Sermons tagged with Joy

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to get to spend some time with you in this way. I'm really hopeful that we can be together again in person, but for now, caution is winning the day, and so we'll get to enjoy church in our different living rooms wherever we are. This is the last part in our series called James, where we're going through the book of James, and we're going to land today in what I believe to be is a very hopeful passage on prayer. I think that this is a really encouraging and empowering passage, and my hope is that by the time I'm done, that you'll feel empowered by prayer as well, and you'll be inspired to cling to prayer and to persevere in prayer. As we approach this topic, I'm reminded of Memorial Day 2017. 2017 is the year that I got to come to Grace and become the senior pastor. And some of y'all know this story, so if you do, bear with me. But maybe it can be a little reminder. And for those who don't know, when I got to Grace in April of 2017, things weren't great. Financially, we were really struggling. We were in debt. We didn't really have a way to go into more debt. We didn't have any more lines of credit to tap on. And so it was a little bit dire. And my goal was simply to just make it, to make it through the summer, to make it into the fall, to see if we could get a little bit of momentum going. And I'll never forget, we were headed into Memorial Day weekend, the last weekend in May. The person handling the finances at the time told me, Nate, we're in trouble. We're going to be behind on some bills in May. We're already behind on giving. We need giving to be really good this weekend. And I asked what the number needed to be, and they said we need $15,000 this weekend. $15,000 was more than we had brought in any single week in 2017. We were bringing in like $8,500 or $9,000 a week. So $15,000 was, that was pie in the sky. That wasn't going to happen. And on top of that, it was Memorial Day weekend. And you may not know this about church world, but one of the things that pastors are aware of is Memorial Day weekend, that service is the lowest attended service and the lowest giving service of the year, every year in every church in the history of America. That's just how it went. And so not only do we need more giving than we've had in any single week for the whole year, but we needed a Memorial Day weekend, which feels impossible. So the finance person told me that in the middle of the week, and honestly, I didn't tell anybody. I just knelt and I prayed. I said, God, we need something here. We need a miracle. This church can't go into debt. I'm not ready to move back to Georgia yet. I just got here. We need you to show up this weekend, God. And so we had the services, and I went into the office on Monday, and usually Tuesday or Wednesday, I get a little financial update, and so I'm just hitting refresh on my email browser, just waiting for the news to come in. And I think it was Wednesday morning, the news came in. I see that I got the email from the finance guy. I break out in the cold sweats, and I click on it, and I immediately just lost my mind. $28,000 came in Memorial Day weekend 2017. I couldn't believe it. It wasn't $15,000. It wasn't just a little bit shy of that. It was $28,000. That was the biggest single weekend giving in all of 2017. I couldn't believe it. I was floored. And God made it apparent that he answers prayers. He made it apparent that day to me, Nate, my hand is on grace. My hand is on you. I answer prayer. I hear you. I've been moved by prayer. And here you go. Here's your answer to prayer. And so that stands out in my memory as a time when prayer buoyed my faith. When prayer bolstered my faith. When I prayed fervently for something in the quietness of my own heart and in his word. And I hope that you have stories like that too. I hope that there are times in your life that you can remember where you prayed fervently for something and God answered. God delivered. He gave you what it was that you needed. He reconciled that relationship. He healed that person. He brought that thing back. He saw you through that circumstance. I hope that if you're a believer that we all have instances and times that we remember God answering our prayers. Because instances like that, like Memorial Day for me, like whatever it is that you think of when you think of answered prayer, instances like that help us believe in passages like this. If you have a Bible at home, I want you to look at James chapter 5. I'm going to pick it up in verse 13. This is what James writes about prayer. You know, when I was a kid and I encountered that verse, I encountered it in the King James Version, and it said, Other translations say that the prayer of a righteous person is powerful in its working. And I used to think, well, yeah, sure, like the prayers of righteous people, of those people that we write about in the Bible, of those pastors that are really good people, like the righteous people, as I'm thinking about this as a kid when I encountered the verse, those are the people who have effective prayers. But here's the deal. If you're a Christian, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, you're righteous. You're as righteous as you're ever going to get. Because Scripture teaches us that when God looks at you, he sees you clothed in the righteousness of Christ. Therefore, your affectionate and fervent prayers are powerful in their working. They availeth much. Christians, I want you to know based on this passage, your prayers work. When you're grieving, go to God in prayer. When you're joyful, praise him in prayer. When someone is sick, pray over them. When a situation is bad, pray over it. Your prayers work. They are powerful in their working. They work to much avail. And sometimes we have stories in our life that remind us that this passage is true. But here's the flip side of this passage. Here's the thing that I wish that someone would have told me somewhere along the way. I wish growing up, I would have heard a pastor talk about this passage in the way that I'm about to talk about it. I wish that somewhere in my formative years, back when I knew what it was like to have a pastor, that one of them, and maybe they did and I just didn't pick up on it, but I wish that one of them would have talked about the fact that sometimes this passage actually makes us doubt our faith. Sometimes passages like this make us actually not believe the Word of God, make us wonder if God really does keep His promises. And I had to learn this lesson the hard way. I had to encounter this question the hard way. But I think if I'm being honest, that when we read passages like this, that sometimes we tend to doubt it. And that makes us doubt the truth of Scripture. When this slapped me in the face, and I wish that someone had walked me through this before it happened, was in the spring of 2010. From 2007 to 2010, I taught Bible at a school called Covenant Christian Academy. And there was a kid in the class that I was a sponsor for named Alex Williams. And Alex was a great kid. He was just a charming guy. He had this winning smile. He would do anything for you. Super nice guy. I loved Alex, and I love Alex to this day. And Alex got a lot of those traits from his dad, Ron. And during high school, during his high school years, Ron contracted cancer. I forget which kind. And we watched Ron slowly deteriorate. Alex was an athlete, and Ron was always on the sidelines, whether it was football or basketball, cheering. He was the loudest voice there. You could always hear him. He was boisterous and loud, and it was really fun to have Ron around. But the cancer began to eat away at him until in his senior year, Ron would attend in a wheelchair. And I can remember the spring of Alex's senior year, we prayed over Ron. Fathers and coaches that were involved in that school who were elders in that church, according to the passage here, came together, I'll never forget it, in my classroom at Covenant. And Ron sat in the middle of us and somebody even brought oil to anoint him which is something that some denominations still observe. And we poured it over his head and we placed our hands on Ron and we prayed, we prayed a prayer of faith that Ron would be healed. And then weeks later, Ron died. And I remember thinking, how can this be true and our prayer not be answered? God, you said that if we would do these things, if we would gather and we would anoint his head with oil and we would pray, God, you said that he would be healed. You said that he would be raised up. And he's dead. God, you didn't keep your promise. And I'd be willing to bet that you have that story too. I'd be willing to bet that for most of us believers, we can point to a time in our life where we prayed fervently for something in accordance to God's will. We asked in his name. There was two or three gathered there and we asked in his name. And he promises to give us what we asked for. We prayed for healing that didn't come. We prayed for more years that weren't granted. And it makes me want to ask, what do we do when it seems like this passage isn't true? What do we do when it seems like this isn't true, when it seems like this can't be trusted, when it seems like these are just the words of James that make us feel good but aren't really a truth that we can anchor ourselves in? What do we do when it feels like this passage isn't true? And again, I wish that someone would have talked about this with me. Because I think the thing that you do is you go back to the passage and you read it again. You go back to God's Word and you ask, what did I miss? What did I presume that I didn't see the first time? And so when we read it again, here's what we find. It says, What we notice here is that there's a future tense. He will be healed. He will be raised up when we pray the prayer of faith. But there's no sense of the timeline of this. There's no sense of when it's going to happen. And here's the reality with Ron. Ron was healed. He wasn't healed in the temporal. He was healed in the eternal. Ron was raised up by God. He wasn't raised up in the temporal. He was raised up in the eternal. And so the reality is that he will heal us. He will raise us up. He does answer those prayers. And it took me a minute to figure that out. We were praying fervently, God, heal Ron. And he did. He just chose to heal him for eternity rather than heal him for a few years. God, raise him up. He did. He raised him up into heaven where he's no longer sick, where he lives in a utopia, where he walks with his Savior and he waits for his children. The truth of it is that Ron was healed, that Ron was lifted up. And this is a concept that even my four-year-old gets. My four-year-old Lily somehow understands this. A few weeks ago, we were back home visiting Jen's family. And if you've been following along in church, you know that Jen's dad isn't doing very well. And truthfully, he looks pretty sick. And after Lily spent some time with him, just Lily and I were in the car, we were driving somewhere, I think to pick up breakfast or something, and she said, Daddy, how come Pawpaw's not getting better? He's sick, but he's not getting better. How come he's not getting better? And I said, well, sweetheart, there's kind of two kinds of being sick. There's the kind of sick where it just lasts for a little bit and then you get better, like a cold. And then there's the kind of sick where you just get sick and you stay sick and you don't get better. And she said, okay. I said, does that make sense? She said, uh-huh, yes, Daddy. And then she thought about it for a second, and she said, but when Pawpaw dies, he won't be sick anymore. And I looked in the rearview mirror, like, where did this four-year-old get this? I said, that's right, sweetheart. He won't. And she goes, yeah, because he'll be in heaven with Jesus. And you don't get sick in heaven. And I said, yeah, that's true. And she goes, and then one day when I die, I'll get to see him again too, and neither of us will be sick. Right. That's it. And I think that if she can get it and comfort her own four-year-old self about her pawpaw who's going to pass away soon, and she knows that he's going to be better when he gets there, that we're praying fervently for his healing, and the reality of it is God's going to heal him. He's either going to heal him for a little bit or he's going to heal him for forever. And she knows that. And she's already looking forward to the forever healing because that's the bigger answer to prayer. When you pray in faith, when there's faith in God, when the prayer is based