Sermons tagged with Branches

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this incredibly gross, hot Sunday. I heard somebody say it's like walking around in warm soup outside. I think that's pretty appropriate. I think we're going to take out the lounge areas next week and make more space for y'all. So we're getting the message. You're coming back to church, so this is great. These lounge areas are penalties for not coming in the summertime, so now we'll get back to normal. We've been moving through a series called 27 that we're going to do this summer and next summer where we're doing an overview of the 27 books in the New Testament to kind of give you an idea of where we're going for the rest of this summer and where we're going to pick up next summer. For the rest of the summer, I'm just going to go through the general epistles, the general letters that are largely in the back half or entirely in the back half of the New Testament. We're going to do Hebrews this morning. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, did a phenomenal job covering James for us in July. So if you want to catch that one, you can go back and take a look at it. And then we're going to do 1 and 2 Peter together, 1, 2, 3 John together. Because I don't want to do three sermons out of 1, 2, 3 John that all say like, hey, if you love God, obey him. That's the message of 1, 2, 3 John. And then we're going to do Jude Labor Day Sunday. We decided that we would save the most overlooked book of the Bible for the most overlooked Sunday of the calendar. So that's going to be very appropriate when we do Jude and you guys watch online while Aaron and I work. But this morning we're going to focus on Hebrews. And deciding how to approach Hebrews and how to give you guys an overview of Hebrews was a little tricky because Hebrews is such an incredible book with so many good things and so many good themes. The overriding theme of Hebrews is to exalt Christ. The overriding point of Hebrews is to hold Christ up as superior to everything, the only thing worthy of our devotion and our affection, the only thing worthy of our lives. That's what the book of Hebrews does, and it focuses us on Christ, which is appropriate because we preached Acts last week. Well, I preached. You guys listened and did a great job at listening. I preached Acts last week, and we talked about how it's the Holy Spirit's job to focus us on Jesus, past, present, and future. And so once again, we're just going to enter into this theme in the text where the whole goal of it is to focus us on Christ. And so my prayer for us is that that's what this will do for us this morning. In an effort to exalt Christ, the author of Hebrews, who we're not sure who it is, the author of Hebrews starts out his book this way. Hebrews 1, 1 through 3. Long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he had spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purifications for sins, he sat down at the right some of the most sweeping prose about our Savior that we'll find in the Bible. The only other place that compares is probably found in Colossians, which Aaron covered. Aaron, our worship pastor, covered last month as well. So from the very beginning, he exalts Jesus. He is the image of God. He is the exact imprint of his nature. He upholds the universe with his majesty, the sweeping picture of Christ. And then the author goes on to kind of build this case for the superiority of Christ. And the book is called Hebrews because it's written to the Jewish diaspora all throughout Asia Minor. As here, I know that you have a Jewish background. Let me help you understand your new faith by helping you understand your new savior. And he goes to great lengths to explain to them why Jesus is superior. And he does this through four major comparisons. He compares Jesus to Moses. He compares Jesus to the angels. He says Jesus is superior to the high priests. And he says that Jesus is a superior sacrifice. And he goes through and he tells them why Jesus is superior to those things. Now, to the Jewish mind in the first century A.D., all of those comparisons would carry a great deal of heft. They would matter. The Jewish mind would immediately know what that meant, would immediately be taken aback by the boldness of the author of Hebrews, and feel the weight of the comparison that they were being asked to make. But for us in the 21st century in America, those things don't resonate with us like they did with the first century Hebrew mind. We know, even if this is your first Sunday in a church in two decades, you probably already know that we're of the opinion that Jesus is a bigger deal than Moses. Like, we got that one down. You know that already. You know that we think that Jesus is superior to angels. No one's getting confused and worshiping angels. Aaron's never gotten a request for a praise song for angels. Like, we've never gotten a Gabriel praise song request. So we know that. Nobody has any misgivings about me being superior to Jesus. We know Jesus is the superior priest. We know he's the superior priest to everyone that's ever lived. And that's a really hard concept for us to hold on to, I think, when we see it in Hebrews that he's the great high priest. That's a difficult one for us because most of us in this room have never really even had a priest. Most of us in this room have had pastors. And pastors are different than priests, take on a different role than priests, have historically been viewed differently than priests. So that's a tough one for us. And then the sacrifice, none of us in this room have ever performed a sacrifice. If you have, I'd love to talk with you about