Sermons tagged with Service

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. It's so good to see all of you. Thank you for being here. Like Michelle said, for part three of our series in John, as we've gone into the series, I've been trying to remind you and encourage you every week to grab one of the reading plans that's on the information table on your way out if you don't have one already. Those are also available online. I'm encouraging you to do that, to read along with us, because even if you come every week, if you don't miss a sermon or you catch up online, which by the way, if you're watching or listening online, thanks so much for doing that. But even if you don't miss a sermon through this whole series, it's going to take us to the week after Easter, you still, if you hear all of them, are only getting acquainted with Jesus through the book of John from my perspective. And that's not good for you. You need to read it on your own. Get your own perspective with Jesus. Get your own sense of what he's going through and how he's experiencing life and how you can learn from him before you come and I muck it up on Sundays. You are smart adults and you need to analyze that for yourself. So please be reading along with us as we go through the book of John. This morning we arrive at one of my favorite characters or figures in the Bible, a guy named John the Baptist, which just for the record so nobody has to feel silly, John the disciple, the disciple John wrote the book of John. John the Baptist is a different John. And in the book of John, we get more information about John the Baptist than any of the other three gospels, okay? So about John, I told you last week that Jesus says about John the Baptist that he's the greatest man ever born of a woman, which means he's the greatest man to ever live besides Jesus himself in Jesus's opinion. That's a big deal, which I think begs the immediate question, why would Jesus say that about John? What was it about John the Baptist that made him the greatest man to ever live? It's a question that I posed to you last week and invited you to go ahead and begin thinking about. I don't know if you spent any time thinking about it. I'm sure all the margins of your week were devoted to this singular question and you thought about nothing else. So thanks for being a good church partner and coming back ready. So I've got an answer that I want to propose to you this morning. And I will admit, this is my answer. It's my best guess on why Jesus thought John the Baptist was the greatest man to ever live. It's very likely a layered answer. It's entirely possible I could get to heaven one day and Jesus would go, Nate, why have you been teaching John the Baptist that way your whole life, man? Like you messed it up. But I hope not, and I think that we're on the right track with what we're going to look at today. To understand the greatness of John, I think we need to understand and recognize one of the most sneaky and pernicious lies that we have in our culture. It's such a sneaky lie that I would be willing to bet that 100% of the room at different points in our lives has fallen into it. I would be willing to bet that a significant portion of the room is still somewhat ensnared in it. We see this lie. I can see it in my life. I can see exactly how it happened. I got a degree in pastoral ministries, and then I got married and was going to go to seminary, and then God kind of redirected my life and said, I want you to teach for a little while. So we were living in Columbia, South Carolina for the first year of our marriage. And then it became clear that I probably shouldn't be a pastor. The going thought was maybe I wasn't kind enough to be a pastor, which I'm so grateful that's changed. And don't laugh so hard, man. And so I thought, I need to pursue teaching. I like to communicate. Maybe I don't have, maybe I need some work there, whatever. I need to pursue teaching. And so I got a job back home outside of Atlanta teaching. And I was teaching high school Bible. And I was actually, I was helping coach football. And I wasn't expecting this career, but I'm in the middle of it. And I'm trying to figure out what's next, right? When you're in your career, you go, what's next? What am I going to do next? That's always the question. When I talk to my friends, I ask them like, hey, what do you do? All right, well, what's next for you? How's that going? What's the next thing? Like, what are you going to settle into? We're always thinking about what do we want our life to look like five and 10 years from now. So we're always planning for that. And so as I'm teaching Bible and coaching football, I'm trying to figure out what's next for me. And I became really good friends with the head football coach, a guy named Coach Robert McCready. He was a recon Marine in Vietnam, and he was a bad joker, man. He was a great dude, and I loved being friends with him. He called everybody baby. And he was convinced that I was supposed to be the next head football coach there at the school. He was making me the coordinator and giving me different opportunities. And he said, baby, I'm going to give this team to you one day, okay? But I didn't know if that was true. I certainly wanted it to be true. It looked fun. But I also thought I don't want to be looking around and having to call everybody boss for my entire career. So I actually went to UGA to pursue a master's in education. I started that at UGA. A lot of people don't know that about me, but I actually did because I thought, well, if this is my career, then this is what I'm going to pursue. And then God changed gears. I was at a coffee with my pastor one day, and my pastor said, I'm going to offer you a job. I don't know what it is, but don't sign your teacher contract. And he came back to me with the job. I was at that church for seven years, and then I was here. So that's the story. But what I see in my story is something that I think that is common to all of us. You go to high school, and people ask you, where are you going to go to college? You go to college, and people ask you, what are you going to do? And they start asking you, who are you going to marry, and what's your family going to look like? And what they're always asking you is, what's your life going to look like in five years? What do you want to be true of you in five to ten years? And so you just put your head down and you get to work and you start doing the thing, right? I had no intention in my life ever of being a head football coach or of being a school teacher or an administration. That was never a thought growing up, but I found myself in this career, and I thought, well, I need to take the next steps, right? Because when you get into your career and you start paying those bills, however they start getting paid, you get used to a standard of life. And you start looking around at the people that you grew up with, and you go, oh, their houses are bigger than mine. I need to get on it. Or you go, I have the biggest house. I've done well. Right? Or you look at your coworkers and you're looking at the things that they're getting and the kinds of cars that they're driving and you look at the people around you that you go to church with and you look at the standard of life that they have and the vacations that they take and the clothes that their kids wear and then as they get older, the types of cars that their kids drive and it's just this big big competition, and we put our heads down, and we make the money, and we do the thing, and we pursue the career, and we're providing for the family, right, as we achieve the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And before you know it, we're 20, 30 years into our life, and we're never even sure if this is really what we wanted. I didn't even want to be a coach or an administrator, but I was going to take the steps to climb the ladder like I needed to because that's what you do, right? Or for others, for others, I was talking to my wife, Jen, about this this week and talking to her about this lie, this way that we just put our head down and we don't really think about anything else and we just begin building this life without ever really defining what we're looking for. I said, if you're going to believe this lie, what does it look like for you? Because she's never been really career driven. She's always wanted to be a wife and a mom and a homemaker. That's what she's always wanted to do. And so I asked her, what does it look like for you to fall into this? And she said, well, maybe it looks kind of like the Pinterest-y or the Instagram life to this desire to have this perfect home where every room in your home is postable, right? Where like, it's got, you have to have white and there has to be light flooding in and there has to be some color and gray somewhere. And then you take a picture of it and then you like, it's blessed. And then that's good, right? Like that's, that's, that's the life that we want. Like that's everywhere. And if we don't watch it, we get caught up in, I just want that house that will be good in the picture. I want the family that looks good in the picture. And so we pour our lives into building that. I've seen other people back off of career and invest in family. I've seen people deprioritize careers so that they can have opportunities to volunteer and cast a big net and have respect in the community and influence in the community. And listen, none of these things are inherently bad. It is not bad to be ambitious and build a career. It is not bad to love family and build a home that is a retreat. It is not bad to pull back from those things and exert your influence in other places. None of those things are inherently bad. But here's the lie, and here's what happens. As I think about this way that we go through life, where without even thinking, we just jump right in, and we start building this thing. Here's what I want us to realize this morning. We are all building our own kingdoms. All of us here in this room are kingdom builders. We're all kingdom builders. And all of us, to one degree or another, entirely or in part, are building our own kingdoms, right? We are kings and queens of our little quarter-acre lot, of our very own fiefdom. And this is the thing. It's that old phrase, right? Get all you can, can all you get, and sit on your can. That's what we do. That's what we're trying. We just build up as much as we can, and then we protect it from everybody else. And it's our kingdom. And now the family that I projected out 10 years from now, I have it, and it's perfect, and it's what I wanted. The career that I projected out, I have it, and it's what I wanted. And so we go through life, we work as hard as we can, we wake up in the morning thinking about it and we build our kingdom because all of us are kingdom builders. And this, when you think about it, is really the American dream. The American dream says everybody gets a kingdom. Everybody gets a kingdom. When this phrase was coined in the early 1900s or thereabouts, this idea of the American dream, there were places where you could grow up across the world and you never had a hope of building your own kingdom. You only ever had the option to build someone else's kingdom. But if you could get to America, the land of opportunity, now you can build your own kingdom. And so what we've done with our culture is we've produced generation after generation of kingdom builders. And we're all building our own kingdom, and we very rarely stop to think about whose kingdom we're building and why we're building it. And this, I think, is what helps us understand the greatness of John. Because John was a kingdom builder too. John the Baptist built a really respectable, successful kingdom. To understand John's kingdom, we should really understand a little bit more about the Jewish educational system. I'm going to try to not bore you with this. This stuff is fascinating to me. Hopefully it's interesting to you. If you were a little kid born at the time of Christ, then you would start elementary school at about five years old. And from five to 10, everybody went to elementary school. And you studied the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And during those five years, your goal was to memorize the first five books of the Bible by the age of 10. I'm not making that up. That's Jewish tradition tells us that that's what they did. And so if you made it to the end and you were a good student and you learned it and you showed some aptitude and you knew your Torah, then at the age of 10 or 11, really, you would graduate to a middle school called Beth Medrash. And you would go to that. And then what would happen is if you were a female, then you would learn, you would focus Deuteronomy and Psalms and you would be the worship leader in your home and in the synagogues. If you were a dude, then you would focus on the rest of the Old Testament being taught to you by a rabbi or a teacher in the synagogue. If at any point in this process you weren't keeping up with your studies, you weren't doing very well, you kind of flushed out or you couldn't memorize or it was just hard for you or whatever it was, then they would say, that's great, that's no problem, go home and learn a trade and be godly doing that. But if you can stick with it, stick with it. Then at the age of 13, you would take a break. And you would go home, and you would continue your studies privately while you learned the family trade, right? This is why we say that Jesus was a carpenter, because his dad was a carpenter, and you learned his family trade. Except