on a faith in God that was won by Jesus, then we know that we have eternal life and God will heal us. In order to understand this passage and how it's not contradictory with some of our experiences, we need to understand that we pray in the temporal, but God answers in the eternal. We pray our prayers in the temporal, in the here and now, with the blinders on of just these weeks or just these months or years. We pray urgently for the here and now, and God answers in the eternal. He sees all of time. And I don't think we grasp just how big of a deal eternity is. The Bible tells us that our life is like a mist or a vapor. Paul went through the worst of sufferings, and he says, though we endure these sufferings for a little while. James tells us at the beginning of his book that when you endure trials, consider them pure joy. They're not that bad. How can they say this? Because their eyes are on eternity. They're praying eternal prayers. James can say he will be lifted up because when you pray in faith, they will be lifted up, either for a little while or for forever, but they will be lifted up and they will be healed. We pray in the temporal, but God answers in the eternal. And what that means is sometimes God doesn't answer in the time frame that we want. God doesn't heal the relationship or fix the problem or bring about the answer to the question in the time frame that we would choose. Sometimes we have to wait. We're told to be patient in waiting for God because he doesn't hurry. And sometimes it's answered in eternity. And sometimes it's answered in our life. It's just answered later and in a way that we don't anticipate. I have a friend back home named Jenny. When she was growing up, she was Jenny Payne. Now she's Jenny Smith. And when Jenny was a little girl, she had two older brothers, and her mom was pregnant. And she prayed fervently as a little girl. She wanted a sister named Jessica. And she prayed really hard for this sister named Jessica. And then the birth of her sibling came about, and it's a boy named Jimmy. God doesn't answer prayer. He doesn't keep his promises. Her four-year-old heart is broken. But as she gets older, her faith matures, and she kind of understands, and she accepts that blow. And then one day, her brother starts dating somebody in their 20s, and they start to get really serious. And they end up getting married, and Jenny loves this girl. And Jenny, in her own language, said this girl is like a sister to her, and her name is Jessica. You want to tell me God didn't answer prayer? You want to tell me God didn't hear that four-year-old Jenny praying for a sister named Jessica, and that he didn't answer it? It just wasn't the way that she expected. But God listens. He hears and he answers. We just have to wait. We just need to be patient. We just need to trust him even in the midst of hurting and suffering when it feels like everything is destitute and messed up and this couldn't possibly be picked up and arranged in such a way that glorifies you, God. Even in the midst of that, we need to be patient and understand that God hears, and he's listening, and he's answering prayers. It just isn't in our timetable because we pray in the temporal, and he answers in the eternal. Maybe that's why he precedes this passage on prayer with the passage imploring us to be patient. I don't think it's a mistake that the two are married up there in chapter 5. Look at what he says in verse 7 of chapter 5. He says, Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains. Just be patient on the Lord, like a farmer watching the field. If you watch it every day, God, please bring me crops today. God, please bring me crops today. It's going to seem like they're never going to come, but if you'll just be patient and wait for the late and the early rains, like a farmer, God shows up. He'll answer in due time. And then down in verse 11, he says this, James warns us. I'm about to talk about prayer. I'm about to tell you to pray. There's going to be some times when it feels like God isn't answering prayer. So be patient. Be patient like the farmer is patient. And be considered blessed. Remember that those who wait, those who persevere should be considered blessed. And then he brings up Job. It's interesting to me that he would bring up Job as an example there. For those unfamiliar with Job, he is one of the classic figures in the Old Testament. There's a whole book dedicated to his story. He was the most righteous man on earth, and Satan asked permission to tempt him and to tear him away from God. And God said that Satan could do that. And in the course of that, he took away everything that Job held dear. He lost his children. He lost the people that worked for him. He lost his livestock. He lost his wealth. It was so bad for Job that his wife's advice to him was to curse God and die. But he didn't. He held on steadfast to the Lord. And in the end of the story, what we see is that because of his continued faith, because of his perseverance, because he clung to prayer and he continued to believe that God kept his promises, that God restored everything that Job had lost and he built him back up. And I think it's so interesting because if there's ever been anybody who lived that would have had cause to not believe this passage that says when we pray they will be healed and they will be lifted up. If there's anyone who's ever had the right to not believe this passage and say God's not telling the truth, it's Job. Yet he didn't. He was patient and he persevered in his prayers and he clung to God and he believed in the power of, and he clung to God, and he believed in the power of prayer, and he believed in a God that kept his promises. Grace. We can anchor ourselves in prayer. We can anchor ourselves in God's Word. We can trust these pages. We can trust these promises because we serve a God who keeps his promises. And listen, I know that it doesn't feel like that this year to some of us. I know this year feels hard. It feels heavy. It feels like we might not get out of it. We are facing difficulty after difficulty. Candidly, in my family right now, it is hard. And sometimes it doesn't seem like these verses are true, but I'm telling you they are. And we can anchor ourselves in them, and we can trust in them, and we can believe in the power and the efficacy of prayer of those who are righteous. And we can believe that God is listening, and we can believe that God is answering. And if we'll only be patient, and if we'll only persevere, we will be blessed in that perseverance. So grace. Pray. Don't lose heart. Don't give up hope. Don't stop praying. Believe that if you're a Christian, that you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ and that your prayers are powerful and effective and they're working. Believe that they bring about healing. Believe that people will be risen up. Go to him when you are hurting. Go to him in joy. And let's continue, no matter what, no matter how bleak things might seem sometimes, to be a people of prayer who choose to believe in the power of it and choose to believe in a God who keeps his promises. Let's pray together. Father, we know that you are good to us. We know that you love us. We know that you look out for us. We thank you that you see things in eternity, that you see past the temporal. God, we thank you that you are orchestrating things in our lives to bring about our pleasure and your glory without us even knowing or understanding. God, I thank you for the gift of hindsight where we look back on seasons of our life that we didn't understand in the moment, but now we see you working. I pray that we would have that in increasing measure. God, for those who feel weak and burdened and maybe even beaten down, may we persist in prayer. Give them strength to be patient and to cling to it and to believe. For those who have been bold in their prayers and are seeing them answered, God, we are so grateful. I pray that they would become ever more bold. And God, I pray for grace. I pray that we would be a church that prays, that we would be a church that believes, and that we would be a church who knows because you tell us that our prayers are powerful and effective. It's in your son's name we pray all these things. Amen.

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

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. We are in the second part of our series called With, where we're going through a book by a pastor named Sky Jethani. It's a book that I read back in 2013, and I've shared with you before, caused me more times than any other book to stop and put it down and get on my knees and repent and say, God, I absolutely see these things in my life and in my heart and in my motives for following you. Please eradicate them from me. I was having a conversation with someone right before church started. Actually, full disclosure, it was after church had started and half of the congregation was still out in the parking lot. Sorry, Steve, for that. That's our bad, buddy. We'll get it better next week. Join me, guys. We'll do better next week. But I was having a conversation, and they said, gosh, I'm loving this book. I've been reading it, but I see myself in all the postures. And I said, yeah, that's kind of it. If you're paying attention, you see yourself in this book as we read it. So as we get together every week, I want to go through the postures. I want to look at the different ways that we can approach God, the different motives we have for approaching him. And then the last week, look at the right motive we have for approaching him. Really, it's five weeks of discipleship, of looking at our relationship with Jesus, the one who saved us. And one of the things we said last week is we kind of asked where we were. We did a little spiritual diagnostic test, and I kind of helped us see, I think many of us, that to be a Christian is to be in a rut sometimes. It's to see other people having this flourishing relationship with Jesus, this really seemingly intimate knowledge with Jesus, and we can't seem to hit the nail on the head. We can't seem to connect the dots for ourselves. And kind of the phrase I'm using that's driving the way we're thinking about ourselves and our walks with Jesus in this series is to say, perhaps our walk with Jesus isn't what it could be because our posture before him isn't what it should be, right? And so then last week we looked at the life under God posture. The life under God posture acknowledges that the universe is big, the world is difficult, it's bigger than me, it's challenging, there's unknown pain and suffering that I can't prevent out there, but God created everything and if I can find a way to get him on my side, if I can appease God, then he'll protect me. And so it's this exchange. If I offer you obedience and you offer me protection, it's how we regain control of an uncontrollable universe. And this week, we're looking at life over God, which is really the natural conclusion of the life under God posture. If life under God says, man, the universe can't be controlled, but God can control it, so I'm going to get him on my side so that nothing bad can happen to me, then life over God is what happens when we start to learn a little bit. It's what happens when we start to get a little bit of knowledge. It's what happens when we realize that, you know what, creation is really a machine, and there are laws to the way it works. And if I can begin to understand these laws, the way the machine works, then it becomes more controllable and more predictable. This is what it looks like in years past. If we had a road trip, we might pray to God. We might go to God and say, God, protect us on this road trip. And now with a little bit of knowledge, we just check the weather app and we do the road trip when it's not going to rain. Now we're safe. We're good. In years past, a pandemic hits and we hit our knees and we pray, God, take this away from us. Now we scramble to create a vaccine. Life has shifted. So in a lot of ways, this life over God posture is a natural conclusion. It's just another way to arrest control back to ourselves and say, God, thanks for everything. We figured out your machine now, so we're going to take it from here. Now we'll be in control again. A great picture of what life over God looks like is actually this. If you go to the Smithsonian, you can see this Bible. That's Thomas Jefferson's Bible. Famously, he took the Bible and he looked at the teachings. That's in the Gospels. He looked at the teachings of Jesus that he didn't like and he simply cut them out of his Bible. It's called the Jeffersonian Bible. And