what led you to do that in your life. I'd like to hear that story. I don't know if I want to commit to a full lunch because you're crazy, but maybe just out there, you just tell me about that time with the goat, okay? But these things are difficult for us to relate to. They don't hit us the same way. So a lot of my thoughts and energy this week went into helping us understand why these are such weighty comparisons, why they are so persuasive, and most importantly, why they're still important to us today in 21st century America so that the book and the message of Hebrews can be just as impactful for us as it was for first century Jews. So I think, as we think about the overview of Hebrews, the most interesting question is, why did those comparisons matter to me today? Why are they important to me today? So we're going to look at them and we're going to ask, why does it matter that Jesus is superior to these things? So the first one that we see, I'm doing kind of a combo platter and you'll see why, but Jesus is superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message is greater than theirs. In your notes, I can't remember if I put it there or not, but there should, it'd be helpful to write above these three points and be bracketed by the text. Jesus is superior because, superior to blank because. So that's, that's the question that we're answering. He's superior to Moses and the angels because his law and message are greater than theirs. Okay. Here's why I kind of combined those two. We probably all know, the Jewish mind certainly knew, that God's law came from Moses. God brought the law down off of Mount Sinai and presented it to the people. Now we often think that just the Ten Commandments were written on those tablets, but those tablets were covered front and back. So we don't know what all was on there, but most certainly more laws. And if you read through the books of Moses, the first five in the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, you'll get somewhere around 620 some odd laws depending on which rabbi or scholar you're talking to. And so those were the laws of Moses. And those were the laws around which their religion was framed. Those are the laws around which their culture was built, around which their entire life was formed by following those laws well. And Hebrews is earth shattering to them because it says, hey, Jesus's law is superior to Moses's law. You can cast Moses's law aside. It doesn't mean there's not some good ideas in there. The one about like not committing adultery, we should probably carry that principle forward. But those laws are done. It's now Jesus's new law that he gives us in John. Jesus tells us that in these two things are summed up all of the law and the prophets. Everything that Moses or the prophets ever wrote or writings that's ascribed to them can be summed up in loving God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus tells us that early in his ministry. But then at the end of his ministry, he's sitting around with the disciples and he says, this new command I give you, there's this new thing I want you to do. I'm going to add to the, I'm going to sweep away those commands. I'm going to give you this new command. Follow this. I want you to love your neighbor. I want you to love others as I have loved you. It's this new command that Jesus gives. And so that command is superior to all of the commands that came from Moses in the Old Testament. It's also superior to all the commands that come after that. His message is superior. This is what it means with the angels really quickly. According to Jewish tradition, it was the angels that took the tablets from God and delivered them to Moses as God's holy and anointed messengers. So what we're seeing in these two comparisons is Jesus' message is greater than any message that's come before or will come since, and his law is the greatest law, superior to all other laws, and it's the only one worth following. This is incredibly important for us because we live in a culture and we are people who are incredibly vulnerable to the insidious slide towards legalism. We are incredibly vulnerable to reducing our faith to a list of do's and don'ts. Okay, I know I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself. Like, I get that. But is it a sin if I do blank? I hate that question. Is it a sin if I do this? Is it a sin if I watch this? Is it a sin if I go there? Is it a sin if I have this? That's an immature question. It's almost irrelevant. Is it a sin? And we even do it in the early stages of our faith. Am I in or am I out? When I die, am I going to burn forever or dance in the streets? Which one is it? I just want to make sure I'm praying the right prayer so I don't burn forever. That seems like a bummer. So I'm going to believe in this. Am I in or am I out? Is there an unforgivable sin? Is there something that if I do it, I'm going to lose my salvation and then I'm out? And we try to make it about the rules. We enter into Christianity kind of asking the leader, like whoever's in charge here, can I just have my personnel handbook? I just need to know when my vacation days are. I need to know how many Sundays I can miss in a year and still be like, good. You know? I don't want to have to feel that out. We want our policy handbook. And when we make that our faith, we pervert it and distort it into things that it ought not be and was never intended to be. When we try to make the Bible basic instructions before leaving earth, have you heard that? If you haven't heard it, sorry, because it's stupid. And I just told you it, now you know. We try to make it God's handbook for life. There's a rule