Sermons tagged with Hope

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week, Joseph's story reached its incredible conclusion in an emotional reunion with his brothers. Now we reflect on everything that happened in Joseph's life and all we have discussed in previous weeks. We will marvel at the sweeping and stunning sovereignty of God as we ask together what it means for us today to continue to believe that He has a plan. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. If we haven't gotten the chance to meet, I'd love to meet you afterwards between the service and the meeting that I have to go to, but I'd still love to meet you afterwards. If you're watching online, thank you for doing that. If you're catching up during the week, we are grateful that you are doing that as well. This is the last part of our series in Joseph, going through the life of Joseph, and I hope that you guys have enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed kind of diving into the story and getting to preach it every week. I love the stories of the Old Testament. I love trying to help them come to life and taking time to go through them and see that there's really so much there for us to learn from that points to things that are relevant to us today. Just for my own curiosity, by show of hands, those of you who have heard most of these sermons and been in here or watched online for most of these sermons and seen the bumper videos, how many of you have picked up on the fact that it changes every week, that there's different words being said every week? Not very many of you. Some of you are like, wait, what? Yeah, we rewrite them every week to catch you up with the story. And we were joking as a staff, wondering if anybody knew that we were actually doing that. And my bet was no, and I was mostly right. So there we have it. We're not doing that for you ever again. We're just going to make the same bumper videos. And you're just going to have to be stuck with them. So sorry. As we finish this week, I'll remind you that last week, we really, we reached the end of the story, right? We reached the end of the narrative. We had moved all the way through, and Joseph was finally reunited with his brothers. His father was told that Joseph was alive. Jacob was told that Joseph was alive, and he was going to go down and meet him. And he looked, and he said, when he saw all the workings of God, he said, it is enough. And we kind of talked about the profundity of that phrase and everything behind it. And so the whole time that we've been moving through, I've been saying, this is really one big long seven week sermon. And so this is the part of that long sermon where we reflect on all the things that we just learned and saw. And it just occurred to me, I'm going to have to take my watch off. The Falcons are about to start playing, which means my friends are going to be texting like crazy. It just went off and something happened in the game already. This is actually why I had this installed. I'm watching the game as I preach there this morning. That's not true. And that joke was given to me by Kyle before the service. So thank you, Kyle. It worked great. Everybody seemed to love it. Yeah, it was very good. It's very good. Part seven. This is the part where we watch and reflect on all that we've learned. And we ask, what does this mean for us? What's the overarching point of the story of Joseph? Not just what do we see when we drill down into the individual details, but as we move through the whole story, what is it that we learn and how does that impact us? And that, to me, what we learn from the entire story of Joseph is probably my favorite thing about the story. As it was said in the intro video there, that this is the most sweeping and stunning depiction of the sovereignty of God, I think, that we find in the Bible outside of Jesus himself. And so I want us to see the story of Joseph the way that I look at it and see it now. To help us do that, we first look at this summary verse from Joseph. This is in Genesis chapter 50. The family has moved down. Pharaoh has given them the land of Goshen. That's where they're living. And Jacob's life is coming to an end. Their dad is about to die. The brother's father is about to die. And the brothers kind of start to murmur and realize, hmm, dad's about to pass away. And when he does, the gig may be up. Joseph may still be mad at us. He may still be harboring some anger against us. So there's a chance that once dad dies, he's going to let Benjamin stay alive and he's going to kill us for revenge. And Joseph catches wind of this thought. So he calls the brothers to him and to ally their fears, to help them just relax and know that he has nothing sinister planned. Joseph says this in Genesis chapter 50, verse 20 to his brothers. And this is a great summary verse that many of us have probably heard before. He says this, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today. Now, many of you probably heard that verse before. You meant it for evil, but you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good. But I think put in its proper context, in this big narrative of the life of Joseph, to know exactly what his brothers did, that Joseph had those dreams and the brothers did exactly the exact opposite of those dreams and sold him into slavery and they meant it for evil. But Joseph, now presumably 20 years later, knows that that was God working and that God meant it for good. So for Joseph to say that, what does he mean? How does he know that God meant it for good? How does he see God's plan come to fruition? What are the layers behind God meaning it for good? And all of the implications of the story of Joseph and what kind of plan and for whom was God weaving it exactly? And so to do that and to think through really all the repercussions of the plan that God had for Joseph throughout his life and the story that we just looked at, I want you guys to think about something with me. This is going to be handy for me to use as we go throughout the sermon today to kind of refer back to this. But I don't want you guys to take out your phones because then you might just stay there and I'll get real discouraged. But think about looking at your map on your phone or on your computer. You pull up Google Maps or Apple Maps or whatever it is you use, and you zoom in on one particular property. Maybe it's your property. That's all you can see on the screen is just your house. And then imagine pinching it or zooming back or whatever it is and pulling back, and now you can see most of the city. You can see where your property sits in relation to the rest of the city. You can see the streets that surround your community, the different shops and restaurants and different things and schools that are in your community, and you kind of realize that your house exists within the broader context of this community, and then zoom way out until you can see the whole country. And realize that this one house exists in this community, which exists within this country. And you could zoom in on any different portion of the country and find your own community, find a different community. And then within those communities, you can find your own house or another individual house. So it's kind of the same idea that's working on three levels, right? At the home, and then at the community level, and then at the country level. And I bring that up because I think it's helpful to think of Joseph's story as a home within a community, within a country. I think there are layered truths to the story of Joseph and layered evidences of God's plan. And here's what I mean. When we read the story of Joseph, we've said all along, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. He has a plan. Each one of the voiceovers that we wrote for the videos ended with the phrase, he has a plan. Each week we leave ourselves in a place where Joseph has to choose to continue to cling to the belief that God has a plan. And so this week, I want us to see the multifaceted levels of that plan. So the first one is God has a plan for his child. What do we see when we look at the story of Joseph? We see that God has a plan for his child. God has a plan for Joseph as an individual. God gave him those dreams when he was young. He said, your brothers and your mom and your dad are going to bow down to you one day. God knew that in his arrogance, he was going to go tell his brothers. He knew that in that arrogance, he was going to get thrown into a pit and sold into slavery. And God knew that he needed to plant Joseph for Joseph's own sake, that he needed to be associated with Pharaoh. But if you go back through the whole story, there's no way to get a nomad from Canaan into the court of Pharaoh in Egypt. So how's he going to do that? So God enacts a plan. And part of that plan is to let Joseph be a snot-nosed brat so that his brothers don't like him. And then they throw him into the pit. And they're going to kill him. But Reuben whispers, maybe let's not do this. Maybe let's just sell him into slavery. I don't know this or not. This is total conjecture. But what do you think are the chances that the Holy Spirit whispered into the ear of Reuben, hey, why don't you sell him into slavery instead? What do you think are the chances that God was present in that moment to change the mind of his brothers to what he needed them to do? His chances are pretty good, personally. He sells them into slavery, the exact opposite of the dreams that he was given. How could this possibly be the case? He's been promised that this is going to happen. He's been promised, he's claiming the promises of his great-grandfather Abraham that were passed down through his grandfather Isaac, through his father Jacob, and now bestowed onto him as the firstborn son of his beloved wife. Joseph is going to live out all of these things, except now he's in the back of an ox cart on the way to Egypt, and it feels like none of those things are going to come true. But God was working in the details of that plan. God sent him down there. He gets down there. He's still got to get him associated with Pharaoh. How's he going to do that? Well, he gets bought by Potiphar, a royal servant. So that when Potiphar's wife would eventually accuse Joseph of sexual harassment falsely, and he gets falsely imprisoned, he doesn't end up in the general population prison. No, he ends up in the royal prison with royal prisoners who are associated with Pharaoh this whole time. Even though it doesn't look like that the dreams are going to come true, even though it doesn't seem like God is with Joseph this whole time, God is working his plan and his child. He interacts with the cupbearer. The cupbearer goes to Pharaoh two years after that interaction. He's swept up into Pharaoh's court. He's put where he needs to be. He's got the preparation that he needs. He's had time to age and mature. He's got experience and leadership already when he rises to prominence in jail and when he rose to prominence at Potiphar's house. And now he's ready to step into his role as the secretary of agriculture for the most powerful nation in the world. Number two in command right behind Pharaoh. He's done this before. He's interpreted the dreams before. He was ready for his moment. And this whole time, God has been working his plan. Do you see? To get Joseph into that place. That was his plan for his child. And throughout the whole plan, there was plenty of circumstances where Joseph could look around and say, God, this plan ain't working, man. The things that are happening in my life are not what I expected based on the plan that you gave me. So we just had to trust that God had one. And so we see this whole time that God has a plan for his child. And we talked about when he rose to prominence last week, I said, the story could end here. When he's in charge, he's got his sons. He names them Manasseh and Ephraim. And it means the Lord has provided it for me in my time of trial. Like that story could have been done there. It's good. It's done. But the story is about more than God's child because God has a plan for his children. Joseph is the house. He's the child. But if you zoom out, you see that God has a plan for his children, for his community, for his people. God has a plan for Joseph's family. Last week, we saw in the verses, we saw in the passage a couple of verses where Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and he says, don't worry, I'm not angry at you. You intended this for evil, but what you think you're the one who sent me here, it wasn't you, it was God. And he sent me here to preserve many lives. And so what we also see, this kind of pulled back layer of the story, is that God wasn't just preserving the life of Joseph to get him where he needed him to be, but he needed Joseph to be there because he needed to protect his children. He needed to protect his people. He needed to protect the offspring of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Because we learned in week one, God made promises to Jacob and God's commitment to his promises are not contingent upon our behavior. Remember? And so God made a promise to Abraham that you're going to have the land of Canaan. You're going to have so many descendants, it's going to be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. And you're going to have one descendant that's going to come and bless the whole earth. That's the plan. And so God keeps his promise to Abraham. He gives him a son, Isaac. He keeps his promise to Abraham through Isaac, giving him a son. He keeps his promise to Jacob by showing him favor until Jacob finally realizes you've been wrestling against God your whole life. Just relax and enjoy God's favor. Joseph figures out to enjoy God's favor, even when it doesn't make any sense. And he looks around and the plan doesn't make any sense. He's just hanging in there and trusting that God has a plan. And now God's put him in this place where he can provide for everybody. And the whole time he's not just doing it to provide for Joseph. God is doing it, I think, because he knows the descendants of Abraham will not survive a seven-year drought in the land of Canaan. They can't do it. When the brothers came asking for grain the second time, they were in year two of the famine. Now this is conjecture. I don't know this for sure. But when are they going to run out of money to feed a small clan of people? When are they going to start? How many more trips to Egypt can the brothers make before they have to start choosing who gets grain when they get home and who doesn't? They have no idea the famine is going to last seven years. They've probably got a year or two left before they've got to start asking some really hard questions questions because if there's nothing growing on the ground, then there's nothing that their flocks can eat. And if there's nothing that their flocks can eat, then they have no way to make money. And if they have no way to make money and there's nothing on the ground and they have no flocks left for them to eat, then what are they going to do but perish? So God, to protect his children, not his child, his children, takes one of his children and places him in a place where he can, according to Joseph, preserve many lives. And so in the story is God keeping his promise to Abraham and preserving the promise to the community, preserving the promise to his children to keep them where he needs them to be. They are brought down, put in one of the most fertile places in Egypt, the land of Goshen, and they are told to live there and flourish there. So when we pull back from just Joseph, we realize that God was working a plan for his children this whole time too, for all of Joseph's family. The brothers had no idea that they were part of this plan, but they were. They were just pawns in what God was doing. Then you pull back even further at the kingdom view, and you realize that God has a plan for his kingdom. What he's working in the life of Joseph, those individual details and the ebbs and flows that we've followed over the last several weeks, he's not just working for Joseph's benefit. He's not just working for his children's benefit. He's working for his kingdom's benefit. We're in Genesis 50 this morning. When you flip the page to Exodus chapter one, what do you learn? You learn that 400 years after Joseph had passed away and Pharaoh had forgotten about them, Moses is on the scene. That's how the stories are linked together. And by the time Moses comes on the scene in Exodus chapter 1, theologians believe that there was between 500,000 and 600,000 Hebrew people living in Egypt as slaves. I have to believe that for some reason, God didn't believe that this family from Abraham was going to make it in the land of Canaan on their own. He had to believe that there was no way they were going to grow to what they needed to be to be able to conquer the land of Canaan and possess the kingdom that he had promised them that they would possess. So what does he do? He takes his children down to the most powerful nation in the world and he incubates them for 400 years where they can grow and develop culture and develop a faith and develop a way that they interact with their God so that when Moses comes on the scene, who by the way, another stunning view of God's sovereignty, God plucks Moses out of Hebrew slavery and puts him in the palace of Pharaoh where he gets the best education in the world. He's exposed to leadership his whole life. He grows up, he's haughty, he goes out into the wilderness and gets humbled, and then he's called in Exodus 3 and 4 back to Pharaoh from the burning bush to go lead his people out into Canaan because now they are finally ready to go live where I want them to live. None of that happens if Joseph isn't sold into slavery when he's 17 years old. None of that happens if Potiphar's wife doesn't falsely accuse him. None of that happens if Joseph doesn't get chosen to go interpret the dream for Pharaoh. None of that happens if Joseph isn't placed as second in command to help preserve the line and bring them down and incubate them. God is planning things on such a bigger scale than Joseph would ever acknowledge or imagine. And so we go from the house to the city to the nation where God's really enacting his plan. We've been saying this whole time, he has a plan, he has a plan, he has a plan. And we've been spending most of our time focused on his plan for Joseph and what it means for him. But as we finish the story, we need to peel back and say, what does it mean for God's children? And then we pull back even more and say, what does it mean for God's kingdom? What is it that he's doing on this huge eternal scale that he's enacting through the life of Joseph? And suddenly we begin to see God's sovereignty woven all throughout the story, understanding that he's in every detail, that he's allowing and disallowing all the different things to bring about the future that he once brought about. And the great part of Joseph's story and seeing God's plan on that scale is realizing that if God has a plan for Joseph, that he has a plan for us. If God had a plan for his children then, then he has a plan for his children now. If God had a plan for his kingdom then, he has a plan for his kingdom now and still. And as Christians, and this is the great part, this is the part that I want us to sink into. As Christians, we have to understand that we are still in the land between, right in the middle of God's plan. We slowed down and we looked at one phrase that Doug did such a fantastic job with, the fact that Joseph had to wait in prison for two years and that land between promise and fulfillment and the already and the not yet. And God, I know that you told me that this would be true, but it's not true yet. And so I wait on