I've always looked at that and thought, what audacious arrogance would it take to begin cutting passages out of the Bible that you don't agree with? But now I tend to think, at least he's honest. At least he has the guts to admit it. Because don't we all do this? That's what life over God posture is. The life over God exchanges God for best practices. As we think about life over God, that's what it is. It just simply exchanges God. It exchanges a relationship with Jesus for best practices. It exchanges a relationship with Jesus for simply the best practices that come out of his teachings. And we know what it is to distill things down to best practices, don't we? We've all done this. This is a thing that we can all fall into. When I first became a small groups pastor, I started reading all the books about small groups. And it would have been a mistake to take one book written about small groups for a church of 20,000 people and try to do a one-to-one exchange into my church of 1,000 people at the time. It would have been a big mistake to try to do that. So I didn't do everything that the author would recommend. I just took a couple things, a couple best practices that I could apply to my situation, and I would do that. And I would take a couple best practices from over here and over here and over here, and I would amalgamate the ministry that we did. Not looking at any of the books as authoritative or any of the individuals as authoritative, but giving myself the right and the license to take best practices from all these areas and then install them in my life. This is what life over God does. It looks at the Bible as just a simple group of instructions, an instruction book for life. And we extract from it the best practices like Thomas Jefferson did, and we apply those to ourselves. And then the ones that we don't like or we don't agree with or that seem too problematic or antiquated, we do away with those. And we begin to pick and choose which portions of the Bible we want to obey. We begin to pick and choose which portions of the teachings of Jesus we want to submit to. And we exchange God for best practices. Now at its worst, this posture is atheism. God's not real. He doesn't exist. The Bible clearly is a book. I'm going to take out of it the things that apply to me. There's some good ideas in there. I'll apply those. We might even feel good about ourselves for doing that, but I'm not going to take it all wholesale. At best, it's deism. God exists. He's real. He created the universe. He created this machine. But now that I have the Bible, now that I understand some of the mechanics of this machine, I can take it from here. I understand. God, thanks. I don't need you anymore. I don't need to pray to you anymore. I don't need to pursue you anymore. I don't need the actual relationship with you. I just need your principles and practices. And now that I understand how to manipulate things under my own control, I've got it from here. That's the life over God posture. And like I said, at least Thomas Jefferson was honest about what he did. We might think that this posture is a difficult one for Christians to adopt. It might be easy to believe that as believers, we wouldn't do this. Life under God, I'm going to obey him so that he watches out for me. Sure, that makes sense in the Christian life. And the other ones, from and for, if you've read ahead or as we get to those, those are easy to apply to the Christian life. But this is the posture of all non-believers. I'm going to take the authority of myself over the authority of God, and we distill him down to best practices, if anything at all. But what's important to see is that this one is sneaky too, and it works its way into our hearts and into our motives as well. And it has for the history of all believers. We can go all the way back to Moses. Sky points this out in the book, and I think it's an appropriate example. We can go all the way back to Moses to see this life over God posture. We're not going to turn our Bibles there this morning, but in Exodus chapter 17, the people of God have been wandering through the desert led by Moses for a number of years now. And they're thirsty, and they're complaining. And they're like, at least in Egypt when we were slaves, we have water. In the desert, we have nothing. What's the deal? They were upset. And so Moses goes to God on their behalf, and he says, God, your people are thirsty. What should I do? And God says, take your staff, take Aaron's staff, and go to a rock, and I want you to strike the rock in front of the people, and water's going to come out. And that's what he did. Amazingly. The miracle. He takes Aaron, his brother's staff. He goes to the rock. He strikes the rock. Water comes out. Everybody has their fill. Speaking of water, I just got thirsty. Everybody has their fill. Then, a little while later, it happens again. They start to grumble and complain again. They start to whine again. And this time, Moses is kind of sick of it. This time, Moses is kind of tired of it because here's God. God's used Moses. They've led him out of the desert. He defeated the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. God is visibly leading them every day by cloud, every night by fire. He gives them manna to eat. He feeds them in the desert every day. And yet still God's people are saying we had it better as slaves. And I think Moses is exasperated and can't believe that people find ways to continue to complain. But if we know anything about human nature, it's that if we were there in the desert, we'd be complaining too, wouldn't we? And so Moses is frustrated. And this is what happens the second time they complain. If you want to look in Numbers chapter 20, it'll be on the screen if you want to read along with me. Verse 7, before the Lord as he commanded him. So God says, go this time. I want you to speak to the rock and water's going to come out. Then Moses and Aaron gathered the assembly together before the rock, like they were told. And he said to them, here now you rebels, he's ticked, shall we bring water for you out of this rock? And Moses lifted up his hand and struck the rock with his staff twice and water came out abundantly and the congregation drank and their livestock drank as well. Now, the people are thirsty again. They're grumbling again. They're complaining again. God, Moses goes back to God. Your people are complaining. What do you want me to do? And God says, I want you to go to the rock. This time, I want you to speak to it and water's going to come out. And Moses says, okay. And he goes to the rock, and he assembles the people, and he says, you want some water, rebels? Which I think is probably the nice way of saying it in the Bible. And then, instead of speaking, he strikes the rock two times. God told him, I want you to speak. Moses says, no, I don't need your direction anymore. I understand this machine. I understand how it works. I have a set of best practices. The staff has worked for me in the past. It's going to work for me now. And he hits the rock twice. And God, in his goodness, allows water to come out. But Moses exhibited the life over God posture and said, no thanks. I don't need your authority. I'm not going to follow your rules. I know the staff works. I'm just going to do it this way. I've got my best practices. I figured out your machine. I know what's best now. And as a result of that sin and usurping God's will in that way, he's not allowed to enter into the promised land. It's actually one of the more tragic scenes in the Bible when Moses allows his frustration to get the better of him in this way. But he exhibited the life over God posture. Because Moses was susceptible to it, because it's been around for thousands of years, we should know by now that we are susceptible to it as well. You may have taken this posture if you've ever in your own life chosen selective morality, chosen a portion of Scripture. There's this thing that you know is wrong, but you've just decided in your life, you know what, I don't really care. I'm just going to do it. I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine this weekend. It came to light. I have a group of friends. There's about seven or eight of us. We talk every day. And it came to light that one of my friends is one of these people that will just buy a TV for a weekend knowing he's going to return it at the end of the weekend. Or he'll buy an iPad for a couple days to use it and then take it back. And I'm like, yo, I can't believe that you do this. That's stealing. And he's like, oh, come on, you guys don't take a handful of the candied pecans at the Sprouts when you're going through there? And we're all like, no, we don't. That's theft. But he does it. And when we get to the bottom of it, what he said is, I'm not hurting anybody. It doesn't really matter. And we're all like, yeah, it's stealing. And he's like, eh, I know. And as I was getting on to him for it, he said, Nate, this may be an issue for you, and you may be able to condemn me for it, but I'm pretty sure if we looked at your life, we could find a place that I was more moral than you, and we could condemn you for that. And I thought, that's a fair point. We should probably wrap this up. Right now, I don't really want to explore this any further. We all do that. We all have these places and pockets in our life where Scripture tells us who we need to be. We know from God what He wants from our character, and we just refuse to hand those things over. We choose to keep a little bit of worry because it makes us feel like we're in control. We choose the right to be unkind or to not like people, even though we know that we don't have that right as believers. We elevate other things in our life over biblical importance in our life. If we have ever had, and I think we all have, selective morality, we've exhibited this life over God posture. Sometimes this posture takes on the form of a spiritual to-do list, of moralizing our faith, of I don't need to pursue God. I don't actually need him. If you'll just give me the best practices to be a godly parent, that's what I need. And we'll do sermon series. And listen, as I read this, I told you I had to repent. As I'm reading it this time, as a pastor, I'm having to repent, realizing I skirt the line of this often. We'll do a series on how to have better relationships. And sometimes instead of simply emphasizing our need for Jesus in our life, we'll say, if you'll do these four things, you'll have a better marriage. If you'll do these three things, you'll have a better kid. If you'll do these five things, you'll be spiritually healthy. And sometimes we under-emphasize how much we need to simply pursue Jesus and over-emphasize the things that we need to do, because this is what we like in life. We love a to-do list, don't we? We love having clear steps to accomplish our goal because we can grab onto that and we can control it. And now we're in charge of that. That's life over God posture. And we distill them down to some best practices. And God, you stay over there. I've got it from here. And what I really want us to see this morning is that when we do that, when we engage in this posture, when we exchange God for best practices, we're really making three losing exchanges that cost us so very much. When we adopt this posture, we make three losing exchanges. The first one is this, we exchange wonder for arrogance. We exchange wonder for arrogance. When we once marveled at God and his creation, when we were once at awe at him and everything that he does. The power of a thunderstorm, the beauty of a sunset, the miracle of cures. Now, with a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of understanding of how the world works, we become arrogant and difficult to impress. As I was thinking through this one this week, I was reminded that just last year, I think it was, Doug Funk, our favorite church partner and effective church mascot over there, who's now got the wonderful, if you're, listen, if you've been watching online, a whole reason to come is to see Doug's new Bob Barker haircut. It's amazing. And you need to come see it in person. And when COVID lifts, touch it. Last year, Doug got prostate cancer. He comes to me and he says, yeah, and he tells me, hey, I think I've got this thing and I'm going to get some tests. And it turned out that he had prostate cancer. And your immediate response is, oh my gosh, Doug, I'm so sorry. That's terrible. You hate to hear the C word. And he immediately says, it's prostate. It's good. They've got it isolated. They're going to run some tests on me, but they're just deciding how they're going to go get it, but they're going to go get it. And you're like, okay, great. So then you pray for wisdom for the doctors. He goes in for surgery. He gets it. You see him a little while later. Doug, did it go okay? And he says, yeah, it's good. Did I get it all? Yeah, it's great. All right, great. You're back at work. Please straighten the rows for church. Like, let's be ready. Like, let's go, right? Like, okay, great. Praise God. And then you just move on. Do you see the arrogance and the lack of wonder in what God has done? 50 years ago, that's a death sentence. 