for everything, we just got to find it. And when you do that, the people who know the rules the best and appear to follow them the best are the spiritually mature ones. Meanwhile, the people over there who don't follow what we think are the rules super well are actually getting busy loving other people as Christ loved them. But we don't value them because we value the rules. So it's important to let Hebrews remind us that Jesus' law is superior to the laws that we add to his law. Because we love to say yes and. We love to turn Christianity into an improv class. Yes, that's true, and this. Yes, to be a believer, what does God ask of you? That you would love other people as Jesus loved you. Yes. And also you shouldn't watch shows that are rated MA on Netflix. You should not do that. Yes. And you should love other people as Jesus loved you. And you shouldn't say cuss words. Because we got together in a room at some point, and we decided that these words that are spelled this way are bad. And you can't say them. And they're very offensive. And they offend the very heart of God. Jesus didn't make that law. We do yes and, and we start to build other rules that are requisite for our faith. And at the end of that is legalism. And some of y'all grew up in legalism. I know my parents grew up in legalism. My mom went to a church outside of Atlanta where you couldn't, if you're a girl, you were not allowed to wear skirts above the knees. They all had to be to the knees or below. And if they weren't, you're a sinner. You couldn't go, you weren't even allowed to go to the movie theater. If you're going to see a Disney movie, you cannot, you cannot go to the theater. You were not, your family was not allowed to own a deck of cards because with those cards, you might gamble and offend the sensibilities of God. And what happens when we do that is people like my mom who grow up in that, when they grew up in that, in their adolescence, they're riddled with all this guilt of things that they're supposed to do and shame for not being able to do them. And that shame isn't coming from Jesus because you've offended his law. That shame is coming from rickety old deacons because you offended their sensibilities. And it's not right. We should always choose love over law because that's what Jesus asked us to do. And here's what can happen when we do that. At the last church I worked at, there was a policy, and some of you are familiar with policies like these. They're particularly prominent in the South. There was a policy that you could not consume alcohol in public. You had to privately foster your own alcoholism. You couldn't consume it in public. You can have it in your house. You can have it with trusted friends. But you can't consume it in public and you can't be seen purchasing it by someone from the church. It's absurd policy. Be all in or all out. Just say don't drink it. That's way less hypocritical than drive to DeKalb County to get it and then drive back. So one day, I'm cutting my grass. I'm relatively new to the neighborhood. And when I finish up, my neighbor, Luis, comes out. He says, hey man, hot day. I said, yeah, it's hot. He goes, you want to have a beer with me? Now that's against the rules. I'm not allowed to have a beer with Luis because I don't want to, I'm not going to get into it. According to the rules, this is bad. But he's my neighbor and we know what do you want to have a beer with me means. He's showing me hospitality. He wants to talk to me. He wants to get to know me and I need to love him. And it's not very loving of me to be like, I'll be right back. I'm going to go get my water. That's just not what you do. So I said, sure. I had a beer, an illicit, an illicit beer. God, I'm still sorry. And we talked and we became buddies. And Luis had a stepson and two sons that lived with him as well, him and his wife as well. Gabriel, Yoel, and Yariel. And over the course of the next six years, I got to be their pastor. And I got to baptize all four of those guys in the church. Now, if I had said no that day, could that still have happened? Sure. But, I chose love over law, and God used it. We should be people who choose love over law, understanding that Jesus' law is the superior law. And just in case you think I'm letting people off the hook to do whatever you want under Jesus' law, as long as you're loving others, it is absolutely impossible to love others as Jesus loved us without being fueled and imbued by the love of the Holy Spirit. We cannot love others as Jesus loved us if we do not know Jesus and love him well. That the two things that sum up the law and the prophets, love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen, love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as yourself. You cannot love your neighbor as Jesus did if you do not love God with all your heart, soul, mind, amen. It takes care of everything. And suddenly there's times when you shouldn't watch that, or you shouldn't do this, or you shouldn't have that, or you shouldn't shouldn't go there or you should do this or you should do that, but not because it offends some law or sensibility that we've added to over the years, but because to do that or to not do that is the most loving action to take. That's why it's important for us to still acknowledge that Jesus's law is the superior law and that Jesus is a superior messenger and the angels. Now your notes are out of order. The next one we're going to do is priest and then sacrifice. So I'm sorry about that. But it's important to us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priests because Nate is broken. It's important for us to understand that Jesus was superior