you. If you are a Christian, that is where you are. And the promise that Jesus died on the cross for you and that one day he's gonna come back and get you. That's where we find ourselves, in that land between, in that land between promise and fulfillment. All Christians live there. And we cling to the truth and to the promise that God still has a plan. And his plan, by the way, is, was, and will always be Jesus. That's his plan. That's what we cling to. As a matter of fact, what I would tell you is that the story of Joseph ultimately points us to Jesus. It's the whole reason that it's there. I've just been waiting for six weeks to build it up so that we could point ourselves collectively to Jesus because he's God's plan. He was God's plan here in Genesis 50. He's God's plan in Matthew chapter one. He's God's plan in Revelation 19. Jesus is God's plan. And that's what we sit in the middle of. God's plan from the very beginning was to send a Messiah through the line of Abraham. We go all the way back to Genesis chapter 12. We get out of what's called the prehistoric narrative to kind of set up the story. Genesis 1 through 11 basically set up the story for us to focus on Abraham and hear the promises that God gives Abraham. And the promises are land, people, and blessing. One of your descendants will bless the whole earth. All the way back in Genesis chapter 12, God knew what the plan was. And the plan was to establish a nation, establish a faith, let them come to the realization again and again and again that they desperately needed a king, they desperately needed a savior. The plan was to send Jesus in the flesh to live amongst us, to stay here for 33 years, to be crucified, to raise himself from the dead on the third day, conquering death and sin for all time and giving us a hope that we can cling to that Romans tells us will not put us to shame. That was the plan. And then one day, he's going to come back. And when he comes back, he's going to have righteous and true on his thigh, and he's going to take us home with him. That's the plan. It's always been the plan. It's what we cling to. And so right now, in this life, for a little while, Paul tells us, we will endure hardship. And right now, in this life, we're going to look around sometimes, like Joseph did on his way down to Egypt and go, God, this doesn't feel like the plan. None of my circumstances make any sense to me with what I thought I was promised. There's going to be times when, like Joseph, we're falsely accused and we're thrown in whatever version of prison awaits us. There's going to be times when we feel like God promised us something or that something's supposed to go our way and instead we're going to languish for two years waiting for that thing to happen. There's going to be times when the plan doesn't seem like it's going how it's supposed to go. And in those moments when the plan doesn't seem to be making much sense to us, it would help us to not be so focused on our own house and to take a step back and say, God, what are you working in the community around me right now? How is what I'm walking through affecting the children, your children that I'm around? How is it affecting my church? How is it affecting my community? What's the bigger thing going on here? And this is what I mean. Many of you guys know that part of mine and Jen's story is that we struggled for a long time to get pregnant. And then when we finally did, we lost our first child. We had a miscarriage. And at the time, here, looking at my house, God, how could you let this happen to us? We serve you, we love you, we do good things, we don't have secret sins. There's a bunch of people who are way worse than us and they're just like slipping and having children. We can't have any. That's not fair, God. But then I pull back and I look at the community. And what God knew that I didn't is that I was going to be the pastor for a lot of people who struggle with infertility. And he knew that it was going to make me a much better pastor to be able to mourn with them and hope with them and pray with them. He knew that Jen was going to have the opportunity to comfort a lot of women along the way. And so it was a hard part of our plan, but I think it was absolutely a part of God's plan. On another level, I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long to have children, and now I'm going to be in retirement when John graduates from college. I believe that one of the reasons that it took us so long and that we are older parents with younger kids is because I think that he knew where we were going to be and what we were going to do. And he wanted us to have children of a certain age so that they would make friends with children of that age so that we would have friends of a certain age so that he could build a community with us and for us. I think it all works. Now, do I pretend to know where God is interjecting himself and diverting our plan towards a particular path that we might not see the end of and when it just really is coincidental and then God's working within those circumstances to bring about his goodness and our joy. No, I don't know how to tell you the difference between those things and when they're happening. But I know that God has a plan. And I know that sometimes we have a hard time seeing it because we're so focused here that we can't pull back to here and see what's going on in our community. And then when that still doesn't make any sense, we pull back to the eternal view. And we trust that God still has a plan. That one day Jesus is going to come back. And he's going to restore creation to itself. This is what Romans 8 tells us, that all of creation groans with the beginnings of birth pains for the return of the king, that creation groans, that when someone gets cancer, that's creation groaning. When abuse happens, when divorce happens, when we lose a loved one too early, when things happen that don't make sense, when we see a school shooting, that's creation groaning. That's our very nature saying, God, this isn't how it's supposed to be. And God is in heaven and he says, I know. And I'm coming. And until I do, just trust me. Trust that I have a plan. This trust is the fundamental Christian trust. That even when things don't make sense, even when we don't understand them, even when we can't explain our faith, we still choose it. Because we trust that our hope will not be put to shame and we trust that Jesus is going to do what he said he would do. That trust in Jesus is the fundamental Christian trust. And what we know and what's amazing about our Jesus is that at every level of the plan he is working. He's working in his child. He is working in his children. He is working in his kingdom. He's working in his child and that he's near us. In John 11, it says that Jesus weeps with us. He's working for his children. In Romans 8, where it says that Jesus is the high priest, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. And it says that again in the Hebrews. He's working for his children and then he's working for his kingdom when he's waiting for God to say, yeah, now's the time. And he comes back and he gets us. And he delivers us into that sweet moment in Revelation 21 where it says that God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping, no more crying and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. That's the plan to get us to that moment. And your job is to take as many people as you can with you as you go to that moment. And your job is even when I don't, I look around and I'm on an ox cart on my way to be a slave and none of this makes sense. It's to still hold fast and hold firm and hold true and steady to Jesus, trusting that Jesus is God's plan. And if I just cling to this, even when I don't understand it, that one day it'll all make sense to me. That when we get to heaven, we'll look around at everything and we'll go, yeah, this was a good plan. And we'll be very glad that we clung to it. That's the story of Joseph. The story of Joseph points us to that plan. I hope that you'll go back and read it. That you'll read it again thinking about the layers and see different details that you didn't see before. I hope that you'll never think of Joseph the same way you did before we started this series seven weeks ago. And here's the really fun part about where we end this series talking about God still having a plan and that we sit in the middle of it and we are awaiting the fulfillment of that plan. You know the very next thing we're talking about? The end of the plan. Revelation starts next week, where we skip to the last chapter of the book, and we find out how it ends so we don't have to be so stressed about the middle part. And it's just pretty cool to me how even as I sit up here and I say every week, God has a plan, God has a plan, God has a plan, that I believe his plan was to weave these two stories of Joseph and then the account of Revelation together to prepare our hearts for what we're going to begin to dive into next week. I hope that you'll come back for that. I'm very excited to share Revelation with you guys and for us to walk through that as a church. And as we finish up this story, I hope that you'll never, ever read Joseph the same way again. And then I'm going to pray. I'm going to pray and we're going to have communion. And I'm excited about doing communion together with you guys in light of what we just covered. And I'll tell you why in a second. Let's pray. Father, you have a plan. You have a plan for your child, for your children, for your kingdom. We are grateful to sit in the middle of that. God, if there is anyone here who does not have the hope of that plan, who does not have the hope of a coming Savior to rescue them, would they place their hope in you just this morning? Would they cling to that hope and never let go? God, for those of us who look around and feel like maybe our circumstances don't really line up with our expectations, would you give us the strength and the faith and the courage to cling to you and to cling to your plan and to trust it? God, I pray for our church family as we go throughout our weeks. I pray that you would draw us near to you, that we would hear your spirit speaking to us, that we would feel moved and directed and guided by you, that we would have a heightened sensitivity to your timing and to your plan and be grateful that we are a part of it. Help us to be more obedient followers of you. In Jesus' name, amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. This week we remember the dreams God gave Joseph as a teenage boy. The promises that one day his family would bow down to him. Joseph's life has seen remarkable twists and turns since those fateful dreams. But now we will finally watch them come to fruition as the story of Joseph arrives at its hopeful conclusion. Joseph will finally see that he was right to believe being here. Thank you for joining us online, if that's what you're doing. Thank you to Doug Bergeson last week for carrying the torch and doing such a great job on that idea about the land between promise and fulfillment. The only correction I would make if you were here last week is that he said that I assigned him only one verse out of the whole story. That's not true. It was just part of a sentence. It wasn't even a whole sentence in the verse. That's all he got was just that fragment there, but he really did a bang-up job with it. And this week, we pick the story back up. And I've said the whole time that this is a, it's one big, long seven-week sermon. We're driving and have been driving to what we want to talk about next week as we reflect on God's sovereignty in the overarching story of Joseph. So this week, we're going to move through the last part of the narrative together. It's a lot to cover. There's a lot of ground to cover and a lot of story. So this is the least sermon-y sermon of all seven of these sermons, okay? Because we're really just going to spend a lot of time in listening to the story, moving through the story, connecting to the nuances of it. And then we're going to end in a place that left me weeping on a bench outside of Starbucks. I'll explain that to you in a minute. And hopefully it will encourage us to, and then we'll be ready to come next week and reflect on these last six weeks and everything that God did as he wrote the story of Joseph and the profound impact it had on everybody around him. So last week, you'll remember that Joseph was left languishing in prison for two years. He interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh's cupbearer and baker. He told the cupbearer, you're going to be reinstated. He told the baker, you're going to be executed. And those things came true. And he asked the cupbearer to remember him to Pharaoh when he got out of there. And the cupbearer forgot about Joseph. And so he was in prison for two full years after that. And that's what we talked about last week was that two-year wait between promise and fulfillment, which is really a much longer wait between promise and fulfillment. Because when we pick up the story this week, we'll learn that he's 30 years old, which means it's been 13 years since he had those dreams that we talked about in the second week and in the video that we watched just here before the sermon. So we pick the story up in Genesis chapter 41 with Joseph still in prison. The cupbearer is out. He's free. He's forgotten about Joseph. Two years later, Pharaoh starts having some dreams. Pharaoh starts having some dreams and he can't figure out what they mean. He's assembled all the magicians. He's assembled all the philosophers, all the priests of Egypt. He's brought them to the palace. He shared with them his dreams and no one can interpret any of them. And he said, is there anyone who can tell me what this means? He felt that they had profound meaning. And the cup bearer, the light bulb goes off. He's like, oh yeah, I know a guy. I got a guy who can do this. And he tells Pharaoh about the Hebrew in prison who can interpret dreams. And so Pharaoh says, let's go, bring him here. I'm going to do some loose paraphrasing during the storytelling, okay? But it's in the Bible, I promise. Chapters 41 through 45 is what we're going to cover today. He says, well, bring him to me. Let's just, let's try it. Worst case scenario, I'll just throw him back in jail, right? So he brings Joseph to him and Joseph comes up and they shave his head and they get him all ready to be presentable to Pharaoh. And he goes in and Pharaoh addresses him. And he says this to him in Genesis 41. And Pharaoh said to Joseph, I've had a dream and there is no one who can, I've been having dreams that no one can interpret. I hear that you can interpret dreams. And Joseph's response to me is pretty remarkable. He says, it's not me. Interpretations belong to God. And this is by no means the point of the sermon, but I thought I would be remiss if I did not make this point. So this is parenthetical to the sermon. I'm going to step over here. I'm not preaching about the thing I'm preaching about anymore. I'm just making this point and then I'll move back. After years of proficiency, Joseph still doesn't claim interpretation as a skill. After years of being good at this thing, he still doesn't claim it as a skill. And it makes me think to myself, what are the things that I feel like I'm good at or gifted at or gifted to do? And how long have I been doing those things? So long that now I forget that God has gifted me to do some things and it's not my skill that I developed. It's not my thing that I do. If you would believe that I have an ability to communicate, I forget that that ability is not a skill that I have. That's something that God gave me. It is his gift to allow me to communicate, and that gift can be taken away at any time God wishes. It is not my skill. And it makes me wonder about us, after years of proficiency at closing the deal, at charming the right people, at having the right amount of empathy, at having good insight, at being able to give good and wise advice, after years of proficiency at being discerning, at being professionally effective, how many of us have begun to think of those things as our own skills and not gifts from God? I won't belabor it. I just thought it worth pointing out and questioning. So Joseph says, yeah, go ahead. Tell me your dream, and I'll do the best I can to listen to God and to interpret it. So Pharaoh shares his dreams with Joseph. He had two dreams. He says, in this dream, I see seven fat plump cows coming out of the Nile. Now, for those of you who are not Egyptian geography experts, the Nile is the heartbeat of life in Egypt. It's the river around which the whole civilization is built. So he says, I saw seven plump cows come out of the Nile and they began to feed on the grass right there on the banks of the river. But then after that, I saw seven skinny, starving, impoverished cows come out and they ate the fat, healthy cows. And then I woke up. And then I went back to sleep. And when I went back to sleep, there was seven stalks of wheat, big and strong and healthy. And after those came up and came to fruition, there was seven stalks of unhealthy wheat, of dried and shriveled wheat that it says, the Bible says, was blighted by the east wind, which sounds really bad. And those unhealthy stalks of wheat ate the healthy stalks of wheat. And Pharaoh says, what does that mean? And Joseph tells him, he said, here's the deal. Here's what's going to happen. In Egypt, there's going to be seven years of plenty. You're going to see your crops flourish like they never have before, and it's going to be great. But immediately following those seven years of plenty, there's going to be famine. There's going to be famine for seven years. And so you need to get ready for it. And he says, Pharaoh, and I thought this was an incredible detail. He says, the doubling up of the dream, the fact that you had the same dream in two different ways, the doubling up of the dream means that it is fixed by God and it will happen. Now, if you've been paying attention this whole series, where does your mind just go? It should have gone to week two when Joseph had his dreams as a boy, as a 17-year-old kid, when he has one dream that his brothers are going to bow down to him, and then he has another dream with stalks of wheat where his family is going to be bowing down to him. The first one is his brothers with the stalks of wheat. The second one is the sun and the moon and the stars are bowing down to him. So somehow, somehow Joseph, if he says this to Pharaoh because of the doubling up of the dreams, this is a fixed thing that God will bring about. If he says that to Pharaoh 13 years later, you can rest assured that somehow, some way, through 13 years of turmoil, Joseph had clung to the belief that because God gave him those dreams and because they were double dreams, that those were still going to come about. I would have long ago left those be. I would have long ago thought that's not true. That's not going to happen. I would have let go of those things. But I can't help but believe that because Joseph told Pharaoh that the doubling up means that it's fixed by God and it will happen, that Joseph believed the same thing about his dreams. He still clung to that faith and to that hope. I don't know how. And so Pharaoh responds. He believes Joseph. Everyone there is awed by what Joseph says and does. And Pharaoh says, what do we do? And Joseph says, you need to find a guy, man. You need somebody in charge of this. You need a secretary of agriculture. You need someone who watches all the fields and all of the empire, who can be in charge of gathering it. And for the next seven years, you need to store one fifth of the grain that you harvest in this country. And then when we enter the seven