for that carpenter thing is sneaky, because the Greek word there is tekton, which could mean carpenter, and it could also mean stonemason. And since Nazareth is surrounded by three stone quarries and no trees, it's very likely that Jesus was a mason and not a carpenter. So some of you need a new bumper sticker. But you would go home and you would learn the family trade, right? You would learn to do what your dad did, and then you would continue in your studies. And then around the age of 15, if you really thought you had potential, if you really thought you had what it took, then you would go and you would find a rabbi. A rabbi is just a Jewish word for teacher. You would go and you would find a rabbi, and you would go to him and you would say, can I follow you? Can I follow you? And what you're saying when you're asking the rabbi, can I follow you? What you're saying is, can I be who you are? The rabbi was somebody who had what we would call a successful ministry, whether that's a church or speaking ministry or whatever you want to parallel it to. Now, a rabbi had a successful ministry and was respected as what we would think of as a Christian leader or a religious leader in the community. And so you're going to him and you're going, can I become who you are? Do you think I have what it takes? Can I follow you? And the rabbis would have different answers for this. Sometimes they would say, well, tell you what, follow me for a couple of weeks and we'll see how it goes and then we'll talk about it. Others would quiz them. I've heard as an example, somebody would go, okay, Amos quotes the book of Deuteronomy seven times. What are the quotes, and what do they mean? And you'd have to know your stuff, right? And if you had what it took, if the rabbi saw something in you, then he would say, yeah, you can follow me. And that began the most intense internship program the world has ever known, probably. And from ages 15 to about 30, you followed this rabbi. You followed him every day. You listened to the way that he prayed. You listened to what he taught. You watched how he interacted with other people. You asked him questions. You learned the Bible from him. You continued to try to learn the Old Testament, what they called the Tanakh. And the goal was, by the time you were 30, to have the whole thing memorized. That's what you had to do to be a rabbi. And so they were learning from this person day in and day out, learning ministry and learning how to love on other people. It was an intense internship program. And then, towards the end of this program, if at any point in that program you just weren't keeping up with everybody else, because rabbis would have like eight to 12 disciples, give or take, if at any point you weren't keeping up with the other disciples, they would come to you and they would go, okay, listen, you're a godly young man and I love you, but you're not able to do this anymore. Go be a godly fisherman. Go be a godly carpenter. Go be a godly mason. And you would go and you would do that. But if you were able to hang with it and continue to show aptitude and propensity, then by the age of 30, what happened is the community around them began to call them rabbi, refer to them as rabbi. The more they taught, the more they were respected, and the community would begin to refer to them as rabbi. It kind of works like an old school pastor, like back in the 80s and 90s when you got hired at a church and you were a pastor. Everybody called you pastor, but at some point or another, they actually start to mean it, right? And you're their pastor. It worked the same way with the rabbi. Eventually, in that community, you became that rabbi. And then, once you became a rabbi, only ones that were in the upper echelon of all of the community of rabbis were the ones that were able to have disciples. So I want you to understand that to be a rabbi that could have a disciple, first of all, to be a rabbi at all is our equivalent of going to like an Ivy League school. To be a rabbi at all, this is the cream of the crop, all right? These are Harvard and MIT and Yale graduates. This is as smart as it gets. This is as sharp as it gets. And then to rise above the rest of those to become a rabbi where you could actually have disciples is the upper crust. And so when we meet John the Baptist, what does he have? Disciples. What does that tell us about John the Baptist? He was a sharp dude. We know other things about John the Baptist. He lived in the wilderness. He wore camel fur and he ate locusts covered in honey, so he's kind of a nut job. But he was like an eccentric professor, right? But he was super smart and he was really accomplished. And by every measure, John the Baptist was successful, wildly successful, and wildly respected. He even had a divine appointment. About him, there were prophecies that John the Baptist would be the voice crying out in the wilderness, paving the way for the Messiah. God gave him a divine role to be in Israel at the time of Christ, getting the rest of the nation of Israel ready for the arrival of the Messiah. He was the voice crying out in the wilderness, and by all accounts, wildly successful. When we meet him, he's baptizing in the Jordan River, and it says throngs of people are going out to meet him. He had a following. He had, he was the closest thing ancient Israel had to a megachurch pastor. He had this big following. He was the upper echelon of the religious community. Everybody was listening to him. Everybody was paying attention to what he said. He had the eyes of the nation of Israel on him. If he were around today to make a crude comparison, he would be one of these megachurch pastors talking to thousands of people at once with broadcasts at a bunch of different campuses. By all stretch, by any measure, John the Baptist was a wild success. And then this thing happened, and Jesus shows up. And when Jesus shows up, people begin leaving John's ministry and going to Jesus's ministry. And his disciples come to him one day, and they go, hey, people who are following you are now going and following Jesus. What do you want to do about that? They're telling him, hey, your kingdom's falling apart. This thing that you've been building, this thing that you've devoted your whole life to, he studied until he was 30 for the right to do this. He's devoted his entire life to do it. And then he launched it and it turns out he's good at it and it's successful. And he has tons of people following him. And make no mistake about it, John the Baptist was a man. He was a dude with an ego. And it would be incredibly tempting to look at those things and say, look at what I've done. You cannot tell me that he didn't derive a sense of his identity from what he had done and from what he had accomplished. You can't tell me that he didn't derive who he was from those things, right? In the same way that when we build our kingdoms, we derive our sense of identity from those. We derive our sense of value and worth from the things that we've built in our life. And so from the outside in, his worth and his sense of self had to be wrapped up in the things that he had accomplished, which were by all measures successful. And then his disciples come and they say, hey, someone's messing with your kingdom, man. Jesus is taking your followers and he's building his own kingdom. Yours is starting to fall apart. What do you want to do about that? And every person in history says what they want to do about that is take measures to protect their kingdom, right? But John's answer to that question, to me, shows us his greatness. In John chapter 3, on the screen we're going to start in verse 29, but I'm going to start reading from verse 27. We see John's response to his disciples who are saying, hey, your kingdom is falling apart. What do you want to do about it? And John says answer. His disciples say, hey, Jesus is taking your followers, man. He's diminishing your kingdom and he's growing his kingdom. What do you want to do about that? And he says, guys, do you not understand? Jesus is the groom. I'm the best man. On the wedding day, when the groom shows up, the best man doesn't stand there and get jealous that the groom's getting all the attention. He stands there and is the head cheerleader for the groom and everything that's happening for him. I am not the point here, guys. This is not what I wanted. This is the right thing. They need to go to him. He is the groom, and everybody is right to go follow him. In fact, what are you two still doing here? Go be with Jesus. My job has come. I've accomplished my task. He says, Jesus must increase and I must decrease. They said, he's taking your kingdom and he's making his kingdom bigger. And he says, yeah, his kingdom needs to get bigger and my kingdom needs to get smaller. And what he's telling his disciples there is, I think what makes him great. I have always been building Jesus's kingdom. I have always been building Jesus's kingdom. It was never my own. These were never my followers. These were never my people. It was never my education. It's never been my ministry. It has always, only, ever been Jesus's. And now that he's here, of course I'm going to give him what's his. I've been rallying these people for him. The whole point is for him to increase and me to decrease. The point is not for me to keep getting bigger. The point is not for me to continue to grow my kingdom. The whole point of this whole exercise has been to build his kingdom. Every verse he ever memorized, every person he ever spoke to, everybody he ever loved on, everyone he was ever patient with, every evening he spent in prayer, every morning he got early, those were all to build Jesus' kingdom, not his own kingdom. And I think John, in history, uniquely understood what it was to be a kingdom builder who was all about the business of building the kingdom of Jesus and not his own. And that's what made him great. And so that brings us to an obvious question for you. Whose kingdom are you building? Are you building God's kingdom? Are you building your own kingdom? Whose kingdom are you building? And I know that's a hard question. I know that's a tough question. It feels like an unfair question. Because the answer is, of course, of course we're all building our own kingdoms in some way. And if we've never thought about it before, and we've never opened our eyes to this lie that we just jump into life and begin to build things for a reason that we don't understand, if we've never drawn ourselves back from it and gone, wait, what exactly am I doing here? Then this is a really difficult question, but I would submit that either in part or in whole, all of us are building our own kingdom to some degree. I would ask you, whose kingdom are you building? Even as I ask this question of myself, just to be completely transparent with you and not be the pastor that's just making people feel bad. If you were to ask me, why are you working hard to build grace? Is the answer because I love you and I love the people that you bring here and I care for the souls that are represented in this room every Sunday morning and I love God and I want desperately for those souls to be knit with God so that everybody who walks in here can experience the peace that it is to walk with God and see families strengthened and kids grow up in those families and go out and be kingdom builders. Is that what motivates me? Yeah, absolutely that's what motivates me. But is there a chance that why I work so hard to build this kingdom is because I want to get to the age of 45 or 50 and go, look what I did? Yeah. Of course there is. Of course there is. And I'll be honest with you. I don't know how to suss out those motives. I don't know how to stand up here with a pure heart and be like, I'm doing all of this for God and none of this for Nate. I pray against it every day. The problem is I have an enormous ego, so I really pray hard. Your motives are mixed too. But I would ask you to press into that question. Listen, this is a successful room. Successful folks in this room. Smart people in this church. The things that you have accomplished, who have you accomplished them for? From this point on, as you continue to build, who are you building for? And so as we confront that question, we have to ask, what does it look like to build God's kingdom? What would it look like for me at 20 or at 30 or at 50 or 60 or 70 to make the decision, now, more than ever, I'm going to try to build God's kingdom. What does it look like to build God's kingdom? And just so we know, as we answer the question, whose kingdom are you building? Are you building God's or are you building your own? Jesus tells us in Matthew, don't store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourself treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. Don't invest your life in temporary things that are going away. Stephen, the worship before I ever got up here was talking about the temporary nature of this life and that what lasts for eternity are the souls of others, is the kingdom of God. And so do we want to invest our life in the things that matter for eternity or the things that only matter right now and even then not really? And let's be reminded that there's only one kingdom. There's only one kingdom that brings us a peace that passes understanding. There's only one kingdom that enables us to walk in joy. There's only one kingdom that says to death, where is your sting? There's only one kingdom that takes the tragedy out of funerals. There's only one kingdom that gives us a hope for eternity. There's only one kingdom worth dying