to the priest because I am broken. When we were running through the slides before the service started, we got to this one, and the band and the tech team laughed at me. They're like, Nate, you think we don't know that? We haven't pieced that one together. And I said, well, my mom's coming. So this one's for her. Sorry, mom, this is news to you. I know that you don't need me to tell you that I'm broken and that I'm a human. And that I'm going to teach you the wrong stuff sometimes. The way I think about faith and the Bible and God and Scripture and all the things evolves. It changes. There's things I taught when I was 30 that I'm so embarrassed about now. And there's things I'm saying to you right now that when I'm 52, I'm going to be like, oh, what a moron. I just know that's true. I'm broken. And even though you guys know that, and you guys know not to put pastors on pedestals, and you would probably all say that you have a pretty healthy idea about that, and I consider it part of my personal ministry to you to act in such a way where it's very easy for you to not put me on a pedestal. That's my ministerial gift to you guys. You would probably all say that you know better than that. But we still get the jokes. Those still happen. I had a friend, a good buddy, still a friend of mine named Heath Hollinsworth. Heath had three brothers. He still has three brothers. Jim was the oldest and Jim was an associate pastor at the church that Heath and I both worked at. So we all worked together. And then Ryan and Hunter worked construction. So they're a little bit less important in the kingdom of God than me and Heath and Jim. Which is the, that's the point I'm making. And whenever they would be around their dad for a meal and it came time to pray for the meal, Heath was in charge of the service. He was program director. It was a big church. So he had positions like program director. Here, Aaron does that. But whenever it came time to pray for a meal, their dad really didn't like praying in public, so he would always get one of the boys to do it, and he'd kind of look them over, and he'd be like, Jim, why don't you lead us today? You're the closest to the Lord. You have the most direct line. And Heath would be like, I work at a church too, and I'm sure it flew all over Ryan and Hunter. But he would joke about it. It didn't really make him mad. He just thought it was the stupidest thing because Jim was ordained and Heath wasn't. His dad thought he had a more direct line to the Lord. And as stupid as that sounds, you guys say that to me. I know we don't really believe it, but we keep saying it. When I golf with y'all and I hit one in the woods, which is rare, but when I hit one in the woods and it comes bouncing out just miraculously, just a squirrel throws it and it just lands in the middle of the fairway, somebody is going to say, got that pastor bounce, somebody's going to say it. We make the jokes and we think the things, and I can tell you from personal experience, we exonerate pastors too much. We honor pastors too much. We think too much of them. We have too great an expectation for them. I am not to be exonerated. My job in God's kingdom is not more important than your job. My gifting is not more valuable than your gifting. And listen, your character is not less important than my character. A lot of us have more expectations for me and what my character should be than for ourselves. And that makes no sense because you're a royal priesthood too. If it's okay for you and not okay for me, then you either need to raise your standards for yourself or lower them for me. Probably raise. And I don't mean to hit that too hard, but the church has a long history of making the people who stand here way more important than they actually are. And we've got to knock that off. While I'm here, and just kind of kicking you guys in the gut, let me kick you in the teeth. The other thing I was thinking about with priests and why this is important is the historic role of the priest. Do you realize that for a vast majority of Christian history, from the first century A.D. to now, for the vast majority of that, Christendom did exist under a priesthood. And that those priests were the sole arbiters of the truth of God in the lives of their people. Do you understand that? The people, for much of history, were largely illiterate. The vast majority of people were illiterate for much of church history. And before the printing press, a Bible was so expensive that it took the whole town to raise money to get one, and then they'd put it up on the lectern in the church or in the pulpit, and they would literally chain it so that nobody could steal the Bible because it was that valuable, and it's the only one that existed in the town, and because everyone's largely illiterate, the only person who can read it is the pastor. Do you understand how easy it is to manipulate when that is true? Do you understand how vulnerable that populace was to the malice that might be in their pastor? Do you understand how limiting it is for your faith if there's only one person who can explain to you who's reading scripture on your behalf and then telling you what it says and then telling you what you should do about that? That's how we got indulgences and we paid for St. Peter's Basilica because they manipulated the masses in that way. Because I'm the only one in the room who can read this and I get to tell you what it means. That's incredibly harmful. And now, we live in a time when Bibles are ubiquitous everywhere. You all probably have multiple Bibles in your home. You probably have more Bibles than you do people. If you'd like to add to your collection, take