years of famine, we'll be able to sell off that grain to the surrounding nations. We'll be able to feed ourselves. We will thrive and we'll get rich while everyone around us suffers. And Pharaoh's like, this is a great plan. Let's do this. So then he talks with his advisors. Who do we think should do this? And he looks at Joseph and he's like, you seem smart. Why don't you do this? And so in an instant, Joseph, once again, goes from being brought low in prison to being brought high. Except this time, he's the second most powerful man in the world. And that's not an exaggeration. Egypt is the most powerful nation in the world. It's the superpower. And Pharaoh says to Joseph, you're in charge. And he looks at all of his other servants and all of his generals. Whatever he says to do, you do it. We're going to figure this out. We're going to get through this. He has the wisdom to lead us through this. And he bestows on Joseph a house and wealth. And he even gives him a daughter that he can get married to. And so Joseph is risen to prominence and he's pulled out of obscurity yet again. And here's God's favor on him and interpreting the dreams. And he's raised to second in command over all of Egypt. And not only that, but he's given the daughter of a priest named Potipharah, which sounds like a girl's name, but it's not. It's a boy's name. So he has a daughter and his daughter marries Joseph. And with the daughter, Joseph has two sons. And the Bible, the narrative pauses to tell us about the two sons and to tell us what Joseph chose to name them. And I think it's significant enough for us to pause and take a look at that too. If you pick up the story in Genesis 41, verse 51, it says, Joseph called the name of the It's pretty profound faith to move through Joseph's story, to finally be blessed with a family and with children that we're sure he always longed for, and to immediately name them Manasseh and Ephraim, which means my hardship is done, and then God has made me fruitful in the land of affliction. He turns and he gives praise to God. Look at the favor that rests on my life. Look at the joy that I get to experience right now. Look at the way that God has worked. And his story comes full circle. And he's the favored son. And then he's the slave. And then he's elevated to Potiphar's house. And then he's falsely accused and thrown in prison. And then he's elevated in prison. And then he's elevated to Potiphar's house and then he's falsely accused and thrown in prison. And then he's forgotten, he's elevated in prison and then he's forgotten about it. And now he's elevated finally into Pharaoh's house, second in command over all of Egypt, second most powerful man on the planet. And he turns and prays to God. And he says, look at how my story has come full circle. And he gives praise to God in what he names his sons as reminders of his journey. And the story could end right here. Joseph exists in prominence. He sees them through the famine. He incurs wealth. He sees them in the years of plenty. He incurs wealth and sees them through the years of famine. And if this story were just about Joseph, this would be a perfectly fine place to end it. His brothers, even by now, figuratively, everyone is bowing down to him. You could even make an argument that those dreams have come true. And this would be a fitting and satisfying end to the story of Joseph. And he and his wife and his sons lived happily ever after as he oversaw Egypt for the rest of his days. But the story's not just about Joseph. And God's plan was never just for Joseph. And so there's more to the story. If you flip the page to the next chapter, chapter 42, the narrative takes you back up to Canaan, where Joseph's family was. His father, Jacob, also called Israel, and his 11 brothers. And Jacob looks at the oldest son, Reuben, and he says, hey, we're hungry. We don't have anything to eat. We're in a famine. I heard Egypt has some grain. Load up the boys, go down there, buy some grain and come back. And so they go down there. They head out, 10 sons of Jacob, but Jacob doesn't allow Benjamin to go. You remember, if you've been following along, that Benjamin is the son of Rachel. Rachel is Jacob's favored wife. This is a good reason why you shouldn't have two wives. Because then one's going to be the favorite. It's going to be a real bummer for everybody. There's some terrible family dynamics going on in Jacob's house. You'll see more in a second. It's remarkable. But Jacob got tricked into marrying Leah, who apparently had weak eyes. And this is bad in the Old Testament. We don't want to marry all you girls wearing glasses. Sorry, you're out of luck. He married Leah, and Leah immediately had many sons for Jacob. But he didn't really love Leah. He loved Rachel. And it took Rachel a long time to get pregnant, which is something that comes up in the Bible over and over again. And then Rachel had two sons, Joseph and Benjamin. And Joseph, as far as Jacob knew, was dead. So all he's got left is Benjamin. He's the youngest of the sons as well. So he's got a special place in his father's heart. So he tells Reuben, take your brothers, go down there. You're not taking Benjamin. He's staying with me. And Reuben says, okay, sounds good, pops. And they go down. They go down to Egypt to buy the grain and they get their passport stamped. They receive like the visa for whatever they need to do. They go through all the paperwork and they end up in the office of, wouldn't you know it, Joseph. That's who you have to talk to. And when they came in to where he would receive people, he recognized them immediately, but they didn't recognize him. He looked like Egyptian royalty. He didn't look like a nomad from the hills of Israel. So they didn't recognize him at all. And they say, we're 12 brothers. We're here. We need to get some grain to go back to our dad who's up in Canaan, a little bit north of here. We'd love to buy some off of you if that pleases you, master. And Joseph treats them in a way, and I'll just say this up front. At this point in the story, Joseph starts doing some things to me that just feel like, why did he do that? Like, why did he behave like that? Why did he treat them this way? Even if you understand what he's trying to get at, which is ultimately to see his brother and to see his father, it seems odd that he would choose this course of action. And I did a little bit of research and read about it. Why do people think that Joseph acted in this way? And the bottom line is people have some ideas, but they were flimsy to me. So I'll just say, I don't know why Joseph acts this way, but this is the story, and so this is what we're going to tell. And so Joseph begins to treat his brothers roughly, the Bible says. And he begins to accuse them, you're spies. You're not seven brothers who came down here innocently to buy grain. You're spies, and you came to see the nakedness of the land. You're going to try to attack us. You're going to try to manipulate the situation. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. We promise that's not us. That's not what we're doing. We're just, we're 12 humble brothers. We've lost one brother. There's one other brother who our dad loves and he's back home and it's just us 10 dudes. And we're just here to try to get some grain and go back home. We, we, we mean nothing by it. We would not seek to do that to you. And, and Joseph continues to press them. No, you're lying. You're spies. And they go back and forth. And Joseph says, okay, I'll tell you what. We're going to see if you're telling the truth. You're going to go home and you're going to fetch this younger brother that you say you have. And you're going to bring him back to me. And if you can bring him back to me, then I'll trust you and believe you. And we can continue to do business. If you can't bring him back to me and you show up here again, I'm going to kill you because I know that you're spies. And just to make sure that you're going to go get him and come back, one of you is going to stay here as my prisoner until they come back. You're going to leave him as a deposit on the life of your other brother and of yourselves. And so they talk amongst themselves and they decide that Simeon was going to be the one to stay behind. Simeon was clearly the second least favorite brother. That would have been a tough conversation. He's going to stay behind and be thrown in jail. And the rest of the brothers are going to go back and get Benjamin. So that's what they do. Simeon hands himself over and the brothers pack up and they head home. Before they headed home, Joseph went to his steward and he said, take all the money that they paid us for the grain and put it back in their grain satchels. We don't want their money. And the steward says, all right, so he does that. So on the way home, the brothers discover that their money has been returned. They open up the grain to look at it, probably just to stare at it and look at the grain and we did a great job. But then they see the money in there and they're freaked out. Oh no, that guy, that master, they don't know it's Joseph, but Joseph is going to think that we stole this money. We're in a heap of trouble. So then they get all worried and stressed out about that. They eventually get home. Dad says, how's it go? And they told Jacob everything that happened. The guy down there spoke roughly to us. He accused us of being spies. It was really pretty difficult. It was stressful there for some minutes, but he sent us home. Simeon's down there. He's in jail. We got to take Benjamin back to this guy. This guy wants to see Benjamin for some reason to believe us that we're not spies. And then we can get Simeon out of jail and we can come back and we can be one big happy family again. And oh, by the way, for some reason we found the money in our sacks of grain and we don't know what to do about it. We think we might be in trouble when we get back there anyways. And Jacob gets ticked at him. Jacob says, why did you tell that man that you have a brother? What'd you do that for? And they're like, what'd you want from us? How were we supposed to know that he was going to ask us to come back and get our brother? And so they go back and forth about it. They say, dad, let us take Benjamin. We'll go back down. We'll get Simeon. Everything will be straightened out. We'll come back. We'll have the food that we need. It'll be good. And Joseph or Jacob says, no, absolutely not. Can't do it. And Reuben, the, comes up with this idea. He says, listen, I swear on the life of my sons, I will go and I will get Benjamin for you. And if I don't come back with Benjamin, you can kill my two boys, which is one heck of a promise from a dad. And then can you imagine being a grandfather that's like, deal. Yeah, I've always found those two annoying anyway. They're my least favorite grandsons. But even at that, with that kind of guarantee, Jacob says, no, absolutely not. We're not discussing it. And so we turn to chapter 43. In chapter 43, they're hungry again. They're out of grain. And Jacob says, boys, it's time to go back to Egypt and get the grain. And Judah says, I mean, okay, dad, but we got to take Benjamin with us. Nope, can't take Benjamin. They go back and forth about it. Judah swears on his life. Dad, we need this. We've got to go do it. We can't show up without him. We'll bring you back Simeon. And Jacob is angry. And he says, you boys have already cost me the life of my son Joseph. And now I've also lost Simeon. And you want to heap this grief upon me. You're going to lose Benjamin too. And when you do, it's going to kill me. And you're going to have to carry my gray beard down to Sheol, which is what they explained the afterlife to be at that time. But Judah gets him to relent and they take Benjamin and they go back down to Egypt. But before they go, Jacob knew the art of the deal a little bit and he sent them with a bunch of gifts and all the finest things from the land. He sent them with double the money to pay for the first grain and then buy another thing of grain to kind of grease the skids a little bit to keep this guy happy down in Egypt. And so the boys go. They get back to Egypt, and they find Joseph's steward and Joseph says, oh, or the steward says, oh, it's good to have you back. Joseph would actually like to have a meal with you guys. And they're like, oh no, he's gonna kill us. He's bringing us to his house. He's gonna put us to death. He's not gonna believe us. He's gonna take our money and that's the end of us. And they're really nervous and they even told the steward, listen, we hope that he's not mad. We found money in our sacks on the way back. We didn't take it. We don't know how it got there. We've brought double here to pay for the grain that we took the first time. And the steward actually responds to them and says, the Lord your God put that money in those sacks himself. I have received the payment for what you took. You're good. And so maybe they could begin to sense that something was up with us. So the next day they go into Joseph's house. Now they're in his personal chambers, personal house. And they're having a meal with him. And as Joseph goes to prepare for the meal, he looks and he sees his brother Benjamin, but Benjamin still doesn't recognize him. And so Joseph continues to play dumb. And he looks and he says, is that your youngest brother? Have you brought him with you? And they said, yeah, this is our youngest brother Benjamin. And scripture tells us that Joseph was so moved with warmth, it says, that he had to go back to his chambers and weep for a little bit and compose himself before he could come back out. And when all the food was served, everybody received a great portion, but Benjamin got five times the portion of everyone else. And they had this big feast and they were merry. And Joseph began to press on them a little bit. He said, you mentioned a father, an old man back where you're from. Is he still alive? And they said, yes, he's old, but he's alive and he's longing to see his son Benjamin again. So we need to get on the road. And Joseph says, okay, you guys can go ahead. And when they go ahead, he tells the steward, put the money back in their sacks again. And this time I want you to take my silver cup and I want you to put it in the youngest one's bag. I want you to put it in Benjamin's bag. So the steward does as he's asked. The next day, the brothers leave. And after they had been gone for a little while, Joseph again gets his steward and he says, I want you to chase them down. I want you to find that cup and I want you to accuse them of theft and bring them back. I want you to arrest the one who stole it. The steward's like, all right. I wonder how many times the steward had to do things like this for Joseph. Like, was this weird or was this just normal? Anyways, he tracks the brothers down and he comes to the brothers and he says, what have you done? We have given you nothing but good and you repay us with evil. And they're like, what are you talking about? And the steward says, one of you stole something that belongs to Joseph. And they said, go through our bags, arrest whoever did it. And so it was discovered that it was in Benjamin's bag and the brothers are beside themselves. This is the very thing that cannot happen. So the steward arrests Benjamin, brings him back to Joseph's house and the brothers pack up and they go back to Joseph's house because they got to figure this out. And in chapter 44, you see this impassioned plea from Judah who goes to Joseph. And he says, he says, please understand, we didn't do this on purpose. We are simple shepherds and farmers. We are just trying to get this grain back to our family. I know you think we stole this cup. We didn't. And I know that you think it was Benjamin that stole it. He didn't. And please, I'm begging you, if you keep Benjamin here and we have to go home and tell that old man that you asked about that his son Benjamin is in prison and is probably dead. He is going to die on the spot. His life is intertwined with the life of Benjamin. And he is too old and he loves him too much. And his heart cannot bear the news that he would have lost his son because he's already lost his brother. And that broke his father's heart. And he can't take it again. So please, Lord, take me and put me in prison and let Benjamin go home. And it was at this point that Joseph was so moved that he just broke down. And we pick up the story in chapter 45 and I want to read to you what it says because I think it's so powerful. And he wept aloud so that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it. And Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, come near to me, please. And they came near. And he said, I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And listen. God sent me here, but sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh and Lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. We're going to remember those verses next week. He tells his brothers, don't feel bad. Because earlier in the story, when he was first accusing them of being spies, Reuben muttered to his brothers, you guys understand that this is punishment for what we did to our brother Joseph, right? We reap what we sow. Now we're finally getting punished for that terrible thing that we did. And Joseph heard them and he understood them because he didn't need an interpreter. And so here, as they reconcile and he reveals himself to them, he's saying, don't worry, don't carry guilt about that. What you intended for evil, God worked for good. What you thought was gonna be terrible for me, God was working the whole time. You think you sent me to slavery in Egypt? You didn't. That was God pulling the trigger. It's the same realization that Jacob had. It's been God pulling the strings all along. And then the scripture says that they hugged and they kissed each other and they wept. And then they sat and they talked about all the things. I don't know that there's a conversation in all the Bible I would rather get to hear than to sit in that room and listen to Joseph and his brothers catch up and tell all the stories about all the things in Canaan and for them to hear all the things that happened to Joseph over the years. What a sweet, sweet reunion that must have been. And what a picture of the incredible sovereignty of God as he wove those things together to bring that day about. Shortly after this, word gets out to Pharaoh and the palace that those men who keep coming back here for grain, those are actually Joseph's long lost brothers and Pharaoh's overjoyed. And he goes to Joseph and he says, bring your family here. Go get your father, bring the whole clan down here. I'm gonna give you the land of Goshen. It's this really fertile, good, vibrant land. Your family can live there. They can have it. No one's going to mess with them. We'll give them the protection of the sovereign nation of Egypt. Go get your dad. And he gives them wagons and he gives them riches to go back. It's basically, he says, here's a bunch of U-Hauls. Go load up everybody and bring them back here. And so the brothers go, and they're overjoyed. And they get back to Jacob, and they tell him the good news. They say, your son Joseph, he's alive, and he's second in command over all of Egypt. And it says that Jacob was numb, and he couldn't process the news. And so they brought him near and they repeated to him, Joseph is alive and he's waiting for us to come and see him. And it says that Jacob looked out and he saw all the wagons and all the riches and all the gifts, and he believed his son. And he said some incredibly profound words in response to all of this. At the end of his life, after all the striving and all the stress and all the worrying and all the wondering, he looks out to the news that his son