out to be true. If you'll read through the book of 1 and 2 Kings, what you'll find is that the first king they had was a disaster. He was a selfish jerk and that David, the second king, had to do a military takeover of Jerusalem just to establish his own kingdom. And then it went well for a while, but at the end of his reign, his son Absalom raised up against him and staged a coup d'etat and overthrew him. And David had to siege Jerusalem again, during which he lost his son Absalom. After that, he was able to peacefully hand it over to his son Solomon. Solomon hands it over to Rehoboam, who's such a terrible leader that the northern tribes revolt and follow someone named Jeroboam. And within four kings, within four kings, after they clamored in 1 Samuel 8, we need a king. it's gonna make us good, it's gonna make us better, it's gonna give us security, it's gonna get us respect among the nations. Within four kings, they descend into civil war and the nation splits forever. It exists for the rest of the Old Testament as the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribes of Judah. And within 300 years, each of those separate kingdoms is ushered off into slavery and exile in Babylon and in Assyria. And at the end of the Old Testament, they come limping back a people of slaves in a post, so I'll highlight for you the story of King Hezekiah. You can find this in 2 Kings 20. King Hezekiah was a righteous man. The southern tribes, the northern kingdoms of Israel had no good kings, had no godly kings for any of the 300 years that they existed. The southern kings, the southern kingdom of Judah only had three good kings. One of them was a guy named Hezekiah. Hezekiah was lauded for his faithfulness and his righteousness. When they were surrounded by the Babylonian army, led by a guy named Sennacherib. Sennacherib sends a letter to Hezekiah and he says, listen, get everybody out of the city because I'm going to burn it to the ground. I'm going to take this place over. And if you're stubborn, they're going to die because of you. And Hezekiah takes the letter to the temple. He lays it down before the Lord. He kneels and he lifts it up to God and he says, God, what are we going to do about this? And God says, your faithfulness has saved your people. I will save your people and you will not have to fire an arrow. And sure enough, that's what happens because of Hezekiah's righteousness. After that, Hezekiah gets deathly ill, and he's going to die. And he prays and petitions the Lord for healing. Please, please, God, save me. Please, please, don't let me die. And God in His goodness grants him 15 more years. And towards the end of those 15 years, there's an envoy of Babylonians that come back to Jerusalem. And Hezekiah and his pride can't resist but showing them everything in his kingdom. He shows them all the storehouses, all the wealth, all the things that he's done. It's not enough for Hezekiah to have the applause and the adulation of the nation of Israel for them to think he's great. He wants the Babylonians to think he's great too. In the south, we call that getting too big for your britches. And so after the Babylonians leave, Isaiah the prophet comes to Hezekiah and he says, hey, what did you show them? He says, I showed them everything because of his pride. And Isaiah says, because you did that, you know they're coming back and they're going to take everything that you showed them and they're going to enslave your people. And Hezekiah responds. Look at 2 Kings chapter 20. He responds, as long as there's security in my time, what do I care? Within those extra 15 years that God granted him, Hezekiah lost his way. He lost his character. He went from being humble and righteous and holy to prideful and arrogant and self-centered. And instead of remembering Hezekiah for this wonderful beacon of righteousness and hope that it can be done right, we have to balance his memory with his faltering in the last 15 years. And the story of Hezekiah shows us again that maybe getting our way isn't the best way. It would have been better for him to have gone into eternity when God allowed him to get sick. He regretted asking for those 15 years. And the same is true in our life. We all have things in our life that we petition God for, that we feel like we want so very badly. I can remember when I graduated from college with my freshly minted pastoral ministries degree. I had worked in Young Life. I had been around youth groups. I had had experience. I had done summer camp. And I wanted more than anything to be the youth pastor of a big, fun youth group at a big, fun church where I could do whatever I wanted. I wanted that, and I prayed for it earnestly. And instead, God sent me to Rocky Mount, Virginia, the moonshine capital of the world. Everybody's got to be proud of something. And we met, to say it was an old country church is probably a disservice to old country churches. We met in a colonial farmhouse on a hillside, literally in the middle of nowhere. It was about 35 people a week. There's three middle school boys in my youth group, and none of them cared what I thought about the G gospels. That's what God gave me. A far cry from what I petitioned him for. That was at 25, 24. But at 30, he gave me the thing I had asked him for. I had a big fun youth group at a big fun church. And what I became certain of is, if he'd have given me the petitions of my heart at 24, they would have ruined me and I would have ruined it. And so because God knows better than I do, he said no or not yet to my request when I was 24. We all have things that we petition God for. We all have things that we earnestly want. Maybe we earnestly want a new job, a new opportunity, a new challenge. Maybe we're working through an anxiety and a depression and we just, we've cried out to God, please take this from me. Maybe there's some turmoil in a relationship that matters to us and we've prayed that God would fix it and it just seems to be getting worse and we're not sure what's happening. Maybe we need money. Maybe we just want more money than we have. Maybe we want a bigger house than we have. Maybe we're praying for a move that's not working. Maybe we're praying for an opportunity that we're not getting. Maybe we're being passed up for a promotion that we feel like we deserve. Maybe we're praying for a child that's not coming yet. We're all petitioning God for something. Maybe we're even praying for health or healing for ourselves or for a loved one. We, like the children of Israel, have this thing that we really, really want. This morning, in light of the cautionary tale that comes out of how Israel got their first king. I want us to think about that thing or those things that we really want, that we earnestly need. Some of them might be silly. Some of them are deathly important. But this morning, can we just pause for a second and consider the possibility that God's answer has been no or not yet because yes isn't best for you. Can we just stop and slow down and that thing that you feel like you want so badly that might even seem like a good and righteous prayer. Maybe God hasn't given that thing to you yet. Maybe his answer is no or not yet because yes isn't best for you. Maybe God knows, no, I'm