one of ours. You can download it on your phone. You can look it up on the World Wide Web. You have universal access to the scriptures of God. And yet, I see so many of you, so many Christians, walking through life, functioning as scriptural illiterates, trusting your pastor to spoon feed you truth twice a month for 30 minutes. And that's all you know of this. People have fought and people have died and people have lived to make this available to you. And yet as Christians, many of us live our lives as functional illiterates who still rely on our pastor or spiritual leader to spoon feed us the truth twice a month? How can we be Christians and be so disinterested in what God tells us? How can we call ourselves passionate followers of Christ and yet not read about him? How can we have access to this special revelation of God and the inspired and authoritative words within it that tell us not basic instructions for life but about our wild and wonderful and mysterious father? They tell us all about that and we have access to it all the time. We can read it whenever we want. We can do all the research we want. We can even, you can download professors walking you through this as you explore it on your own. And yet we function as illiterates still acting like the only source of truth is our pastor for whatever sermon they want to give that day. Jesus is your pastor. He's your source of truth. And he made sure that this got left for you so that you could learn about him. I'm here to augment the work that you're doing. I can't do the work for your whole life. Neither can your small group leader. It's important to know that Jesus is our high priest because we have the freedom to go to him and to pray to him whenever we want. We don't need a go-between. We don't need someone else to spoon-feed us truth. He makes it available to us here. Now, let's end on a higher note than that. It's important for us to know that Jesus was the superior sacrifice because he was enough. It's important for us to know that Jesus was a superior sacrifice because he was. This is important to mention. Because the old sacrificial system, you had to perform a sacrifice, and then you were good until you messed up again, and then you had to go back and you had to sacrifice. Like I wonder about the people who like went to the temple for a certain festival and they performed all their sacrifices and they're good. They're good before God. If they die, they're fine. And then they like take a wrong turn or there's traffic getting out of Jerusalem and they say things they shouldn't say. Like, I guess we got to go back to the temple and do this again. But Jesus is a superior sacrifice because we need one for all time. That's it. We're done. We don't have to go back and keep making sacrifices. And yet, we do the yes and thing again where we go, yeah, Jesus died for me and he made me right before God, but now that I'm a Christian, I keep messing up, so I need to do more and I need to better, and I need to perform my own personal sacrifices to get myself back in good graces with God. And we make Jesus' sacrifice not enough. Yeah, that was good then, but I know better now, and I need to keep working harder and keep being hard on myself and keep making my own sacrifices to then get back into the good graces of God so that he will love me more and approve of me more. And we live our lives, I do this too, as if Jesus' sacrifice wasn't enough. And now God in his goodness and glory and perfection requires me, Nate, to make greater sacrifices to supplement the insufficient sacrifice that Jesus made for me. I think that we would do well to wake up every morning and remind ourselves, even if we have to say it out loud, what Jesus has done for me is enough. God loves me as much as he possibly can and ever will. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me less. There is nothing I can do today to make God love me more. And there's nothing I can do today to make myself more right before God. Jesus was enough. He did that for me. And then walk in the goodness and freedom of God. From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Walk in that fullness. Walk in that grace. Walk in that gratitude by allowing the sacrifice of Jesus to be enough. That's why Hebrews can still, that's how Hebrews can still resonate with us today. By acknowledging that Jesus is superior to the law and the message of old, that he's the superior priest that gives us unfettered access to him, and we ought to passionately pursue that, and that he is the greatest sacrifice because he's enough for us once and for all. We don't have to keep supplementing that with our insufficiency. And to do all of this, as we're reminded of all of this, and we start with the sweeping prose about Christ, and then we see the comparisons, he starts to close his book by drawing this conclusion, and I think it's a great place for us to stop and put our focus on today as we prepare our hearts for communion after the sermon. But he starts to summarize his book and to wrap up by telling us to do this. I preach about this lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, my Bible says, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In light of all that we learned, in light of who Jesus is, the image of God, the very imprint of His nature, and in light of the ways that Jesus is superior and serves us and sacrifices for us and is our high priest, in light of the law that is to love Jesus with all our heart, in light of the law that is to love other people as Jesus loved us and then so in turn love Christ and be fueled by that love, in light of all these things, what are we to do? What are the rules that we're supposed to follow? How are we supposed to live this Christian life? Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Run your race. Go out there and run hard. Pursue Jesus with everything you've got. Go love other people with your whole heart. And to do it well, you've got to throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles. And we don't do that by white-knuckling it. We don't do that by trying to be our own sacrifice. We don't do that by supplementing the work of Christ in our life. No, we do it by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. If we'll do that, we will follow God's laws. We will pursue Jesus hard. We will love others well, and we will have run a good race. That's the point of Hebrews. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are, for how you've loved us. Thank you for your son. Father, I pray that it would be critically important to us to acknowledge the superiority of Christ. That it would be critically important to us to pursue Him, to love Him, to know Him. Father, if we are not in Your Word, if we're not pursuing You on our own, would you light a fire in us to do that? If we've spent too many years not knowing your Bible well, would you let this be the year that fixes it? If we've spent too many years adding to your law, would this be the year that we let that go? If we've spent too many years supplementing your sacrifice, would this be the year that we finally accept yours? And God, as we go from here, would you help us run our race? It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, Mailman Kyle. This week, Daniel in the lion's den. Nice. All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Grace. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here, and I'm so excited. I'm so thrilled once again to be able to be up here preaching in the book of Daniel. As I always do, I spend time, I read through or I listen to different sermons on the topic I'm going to talk about. I'll read, you know, parts of books, whatever. Whatever I can do to get a good solid wisdom and understanding of what's going on. And as I found one sermon, I took specific note of something that I thought was pretty cool. And the reason why I'm going to do it up there at the front is it's not directly about Daniel 6, but I think it does an awesome job of reminding us of what we talked about last week, while then connecting it to where we're going to go today with Daniel and the lion's den. John Piper started out his sermon in Daniel, referring to Daniel's name and talking about that in Hebrew, his name in Hebrew means essentially, God is my judge. That's pretty cool. It's pretty cool, not only because, hey, that's a great name. You know, if you're thinking, if you're having a baby, Daniel, God is my judge. Perfect. But it's pretty cool because when you look at the book of Daniel, as you sift through the stories we talked about last week, and when you get into this week and what we're talking about this week, what we see is, I mean, there's not a more aptly named character that I know of in the Bible, right? This is a guy, Piper puts it this way. He says that God is my judge, this name that has been given to Daniel, that this almost becomes like a creed or like a motto of how and where he lives his life. He says this comes out of the way that he ate. We think back to Daniel 1. Daniel comes over as a young, exiled man from Judah, and he says, hey, I'm not going to eat the food that you're giving me because I feel like that will be defiling myself and defiling my God, and I'm not going to do that. He stands in his faith. He says, hey, what matters is what God thinks about this, because God is my judge. And then he says, it comes out in the way that he interprets dreams. We go to Daniel 2, which we talked about as well. Not only Daniel 2, but Daniel's, both Daniel 4 and 5, which we're not going to talk about today, but in essence, Daniel goes to different kings and he interprets their dreams. And the way he interprets the dreams is, one, through the providence of God. We know it's his connection and his commitment to God that allows him the wisdom to interpret the dreams these kings are having. And the interpretations are all about, hey, basically, hey, you're the king for right now. The Lord has allowed you to have the power that you have, but the Lord is in sole control of that power. The Lord has every bit of power, and you're just a pawn in his system. And we see that played out in different ways. We see him bring people into power. We see him take power away. We see him give power back to kings. And we see him ultimately put people to death for disobeying and dishonoring him. He says, God is my judge, influences the way he writes the book. As we go through these first six chapters of Daniel, Daniel clearly chooses and picks to write about these six significant events because this is where he sees that God is most glorified. And so this is what he chooses to write about. And then as we transition into Daniel 6 and Daniel in the lion's den, we see that it comes out in the way that he prayed. And so we open up to page number 880, whoever wants to roll with us, but we open up to Daniel 6. And we open up to Daniel and the Lion's Den, which at its core is just one of your classic workplace disputes. You're in the office and your boss decides that he's going to elevate, he's going to promote someone to be now over you, and you don't think he should be there, or you don't think she should be there. You're not thrilled about the promotion that your boss made, and so, like you do, you go to your other people that you work with who also don't think that that