for. Which one do you want to build? Yours or his? If we want to build his, what does that look like? Well, when John was building it, to me, it looked like holding things with an open hand. We're going to work hard. We're going to build things. We're going to build with our life. But the things we build, we hold with an open hand. And we say, these things were never mine. When Jesus comes to John and he starts taking followers from John, he says, I need these people now. They're going to be a part of my kingdom. Did John hold on to them and resent it? Or did he go, yeah, they were yours all along. They were never mine. He held them with an open hand. And so to build God's kingdom doesn't look like stopping our ambition. We'd be as ambitious and as smart and as hungry as we possibly can. But as we build those things, the things that we accrue, we hold with an open hand. And when Jesus says, I need that, we say, that was yours to begin with. It can look like the switch that happened in my dad's heart. And I'm going to brag about my dad now. He'll listen to this online and feel good and make him look really good. But I could also do plenty of sermons that would make him feel bad. So let's just be honest about that. But when he graduated college, he went and he got a job as a CPA. And he was a really driven guy. And his goal before he was 30 was to be a millionaire, which is a bigger deal in the late 70s than it is now. But he said, I want to be a millionaire. And that's what drove him, right? But somewhere in his 30s, God got a hold of his heart. And his thinking changed. And he said, I no longer want to be a millionaire by the time I'm 30. I want to give away a million dollars before I turn 40. I want to be a conduit of God's generosity. And then he made partner. And there's been some other iterations, but he owns his own firm now, and that firm is a conduit to God's generosity. They do for free the finances for several nonprofits. Dad's probably going to be mad at me for saying this, but they have a couple pastors on their payroll that he's simply supporting because he doesn't want them to not have options later in life. He sat on the boards for some missions boards and launched missions organizations and helps people all over the world with what they're doing. He is a conduit. His company is a conduit of God's generosity because something switched in him and he realized this isn't for me. This is for God. So here's my company. I'm going to work as hard as I can at it. Take what you need. He's open-handed with it. To be open-handed as a church. I think about this. I think I made him uncomfortable the first service. I'll do it two times in a row. Kyle, I've known Kyle, our student pastor, for a couple of years now, three, four years. I think he has the integrity and the gifts and the ability and the hunger and the unique makeup to do big things in God's kingdom. I think he's going to have great opportunities in his career. It wouldn't shock me at all to see Kyle become a senior pastor one day and go on to bigger and better from this. Not one little bit. And so while he's here, we're going to pour into him all we can. We're going to build him up and develop him. And I'm going to teach him everything I know, which is not much. It should take about the next six months. And we're going to do everything we can to get him ready for whatever the next opportunity is, understanding that it might not be in this place, and understanding that at some point or another, there's a very good chance that Jesus is going to go, I'm ready, I need him now over here. And we as a church are going to go, that's great, he was never ours. Even though he's going to leave a big void here, whenever this happens, we don't care because he's not ours and we want to see God's kingdom built wherever he goes. This is how we hold the people in our life as well. This is how we hold our time. I see people at the church. Y'all, we have one lady at the church who was a, she's been an elder for basically a vast majority of the existence of the church. She keeps up with the website. She's here early every Sunday morning. She works for a non-profit in her free time. If I email her at 11 o'clock at night, I will have an answer by six in the morning. She is on top of it. She does so much stuff for behind the scenes at this church that she has with her time and with her energy and with her talent said, here's an open hand, I want to build your kingdom. It can look like it at any place and at any time. So my question to you this morning is, whose kingdom are you building? Whose kingdom do you want to build? And what would it look like for you in your life to be wholly dedicated to building God's kingdom? And with that, what things are you holding with a closed hand that we're not allowing him to use? What things are you protecting that you haven't said, if you need it, God, it's yours? And then, what would happen here if we had a church full of kingdom builders? If everybody here quit being so concerned, and just like anybody else with their fiefdom and their kingdom and their quarter acre lot, if we quit being concerned with our kingdom and started getting concerned with God's kingdom, what kind of things would God do here with our collective efforts to build his kingdom in this place? We're about to sing a song about building a kingdom and there's a line in there that says, let the darkness fear. Let the enemy fear what will happen here if we determine within ourselves that we are going to be builders of God's kingdom and not our own. And look what can happen if a whole church will say yes to that. That's what I want grace to be. Let's pray. Father, you're so good to us. We acknowledge that you've gifted us in so many ways, God. Some of us are smart. Some of us are charming. Some of us are friendly. Some of us are hospitable. Some of us are funny. Some of us are servants, God. Each of us brings a different set of gifts to the table. And God, we acknowledge that they are your gifts and they are given to build your kingdom. And I pray that we would use those things that you've given us, not to build our own kingdom, God, but to build yours. Help us be more like your servant, John the Baptist. Help us to embrace what it means to decrease while you increase. God, give us the courage to be kingdom builders. Help us to identify, give us the discernment to see the things in our life that we hold too tightly and give us the courage to let go of those things. Let us, Father, live our lives for you, for eternity and for your kingdom. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am the pastor here. I know a lot of you guys are wondering, did Nate do that voiceover? Yeah, I did. I did, actually. I worked really hard on that and my accent. But I am so excited about this series, about the book of John, about spending. We're going to spend 13 weeks in the gospel of John, and I really couldn't be more elated to do it. And I will tell you a couple things. First off, the whole point of this morning, like Kyle alluded to in the announcements, is to get you excited about John, to help you understand why this is such a big deal, why this is such a big book, why it's important enough to stop and spend 13 weeks in. I really haven't been excited for a series, this excited for a series, in a really long time. Part of the reason I'm excited is because I feel like we've been waiting to do this as a church. I've been waiting to do this as your pastor. I told you guys last week, if you were here, that when I came in April of 2017, that I looked back through all of the series that had happened at the church to see where you guys had been and what you guys had been learning about to make sure that I wouldn't be repetitive moving forward and to see if there was any gaps that I felt like I needed to teach. And what I saw was that we spent a lot of time in the Gospels. The Gospels are the books of the Bible that tell the story of Jesus' life. It's the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And so you had spent a lot of time there, and you'd spend a lot of time in a book called Acts that kind of tells the story of the early church. It's a fun book. It's a storytelling book. It's the only one in the New Testament. And so it's a good book to be in. But I felt like there was so much more that we needed to study and know about the scripture. So we spent time in the Old Testament focusing on characters like David, and then the names of God, and then how the Old Testament points to Jesus. And so we've done that for a long time, and now it's time as a church to dive into Jesus, to dive into the story of his life, to acquaint ourselves corporately with our Savior, with someone who loves us and who died for us. And I'm really elated to do this. But I will also say this, and I'll remind you of this here at the end of the service. As I sat down to prep for the series and outline it, one of the things I realized is there is no way I can teach everything that I want to teach from the book of John. There is no way that I can do justice to the book of John. When I was growing up, my pastor, a guy named Buddy Hoffman, who I adore and respect immensely, he passed away a couple of years ago, but I consider myself lucky to grow up under his teaching. And my passion for scripture, I think, was ignited a lot by him. He spent four years going through the book of John, every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, until his elders finally sat him down and were like, dude, we need some Proverbs or something. You've got to switch it up. So if he could do that, I couldn't do four years, but I could do more than 13 weeks. I sat down to outline the series, and I just started by opening the Bible and just writing down everything that I saw. I was like, oh, I got to teach about that. Oh, yeah, that can be a sermon. Oh, yeah, they need to know about this. And I got through the first two chapters, and it was already like an 18-week series. So this really, if I'm being honest, isn't us going through the book of John. It's really Nate's 13 favorite things in the book of John. So to really get all of it, you're going to have to work along with us, okay? And we're going to get to that at the end. But I just want to say that as a preface to the series. As we preface the series this week and we launch into what does God say to us through this book, I want to answer some fundamental questions about why we're even doing this. I think one of the fundamental questions that we should answer is, why should we study a gospel? What is interesting to us about the gospels? Why were they written? Why did these books matter in some ways, in a different way than all the rest of Scripture? And so that's the first question we're going to answer. And I think John gives us that answer, at least the beginnings of an answer, in the 20th chapter of his book. The Gospel of John is 21 chapters long. And at the end of the second to last chapter, he throws in this statement, verse 31. And he says, I have written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he says, I've written all of this down, my experiences with Jesus down for this reason, so that you, you being whoever reads this ever, may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. So he wrote this so that you believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He wants you, he wrote this down so that you would know that Jesus is real and Jesus was who he says he was. And I don't know if you ever thought about it this way, and this is why we need to study a gospel and why Jesus matters so much to us. Do you understand that Jesus is the hinge on which all of history swings? He's the fulcrum on which all of history rests, that he matters more. He stands alone in history as the single most influential figure to ever be on the planet. Do you understand that? Do you understand that all of history and all of faith really boils down to two questions? These are the only questions that matter. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? That's all that matters. Was Jesus real? Did a guy named Jesus of Nazareth actually walk the planet 2,000 years ago? And if he existed, was that guy telling us the truth about himself? Because what he claims is that he is the incarnate son of the creator God who came to reconcile our relationship back to that God and that all reconciliation that we know as salvation flows through him because of what he did while he was on this earth, because he died and resurrected and defeated death and sin, and we'll see that later. Because of all of that, we can have a faith that we place in God if he's real, because that's what he claimed. So we have to answer those two questions. Was Jesus real, and was he telling us the truth? And I would say to you this morning, if you were here and you're not a believer, if you were here and you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, maybe there's someone close to you who kind of encourages you to come to church and so you come to do the nice thing. First of all, good for you for doing the nice thing. But if you're considering faith, dipping your toe into the waters of faith, unsure about faith, I would tell you that the very first thing you need to figure out is the answer to those questions. When I do my research, when I look at history, based on all the evidence, did Jesus, did he really exist? And then, do I believe that he was telling us the truth? Because if the answers to those questions are no, I don't think he existed. I don't think he was telling us the truth. Then nothing else matters, right? Nothing else matters. The Old Testament doesn't matter. What we understand about God doesn't matter. Nothing else in all of Christendom and the way that we understand the world and our worldview and the way that we understand faith, none of that matters if Jesus wasn't real and he wasn't telling us the truth. But if he was real and he is telling us the truth, that changes everything. Because that man during his life is recorded as affirming the first 39 books of the Bible that we call the Old Testament, that he called the Talmud. He affirms those, the law and the prophets, as scripture, as God breathed. He had the same 39 books that we have today by the time he was on earth. They were assembled around 250 BC and the people in Jerusalem said, yep, this is the holy text. And so Jesus affirms the holy text. So if Jesus is real and he is who he says he was, then he said he himself believed that the Old Testament was God breathed and was the word of God. So we can believe it too. If he's real and he is who he says he was, then he actually died and he was actually resurrected and he actually went to heaven. And the church that he leaves us in Acts is actually true and that was really the kingdom that he came to start that goes through the rest of history. It's the kingdom that we sit in now. If Jesus is real, then all of history before him looked forward to anticipating a Messiah, and all of history after him looks back to him as the Messiah and looks forward to his return, if he's real. So Jesus really is the hinge of all of history. We have to figure out what we think of him. We have to understand whether or not we can believe him. I think those questions are the most fundamental and the most important questions for anyone to answer in their life. If you've never answered them for yourself, it is worth the effort to do it. I promise. Get those answers for yourself. Because in Jesus, what we see is these essential qualities that we absolutely have to have. They're revealed in the Gospels, and it's why we study the Gospels. What I want you guys to understand is Jesus is the divine exemplar. He is the divine exemplar of our faith. An exemplar is just a fancy word for the best possible perfect model. And we see both of these things in the gospel. If you really want a fancy theological term, it's called the hypostatic union, that he is 100% God and 100% man. And we will never really understand how that all works out. But both elements are necessary and both elements are displayed in Scripture. And we need him to be divine, because without his divinity, we do not have the faith that he gave us. Okay? Without his divinity, there is no faith. Right? We understand that? And then, if we don't get his example, if he doesn't live for 33 years, three of which are really highly recorded, if we don't see the gospel stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, then we never get his example, and we need his example because without it, we have no perfect model for the faith that he founded. He is the exemplar, and that's essential for us as well. Without Jesus, we get other pictures of the faith. We get Paul, who may have struggled with arrogance. We get Moses, who may have struggled with anger. We get Esther, who had her own struggles. We get Ruth, who had her own struggles. We get them throughout Scripture, but they're all imperfect models. Jesus is the perfect model of your faith. So because he is the hinge of history, because he's the most influential person to ever live, we should really, really, really want to know everything we can about him on a more personal level than that. Jesus is your Savior. If you're a believer, he's your Savior. He is the one person to whom everyone else looks. He is the one person on whom all of Scripture is focused, whether it's looking forward to him or looking back to him or anticipating him again. Understanding Jesus is fundamental to your faith. That's why the prayer of Paul for all of his churches is that you would know Jesus along with the saints in the breadth and the depth and the fullness of the knowledge of Christ. It's why he prays it over and over again, and he praises the churches throughout the ancient world for their knowledge of Jesus, because it all boils down to how well we know Jesus. Jesus says in John 15, and we're going to spend a whole week on this, that if we abide in him, that he will abide in us, and that we will bear much fruit. And all of life boils down to focusing on Jesus. The author of Hebrews tells us to run our race, to throw off the sin and the weight that entangles us. And how do we do that? By focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If you are a believer, there is no element of your faith that is more important or fundamental to you than understanding the person of Jesus and getting to know him in a very real way. And there is no better way to do that than the Gospels. If you are considering the faith, and you wouldn't say yet that you're a believer, the best thing to consider in the faith is who was the person of Jesus. It's essential to us that we study him and that we know him. I heard somebody say one time, a scholar once said, you couldn't possibly claim to be a Christian who knows Jesus if you don't read all four Gospels a minimum of once a year. I'm not espousing that as true. I would never say someone is not a Christian who doesn't know Jesus. That seems pretty inflammatory. But the attitude behind it is, if we believe, we have got to dig into these things and get to know the person of Christ. So, because we see that studying the gospel is so essential, something that we have to do, we should want to do, the question becomes, well, why John? There's four options there. They all do a great job of it. So why do we choose John? Why have I chosen John for us to go through? Well, I believe that John has a unique relationship with Jesus. He has a unique relationship with our Savior. And I think that because there's clues dropped all throughout his gospel that show us that this is true. First of all, one of the things I would point to is Jesus in his life had about 100 to 120 people kind of following him around wherever he went. Sometimes we don't know that or we forget about that. We think about the 12 disciples that were with him all the time, but really there was others around him, 100 to 120, that followed him all over the place. Actually, in Acts, when Judas has to get replaced, one of the requirements to be the replacement disciple, which ends up being a guy named Matthias, is he had to have been here from the very beginning. So there's people for all three years of his ministry that followed him around that were just never mentioned. Those are people of great faith. Then there was the 12 disciples, the 12 that he called, and we know the 12 disciples. But then there was an inner circle of three disciples, the only disciples that he gave nicknames to, Peter, James, and John. When Jesus met Peter, his name was Simon, but he renamed him Cephas or Cephas, which means rocky, which is translated Peter. So Jesus named some dude Rocky because he just kind of had an attitude that was like ready, fire, aim, right? And so Jesus was like, you're Rocky. Then he gives James and John the coolest nickname in all the Bible. They were brothers, and their dad was named Zebedee. And so they were called the sons of Zebedee, but his nickname for them was the sons of thunder. Come on, man. That's awesome. I want to be a son of thunder. I'm just Nate. That's lame. But they get the best nickname in the Bible. They're in the inner circle. They have access to Jesus that even the other disciples who see him every day do not have. Little things like, and it's not a little thing, it's actually a huge thing. And some of you know the story and some of you don't, and that's okay. But at the end of Jesus's life, he's about to be arrested and he goes to pray this incredible prayer in what's called the Garden of Gethsemane. And he leaves the disciples and he grabs three of them and he says, will you guys come pray with me? And John's one of those disciples. Throughout the entire crucifixion process, John is present there. He had access to Jesus that nobody else had. We'll see an intimate moment between he and Jesus at a meal here in a minute. John was so comfortable with Jesus that his mom felt total comfort in asking Jesus for special favors for her boy. They were walking into Jerusalem the last week of Jesus's life to begin Holy Week. In Christendom, we understand Holy Week kind of sets in motion the gears that bring about crucifixion and resurrection, and then we celebrate Easter. And so they're walking into the city. Jesus has been being welcomed as a king. One of the things you'll see in the gospel as we go through it is nobody, my contention is, nobody understood who Jesus was or what he came to do. Nobody really understood Jesus except for two people, Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I don't think anybody else got it until after he came back to life. They expect Jesus to walk into Jerusalem. All the prophecies are that he's going to be a king. So they expect him to walk into Jerusalem, sit on the throne of David, overthrow Roman rule, and make Israel awesome again and this world's superpower, and Jesus is going to be the king of the world. And so walking into Jerusalem, John's mom is behind Jesus tugging on his tunic going, hey, when you take over the planet, can John be like your vice president? Moms, man, forever. They're all the same. Moms are the best. That's why we have a day for you guys. Fathers have a day for you guys because we felt bad about dads, but moms, they deserve their day, right? Because they've always done that. That's how comfortable she was. She felt like she could ask for that from Jesus. John actually records that he was the first disciple to the tomb. After Jesus dies and is resurrected, John records that Mary Magdalene was the first one to the tomb, but then she goes back to the disciples and she goes, hey, there's nobody there. And so two of the disciples take off running, John and Peter, right? Two of the very close ones. And John makes sure to record in his gospel 60 years after it happened because he's a dude. We started running together, but after a while, the one that Jesus loved left behind Peter and got ahead of him. So he's like, hey, just so we know, for all of history, I won, all right? Like I got there first and had enough time to review the tomb and fold some stuff up before Peter ever gets there. He was the first one to the empty tomb. He was so close to Jesus that when Jesus was hanging on the cross and said very little because of the excruciating pain that it required to speak, he looked at John. And John was the lone disciple around. He looked at John, who was standing next to Mary, his mother. And he says, Mary, behold your son. John, behold your mother. And what he's saying is, John, take care of my mom for me. Especially in that society where old women had no way to make a wage and they were entirely reliant on their families to care for them, this was a huge responsibility. And he looks at John, of all the people that he's met in his life, of all the people that he knows, he looks at John and he says, take care of my mom. Makes him the executor of his will. Remarkably close. And then we have this moment in John chapter 13 that I think impacted John for the rest of his life. It gives us a picture of the relationship that Jesus had with him. In John chapter 13, what's happening is the disciples are reclining at the table. And when the Bible says reclining at the table, for us, it really just means like drooping in your seat, probably with your legs crossed and just kind of slouched down like you own the joint. Okay, that's what it looks like when I recline at the table. But when they reclined at the table, it literally meant that they were kind of laying down on their side with their elbow out and eating off the table like this, kind of in a pinwheel situation, like chest to back. Not totally spooning, but closer than you'd want to be, okay? And that's how they're reclining at the table. And in this meal, it's before Holy Week, before things are set in motion, he looks at the disciples and he says, one of you is going to betray me. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be a disciple in that moment. To go, what? Who? Who would betray you? But he says, one of you is going to betray me. And Peter, of course, because he's Peter, wants to know immediately. I love Peter so much. I relate to him so much. He wants to know immediately, but he knows he can't just brutishly ask in front of everyone. So he hits up John, like in elementary school. Hey, John, figure it out. He says, hey, John, ask Jesus who it is. Who's it going to be? Because he knows that John has Jesus' ear. It's a tip of the cap to the relationship that Peter knows they share. And John leans presumably back to Jesus. And he says, who's going to betray you? And Jesus says, it's the one that I give this morsel to. And he takes the bread and he dips it and he hands it to Judas. And John knows. And he's the only one that knows. Because Jesus trusted him with that secret. And then I'll say it now because we're not going to get to it later because there's just so much. But this incredible moment happens. He gives it to Judas. And when he gives it to Judas, it says that Satan swept into him. So now Jesus is eye to eye with Satan. And he looks at him and he says, what you're about to do, do it quickly. Incredibly intense sentence. And if we're reading too fast, we don't get it. What you're about to do, go and do it quickly. And then it says, and then it was night. And the whole tone of the book in Jesus' life changes. Because before then it had been light. It's an incredible moment there. And right after that moment, Jesus offers a profound teaching to only the disciples who remain, to only the faithful ones who will now carry his kingdom forward because Judas has been exposed and he's now gone. It says the disciples didn't know what he was talking about. They thought when he said, go and do it quickly, and they thought maybe he's going to get some money for a meal or something like that. They didn't know, but John knew. And so John was really paying attention to what happened. And then Jesus gives them, the faithful disciples, this teaching. And he says to them in John 13, and you can just listen. He says, little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me. And just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, where I'm going, you cannot come because he's going to death. They don't understand this yet, but that's what he's telling them. He says this, It's the whole commandment. It's the new commandment. It even supersedes the commandment to love God and to love others. It's the new one. Love one another. Love, love, love. It's the final commandment that Jesus gives. It's the only new commandment that he gives. And it touched John so much that at the end of his life when he was writing the other epistles, John, first, second, and third John that we have at the end of the New Testament, you know that 1st John, if you open it up and you read it, it is a commentary on these two verses, on that one teaching, love one another. That is how the world will know that you are my disciples, love one another. If you go in your Bible and you open up 1st John, it is a commentary, it is an exposition of what Jesus teaches right here that stuck with him so profoundly that he writes about it as an old man wanting everybody to understand what Jesus was teaching in that moment that mattered so much to him. If you open up 1 John and you read it, what does it say over and over again? If you say that you love Jesus but you hate your brother, then you are a liar and the truth is not in you. If you do love Jesus, then you will love your brother. And if you love your brother, then you must love Jesus. It's an entire exposition on this moment. And then there's this other moment that I really love in Revelation. John goes on from here. He goes on. He takes care of Jesus' mom. And all the disciples we see in Acts, a lot stay central to Jerusalem. Some disperse and begin to preach the gospel in other places. But John, we learn, is the only disciple that did not die a martyr's death. All the other disciples were put to death for their faith. But John was allowed by God to live for many, many years into maybe his 70s or 80s. A lot of people believe that John was maybe the youngest disciple. Some put him as young as potentially 10 years old when Jesus called him. A lot of scholars believe that the disciples were high school boys and college freshmen when Jesus called them. Can you imagine that? Leaving the keys of the kingdom to them? Yikes. I don't know that that's true, but a lot of scholars believe that that's true. And that means that John has a lot of time between when Jesus passes to remember back. And he's got a lot of years of ministry and a lot of preaching and a lot of writing and a lot of influencing. And he discipled early church leaders like Polycarp and set in motion the vehicle of the church. He was like the first real church father. And at the end of his life, he's on exile. He's in exile on the island of Patmos, somewhere around 93 AD, 60 years now after Jesus has passed. And all of these years, he's preached about his Jesus. He's taught other people about his Jesus. He's taught them about his best friend and his hero and this man that he loved so much that he has devoted his entire life for. And now he's in exile, remembering and writing and looking forward to when he finally gets to meet his Savior again. And the Holy Spirit comes to him in this season and sweeps him up and takes him to heaven. And he says, here, I want you to write down the things that you see. And that book becomes Revelation. And at the beginning of Revelation, we have this incredible glimpse of the relationship between John and Jesus, where they are reunited. And I'm going to read. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen. John is in heaven, and he's seeing all of these visions. And then he sees this man that scares the fire out of him. And this like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. His feet were like burnished bronze refined in a furnace. And his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars. From his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword. And his face was like the sun, shining in full strength. When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. He didn't know yet that it was Jesus. And he falls on his feet, terrified, because he's never seen the heavenly reunited with his Jesus. He knows that it's Jesus' hand on his shoulder and that it's Jesus' voice speaking to him. And the one that he had lived his life in memory of and devoted to and longed to be reunited with was there, and he finally meets him in his heavenly form. And it's this man, with those unique perspectives, that writes us the gospel of John. We study John because it gives us a unique perspective of Jesus. How could it not? You know, in John's gospel, he never refers to himself as John. He refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And some scholars argue that this is evidence that he didn't actually write the book himself, that somebody wrote it for him, because what an arrogant thing to call yourself the disciple whom Jesus loved. But man, as I read that and I think about the relationship that John had with Jesus, I don't think it's an arrogant thing at all. I think that John, in his old age, he's 50 or 60 years removed from Jesus. He's in his 70s. He's in the twilight of his life, particularly with life expectancy back then. He was an old man reflecting back on his early years. And as he wrote this, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. And I think that he uses that not because he was proud of himself or somehow arrogant. I think he was astounded that he was the one that Jesus chose to love and reveal himself to in that way. I think as he thought back that he was touched and humbled, I can't believe that Jesus trusted me with the secret of Judas. I think he was touched and humbled. I can't believe that my Savior, that my hero asked me to care for his mom. I can't believe that he swept me up and spoke to me in Revelation. I can't believe that all the other disciples have passed, and for some reason he's allowed me to shepherd the early church, his kingdom, his building into the next age of leaders. I can't believe that my life has included these amazing privileges. I cannot believe I'm the disciple that Jesus has chosen to love. And so he calls himself that. And that's the man that offers us a perspective of his Jesus. By the time he wrote this, all the other gospels had been written, and they had begun to circulate in the churches. So we have every reason to believe that John had actually read the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And those are called synoptic gospels, and they're different than John's gospel. They're synoptic because they tell the same story with the same chronology from beginning to end. And so what John is able to do is read those and go, okay, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my best friend. He is a man in his old age who loves Jesus, who knows him maybe better than anyone has ever known him, writing down a book that you may believe that Jesus was who he says he was, telling you, you know what? If you want to know Jesus, then here's what you really need to know. Look at these things. That's why his book is unique. That's why the other books include parables, pithy sayings that are memorable teachings of Jesus, and John doesn't include any of those. In John, we get these big sweeping monologues. We get these real long teachings from Jesus. In the other books, we have the long teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, but John doesn't share the Sermon on the Mount because it's already been taken care of. Instead, he shares with you these big, long conversations like the one that he has with Nicodemus in chapter 3, the Pharisee that comes to see him at night because he's ashamed and embarrassed that he might actually believe in this Jesus guy. So Jesus has a conversation with him that John records. We get stories that we don't get in the other Gospels, like when Jesus' closest friend in the world, Lazarus, dies and Jesus goes to raise him from the dead and comfort his sisters in the city of Bethany. And we get this verse, John 11, 35, the shortest one in the Bible that says, Jesus wept, that answers for us for all time. How does Jesus respond in our tragedy? Well, he comes and he weeps with us. We know that because John tells us so. We get in John these I am statements. There's no parables there, and there's not as much figurative language, but he says, I am again and again. I am the bread of life. I am the living water. I am the good shepherd. Over and over again, we see these things. We get the miracle at Cana, where Jesus' first public miracle is to keep the party going. You guys do with that whatever you want to, but it's in there. We get one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, John 17. It's called the High Priestly Prayer. Right before Jesus dies, he prays for them, and he prays for the church. And get this, 2,000 years ago, he prayed for you. And it's recorded in John 17. We have all these things in his gospel that we don't get in the others. And the others are not unimportant. They're incredibly important. And we can't get a holistic picture of Jesus outside of those gospels. But John is an old man in his old age reflecting back on the person that he's loved the most in his entire life saying, here's what you need to know about my Jesus. Here's what you need to know about my friend and my hero. Unique and it stands alone. And it's an amazing book. And it's worthy of our consideration. And like I said, the whole point of this morning is to get you to a place where you go, I want to know what John says about Jesus. Wherever you are, if you're dipping your toes in the water of faith, start with John and see what he says about the person you're considering. If you call yourself a Christian, then read John and look at what he says about his Savior that you love so much and learn about him. And like I said at the beginning, this is not a series working through John. I'm going to skip around and share stories and it's going to be good. I really, really hope. But if you want to get the most you can out of this series and you have got to do the work on your own on a daily basis. So I made a reading plan for us for John. There's one, they're in the lobby, they're on the information table. The one thing I want you to do from this sermon is leave and grab one of those. There's gonna be one online, they're gonna be in a couple of different places. I've even, I want you so badly to read the book of John with us that uniquely I've included a catch-up day, okay? Every Saturday it just says, catch up, man. I know you missed one, I did too. Let's catch up. Do it. Use the YouVersion app. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Use that app, and you can listen to it in your car, okay? If reading is hard for you or you're lazy like me, just listen to it in your car, man. Listen to it on your jog. But it's two chapters a week. It's easy. The whole goal for you leaving today is to be excited enough about the book of John and what God's servant John has to say about his Jesus that you're willing to dig into it on your own. And then together as a church, we're going to learn more about who our Jesus is. And my prayer for you is that you will know him, Jesus, more deeply and more intimately than you ever have by the time we get on the other side of Easter this year. I hope that you'll do that with us. Let me pray, and then we're going to take communion together. Father, we love you. We are so grateful. We're so grateful for the book of John. I thank you for inspiring him to write down what he did. Thank you for giving him the perspective that would allow him to remember the things that he remembered. God, thank you even for preserving it through all of history, through the years and through the wars and through all of the torrent of the times, God, that you brought this book down to us. Thank you for the diligent scribes that recorded it, that protected it, that gave their lives for it, that we might learn from it. God, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us in this book in incredible ways, that we would see the tenderness of your son, that we would see your heart revealed as it's poured out in the form of him, that we would come to value the spirit that he's left us behind, and more than anything, that we would come to know you in an intimate way through this series and through this study. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. In just a minute, we're going to take communion together, but as we do, this is probably the appropriate place to acknowledge that earlier this week, a young boy, 17-year-old, named Leighton Holidayiday passed away overnight in the early mornings of Wednesday. A lot of us know the family and know his dad, Craig Holliday, was the founding pastor of Grace. And so the community grieves, and Grace in particular grieves with the holidays with Craig and Rhett and his brother Cody. And so this afternoon there's going to be a funeral at NRCA at 3 o'clock. Everyone's invited, and the family would appreciate your attendance and your prayers and your support. And I mention it now because we're about to do communion, and today is a tragic day. It's been a tragic week. One of the most sad things in life is to bury a child. And so today, there's nothing that makes today not sad. But here's the thing. Because of communion, because of what it represents, today isn't just sad. It is tragic. But because of Jesus, it's not just tragic. Because Jesus defeated death and holds the keys to hell and Hades, this day is not just tragic. It can also be hopeful. And that's an amazing thing. So when we take communion today, we remember the death of Christ that united us with our creator. But what we also remember is that this was the moment that Jesus defeated death and took the sting out of days like today and made them not just tragic, but also made them hopeful, which is a remarkable thing. As the disciples were reclined around the table the night that Jesus was arrested, he took the bread and he broke it and he says, this is my body that was broken for you. Every time you eat of this, do it in remembrance of me. And then he took the wine and he poured it out and he says, this is my blood that was poured out for you. Every time you drink it, do it in remembrance of me. So I'm going to pray and we're going to take communion. And as we do, as we always do, we reflect on how grateful we are that Jesus, through this breaking of his body and through the spilling of his blood, reunites us with him. But today we also are grateful for the fact that through this act he defeated death and Hades and that days like today aren't just tragic. They can be hopeful too. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for sacrificing him for us. We thank you that he rose again and defeated death and hell. We thank you that he has taken the sting out of sin and says to death, where are your shackles? That it has been defeated. God, we are so grateful that you've saved us from ourselves, from our own foolishness at times, that from our own choices, God, you reunite us with you and we are so grateful for that. God, we are also grateful that you take the sting out of tragedy and that you promise a future that is delivered by Jesus. Thank you for communion and everything that it means. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank y'all for being here. It's so good to see you. I'm actually the pastor here. They let me do it, which is silly. But my name is Nate, and it's good to see all of you. And again, thanks for being here as we start out January in 2019 together. We have launched the new year with the series Lessons from the Gym. And that started in 2017, that whole year. For whatever reason, I had an uncommon burst of discipline, and I spent more time in the gym that year than I ever had before. And while I was there, just some things occurred to me. I observed some things and learned some things, and I began to see a lot of similarities between going to the gym and trying to get physically healthy and coming to church and trying to get spiritually healthy. And so I just kind of kept track of these things. And as we approached the new year, we knew that some people would be making some resolutions to get physically healthy. I mean, I had my first day back in the gym already this year. It went really well. I was throwing up tons of weight. And then some of us have some resolutions to get spiritually healthy. And we want to meet those and foster those as well. And so as we start the year together, I thought I would share with you some of the things I learned or thought about while I was doing that. Last week, I shared with you my experience in going for the first time and how that could be intimidating when you go to the gym for the first time and you don't know what to do. You feel like kind of an imposter and everyone's kind of looking at you and they're going to figure you out, right? And then it occurred to me that, oh my goodness, this must be what it feels like to go to a church for the first time. It's got to feel uneasy. It's got to be a little bit unnerving, even for those of us with more confidence, which has to be just a little bit intimidating for us to do that. And so I thought, man, what are five things I would love to be able to say to people on their first visit with us at Grace? And what are five things that I want us as a church to be saying to other people through our words and our actions as they come to Grace? And so I would say this, I never do this. I never tell you like, hey, go back and listen to the sermon because that's self-aggrandizing and gross. But for this one, I do think it's important because last week I shared five things that we would love to tell people on their first visit at Grace. And so if you're new to Grace, I would encourage you to go find that online or on the podcast and give it a listen. This week I want to tell you about a meeting that I had with a nutritionist at the gym. As I started to exercise, one of the things I learned is that exercise is good. It makes you healthy. It's very helpful. But if you really want to change the way you look, meaning my goals was for when I sweat, for my sweat to show up on my chest before my belly. That was my only physical fitness goal. But to start changing that, I didn't need to get in the gym. I needed to eat right. And I realized that diet is really more impactful than exercise. So then I started thinking about like, well, how can I diet, right? How can I eat right? Because there's a lot of fad diets out there and they seem unmanageable and unwieldy. And I'm not going to be able to like do those in perpetuity, right? Like I heard somebody say like you have to eat the rainbow every day and that feels like a real hassle. I don't want to do that. I know some people who are on Whole30, which really should be called Whole Hassle. It's so annoying even to be friends with these people when you go out to eat. You may as well just hand a note to the server when you walk in going, I'm really sorry, I'm going to be a hassle for you today. That's not sustainable, right? Because you have to know all these things about food and how to eat. You can do that for 30 days. You can't do that for forever. And so I wanted to learn how to eat right moving forward, something that would be manageable. And so I found a lady who was a nutritionist at the gym and I set an appointment and I went to meet with her. And I was fascinated with what she had to say about nutrition and all the different ways it works and the way that like different bodies respond to different. And I had no idea that it was that detailed. And I quickly became overwhelmed and a little disinterested because I thought, I'm not going to do any of this. So instead, I noticed that her job in trying to help people get physically healthy is a lot like my job in trying to help people get spiritually healthy. And so I began to ask her questions about that. She kept trying to go back to nutrition. I'm like, yeah, that's great. I'll eat some eggs. But let's talk about this, right? And I noticed that she has people come in. She gets to know them, what makes them tick. She comes up with a plan to move them towards health. And then they provide accountability around those people to help them become healthy, and that's really what I do. And from her vantage point, she's seen a lot of people come into the gym wanting to get healthy, and she's seen success stories, and she's seen others that flamed out, and she was telling me the importance of, if you're going to do it, and you're going to do it right, then you really do need a trainer because we hold you accountable. It would be good to have a group of friends or a group of buddies to kind of work out with you or at least see at the gym to hold you accountable there. It would be good if you would do that. Her nutrition and program, she said, was great because you keep a log and she holds you accountable for what you eat and all those kinds of things. And a question occurred to me that I thought had some application at the church. I said, how many people do you see come in? Because when you're at the gym and you're a trainer, January, right, you see us all come in. All the people with our holiday weight on us, like we come in and they see us and they kind of know whether or not we're going to be successful or not. And so I said, how many people do you see come into the gym with the goal of getting physically healthy, but they're doing it alone? They don't have any accountability. They're not hooked up with a trainer. They're not doing the nutrition program. They're just on their own through their own personal discipline. They're just trying to get themselves healthy. How many people do you see successfully do that by themselves? And she very quickly said, less than 5%. Less than 5%. That's nearly impossible. And I thought, oh, how interesting. Because if you think about segments of our culture that are disciplined, people who go to the gym are disciplined, right? And so if you wanted to isolate a segment of our culture that does exhibit discipline that's maybe even above and beyond the mean, you would go to the gym. And what I thought was interesting was even amongst people who are by nature disciplined and have taught themselves self-discipline over the years, less than 5% of them are able to accomplish physical health without other people around them. You cannot get physically healthy alone. And to me, everything in my brain went off as I think about church, because I know that it's entirely true that just like you can't get physically healthy alone, you don't stand a chance of getting spiritually healthy alone. You cannot do that. She said less than 5% of people come in and achieve physical health by themselves. I would say nobody comes into church, regardless of their resolve and their background, void of other people in their life who love them and love Jesus, and moves to a place of long-lasting spiritual health. Nobody does that. You can come to Jesus on your own. You can come to Jesus in the privacy of your own heart, in the privacy of your own home. You can do that on your own. You can get connected with Jesus by yourself. That's absolutely possible. You hear a sermon that compels you. You have a conversation with a friend. You have a big life event. There can be something that just between you and God, you accept Christ and you're connected now to the Father through Jesus. You can do that on your own, but you cannot sustain that growth and flourish in your spiritual health on your own. There is no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. I have been doing ministry now, vocationally, for nearly 20 years, which is, I feel old. But when I was 19, I went pro, right? They started paying me to be a Christian, which is, that's all ministry is. It's not a big deal. But at 19, I got involved with Young Life, started doing youth ministry, kept doing youth ministry, started doing some other stuff, got involved in a church. I oversaw small groups for a church of nearly 2,000 people and kind of watched the spiritual maturation process within the several hundred folks that were in those and have just been around church world for a long time. And like the trainer at the gym, I've seen a lot of people come in and out of the church. I've seen a lot of people come into the church with gusto. Something's happened in their life. They really want to pursue spiritual health. They want to prioritize their walk with the Lord. They want to prioritize. They want to get some things out of their life that they've been wanting to get rid of for a long time. They want some things in their life that they feel like they've been missing for a long time. I've seen this happen a lot. And sometimes you watch people, it just takes off. Something clicks and they move towards spiritual health and it's a really cool story. And other times you watch them flame out. And maybe that's part of your story. You go back to church with gusto. We've seen this happen. If you've been a church person for any length of time, you've seen other people do this. And maybe we've done it too. We recommit. We make a commitment. I'm going to get spiritually healthy. I'm going to do this. This is going to be important to me. And so we prioritize our walk with the Lord. But then the spiritual things in our life, church, small group, whatever matters most to us, I don't want to set up Sunday morning like it's the number one indicator of spiritual health. It's not. But our commitment to those things tends to fall away, right? At some point or another, it's going to trickle down. No matter how much energy and effort we have and commitment we have going into it, eventually our enthusiasm wanes. And I've seen people come in and they meet with me and they're on fire and they want to get plugged in and they do all the things, but then like attendance and engagement starts to kind of fall off, right? For a couple of months, I don't see them as often. And then after those couple of months, I just don't see them at all. It just falls off. And as I've watched this process over the years, one of the things I've learned is this, that the number one, and I believe this with my whole heart, the number one indicator of your future spiritual health is the