is alive and that he will see him again. And he says this, and Israel says in Genesis 45, 28, it is enough. My son Joseph is still alive and I will go see him before I die. And this week, for just a weird set of reasons, I was doing my sermon prep on a bench outside of Starbucks at North Hills, and I read the whole story to get a sense of it. And when I got to this phrase, when I got to Jacob at the end of it, looking out after his whole life of striving, and he could see God's provision, and he understood the story, and he understood the plan, he said, it is enough. And I wept. I put my head in my hands like a crazy person in public and I just cried on the bench. Because it's enough. Because how remarkable is it for Jacob to have gone through everything that he went through? All the ups and all the downs and all the hopes and all the dreams and all the strivings and all the realizations and all the healthy times of faith and all the impoverished times of faith, all the arid times and all of the fruitful times. All of the striving and wondering about his sons and the grief that he had gone through and lamenting the loss of Joseph and probably wishing he'd have done things differently and all the stress about sending Benjamin down and how is my family going to survive in the midst of a famine and all the worries that a man would have carried with him throughout his entire life as he went through all of those griefs and all of those trials and to arrive at the end of it and look at the blessings of God and see how he wrote the story and say, it is enough. And I didn't just weep for Jacob. I wept for us too. Because there's coming a time in all of our lives when we will collectively say, it is enough. It's good. If you're struggling with infertility, there's coming a time when you will say it is enough. We struggle. And I look at John and Lily, and it's enough. If your marriage is going through lean years, and it's a struggle, and it's hard, but you trust God with it, there will be a day where you say, it is enough. All the struggles and all the trials of raising kids and hoping that they turn out right and running the business and working out the things and all the things that stress us and keep us up at night. All the things that keep us worried. All the financial situations and should we move or should we should we do this, or how do we handle this situation, or our kid has crippling anxiety, and we don't know what to do, or I've struggled with depression, and I don't know what to do, all the things that stress us out over all the years, God is in heaven, and he is sovereign, and he loves you, and he has a plan for you, and there will be a day coming in this life or the next where you say, it is enough. And there will be all these little it is enoughs all along the way. Where you look at your situation, you look at your life and you go, this is good. I understand God's plan now. It is enough. But there's one big one coming at the end of time, which is what the whole next series in Revelation is about, where Jesus returns and makes the wrong things right and the sad things untrue, and we say together, collectively, it is enough. And this is so beautiful, because it's the hope that we cling to. It's the one that won't put us to shame. It's the ardent and fervent belief that keeps me clinging to what I do and keeps me believing in church and keeps me believing in faith and keeps me believing in Jesus that one day, even with all the stuff that doesn't make sense, right? Even with all the human suffering, even with early diagnosis that don't make sense to us, even with losses that don't seem fair, even with all the things that we go through that just don't make any sense to us and we can't fathom that God would let that happen. What we'll know is that one day we will be in heaven before God and his throne and we will see Jesus face to face. And on that day, in that place, we will say, it was always enough. And this is enough. That's the promise of faith. That if you believe in Jesus, one day you'll say beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is enough. Let's pray. Father, you're enough. You're everything that we need. Father, I know that you have a plan for us. I know that you didn't stop weaving stories together when you wrote Joseph's. You didn't stop making plans for your children when the Bible was finished. But you still do those things today. So Father, I pray that for those who are in a time of plenty, that as good and blessings abound, that they would look around and be grateful at your provision. God, for those who are in lean times, who are in uncertain times, would they cling to the truth that you have a plan and that that plan is enough, that plan is good. God, for those of us walking through hard times, will you just give us the strength to cling to you? To have a faith that surpasses understanding? Will you help us to trust in you, God? It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

We serve a God who's working through time to bring about His will and ultimately our good. We see the evidence of His sovereignty in the book of Genesis with the life of Joseph. To know and understand the story of Joseph is to get a glimpse into the very heart of God and to be assured that we can trust His plan. Last week we heard about Jacob and collectively wondered why God would choose to bless someone who at times acted so very ungodly. We were comforted to learn that God blessed Jacob because he had promised him that he would, and our God always keeps his promises, no matter our behavior. This week, we will see God make a promise to Joseph in the form of a dream, but immediately be forced to wonder if and how God will actually keep his promise. In the end, Joseph will be compelled to decide if he trusts God and trusts that despite uncertain circumstances, he has a plan. Well, good morning, church. It's good to see everybody. Thank you for being here today. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you yet, my name is Nate, and I would love to get to do that after the service. If you're checking us out online, thank you so much for doing that, and we'd love to see you here whenever you get the chance. Emil, those were the best announcements you've ever done. Thank you for that. Those were fantastic. This is the second part in our series called He Has a Plan, where we're going through the life of Joseph together. And so just as a reminder, it's a seven-week series, and the way that I'm looking at it and thinking about it as I write the sermons and think about how to weave them together is with the license that this is one big, long, seven-week sermon. Again, these sermons are not designed to stand alone by themselves and make the traditional point that you go home with thinking about, but rather each as a setup for the next as we follow the narrative of Joseph's life through scripture. And we're going to be spending a lot of time each week in the narrative, in learning the story, and thinking through what it would be like to walk through the story. Because I believe that honors the text. I believe that honors God's word that people have given their life to, have died for, have preserved through the years. And there's a reason that the author of Genesis recorded these stories. There's a reason that they choose the details that they do. And so we honor those stories and we honor the text and we honor our God by taking our time and going through the stories, not necessarily mining for things that can matter to us right now, primarily, but really as a vehicle to learn about God and his story as it's revealed in the stories of the Bible. So we're going to sink into them as we move through these next now six weeks. Last week, as you were reminded on our video there, that we started in the life of Jacob, Joseph's dad, whose name was later changed to Israel. And we picked up some important dynamics there, too, that are very relevant to the story this morning. The first is those promises that were made to Abraham that Jacob wanted to attach himself to. Abraham is Jacob's grandfather, Joseph's great-grandfather, and Jacob wanted to attach himself to those promises. And we're going to see those come up again today. And then we also learned, and this becomes very important, that Jacob had two wives. He married first Leah. He got tricked into marrying Leah by his uncle Laban, which is a really dirty trick. I mean, that's up there in terrible things to do to somebody, marry off a daughter that they're not interested in and then be like, well, you're stuck with her now. How must that have made Leah felt? And then he married the one that he really loved seven years later, Rachel. And what we didn't talk about last time that's worth mentioning now is that Leah was able to begin to produce male offspring with no problem at all, which was a huge deal in the ancient world. That's what you wanted was male offspring. And so Leah was able to do that with great efficacy. She had a bunch of kids, seven or eight boys. But Rachel really struggled to produce a male offspring. And it was years and years that went by of the struggle for her, which is a struggle that we see often in the Bible. Which is why I do very much think that God is near and cares deeply about those people, particularly those women who struggle to have the children that they want so desperately. That theme comes up again and again in the Bible, and Rachel is a part of that theme. But we see her eventually have a son, and his name is Joseph. Joseph is the firstborn son of the wife that Jacob really deeply loved. So we finished the narrative last week. Jacob had just encountered his brother Esau, and then he was moving into the land of Canaan, the land that was promised to his grandfather Abraham, and kind of setting up life and finally able to live the life that he had always wanted to lay hold of. And that's kind of where we pick up the story. So we turn over a couple of chapters, and we're in Genesis chapter 37, which is where we're going to be all morning this morning, if you have a Bible and you want to turn there. And we pick up the story when Joseph is 17 years old and they're living in the land of Canaan, what we now know as Israel. I'm going to begin reading in verse 2 and then verse 3 and 4 will appear on your screen. But this is where we pick up the story. Joseph, being 17 years old, was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more. Israel is Jacob. Remember when Jacob had the encounter with, we think, potentially Christ, his name would change to Israel. So now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. So there's a lot going on in the family dynamics there in those verses. But what we see is that Joseph, like I said, is the favored son. He's the firstborn son of Rachel, but he's got a lot of brothers. Joseph has 11 brothers, 12 sons in all, and they would become the 12 tribes of Israel when they move into that land later on in the time of Moses and Joshua. But right now they're just 12 individual dudes, and Joseph is younger than most of his brothers. The oldest, Reuben, was likely in his early to mid-30s by the time Joseph is 17 years old. So the dynamic is the patriarch of the family, Jacob, has two wives, and each wife has a servant that he uses as a concubine that each bear him some sons, but he's got a bunch of sons. But his first son from Rachel is the one that he loves the most. He's got another son from Rachel named Benjamin, and it's important that we remember that name because in week six and seven, we're going to encounter Benjamin again, and this is going to matter. But Joseph is his favorite son because that's from his favorite wife. Now, how do you think that made Joseph's brothers feel? These guys who are grown men, who are grown adults, and they're doing the hard work of the flocks. Jacob's not, he's not working with the herds anymore. He's not doing any of the stuff to generate the wealth. It's his sons that are doing it. And he's made it very clear to his sons that work the hardest that you are not my favorite, that Joseph is my favorite. This was, it's easy to say, a very unhealthy family and family dynamic. In the midst of this, Joseph is a 17-year-old, is out with the herds and his brothers. And this was a nomadic people. So Jacob was kind of the central hub. His camp was kind of the central hub. And then his herds were out in the countryside all around them. You could travel for a day before you would get to his sons and the flocks that they were tending. So they're pretty dispersed. And so Joseph comes back to his dad, Jacob, and he gives him a bad report of his brothers. Reuben doesn't know what he's doing. If Tally can't shear sheep worth a darn, they're terrible at this. They're selling them for peanuts. It's a bad operation out there. And he goes back and he tells on his brothers. And while he's back there telling on his brothers, his dad gives him the famous coat of many colors that we've probably all heard of before. And we might wonder, what's it matter that it was a multicolored coat? And I could get into all the stuff about how expensive it was to dye materials and what colors things normally were. And they were monochromatic and very easy to make and all that stuff. But suffice it to say, this is Joseph or this is Jacob in no uncertain terms, letting his sons know, this is my favorite son. I know that it's kind of been implied before. I know that you guys could probably figure this out, but now you need to know this. He's the guy. He's my favorite. It's not too dissimilar from the idea of somebody having a bunch of sons and whenever the son gets to be driving age, he buys them a truck, but it's a beater of a truck, like an old Ford Ranger with 180,000 miles on it that barely gets down the road. And then when Joseph comes of age, dad buys him a brand new F-150 with all the bells and whistles. And he takes that F-150 and he drives back to the brothers and he says, look at this truck. Joseph was incredibly unwise in this season of life. So he goes and he wears the coat around his brothers, which if it were me, I would thank you, dad, and I would fold that up and put it in my tent and I would come back to that later, but I wouldn't go wear it in front of my brothers. But this is what Joseph does because Joseph is dumb. And if you don't believe me that he's dumb, that he's just a dumb, bratty, snot-nosed 17-year-old kid, look at what he does. Joseph has some dreams. And this is important because Joseph has a gift from God that we'll see laced throughout the story as a dream interpreter, an interpreter of dreams. And I'll say up front before we read these, that there's nothing in the text that says that these dreams were from God, but all of the context around the text and all of the context around the life of Joseph suggests very much that these dreams are from God. And so I feel like I'm on solid footing if I were to espouse to you the idea that these are dreams that represent promises from God. But just know in your own thinking and the way you process the story yourself, it doesn't say that in scripture. That's just a license I'm taking with the context within which we find the dreams. We're going to look in 37 beginning in verse 7. These are the dreams that Joseph has. He says, So he has two dreams. In one dream, it's all equals, sheaves of wheat, stalks of wheat. And all of the wheat bows down to one wheat. And Joseph says, I'm the one. They were bowing down to me. Well, he has 11 brothers, so it's pretty obvious the symbolism here. And they respond in kind. Are you saying that you're going to rule over us? And then he has another dream. And in this dream, it wasn't just the planets, but the sun and the moon that bowed down to him as well, indicating his father and mother. And so the brothers resented him even more. But if you keep reading down into verse 10, what you'll find is it said that Jacob took this to heart. Jacob didn't get ticked yet because he kind of knew something was going on with this Joseph kid. He had already experienced in his life how God brings about his promises in unexpected ways. And this was really just a way of putting the writing, of taking the writing on the wall and putting it in front of their faces. Because the technicolor coat and all the other things indicated that Joseph was going to be the one to rule over his brothers. You'll remember from last week with the idea of birthright and blessing, that in the ancient world, the firstborn son received a double portion of inheritance from his father when his father passed away, and the firstborn son assumed the authority of the father if the father was incapacitated or passed away. So for Joseph to be the one that's favored above and beyond his other brothers, the writing is on the wall that one day all the older guys, Dan and Reuben and Naphtali and all the others, are going to be working for Joseph. And so it's at this point that I think it's worth just pausing and thinking about what Joseph is doing right here. Put yourself in his shoes. Pretend you're Joseph. And in your family dynamic, you know that you are your dad's favorite child. You also know that you have 10 brothers who are older than you. The oldest of whom is probably in his mid-30s. The rest are somewhere in their 20s. It's a whole swath between 17 and 35. And you know that they hate you. They can't stand you. They loathe you. They resent you. They do not want to work for you one day. And yet, your dad loves you and is going to elevate you above all of them. And so one day, you're going to have to find a way to get these guys to continue to work for you and produce for you and run the clan with them. These relationships are important. If Joseph is forward-thinking at all, which he was a 17-year-old kid, I don't know a single 17-year-old boy that is forward-thinking beyond prom. But if Joseph was forward-thinking at all, he would have understood, I'm going to have to lead these guys in the future. Me having a harmonious relationship with them is going to be pretty essential to our combined success. And so he ought to have slow played it. He ought to have been humble and played those things down. But instead he shows up wearing the coat instead of tucking it away and saving it for later. And if you had those dreams and you're Joseph, would you then go to your brothers who, by the way, in a land with no military and no police, no recourse for you, this is a place where might makes right. Are you going to walk up to them and be like, guys, I had a dream. Guess what it was? We were all weak, right? You with me? And then you guys bowed down to me. And then I had another dream. And you guys and mom and dad did too. How you like that, suckers? It was incredibly dumb and incredibly arrogant, incredibly bratty. At this point in his life, and we're going to talk about this more in a minute, because it's a stark transition from who Joseph becomes. But at this season of his life, Joseph is a snot-nosed 17-year-old brat. He's the worst kind of rich kid. He's kind of a terrible human, and he's rubbing his brother's noses in it. And so, one day, his dad says, go out to your brothers and check on the herds. And so off he goes. He goes to where his brothers are supposed to be, and they're not there. But someone points him in the right direction. He goes and he finds his brothers. As he's approaching, his brothers see him approaching and they begin to talk. And they say, hey, here's Joseph. He's coming. Let's just kill him. Let's just kill him and we'll tell dad that he's dead. And the thinking had to be, and then one of us can inherit the promises and we don't have to worry about that. One of us can be in charge of the family. We won't have to submit to Joseph. He's a jerk. That's going to be a terrible life to have to submit to this guy for the