Sermons tagged with Growth

I am super excited for this sermon this morning. If you let me, I think I could go for about 90 minutes, so buckle up. Thanks for being here. Thanks for joining us online. I'm so glad to get to be with my church family, with faces that I know and love, some of whom love me back after this week. It's been a week, man. It's been arduous. And I've been excited for this sermon since we outlined this series. And I opened up my Bible and I was reading through James and breaking it out into sermons and trying to figure out which parts we get to talk about and which parts we'll have to save for the next time we go through James. And when I arrived at this passage in chapter 3, chapter 3, verses 13 through 18, I was just excited to get to share the message from James with you guys, with my church. Because I don't know how you guys have felt about all the divisiveness and contention in our culture, racial and political and otherwise. But it's been wearying to my soul. It's been hard on my heart. It has grieved me that our culture has been this divided. It's been at least 50 years since our country has seen division like this. And as a pastor, it hurts my heart. And it hurts my heart in part because it's just a lot. But it also hurts my heart because I believe that Jesus' bride, the church, has a part to play in this, in this divisiveness. We actually have a role that God wants us to step into, that he asks us to step into. We have a role in our culture right now of who we should be and what we should do, and I believe that James speaks directly to that role and gives us hope and purpose in the midst of this contention. So I'm excited to talk with my church about that this morning. So let's look at James chapter 3, verses 13 through 18. I'm going to read them all, and then we'll talk about the passage. James writes this, Who is wise and understanding among you? By his conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. I love that phrase. James has this flourish for writing that Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, does not have. Paul writes his books like an engineer would write their book. It's very matter-of-fact, systemic, like this is how we're doing it. James has this flourish, and so he brackets this idea, which, by the way, he's extracting this idea out of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount was Jesus' first recorded public address. This is almost like a commentary on the things that Jesus taught in that sermon. And Jesus says, blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth and blessed are the peacemakers. And so it's like James is pausing to say, yeah, let's talk about those people and why they're needed and how we become like them. And so he opens up with this great phrase that the good works in the meekness of wisdom, and then he brackets it with that great phrase at the end, and harvest a righteousness s is it that wisdom has to be meek? Why is wisdom meek? Why did he choose to pair those things up together? Why did he couple them together in that way? Why is wisdom meek? And so to answer that question, I started thinking about, well, who's the person that I know or that I've seen? What's the example or the personification of someone who lets themselves show, whose good deeds are shown in the meekness of their wisdom. And since I don't like to use myself as an example, I'm just kidding, I'm terrible at this. I thought of my mom-mom. My grandmother on my mom's side, I think personified someone who walked in the meekness of wisdom. Her husband, Don, my papa, I'm very southern, so those are their names, was loud and bombastic. He was a phenomenal storyteller. He was the guy that if you went to dinner with a group of friends and he got sat on the opposite end of the table as you, you were bummed out. Because you're talking to whatever boring person is over here, and you're like, I wish I could listen to that guy. That was my grandpa. That was my papa Don. And Linda was quiet. She was diminutive. She was happy to stay in the background. She didn't really want any of the focus on her. And I didn't appreciate it when I was a kid, because I didn't really understand all those dynamics. But as an adult, as the years progressed, particularly towards the end of her life, when she and I were in the habit of having coffee together every other Monday morning and just chatting for a while, I got to see the ways that her quiet strength and gentle, meek wisdom had carried her through so many seasons of her life. And so I thought, well, she's the example to me of the meekness of wisdom. Then what made her meek? So I thought about her life. She grew up in rural Baton Rouge. I have a great uncle named Dodie Sandifer. All right, that's how Cajun we are. She grew up in a very racist home. Racism was so ubiquitous in her family that when my mom was a little girl, she used racial slurs without understanding what they were. Mama grew to disdain that part of her heritage. She grew to see the evil in it. And when I did her funeral, in her retirement years, she was a bank teller. And when I did her funeral, many of her co-workers, her African-American co-workers, came to the funeral and told me how much they loved my mama and how much she meant to them and how well she loved them. She changed over the course of her lifetime. When my mom was eight, they did a church called Forest Hills, did a bus ministry where you used to be able to do this. Can you imagine? They just drove a bus through neighborhoods and just invited kids to get on. It doesn't matter. Do you have your parents' permission? We don't care. We're going to get you saved. Come to church. Do your parents know where you are? It doesn't matter. Let's go to church. They just went. I can't imagine just sending Mike Harris right here, just go get a bus and just drive around Falls River and just grab kids. It'll be fine. That's so weird. But they they did that in the 60s and so my mom went and praised God that she did because she accepted Christ. And because she accepted Christ, my mom and my papa started going to church with her. So here's a woman who grew up without a faith and she embraces a faith. She changes. But as she embraces that change, she got involved in what I believe was one of the worst kinds of churches. Super legalistic and damaging. I'm talking about super conservative, 70s, Southern Baptist, fundamental oppression. No going to movies, ever. Don't be seen at the movie house, is what it was called. No dancing. Girls wear skirts and dresses only. Always below the knees. None of this, none of this, none of this. It was just writ with legalism. And because she didn't know any better, that's the faith she taught her kids. But she grew up. She grew in wisdom. And she started going to churches that lived a more gracious faith. And she became more gracious in her faith. And she moved away from those old things that she believed. And I could talk to you and tell you story after story of ways that I didn't see at the time, but as I reflect back on her now and watching the scope of her life, ways that I saw her change, ways that I saw her grow in her wisdom. And it occurred to me that wisdom is meek because wisdom knows what it is to hold something ardently and fervently and fanatically in your 20s and be ashamed of it in your 50s. Right? Wisdom knows what it is to hold an opinion tightly and then to see the currents of change move through the community and hold it a little bit more loosely and regret how tightly you used to hold it and who you hurt in holding it that way. Wisdom has fallen on its face a few times. Wisdom knows that it has some shadows in its past and some skeletons in its closet, so it's not going to leap to beat you too hard with yours. Because wisdom has grown in grace. Wisdom has made mistakes. Wisdom has seen who they were when they were younger and been forced through introspection to offer themselves grace for their humanity and likewise is gracious towards others in their humanity. Wisdom is someone in their 60s who doesn't get super annoyed by the person in their 20s because they understand and they were that person too. That's what wisdom does. Because of that, I came to the conclusion that acquiring wisdom is a humbling process. That's why we pair meekness with wisdom because acquiring true wisdom is a humbling process. That's why we pair meekness with wisdom, because acquiring true wisdom is a humbling process. You don't grow in wisdom by just stridently thinking you're right all the time. I'll never forget when I was 18 years old, my dad took me to college. I went to Auburn University my freshman year. He drove me to college, he dropped me off, and he said, son, I'm bringing you here, and I hope that you get dumber. And I was a snot-nosed 18-year-old kid who thought he knew everything. And what he was telling me is you need to grow in wisdom, which, by the way, can you imagine how insufferable I was at 18? I would hate that guy. Like, good, find a new church, pal. I needed to grow in wisdom. I needed to be humbled. I needed to know that I wasn't right about everything. And I think that that's why James pairs meekness with wisdom. Because acquiring wisdom is a humbling process. And so, I want to offer this to you. You take it or leave it. Okay, this is Nate talking, not Scripture. This is just my opinion. You're smart adults. You take it for what it's worth. But I think that there's a litmus test for whether or not we're growing in wisdom, particularly growing in the meekness of wisdom. And I think it's this question. When's the last time you changed your mind about something important? For you as an individual, the things that you hold dear, the things that you hold firmly and stridently, when's the last time you changed your mind about something important? And I'm not talking about going to Winston's for lunch thinking that you're going to get the health nut salad and then calling an audible and getting the prime room sandwich with french fries. I'm not talking about that kind of mind change. I'm talking about the way that you used to feel about a community. Has that shifted? The way over the years that you viewed the other side of the aisle, has that grown more or less gracious? This person in your neighborhood that you can't stand, have you grown to be able to appreciate them a little bit more? The person that you were in their 20s, have you been forced to offer yourself grace for being that person? Have you changed your mind about something that's important to you? Because if you haven't, if you can't think of anything, there's only really two options. Either, dude, you're nailing it. Like, you're right about everything. And that's super impressive. Good for you. Let's have lunch. Or we're just walking in our strideful ignorance, refusing to learn anything that God is trying to teach us. Right? If our mind never changes about anything important, then we're not very open to growing in the meekness of wisdom. That's why just being old doesn't make one wise. Being old and learned and introspective and adaptable and malleable and impressionable and open to reason, like James says here, is how we grow in the meekness of wisdom. So I would ask this morning, are you growing in wisdom? And again, that's my litmus test. If you don't like it, throw it out. If it's helpful, use it. But I think it's important to understand how meekness and wisdom work together, because if we don't, if we can't be meek in our wisdom, then I don't think we can do what we're told to do in the rest of the passage. I want to pick it back up at verse 17. He finishes it this way. He says, but the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. I don't just want to blow by that verse because I think those things are so very important. It is pure. It seeks peace. And this is the thing that I love in here. It is gentle. True wisdom. God's wisdom from above. It's gentle. As I prayed before the sermon a few minutes ago, I prayed, God, let me be brave and let me be gentle. Bravery is not often what I struggle with. Gentleness is. True wisdom is gentle. It's open to reason. It's not convinced of its own correctness all the time. And then he finishes it this way with this great sentence. I just love it. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. And that sounds nice, but we might think to ourselves, what is a harvest of righteousness? I think it goes with the theme in the book of James. In the first week, remember I said that the reason that James wrote this letter was to help us, to help the church pursue wholeness, to help the church become this whole person with a sincere faith, to not live as two disjointed people, as the old nature and the new nature, but to walk in the person that God wanted us to become, to walk in the person that Jesus died to turn us into. We related to Romans 7 where Paul laments, the things that I want to do, I do not do. The things that I do, I do not want to do. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? That lament is why James was written. And so what he's saying is you will reap a harvest of righteousness. You will move towards that wholeness, towards being the person that God created you to be and died for you to become. A sowing peace by making peace. James is telling us that it's our role to make peace, that true wisdom makes peace. And so I thought, if it's our role to make peace, if that's what God has called us to do, what does it look like to make peace? What does a peacemaker do? I think it's an important question. The first answer, I think, is that a peacemaker values understanding over persuading. A peacemaker values understanding someone over persuading them. Often when we're in a conflict, when we're in a situation, in a relationship or a dynamic where we're not at peace. There's tension here. I think so very often we approach it trying to be persuasive. If they could only see my side, if they could only understand what I'm talking about, if they would only see it from my perspective, or if they would just be encountered with this list of facts, which by the way, 2020 has shown us that facts really are not argument winners anymore. We've all got our own set. We don't trust anybody else's. So that ain't it. Persuasion is not the goal. Understanding is the goal for a peacemaker. The other night, I had a moment in the house that I was very much not proud of. We've got a daughter named Lily, and Lily is the sweetest. She is the best when you see her. A lot of you have seen her on social media, or you might see her here in the church, and she is sweet and cute and adorable, and she's very quiet and meek in the church because she's scared of everyone, and that bodes well for us as parents because it looks like she has behaved. And she is. She is. But here's the thing with Lily. She has a will. She's found it, which is a fun part of parenting, I think. I've told Jen a few times, you're not raising yourself, sweetheart. I'm very sorry for this. You're raising me. And the other day, she expressed that will more than normal, and it got me frazzled. I was getting a little tired of it. And at night, it was time for her to go to bed, and I told her to clean up her room. She had taken some stuff out of a small Tupperware container or a plastic bin or something, and it was kind of all over the floor. It was like little magnets that you can dress girls up with or whatever. And I told her to clean it up. And she said, okay, Daddy. And then I walked out. I came back five minutes later. It was like two things in the bin. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, clean up. Let's go. I told you to clean. And she's like, I know, but I'm doing it this way. I said, I don't care what way you're doing it. Clean up, sweetheart. Let's go. And I left. And I came back. And there was not adequate progress made. And so I get frustrated. I said, all right, that's it. I'm going to clean this up. You go to the potty, and then we're going to bed. That's it. And she starts to leave, but she says, but Dad, I want to do the other thing. And I said, I don't care. Go and come back. And things started to escalate. And they ended in tears on both sides. And I was not proud of myself at all. And the night ended with us hugging and falling asleep next to each other in her bed, and the world is good. But as I was thinking about it the next morning, she wasn't being defiant, at least not intentionally. She wanted to organize her toys. She didn't want me to put them all up together because she was in the middle of a task, and she just wanted to keep the things that she had separated, separated. She just didn't want me to mess it up. She wasn't trying to say, I'm not going to put it up. She just had a system and it was important to her because she was going to wake up in the morning and she was going to keep playing with it. And if I would have taken just a dang second to understand a four-year-old instead of trying to persuade her, it all could have been avoided. I could have made peace. Instead, I was an idiot. And it makes me wonder how many conflicts in our life would go away if we chose understanding over persuasion. If we just stopped for a minute and thought, am I really right about all the intentions and motives and stupidity that I'm reading into this instance? Or would it be worth it to talk to them and see what their side is? Would it be worth it to try to empathize? Those of us that have relationships in our life that are not at peace, how many of those could be made peaceful if we would simply choose understanding over persuasion? It's not a panacea, but it's a start, isn't it? Peacemakers make that choice. The next thing in your notes, it says that a peacemaker seeks harmony over victory. And that's well and good and that's fine and we can talk about that. But I actually, as I was thinking about it just this morning, it occurred to me that actually what a peacemaker does is they prize the victory over small victories. A peacemaker prizes the victory over small victories. Guys, we're a church. We're believers. The only reason we walk the earth after we come to faith is to share our faith with others. The only reason we still breathe is to bring as many people with us to heaven on our way as possible. That's it. We are here for the souls of men and women. That's why we're doing the whole thing. That's why the first thing in our mission statement is to connect people with Jesus. That's what we want to do. That's the victory. That's what this whole thing is about, is to unite people with their Savior. Yet sometimes we get so caught up in pursuing the small victory that we forsake the victory. Yesterday on Facebook, I posted something that I feel is true. And I just said to Christians that the way that we respond right now in light of the election matters a lot. And I just said, if you're a guy won, be gracious. If you're a guy lost, be gracious. And I wrote that. People started to comment or whatever. I went away. I had dinner with some friends and came back to my phone hours later. And when I came back to my phone, I scrolled down and there was a comment from a guy that actually I met the year that I went to Auburn. I don't know him very well, but we're Facebook friends, and he commented, what should I be if I didn't vote for either of them because I didn't like them, which I think that's not an unfair stance, and I said, you should be gracious, but before I could say that, under his comment, someone else that I know, I know him from back home. He's a good man. He's a loving man. I like this guy. I've since deleted these comments, so you can't go and look at them. He commented under my Auburn friend's thing this big paragraph about how could you think about voting for so-and-so when all of these reasons point that you should vote for so-and-so. Just demeaning him and tearing him down. And then my Auburn friend responded to that, don't come at me with that stuff and did his own paragraph with an article attached to make his point. I didn't read both of the comments. I deleted them immediately. But here's what I know. My Auburn friend is not a believer. The man from back home is. And when I saw his comment in my Facebook thread where he attacked this guy for the way that he felt politically, I thought to myself, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? What are you trying to win? All he has to do is click your name and he knows who you are and what you stand for. And you're going to turn him off to your savior so you can turn him on to your candidate. Who cares? He sacrificed the victory to try to win a victory. And it doesn't matter. Church, the victory is the souls of men. The victory is acquainting people with their Savior. The victory is that people would see Jesus in us and want that in them too. The victory is not in small political or otherwise silly arguments. We're the church. We pursue souls. We pursue the victory. And when we do this, when we make peace by prizing what's important, when we make peace by seeking understanding rather than persuasion, when we sow that peacemaking, we reap a harvest of righteousness. We walk exactly as the people that God designed us to be, which is why I think it's impossible to make true peace if we cannot walk in the meekness of wisdom. They go hand in hand. So here's what's vitally important to me at Grace. That we be peacemakers. That we walk in the meekness of wisdom, that we understand that the true victory is that people would see Jesus, not that they would see our side. So, Grace, let's be peacemakers. I'm going to pray for us. Father, would you make us whole? Would you heal our hearts? Would you heal our community and our country's division? Would you make us your agents of peace? Lord, I pray that we would reap a harvest of righteousness by making as much peace as we can and pointing people towards you. God, may we be brave about the things that matter and may we be gracious about the things that don't. Father, let us walk increasingly in the meekness of wisdom that comes from you And let us in that meekness point people towards your son. It's in his name that we pray. Amen.