not gonna just drop in and magically heal your relationship because if you don't go through these hard times and do the hard work to find a way to help, then you're not gonna have a foundation for it to not get unhealthy in the future. You need this struggle. No, I'm not going to give you the job yet because you're not ready for it. And if I do, it's going to destroy you. No, I'm not going to give you the money yet because if I do, you're going to be an arrogant jerk and that's going to destroy you too. And you're going to lose your friends. And I don't want that for you. Your greatest happiness is here. I'm providing for you in a way right now that you're not acknowledging that if you would just stop looking at what you're focused on and focus your eyes on God, you would see that he's already met that need for you in your life. Just like the Israelites who were clamoring for a king, yet they had the best one ever. And I know that it's hard to hear. And this one hits close to home for me. But it's possible that even though we earnestly pray for healing, that healing simply isn't what's best. The healing wasn't best for Hezekiah. We so often forget that God sees things from the scope of eternity. And we see this much of it. And even though in this much of it, sometimes it feels like we want something so badly and we can't understand why God wouldn't let us have it, He sees this. And He understands perfectly. And in eternity, you will too. Consider this morning the possibility, just the possibility, that the reason you don't have the thing that you want so very much, that seems like God should want that thing for you, is because having it wouldn't be what's best for you right now. Consider the possibility that God is already providing that in ways that you don't notice. And listen, hear me. I'm not saying that we shouldn't petition God. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go to Him in prayer. I'm not saying that we shouldn't lay out before Him the things that we earnestly want. Jen and I prayed for years that we would have a child. Lily is the answer to that prayer. I don't regret having Lily. It's one of the greatest blessings in my life, if not the single greatest blessing in my life. We should absolutely petition God. The story from Kings is not that we shouldn't go to him with what we want, but maybe it points to a prayer by Jesus himself in the New Testament and encourages us to pray like that. I don't want you to hear this morning that you shouldn't petition God, but I do want you to hear that we should pray like Jesus did, according to the Father's will. When the disciples go to Jesus and they say, how do we pray? He says, when you pray, pray like this. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The disciples said, Jesus, how do we pray? And he says, you pray like this. First, you praise God. You acknowledge who he is. Then you say, not my will, your will. What you want, God. Let your will be done here on earth as it is in heaven. And to put his money where his mouth was in praying like this, we see Jesus literally pray like this at the end of the Gospels when he's in Gethsemane, the night that he's getting arrested to be crucified. He's laying prostrate on the ground. He is sweating blood. He is maximum stressed out that a human can possibly endure. And he is crying out, God, Father, please take this cup from me. Please don't make me do this. I don't want to do the thing. I don't want to get crucified. I don't want to die like this. Please don't make me do this. But not my will, but your will be done, Father. See the difference? Israel says, God, we want this thing no matter what. God says, it's not going to be good for you. That's not my will. They go, we don't care. This is what we want. We know better than you. Jesus says, God, this is what I want. I want it desperately, badly. But God, I acknowledge that my will might be different than your will, so your will be done, not mine. I think the message coming out of 1 Samuel 8 and the overarching narrative of the results of this desire that's expressed in chapter 8 that we see in 1 and 2 Kings. There's this stark reminder that when we argue with God, He's going to let us have our way, but our way is not the best way. And we should remember that if there is something that we earnestly want, if we've gone to God like the Israelites had and said, hey, we really want this, and God hasn't given it to us yet, it's probably because it's not best for us. And let us remember that when we pray, when we petition God, we should do it like Jesus did. And lay out the things before the Father that you earnestly want, but let's blanket that with, Father, not my will, but your will be done. Let's pray. Lord, you are good, and you are gracious, and you are loving. You are boundlessly patient with us. You were gracious with our frailty and our humanity. I pray that we would see that more and more. God, in light of the sermon, I pray for grace. I don't know how much longer COVID is gonna be a thing. God, I hate that we can't all be together. I know that you hate it more. I know that you're seeing us through this season. And God, even though we earnestly pray that we can all come back together with a feeling of safety and security without anxiety about catching a disease that some of us cannot handle. God, not our will, but your will be done. Let us all return in your perfect timing. God, with the different issues that we're facing with our employment, with the anxiety that we're facing with whether or not our job's going to exist in a couple of months, for those of us who are on the incredibly competitive job market, Father, not our will, but your will be done. Father, may your will be done in the marriages of grace. May your will be done in the raising of the children of grace. May your will be done in the day-to-day lives of the people who call this place home. May your will be done in my life. God, help us pray like that. In Jesus' name, amen.

Happy Easter, Grace. This is the weirdest Easter ever, isn't it? None of us have ever experienced an Easter like this before, and I don't think we ever will again. It makes me so sad because Easter is my favorite holiday. I love Easter. I love getting to see everybody. I love the energy in the lobby and in the auditorium. I love getting to hug everyone's neck and seeing how everyone is dressed and meeting children and parents and grandparents and family. It's just, it's such a great holiday. And Easter is a boisterous holiday. It's celebratory. It's exuberant. It celebrates the victory of victories. But it just doesn't feel like Easter right now. It doesn't feel like Easter at this time in our culture and in our community. We don't feel exuberant. We don't feel boisterous. We feel anxious. We feel unsure. For many of us, it's hard to see a path forward on the other side of COVID and quarantine and economic depression. To have a job right now, if you have one at all, is to have done the mental math of how long can my company continue to pay me? And once that money runs out and they have to make cuts, where do I sit in the spectrum of people in my office? We look over the cubicles and think I'm more valuable than that person. That person's