rest of our life. He's totally unbearable. Let's just kill him. And we'll tell dad that an animal got him. And they said, yeah, okay. Well, then the oldest son, Reuben, heard of this plan. And he was like, guys, let's not kill him. Let's just throw him in a pit. And in that way, he effectively saved Joseph's life, which is why to this day, the Reuben is the king of all sandwiches. I don't know if you guys ever knew that by that connection in scripture. They teach you that in seminary. So they decided to throw him in a pit. And then Reuben's off doing something else. I don't know what Reuben's doing. And Judah, one of the younger brothers, says, guys, what are we doing with Joseph in a pit? We can't make any money off of him. It doesn't do us any good. What are we going to do? We can't take him out now. He's going to tell dad on us. We're going to have to kill him. What do we get if we kill him? Nothing. Let's sell him. Here come the Midianites. They're known slave traders. Let's sell them to the Midianites. And at least we can make some money off of this, and then we'll tell dad that he's dead. So that's what they do. The Midianites come by. They sell Joseph to them. He's now a slave. They take the coat of many colors and they tatter it and they beat it up and they dip it in animal blood and they carry it home to Jacob and they say, we're so sorry we found this coat as we were coming back. It looks very much like some wild beast got to Joseph and killed your beloved son. We're so sorry, Dad. And then they grieve with him. And so Joseph goes from next in line to be the head of a tribe, the head of this clan, to on some ox cart in shackles, heading to a foreign country to be a slave. And it seems worth it to pause here and make note of this point, because this is not the Joseph that we know. When I think of Joseph, when I think of the Joseph of the Old Testament, I think of a man that personifies consistent obedience. I think of a man who at every turn does the right thing. I think of a man who we would all do well to be like Joseph. He is a moral exemplar in the Old Testament. Next week, we're going to look at his outright commitment to his own purity of heart and of spirit. I think of Joseph as a character to be attained to, of someone that I want to be like, who does the right thing all the time, no matter what. But in chapter 37, that's not the Joseph that we see. So there's a change that happens between chapter 37 and the rest of Genesis through 50. And I think that change is what's happening to him right here in this passage. And it makes me believe that humility always precedes obedience. Humility always precedes obedience. A humbling will happen before we can walk in the obedience that God asks of us. I'm not talking about little pockets of obedience. It's possible to be prideful and still obey in places. But what I'm talking about is it is impossible to live the obedient life that God calls us to. It is impossible to submit ourselves to God's word and to submit ourselves to God's will and his plan if we have not been humbled, if we are living arrogantly. Isn't this the fundamental agreement with salvation? Isn't that how it starts? Someone who is not a believer coming to the end of themselves, coming to a place where they say, you know what? I think I've been wrong about faith. I think I've been wrong about religion. I've been wrong about trying to be the Lord of my own life. God, I'm tired of doing it my way. I want to do it your way. Isn't there a fundamental submission in the obedience of salvation? And what is obedience besides agreeing that, you know what, I think that your way is better than my way? With your kids, we have a five-year-old. She has to choose to obey us. She has to choose to believe and humble herself and say, I'm not right here. You guys must be right, I'm going to trust you. Humility always precedes obedience. And if you think about it, how is it possible to become more Christ-like? How is it possible to be more like Jesus and carry a prideful and haughty spirit through life. Someone who is described as gentle and lowly in heart. How can we become more like that if we're prideful in ourselves? How can we produce the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. How can we produce those things? How can those things be produced in our life if we are walking in a prideful, haughty arrogance? If we walk out and we look at our house and we say, look at what I bought, look at how successful I am. If we look at our cars and say, look at what I drive. If we look at our friendships and say, look at who they are. If we look at ourselves in the mirror and say, look how good I look, which is a particular struggle of mine. And how can we look at the things in our life and attribute those things to ourself? Look at what I've built. Look at what we've done. Look at who I am. How can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that the people who disagree, who deign to disagree with us are stupid and misinformed and watch the wrong cable network that they shouldn't watch? Like how can we walk through life thinking that we're right about everything and that people who disagree with us must be inherently wrong about everything and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires? How can we think highly of ourselves as Joseph did and yet walk in the humility that obedience requires. We can't. And those of you who have been around long enough, which is approximately seven years, after seven years of life, you ought to have figured this out. Life has a way of bringing us all low, doesn't it? Life will humble you. One minute, you'll think you're the best. The next day, you feel like the worst. Life has a way of humbling us. And so I think the option for us, if we'll accept that the obedient life that God calls us to follows humility. And we'll accept that humility is going to happen. The question becomes, do you want to be humbled the easy way or the hard way? Do you want in your prayers to ask God of it, God, please keep me humble. God, please remind me of how much you love me. Please remind me of my own sin that you've forgiven in me so that I don't think overly hypocritically about other people and condemn others. Do we want to be people who pray and ask for God to keep us humble in what I believe is a gentle and loving way that our God does it? Or do we want to, like Joseph, be broken into humility? Not because God seeks to break us, but because life humbles us. How do we want to be humbled? The easy way or the hard way? This may be why Proverbs says in chapter 16 that pride comes before the fall, that a haughty spirit comes before destruction. This may be why James says in chapter 4 that God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble. There is a profound change in the life of Joseph, and I think it has everything to do with the humbling that he went through here. And the other thing worth pointing out, particularly for those of us in the room who are starting out our adult life, God had plans for Joseph. God made a promise to Joseph. Your brothers are going to bow down to you. Even your dad and your mom are going to bow down to you. God made that promise to him. There was a plan for Joseph. The problem was Joseph wasn't ready for that plan. The problem was the current version of Joseph was going to muck that one up. So Joseph has to go through a humbling and a changing so that when that plan arrives, he as a person is ready for it. And for many of us, sure, God has a plan for you. God wants things for you. God has designed you to do and accomplish certain things and to experience certain blessings and to be used in certain ways. The problem is you're not ready for God's plan yet. So His Holy Spirit grows us and humbles us and brings us to a place where our character can handle the plans that He has for us. So if it feels like you're treading water, if it feels like you're not accomplishing the things that you want to accomplish, or that you're not yet where you feel like you want to be, or even where it feels like maybe God has told you that you would be, I'm not saying it's the reason, but there's a chance that the current version of you simply isn't ready for the plans that God has for you. And so we're going to need to go through a humbling and a changing. At the end of this chapter, we stop at this perilous place for Joseph. Verse 36 in chapter 37 sums it up this way. It says, Meanwhile, the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard. This is where we will leave the story. We see this picture of a snot-nosed kid who can't get out of his own way, who angers his brother so deeply that they sell him into slavery and they go back and they tell his dad Joseph is dead. And Joseph goes from second in command, from claimant to the promises, from heir to the throne of a tribe, where he was going to be the guy. He goes from that to a slave, the slave of the captain of Pharaoh's guard, a slave in the most powerful nation on the planet, working for a guy that was tasked with protecting Pharaoh. It is a precipitous drop. And in this moment in his life, as he's being carted off by the Midianites, as he's eventually bought by Potiphar or representatives of Potiphar, I believe that Joseph faces this question that all of us at different points and seasons in our life face? Is he to resent God because he betrayed me or trust God because he loves me? That's the question that Joseph is faced with now as he travels down to Egypt. Do I resent God because I feel like he betrayed me or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? Because make no mistake, in this moment, Joseph had to have felt betrayed by his God. God gave him a promise. God rose him to prominence. God told him, your brothers are going to bow down to you. And in this moment, it seems like that's the exact opposite of what's happening. His brothers heard that. They didn't want it to happen. So they do the exact opposite of God's will and sell him into slavery so they don't have to worry about that anymore. Problem solved. We're never going to bow down to Joseph. And so it seems very much like what's happening in Joseph's life is the exact opposite of what his God had promised him. So Joseph feels betrayed. So he's got a choice. Do I resent this betrayal? Or do I choose to trust God because I know that I know that I know that he loves me? And if he loves me, he must have a plan for me. And here's the thing. Here's the thing that I love about this crossroads in the life of Joseph. The very thing that has caused him to feel betrayed by his God, the very thing that makes him doubt his faith, the very thing that makes it seem like God has let him down, the fact that he has been sold into slavery and has been brought low and humbled and is no longer where he was and cannot see a clear path to the promises that God gave him, the very thing that happens to cause Joseph to doubt God and feel betrayed by God is the thing that has to happen to bring about the future that God promises to Joseph. Do you understand? If you know the whole story, you know, spoiler alert, eventually his brothers do bow down to him. But his being sold into slavery by his brothers was a necessary trial and instance to go through so that God could put Joseph exactly where he wanted to put him 25 years later and bring about the promises that he made to Joseph when he was a 17-year-old snot-nosed kid. And from his spot, from the ox cart on the way to Egypt, Joseph cannot see that future. There is no path in his head that brings about the promise that God gave to him. He cannot see that future. And in the midst of that blindness where he cannot see how in the world is God going to be faithful to what he promised me, he has to choose. Do I resent God because he's allowing me to sit here? Or do I choose to trust him because I know that he loves me? And I know that he has his hand on me still. And you have to make that choice too. There are times in life when we feel betrayed by our God. When a diagnosis comes in that feels unfair. When we're faced with a loss that doesn't seem right. When we don't get the job, when we don't get the child, when the child that we do have is so difficult to deal with that we're not really sure what went wrong or how we could fix it. To be someone who follows God is to experience a season where we feel like in some way or another he's let us down. And when we're in that season, we have good company and that Joseph sat there too. And he had to choose. Am I going to resent God because I feel like he betrayed me? Or am I going to choose to trust him because I know that I know that I know that He loves me. And if He loves me, He must have a plan for me. That's where we're going to pick it up next week. Let's pray. Father, thank You for loving us. Thank You for having a plan for us. Thank You for creating us in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. I pray that we would cling to those promises. Cling to what is promised to us in Scripture. Because Romans tells us that we can hope in you because that's the one place we can put our hope where it won't be put to shame. God, thank you for your servant Joseph. And thank you for directing the author of Genesis to show us his humanity, to show us that he wasn't always this guy who made incredibly good choices at every turn despite the difficulties. Thank you for showing us that he was human just like we are. Lord, I pray for our humility, that we would be gentle and humble in spirit, that we would be increasingly like your son, Jesus, that we would think more highly of those around us and that we would see your blessings in our life and allow those to bring us appropriately low so that we can walk in obedience to you. Let none of us in here require the force that Joseph did to bring us to a place of humility. And God, if there are those of us who are tempted to resent you right now, I pray this morning that we would choose to trust you, that we would be assured in myriad ways that you love us deeply, profoundly, and unconditionally. It's in your son's name that we pray. Amen.

If you're like a lot of us, then this jar kind of looks like your life as we entered the pandemic. Lots of things in our life that are really important to us, big deals, things that we definitely want to prioritize, but maybe sometimes we have a hard time finding time for, and then other things in our life that are probably important, but maybe not essential, and we'd love to give our time to them, but we probably don't need to make big priorities out of them. But what happens in the end when we get so busy is that we don't have time for everything, right? But then with the pandemic, life, well it kind of hit the reset button. And we spent most of last year with nothing but time on our hands. And now, as we face moving back into what feels like normal, I think that we have this unique opportunity to reassemble our lives. And as we have this opportunity, I thought it would be appropriate for Grace to stop and really think critically about well, what are our big rocks? What are the things in our life that are the most important to us? What are the things that we want to prioritize above and beyond everything else? And what would our life look like if we actually identified our big rocks and prioritized our time around those things? What if we put these rocks in first and made sure that there was space in our life for the things that were most important and then around those things we allowed all the other little things to kind of fill in the rest of our time and priorities? What would it look like if we were to hit the reset button on our life and reassemble it in such a way that we had time and space for what was important to us and we didn't have to worry at all about the other things that just at the end of the day they're not nearly as big of a deal? What are our big rocks And how do we make space for them as we enter into a new normal? Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Isn't it cute in that video how I assumed that we were just charging right back into normal? And then here we are in masks again. Boy, the naivety as we roll into each wave of this is pretty funny, especially to think back. I can remember back in March of 2020 having conversations. Joe, the moderator of our board, called me in between the 8th and the 15th of March, and he said, hey, I think maybe we need to take a break. Maybe we can't meet in person this Sunday. And I was like, Joe, this is a big decision. I don't know if we should do this. And he goes, no, man, I really think we need to. And I'm like, Joe, listen to me. This is not going to be like a two-week thing. This could go well into April. So who the heck knows? But it's good to see everybody. Thank you for doing your part. And this is the last part of our series called Big Rocks, which if you've been here all four weeks or you've watched online all four weeks and you've watched that intro video of me four times in a row, good for you. That's serious partner of the year stuff right there. This week, as we talk about our priorities in life and approaching this fall, we're going to talk about the idea and the topic of community. And if you've been in church for any amount of time, you've heard a sermon on community. If you've been here, you've probably heard me talk about the importance of community. In our mission statement, we emphasize community by saying that grace exists to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. So you might be tempted when I say that the sermon this week is on community, you might be tempted to kind of glaze over and go, yep, got it. Christian community is important. I'm going to do it. Good. And then start thinking about whatever you've got going on the rest of the day, lunch plans, or if you're me trying to get the grass cut before the thunderstorm start, whatever it is you've got going on, you might be tempted to take your head there when I say that the sermon is going to be on community because we might feel like we kind of get it. But if that's you, I want to encourage you to lean in this morning. Because I hope that what we'll do is I'll leave here or I'll turn off our TVs, wherever we might be consuming this, that we will finish this experience this morning or whenever you're listening, thinking differently about the power and efficacy of community than when we started. I hope that we will be inspired to pursue it as if our lives depended on it. I think the idea of community is incredibly important. And if you read your New Testament, if you read the Bible, the New Testament that starts with the Gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ, and then on to the end of Revelation, if you read your New Testament, if you read the Bible, the New Testament that starts with the gospels, the accounts of the life of Christ, and then on to the end of Revelation, if you read your New Testament and you pay attention, what you'll find is a lot of we's and ours and collective you. Like when Paul writes in the letters that he says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. And he says, I pray for you. I thank my God every time I remember you. That's not you as an individual. That's a collective you as the church in Rome or Philippi or Ephesus. The Gospels are written to an audience, are written to a church, are written to a group of people. You find in the New Testament very few personal, singular pronouns. You find very you singular yous. You should do this, you should do that, God did this, whatever it is for just you. You don't find those in the New Testament. What you find in the New Testament is collective we and are. The New Testament assumes that your faith will be communal. It assumes that you have other Christians around you walking in the same direction you are pursuing, the