community of people that you have in your life. The number one indicator of whether or not you're going to be walking with the Lord in three years and five years and 10 years is who you have in your life right now that is connected to Jesus and connected to you. It's who you have in your life who loves you and who loves Jesus. You show me a person, and not that anybody ever does this, this is a ridiculous hypothetical conversation, but if you showed me a person and you said, this is Kyle, how do you think he's going to be doing spiritually in five years? The very first question I would ask is, who are his friends? Who does he have around him? Who does she have around her that loves her and loves Jesus? To me, that is the number one indicator, more than whether or not we're getting up and reading our Bible and praying, more than what their church attendance is. No, no, no, no. Who do they have in their life that loves them and loves Jesus? It is the number one indicator of future spiritual health. I believe that community is vitally important. And I believe so strongly that you can't be a Lone Ranger Christian that I think it should be prioritized in church above and beyond almost everything else. And this isn't just my idea. This is not something I've learned over observation in ministry. This is a very biblical idea. If you look at Jesus, the Son of God comes down to earth, lives in Nazareth and the area of Galilee and northern Israel for 30 years, and then at the age of 30, he starts his ministry. And if you're a Bible person and you've read the Gospels, the first four books of the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, they all tell the story of Jesus' life. If you've ever opened those up and you've read them and paid attention to them, when Jesus starts his ministry, when he goes public, what's the very first thing he does? He calls the disciples to himself. Does he go, okay, I'm starting, and then just go out and start preaching and talking to people? No. He goes and he gets community around him. We actually see evidence in Jesus's life that he had some very best friends that lived in a town east of Jerusalem called Bethany. And that those were his people. And that those are who he loves. And when he called the disciples, he didn't just call one or two or three, he called 12. And when you watch Jesus interacting throughout his ministry, he's interacting with groups on a group level. You very rarely see Jesus having a one-on-one conversation with somebody. He's always teaching corporately. He's always keeping people around him. Jesus was one who believed in the power of community. Paul, the most influential Christian to ever live, he wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. He was a man, his name was Saul, until God got a hold of him, changed it to Paul, and said he is the chosen instrument to reach the rest of the world. And what he did to reach the rest of the world is he went on three, maybe four, depending on what you think of the last one, missionary journeys where he went around planting churches in cities like Thessalonica and Corinth and Philippi and Ephesus and Galatia and Rome. And then he would write letters back to those churches which have become our New Testament. And when he would go on those missionary journeys, the most influential Christian to ever live, did he go alone because he was so close to God that he didn't need anybody else? No. He had with him what we refer to now as the traveling seminary. Younger men and women that he was training for ministry, that he was pouring into, that he was leaving at certain places. Did you know that there's books in the Bible, 1 and 2 Timothy, that Paul writes to a young pastor because he left Timothy, who was in his traveling seminary, in Ephesus to continue the work there. He discipled him relationally. Even Paul surrounded himself with community. If you read his books, what you'll pay attention to and you'll notice is that friendship mattered a lot to him. The book of Romans, the entire last chapter, Romans 16, is almost entirely greetings and salutations to people who were in Rome to whom he was close. These relationships mattered a lot to Paul. If you look at the book of Acts, where the early church starts, Acts chapter 2, Jesus has lived his life. He's died on the cross. He's come back to life. And then he gave the disciples some instructions. You guys lead the church now. You guys make it go. I'm going to heaven. I'll see you when you get there. And they get together in this upper room and they go, what do we do? And the rest of them go, I don't know, what do we do? And they waited for the Holy Spirit. the Holy Spirit showed up and told them what to do. And so they went out on their balcony and they began to preach to the thousands of people in Jerusalem who were gathered around the disciples to see what do we do next. And when they heard the message of the gospel, when they heard who Jesus was and why he was here, they said, I want in. And the church immediately grew to thousands. Two or three thousand people right there in Jerusalem. That was the birth of the church that we are now a part of today. And in Acts 2, chapter 42 through 47, or chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, we have the seminal passage on what the early church looked like. Like, if you care about church at all and you want to know, like, are we doing this right? The biggest indicator is to go back to Acts chapter 2 and look at the characteristics of the early church that are listed out in those verses. And we're not going to turn there today because I don't have time to do it, but I'll tell you that the characteristics there are they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, to the breaking of bread, to eating meals together in their homes. It says they gathered in their homes daily. It says that they pooled their resources and shared them together and gave them to whoever needed them as those needs came up. And then it says that the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. You know what characterized the early church? Community and connection. It's that important. It's not just important in the New Testament, it's important in the Old Testament. In the days of ancient wisdom, Solomon, the wisest man to ever live, wrote the book of Proverbs. And in Proverbs chapter 10, he says, the companion of the wise will become wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm. My dad used to say, show me your friends, I'll show you your future. It's absolutely true. And then in Ecclesiastes, Solomon writes this. I love the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes has the guts to just be dead level honest with you and tell you the truth. The rest of the Bible tells you the truth, but this one just who love you and love Jesus and are helping foster that commitment. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon says, the more the merrier. The more people you have around you in your life who love you and love Jesus, the better chance you have of maintaining and growing and flourishing in a spiritual health. I believe that this is so important, this concept of connection and community, that if you were to ask me what the most important part of my job is, that's what I would say. Which is interesting because when I took this job, that's not what I thought it was. If someone were to come to you and ask you, hey, who's your pastor? You would say, well, it's a guy named Nate. We're kind of going through a rough patch right now. But then if they were to ask you, what is his job? You would probably say, well, he preaches. We prop him up there on Sunday morning, and he runs his mouth, and then we go home, and that's how it goes. His job is to preach. And when I took the job, I felt like my job was to preach. But the more I've thought about it, I've realized that's not the biggest thing that I do. The biggest thing I do is to create systems and processes that funnel you into connection that matters. The biggest thing I do is get fanatical about connecting you with people once you come here. The biggest thing I can do is activate those of you who are grace people, who are grace partners, to use and leverage your community and your connections to graft others into the family of God so that they have the community that you have and are plugged in in such a way that we propel them towards spiritual health. The most important thing I do is to help us be fanatical about getting other people connected to people who love Jesus and who love them. It is the difference maker in future spiritual health, and it is vitally, vitally important. It's a huge deal. And if you hear that and you think, gosh, man, I hear you. We do have to get people connected, but you should preach, man. We got to learn the Bible. There's other things that are super important. I agree with you. Because of that, I want to ask you to do a little exercise with me, okay? I'm being serious now. You can get a pen. You can get your bulletin. You write this thing down. Or if you're like me and you're going to ignore my instructions anyway, just think about it for a second. Here's what I'd like you to do. If you've spent any time in church, if you're not a church person, this is your first time in church, this is going to be a hard exercise for you. You just chill out for just a second. But if you're a church person, I want you to do this for me. I want you to take 30 seconds and write down the five most influential sermons you've ever heard in your life. The five sermons that you've heard in your life that have impacted you in such a way that's moved you to a place of spiritual sustained health. The ones that you look back on and you go, that one was good. That one really changed me and impacted me. Five most influential sermons in Go. Y'all can't even remember two of mine. All right. Time out on that. If you're really doing it, you can continue it later. It is an interesting exercise. Now I want you to do this. Same piece of paper, same thought process. Make a list in 30 seconds of the five most influential people in your life who have impacted you spiritually and pushed you more towards Jesus. That's an easier list, isn't it? It's a much easier list. And when the pastor asks you to write down influential sermons, you think, oh, shoot, I've got to come up with something here. No, you don't. Here's what I know. Can I just tell you this? Can I just be honest with you? You guys don't remember what I say. I know that. You guys don't remember my sermons. Maybe. I've been here almost two years. Maybe one, maybe two. You don't remember my sermons. And that's okay. You're not supposed to. I've worked the hardest I can to give you something on Sunday morning that's worth showing up to. I don't expect you to remember it on Wednesday. I just hope that there's something over the course of time that we learn about Scripture, that we learn about our God, that we learn about our Savior, that moves us closer to Him, that they can impact us for that day, for that week, but we just push the needle every week. We just push the flywheel every week. There's not one single sermon that moves us in that direction, but do you know what impacts us? People. Over the course of my ministry here, if God blesses me with decades here, you know what will be most impactful to you is the times that I am able to show up at the hospital, the times that we're able to sit around a table together, the times that we served on committees together, the times that we were in small group together. You know what's going to impact you at grace more than my sermons is the friends that you have here that push you towards Jesus. That when you begin to fall away a little bit, they reach out and they grab you and they go, hey, why don't you come back? That when your marriage starts to struggle a little bit, they put their arm around you and they go, hey, is everything okay? That's going to impact you. The people in your life are going to impact you so much more than what happens here on Sunday mornings. And I understand that. Which is why I believe that the most important thing I can do for you is to connect you in community. The other reason I believe this, if we're just being honest, thinking about church moving into the 2020s, which is super close now, which is nuts. And I know you guys probably haven't thought about this. I think a lot more about church than most folks. Do you realize that the only part left of church that you can't download is friends? You ever thought about that? The only part left of church that you can't download is your friends. Listen, I work hard on these sermons. You guys say, most weeks I work hard on them. Sometimes I wing it. You guys say nice things about the sermons. But this is not false humility here. There are world-class speakers and preachers who their sermons are uploaded every week. You can listen to me on Sunday and go listen to six better ones every day of the week. There's better sermons and better preachers out there. That doesn't hurt my feelings. It's just true. And if you're coming to church for the sermons, you can download those. If you're coming to the church for the music, which by the way, time out, wasn't that freaking great this morning? Gosh, that was so good. I'm so proud of the way, the job that Steve has done and the way that they sounded. And it's just, I really like that. And I love singing Reckless Love. But you can get in your car and sing it with the person who wrote it, who got paid to record it, who is really good. You can download worship songs. You've got Spotify. You can