50 years ago, if you get that, you don't know you have it for a long, long time, and then you die, and we don't have Doug anymore. But because the medical community has advanced so much, because God has given us such wisdom that we can unpack the wonders of his creation, we take a little bit of knowledge and a little bit of understanding and we allow it to turn into bored arrogance so that when my friend recovers from cancer, I go, that's great, praise God. Let's get back to work. What wonder have we lost when we allow cures to pass us by like that? What wonder do we lose when we don't simply walk through nature and appreciate the breeze? When the weather feels this good and all we're thinking in our heads, because we've felt weather like this before, is, is this a false fall? How long do I get to enjoy this? Can I really break out the flannels for like months or am I going to have to wear a polo again? Instead of just going, God, this feels amazing. Thank you. When we adopt a life over God posture, we exchange wonder for bored arrogance. What a terrible way to go through life. Another exchange we make when we adopt this posture is we exchange trust for anxiety. We exchange trust and peace for worry and anxiety and stress. Because in this posture, we figured out the machine, right? We figured out how life works. We figured out what we need to do to get things to go our way. And because we have this understanding and because everything becomes predictable, we begin to heap all of the pressure and responsibility for life's unpredictability onto ourselves. We take on all the pressure. Literally, the weight of the world is on our shoulders because we've said, God, I don't need you to carry that for me anymore. I understand a little bit about how the world works, so I'm going to carry that and I'm going make things go, and I'm going to make things happen. And our souls were not created or designed to carry that weight. That's why God is constantly ushering us back to him. Come to me for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. That's why he says that we should cast all of our cares upon him and that we should lay our burdens at his feet. That's why he says in Philippians that we should present everything to God with prayer and thanksgiving and that he will guard our hearts and our minds with a peace. He and Jesus Christ will guard our hearts and minds with a peace that passes understanding. And we exchange the peace that Jesus offers us when we walk with him and we simply trust him. And we say, God, we're in the middle of a pandemic. I don't know what to do, but you're bigger than this. I'm going to walk with you and trust you and whatever happens, happens. I'm with you. And instead, we take it and we internalize it and we think of all the different things that we need to do. I can't think of a better example of trading trust for anxiety than the way that we parent now. I can remember, I mean, we've only been parents for four and a half years. But you start to learn all these things about kids. I start to read about how a one-year-old and a two-year-old brain develops, and we're like, oh my gosh, do we use enough words in the home on a daily basis? Is the TV on too long? Should we read to her more? Should she be writing now? This kid colors in the lines. What should our kid be doing right now? Look at her. She's a disaster. This is embarrassing. And then we do coloring practice and the whole thing. Like, you worry so much. And now in a pandemic, what school do we put them in? Do we switch them to in-person? Do we keep them at home? Should we erect a bubble around our house for the rest of our lives? What is it that we should do? And we assume all the responsibility for our kids. And everything that happens, we flip out. Our mind spirals into this death spiral of anxiety where we draw the worst of conclusions. And I just wonder, parents who are given to anxiety over your kids, and this is a not fair question, all right, so I'm in this with you. What's your worry to prayer ratio? Those of us that have anxiety in our life, what's our ratio of minutes of worry and stress versus minutes of prayer and giving it back over to God? With your business, with your career, with your marriage, with your relationships, with finances, with that really difficult thing in your life, all of us, what's your ratio of minutes of worry versus minutes of prayer? When we adopt this life over God posture and we take it all on our shoulders, we trade trust in Jesus for a crippling anxiety that drowns us that we were not designed to carry. And I would simply ask you, if you feel yourself anxious, which has there ever been a time where there's more reason for that than in an incredibly divided country about myriad issues in the midst of a pandemic and all sorts of uncertainty? Is there ever more of a time for anxiety than now? Conversely, is there ever more of a time to realize that that's what we're doing and offering our trust back to God than now? What are our minutes of worry versus our minutes of prayer? The last exchange that we make that's dangerous for us is we exchange seeking for doing. We exchange seeking Jesus for doing the things that he wants us to do. We exchange pursuing the Father for an eight-step program to have a better relationship with the Father. And instead of simply craving more Jesus, instead of that passage in Psalms being true of us, as the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, oh God, the living God. Instead of that being true for us, we're just asking, what do I need to do? I'm reading my Bible 30 minutes a day. I'm praying 10 minutes a day. I'm leading a small group. I go to church. I tithe and I volunteer, and yet I still don't feel like I'm really connecting with Jesus. What do I need to do next? Maybe we just need to pursue Jesus. Maybe we need to do away with the spiritual to-do list and we just need to lay prostrate before the Father and say, God, I want you to show me what that looks like. Our tendency to make these to-do lists, to grasp onto control by giving ourselves bite-sized tasks that we know we can master, is so ingrained in us that I personally believe, and now this is, let me preface this. I've said this in Bible studies before. I've never said this from stage because I feel a responsibility with what I say from stage. So I'm going to say that this is a guess. This is a pastor's best guess. I would love it if you guys would talk about this guess in your small groups this week. Chew on this. Figure out what you think. You guys have interacted with Scripture, most of you, more than me. So you figure out what you think about this. But I think that this is the reason that God waited so long to give people the Ten Commandments. You ever wonder why God waited that long? Adam comes on the scene. He gives them the one commandment. Don't eat from that tree. They're like, got it. And then they ate from the tree. Why not after that, as soon as they fall, as soon as they mess up, as soon as they're out of relationship with God, why doesn't God go, okay, you blew it. Now here are the 10 rules. If you do these things, you'll be good with me. You've already blown it. I don't know what to do about you, Adam and Eve, but maybe Cain and Abel got a chance. Why didn't he give them the law then? Say, here's what I want you to do to be right with me. Why didn't he give it to Noah? Creation floundered and it failed and he hit the reset button and now it's just Noah and his family. Why didn't he give the Ten Commandments to Noah and say, here's what I want you to do. These are the rules. Let's not let what just happened. I don't want that to happen again. Here's the rules to follow to make me happy. Why didn't he give them to Noah? Why didn't he give them to Abraham? He speaks directly to Abraham. Go to the promised land. I'm going to make you the forefather of all of my children. I'm going to make you the founder of a promise. And by the way, here are the rules that you need to teach to all of your followers that are my children. Why didn't he give them to Abraham? It wasn't until we get to Moses and his children are wandering in the desert and clamoring that he finally allows Moses to come down the mountain with the two tablets and the Ten Commandments and the law. Why did he wait so long when he could have made it so clear? This is my guess. You might have your guesses. My guess is he knows our hearts. And he knows that the second we get Ten Commandments, he's giving us a spiritual to-do list. And then we do the same thing we did last week. It makes us legalistic hypocrites. It also makes us control freaks. And now we say, good God, I don't need you anymore. I don't need to pursue you. I don't need to kind of follow this wispy idea of you. I have these set rules that I can follow. I'm good. And what we do, just like last week, is we remove the relationship from a fundamentally relational thing. And now our very relationship with Jesus no longer requires a relationship because we have the rules. We have a to-do list. Have you ever been to a wedding and after the vows, each, the husband and the wife present each other with their 10 rules for marriage? You ever seen that? Here's your rules. Jen, if you'll do these things, I'll be a good husband and I'll be happy and then she gives me my rules. And then when we have this relational issue, when we're kind of at each other's throats, I don't get to go like, what's wrong? I followed your rules. I don't understand. Because rules remove relationship from a fundamentally relational thing. That's why we don't do it in our relationships. And God didn't want to do it to his either, I don't think. He gave us these to help us, but I think he knew our hearts and he knew that we would reduce a relationship to a spiritual to-do list and remove the pursuit of Jesus from our hearts. And I think we've all done this. And like I said last week, we're going to do four weeks in things we shouldn't do. And then we're going to cap it off with what a relationship with God should really look like and what should really drive us to Jesus. And I'm excited. We're supposed to wait until next week to announce this, but forget it. Sometimes I just do what I want. I'm excited. We're going to cap this series off by taking communion together for the first time since February or March. We're going to get you ready at home. We're going to find a way to do it here. But when we talk about being with God, we're going to bring him in with us and have communion together as a church. And I'm excited about that. But this week, I would simply ask you, do you see this posture in yourself? Do we have pockets of selective morality? Do we have places where we've reduced God to a to-do list and not a relationship? Have you made the exchange of wonder for arrogance, of trust for anxiety, or of seeking for doing? And will you allow God to work in your heart this week as you pursue him, to show you where this posture exists in your life, and to begin to ask yourself the question and ready your heart for what it should look like to follow Jesus. Let's do that this week and this month as we move through this process together. Pray with me. Jesus, you are good to us. You love us. You intercede for us. God, you see in us our true motives, and you're patient with us. Father, you know that we can only offer you gross. We can only offer you messed up. We can only offer you our selfishness. But would you help our hearts to learn to beat with yours? Would you create within us an earnest desire for you? Would we not make these awful exchanges and be people who wonder at you, who trust in you and who seek you? Would you work in our hearts even this week to prepare us for what it is to truly know you and follow you. God, would you be with those who are hurting this week? Would you buoy their spirits? Would you encourage them? God, would they see you even in the struggle? And for those of us who are having good times and good weeks, would we see your joy in those moments as well? Jesus, it's in your name we pray. Amen.