same Jesus that you are pursuing. As a matter of fact, if you go to Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, that's not in your notes, so you can write that down if you want to. You can turn there if you get bored at some point in the sermon, which is likely to happen. Turn to Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, and make sure that I'm not making this stuff up. That is the quintessential church passage. There is no pastor who has preached more than two sermons on community and has not based one of the sermons in that passage. It is a quintessential church passage. It describes what the church looked like and did in its very infancy. As soon as Christ ascends and we have Pentecost and Peter and the disciples share the gospel, we see 3,000 people come to faith that day. That's the birth of the church. And then Acts chapter 2 verses 42 through 47 describes what the church did and how it behaved in its infancy. It is the barometer by which all church for the rest of time is measured. And if you read those verses, what you find is collective wheeze. It's communal. The church did this and they committed themselves to the apostle teaching. They devoted themselves to prayer. They met in one another's homes day by day. They were together all the time pursuing teaching, sharing meals, praying together, learning together, pursuing Jesus together. It is a communal activity. Your faith, if you have it, is quintessentially communal, which is why there's a little bit of an issue in evangelical churches with this phrase that we like to use sometimes. Raise your hand if you've ever heard the phrase that Christianity is about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Have you ever heard that? Now listen. Christianity is about a personal faith. It's about a personal belief that God is the creator and author of the universe, that to reconcile his creation to himself, namely you, he sent his son to die in your place, and we place our faith in Jesus' death on the cross, and we place our hope in his resurrection on Easter, that one day we will be united with our God and reunited with those who also have faith in our Jesus, and we have a hope that will not put us to shame. To be a Christian, you need to individually believe that and have faith in that, and one of the remarkable things about Christianity is that our God does offer us a personal relationship with him. But listen to me closely. We must have an individual faith, but your faith is not about your personal relationship with Jesus Christ because your relationship with Jesus Christ is not personal. It is communal. We see it over and over again in Scripture. It is a communal faith. It is not just your business. It is our business as a church. We don't see that phrase, personal relationship with Jesus Christ, pop up in the Bible. We see a necessity for an individually claimed faith. But make no mistake about it, your faith is quintessentially communal. It is, I would argue, it is impossible to grow close to Jesus and have a vibrant walk with him totally by yourself. To take your Bible and a prayer book and to wander off in the desert like these mystical people who have existed before us that we somehow, we look at and we think that they were the ones who had nailed faith. And I don't think any of those existed, but the people who just go off by themselves and just totally ensconced in God's word and in prayer, and it's just them and God. you can't have a vibrant walk with Jesus doing that because loving Jesus requires you to love others. If your love from Jesus does not cause you to pour out love onto other people, then you are not expressing the love that Jesus has lavished on you. You are bottling that up. You are keeping that to yourself. To live a non-communal faith is fundamentally self-centered. And we miss out on who Jesus is by not lavishing his love on others in the same way that he loves us. John tells us in his letters at the end of the Bible that if we love Jesus, then we will love others. The Christian faith was not designed to live alone. I think that there are parts of Jesus that you find in loving other people. We cannot come to know Christ in the way that he wants to be known if we are trying to do it void of loving others and serving others and doing his work. This is why the mission statement at Grace is connecting people to Jesus first, but also connecting people to people. Because your walk with God will not be as vibrant and as healthy as it can be if it is void of community as you share your faith. So community and our faiths is vitally important. It's why I think that community is God's primary tool for tethering, comforting, and sustaining his children. Community is God's primary tool for tethering his children to him, for comforting his children in their time of need and for sustaining them in their walks and in the commitments that he's led you to make. Now, I would offer you a caveat here. I need to, if you have notes, if you're a note taker, please write this in your notes. Community is God's primary tool dash outside of heaven. It's God's primary tool this side of heaven to tether us and to sustain us and to comfort us. Because he tethers us with his son. He sustains us with his spirit. He comforts us with Jesus as he weeps with us. But these things, this community I'm going to show you is the way that God gives himself time to work in your life to bring you to a place where you're walking with him. It's the way that God the Father throws his arms around you in times of trouble. It's the way that God comes beside you and sustains you when your faith and your commitments are faltering. So I do not at any point want to replace the work that the Holy Spirit and God the Father and Jesus are doing in our lives and moving in us, but I do want us to see that community is often the tool that they use to work powerfully and effectively in our lives. I say that it's the primary tool for tethering, for kind of keeping us attached to the faith, even at times when we might be wandering off. With that in mind, I'm going to share something with you that I really am not sure that I'm all the way ready to share, because if I share it and then I don't do it, I'm a failure and a quitter. But last week, I committed with some friends of mine to run a half marathon at the end of February. I committed to do this because I'm fat now, and I need to. Somebody asked me before the service, why is your shirt tucked down? Like, are you being serious today? I'm like, no, no, I'm fat. I need to be able to blouse a little bit for the camera, you know? But I'm sharing that with you because if you know me well, you know that I've got a group of really good buddies. One guy I've been best friends with since I was five years old, so we've been friends for 35 years. And then there's eight of us total. We've been friends together, all of us, for at least 20 years. And we talk on this app called Marco Polo. It's probably for high school girls, but we love it and we use it to talk back and forth. We talk every day. And so there's eight of us and we legit, we talk every day. Whatever's going on in the world, whatever's happening in sports, whatever's happening in our lives, we talk about it. Just this morning, I was watching my friend, he dropped his daughter off at college yesterday and was telling us how emotional he got about it. And I'm in my office getting emotional about Lily starting kindergarten tomorrow. And if I talk about it for too long, I'm gonna get emotional in front of you. So we talk about stuff all the time. And then we have different threads for different topics. You know, different things that some of us may wanna talk about, but not everybody does. Anyways, we've got one for exercising. I can't tell you the name of it. There's a cuss word in it, but we've got one for exercising. And I started it. I started it back in January. I was like, guys, I'm fat now. I think I want to start eating well. I think I want to start exercising. Is anybody with me? And seven of them were like, yeah, let's do it. My one buddy, Tim, God bless him. He does not care. And I wish I could be more like Tim. But the rest of us were in there. And so we're encouraging each other every day, right? But eventually, I just stopped caring. I kind of fell off the wagon. Having a nine-month-old or an eight-month-pregnant wife will do that to you. And then so will having an infant and a three-month-old. It kind of takes you out of your regular rhythm. So it's been more difficult, and I kind of just lost my desire to do it, and to the point where they were daily talking about their workouts and the stuff that they're doing and yada, yada, yada. And I would just skip. Like, I wouldn't even listen. I would just fast-forward to the last one, hit play, skip to the end of that one, and so that those didn't show up as new, because I don't know. You people that just leave notifications on your phone, I don't know how you live with yourself. So I would have to go and just skip all the way through it, right? Ignoring it. And then I even became the devil on the shoulder of the people. They would share sometimes when I would listen, like, I didn't do anything today. I've been eating like crud lately. I just don't feel good about myself. And then I'd go out there and be like, come on over. It's great over here. There's barbecue and sweet tea. This is wonderful. Just buy larger fishing shirts and you're good. Like you can just let it all hang out. It's really, really great. It's good over here. But somewhere in that week and a half ago, my buddy got on there and he said, hey, I found a half marathon in Greenville and I think it would be fun if we would train for it together and try to run it together. And something about it, I don't know what it was. I don't know. I had some weakness that day and I said, yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Like it caught me on a good day. And I said, let's do this. Let's do it. And they were all very surprised that I was into it. But now I think there's five or six of us who are going to do it. And I'm only a week and a half in and I'm just a slow lumbering mess. As a matter of fact, if you live in my neighborhood, Falls River and then Bedford or whatever, and you see me running, can you just do me a favor and avert your eyes? And we'll just both pretend like that never happened. Do not honk at me or wave. I do not want to know that you saw me. I'd just like to live in this world where no one can see me lumbering down the road. But it's been fun to get back to it and to begin to train and begin to exercise and share that with my buddies. And I feel more inspired now to do this than I have in a long time. And I really think it might stick. So barring injury, which is more of a factor than it's ever been in my life, Lord willing, I'll run that thing in February and I'm looking forward to doing that. I share that story because I believe that this is what Christian community does with us for the church. To be a Christian for any amount of time is to go through a season of wandering. It's to go through a season where I was once committed, I once cared very much about my spiritual health, I was once very consistent in going to church and going to small group and reading my Bible and praying on my own, and I can remember seasons of vibrancy in my life, but now I'm just, whatever you want to call it, I'm in a rut, I'm wandering off, I don't feel it right now, I just am not, I'm going through some things and I just not sure that I can really connect with God. I'm not really sure that's a thing that I want. To be a Christian is to have gone through a season of wandering and probably not just one. And what community does is it keeps us tethered to our faith, even in times when we're not necessarily very committed to our faith. I didn't leave that thread because I like my buddies. I wanted to know what they were talking about. I wanted the community there. Even though I wasn't engaged in what they were engaged in, even though I wasn't pursuing what they were pursuing, I didn't want to totally detach myself because I thought maybe one day I will. Plus, I want to know what my friends are talking about. I don't want to have FOMO. So I stayed in there. And then one day, because I was tethered to that group by the community in that group, something caught me right. And I said, yeah, I'm going to make that choice for my health or for my children. Church community does this too. As we're going through a season of wandering, maybe we're not feeling faith right now. Maybe we're not super committed to it. Maybe we're not doing the things in private that we know we ought to be doing, but we keep showing up because we love the people in our small group. We keep showing up because we love to serve on Sunday morning. We keep showing up because that's our community and we don't want to miss out and those are our people. And then one day when you're at church or your small group or you're having a conversation or one day God speaks to you. He shows you something. You have an experience that moves you. Something catches you right. And that's what clicks and you re-engage in your spiritual life and you begin to pursue Jesus again. Our community tethers us to God in a very real way. Don't raise your hand, but I would ask you, those of you who are Christians, has there been a season of your life where if you didn't have Christian brothers and sisters who loved you and who just accepted you, not who came after you and got onto you and tried to convict you for the decisions that you were making, but who simply loved you, have you had seasons in your life that if it weren't for your Christian community tethering you to your faith, that you would have walked away from it entirely? Yeah. Or you're not being honest. God places us in community because he knows there will be times when we wander, and when we do, he's tethering us about this wandering at the end of his book. he writes this, my brothers and sisters, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring that person back, remember this, whoever turns a sinner from the error of their way will save them from death and cover over a multitude of sins. Not only do we have brothers and sisters who love us as we begin to wander and tether us to our faith and kind of draw us back to God as God works on our souls to soften them back to himself. But we also have the opportunity in Christian community, in church community, to be the one that pulls back a wandering brother or sister. To be the one who just consistently loves, who just consistently shows up for, who just consistently says, I'm not here to judge you. I'm just here to love you. I'm here to enjoy you. Not a project friendship, deep, meaningful friendship. When we express that with one another, when we express the kind of community that I've seen at Grace, we are used by God to tether people to their faith and draw them back towards him. You are a tool in his hand used to draw back a wondering brother or sister by simply maintaining community with people even if it feels like they're wandering. So those of you who have wandering friends, which, has there ever been an easier time than now to wander away from the church? Continue to love them. Continue to be that tether that lets them know anytime you want to come back, we're here, we love you. And you can be a brother or a sister that is blessed according to James as we do that. The community here is absolutely a huge way that God keeps us tethered to him and to our faith. Community is also an enormous tool in the hands of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit as they seek to comfort us. We're told in Psalms that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, that he saves those who are crushed in spirit. It's this idea that when we're at our lowest, God is at his closest. I've preached from stage many times, John 11, 35, the miracle of that verse. It's the shortest verse in the Bible that says that Jesus wept when he met Mary in her sorrow at the loss of her brother Lazarus. Jesus' response was to weep with her. And we get to preach and we get to claim and we get to know that we have a Jesus who weeps with us. And that's wonderful. But have you ever thought about how he does that? Have you ever thought about how God brings himself close to the brokenhearted? Will he bring his presence and his spirit close to the brokenhearted? Yes, absolutely he will. And he will speak into difficult times. Just yesterday, I was sitting on my porch swing and we've had a difficult couple of days and I felt pretty stressed. And I was just sitting there in the rain because that's what I love to do. And it was a good storm yesterday. And there was just this moment where God spoke some encouragement into my life. And it instantly gave me a peace. And so God will absolutely do that and comfort us in that way. But have you ever considered that the church community itself is also how God wraps his arms around us? Have you ever considered that our church community crying with us is also how Jesus weeps with us? Have you ever considered that that might be why Paul tells us to weep with those who weep and mourn with those who mourn? Because that is the expression of the very body of Christ hurting with those who hurt. Jen told me as I was talking through this sermon with her, she said, you got to tell the Lisa story. And I'm actually glad she's not here. Jen's not here this morning, because we'd be a sobbing mess. But if you've been going here since the end of last year, at least, then you likely know that in December of 2020, December 29th of 2020, just to cap off a real humdinger of a year, we lost Jen's dad, John, to pancreatic cancer. That's who our son is named after. And so in the months prior, Jen had been down there a lot. They're located in Athens. Jen had been down there back and forth a lot. And at some point she came home. After Thanksgiving, she came back with me and we were home. And John has a brother-in-law named Edwin who's a doctor. And Edwin and Mary stayed with John. And Edwin told me, Nate, go back home, take your family. We don't really know what's going on with John. But when you need to be here, when it's time for family to be around him, we'll call you. I said, all right. So we came back. We were back for about a week. No, it was just a couple days. It wasn't even a week. And it was the Sunday of December 6th. And at the time, we weren't meeting in person because we'd had a COVID flare up, and so we were just chilling out for a little bit. And so I had to come that morning on December 6th, and we did a live service. So we had worship worship and then I was to preach, right? And five minutes before the service started, my phone rings and it's Edwin. And he says, you need to get down here. So I said, all right. So I called Jen. So we need to get down there. I'm going to go ahead and preach this sermon. And then we'll hop in the car and we'll go home. Let me tell you something. I have no idea what I preached December 6th. I have never been less present for a sermon in my whole life. If you watched it and got something out of it, the Holy Spirit is good, okay? Because my mind was not on that sermon. And I got done and things felt so urgent that I literally, and I never do this, I just pulled off my mic and everything. I set it down. I got right in my car and I drove away. Steve was still playing. The band was still going. Folks were still here. I just got in my car and I left. And when I got in my car, I texted Steve and Kyle because they were both here that morning. And I said, hey, I'm so sorry for leaving so quickly. Here's what's going on. We got to head home. And I go home. I get Jen and we're scrambling to get out the door. We scrambled to get out the door so quickly that