dial up anyone you want. You can have a big, long worship session in your car or in your office or in your kitchen, wherever you want it. You can download that. You know what you can't download? Your buddies. People who love you and love Jesus. And so I believe that the churches who emphasize community most are the ones that are going to be healthiest and best as we move into the future. The ones who emphasize community and connection are the ones that are going to actually be healthy because we're paying attention to what matters in the lives of others. And so my goal for you is that you come in here and you get connected with other people. That's what I think about. And can I tell you that that's the reason I chose Grace? That's the reason I came to Grace was because of the tremendous sense of community that we have here. In December of 2016, I had an interview set up with the search team from Grace. It was a Skype interview. It was going to be two hours. And so I woke up that day, I think it was December the 8th, and I began to do research about the church because when they asked me, why is it that you want to work here? I'm not going to go, I don't know, what's on your website? Like I was going to have a good answer for them, right? Which by the way, if you're interviewing for jobs, like you should do that, like research for the company. They appreciate that. So I was just learning because I didn't want to look dumb. And can I just be honest with you? Some of you guys know this story. Others of you don't. So I'm sorry about this. The more I learned about grace in December of 2016, the less I wanted to be here. Because that church at that time was not going well. It was kind of leaking like a sieve. And I thought, I don't think that this is, I got a job I like, comfortable in, I have a family. I'm not moving six hours for that. So I actually opened up my computer to write the email to cancel the interview. But then I thought, time out, big time. You're not so important that you should cancel interviews. Just take it and practice. You need it. So I took the interview. And they asked me all the questions and whatever it was. And then at the end, they said, well, do you have any questions for us? And I thought, yeah, I mean, I don't really care. I said, let's just let it fly. I was interested in this. And I said, you guys, you guys have not been doing well. You've been shrinking for several years. And that church has been through a lot of strife. What are you still doing there? And they said, we're here because we love each other. We're here for the community. We're here because our kids grew up here and this place matters to us. And we're here because of our connection with others. And when they said that, I thought, that's where I want to be. That's what I want to be a part of. A church that values community like that. Because I so strongly believe in it. And as I've come here, I've seen that that is what's most important to Grace. I've watched you guys as we've come and we've grown over the last 18 months. As people come in who maybe haven't been in a while, there hasn't been even a hint of, oh, you're back now. It has only been open-armed welcomes. It has only been warm receptions. And I hope that as you've come back to Grace that you've experienced that same warmth as well. If you haven't, I'm sorry that we have failed you, but I think that's what characterizes Grace. I think it's what we do, and it's what we do best. Which is why, as I came here, and I thought about what are we going to look like in the future? What's going to characterize us? Because we're in Raleigh. There's hundreds if not thousands of churches. All of you guys, this place could fold. All of you guys could be in another church next week, okay? And I know that. So it's important to me to figure out what makes us us. What makes us Grace Raleigh? God has different churches that he's positioning throughout the city to build his kingdom here. What's our niche? What do we need to lean into so that we most wisely invest our resources and our time? And I'm convinced it's community. It's our ability to graft other people in and get them connected. Because of that, in the fall of last year, I began to look at our mission statement. And our mission statement was a good one. Loving Jesus, loving our neighbor, and living faithfully. We said it here every Sunday. It's a good mission statement. And for those of you who are unindoctrinated, the mission statement of a church isn't a huge deal, except that it really serves as kind of the marching orders for a church. The mission statement, what you say it is, has two purposes. It's descriptive to outsiders. As they look at the church from the outside in, what does that church do there? It's descriptive to them. It's prescriptive to insiders. It prescribes for us what we need to do. Our mission is to love Jesus and to love our neighbor and to live faithfully. That's what we're going to do. That's what's going to be expected of me if I go there. And that's a good mission. But this thing I had in the back of my head was the idea that that's a good mission, but that's not graces. That's not personalized to grace. That doesn't make grace unique. That doesn't capture who we are and what we most deeply care about. And to me, the belief in community and commitment to one another, connecting with one another as we connect to Jesus, is what's most important to us. It's what is vitally important to us. It's the reason I came here is because I felt like we were on the same page with that. And so at the beginning of the year, I proposed a new mission statement to the elders, and we had a really great, I would call it a healthy give and take discussion about it. And it was a worthwhile investment of time because by the end of it, we were all on the same page and of one accord. And we came up with a mission statement that I don't believe at all changes the direction of grace. I think it captures what we already do and makes our future more clear. So now, beginning in 2019, the mission statement at Grace Raleigh is connecting people to Jesus, connecting people to people. That's what we do. It's who we are. This doesn't change our direction. It just makes it more clear because we're already passionate about doing this. Because I think you know without ever saying it or thinking through it that the best indicator towards someone's spiritual health is whether or not they're connected to other people who love Jesus and love them. And so when someone walks through the doors at Grace Raleigh, our very first goal for them is that they would get connected to Jesus. But what we understand about the power of community and the difficulty of life is that no one grows closer to him by themselves. And so the very next thing that we have to get, we've got to be fanatical about is getting them connected with community. The shorthand of this is connecting people. Grace Raleigh, connecting people. That's what we do. Who do we connect them to? Well, first we connect them to Jesus and then we deepen that relationship by connecting them to other people who love Jesus and who love them. I hope that fires you up. I hope that you like that. I am excited about that. I've had people ask me a lot over the past several months, what do you think is the future of the church? How big do you think we're going to be? How big would you like to see us become? Where do you think we're going to go from now? What are we going to look like in five years? And to all those questions, I always go, I don't know. That's a lot of pressure, man. I just have to preach. I don't know. And to be honest with you, I don't really care. I don't really care how big we get. That's not really important to me. What's important to me is how healthy we are. What's important to me is how good of a job we do at what I believe church exists for. And the entire time I've been here, whenever anybody would ask and they say, what's your goal for the church? My goal is that on Sunday morning, when somebody walks through those doors, we acknowledge that God has entrusted us with that soul and we are a good steward of that soul. Whether it's for the first time or the thousandth, we need to be good stewards of the souls that God entrusts to us when they walk through those doors. And I believe that the best way to do that is to teach the Bible, connect them to Jesus, and to get them as quickly as we can connected with other people who love them and love Jesus so that we can sustain this desire for spiritual health in their life. We have to do it. I don't want to see people coming in here and fading away. That breaks my heart. So we have to fight for these connections. And the challenge at Grace is to take a sense of community that for years has protected us and sustained us and been inwardly focused by necessity and now begin to turn that out and graft other people into the family that God is growing here. That's what we need to do. Because of all of this, we have small groups. Small groups are the best way to get connected with people at Grace. If you are thinking right now, man, I don't know if I'm connected, I really need to be, then this is the next step for you. I would encourage you to do an inventory and think about your friends. Who are the top five people I talk to most often? Do they love you and love Jesus? Because if they love you, that's great, but if they don't love Jesus, that doesn't do you much good. If they love Jesus and not you, that's not very helpful either. We need both those things. Do you have that? Some of us need to lean into that more. Some of us need to rekindle some old friendships and say, hey, I really need you in my life a little bit more. Don't say it like that. Think of a cooler way to say it, but that's what you need to do. Some of us, you're coming in from other circles of life, and your circles of friends, they might not go to church right now, and that's great. I'm not telling you at all to disconnect from those friends, but what I am telling you is you need some connections in church. You need some connections of people who love you and love Jesus. And so I would encourage you, if you're not a part of a small group, to fill out that piece of paper that's in the seat that you're sitting in. That's an easy informational thing. You just write your name, write the way that you want me to get in touch with you, and then you put when you're available and what you think you might be looking for, and I'll give you a call or shoot you an email. We don't do sign up for a small group anymore like you pick from a catalog. I like to play matchmaker, and as long as I can, I'm going to do that every semester and just spend the time with the individuals and figure out what's going on in your life, what are your needs, what's the general sense I get from you, and how can I best place you in a group of people who are like you, where you're going to feel comfortable and get connected. So my encouragement to you is, if you're not connected, fill that out. And when we're done, in a minute we're going to take communion, then we're going to sing a song, and we're going to be dismissed. And as we're dismissed, at the end of the aisles, the doors, is either going to be an usher or a little table with a basket in it. Just put that sheet in the basket. Those are going to be put on my desk this afternoon, and I'll follow up with you this week and try to get you connected. As an aside, if you're here and you're in your 20s, there's a lot of you here. So many that I'm taking a break from my young family small group, my wife and I are, and we're going to help give some energy to the 20-something small group this semester. So if you're in your 20s and you'd like to get connected here, please indicate that on that white piece of paper and I'll be in touch with you this week. I'm particularly excited about that this semester. But whoever you are, whatever your walk of life is, we have a way to get you connected here and I hope that you will be. And I'm so excited as we move forward that this mission statement is going to characterize us. Because being committed to that, I think and I hope that we're going to to come to a place where we have to choose between do we grow more or do we try to stay smaller because if we grow too big, we can't do this. I wanna make that choice and I wanna choose health. I don't care what we look like. I hope that I get to be here for decades and I don't care what we look like at the end of that but I do, as far as size, but I do hope that we're healthy. That would be success. And I think by staying committed to this, we have a really good shot at that. And I'm going to pray, and then we get to partake in communion. Father, we love you. We're so grateful for you. We're so grateful for the way that you reach into our lives, that you love us recklessly with no regard for yourself, how you pursue us. Lord, we are so grateful for the connections in our life that move us closer to you. We are grateful for the friendships that have sustained us in this place. I pray that you would use those friendships in amazing ways moving forward. God, as people come to grace, may this be a place where they get connected quickly, where they experience community and your love quickly. And may that community serve to move us closer to you. If there's anyone here who's experiencing any trepidation about just taking that first step towards connection, I pray that you would give them the courage to do at least that today. We thank you for who you are and all the ways you love us. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.