person should have gotten that promotion, and you devise a scheme. And you devise a scheme that basically allows the boss to be tricked into throwing that person who got the promotion into a den of lions. We know it. It's the age-old story. But ultimately, I guess for those of us who maybe have not experienced this or maybe will find a couple different things that maybe these guys tried to do. Let's still go through it together. We jump in on Daniel 6, and basically, as these chapters have gone, we have seen how devoted and how committed to God Daniel has been throughout his life. God is my judge. That's Daniel. That is how he lives his life. And through that, the Lord has moved in Daniel, not only to provide him wisdom, but also because of his commitment, we see that his character is such that he is found completely and wholly trustworthy to every one of the kings that he serves under. And so as that continues to happen, what we know is that his character and his integrity come and is rooted in his commitment and his faith to God. But that doesn't really matter to the king. All that matters to the king is this man is trustworthy and I know I can continue to elevate him and he's going to continue to remain faithful to him. And we know that that comes from God, but ultimately, it just works out for Daniel. And so here we are in Daniel 6. Daniel is now on his third king. We talked about Nebuchadnezzar last week. In the middle of that, there is a pretty wild and awesome story about King Belshazzar. But King Belshazzar has died, Darius has taken over, and what Darius has recognized and realized, once more, like every other king, Daniel can be trusted, and I am going to trust him with much. There are 120 satraps, it says. There's basically, satraps are these people who are over different regions within the empire. And then above those satraps, there's three people that their goal and their role is to govern and to lead the people that are the different satraps. So they're the leaders of the leaders in essence. Well, Daniel was one of those three, and Darius has decided, Daniel is my guy. I'm going to continue to promote him. I'm going to continue to elevate him to prominence. He decides basically to say, hey, Daniel, I'm going to elevate you above those three, and you are now going to be basically my number two. You are going to govern all of my governors, and the only person that you bow down to, or the only person that you serve, and that you're not over and above, is myself. Well, like we just talked about, not everyone really liked that. There's a lot of satraps who are like, wait, what? What's this? This guy, this random exile from Judah who doesn't believe or look like, who doesn't like serve or bow down to any of our gods, now we have to bow down to him? That's not how I'm rolling. And so he does what we would, they do what we would all do in a similar scenario, and they start to devise a scheme. And I love the way that they devise their scheme because they go about looking into his personal life. And they're like, all right, well, time to become private investigators. We got to figure out the way that this man falls short. What can we hang him up on? What in his character can we find that's flawed that we can bring to the king to where the king will have to relieve him of these duties that we don't want him to have. And it's pretty cool what we see. We see, as they say in Daniel 6, I don't think this one's on the screen because I didn't put it up there. At this, the administrator and the satraps tried to find grounds for charges against Daniel in his contact of government affairs, but they were unable to do so. They could find no corruption in him because he was trustworthy and neither corrupt nor negligent. Finally, these men said, we will never find any basis for charges against this man, Daniel, unless it has something to do with the law of God. So here we have these two sides of the same argument. We've got the king who recognizes and realizes that Daniel's faith and Daniel's commitment to God allows him to be completely trustworthy and completely good, and I can put whatever I want on him, and I know he's not going to turn around and stab me in the back. We recognize that he has character on this side. And then what these people who hate Daniel now realize is, oh, he is kind of exactly what the king is looking for. He is kind of exactly why the king is elevating him is for this very reason, that we can't find any fault to him. All of us know that's because of his commitment to God, man. He has godly character because he has remained committed to God throughout these 50 years or however long he has been in this kingdom. And so then they say, well, great. I know what we can get him on. His faith and commitment to God. If that's the backbone behind everything, what we know to be true is that this guy does not miss his times to pray. This guy is so committed to God that every single day he goes up to his room, he takes up to this window and he prays every day. He prays, he praises God, all this stuff. That's how we're gonna, that's how we going to set it up. And just real quick, imagine someone tries to take you down. They look into every single part of your life, and the only thing they know they can hang you up on is that you're too committed to God. That's pretty sweet. That's, I mean, oh, to have that much faith and that much character in our life. But nonetheless, they go to the king. Because how can you get the king to do something? You remind the king of how great and how powerful he is. They go to the king and they say, King Darius, you are so great. And because you are so great, you have