probably going to have a job longer than I do. I think to be employed is to have had to have done that math. I talked to a buddy just last week who said, yeah, man, I have a job now, but I really don't know how much longer they can continue to pay me. That's a difficult stress to be in. And then I think of the people on the other side of that stress, the folks right now who own businesses, who are running companies. And I think, gosh, that's a difficult decision that they have to make. They're walking down that path as well, trying to figure out who can we keep and how long can I keep them and how long can we keep things afloat. Others are furloughed and that's fearful and that's fraught with uncertainty. We may not see a path forward there because will the job that we were relieved of be there when things go back to normal and what will normal look like? Or if you're just unemployed and you're facing the idea of trying to get a job once the economy can get turned back on, man, we're facing job loss at an unprecedented rate. The unemployment rate is close to that of the Great Depression. So a lot of us are thinking, even if I can get back into the job market, what is the competition for those jobs going to look like? These are very real stresses. These are very real fears and sources of anxiety. And then if we think about a path forward, that's uncertain too because what does it look like when we just turn the spigot back on and we can all come out of our caves and get haircuts and see each other and not wear sweatpants anymore? What does that look like? I've talked to parents that are concerned about how this is impacting their kids. I know for me, my daughter Lily is asking questions like, Dad, what is a virus? What do viruses do? There's caution tape over our neighborhood playground right now and every time we go by it, she says, it makes me so sad that the playground is closed. And she doesn't understand, and she's sad that she can't see her friends. I'm sad I can't play with my friends. And what's it going to look like when things are normal again? I think a lot of us are facing the reality that the impact of COVID and what we're walking through right now is going to be more protracted than we ever anticipated. And so the truth of it is right now we don't feel like Easter. It doesn't feel like spring. We feel a lot more like the people of Israel that Isaiah is talking to in the book of the Bible that he wrote. In the Old Testament, there's a book called Isaiah. It's one of the greatest books of prophecy ever written. It's a phenomenal book. And he's writing it to an Israelite people who are God's chosen people. They're God's children. They're his chosen ones. And they wear that like a badge of honor. And they should because God has promised them His protection. And in those promises, He's also promised them that He would grant them land, that it would be what we know of as the modern nation of Israel. That would be theirs forever. Yet in the time of Isaiah, several hundred years before Jesus comes on the scene, they do not inhabit the land of Israel. They're actually enslaved by the Babylonians. They're enslaved, they feel abandoned, they feel forgotten, and they're abused. And for many of them, they were hopeless. They're thousands of miles away from the land that was promised to them. Many of them feel abandoned by their God. God, if you're so good, if you're so real, if you're looking out for us, then why are we here? Why are we growing up as generations of slaves? They felt hopeless. They felt anxious. They were very unsure of their path forward and they didn't even know what normal could potentially look like. And so as I thought about the Easter message, I thought it was more appropriate to look at this verse in Isaiah than it was to start off with the resurrection story and the victory that it celebrates because we feel a lot more like the people in Israel or like the Israelites than we feel victorious right now. And it's to these people, these people who felt hopeless, these people who didn't see a path forward, that God gives this great chapter in Isaiah 43. I would encourage you to read the whole chapter of Isaiah 43 and see the heart and the promises of God brought forth in that chapter. But in the 19th verse, God makes this promise. He gives His children this assurance that I think is so comforting and so powerful and so wonderful that it's where I wanted to land for us this morning. And I can't speak to the posture of God during this passage. I can't speak to his emotions because the scriptures don't reveal much about it. But if you'll allow me the license to make a guess, I picture God in this passage as a good and kind and loving father. I know that when I comfort Lily, I bring her up into my lap and I bring her close to me and I tell her that everything's going to be okay and I try to, I use a calm voice and I try to reassure her and I kind of picture God collectively doing that with his children in this verse. In Isaiah 43, verse 19, God says to his children who are hurting and broken and scared and unsure. He says, behold, I am doing a new thing. Even now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it? I will make paths in the wilderness and streams in the desert. I love that verse. What a wonderful verse of comfort to his children. To bring them up onto his lap, to comfort them, to embrace them, to bring them into himself and say, I know that you feel hopeless, but I'm going to give you hope. I know that you feel forgotten, but I see you and I remember you. I know that you feel abandoned, but you're not abandoned. Even now, even though you don't see it, I'm working for you. Don't you see it now? If you look carefully, can't you see the work that I'm doing for you? Even in a very practical way, they were surrounded by thousands of miles of wilderness. There was all this uncharted territory between them and the land that God had promised to them. And God says, I will make a path through that wilderness. And even though that wilderness is surrounded by desert, I will make streams in that desert to sustain you. I love the message there in Isaiah 43, 19, where God says, hey, I'm doing a new thing. I'm going to make a path for you. I'm going to make streams in the desert. I'm going to make the impossible possible. I know you don't see a way out. I know that you feel forgotten. I know that you even feel betrayed by me, but I have not forgotten you. I remember you and I see you. And I think it's important to note that these people have every right to wonder, man, has God forgotten about us? Has God forgotten about me? He made me these promises. I've done all the right things. Is he still looking out for me? And God in Isaiah 43, 19 says, yeah, I am. I still care about you. And I heard one time that a good book or a good verse is 50% content and 50% timing. It depends on when it encounters you in your life, what's going on in your life. And that's maybe why this verse is so powerful for me because I remember when I encountered this verse and when God made a new path for me in my life. I have proof that this verse is true and that the heart of God stays true for His children. In October of 2014, and I've told this story to grace