This is good. I've been preaching to Steve for 22 weeks on Thursday mornings. This is great. This is the first morning. Jen and I moved into a new house in April, beginning of April. This is the first morning I've woken up in my new house Sunday morning and driven to church and now preach. So this is really, really great. So good morning to you, Grace. Good morning to you online. I wanted to say to those of you who are watching from home and just reiterate, you are every bit as much a participant in what's happening this morning and in this church as anybody who comes in person. And we are now in this new season of life as a church. This is the new season of grace. We are one church that meets in a bunch of different locations, both here and now, like Kyle said, all over the world online now. And this is what church is going to be for the foreseeable future. We're going to be like this for a long time. I don't know if you guys have thought that through, but this is a new season in the life of Grace as a church because we have to be one church in multiple locations. It's going to be a while before everybody feels all the way comfortable coming back. We're going to grow back into a need for children's ministry as that starts back up. And so this is the new season for Grace, which is kind of crazy to say, because I don't know if you know this, the last time we met in person, I was announcing to you the pledge total of our campaign. That's a thing that happened. And then COVID started, and here we are. So even though this plan, the way that 2020 has played out, and this new season of grace that we're facing is not our plan. God knew what was going to happen. His hand has been on us this entire time, and it will continue to be on us. He will continue to be with us. We have always said that God's hand is on grace. He's made it evident that he loves grace, and we are every bit as confident now that his hand remains on grace. And I need nothing more than this. I was talking with Joe as worship started this morning. Joe's the moderator of our board, and I went, this is great. I didn't expect this. All you brave souls to be here, this is wonderful to get to see everybody. So we are excited. And as we move into this new season in the life of grace, I did want to say just thank you a ton. There have been some people working behind the scenes, and whenever you want to call out any one individual person, it gets a little murky because so many people have been doing so very much. We've had people watching our practice online streams and giving feedback. We've had people showing up to work in the booth and help out behind the scenes. We've had Erin, her whole ministry, our children's pastor, has changed and she's just been killing it online. Kyle's switched everything to online. Everybody just up and changed their job in this quarantine and have done so much to push the church forward. But as we started this new season of grace, I would be remiss if I didn't point out to you the hard work of Steve Goldberg, our worship pastor. When we went in March, when we realized, hey, we have to go totally online. We have to find a way to record a sermon, release it online, and be totally online. And we'd like to have a virtual lobby where people can still talk to each other. And also, we need a new webpage. And we need somebody to record the sermon and edit it and upload it and be ready to go. Steve? And then when the elders, when we realized as elders that in June, we're going to have to go live. We're going to have to do a live stream. We really don't have a choice. We're going to have to be able to do this when we come back because when we begin to resume in-person gatherings, because not everyone's going to feel comfortable doing that. There's costs involved. There's technical attitudes involved. There's different things that you have to do. It's a big, huge stressor. And once again, as a church, we went, Steve? And he knocked it out of the park. So his job fundamentally changed in COVID. He has been a huge servant to the church and is the reason, the biggest human reason that we exist as a body right now because of the work that he's done behind the scenes. So we are grateful to Steve. Thank you, Steve, for that. As we jump back into the series, we are in the series called A Time of Kings. We're walking through the Book of Kings. We know it to be the Book of Kings. Our Bible divides it into two, 1 and 2 Kings, but it was originally all one big scroll that got divided in half because it was just too long of a scroll to carry around. This morning, we are in 2 Kings chapter 10. So if you have a Bible there at home, go ahead and turn there. If you have one here in the service, turn to the Bible. The Bible in front of you, in the seat back in front of you, has not been touched for over like six months. So it's good. It's clean. You can touch it. But we're going to be in 2 Kings chapter 10. In this chapter, there's a principle pointed out that reminded me of a book that was written back in 2001. It's almost 20 years old. If you're a business leader, if you're in the corporate world at all, you have probably gone through this book, Good to Great by Jim Collins. It's a great perennial book. It's one of these wonderful leadership books. Incidentally, in these leadership books, whenever you read these leadership books, how to be an effective leader, how to grow an effective company, whatever it is, the result of it is the author will always land on, after different studies by like Duke and Stanford and Yale and whatever else, that to be an effective leader, you need to be humble and lead without an ego. You need to be a servant leader and put others first. These are the most effective leaders we see in the world. And as a believer, you just kind of go like, oh, you mean to lead like Jesus? That's what your research tells you? That's just an aside. But in this book, Good to Great, he looks at companies and he's asking the question, how do companies go from good, effective companies to really great, knocking it out of the park companies? What's the difference between something that's good and then taking it to the next level and making it great? He's got a lot of good ideas in there that stand the test of time. But the one that he leads the book with that I think is incredibly effective is this statement that I was reminded of as I looked at the story of Jehu this week. It's a statement it's in chapter one of the book. Good is the enemy of great. Good is the enemy of great. And what he means is that when we settle for good enough, that's the enemy of actually pursuing greatness. That so many people, so many corporations don't reach greatness because they settle for good enough. They get to good enough and then they go, great, that's perfect. And they don't actually get to be great. So its premise is that good is the enemy of great. And this is true in the professional world. It absolutely is. You know this to be true in your own lives. It's also true in marriage. It's true in how we parent our kids. It's true in our physical health. Settling for good enough is always the enemy of great. And the story this week points out to us that not only is that true in the professional world, but it's true in the spiritual world as well. I think when we look at the story of Jehu, what we see is that spiritually, good is the enemy of great. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn, like I said, to 2 Kings 10. I'm going to give you a little bit of the background of what's going on here with this story of Jehu. By the way, I don't think there's ever been a more redneck pronunciation of this particular king's name, J-E-H-U, Jehu, right guys? But as I looked at him this week, it became apparent to me that this is one of the more tragic figures in the book of Kings. And I would have thought that two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, if you asked me, who are the characters in this book that make you sad? I wouldn't have named Jehu. But the more I dove into his story, the more my heart broke for him and the potential that he had that he messed up. If you've been following along, you'll remember that two weeks ago, we looked at the showdown of Elijah against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. And you might remember that the king at the time was a guy named King Ahab, married to a woman named Jezebel. And Ahab, when he took over as king, for whatever reason over Israel, he installed Baal as the God. This is the God that we're going to worship. So he had 450 prophets of Baal. He had temples erected to Baal all over the country. And that was the predominant religion in Israel, which broke the heart of God because these are his people. These are his children, the descendants of Abrahamal on Mount Carmel. If you haven't seen that sermon, there's a spoiler alert. Elijah wins. God wins. And he kills the 450 prophets of Baal. He turns the hearts of the people towards the Lord, but apparently not all the way. Because when Ahab dies, Jehu is his successor. Jehu takes over as king. And he immediately, you'll see in the preceding chapters, stamps out the lines of Ahab and Jezebel, which is an uncomfortable truth, but that's just what they did in the time of kings. That was part of the deal. And the very next step he takes after making sure that Ahab and Jezebel are no longer a threat is he puts to death all the prophets of Baal and he burns down the temples of Baal. He says, no more with this religion, not in my reign, it's done. And it's because Jehu had a heart for the Lord. He said, this is wrong. We're not going to do this in the Israel that I run. He burned them all down. He ran out the prophets. He killed the ones that remained. And he said, in this country, we honor God. This is what we do. And it's a great thing. This is why I think Jehu is a tragic figure, because if you've been paying attention, you know that after Solomon, David and Solomon ruled over Israel, all of Israel. But after Solomon, his son Rehoboam was a dummy and he was so prideful that he split the nation. Now there's the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah. After the Civil War, there is a split. As you follow the history of Judah through the book of Kings, they have, depending on who you ask, either three or seven good kings. Israel had no good kings, not a single good king as it existed as a sovereign nation, if you understand good to be a king who turned the hearts of the people back to the Lord, a king that was faithful to God. Israel didn't have a single good king. And here Jehu is, at the beginning of his reign, taking this huge step, doing this really great thing, this thing that was very bold, this thing that probably would have upset a good portion of the people who followed Baal, this thing that was loud and prominent and good. And he wiped away the prophets of Baal and he wiped away the temples of Baal. And he could have been a good king that changed the course of the nation of Israel, that changed the course of history for Israel for all of eternity. But he didn't do this one thing. And that's where we pick up the story in verse 28. Chapter 10,'s good. God says you've done a good thing. You came in and with faith, because you love me, you got rid of the prophets of Baal, you got rid of the idols of Baal, you got rid of the temples of Baal, and you have followed me. And because of that, this throne is going to be in your family for four generations. This is a good thing. He is on the precipice of potential now, Jehu is, the precipice of greatness. All he has to do is finish the drill. All he has to do is take the next step. He's done the hard thing. And God says, good, I'm going to honor this. But God's not done talking to Jehu. We pick it back up in verse 31. But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God nation split, everybody was still practicing Jews. And for every festival and holiday, they had to go to Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, they would pay the temple tax. They would pay for their sacrifices. They would pay for a hotel stay. They'd go to the restaurants. They'd do the whole deal. It was a trip. It was a pilgrimage. And Jerusalem was getting all the tourist dollars. And Jeroboam went, this stinks because Jerusalem is in Judah. So he made up his own religion with golden calves and he put them in Bethel and in Dan and he told the Israelites, hey, good job. You don't have to go to Jerusalem anymore. You can stay right here and leave your tax and tourism dollars to the nation of Israel. It was an economic choice. And in doing so, he sinned against the Lord. And those golden calves stayed there through many kings, virtually ignored. But to the heart of God, they were offensive. And when Jeroboam took the great step of getting rid of all of the idols in Israel, he didn't get rid of these two idols, the original ones, the ones that were there from the beginning. And I don't know why he didn't do that. I don't know why. Your guess is as good as mine. He could have thought these are part of the heritage of the country. I don't want to mess with this. I don't want to offend people. People go there. They're tourist attractions now. I don't want to fool with it. I've ruffled enough feathers with the bail thing. I don't want to do this thing. He could have thought that. He could have just thought, they don't matter. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to worship these golden calves. Nobody does that anymore. It's an antiquated religion. It's part of our history. It doesn't matter now. They're no threat to God, so whatever. But for whatever reason, he left them behind. And because he left them behind, he didn't turn his heart completely to God. Because he left them behind, he didn't do his part in turning the hearts of the people completely to God. And over time, the worship of those golden calves began to creep back into the culture. And over time, the hearts of God's people were turned away from him again. And over time, it says at the end of this that God began, in verse 32, that the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel. Bit by bit, portions of the kingdom were taken away from Jehu and his descendants until in four generations they were carried away as slaves because of this fundamental mistake that he made. And to me, the lesson from Jehu and his reign that echoes down through the centuries is that partial obedience leads to total failure. Partial obedience, a half measure, not quite full measure, leads to total failure. Partial obedience under Jehu led to total failure. The steps he took with Baal were big, and they were bold, and they were brave, and they were courageous. And he gets credit for that obedience. But because he didn't take the full step, because he didn't go the whole way and take the full measure, eventually it led to his total failure. And you know, the Bible is replete with these examples where half measures don't get the job done, half measures lead to total failure. The most prominent example to me is the transition between the book of Joshua and the book of Judges. The book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Bible that tells the story of the conquest of the land of Canaan. God brings his people, led by Joshua the general, into the promised land that's now occupied by other tribes and nations and city-states. And the whole book of Joshua is a book of conquest sweeping through the nation, and God has given them the divine instruction to get rid of everybody who's not one of my children. This is your land. It's nobody else's. I don't want them here. They're going to contaminate the holiness of my people. Get rid of them. And the whole book is about how God goes before Joshua and his armies and makes that possible. But then the next book, the book of Judges starts. And the book of Judges starts off by telling us, Joshua did right and swept through the land and cleared it out. But he left a couple of pockets of some tribes and some villages that he must have thought were inconsequential. I don't know if he was battle weary and just didn't feel like it. I don't know if he didn't see them as a threat. And so he left them. They could never oppose anything to Israel that would be bad for us. They could never hurt us, but he left them behind. He offered partial obedience. And because it was partial and not full, the author of the book of Judges tells us that because Joshua left them behind, that they were a thorn in the side of the nation of Israel. And in the book of Judges, we see those little inconsequential people groups rise up and oppress God's people in Judges. And they stay there and they remain so much so that generations later when David is in the valley fighting Goliath, he is fighting a giant that is a descendant of the tribes that Joshua left behind because he wouldn't be completely obedient. We see over and over again in Scripture that partial obedience leads to total failure. And what I want us to see this morning is that these stories, the story of Jehu and overthrowing Baal but not the golden calves, the story of Joshua not cleansing the nation like he should have. These stories are not stories about cleansing a nation. They're not stories about getting rid of idols. That's not really what they're about. These stories are about our ongoing battle with sin. They're about our ongoing pursuit of holiness. These stories matter to us deeply because what we should learn from this story of Jehu and his partial obedience is that partial obedience leads to total failure in sin and sin, in lowercase sin and in uppercase sin. For us, here's what I mean. I think the easiest application of this lesson is for us to think about that one sin in our life that just eats our lunch. That one sin in our life that over the years, decades maybe, we just have to battle with over and over again and we experience different seasons of victory and different seasons of struggle with this sin, this one big sin. Many of you, when I said sin, this one big sin, half the room and half of you guys there at home went, yeah, I know what that is for me. You don't have to do a lot of soul searching. You, in fact, think I'm preaching right to you right now that the Holy Spirit gave me a special message, and I know what your sin is. Let me tell you something, I don't. I'm so glad we're not Catholic, and you don't have to confess to me because I don't want to know. But we have those. These big sins that we struggle with over and over and over again. And if you have one of those, come on. You know what that struggle is. You've taken the big measures, haven't you? You've knocked down all the prophets of Baal. You've burned down all the temples for this sin. But you left behind some golden calves because you didn't want to admit that was tempting too. Because maybe you were a little battle weary. You were tired of fighting that when you thought, those can't possibly trouble me. And you left a little remnant. You left a little thing. You left a little window. You left a little foothold behind. And over the years, that sin evolved back into something that was more debilitating than before. You been through that cycle? Yeah, I have too. This story from Jehu is a reminder that partial obedience leads to total failure. The easiest example of this sin, I'm sorry guys, I don't mean to make us, hey, welcome back. Let me make you super uncomfortable for a minute. The easiest example of this is lust, right? It's a sneaky, pernicious sin, man. You can sneak in anywhere. Now, if that's something we struggle with, we can give in to that struggle any time there's cell phone service. And we've taken the steps and we've done the things and we've tried to move past it and we've confessed and we've done the hard stuff and we've sat there in shame and we've been met with grace and we've said, I'm not going to mess it up again. But we leave these pockets, don't we? We leave these little golden idols where we say, certainly that couldn't be what does it. And over time, it builds and becomes just as debilitating as it ever was. And it's not just true of that sin. It's true of pride, or greed,, gluttony, or sloth. So let me just encourage you. If this is you, if you've got one of those sins in your life that's just kicking your tail, that as soon as I started talking about this, you knew what yours was. If that's you, can today be the day that you draw the line in the sand and you go, God, just show me everything I've got in my life that needs to come down so that I can move past this. Show me what full obedience looks like. I'm tired of partially obeying you and then totally failing. So show me what full obedience looks like in this sin. Can today be the day you do that? If you have one of those sins, and you would honestly, in your heart, listen, you don't have to lie to me. I have no idea what you're thinking. The people around you have no idea what you're thinking. If you have that in your life right now, and you think to yourself, you know what? I know that my life shouldn't have this sin in it, but I really like it. And honestly, I don't want it to go away. I'm happier when it's a part of my life. Can you just be brave enough to pray today that God would change your heart? Can you just admit that to the Father? Say, God, I have this sin in my life. I know it doesn't belong there, but I like it there. Will you please change my heart so that I'm not happy with this being a part of my life anymore? Will you just pray that and let the Lord work through that prayer? But this lesson, partial obedience leads to total failure, isn't just true of an individual, lowercase sin, but of all sin, of the sin nature that lives inside of us, of the sin nature that Jesus died so that we might be able to put to death. We can only battle that sin nature with Christ. We can only battle that sin nature with the Spirit. So even as we talk about battling all the sin that is in our hearts, we have to first acknowledge that Jesus expunged that from our hearts and we wander back into it because we're broken creatures. But I think in a church full of Christians, this is probably the more applicable way to look at this story. For many of us here in this room and at home, wherever you are, we don't have that one big sin. Sure, we sin. Nobody's perfect. But we don't have the one thing that if people found out about it, it would just tear us down. We don't have that, but we have sin. And I think for many of us, especially church people, this is where good is the enemy of great really comes into play. Because we feel like we're good enough, right? Maybe you got saved as an adult. Maybe you came to know Jesus as an adult and you look at your life now and you compare it to your life then and you think like, man, I'm totally different. Like I cuss way less, which in Christian circles has to mean you're godly. I cuss way less, right? I don't do the things I used to do. I used to drink this much, now I drink this much. I used to party with these people, now I don't do that. I used to have those friends, now I have these friends. I go to small group, I do all the things. I'm pretty good. So you compare yourself to who you used to be, you feel pretty good about life. Or maybe you've been in church for forever. Maybe you're like me, and as far back as your memory works, church and faith were a part of it. And so you think you're pretty good. You're pretty squared away. And yeah, sure, I mean, I could read my Bible more, but come on, just pastors read their Bible every day, right? Maybe most of the elders. People don't really do that. You know that you could pray more, but you're like, I mean, come on, who has time to pray like 30 minutes a day? Isn't that for little old ladies? Like, I got things to do. And we're pretty good. We look pretty okay. We compare ourselves to the right people. We're pretty spiritually healthy. But that partial obedience, those partial measures, allowing God to change portions of your heart, and then when he shows you this part of your heart, you go, God, I feel pretty good right now. Maybe you don't say that. Maybe you'd never have the audacity to say that to God in prayer, but we say it every day with the way that we act, right? Those partial measures, they lead to total failure just as much as anything else does. And when I say they lead to total failure, what I mean is if we're just cruising along, settling for good enough, not pursuing the Father, not engaging in a relationship with the Father, not daily pursuing Him through prayer and through reading His Word, and then something happens and our life gets shaken to its core and we need our God. We have not been investing in this relationship with Him and we don't have anywhere to go or to grasp and He feels so distant when we need Him so close. Or we're called to ministry or our kids have a question or we need to pour out and we realize that we're pouring from an empty vessel because we haven't been filling ourselves up because we've been settling for good enough. We've been settling for partial measures. It can lead to total failure. But you know, you know what scares me more than that total failure? You know what scares me more for myself and more for you in settling for good enough? It's the thought of what we're missing out on if we would pursue greatness. Think about Jehu. All Jehu had to do is take the next step and get rid of two cows, man. Get rid of those two golden calves, take the next step, take the full measure, and he would have been the lone good king in the nation of Israel. He would have forever changed the course of that nation. He would have been held up as a spiritual hero, and now he's lost history. Many of you never even heard of him before you walked in or before you tuned in this morning. He could have had such a better legacy. What richness and blessings of God did Jehu miss out on because he was partially obedient and he settled for good enough? And for you, what blessings of God are you foregoing by settling for good enough in your life? How much better of a spouse could your spouse have if you would refuse to settle for good enough in your life and you pursued holiness as God instructed you to pursue it. How much, think of your kids. How much better can we disciple our children if we would, as parents, refuse to settle for good enough and pursue greatness and pursue holiness and always go the full measure in our lives and in our hearts and always be willing to tear down the next thing that God shows us. What richness and blessing waits for us on the other side of complete surrender and obedience? We're told that at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence there are fullness of joy, that Jesus himself came that we might have life and have it to the full. And I am convinced that the only thing that is keeping us from not experiencing those pleasures and experiencing those joys and experiencing the full life that God has for us is our offerings of partial obedience rather than complete surrender. So look at the story of Jehu. Don't be scared of the consequences. Be aware of what he missed out on. And let's be people who determine, God, I don't want to miss those blessings that you have for me. I don't want to miss that richness that you have for me. I don't want to miss the relationship that you have waiting for me. I don't want my marriage to miss out on that. I don't want my kids to miss out on that. I don't want my next decades to miss out on that. And let's be people who learn from Jehu and apply it to sin and sin. And let today be the day that we say, I'm tearing down all the idols and getting rid of that big sin. And let today be the day that we say, I am going to stop offering partial obedience and start being willing to tear down everything that God shows me in my life so that I can experience all the blessing and all the joy and all the peace that he has for me. Let's do that together as a church. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. God, I think about maybe some of the things that I've missed, some of the experiences that I haven't had or some of the joys that I would have loved that my half-hearted devotion to you has cost me. Father, may we not be a people of regret. May we not be a people of fear, but may we be a people with an anticipatory joy of what is waiting for us when we will simply surrender ourselves to you. And whatever situations we find ourselves in, whether it's facing a big sin that we're just so scared of, that's just so pernicious, or whether it's facing that sin monster in our life and the temptation to settle for good enough and not tear down the next thing. Wherever we are, God, would you give us the faith and the courage and the desire to take that next step? For those of us who are entrenched, admired in sin, would you simply change our hearts to not be happy with that anymore? Would you help us as a church walk in a pursuit of holiness towards you? Thank you for this morning, for this new phase of grace. We pray that your hand would continue to be on us as it has been in spite everything around us and sometimes in spite of us. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to be back in the saddle again, getting to talk to you. I'm so grateful to have people like Kyle who can step in for me last week. One of the values that I feel we have at Grace is the desire to hear multiple voices, multiple influences, multiple perspectives. So I was excited to have Kyle in here to do a phenomenal job talking about the joy of Paul and Silas last week. This week, before we jump into the sermon, I'm really excited to announce that we are going to resume in-person gatherings on August the 16th. 10 a.m. right here. You're invited to come participate in church live. We're thinking of it as having church in our home or yours. So by August the 16th, we're going to be prepared to do a live streaming simulcast of our service. So you can come and experience in this room in person, or you can experience it in your home where you have been experiencing it all summer long. I understand that a lot of us simply won't be ready to come back by August the 16th, and that's all right. We're going to have a full service, worship, announcements, sermon. Our very first service back, we're going to be focused largely on worship, corporate worship together, because I miss nothing more than worshiping with you guys and being in the lobby and talking with all of you. on August the 16th. If you're not quite there yet, you can stay at home and have the exact same experience. There's going to be details to follow about all the precautions that we're going to take on Sunday mornings. One of the things I know that we're going to do, I was just talking to the elders about this this last week, is we're going to ask that everybody in this place be wearing a mask. So if you're not comfortable with wearing a mask, if you're going to be mad about that, then go ahead and email me and let's start having that discourse right now. But that's going to be part of the deal when we come back. We're all going to wear masks. We're going to distance ourselves. We're not yet going to have child care. Everyone's going to be invited to participate in the service. The mechanics of child care just won't work out yet. But I'm super excited to get to see everybody again. I'm super excited at the idea of preaching to people. I'm super excited to worship with you, to see you, to catch up with you. If you feel comfortable with it, I hope that you'll consider joining us on August the 16th as we resume our in-person gatherings. And I hope if you're going to consume them from home that you'll look forward to that being a live stream with full worship and everything we do as a service. Hopefully it can begin to feel like grace again. Now this morning we are finishing up our series in the book of Acts called Still the Church. We've been looking at this book that chronicles the beginning of church. Jesus goes up to heaven, he leaves behind his disciples, and he tasks the disciples with the job of building his kingdom on earth, to build the church, right? And we've been pulling out from this book the practices, principles, and philosophies that we should apply to our church today, the things that we should still be doing. And so we looked at Jesus going up into heaven. He left the disciples behind. After a few days, they received the Holy Spirit, and they go out. We spent two weeks looking at the seven distinctives of the early church that should still be true of our church today. And then we moved through the book looking at these key events, these substantial events in the life of the early church that really formed and played a big part in who we are and what we should do. And after the conversion of a guy named Saul into Paul that God said was his chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles, the rest of the book of Acts really mostly chronicles his ministry, the most influential ministry of all time. And Acts ends in the 28th chapter. And at the very end of the 28th chapter, we kind of get the synopsis of Paul's ministry. We get our final words from him, and then Luke, the author of the book, kind of shares with us what happens at the end of Paul's life. So if you have a Bible there at home, go ahead and turn it to Acts chapter 28. You can go to the very end of the chapter. We're going to be looking at verses 28 through 31. And in verses 26 and 27, Paul is speaking, and he's speaking to a Hebrew audience. You'll remember from this series and from sermons past that the Hebrew people were God's chosen people, and they believed erroneously that God and his kingdom and his salvation was only for them. The problem was they didn't really receive it or accept it the way that they should. The problem was that when God finally sent the promised Messiah for whom they had been waiting for millennia, that they rejected him. And because of that, God is now, through Paul, opening up the gospel to the rest of the world. The intent was always to reach the world. He gave the Israelites, his chosen people, the news first, but it was their job to spread it. They didn't do it. So now Paul says, I'm going to do it instead of you, and they get to hear it instead of you. And so in 26 and 27, he quotes back to them from a passage in Isaiah that they all know very well, that essentially says that God's people will be ever seeing and never perceiving and ever hearing and never understanding that they're going to listen but that they won't hear. They're going to be exposed to the gospel but they won't receive the gospel. And then in response to that, Paul says this in verse 28. He says, So he's talking to the Hebrew people and he says, you've had a chance to listen and you've chosen not to. You're ever seeing and never perceiving, ever hearing and never understanding. So now I'm going to take this gospel, I'm going to take this truth and I'm going going to preach it to the Gentiles, and they're going to believe it. I'm going to preach it to the whole world. And then Luke finishes up the chapter like this. Speaking of Paul, he lived there. By now Paul is in Rome. He's in house arrest in Rome. So it says, So the book of Acts chronicles the beginning of the early church. I think of it as a baby deer learning to walk, finding its footing, becoming an institution. It grows into 3,000. It spreads in Jerusalem. It spreads in the Diaspora. It spreads in Asia Minor all the way out to Rome. Paul has three or four missionary journeys depending on which scholar you ask if the shipwreck on Malta counts as one. And he plants churches the whole way. And then he finishes his life in Rome. Many scholars, most scholars believe that Paul died in Rome a few years after this was written. And for the last years of his life, he preached the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. He preached the gospel. And as we look at the book of Acts, we've been asking every week, based on the example in the book of Acts, what should we be doing? And if you're watching this, listen, let's be real for a second. It's in the middle of July and we've been doing online church for four months. If you're watching this, you care about church. If you're watching this, you care about the things of God. If you're watching this, you're asking the question, okay, that's great that Acts 28 ends that way, but how can that relate to me? How should that inspire me? What can I take out of that that should spur on action and passion within my own heart? What is happening in here that can stir my soul? If you're watching in the middle of July, in the fourth month of a pandemic, then what I know is you want to apply this to yourself. You care deeply about the things of God and about mimicking the early church. So what is it in this passage that we can pull out and apply to us? I think it's this simple truth, that like Paul, each of us must spend the rest of our lives preaching the gospel, just like Paul did. It says that he finished his life preaching the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance, just like he had done in all of his previous years. In Paul, we see a life poured out. He even says that he is a drink offering and that he has been poured out for the sake of the gospel. We see a man who says, I have run my race, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In Paul, we see a life that was poured out for the sake of the gospel. And if there's anything that we should take from Paul, it's the truth and the reality that if he spent his last years preaching the gospel, that we should spend our years preaching the gospel. If he invested his life in preaching the gospel, then we should invest our lives in preaching the gospel. And even as I say that, I think it stirs up two questions within us. First, what is the gospel? How do we succinctly and clearly define that? And second, how do I preach it? And I think that those are both legitimate questions. And I don't know how many of you are watching this right now, but I would be willing to bet if I could sit down with each of you and ask you, how would you define the gospel? If someone were to ask you, what is the gospel? What would you say that it was? I bet I would get a bunch of answers that were at the very least really close to right. But I also bet I would get a bunch of different meandering responses trying to really hone in on what the gospel is. And so I think it would be helpful for us to have a clear and concise understanding of the gospel so that when we talk about this idea of preaching the gospel, what do we mean? What are we preaching? How do we define that? And so this week I sat down and honestly I researched a bunch. I read over 50 different definitions of the gospel. Some short, some super long, and some had a ton of details, some didn't have very many details because I had an idea of how I wanted to describe it for the church, but I wanted to make sure I was right and on solid footing. And so I've come up with a definition of the gospel that I believe is true, I believe is accurate, I believe is fair and workable. It's stripped away of detail, but I think all of the details are embedded in it if you pay attention. And so for the sake of this morning, for the sake of our church, as we think about how do I preach the gospel, what is it, I want to define the gospel this way. We know that the gospel is good news. It comes from the word euangelion, which literally means the good news. So what is the good news? The good news of the gospel is that God invites you into a perfect eternal kingdom and Jesus has secured your citizenship. That's the gospel. That God, creator God in heaven, has also created a perfect eternal kingdom that he's invited you into and Jesus, through his death on the cross and covering over of your sins by that death, has secured your citizenship. The gospel says that there is an eternal kingdom in which God sits on the throne, and that in that kingdom, the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf. Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf with groanings that are too deep for words, that when you pray, the Holy Spirit hears those words and takes them to God the Father and says, here's what they really meant. Here's what she really needs. Here's what's really on her heart. And that in this perfect eternal kingdom, we're told again in Romans 8 that Jesus himself sits at the right hand of the Father interceding for you. That Jesus sits next to God the Father and he says, he's okay. He doesn't mean what he's doing. Have patience with him. Be gracious with him. I'm vouching for him. I died for her. The gospel is the reality of an eternal kingdom in which the Holy Spirit intercedes for you, and Jesus himself advocates for you, and Jesus can advocate for you because he has secured your citizenship with his own life. That's the gospel. And listen, because that's the gospel, that changes everything. You understand? Because we know, because as believers we are aware of the reality that there is a perfect, eternal kingdom, It changes everything in this world. Doesn't the reality of the gospel change the way we process pain and loss? Doesn't the reality of the gospel change the way we process hurt and tragedy? Paul says in Corinthians that though we endure struggles for a small time, James says that we should consider struggle a pure joy because we know that it's only temporary. We know that it won't last forever. Don't you understand that the gospel says that years like 2020 are not all we have? That the gospel says that there is a perfect kingdom beyond political division and racial strife and pandemics. That 2020 isn't all that there is. That there's more on the other side of this. That even if the world were to end in 2020, that there is another eternal perfect kingdom waiting for us on the other side. The reality of the gospel should change the way we process pain. It should help us see everything as temporary and not permanent. The pain that we're experiencing in our life, heartbreak and tragedy and abuse and disease, they don't get to put a period on the end of the sentence. God finishes that sentence later in eternity. Because the gospel is true, we can say things at funerals like I did a few weeks ago. We've lost a great partner of our church, a guy named Wes Clark. And I got to do his graveside service for his family a few weeks ago. And at that service in front of his wife who loves him and his six wonderful kids who loved him dearly, who didn't have a negative thing to say about their father and his grandkids who loved him dearly, I got to tell them, because the gospel is true, I got to tell them that this service isn't goodbye. It's goodbye for now. It's just goodbye for now. We're going to see him again. When I was growing up, there was this old gospel quartet, and I'll never forget one of the stanzas of one