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.

Thank you, Steve and the band. I don't know if you guys realize this, but that's the first time we've had a full band since like March the 1st. So that was really great to get to have them. For those of you that I haven't gotten to meet, my name is Nate. I am the pastor here. Thank you for joining us online. Thank you for being here in person. Every week I get to see a few more new faces, folks brave enough to return, and it's always so, so good. And if you've been watching Faithfully Online, we are so, so grateful for you, and you're continuing to do that. This is the first Sunday of a new series called With. We're looking at a book called With, written by a pastor named Sky Jethani. I first encountered this book in 2013 and I have never read a book that caused me to pause, stop, put the book down, literally get on my knees and repent more than this book did. I identified with so much of it. So we've been encouraging you guys for a couple of weeks to pick it up. Normally, we'd buy a bunch of copies and we'd leave them here, but that's a lot of touching and handling of money and the whole deal, so we can't do that right now. So hopefully you've ordered your copy online. If you haven't done that, just Google With and Sky, S-K-Y-E. It'll come up. I've sent out email links. You can email me. I'll send you another link. I believe in you, okay? It's 2020. You can all find things online. Get the book. Read along with us. Speaking of reading along with us, we have a reading plan that will help pace you through the series. Kyle Tolbert, our great student pastor, comes up with reading plans for the church. If you don't know about those, they're on our live page, and we actually have new plans that are on the information table kind of spread out for you so you can grab them on the way out if you'd like to do that. Those give you a portion of the Bible to read every day. We talk about how important that is all the time, but in this particular reading plan, Kyle has paced out for you the chapters that you can read in with to keep up with and be ready for the upcoming sermon as we go through it together. This series, more than any other series I've ever done, is one that you really need to see all the Sundays. The first four weeks are going to be invested largely in talking about what we shouldn't do. And the last two weeks are going to be invested in talking about what we should do. So if today you leave and you feel beat up with no resolution, that's all right. Come back in four more weeks and we'll give you some resolution, okay? Because we're moving through the book together. So this is going to feel a little bit different. As we begin, I want to help you see why I believe you should be interested in the contents of this book. I'm going to take you through an exercise that I do with all the couples that I do premarital counseling with. When I do premarital counseling with a couple, I tell them that we're going to do three sessions of 60 to 90 minutes. They think I'm going to counsel them about their marriage. I'm not. I'm not a counselor. I don't know how to do that. I just disciple them for about three hours, talk to them about spiritual things, and try to get them prepared for marriage in that way. And so the first question I ask them is, granted, it's silly, okay? There's all kinds of theological issues with this question, but I just want to ask you to play along and play along there at home. Let me ask you this question, okay? On a scale of one to ten, one being completely apathetic or maybe even adversarial towards God, and ten being apex Christian, super spiritual, ten is Elijah on Mount Carmel calling down the fire to defeat the prophets of Baal, okay? One to 10, where are you spiritually? Spiritually speaking, in your walk with God, your walk, your relationship with Jesus, your spiritual health, however you phrase that, where are you on a scale of one to 10? Where would you place yourself right now on that scale, okay? You figure out your answer. Now, let me ask you this question. Where would you say you'd like to be five years from now? Five years from right now, today, you get to make decisions, you get to project forward, and hopefully you've progressed a little bit. Five years from now, what do you want your number to be? Now, with the couple that's going to get married, I usually at this point talk about, okay, well, what's the gap between where you are now? Most people will do four to six. No one's going to cop to a two or a three, and no one's going to claim or a seven or an eight. So most people's first answer is four to six, okay? So you're a five now. What do you want to be? And then most people say seven or eight. I've never had anybody say 10. I don't know why, nobody wants to be a 10. Nobody's like, I don't wanna be that spiritual. That's too much. Nobody wants that, I don't know why. I think that's an issue. It's another sermon that I need to do. It's probably a failing of their pastor to not paint a great enough picture of ultimate spiritual help. And I asked them, okay, how do we get from like a five to an eight? What are the gaps? What are the things in the way? And we kind of plot a course for spiritual growth for them. Really, it's an exercise to help them prioritize spiritual growth. But to you, I would ask this question. You have your answer now. Here's what I am now. I'm a five. What do you want to be in five? I wanna be an eight. Okay, great, you have your two numbers. Let me ask you this question. If I could have talked to you five years ago, how would you have answered that question? If I could right now go back to five years ago you, what are you now, what do you wanna be in five years? What would your answer have been? Probably the same as the answer you just gave, right? Yeah? To be a Christian is to know what it is to be stagnant. To be a Christian is to know what it is to see other people who seem like, they seem like they're flourishing. They seem like they know Jesus in a way that I don't. They seem like they respond to worship in ways that my soul doesn't. They are able to get up and read their Bible every day. I can't seem to do that. They pray all the time. I can't seem to pray. They have this spirituality that I'm not sure I'll ever understand. To be a Christian, I believe, is to be frustrated with our spiritual walk. It's to feel stagnant and discouraged, like we should be further along than we are. Now, some of you five years ago, you were a totally different human. You didn't know Jesus. You weren't saved. So maybe for you, the question is, where were you two years ago? But I think that to be a believer is to be very familiar with that feeling of inadequacy, with that feeling of I should be further along. Because if I asked you five years ago, what are you? And you said five, and the answer is eight, then today you should have said eight, and I want to be a 10. But I think that to be a Christian is to sometimes be discouraged about our spiritual lives. And this is directly what this book speaks to. This is why if you can relate to what I just said at all, if your answers were the same five years ago and now, then I think this book can help you tremendously. And I want to begin this series by simply making this statement for you to consider. And we're going to talk about what this means. Maybe your walk isn't what it could be because your posture isn't what it should be. Maybe your walk with God, your relationship with God, isn't what it could be because your posture before God isn't what it should be. We're going to talk about what postures are, but in this book with, Sky takes five postures before the Lord. He calls them postures. I kind of think about them as motivations. He takes five postures before the Lord. If you haven't figured this out yet, four of them are bad. One is good. If you haven't figured out what the good posture is yet, just stick around. You'll pick it up with context clues. I believe in you. So the next four weeks, we're going to go over these postures that we often assume without necessarily knowing it and try to understand why these aren't helpful. And in the last two weeks, we're going to look at what the right posture is before the Lord, and I hope help us find ways to begin walking in a depth that we've never experienced before, so that five years from now, you would answer that question totally differently. This morning, we're going to look at the first posture called life under God. Very simply, to understand this posture, life under God is this. Life under God says, I offer you obedience, and you offer me protection. Life under God says, I offer you obedience, and you offer me protection. I forgot there in your notes, there's a spot that says, what do you really want from your relationship with God? That's a good diagnostic question. If I ask myself this, what do I want from my relationship with God? That's a good way to figure out what our posture is as we go through these. But the life under God posture says, I offer you obedience and you offer me protection. This is a posture that's present in every religion ever because this is what this posture acknowledges. The world is big. The world's crazy. Sometimes there's pandemics. There's things outside of my control. There's school shootings and there's cancer and there's illness and there's difficult phone calls and there's loss and there's undue pain and there's all kinds of crazy things that happen in this world that are outside my control, that are beyond my control. This posture acknowledges that and it acknowledges and there's a God in heaven who's controlled none of these things are outside of. There's a God in heaven who's sovereign and he's in control of everything. So I'm going to figure out how to get that God on my side so that he will protect me. This is the life under God posture. I said this was every religion ever, right? This is, think about the ancient Mayans performing sacrifices to try to appease the gods to get them on their side for a good crop or for a good war or for a good rain or whatever it is. We know that things in this world are outside our control. We know that there is a sovereign God who can control them. And so we orchestrate our lives in such a way to please the God so that he will look out for us. The life under God posture assumes that if things are going well for you, if you're blessed, then you must have behaved. If you are going through difficult times, you must not