people before, so I won't belabor it, but for those of you who may not be aware of this part of my story, in October of 2014, Jen and I found out that we were pregnant. And we had struggled for many years to get pregnant. It was the prayer and the cry of our heart that God would allow us to be parents. And we had people and communities praying around us. It was an incredible movement of God and always encouraging to know that these people were looking out for us. And in October of 2014, we found out that we were pregnant. And we were exuberant. We were so happy. I can't remember joy like that. But in early December of 2014, we learned that we had miscarried. And in our life, the way that things have gone for us, that was the deepest, most profound sadness we'd ever had to walk through. I felt broken. And even though I wouldn't have admitted it at the time, I was mad at God. I felt abandoned by him. I was looking at all these other people who had kids and had families, and I would think arrogantly, why did they get a family? What have they done? I've organized my life around you, God. This isn't fair. But I was just mad at God, and I was just flailing and thrashing. And in the midst of that, I got asked to preach a sermon. I was on staff at a church, and the new year was coming, and that was typically a time when I got asked to preach. And so I got asked to preach in the beginning of January. And I wanted to be a good soldier. I wanted to do my part, and so I agreed to do it. But I didn't want to preach. I was mad at God. I don't want to get up there and start talking about his truths. And so in all that, I went to Jen, my wife, and I said, hey, I have to preach in a couple of weeks. What should I preach about? And she showed me this verse in Isaiah. She pointed it out to me in her Bible. And she said, I need you to preach on this verse. I need you to preach on a new thing because that's what I need. And I said, okay. And I wrote her a sermon. And it's the only time in my life that I can remember writing a sermon for one person where I thought, I hope the rest of you get something out of this. But for me, I just hope that this encourages my wife. And I wrote it for her. And even, can I just tell you, even as I preached it, I didn't believe it. I didn't, I didn't, I was preaching about God doing a new thing and I didn't want a new thing. I wanted my old thing back, that baby that we had. I was convinced it was a boy and his name was going to be Sam. And I didn't want a new baby, I wanted Sam. But I preached it. And I got through it. And we just kind of muddled on. But around Mother's Day of that year, we found out that we were pregnant again. It was joy of joys. And that pregnancy is what gave us Lily. This is my daughter Lily right here. This week, I taught her to ride a bike. She looks amazing in that helmet. I wish all of you could have heard her screaming and laughing and exclaiming and giggling at her ability to ride a bike. It was incredible. It was one of the gifts of this COVID time that we have that part to ourselves where she can learn. And you know, every time I look at Lily, I'm reminded that she's my new thing. She's my new path. Every time I hold on to her, every time I help her fall asleep, every time I pray for her, I remember how I felt in December of 2014, and I hold on to this new thing that God did for us. I hold on to this new path that he made for us that I would never not choose, that I'm so grateful for. Lily is my reminder that God continues to make new paths. And it may seem weird that this is what I'm talking about on Easter, that it's some obscure verse in the Old Testament, but I wanted to help you see how Lily is my reminder that God still makes new paths because I believe that Easter stands out throughout all of time as God's yearly reminder that he continues to make new paths. Isn't that what Easter is? Isn't that what the disciples stumbled upon? The story of Easter is that Jesus was crucified on Friday and he was put into a grave And as the body of our Savior went into that grave, all hopes of a future went into it with him. That grave, that tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea was a dead end. There was no paths out of there. It was it. There was hopelessness in that tomb. And as the disciples sat around quarantined, ironically, on Saturday, they had no hope. They sat in the middle of a dead end. They were anxious and unsure of a path forward, just like us and just like God's children of Israel in the nation of Babylon when Isaiah was writing. And then on Sunday, on Easter morning, Mary goes to the tomb and she hears maybe the greatest sentence that's ever been uttered in history by the angel of God who is at the tomb. And he says to her, why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen. Jesus is risen. And in that moment, what we see is that all of history turns on its axis and God has won the victory of victories. He has conquered death and hell with the resurrection of his son. He has restored us to a relationship with him. What our sin broke, that death and resurrection repaired. And because of Easter, there are no dead ends. Because of Easter, there are always new paths. Easter itself is a new path where Mary walked into that tomb feeling as if she was entering into a dead end, into a hopeless situation with no path forward. And God, in that moment, I can almost hear Him whispering, Behold, the new thing, the new path, the stream in the desert. And because of Easter every year, we're reminded death has no sting. Because of Easter, we have my favorite quote that says, for we are not given to despair, for we are the Easter people, and hallelujah is our song. There is no pandemic. There is no death. There is no disease. There is no bad news. There is no tragedy that can overcome the victory and the joy of Easter. And isn't it great? Isn't it remarkable? I wish that we could be together for Easter. I wish that we could celebrate this as a family. But isn't it wonderful that in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, in the middle of isolation and global uncertainty and anxiety, God has placed this most holy and high of holidays to remind us, I still make new paths. I still do new things. You may not see a path forward, but I do. You may not know what's going to happen next, but I do. You may feel abandoned by God. You may feel let down by God. You may be looking around going, God, I've done all the right things, man. I've tried to be nice to my wife. I've tried to be nice to my kids. I've tried to support my husband. I've tried to give when I can. We try to be generous people and my life feels like it's falling apart. And where are you, God? And Easter is his reminder for us that he's right here. Can I also tell you that that message, that simple message that God still makes new paths, he still makes old things new, he still makes beauty out of ashes is why we're filming here in this place. It's why we've chosen this park, not just to make it springy for Easter, not just to remind us of the promises that nature brings in at the end of every winter, but because this park used to be a city dump. This is the park that used to be the landfill for Raleigh. This place, where I