of their songs. It says, Because that's true. Because there's an eternal kingdom in which Jesus has secured our citizenship, death doesn't have a sting like it did. Sin doesn't have its shackles like it did. Everything changes. I love that quote from Pope John Paul II that says, we are the Easter people. We will not give way to despair for we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. We can have this uncommon joy in the face of tragedy. We will not despair. We will always sing praise because we know that there is an eternal perfect kingdom waiting for us and Jesus has secured our citizenship there. If you're watching and you don't know if you're a part of that kingdom, talk to some people around you. Email me because Jesus has died for you too. But the gospel doesn't just change the way we view pain or the way that we view struggle or the temporary nature with which we view this earth that the Bible tells us we are aliens in a foreign land here because we are members of another kingdom. We're citizens of another kingdom. It also imbues us with purpose. Because the gospel is true, each of us have something much larger than ourselves to live for. We have something much larger than our children to live for, much larger than our businesses or our families or our legacies to live for. We have the kingdom of God to live for, which is why it was so easy for Paul when he was struck with the reality of the gospel to spend his entire life preaching it. And because of the reality of the gospel, we should spend our entire lives preaching it. So if that's what the gospel is, if the gospel, if the good news of it is that God invites us into an eternal perfect kingdom, and Jesus has secured our citizenship in that kingdom, and it's our job to preach it. We might ask ourselves, Nate, how do I realistically do that? How do you want me to preach the gospel? Because you might be looking at me on your screen thinking, it's easy for you to connect those dots, pal. Like you're a pastor. You just preached it. Go you. That's a pretty easy equation to figure out. But how do I do that? How do I preach the gospel if I'm not given a platform? And to that, I would simply say this. I'm going to give us four ways to preach the gospel, but I would also remind you that I get to preach the gospel to people who love Jesus in the middle of July and are watching online. That's who I get to preach the gospel to. I don't get to preach the gospel to your coworkers. I don't get to preach the gospel to your neighbors. I don't get to preach the gospel to some of your circles of friends. For some of you, I don't get to preach the gospel to your adult children. You're the one left to do that. So while it may be easy to connect the dots on how a pastor can preach the gospel, we should also acknowledge that my audience is different than yours and that your audience needs the gospel too. They need to know that an eternal perfect kingdom exists and that Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom. So if that's what we're supposed to do, how do we preach it? Because when we think of preaching the gospel, we often think of using words, of telling people about Jesus, of going out and proclaiming. But I would submit that there's a lot of ways to preach the gospel, to show this truth to people. And I'm going to give you four of them. There's more than four. You could probably sit after the sermon if you're really ambitious. You could think of more than these. And I would also tell you that because I'm going to give you four applications, four ways to preach the gospel, my challenge to you is just to pick one. Pick one that resonates with you. If I say one and it doesn't click with you, then just wait. I'll be to the next one in a few minutes. But pick one that resonates with you, that clicks, and try to preach the gospel to the people around you in that way. But here are four ways this morning that we can preach the gospel and be obedient to that calling like Paul was. The first way is that we can preach the gospel with eternally inspired kindness. Eternally inspired kindness. And I say eternally inspired kindness because it's kindness that we treat people with in light of the fact that the gospel is true. extreme lenses we can see them through. One is to see everyone through the best possible lens to give them the benefit of the doubt. My wife, Jen, does this. She's one of the kindest, gentlest people that I know. She's so nice to everyone, and she sees everyone through this lens of benefit of the doubt. She just thinks the best of every person. Whenever I'm criticizing anybody, she says, that person is just doing blank. That person is just having a hard day. That person is just stressed. That person might be rushing home and cut you off because they have three pregnant wives and they're all about to give birth at the same time. You don't know their reality. You should be nice to them. So she's always finding the benefit of the doubt. I, on the other hand, am on the opposite end of the spectrum with my kindness, and I tend to view people through the spectrum of objects that are in my way to get the things done that I want to get done today, right? And we fall on that spectrum somewhere. But eternally inspired kindness, I don't think sees people through that grid. Eternally inspired kindness sees people through a grid of, that is a person for whom Jesus died. And they might not know that there's an eternal kingdom beyond this world that could fill them with a hope that will not put them to shame. And I need to be kind to them in such a way, I need to treat them in such a way that my actions towards them can push them towards a knowledge of this eternal kingdom. We can absolutely preach the gospel with our kindness to one another. We can preach the gospel with our kindness when there's somebody at work who we know good and well talks about us behind our back. To our face, they're kind, they say nice things, but behind our back, they're saying things about us that are not kind. And we know what they really think of us. And our coworkers know that we know. And we can choose to treat them like they've offended us. We can choose to distance ourselves from them, or we can choose to treat them with eternally inspired kindness. Understanding that not only is this person someone who needs to know that there's an eternal kingdom and Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom, but the people who are watching me now and know that I'm a believer, they need to see that there's something different about my kindness and the way that I treat that person. The neighbor that you have that just loves to sink their teeth into a conversation and overshare and wears everybody out, they're an energy sucker from everyone who's around them. And most of your neighbors just try to spend their time avoiding that person and not getting caught up in that conversation because they have other things to do. Eternally inspired kindness just locks in and lets them share and lets them go and listens and empathizes and lets your neighbors around see that you're treating this person different than anyone else does. And we're doing that because we're offering kindness in light of eternity. I think eternally inspired kindness absolutely preaches the gospel. It shows people that there's no way this person could treat others the way they do unless there's something else going on in their life. And I wanna know what that thing is. How are they possibly so nice? Is that real? That's eternally inspired kindness. Another way we can preach the gospel is through eternally inspired joy. Kyle preached about this last week, this joy in the face of trial and hardship and tragedy. He talked about Paul and Silas being locked in the jail in Philippi and an earthquake coming through and loosening the chains. Everyone is scared. Everyone is terrified. Things are crumbling around them. And Paul and Silas are worshiping God in the midst of this. And because of that contagious, eternally inspired joy, he gets saved and his entire household gets saved. What better time? I loved the sermon last week. I love the point of it. And I thought it was incredibly apropos of the moment. What better time is there to display eternally inspired uncommon joy than 2020? Than a pandemic we're all tired of, than political divisiveness that is wearing us all out, than racial issues that are bubbling up and causing different emotions on totally different ends of the spectrum. What better time is there to display this uncommon, eternally inspired joy, this peace that passes all understanding, acknowledging that there is an eternity on the other side of this, that God is going to fix this one day, what better chance to display that joy than in our current context? When we have eternally inspired joy, we have a joy and a peace and a fulfillment that this world and the circumstances of this world can't touch. And in a year like this, that joy stands out like a city on a hill. And we preach the gospel and point to God with eternally inspired joy. We can preach the gospel with eternally inspired generosity. Not just with our finances, but with our time and our energy and our effort. We can be incredibly generous people. I think increasingly to be a believer is to have this awareness that everything I have is God's and I am to leverage it for the sake of eternity. I'm to use everything I can, every ounce of my resources to push people towards this kingdom that God has created and to make them aware that Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom. And when we think of generosity, often we think of finances, and that's true. We should. That's a wonderful application. I think that Christians should be the most financially generous people on the planet. I think we absolutely should be the most generous people on the planet, but it also means being generous with our time, being generous in the things that we pour ourselves into. I think it means being generous with our forgiveness, offering it when it's not deserved. The older that I get, the more I want generosity to define who I am. And listen, I'm woefully short of that. I'm not sure if anybody listening to this would think to themselves, you know what I think of Nate? I think of generosity. But I know that I want that to be true. To me, a generous spirit in all ways is one of the defining characteristics of someone who knows and loves God and is aware of his kingdom and has this eternal mindset in the way that they handle all the things that were given to them. We can absolutely preach the gospel through eternally inspired generosity. The last way that I would give you this morning is through eternally inspired boldness. It's to actually preach the gospel. It's to use the words and form the sentences and to have the conversation. It's to let it be known. Some of us aren't very public with our faith because we don't want to be offensive. We're afraid that faith will cause a disruption in our friend group, a disruption in our neighborhood, a disruption in our office space. We kind of avoid talking about religion the same way we avoid talking about politics because to bring up politics is to invite strife, it's to invite division, and we feel the same way about our faith. But I would simply say to you that I totally understand this aversion to discomfort. But if we really believe the gospel's true, if we really truly believe that there is an eternal, perfect kingdom that John describes in Revelation. Revelation 21, I talk about this passage a lot. And in this kingdom, there will be no more crying and no more weeping and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And God will be with his people and his people will be with their God. And it will be perfect. If that kingdom really exists, if we truly believe that there is a perfect eternity waiting for us on the other side of death and that Jesus has secured our citizenship in that eternity and all we have to do is believe in what he did on the cross and we will enjoy that eternity forever. If we believe that is true, isn't it worth a little discomfort with our friends and neighbors to get them to go as well? Isn't it worth our boldness? Isn't it worth being a pariah if we can bring a few with us on the way? If the gospel's true, isn't it worthy of our boldness? If this book is true, there's a creator God in heaven who loves us, who loves us so much that he sent his only son to die for us, to cover over our sins so that we might spend eternity experiencing him forever in perfect joy. If that's true, isn't it worth our whole life? Isn't it worth preaching in every way possible? Isn't it worth bringing as many people as we can with us on our way to this perfect kingdom? That's why Paul spent his last years preaching the gospel. And that's why I think for us, as individuals who care about God and who do believe that this is true, we should spend every day of our life preaching the gospel too. I hope that we'll find ways to do that. And I hope that God will use you in incredible ways and you'll get to sit on the front lines of ministry because we have faithfully preached the good news that there is an eternal perfect kingdom and that Jesus has secured our citizenship in that kingdom. Let's pray. Father, you are better to us than we deserve. God, we bring everything that we are and we lay it at your feet. We know that you see both the good parts and the not as good parts. We know that you see the purity of motives that exist in our hearts and we know that you see the messy stuff too. God, for those struggling with faith, build it up, strengthen it. Let us believe that this is true. God, for those who desperately wanna preach the gospel, show us places where we can do that. For those of us like me who struggle with kindness, God, give us eternal eyes. Let us see people as you do. For those of us like me who struggle with generosity, God, let us hold things with an open hand and let that word define us. For those that struggle with boldness, give them courage. For those who struggle to be joyful, help them find reasons to celebrate in the midst of hardship. Father, make us a church who preaches your gospel every day and let people come to know you because of how you use us here. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.