be right with God. And though none of us would admit readily that this is our posture before the Father, this attitude and mindset shows up all the time in everything that we do. I hear it every time I golf. Every time I go golfing, on the tee box, someone hits a drive that is going very clearly into the woods. This is never me. I strike mine 275 down the middle every time. But if you're golfing with like Harris Winston or something like that, it's definitely going to go really far into the woods. And as it goes really far into the woods, it's clearly going to be lost. You'll hear the solid sound. It will have bounced off a tree miraculously and bounced back into the fairway. And someone will say, it's total luck. And someone will always quip. Someone's been living clean. That's clean living. Someone had their quiet time this morning. As if you have been following God's rules, so now on the golf course, he's going to throw you a bone and a squirrel's going to kick it out there for you. You're in a parking lot. It's crowded. It's Walmart. It's Sunday afternoon. In the middle of COVID, there's only one entrance and everything's so far away. And then this one spot opens up. God is looking out for me. You must be living right. That's life under God. Life under God is an exchange. It says, I'll follow your rules and you protect me. And we laugh about it, but it shows up in far more insidious ways than that. And see, there's issues with this posture, with this exchange, with this transactional relationship that we would engage in with God. And I want to point out to you three big ones this morning. The first real issue with this posture is it inevitably leads to disillusionment. It leads to disillusionment every time. If you adopt this posture and your posture before God is, I'm going to follow your rules and you're going to protect me. It's this transactional contract that we enter into with him. 100% of the times, it will make you feel like I felt standing in the middle of Papa Murphy's pizza. I went a couple years ago. A couple years ago, Jen and I decided that we wanted pizza. It was once a year that we eat pizza. We're very healthy people. We don't do this a lot. We went to Jets. There was a Jets close to our house. Love Jets pizza. Love their thick crust with pepperoni. It's so good. And so I went to Jets. I'm so excited. I was just all in on fat day. Let's just go. I'm going to have it. I'm going to eat it all. And I get to Jets and there's a sign that it's closed. They moved to Creedmoor. I like Jets. I don't like Jets that far away. I don't like it that much. So there's another place that opened up in that same shopping center called Papa Murphy's Pizza. And I'm like, all right, pizza's pizza. I'll go to Papa Murphy's. So I go over there and I'm looking at the menu and this is just like an old man, angry old man rant. It has nothing to do with the sermon. But I at the menu, and there's no like proper names. I want like, I need like Supreme and Meat Lovers and Pepperoni. Like I need just normal pizza names that we all agree on, and they're getting cute with it. It's like Papa's Favorite, Mama's Best, and I'm like, I don't want to read all the ingredients. I just want a Supreme, you know, like just name it Supreme. Anyways, I get up to the front. The girl says, what do you want? And I said, do you have just like a supreme pizza? I don't want to read all the things. And she goes, yeah, that's mama's best. I'm like, great, give me that. So she goes, okay. I said, take a large. And I said, I'm going to go get some groceries. I'll come back and pick it up. She said, that's great. So I go, here's Teeter, get my stuff, put it in the car, go back in, Papa Murphy's, I'm sitting down looking at Twitter or something like that and just messing around. And then they say, hey, your order's ready. So I get up and go, okay, I walk over to the girl and she hands me this thing. And it's cold. It's in like this foil pan with cellophane on the top. And I go, this isn't my order. And she goes, you're Nate, right? I said, yeah. She goes, mama's best? I'm like, yeah. She goes, yeah, that's it. And I go, what, do I have to cook it? What are you talking about? What? And everybody in the store turns and looks at me and starts giggling. The manager looks at me and just starts laughing. I go, I can cook this? And I'm about to say, here, you take it. Like, just give me my money back. I don't agree to this deal. You just take the chore that you just put in my hands. You take that back. And the girl, she was so sweet, she's laughing and she says, sir, I promise you it's really good. Just put it in the oven for like 12 minutes. It's gonna be great. Okay, fine. So I take it home. I'm so angry that they violated the pizza contract. I go home, I put it in the oven, I get it out. I don't have a way to remove the foil from this large pizza, so I've got like a knife and fork situation where I'm sweating now, I need a towel. And I'm trying to get this pizza out of the thing. And then I realized I don't have a pizza cutter and I don't have a stone big enough to cut this pizza. So I have to put it on the countertop with like paper underneath it with a butcher knife, like burning my knuckles as I try to cut this pizza. They handed me a chore, man. I was so angry because what they did is they violated the unwritten American pizza contract. The American pizza contract is simply, listen, I give you $12. You give me a hot pizza cut in a box. That's it. I'm going to take that pizza home. I'm going to put those pieces on paper plates, and I'm going to throw it all away, and I'm going to sit in my shame after I'm done. That's the deal. And you violated this. You gave me a chore. I don't want to cook. If I wanted to cook, I would have gone there and gotten the ingredients and cooked, but clearly that's not what I want to do. You broke the contract, man. I want my money back. When we adopt the life under God posture, we will have a moment just like that. Where we sit before God and we think, this isn't the deal. You broke the contract. I gave you my obedience. Now you give me protection. That's the deal. And God says, I never made that deal with you. I won't be reduced to that. If you've been a Christian for any amount of time and you've adopted this posture, and I believe we all have at different points, you've experienced that disillusionment. You know exactly what that is. That disillusionment almost always comes at unwarranted pain. When you experience a time in life where you feel like you are enduring unfair pain, unfair stress, you lose a loved one, someone gets sick, you get a difficult diagnosis, you face a tough loss, you watch a relationship in shambles, you don't have the job that you identified with anymore. When your life sits in shambles, that is usually when we have our moment of disillusionment and we look at God and we felt like I felt in the middle of that pizzeria that day, this isn't the deal, I want my money back. For some of you, that disillusionment wrecked your faith years ago and you're still recovering. If you haven't had this moment, you will. And the life under God posture sets us up to be disillusioned and frustrated. It sets us up to shipwreck our faith. There's no better example of someone who had this mindset and had to be set straight than Job in the Bible. Job is actually, he perfectly illustrates not only this first problem, but the second problem as well. The second problem with this life under God posture is it reduces and seeks to control God. It looks like we're following the rules. It looks like we're submitted. It looks like we're being obedient, doing everything that we're supposed to do. But in our hearts is this motivation, this murkiness that's pushing us to seek to control God. I can't control the universe, so I'm going to appease the God that can, and then you owe me. I've behaved well, now you owe me protection. It seeks to control God. And we see this posture all over the story of Job. Job is the first wisdom book in the Bible. It was the first book of the Bible ever written. The Monday Night Men's group is actually going over the book of Job this semester. So if I say something in here that interests you or that sparks you, I would encourage you to sign up for that. But some of you are familiar with the story of Job. Others may have forgotten and some may not have heard it yet. So just as a primer, I'll tell you what's happening. Job is the most righteous man that's alive at the time. And God allows Satan to torment him. And he torments him in devastating ways. Job is a very wealthy man. He loses all of his wealth. He loses all of his real estate holdings. He loses all of his servants and employees. He even loses his children. He has boils on his skin. His wife's advice to him is curse God and die. You want to talk about someone that experienced unwarranted and unfair pain? Job. And the first 36 chapters of the book are his friends giving him advice in three different cycles. And this advice is riddled with the life under God posture. They come to him and they say, Job, what have you done? What have you done to deserve this kind of punishment from God? You've lost your real estate. You've lost all your buildings. What did you do? Certainly you are hiding some secret sin, Job. And Job says, no, I'm not. Like, I'm not doing that. I promise I'm not. And then they come back a second time. They're like, no, no, no, Job, you're not listening to us. What is it that you're doing? What have you done? Because clearly you have sinned against the Lord, and that's why you're being punished in this way. Clearly you violated your side of the contract, and that's why God's not keeping up his end of the deal. It's this life under God posture. And after three cycles of this, where they become really pointed with him, Job still refuses and says, no, that's not what I'm doing. I don't have some secret unrepented sin. So he demands an audience with God. And he goes to God to shake his fist at him and to say, hey, this isn't fair, man. This isn't part of the deal. I've always honored you. I've always worshiped you. I raised my kids to follow you and love you. I offer you everything and you're letting this happen to me. This isn't fair, God. And any of us that have ever experienced that moment of disillusion where we would look at God and we would go, this isn't fair. I've shared with you before, mine and Jen's struggle to have kids. With every new young couple that would so easily have two and