am, everything here used to be filled with trash and fire. It was undesirable. It was the last place anyone or anything wanted to end up. This place was one big dead end. And God, in His goodness, has made it beautiful again. He has literally laid new paths in this place that families walk on and enjoy. There's a playground that children play on. This has become one of the prettiest places in the whole city. And to me, it's a reminder and a symbol of the fact that God still makes new paths. So if you need a reminder, if you need some encouragement during this Easter season, come out here, walk around, look at the greenery, experience the beauty, and be reminded this Easter that even as you sit at home, even as some of us are fraught with uncertainty, even though it might feel silly to be all dressed up for Easter and still sitting on our couch, just remember, God still makes new paths. The same God that made one for Israel, that has made one for you in the past, that has made this place beautiful, will make a new path for you too. And isn't God good for placing that yearly reminder in the middle of our uncertainty? Let's pray. Father, you're good. You're good even when we don't know how. Even when we don't know how everything's going to work out. Even when it's hard to see that goodness sometimes. We know that you're good. Father, thank you for conquering death for us. Thank you for conquering tragedy for us. God, I lift up anyone who feels uncertain, anyone who feels anxious, anyone who might be saying, I don't want the old, I don't want anything new, God. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I pray that we would take solace and comfort in your word. I pray that we would take solace and feel peace from your promises. And that in the gentle way that you do it, that you would draw us into you and you would remind us that you are still the God who makes new paths. It's in your son's name we pray, who died and was risen for us on this day. Amen.

So this Sunday we're talking about parenting. We're in the middle of a series now called I Want a Better Life, and we're focusing on four elements of our life that I think that we would all agree that we want to improve upon. Last week we said I want a better schedule, so we talked about some biblical principles to build our schedules in such a way that we'll invest our time in ways that are beneficial, that we don't regret, that really get accomplished what we want to get accomplished with our time and with our days. Next week, we're going to say, I want a better marriage. And so we're going to look at some biblical principles around building a strong marriage, which I know that, again, no one in this service needs, but the second service is desperate for this message. So we're going to go ahead and move forward with that next week. And then the last week of the series, in the end of January, we're going to say, I want a better me and look at mental health. I've been diving into some research on that already, talking to folks, and I'm excited to share with you whatever it is I learned between now and January 26th. I think that's going to be an important Sunday. But this Sunday, we want to focus on parenthood, and I want better kids. And we all know, fundamentally, that if we want better kids, that we need to be better parents. I used to watch that show, The Nanny, or The Nanny, I don't know what it's called. The one with the lady that would like swoop in and fix your broken children, whatever show that was. And what I found when we watched that show, Super Nanny, what I found when we watched that show was it was never the kid's fault. Like you watch the previews, kids are disasters. And then the nanny would come in, she's supposed to talk to the kids. And what she would do instead is talk to the parents. And it was always the parents that needed to change the way they were approaching parenthood. And so when we say, I want better kids, what we mean is we want to be better parents. And the temptation is that when this is the topic, that for those who are not in the throes of parenthood, currently in the trenches, it's kind of for us to take a step back and say, well, maybe this one's not for me. But I would say if you don't yet have kids, then having children is like this great unknown in the future. We have no idea how it's going to go. So maybe this can help to orient you so that we have some good principles as we approach parenthood. If you're in the throes of it, hopefully you're locked in. You would readily admit, I don't know what I'm doing. I heard people, I heard multiple people in the last couple of weeks when asked, and this is not because I asked them, it just came up in conversation, when asked, you seem to have good kids, what do you do with them? They would say, we just make it up as we go along. Like to be in the throes of parenthood is to kind of not know what we're doing. We've never done this before. And then a lot of us are facing parenthood with having adult kids, kids who are out of the house. And now you have to walk through this transition of how do I support and encourage and advise them as parents without trying to be tyrannical or controlling or dictatorial to them and allow them to be the adults that God created them to be. So I hope that the principles that we talk about this morning can help us no matter where we are on the spectrum of parenthood. And when you think about being a parent and how to be a better one and where we get our information, it's true that a lot of us Google and that there's not a handbook out there. And what we as church people do and what I do is turn to the Bible. God invented parenthood. What does he have to say about it? But here's one of the little secrets of the Bible that all family pastors, senior pastors, children's pastors, and student pastors know, and parents if you're diligent, the Bible really doesn't have a lot to say about raising kids. The Bible really doesn't have a ton to say about parenthood. It's difficult to turn to a passage. If you think about marriage, you go to Ephesians 5, and it's a seminal passage on marriage. This is what marriage is all about. We don't have that for parenthood. We get bits and pieces throughout Scripture, pieces of advice or commandments or encouragements. In Deuteronomy, and this one's profound, so we're going to come back to it later in the sermon. In Deuteronomy, we're told that we need to teach the Bible to our kids. We need to write it on the walls of our house and instill it into our children. We're told several times throughout the Bible, namely in Proverbs and in Hebrews, that a loving parent disciplines their child. Proverbs tells us that we should make punishment a part of our house and a part of our culture, that punishment should be a thing that's a good idea. There's one spot, and it's interesting to me, apparently this was an issue in the early church, but it says, parents, you should not intentionally tick off your kids. So if any of you are out there just really just putting the screws on them just to watch them squirm, knock it off, all right? The Bible says to quit it. So we're not supposed to do that, but there's not a lot of, hey, this is how you raise kids according to God's standards. So