to pack for this trip, I just opened up the biggest suitcase I have and dumped all my dirty clothes in it and then grabbed clean clothes and threw them in there, zipped it up, and we headed out the door. I can do laundry where I'm going. I don't know how long I'm going to be there. But that's the kind of urgency that we were trying to get out the door with. In the middle of that, somebody rings our doorbell. And we're like, who's ringing our doorbell on a Sunday morning? And we look, and it's Lisa Goldberg, Steve's wife. And she's at our door, and clearly Steve had called her or texted her and told her what was going on. And see, Lisa's mom passed away of pancreatic cancer a few years prior. Actually, right before, right as Steve and Lisa were moving here to become a part of Grace. And she knew the road that Jen was about to walk. So Jen goes and answers the door. And Lisa has a little gift bag prepared for her and hands it to her and just gives her a hug and starts crying. And Jen was telling me about it this week, and she said she can't even remember Lisa saying any words. Maybe I'm sorry. They just hugged for a really long time. And then we got in the car and we left. And that hug and those tears meant more to Jen in the following weeks than they did in the moment. Because in the moment, she didn't know the hell that she was about to walk through. But Lisa did because she had walked it. And so that provided her with comfort as she walked through that period. You can't tell me that that morning wasn't Jesus coming to our door and wrapping his arms around my wife. He did. That's how he weeps with us. That's how he comforts us. That's why he tells us to weep together. Because when we do those things, we're the hands and feet of God. We're the hands and feet of Jesus wrapping ourselves around people who are hurting. That's how God expresses his love to us. That's how we express ourselves as the body of Christ. He places us in community so that our community can comfort us when we need it. So that he can be close to the brokenhearted. So that we can experience having a God that weeps with us. That's what community does. And it also sustains us. And this is my favorite. Community sustains us. There's this great picture in Exodus. Exodus chapter 17. I'm just going to tell you the synopsis of it, but the story is in verses 8 through 16. I'm going to be a mess. David, can you go get me a tissue? Do you mind doing that? Thank you, sir. Oh, Wes is on it. Thanks, Wes. That's why Wes is an elder, because he does things like that. Oh. That's why Cindy's a resting elder. Thank you. All right, give me a second. I'm sorry. Especially if you're watching online. You're just going to watch me turn my back. All right. Does anybody else need some of these? I saw a couple of tears out there. In Exodus 17, there's a guy named Amalek who's brought his armies against Israel. Moses is the head of the nation at this point. Joshua is his general. Moses is too old to lead people into battle. And so Moses tells Joshua, you go down into the select some men, go down into this valley and you fight Amalek. And as you fight him, I will be up here and I will have my hands raised to God. And as long as my hands are raised to God, then you will win the day. And Joshua says, okay. So he goes down and he begins to fight Amalek. And as he's fighting Amalek, Moses is on the top of the mountain with his hands raised. And as his hands are raised, then what he said comes true. And God is with Joshua and Joshua is winning the battle. But battles are long and Moses is old. And I guarantee you, he had lived a life of shepherding for 40 years. If you wanted to have a hold your hands over your head contest, he would crush everybody in this room. But at one point or another, no matter how strong you are, you'd get fatigued. And he needed to take a rest and let the blood get back in his shoulders. And when he would rest, the army would begin to be defeated and the battle would go towards Amalek. And so he's in this struggle of trying to hold his hands up, but not having enough strength to do it. And they're losing the battle if he can't hold his hands up. So what happens? Well, his brother Aaron and his friend named Hur, H-U-R, are next to him and they find a rock and they put a rock behind him and they tell him to sit on it and then they stand. I love this picture. They stand next to him and they hold his hands up so that he doesn't have to anymore. That's the best picture of community in the Bible. Because each of you, your husband, your wife, your friend, your Christian, your son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, if you're a woman in this church who's married and you have children, you've got a marriage that you're holding up, that you're offering to God. You've got children that you're trusting to God. You've got concerns in your own life. You've got your own faith that you need to carry. You've got your own stresses and your own anxieties and your own worries, and you're facing those battles. And life is long, and I don't care how strong you are. At some point or another, your hands get tired. At some point or another, you think, I don't know if I can do it with this marriage. I don't know if I have the energy it takes to make this thing go. I just don't know if I can pick my hands up anymore. I don't know if I can continue to love these kids the way they need to be loved. I don't know what to do. I can't pick my hands up anymore. I don't know if I can walk in faith. I just can't see it. I have so many questions. God's disappointed me in these ways. I just don't know if I can keep doing this anymore. And when you're on your own, you're right, you can't. This is why we're placed in community, for our friends to come up beside us and grab our hands and say, hey, buddy, I got you right now. I will fight for your marriage right now. I will hold your hands up and fight for your faith right now. I will stand beside you and hold your hands up for your children and for your business and for your health and for your love of Christ right now. I will stand in this gap for you, and I will be the strength that you don't have. That's what community does for us. Our friends come alongside us, and they hold our hands up, and they give us the energy and the strength for the battle that we can't fight right now. And that's what community offers to others. This is why I think that community, this side of heaven, is the most powerful and effective tool that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit use to tether us to him, to comfort us, and to sustain us in our faith and the commitments that he's led us to making. And I'll end with this because I think this is important. Community is a choice. It's a choice. That kind of community, that kind of community where someone shows up at your door just to wrap their arms around you because they know what you're about to walk through, that kind of community that grabs your hand and holds you up when you can't do it, that kind of community that loves you when you're wandering and keeps you tethered to your faith so that you can wander back. That kind of community, that doesn't happen by default, man. We don't just stumble into that. That kind of community we show up for. Sometimes in small groups, I'll talk about it in a second, we sign up for. And then we let the Lord do his work in bringing us together and knitting lives together. We have to choose that community. Just last night, some friends of ours had a birthday party. And our childcare fell through, and so we had to figure out what to do. And so we decided that Jen was going to go to dinner, and they were going to go to drinks afterwards. Jen was going to go to dinner, and then when she got home, I was going to go and have a drink or two with our friends and then come back. That's what we decided we were going to do. Well, Jen stayed at dinner until like 9.15. I needed her to be back at like 6.15. Do you think, listen, I don't know how well you guys all know me. You think I wanted to go anywhere at 9.30 on Saturday night? No, I was in my gym shorts with paint on them and a big baggy t-shirt and Crocs and I was unshowered. I didn't want to go anywhere. But I also knew that I couldn't get up here today and preach about community if I wasn't going to prioritize my own. So they got Saturday night and ate and I showed up just how I was dressed. And we had ourselves a grand old time over at, I think, Tonic in Wake Forest. We have to choose community. It's not always convenient. You're not always going to want to go to small group. You're not always going to want to prioritize it. Parents of elementary and middle school age kids, you'll never be in a busier season in your whole life. It's so hard right now to prioritize small group. Do it. Community is a choice. It's an essential tool that God has placed in our life to bring us closer to him, to experience his love of us. In a minute, I'm going to talk more about small groups. But I want to encourage you here at the end of the sermon to sign up for them. If you're not in one, join one. Step into this community and let's begin to pursue it together and let's let God use this place to further connect us to him. Let's pray. God, thank you for you. Thank you for how you love us. Thank you for who you are. God, thank you for our friends. Thank you for the people who love us, who we get to share life with. Thank you for our brothers and sisters who draw us back in our wandering. Thank you for the ones who comfort us. Thank you for the ones who sustain us and hold up our hands when we are too weak to do it. God, give us the desire and the conviction to choose community. To choose to live our faith with those around us. Remove any obstacles that we might have, whether fabricated or real, and knit us together, God, as a church family, that we might love one another well, that we might express your love for one another well. That we might support and sustain one another well. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I am the senior pastor here. If you're here this morning and I haven't yet had the chance to meet you, I would love to do that. So please say hello in the lobby after the service. If you're watching online, thanks for doing that. Particularly if you're on vacation, thanks for making us a part of your Sunday, even while you're away. This is the last sermon in our series, One Hit Wonders, where we have been pausing and looking at some verses and passages that we don't often get to stop at in a normal series or in our normal Bible study. Some of the lesser known verses and passages that we find in Scripture, a lot of them have been in the Minor Prophets, which is a whole section of the Old Testament that we don't often explore. But this morning is admittedly more of a greatest hit than a one-hit wonder. It's actually apropos with the last question of our little game, trivia game that we were playing there in the bumper video. Steve, I don't know if you did that on purpose, but I'm actually going to pull this one out of Psalms, which is that's the Beatles of the Bible. All the greatest hits there are in Psalms. And so the one that I'm pulling out this morning is one that we have framed and in our house. It's a very frameable verse. I would encourage you to do that. If you've never heard Psalm 1611 before, I think it's going to be one that you'll identify with and appreciate, and hopefully we can leave today thinking about in a different way, especially if you are aware of this verse. But Psalm 1611 simply says this. This is where we're going to focus this morning. David writes, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there's fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's a heck of a verse, isn't it? I mean, that's a really encouraging, life-giving verse. That's a great promise that David makes to us through the voice of God in Psalms. And as we walk through it, that first sentence, you make known to me the paths of life. Often in Psalms, David adopts kind of the motif of a shepherd, us as the sheep and God as our good shepherd. Psalm 23 is a very familiar Psalm where it says, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So maintaining that illustration, you make known to me the paths of life is this picture of a shepherd leading his sheep to the good places, leading his sheep to where they can eat, to where they can drink, to where they can rest, to where they'll be protected. And so he's saying, and in the onset, you lead me to the life-giving paths, to fullness of life. You lead me, God, to the best possible places. And then he says, in your presence, there's fullness of joy. Now, I don't know if you've ever thought about this. Not everyone here is a scientist. You may not be aware of this fact, but you can't get fuller than full, man. When you're full, that's it. This idea in sports that we give 110%, that's bupkis. You can't do it. It's 100%. That's it. When you're full, you're full. So what he's saying is in God's presence, you will experience maximum joy. It is impossible to find any other place in the known universe, any other scenario, any other situation. It is impossible to pursue any other relationship in which you will find more joy than in your relationship with God, than in the presence of the Father, there is fullness of joy. And then he says, and at the right hand of the Father are pleasures forevermore. And we learn in Romans and Hebrews that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for us as our high priest. So what that is saying is, in Christ, if we obey John 15, when Jesus says, abide in me and I in you and you will bear much fruit, if we abide in Christ, if we pursue him, if we love him, if we chase him, if we know him, if we are intimate with him, then we will experience pleasures forevermore. That's some astounding promises, right? He's going to lead us to the best places possible in God's presence as we pursue him, as Steve and Lisa invited us into worship, as we go into worship, as we take ourselves like in Isaiah 6 into the throne room of God in prayer, in his presence, we will experience the fullness of joy. And then as we pursue Jesus and we go to his right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. That's a pretty good promise, isn't it? Isn't that what we're all chasing anyways? Just better days and a happier existence? If we were to say for ourselves, what do you want in 20, 30 years? We'd say, I just want to be happy. If you have kids and you say, what do you want for your kids? One of the things I promise would be in your top five answers is, top three answers is, I just want them to be happy. This verse promises that. So I actually think that if we really believe that, if we really believe Psalm 1611, that our own selfishness would drive us to God. If we really believe this verse, that he's going to lead us to try to be generous or unselfish. We can do the most selfish thing possible, and that selfishness should, in theory, based on these promises, drive us straight to the throne of God. We should respond to this verse. Like I responded to the news in my mid-twenties that places like Fogo de Chão existed. Now, I don't know if you know what Fogo de Chão is, because we had one in Atlanta. That's where I'm from. We don't have one in Raleigh. It's a Churras, Korea. It's a Brazilian steakhouse. There's one over in Briar Creek, I think. I still need to get over there. But in a Brazilian steakhouse, let me just, let me just tell you what they do there. Okay. This is unbelievable. Some of y'all know. If you know me, you know, I love steak. I really do. I had steak the other night for the first time since John was born because I like to make it myself and it's a whole process and I was in heaven watching the recorded Open Championship. Anyways, I love steak. And they told me, and I was like 25, 26, you know there's this place called Fogo de Chão. And when you go there, there's a card next to your plate. And one side is red and one side is green. And when you put it on the green side, they just bring you steak until you flip it back to red. And I'm like, what now? And so I go to this place, right? And there's these men and they walk around with these skewers of perfectly cooked steak. And they bring it up to you. Your card is green. They go, would you like some, sir? Yes, I would. I'm glad that you came. And they start to slice the filet or the top sirloin or the skirt steak or the bottom sirloin or the lamb or whatever it is. Jen, we need to go to this place for lunch today. They just start shaving it until you tell them to stop. If you want a steak mountain on your plate, you can have a steak mountain. It's amazing. And I'm just telling you, if you leave there without the meat sweats, you're not a good American. It's a remarkable place. And so when they told me that this place existed, with all of my heart, all I thought is, I want to go to there. I want to go. I'll save my money. I will lie to people. I will disappear for three days so I can go to this place and experience phogo to chow. That's where I want to go. That's how we should respond to this verse. What? There's a place I can go and there is fullness of joy. There are pleasures forevermore. There's someone I can follow who will lead me to only the best places. That's a thing? I want to go to there. I'll disappear for three days. I'll sever relationships. I'll give up whatever I do. I'll save up whatever I gotta do. I want to go to there. That's how we should respond to this verse. If we believe that the Bible is the word of God and that what's in here is eternally true and good and right and worth staking our life on, if we really believe that this is God's word and that what he's telling us, what David is saying is true, then why don't we treat the kingdom of God like Jesus tells us to when he said the kingdom of God is like someone who finds a pearl in a field and they sell everything they have so they can buy that field and have that pearl. We would forsake everything for the kingdom of God and for the presence of God and to walk and abide with Jesus if we really believe this. But see, for me, I'm just talking about me. I'm not talking about you guys. For me, my actions don't bear out that I really believe this. If I really, truly believe that in the presence of God, I would find the fullness of joy, then I would betray everything that's not associated with that presence and chase after it as hard as I could. But I don't. And see, I'm preaching this because I've been a Christian about as far back as my memory goes. I've been around Christians for 40 years. I've talked to a lot of them. I have yet to meet a single Christian that when I ask them, how's your relationship with God going? How you doing? How's your spiritual health? I've never heard a single one of them say, I'm nailing it. I mean, I'm really good at this. I mean, about five, 10 years ago, I got to this place where I was just really walking with the Lord and now I'm just waiting on him to come down here and carry me up to heaven in a chariot without having to experience death. How can I help you? I've never met that person. Everyone I talk to has this profound sense of, I ought to be doing better by now. I know better than to do the things that I do. I thought I'd be closer with Jesus by now. I thought I'd be further along. I thought I'd be more spiritually mature and spiritually healthy. That's my experience of faith. There's this constant voice going, why aren't you better at this? And I think it's because we don't really believe that verse. We say we do. Do you believe the Bible? Yes. Every word? Yes. All of them. Okay, well, we don't seem to believe this one. So the interesting question becomes, why is that? Why do we have such a hard time trusting this verse in Psalms that says that in the presence of God, in the presence of Jesus, there are pleasures forevermore, which we all would agree we want. Then why doesn't our life look like we believe it? I think one of the big reasons is that we have an impoverished view of Jesus. We just have this impoverished view of who Jesus is. I've told you guys this before. I do premarital counseling with couples that are getting married. And one of the things I always ask them, so I won't belabor this because I really have told you guys this before, but the point that I'm making is important. I'll ask them on a scale of one to 10, place yourself on that scale of spiritual health. 