three and five children, I would look at God and go, what gives, man? This isn't fair. This isn't the deal. I think we've all said that to God at one point or another in our own ways. God's response to Job is profound. And it is not at all what you would expect. Job asks for an audience with God to say, hey God, what's the deal? This isn't fair. And God's response is one of anger and frustration. Look at what God says to Job. This is amazing to me. It's one of the most profound things in the Bible. Chapter 38, then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man. I will question you and you will make it known to me. Does that sound like a God who's about to go, yeah, my bad, I didn't keep up my end of the deal. Here's why I broke contract. Sounds like God is angry. I had a professor one time say, Job wanted a man-to-man conversation with God. The problem was he was one man short. God says, who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? You want to talk to me like a man? Okay, dress yourself like a man. It angers God. And then God, for two chapters, proceeds to ask him questions. He says, where were you, Job, when I laid the foundations of the world? Surely you know. Surely you understand, Job, the inner workings of the universe. If you're asking me this question, you want to understand how I orchestrate everything, how I run the universe, you're questioning my leadership, then maybe you can explain to me how the Leviathan and the behemoth came into being. Maybe you can explain to me how the world works. Surely you were there when I told the oceans that they can go this far and no further. When I drew the boundaries of the continents, surely you know Job. And God's response is very clear to Job. Job, most righteous man to ever live, who in the season of his life adopted the life under God posture. God says, hey man, you've forgotten your place. I'm the creator. You're the creation. I won't be reduced to your contracts. I will not be reduced to your control. You don't get to follow the rules like I'm some pagan God and then hold my feet to the fire about the contract that I didn't enter into. That's not the deal. I'm God. You're not going to understand me. And I think one of the most difficult things about the Christian life is to understand there are going to be parts of God that we can't understand. God's point here with Job is, even if I explained it to you, even if I set you down and told me everything that I was thinking with what's going on in your life, even if I told you everything that I could, it would be like you trying to explain yourself to a six-month-old. It's just not going to work. We don't have the capacity to understand. And when we adopt this life under God posture, it seeks to reduce God to our level and it seeks to control him and it angers God because he's not gonna enter into our contracts with us. The last problem is highlighted by Jesus himself. The last problem with this posture that we wanna look at this morning is that it turns us into legalistic hypocrites. If we adopt this life under God posture, I'm going to obey you and you protect me, it turns us into legalistic hypocrites. Because in this posture, what we assume is those who are blessed are obedient and those who are struggling are disobedient. This attitude was around when Jesus walked the earth. They came upon a blind man one day and the disciples, his disciples looked at him and they said, what did he do or his parents do that made him blind? What's their sin? That's life under God posture. And what this does is it reduces relationship to a set of rules. It takes the relationship that Jesus wants with us, that he created us for, to be in relation with him, and it reduces it to a set of rules. And it makes it, this posture makes it entirely possible to appear outwardly spiritual because you follow the rules and your life seems blessed when inside you're rotting away because there's no relationship at all. It robs the relationship of all emotions and the actual relationship that it should be. It's kind of like church over the summer. The thing that broke my heart about church during COVID is that church is a fundamentally communal institution. And I had to get up in this room and preach. And it felt like a performance to an empty room. And hope that you guys would watch it three days later. And I don't know about you. But church got to feeling pretty empty for me over the summer. Because there was no community in the church. And that's what makes the church the church. From a human standpoint. And we do the same thing with our relationship with Jesus. If we reduce it to a set of rules, things I have to do to be right with God, we remove the relationship from it and it becomes empty. There's no better example of this than the Pharisees. The religious leaders in Jesus's day were experts at this. Outwardly, they looked great. They were living the blessed life. They were good. Everyone looked to them and tried to get on their level. If I asked the Pharisees, where's your relationship with God and where do you want it to be? They'd be like, I'm currently at a 10. I would like it to remain at a 10. That's the Pharisees because they have it all together on the outside. But here's what Jesus says to this group of people in Matthew 23. In Matthew 23, verse 27, he says, you're like a dirty cup that's been cleaned on the outside, but inside you're filthy. He looks at the religious leaders of the day, the ones who are supposed to know better. And he says, you're hypocrites. You're whitewashed tombs. It's a pretty tombstone with a rotting carcass underneath it. When we adopt this life under God posture and we reduce our relationship to a set of rules, it turns us into legalistic hypocrites who on the outside can look like they have their life together and on the inside are rotting away. This incidentally is how someone can know more Bible than anyone you've ever known in your life and be a jerk. So I would ask you as we finish, and I warned you, I'm not giving you a resolution here. I'm not saying, so this is the right way to do it. I'm just saying that's bad. And I would end this week by asking you this question, and this is what caused me repentance. And if this resonated with you, I would really encourage you to read the chapter and follow along with it. But I would ask you this week, as you're introspective and look at yourself, how much of this posture do you see in you? How much of this do you see in you? How much over the years have you followed God because somehow by following him, I'm going to appease him and win favor? Have you ever had something big in your life coming up and so all of a sudden you get real spiritual? You ever had something super bad happen and then you get really spiritual? I don't want this to happen again. That's a life under God posture. And when we adopt this posture, it will lead to disillusionment. We reduce God and we try to control him. And ultimately, we end up legalistic hypocrites who have removed the relational part from the relationship with Jesus and replaced it with rules. And we become whitewashed tombs. So how much of this exists in you? Let's pray and then Steve's going to come and introduce to us a new song for the series. Father, we love you. We're grateful for you. Lord, I know that within us, those of us who know you, is a desire to know you more. I know that within us is a desire to grow. Within us is a holy dissatisfaction with where we are and a divine yearning to know you better. God, I pray that you would make a path for us. Would you give us the honesty in our hearts and in our minds to be honest with you and with ourselves about where we stand and how we've approached you? God, if we have come to you simply because we want you to protect us, simply because we want you to bless us, and not because we want you, would you convict us of that? And would you show us a better way? It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's good to be here with you in this way again. I'm so excited for August the 16th when we resume our in-person gatherings. On August the 16th, we're going to have the opportunity to participate in church in our home or yours. So for those of you who want to come and experience live church and see your church family and socially distance from the people that you've missed so much. I know that some of you have young kids and you really do want to come and you really do want to be a part of things, but we're also not able to offer children's ministry yet. So you kind of love the idea of coming and seeing folks and participating in worship, but might not feel great about trying to entertain a three or four or five-year-old during a boring sermon. And I totally get that. We have a four-year-old of our own. So if you want to come, bring your family, participate in worship, see your church family that you've missed so much, and then head home once the sermon starts, I just want you to know that's not going to hurt my feelings. I totally understand that. And if that helps you participate in the 16th and that's something you'd like to do, then we want to make that a possibility. So if that's something you want to do, please don't feel bad about that. I encourage that. I can't wait to see everybody who's willing to come on the 16th. And for those who are willing to wait, or feel they need to wait, I totally understand that, respect that, and look forward to seeing you whenever you feel comfortable venturing out. This morning we jump into the second part of our series called The Time of Kings. We're going to look at a story about the fourth king of Israel, a man named Rehoboam, that I love. If you read the Grace Vine, I said this week that this is another one of those sermons that I've wanted to preach for years. I love this lesson of the mistake of Rehoboam and how easily applicable it is to our lives today. By the way, if you just thought, man, I didn't get the Grace Vine, I don't see that, please let us know. Email me or email info at graceralee.org and we will get you on that email distribution list. But like I said, I've been looking forward to preaching this sermon. And for a little bit of context, as we just dive into scripture, we're going to end up in 1 Kings chapter 12. This is when we're introduced to Rehoboam. So if you have a Bible there at home, I hope that you'll grab that and open it up. Again, if you have folks around you, particularly kids, open up the Scripture and look at that text together. I can't