as I thought about this topic, and of course my desire and belief that it's my job to approach it biblically, I just began to think through the relationships that we see in Scripture between parent and child. We don't get a lot of glimpses of parenthood in Scripture. So without an idea, sometimes you come up with an idea, I want to talk about this thing. Let me go to the Bible and see what it says about this thing or see if it confirms what I'd like to say. This time I didn't do that. I try to never do that. I just went to the Bible open-handedly. I thought through the relationships that I see in Scripture between parents and children, and I thought, I wonder if there's a theme that we can pull out. I wonder if there are principles that we can see. I wonder if there's some commonalities between them. So the first one I thought of was Abraham and Isaac. God made promises to Abraham. Those promises were going to come through his son. He gives him a son named Isaac. And when Isaac is somewhere in his adolescence, God comes to Abraham and he says, hey, I want you to offer Isaac to me on this mount that I'm going to show you three days journey away. Certainly what Abraham was expecting. It's certainly not what he would have chosen for Isaac, but that's what God asked him to do. So he takes him three days journey and he goes to offer him to the Lord and right at the last moment, the Lord intervenes. But the exercise for Abraham was to trust God's plan with Isaac. Then I thought about Moses. Comes a little later in the Bible. Moses was born as a slave in Egypt and Pharaoh was killing all of the firstborn sons of the slaves, the Hebrew people, Abraham's descendants. And so his mom hopelessly, perilously puts an infant baby in a basket and literally floats it down a river and hopes for the best. She just has to say, I have no control over this boy's life. Here we go, God. I hope that it works out. That's a picture of parenthood we get from Moses. Fast forward a little bit in the Bible, you see Hannah. Hannah's a woman married to a guy named Akina, and she wants a baby really badly. She can't have one. We've walked through that. Some of y'all have walked through that. That's a hard season of life when you want to experience parenthood, and that's being withheld from you. She's praying so intensely for a child in the temple that Eli, the priest, thinks that she's drunk and gets on to her. And she says, no, I'm not drunk. I'm just praying intensely for a child. And the Lord's good to her and blesses her with a son and she names the son Samuel. And as soon as Samuel is old enough to eat solid food, she takes him to the temple and drops him off with the priest Eli and says, here, this was a gift from God. He's not mine, he's yours. I want him to serve God with his life. That's a picture of motherhood from Hannah. Fast forward a little bit further, there's a guy named Jesse. He's got eight sons. And one day, that same kid, Samuel, shows up at Jesse's house and he says, hey, I need to see your boys. And he goes to the youngest son, David, and he says, Jesse, David's gonna be the next next king of Israel. God said so. He's going to be a man after God's own heart. And we don't know what Jesse's profession was. We know that David was watching the flock, so we can guess that it was agrarian. Maybe they had some fields and maybe a farm, maybe a couple different types of livestock. And David was doubtlessly supposed to be a part of the family business. But Samuel shows up as a representative of God and says, hey, Jesse, I've got to change the plans with David. Here's what he's going to be. He's going to be the king. Then you think about Mary in the New Testament. And God didn't waste any time with Mary. As soon as she got pregnant, an angel shows up and talks to her and says, Mary, you're pregnant with a baby boy. The boy is from God. His name is gonna be Jesus and he is the Messiah. Mary, don't make any plans for this one. I got my own plans for this one. And as if to drive the point home, when Jesus was 12 years old, his family was in Jerusalem for the holidays and they leave leave to go back to Bethlehem. And Mary and Joseph, his parents look at each other and go, where's Jesus? Is he with you? They go back and they find him in Jerusalem in the temple asking the rabbis questions, which is another way to say already teaching the rabbis. As if to drive home the point, this boy's got his own plans. God's got an agenda for this one. And so if you look at those models of family dynamics in the Bible, if you look at those models of parenting in the Bible, to me, there is a clear theme. For parents, it may be a disturbing one. It may be one that we don't want to think about. But I think that the biblical model of parenting is releasing your children to God's plan. I think the biblical model of parenting is to release your children to God's plan. What does the Bible have to say about parenting? What are the examples of parenthood that we have in Scripture? I think over and over and over again, that's why I chronicled five of them and not two of them, over and over and over again, we see this model of God's expectation of believing parents to be releasing your children to God's plan, not your own plan. And this might not seem that profound or insightful to you. It might not be much of a surprise that you show up at church and the pastor says, hey, if you want to raise kids biblically, you got to raise them according to God's plan. You got to release them to God's plan. But I think that's a much more difficult challenge than we realize at first. I think that's a more profound command than we understand. And I think that because of this. In our culture, we've kind of all agreed that stage moms and over-aggressive sports dads are not good elements of the culture, right? Like we don't, we've agreed that we don't really support that. When an overactive stage mom gets like super involved and begins to live her life through her daughter, we all agree like, come on man, knock it off. That's not fair to that kid. When a dad does that, when there's a stage dad or a sports mom or a sports dad, and he does that to his kid, we all agree like,, come on, don't do that. You're damaging that child. I read a couple years ago an autobiography by Andre Agassi. He's a professional tennis player in the 90s and the early 2000s, one of my favorite athletes growing up. He grew up in Nevada, and his dad was an over-aggressive sports dad. And when he was four years old, his dad got a ball machine and souped it up so that it could shoot balls at 90 miles an hour. I'm not making this up. And he put it on legs and stood it up at the net so it could fire balls at his four-year-old's feet. Not like easy ones where you can hit here like you're supposed to, would fire them at his feet and then yell at him to return the balls. Like, it was nuts. And he forced tennis onto his kid. He forced him to do that. And what Agassi says in his biography is it took him into his adulthood to realize that he didn't even like tennis. In fact, he hated it for everything that it represented to him. So we all agree that's not who we want to be as parents. Is the over-aggressive stage mom or the sports dad or however it