10 is just zealot on fire for God, Elijah in the Old Testament, John the Baptist, just going and doing everything for Jesus, just totally on fire zealot. And then one is just very, very far from God. And I'll ask them, where are you in your spiritual health? And without fail, people will answer four to six, okay? Because no one wants to say, well, I'm currently doing great. And no one's going to admit to being a two. So everybody says four to six, okay? And then I'll say, and this is the important part, all right, that's great. In five years, where would you like to be? And it's really a vehicle, the numbers don't matter, it's a vehicle to talk about what steps can we take to grow in our spiritual health. That's what it's there for, to help us get into that discussion. But what's interesting to me is when I ask people, and where do you want to be in five years without fail? Eight. I've had one person in 11 years of premarital counseling say 10. One person. Everybody else, eight. I don't want to be like, I don't want to be crazy zealot. I don't want to be that person. Just make me an eight. That'd be great. And what they probably really mean is seven, but they're telling the pastor, so let's bump it up. And I can't help but think that that's probably due at least in part to the fact that they probably don't think that walking with Jesus is that big of a deal. They probably aren't that enraptured with Jesus. I probably just don't think he's as big of a deal as he is. Whatever picture we have in our head of what it would be like to be a 10 isn't that attractive. It's just not that great. We're not that compelled by it, so we don't pursue it. Why don't we say 10? Because we don't want to be. Because whatever's at 10 is not really something that we would enjoy. Because I think we have this small view of who Jesus is. Because for some reason or another, we've never just fallen in love with scriptures and made it a habit to get up and read it every day and see Jesus on these pages and read the gospels and walk through his life and see how he forgave and see how he was generous and see how he loved and see how he sacrificed and fallen in love with him. We haven't allowed the sin and the weight that so easily entangles in Hebrews. We haven't allowed that to fall to the wayside to a degree that we can begin to experience our savior. We haven't engaged in worship in such a way that we turn our heart to God and let him fill it up with his joy. We haven't stopped and reflected on the fact that Jesus, God, condescended, came down from heaven, became one of us, walked with us in our filth, was patient and gracious with us, marched to the cross, died there on the cross for us, even though he knew that we would crud on it with our own life and with our own actions and with our own hypocrisy and sits at the right hand of the Father despite all of that and intercedes for us. We don't sit in the weight of that reality and allow the gratitude and the grandeur of his forgiveness and grace to wash over us. And it allows us to create this impoverished view of Jesus that isn't really all that compelling. And I think one of the reasons we keep our view of Jesus small is the second reason why we struggle sometimes, I think, to believe Psalm 1611, which is that we like making mud pies. We like making mud pies. C.S. Lewis was an author in England prior to and through World War II, and one of the greatest authors of all time. And he described sin in this way. This is a very gross, loose paraphrase. But he described sin like this. He said, it's as if we are children and our parents want to take us on the most amazing holiday. For us in America, it'd be a vacation. Our parents want to take us on the most amazing vacation, but we content ourselves sitting in the backyard making mud pies. We'll sit in the backyard playing with mud because we don't believe that anything could possibly be better than this, and our parents have the most amazing vacation on the planet planned for us, and we're totally disinterested in it. That's how he describes sin. That God has the fullness of joy. He has pleasures forevermore. He leads us to the paths of life. He has something better for us that he's trying to draw us to and we content ourselves with making mud pies in our backyard because we just don't believe there could be anything better. This is actually a trick of the enemy. This is a lie of Satan. You understand that, right? Think of it this way. One of Satan's best lies is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure. One of the enemy's greatest tactics is to trick us into sacrificing long-term joy on the altar of short-term pleasure, on what we can have right now. Isn't this why most of us fail at diets? Not me, but you fail at diets. Because I want to be in good shape. I want to exercise and have the sweat show up here before it shows up here. I want that very much. But I also want a steak right now. I also want Cinnabon. I also want a Chick-fil-A, number one. And I want the sweet tea and I want it to be large. We also want those things. And so we sacrifice long-term things on the altar of the immediate. And this is a trick that Satan plays on us, where God offers us the fullness of joy in this process. God is thinking long-term. He's promising us things years down the road, and we sacrifice those things on what we want right now. Marriage is probably the easiest example of this, where God makes it very clear in Scripture, in Genesis, and then repeated again in Mark, that for this reason, a man will leave his father and mother and be united with his wife, and the two will become one flesh. And what God has put together, let no man separate. It is God's will for your life. When you are born, it is his will and hope that you would meet one person, that you would marry them, that you would become one flesh, and that you would experience the fullness of joy that comes from being in this lifelong giving relationship. Now, I'm not trying to diminish people who have walked through divorce or are currently divorced or whatever and diminish you as being outside of God's will. I believe that divorce happens because we're broken people and that there is redemption after that. But if we want to talk about what God wants for us, he wants a husband and wife to be united in one flesh and he wants them to walk down the years and the decades following him and knowing him and raising children together and walking through things together and experiencing the depth of love that can only come through that level of commitment sustained through the decades. That's what he wants for us. There's joy and happiness there. Just last night, I'm going to embarrass Jen here, I'm sorry, but just last night, Jen and I, we've got an 11-week-old and we've got a five-and-a-half-year-old, and sometimes, just sometimes, only me, this is not true of Jen, but sometimes I don't like either of them. I just want to sit. Yesterday may or may not have been one of those times. But we had a plan. That last night, we had a plan. We're going to get the kids to bed, and we're going to go get Chinese, and we're going to bring it back. There's this knee Asian kitchen that's really, really good. And we went, and we got the stuff. And I bring it back, and we set it out on the console table and we sit down on the floor and we eat Chinese and we watch Hometown with Ben and Aaron who are charming. If you're not watching Hometown, I mean, you're missing out. They're great folks. And we watched that and we laughed together and we ate together and we talked about how good the food was and then afterwards we laughed at Instagram videos and then both of us couldn't stop commenting on how great it was to have that night and how much we loved each other. Give me that. Give me that love after 15 years, all day long over our honeymoon in St. Lucia. When we were 25 years old, we went to St. Lucia for our honeymoon and we thought it was great and it was the best and we're so in love and it was wonderful. Man, that's nothing compared to what we experienced last night. Give me Chinese on the floor hiding from our children and our dog over a week in St. Lucia because the love 15 years in and what we've walked through and what we experienced and what we know about each other and the ways that our love has changed over the years is so much richer than it was 15 years ago. Now, I can't wait to experience what some of you guys have experienced being 10 and 20 years beyond where we are and the fullness of love that comes there. That's what God wants for us. He wants us to experience that fullness, but there's a process and it takes time. And Satan, Satan would will to steal that joy from us by tempting us to just fade in our marriage and not put in the work that we need by tempting us to just be selfish. And today I know I should help with the kids. I know I should do these things. I know I should love. I know we should go to counseling. I know that we need to work on this marriage, but today it's hard and I don't want to. So we sacrifice future joy on the altar of the immediate. Or even worse, he begins to tempt us to look outside our marriage and that would be fun and that would be entertaining for a season and that would be a type of joy and pleasure that we don't get to experience. And so we do and we sacrifice what could be long-term joy on the altar of immediate pleasure. It's true in our quiet times. I've said dozens of times from this stage, there's no more important habit in our life than to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And we know this. And we know that through doing that, we will find Jesus, we will be drawn to him, we will be caught up in him, that life will be better, that our attitude will be better, that our spiritual health will be better. We know it's good for us. Most of the whole room would agree with me that that would be an excellent practice in our lives, and yet for many of us, we don't have it. Why? Because it's easier to hit the snooze button. It's easier to flick through Twitter. It's easier to turn on SportsCenter or to get to work early or to just sit in the quiet or to read a book. There's so many different things that we could do besides dive into God's Word. And so once again, we sacrifice the joy that waits for us in the presence of God on the altar of the immediate, doing what we want. This is one of the greatest tricks of Satan, just to trick Christians into wasting their days and pursuing temporary pleasures instead of long-term joy. I came across a quote this week, and I that it was timely from some pastor that I didn't recognize and he just simply said, all of Satan's promises are for the right now. Promises without process are lies. God promises us the future. Satan promises us today. And we so very easily choose today. But really, I think in a room full, for the most part, of believers, the reason, probably the predominant reason, we struggle to believe Psalm 1611, is if we're being honest, I think we're afraid to be on fire. I think we're afraid to be a 10. I think we're afraid to be zealots. We're afraid to be on fire for Jesus. We don't want to be that person. We don't want to have to give up everything and move to Malawi and teach and write the Bible in another language. We don't want to have to do that. We don't want to have to sell all the things that we've acquired. We don't want to have to give up the pleasures that we enjoy. I know for me, the thing that makes me scared to be a zealot, and listen, I'm speaking to me more than you right now. The thing that makes me scared is I just don't want to be weird. I want people to like me. I like having friends. So I think we're scared to be on fire. And after being around church people my whole life, I'm convinced that this is true. And when I say this, just know I'm saying this to me, okay? I'm saying this to me. I am convicted by this. I am stepping on my own toes. If this doesn't apply to you, great. If it does, welcome into my conviction. But I'm saying it to me. I'm convinced that we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground that appears spiritually healthy while still leaving us the Lord of our own lives. I'm convinced that a vast majority of Christians are afraid to be on fire, and so what we do is we carve out for ourselves a moderate middle ground of spirituality that makes us appear spiritually healthy while still giving us space to hang on to some of the things that bring us joy and pleasure and therefore still being the lords of our own lives. I'm going to go to church. I'm going to go to Bible study. I'm going to say the things. I'm going to have the right friends. I'm going to reorient my life. I'm going to look different now than I did years ago. And now I'm doing pretty good. I'm doing okay. I'm not a 10, but I'm like a seven. And this is a pretty comfortable place for me. Maybe I'm the only one that does that. But we carve out this moderate middle ground. I'm not John the Baptist. Okay. I'm not one of the disciples, but I'm not one of the bad ones either. I'm good. Could I be doing better? Sure. Everybody could be doing better. Could I be doing worse? A lot worse. You should have known me five years ago. And so we carve out this middle ground. Well, we're not on fire. We're not totally cold and turned off to the Lord. We're just like a seven. And we're good with it. When we do that, the Bible has something to say about it. About specifically that. In Revelation chapter three, Jesus has written letters to seven churches in Revelation two and three. And in chapter three, he says, you're pretty good. You do a lot of good things to this particular church. But then in 3.16, he says this, but you are lukewarm. And because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. That word spit there is better translated as vomit or spew. That's what Jesus thinks of the middle ground that we carve out for ourselves. Well, we're comfortable and happy and sure, I could give more, I could do more, I could grow more, I could sacrifice more, but that's scary, I don't want to do it. I'm doing pretty good here as a seven. God, if you'll just kind of leave me alone and worry about some of those threes, I'll be happy to invite them to my house. I'll be good. And Jesus says, couldn't be less interested in that. To me, Nate, I couldn't be less interested in your moderate middle ground of spirituality here. He calls us to be on fire. He calls us to be zealots. And if you're in this conviction with me, of this middle ground that we carve out for ourselves, I would invite you into this question. What is it that you're afraid of? If you light your hair on fire for Jesus and go burn the world down, what is it that you're afraid of? What is it that worries you about getting up every day and reading God's word? What is it that worries you about inviting Jesus into every moment of your life? What is it that worries you about being a zealot? Is it that you'll have to give up something that brings you pleasure? God has more pleasure waiting for you if you'll just trust him, if you'll just drop your mud pies and go with him on vacation, what are we scared of? Is there some pleasure or friend group or thing that you like to do that you're worried, well, if I really sell out, then I can't engage in that anymore. So what? God's got something better. Well, I'm worried that, this is me, I'm worried that I'm going to be weird. People won't like me, that I won't be relatable. Who cares? Jesus didn't call me to be relatable. He called me to be passionate about him. And I bet the joy that I'll find there and the relationships that are there and the magnanimity of the love that's found there will do just fine with the weirdness. What are we afraid of that God's not going to give us back? What kind of pleasures are we embracing in our middle ground that we don't want to let go because I don't want to go too far? Why? Are you afraid he's going to ask you to sell everything and move to Ghana? He's probably not. If all American Christians moved to Ghana at once, that would be inconvenient. He's probably not going to do that. But even if he did, you'll find pleasures forevermore and fullness of joy in Ghana, so go to Ghana, man. What are we scared of? I think we're scared of being zealots. And so maybe what we need to do is understand what that means. I don't think that being a zealot is selling everything and becoming a weirdo and moving out into the wilderness like John the Baptist and wearing camel skins and eating locusts. I think that being a zealot means inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. Into every conversation. Inviting him in. How would you have me handle this? How can I reflect you here? Into every quiet, peaceful moment. Into every still morning. Into every late night. Into every dinner conversation. Into every relationship, into every work interaction, inviting him into every email, into every prayer. I think being a zealot looks like simply inviting Jesus into every moment of your life. What harm can come if we do that? What possible thing could we give up that's worth anything at all if we simply start by inviting Jesus into every moment of our life? If we do that, you know what we'll find? That our view of him begins to enlargen. That the lies of Satan become less convincing. That the fear of being on fire becomes a lot less fearful. So let's do that, Grace. Let's collectively light our hair on fire and light the world on fire for Jesus. Let's collectively be zealots. Let's collectively trust that this verse is true. And let's collectively ask ourselves the tough question, what am I hanging on to that's preventing me from pursuing God? That's preventing me from pursuing Jesus, from abiding in his presence and creating a larger view of him in my life. And then let's ask ourselves if it's worth it. I know that for me this week, as I've sat in this verse, I've developed a more deep conviction than ever that I want to trust this verse. I want to believe it. I want to live it out. I want to go be a zealot. And I want the church to come with me. Let's pray. Father, we love you. I'll be the first to admit, God, sometimes I just, all the time, I love you the best way I know how. It's an imperfect, insufficient, hypocritical, broken love. But God, we love you. We're grateful for Jesus. We really are. We know that sometimes it doesn't seem like that. We know that we demand a lot of your forgiveness. God, we are grateful for it. Lord, I know that I have been afraid to give up some of the things that I think are actually bringing me joy when all they're doing is keeping me from you. So I pray that you would give me the strength to walk away from those things and the strength of faith and hope to trust that you're going to bring me to these paths of life, to the best places possible. God, would you give us the strength this morning to put down our mud pies and trust that where you're taking us is exponentially better than anything we could ever cook up for ourselves. I pray that we would grow in our view of Jesus and be so enamored with him that we would just sprint towards him with all of our might. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.