tell you enough how important it is to go through text, to interact with Scripture as a family. Rehoboam comes after King Solomon. So the context for where we see this story is, last week we talked about Israel clamoring for a king. They wanted a king. God said it was a bad idea. They rejected God, and God said, just go ahead, Samuel, and give them a king. So they appointed a king named Saul. Saul was an egomaniac. He made it all about him and his kingdom and his wealth, and so God took his kingdom from him. He said, I regret making Saul king. And then he named Jesse, the son of David, the king over Israel. David, to this day, is the greatest king that Israel has ever had. The second greatest king, without hesitation, that Israel has ever had is David's son, King Solomon. Solomon, you'll know, is, according to the Bible, the wisest man to ever live. He wrote a bulk of the wisdom books that we find in the Old Testament. He wrote Proverbs and Song of Solomon and Ecclesiastes. I love the book of Proverbs that was written by Solomon as a letter to his son of just short snippets of wisdom. And as a matter of fact, as an aside, if you're someone who thinks, you know, I would love to read the Bible more. If you've heard me say before that there's no greater habit, there's no more important habit than anyone can develop in their life than to get up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. And you think to yourself, man, I need to do that. I would love to do that, but I don't know where to start. The Bible is really difficult to understand. It's 66 books. It spans thousands of years. It's a really difficult document to understand, and it's difficult to just drop parachute into a portion of it and know everything that's going on around us. So sometimes when we decide that we want to read the Bible, we dive into it and we don't understand it, and so then we put it away because it becomes frustrating. If that's your story, let me encourage you to start reading in Proverbs. Proverbs has 31 chapters. You can read whatever chapter corresponds with the date of that day. Just open it up, read a chapter, put it down. Proverbs is great because if you're skeptical about faith, if you don't know if you can trust the Bible or not, Proverbs is a great thing to pick up, to read, and to try to apply to your life. Is this truth going to work for me? If I do this, am I going to find out that it's true? It's a way to put the Bible to the test. It's also a book that doesn't require context. You can just jump right into it and start to read, and things are going to make sense to you without having to know the context of the rest of Scripture. So if you have a hard time reading the Bible, if you don't know where to start, Proverbs is a great place to start. If you have people in your life who want to read the Bible and they're asking you, where should I start? That's where I tell everybody to start is the book of Proverbs. And Solomon wrote that. And we think of Solomon, rightly so, as a righteous man because he wrote books of the Bible. He prayed to God. He prayed for wisdom when he could have had anything that he wanted. But it's also worth noting that later in Solomon's life, in many ways, he turned away from God. He took many hundred wives, he took a thousand concubines, he married for political reasons. Later in his life, he built an army. He built the first large standing army that Israel ever had, and he did that by taxing the people heavily. He built monuments and public works, and he did that by enslaving the people harshly. And so later in his life, Solomon became a really harsh king. To live in Israel under the reign of Solomon was not a pleasurable experience. History smiles on Solomon for his contributions, but if you were one of his subjects during his reign, you would not have enjoyed the reign of Solomon. So when Solomon dies, the mantle of the role of king goes to Rehoboam. It passes to Rehoboam. And when he's named king, you'll see in chapter 12, the people of Israel come to Rehoboam and they clamor for him. And they say, please take it easier on us. Your dad was so harsh on us. He was so ruthless. He taxed us heavily. He enslaved our children and us. Please don't do that to us. Can you please be a kinder, gentler king? And Rehoboam's response to them is telling. Rehoboam said, give me three days. Let me think about it. To which I kind of feel like that's your first indicator that Rehoboam's not really thinking very clearly. That seems to be a no-brainer, doesn't it? A group of people comes to you and they say, hey, can you please try to not be a tyrannical dictator? Can you please like lower the taxes so that we can experience some wealth and pour that back into the country? Can you please do that for us? Can you please like not take us as slaves? It should be a no-brainer to go, yeah, okay, that seems reasonable. But Rehoboam says, let me take three days and go think about this. So during those three days, he assembles his dad's old advisors, basically the cabinet of King Solomon. And he goes to them and he says, the people have asked me to take it easy on them. What do you think I should do? And Solomon's advisors give him good, wise, sound advice, the same advice that you would likely give that I would likely give to Rehoboam. And they tell him, you should listen to the people. If you will ease up on them just a little bit, man, I'm telling you, they're going to love you forever. You should heed their desires. Do what they're asking. Be gentle with them. Be kind to them. Be softer with them. You don't have to be as hard as your dad. You can be a different kind of king, Rehoboam. Listen to us. And listen, these are the men who walked through the fires with Solomon. These are the men who were right next to Solomon and watched him become ruthless and watched him become authoritarian and watched what it did to the people around him. They had led through the nuances of leadership. They understood everything that hung in the balance. And this is like easy leadership decision. Take it easy on the people and we can see, hindsight's 20-20, you can see as well as I can, that if Rehoboam would have just been kind to them, if he would have just said, yeah, okay, I'm going to be nice. I'm not going to be the kind of king that my dad was. That those people would have loved him. Those people would have served him. They would have run through a wall for him. But this was the advice of the old guard. This was the advice of his dad's advisors. And clearly it wasn't the advice that he was looking for. Because after receiving this advice, Rehoboam goes to his friends, the guys that he grew up with. And this is what they tell him. Look in 1 Kings 12. I'm going to begin reading in verse 8. Verse 8 says, but he abandoned the counsel that the old men gave him and took counsel with the young men who had grown up with him and stood before him. So the old man said, take it easy on him, be nice to him, be the king that they want and that they need, and he abandoned that. He said, no, I'm not interested, and so he goes to his young friends and he asked, what do you guys think I should do? And he said to them, My little finger is thicker than my father's thighs. And now, whereas my father laid on you a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke. My father disciplined you with whips, but I will discipline you with scorpions. Which, by the way, as an aside, this week I learned that scorpions are worse than whips. I would not have thought that 10 days ago, but now I understand that's actually worse. He goes to his friends. He receives the counsel from the old men who say, be the king that they need. And his friends go, no way. Don't tell them that. You need to go tell those people that your little finger is thicker than your father's thigh, that you have more power and more authority in your little finger than he did in his whole body. You need to go tell them that if they were scared of your dad, they need to be terrified of you. Your dad disciplined with whips. You're coming at them with scorpions. Your dad enslaved this many. You're going to enslave this many. Your dad pushed them this hard. You're going to push them harder. You need Rehoboam to go strike fear into their hearts and into their minds and let them know that you are not a king to be trifled with. They built up his ego. He said, go tell them you're a bad dude, man. And Rehoboam, who grew up watching his dad, who was a young man, and as we know, young men feel this desperation to make their mark and to stake their claim and to gain the respect of everyone. And so he clumsily forced it, and he goes back to the people after three days, and he says exactly what his friends told him to say. Forget you guys. You want me to go easy on you? I'm not going to. You think my dad was bad? Get a load of this. You see the slaves my dad took? I'm going to take more. You see how hard my dad worked you? I'm going to work you harder. And he just set up from the very beginning this ruthless, tyrannical dictatorship where he said, I'm the man and you can't mess with me. And what Rehoboam failed to consider is that there was another guy named Jeroboam. Jeroboam was a rival of his dad and rose up at one point to overthrow Solomon and when that wasn't successful, fled to Egypt. And when Solomon died, Jeroboam comes back to Israel and listens to Rehoboam say this. And after he says that, Jeroboam knows that he's going to have enough support for what a jerk Rehoboam is, that he can garner a military and take over part of the kingdom. And as a result of Rehoboam's pride and selfishness and short-sightedness and refusal to listen to wisdom, Jeroboam took 90% of his kingdom from him. And like I said last week, within four kings, Israel descends into a civil war, the result of which we now have the northern kingdoms that are led by Jeroboam and the southern kingdoms that are led by Rehoboam. The northern kingdom had 10 tribes in it. The southern kingdom had two. Rehoboam loses 90% of his kingdom because he made a selfish, egotistical decision. And I've always loved this story because it stands out as a stark warning to avoid the folly of Rehoboam, to avoid this big mistake. So when we planned out this series, and I was flipping through the books of 1 and 2 Kings, wondering what am I going to teach to grace, and I came across this story, I knew I was going to teach it. I knew that I had to highlight it. And so as I sat down this week and began to interact