works out. We don't want to do that. But here's what we need to understand. We all have a little stage parent in us. We all have a little bit of an over-aggressive sports parent in us. Because what is the sports parent doing? What is the over-aggressive helicopter parent doing when they decide that this is what my child's going to be? All they're saying is, this is what I want for my child, these are my plans for my child, and this is how I'm going to bring it about. They have the kid, they go, this is what I want for the kid, and this is how I'm going to bring it about, and they force it upon the kid. And the truth of it is, we all have some of that in us. I was just talking to some parents that recently had a child, and they made the comment that a lot of parents make. They said, you know, I thought that I understood what it meant to love a kid, but then as soon as I held them for the first time, I could not believe how much I loved them. I could not believe what it felt like to hold a kid. I could not believe that my heart had that much space for love. And when that happens, when you love somebody that profoundly, you begin to want things for them. It's a very natural part of parenthood. You want for them. You want them to be successful. You want them to be good people. You want them to make you proud. You want the best for them in life. And so without even realizing it, we by default begin to make plans for our kids. And our plans almost always include wanting our kids to be successful. And every house, every family, every little ecosystem, there's small tweaks and small differences. All of our families with all of our different last names, we all have different versions of success, but we all want our kids to be successful. And so we try to put them on a path towards success as we've defined it. We all want our kids to be happy, but each one of our families and our different ways, we define happiness according to our own ecosystem, and we drive our kids, we plan for our kids to find the happiness that we want for them or to find the goodness that we want for them. Each of our families, we have our own moral codes. We have our own set of values where we champion this value over this value in our house. In our house, the debate is which value or character trait is more valuable. One of us says that the most important thing for our children is to be kind, and the other one says the most important thing is for them to be intellectually independent. You guys can try to figure out which camp we are in on that. But we all have that. And what we do when we have kids is we push them towards our definition of success, towards our definition of happiness, towards our definition of good, and that's the plan that we make for them. And we're not, most of us know better than to be the over-aggressive, dictatorial, Andre Agassi's dad firing tennis balls at their feet. Most of us don't slide that far, but to some degree or another, we all have plans for our kids. We all have hopes and dreams for them. We all have definitions of success and happiness that we're chasing. And that's why this is so difficult. Because biblical parenthood is to release your children from your plans to God's plans. The picture of Moses' mom releasing him down the river and hoping for the best is a picture of biblical parenthood. God, I don't have control. Anyways, I'm trusting them to you. And it's not just whatever you want for them in their life is good with me, God. I release them from my definition of success to God's. I release them from my definition of happiness to God's. I release them from my definition of good to God's, which I think is a big deal because a lot of us say, and I'm not thinking of anybody's kid here now, but a lot of us say, oh yeah, so-and-so's a good kid. And when we say that, what do we mean? We tend to mean that they get good grades and don't do any dumb stuff. That's a low bar for good kid. Isn't it? Everybody's a good kid then. He's a good kid. Why? Well, he's still in school. He's managing not to fail out. Great. We release our children from our definition of those things to God's definition. We release them from our plans and hopes for their future to God's plans and hopes for their future. And it is a much more profoundly difficult thing because suddenly we're not shaping them into being replications of ourself and what we want. We are freeing them up to be who God created them to be. To be a biblical parent is to have the mindset and the understanding of God created them and one day they're going to up, and hopefully they'll come to know God. And when they do, they're going to be my brother and sister in Christ, and they're going to be an adopted son or daughter of the Creator God. And it's up to Him to decide what He wants to use these children for. And my job is to steward them until they're ready to be released. So if that's what we're supposed to do, how do we do it? I think there's two foundations for biblical parenting that I wanna share with you this morning. The first is consistently prepare. We have to consistently prepare. I think in your notes, there's a word prayerfully. I just like the word consistently better because I feel like it makes a better point. We have to consistently prepare our children. Listen, if the goal is to raise a child that is released into the wild, to walk in God's identity for them, to be the person that God created them to be, to execute the plan that God has for their life, which I believe he has a plan for everyone's life. If that's what we're supposed to do, to release them to walk in God's plan, how can they walk them. That's why I think this verse in Deuteronomy is so important. I alluded to it earlier. In Deuteronomy, at the beginning of the Hebrew people, God is saying, this is what I want your culture to look like. This is what I want my people's society to look like. And he's talking about his word and how valuable it is. And he says this, verse 18 of chapter 11, you shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. Listen, you shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in rarely try to use this stage to try to say like, hey, you need to do this. But this is an instance where Scripture gives me a foundation to say, parents, your children's spiritual health is your responsibility. Your children's discipleship is your responsibility. God set up His culture, He set up His people, and He decided it is your responsibility. God set up his culture, he set up his people, and he decided it is your responsibility to teach your kids God's word. The temptation is to say, well, I'm gonna join a good church, and the good church is gonna teach them God's word. And that's true, but here's the thing. If your kid comes to everything we offer, everything, some are extreme and they never miss a week, ever. We get them 58 weeks a year. There are 58 hours a year. 58 hours a year. That's what we have to impact your children. The best programs in the world aren't going to make a big, huge dent. 58 hours a year. If your kid is in middle school or high school, it's even less than that. We are here not to fulfill Deuteronomy 11 for you, but to echo what is happening in your home. Parents, it is our responsibility to train our kids to follow God. It is our responsibility to disciple our kids. It is our responsibility to teach them a word. And listen to me, listen. I'm sorry that this is gruff. It's not optional. We don't get to say, oh gosh, you know, that sounds like something I should do, but I just don't know God's word well enough. Listen, I'm sorry. Then figure it out. Learn it, knuckle down. We've got to. It's our responsibility. No one else can fill that void for you. If you feel inadequate to it, guess what? So does everybody else in the room, including me, but we gotta figure it out because it's on us. And I'd rather just know the truth than try to soft pedal it and make us all feel better. Listen, parents, it's our responsibility to train our kids in the word. Dads, your sons are watching you. They're watching you to learn what it is to be a godly man. They're watching you what it is to love people well. Like it or not, step into that or not, assign yourself as a role model or not, to have kids is to sign up for that. They're watching you at every stage of your life. Moms, your daughters are looking at you. They want to know what godly womanhood looks like. And they're watching you to define it for themselves. That's reality of being parents. So for grace, I want us to step into that responsibility, not shy away from it, and definitely don't say, gosh, I just don't feel adequate to it. Listen, nobody here does, but that doesn't mean that we can step away from it or shy away from it. We do our children a disservice by not stepping into that. If we want to teach our children the word, then we have to learn the word. If we want to teach our children how to follow God, then we have to follow God. If we want to teach our children how to walk in the identity that God has created for them, then we have to walk in the identity that God has created for us. That's why I say we consistently prepare, because it's a daily, hourly effort to follow God and to model that for our children. So that's what we do. And the good news is, if you're sitting here going, geez, Nate, I don't know how to do that, there's a parenting small group. We're starting it up. Harris and Aaron Winston have perfect children and made no mistakes, so we thought that they were the best ones to do it. They're the good ones to do it because when I asked both of them to think about leading something like that, both of them went like, why? We don't know what we're doing. I'm like, you're perfect then. You're perfect. Figure it out together. You can sign up for that. It's going to be Sunday afternoons. If you're in the middle of parenthood and want some help and some other people around you to help figure this out and step into the responsibility you have, that's a good way to start. We consistently prepare. And then the second foundation, I think, of biblical parenting is that we continually release. We continually release. I say continually because that release isn't just one moment. As we walk through those stories in Scripture, Abraham and Isaac, he released him to that sacrifice. Moses' mom released him. Hannah released Samuel. It's not just one moment, though. We're building towards a moment of release when we admit I have no control over this life anymore. But it's also a continual release. In every instant and in every way, at every crossroads in their life, what we're asking is, Father, how do I prepare this kid for your plan? How do I release them to what you want, not what I want? I even think about moments of discipline. I've already learned as a parent that when it comes time to discipline, when your kid is acting in ways that are shameful, I haven't seen Lily do this, but I've definitely noticed with other people's kids, that the temptation, the temptation is to begin to discipline them in such a way that doesn't embarrass you. The temptation is to grab them and to get onto them and to tell them things that you need to act in this way. And really what's going on in your heart is because when you don't act in this way, it causes me shame and I feel like a terrible parent. So I really need you to get right so that I'm not embarrassed in front of my friends. That's one reason to discipline. Another reason to discipline is, this is what I think is going to be best for you. But the best reason to discipline is to say, God, when they act that way, I see this trait in them. And I believe that it's possible that you may have instilled that trait in them because one day it's going to be a great strength. How do I fashion that strength so that they can walk in the identity that you've created for them? How do I discipline them according to your plan, not my plan? How do I advise them to go to college according to your plan, not my plan? How do I advise them to invest their high school hours according to your plan, not my plan? God, when they're old enough to pursue a career, how do I encourage them to follow your plan, not my plan? God, when they're old enough to have kids and they begin to lead their family, what can I do to pray for them and rally around them so that they follow your plan for their family, not my plan? It is a continual, perpetual release where we acknowledge these children are not our own. They are from God and we are stewards of them. So I believe if we want to follow the biblical model of parenthood, we have to consistently prepare and continually release. Because that's such a challenge, because those feel like high bars, I thought it would be helpful for us to have a prayer together. So I'm going to put a prayer on the screen. I would encourage you to write it down. I would encourage you to pray this weekly, if not daily, for yourself as you pray for your kids. But the parent's prayer simply goes like this. Father, give me the faith to see your plan for my child, the consistency to prepare them, and the courage to release them. Father, give me the faith to see your plan. Help me know. We see for our kids the next couple of days, God sees the next several decades. God, help me see a glimpse of your plan so I know I can keep them on the right track. God, give me the consistency in my own walk, in my own character, in my own discipline, in my own pursuit to be the model that they need. And give me the courage when it comes time, Father, to release them to your plan, not my own plan. Father, give me the faith to see your plan for my child, the consistency to prepare them and the courage to release them. I'm going to pray for us. I'm going to pray that prayer, and then we're going to transition into a time of communion. Father, we love you. We thank you for the gifts that you give us and our children. God, I pray specifically for those in this room who really want kids. Will you just give them some? Will you just let them experience that part of what it is to be a human? Bless them in that way, God. God, for those of us who do have the privilege of being parents, give us the faith to see your plan for them. Give us a consistency in our walk and in our devotion to prepare them for your plan. Give us the courage, Father, to release them when it comes time. Help us raise kids that are good, successful, and happy according to your definition of those things. In Jesus' name, amen.