with it, the question becomes, well, what's the point? What do we take away from this? What's the application to us in our lives here in 2020? What's the application to grace? And, you know, I've always taken this as a warning to listen to the older voices in your life. For most of my ministry career, I've thought of myself as young. I realize that those days are fleeting now. Just this week, Lily put her hand on my stomach and she said, Daddy, you have a fat, fat belly and you have a lot of gray hair in your beard. You look like a grandpa, Daddy. So clearly my young days are behind me. But in my young days, I would look at this and I would think, this is a warning to heed the older voices in your life. And it is. But I don't think that those are the only voices that we should listen to. And so then I thought, well, this is a warning to heed the advice, to listen to the voices that God places in your life. And you have this juxtaposition, this comparing and contrasting between the old guard that God placed in his life and the friends that he chose to put in his own life. But you know, honestly, I believe that God puts friends in our lives that we should listen to, and so I would never tell us not to listen to our godly friends. And so the more I thought about it, what's the lesson from this mistake, from this episode in the life of Rehoboam? I realized that the overarching message here is to listen to wisdom. Listen to wisdom. And I know this is not an earth-shattering point for a sermon. I'm aware of this. That's why we have it in all caps there at the bottom of the screen, to make fun of me for making this the point of the sermon. But it is. It's the point. It's what comes out of the story of Rehoboam. You know what we should do when we read this story and we look at this mistake that he made and we see what it costed him? You know what we should take away from this? We should take away from this that we should listen to godly wisdom. But even as I say that, it's not a shocker that a pastor would say in a sermon that we should listen to wisdom. That's a pretty simple thing. We know that. You know that. And Rehoboam knew that. And because of that, because we all know that we should listen to wisdom, we all know that the wise way is the best way, the more interesting discussion becomes, why do we have such a hard time hearing and heeding wisdom? If we all know that we should listen to wisdom, if we all know that we should obey the Bible, let's just put it down to brass tacks. If we all know that we should do the things that this book tells us to do, and we should not do the things that this book tells us not to do, but we keep not doing the things we should do, and we keep doing the things that we shouldn't do, what that means is we have a problem listening to wisdom. And so the question becomes, why is it that we have such a difficult time hearing and heeding wisdom? If we all know that we should listen to it, if we all know that we should obey what God says in his word, if we all know that there are voices in our life that tend to tell us the right thing even when it's the hard thing, why is it that we continue to have a hard time hearing that wisdom and heeding that wisdom and abiding by it in our own life? And I think that this is a fair question to ask of Rehoboam, because if there's anybody who knew that they should value wisdom, it's Rehoboam. If there's anyone ever in the history of the world that was poised to be a good king and to learn to listen to wisdom, to be able to hear it and heed it, it was Rehoboam. Think about it. Rehoboam's granddad was David, the guy who wrote Psalms. The guy who penned Psalm chapter 1, one of the most famous Psalms, maybe just behind Psalm chapter 23, where he warns people. In this case, his grandson. Do not sit in the seat of mockers or stand in the way of scorners. Do not associate with unwise people. But he says, Raybaum knows that, just like you know that. Rehoboam's dad was Solomon, who wrote the quintessential book of wisdom and addressed it to his son. I don't know if he addressed it directly to Rehoboam, but I know that Rehoboam was his son and took over as king, so it would make sense to think that Rehoboam had read it. And if you open up Proverbs and you read it, the first four chapters, all it says over and over again is get wisdom. No matter what you do, pursue wisdom. Foolish people throw off wisdom. Smart people accept wisdom. Get wisdom. Cherish it. Value it. It is greater than gold. It is greater than wealth. Get wisdom with everything that you do. This is what's poured into Rehoboam. And yet at the crucial moment, when more than any other time in his life he needed to listen to wisdom, to hear it and to heed it, he ignores it. And I think if we can look at why Rehoboam chose to ignore this wisdom in his life, what we'll find is that we can relate to those answers too. And that the same reasons that Rehoboam rejected wisdom in his life are the same reasons that we often reject wisdom in our life. So I'm going to give you three. This morning, there are more reasons than this than we have a hard time hearing and heeding wisdom. But these are the ones I think we can pull out of this story in 1 Kings chapter 12. The first reason why we often struggle to hear and heed wisdom is because wisdom doesn't care about our ego. Wisdom is wholly unconcerned with your ego. Rehoboam goes to the old guard and he says, the people want me to take it easy on them. What do you think I should do? And they told him to be the kind of king you don't want to be. He said, be gentle, man. Be loving. Be considerate. What they're really asking him to do is in your very first decision, in your very first my way or the highway moment, give in. Just give in. Just don't choose your way. Just let them have this one. You don't have to win everything. Be who they want you to be, not who you want to be. Let that respect come in a different way. Don't demand it of them. And then he went to his friends. And what did his friends do? They appealed to his ego. I got more strength in my finger than my father did in his whole body. If you thought he was tough, wait until you get a load of me. It was all ego. It was just being young and dumb and wanting to make a name for himself and being blinded by this appeal to his ego. And wisdom never cares about your ego. I remember a while back I was doing a wedding. And I was at the rehearsal in the rehearsal there's a little bit of a squabble between the husband and the bride-to-be. The husband wanted somebody else in his wedding party and the bride said that couldn't happen because that would be an odd number of people and it would throw off the entrance and the pictures and the whole deal and it was I mean, the bride's clearly right. It was a bad scene. And so they're frustrated at each other, and we're off to the side. I'm standing there with the groom and his best man, who happens to be his brother. And right before we're about to start the rehearsal, they're kind of fired up about it, and the groom's brother looks at him and he says, man, you just need to tell her. You just need to go right now. You go over there and you tell her that you're the man. This is your marriage. You're the man in this marriage. You make more money than she does and it's going to be your way and this person's going to be in your wedding. And I wasn't going to be disrespectful to the brother. But I had done some counseling with this couple, and I knew this guy well enough that I just kind of stood there quietly, and he looked at me, and I looked at him, and I just went, that's terrible advice. Terrible advice for tons of reasons. But what it was on its face was an appeal to his ego. Foolishness appeals to our ego. You go be a man and you go be tough. No, that's stupid. That's not manly or tough. That's Neanderthalic. Don't do that. It's not going to help you do anything. Wisdom never comes in a package that appeals to our ego. It's always going to push us to do the kind thing. It's always going to push us to do the patient thing. It's always going to push us to take a back seat. Some of us with big egos have a hard time with wisdom because it doesn't kowtow to that. It just tells us the truth and we have to have the guts to walk in it. That's why Jesus says, when someone hits you, you should turn the other cheek. That's why we're told that a soft answer turns away wrath. That's why we're told in James that we should be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry. That doesn't appeal to our ego, but that's the right thing to do. I think often we have a hard time heeding wisdom because it never comes in a package that strokes our ego. And for some of us, that's a thing that we have to get over. Rehoboam couldn't get over it, and so he made the wrong choice. Another reason that Rehoboam had a hard time hearing and heeding wisdom that I think we can relate to is that wisdom is rarely efficient. It's rarely efficient. Rehoboam wanted to get things done. He saw the works that his dad did. He saw the army that his dad did, and he wanted to do that too. He wanted to make a bigger army. He wanted to construct bigger things. And to do that right away within the next five to ten years, I've got to tax the people more heavily so I can make a bigger army. I've got to enslave more people so I can build bigger things. I've got to charge more taxes so I can get my things done. I can't let them off the hook, old guard, because if I do, then I can't accomplish the things that I want to accomplish. Wisdom often seems inefficient. It reminds me of one of my favorite Proverbs. In Proverbs 25, verse 15, it says, Sometimes in conflict. We just want to jump in with two feet and just make it happen and say all the things and give vent to everything that we're feeling and try to win the day when really a soft tongue breaks bones. Isn't this true in our marriages? When our spouse does something that bothers us? Sometimes we just want to jump on them with two feet. Hey, why'd you do that? I didn't deserve that. That's not fair. You shouldn't do that to me. You shouldn't treat me like that. You shouldn't expect that of me. When our husband or our wife bothers us, sometimes we just want to jump on them with two feet because we feel like we have every right to. But that's probably not what's wise. What's wise is to probably wait and to bite our tongue and to wonder what's motivating that choice. What's going on in their day and in their week and in their life? Let me just wait and see if they do it again. And then if they do, I'm going to approach this in a way that maybe can be helpful to everyone. But we live in a culture that just wants everything right now. And so we often throw off wisdom because it doesn't seem efficient. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this in the spiritual development of others and even in myself. Somebody comes to faith or gets reignited in their faith and they want to understand scripture. They want to be able to lead Bible studies. They want to be able to teach other people. And it's hard to accept that this takes a long time to learn. It's hard to accept that knowing the character of God, that knowing how to pray, that knowing how to hear the voice of God, that having a heart that beats with God, that having an understanding of the breadth of Scripture and how it all ties together and what's going on in Galatians that reaches back into the Old Testament that you need to understand so that you can understand Paul's letters and the things that Jesus says that are quotes of prophecies that he is fulfilling. It takes a long time to tie all of those together. It takes a long time to drop into the book of Romans and understand what it is that Paul is talking about and why it is such a radical gospel. But we live in a culture that wants everything right away. And I've seen so many people become believers, get ignited in their faith, start to read scripture or listen to a podcast or go to a Bible study or become more committed in their attendance for church. And they don't understand it like somebody over there understands it. It doesn't matter that that person has been walking with the Lord for 30 years. They don't understand it like that person understands it. And so they get discouraged and they walk away. And I think what we fail to realize is that this kind of wisdom is never efficient. If you come across someone who knows how to pray, when you pray with them or when you hear them pray or when they talk about their prayer life, it feels like they are literally at the throne of God, that they have this seasoned voice that you just don't have. You have to know that comes from a lifetime of prayer. That comes from worn knees and worn carpets. That comes from beating their head against the wall, wondering if these prayers are even leaving this room. That is a lifetime prayer. If you meet someone who knows the intricacies of the Bible, who knows how it weaves together, who knows which stories are talking about which person and which books are referring to which other books and how it all ties together, if you meet someone who you think has a mastery of Scripture, you have got to know that comes from a lifetime of diligent study. Spiritual growth is hard work. It is rarely efficient. But wisdom is found in that perseverance. Wisdom is interested not in short-term gain, but in long-term fruit. This is why the Bible over and over and over again encourages us to persevere and prizes perseverance as this thing that ought to be honored. Because true wisdom takes time and true wisdom will always push us towards future fruit rather than present gain. Rehoboam had a hard time with that. So he couldn't hear or heed that wisdom in his life. The last reason, and this one's my favorite, the last reason Rehoboam had a difficult time hearing and heeding wisdom and the same reason that we have a difficult time sometimes hearing and heeding wisdom is that wisdom is often dumber than us. Come on. Come on, egomaniacs. Come on, guys. Those of you who understand me, it takes one to know one. Wisdom is often dumber than you, isn't it? It often comes in a package that you don't respect. If you're not sure if you're an egomaniac, here's a good test. If you've ever been in a room full of other people that you respect and had an opinion and tried to win the room over to your opinion and you left that room and no one agreed with you and you still thought you were right, then you and me are friends. Because I've done that before too. But that's a pretty good indicator that for one reason or another we're not accepting wisdom because we think that wisdom is dumber than us. We think we're smarter than the room. And sometimes that arrogance comes in the form of defiance, of loud defiance. Nope, y'all are all wrong and I'm right. Sometimes, though, it comes in the form of sweet, quiet stubbornness, of just sitting on it and thinking, I'm still not going to do all the things you want me to do. Sometimes it comes in this stubborn refusal to receive help. No, I still have it all together. It's all the same thing. It's all the same ego. It's us thinking we're the smartest ones in the room. It's us thinking I know better than these people that are telling me this thing. And Rehoboam's problem was that he was told truth. He was given wisdom, but he didn't respect the package that it came in. He thought you bunch of old men. You don't know what you're talking about. I watched you advise my dad. He probably took pot shots at their leadership, which is way easier to do when you're not the one making decisions. And he said, I'm not gonna listen to you guys. And Rehoboam very easily and swiftly sidestepped the wisdom because he didn't respect the package that it came in. And how often in our lives do we reject wisdom because we don't respect the package that it comes in? I remember when I first started writing sermons back at my previous church when they started asking me to preach. I would spend days coming up with a sermon. I would look at a text. I would think, what are the points here? What can we do? How do I want to approach this? What's the point that I want to make? And then once I felt like I had that, I would go to Jen. I would go to my wife and I would say, hey, here's the text. Here's the way I think I want to approach it. Here's the points that I think I want to make. What do you think of this? And most of the time she would go, I think that sounds really great. You do that. That sounds good. I'm looking forward to hearing this. But every now and again, she would say, uh, that's, uh, I don't think that's very good. She would say, I know that you think that's the point that the text is making. I got to tell you, I don't see it. She would say, I think you might want to take another go at that. I'm not sure that that's super good. And at the time, all I was interested in was her telling me, that's great. This is going to be the best sermon ever. I can't believe you're smart enough to come up with these things on your own. How do you do it? But instead, she says, you may want to go back to the starting board on that one. And I remember in my arrogance, thinking to myself, what do you know? You don't preach sermons. You've never had to do this before. You didn't go to preaching school like I did. You haven't been through seminary. You don't work at a church. Why am I asking you anyways? And I would go away mad at her that she didn't believe in me and get back into the text and try to write the sermon and keep butting my head up against a brick wall. And then one day it would dawn on me a week later, I think Jen was probably right. Maybe this isn't such a good sermon. And my arrogance in that situation, I didn't have respect for the package that the wisdom came in. Now, when she tells me a sermon isn't good, I'm like, well then, we can just slide this one over here. I don't think I need to do that one anymore because I've learned that I can trust her. I've learned that I respect her and her opinion. But often when wisdom comes packaged in a way that we don't respect, in a way that we don't look up to, we reject it. We reject the message because we don't trust the messenger. Isn't this what people do with faith? A lot of people who have a hard time accepting this is true think to themselves, this was written 2,000 years ago. How does it apply to me? Jesus taught these things to an ancient crowd that didn't have the nuanced understanding of life in the universe like we do. What did he know that I don't know? And we find ways to discount what's in the Bible in ways that we shouldn't really listen to Jesus in this instance or Paul in that instance. And I think what we'll find often when we are rejecting wisdom is that we're rejecting it because we don't respect the vessel. And if we'll stop doing that and just listen to the message and get over ourselves, we will learn lessons a lot more quickly and a lot less painfully. If I would have just listened to Jen and gotten over myself, which should have been really easy to do because I wasn't that impressive of a person and I'm still not, I would have had a lot easier time writing those sermons. If Rehoboam would just get over himself, he would have had a lot easier time being king. I wonder how many times in our own life if we would just get over ourselves and accept the wisdom or accept the help or accept the advice, how much better it would go for us. This morning, the lesson that we take away from Rehoboam's mistake that cost him the kingdom is that we should listen to wisdom. And I want us to acknowledge that often we have a difficult time hearing and heeding wisdom because wisdom doesn't care anything about our ego. Wisdom is often inefficient, often choosing the fruits of the future rather than the gains of the present. And that sometimes God and his goodness packages wisdom in a vessel that we don't respect and we have to get over ourselves and hear it anyways. And I hope that we will listen to this lesson, to the wisdom coming out of the story of Rehoboam through the centuries and heed it in our own lives. And that this summer, this year, in this difficult time, we can be people who hear and heed wisdom. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. You are patient with us. Lord, with those of us who have voices in our life right now that are giving us good wisdom, would you please give us the strength to hear it? Would you please give us the courage to enact it? If our egos are getting in the way of lessons that we should be learning and voices that we should be hearing, would you sweep those aside? Father, if we're rejecting a message because in our arrogance we don't trust the messenger, would you help us see ourselves more accurately and the vessels that you've placed in our life more accurately? Lord, would you make us a people who hear and recognize and heed and obey your wisdom in our lives? In Jesus' name, amen.

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