to, you need to make a decree. Make a decree that no one can worship or bow down to any God or pray to any God or any person except you for 30 days. You deserve that kind of praise because you're awesome. And King's like, yeah, I am awesome. You are 100% right. We need this to happen. And so he makes a decree and he writes it into law. Not only that you have to do it, but he also writes in the consequence that if you don't do it, if you bow down and you worship or praise any other God or any other person, that you are to be thrown into the lion's den and executed. They got him now. And so comes one of my favorite written verses in all of the Bible. So let's read this one together. So comes verse 10 when our buddy Daniel finds out what just happened. Now, when Daniel learned that the decree had been published, he went home in his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem. Perfect. Let's go to the window where people can see us. Three times a day, he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to any God in this 30 days, you'll be killed. You will be ripped apart by lions. And Daniel says, what should I do about this? I got to go pray to my God about this. And it's incredible. It's awesome. I love that it's, and why I say I love the way that it's written is because it seems instantaneous, right? It's like, oh shoot, this is bad. I got to go pray about this, which is great because it is exactly what he just read that he wasn't allowed to do. But all that Daniel knows is that regardless of circumstance, that what he must remain connected to is his God. And so he goes and two to three times a day, he prays to God and he gives thanks to his God. And then the kicker, just as he had always done. He doesn't start doing it. He doesn't do like Michael Scott does in the office where Pam finds out that he's dating her mom and he's like, oh, I'm going to date her even harder now. It's not like he's like, oh, I'm going to pray so much harder now. King, you're not even going to believe it. He doesn't change anything. He just remains connected daily to his God, spending time in prayer. Does he know that it is still defiant? Yeah. But it's not worth it to give it up for him because it's the most important thing in his life. And it has grounded him through every part of his life and it has brought him this far and he has faith that it's going to continue to bring him through. And so they got him. They go to the king. They say, king, please remind me, didn't you write this into law that people could only bow to you and praise you during this 30 days? And before they mentioned Daniel, who he loves, and he's about to elevate to prominence, even greater prominence, he says, yes, it's been written into law. I can't take it back. There's no way. It is law. That's what law stands for. And they said, well, do you remember that one exile from Judah? I think his name's Daniel. And like, by the way, how disrespectful is that? Like, hey, you know the guy who's maybe closest to you of anyone in this kingdom, the guy you're about to elevate to the number two, I'm going to refer to him as just this exile that like back like 50 some odd years ago was exiled to this place. It'd be like me like referring to Nate, our pastor, and being like, hey, you guys know Nate, right? The one that graduated from Toccoa Falls College? Like, you guys all know him as the pastor. We all know this guy, but it's like, I don't need to bring up some random fact from like 30 years ago. I don't know if it was 30 years ago. I just know he's older than I am. So he's older than I am, so it is what it is. But as disrespectful and as weird as it is, what we recognize and what we realize is their ultimate problem with Daniel is his race and his values. And I think even more than that, it frustrates them that clearly he's right about something. They're frustrated that he only worships this one God, but they're even more frustrated that for some reason his commitment to this God has allowed his character to be what it is. And Darius is upset about this. He's hurt, he's frustrated because he realizes, oh, I've been tricked. I've been had. And so we roll to verse 16. So the king gave the order and they brought Daniel and threw him into the lion's den. The king said to Daniel, may your God whom you serve continuously rescue you. He has to do it. He has to throw him in. I love that part at the end where it's clear that these people all know his commitment to God. And King Darius is kind of open to the fact that, hey, may this God that you serve so continuously, may he come through. I would love, I would love for you to be right about this. They cover it, so Daniel can't get out. King goes home. Can't sleep. He doesn't have any entertainment brought into him. He doesn't watch any TV, I guess, is what that means. He doesn't? Daniel answered, O king, live forever. My God sent his angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions. They have not hurt do it? This God that you serve and this God that I know you believe was protecting you, did he protect you? And Daniel's like, yeah, of course he did, man. So he's brought out. King says, get Daniel out of here. We threw him in. Lions weren't interested because the angels shut their mouths. In his fury, he throws all of the remaining satraps that tricked him into the same lion's den and they were killed, which is a pretty grisly detail in the story, but it is a detail nonetheless. And then we come to the culmination, starting in verse 25. It says, in his land, and he dec. He performs signs and wonders in the heaven and on the earth. He has rescued Daniel from the power of the lions. He witnesses the glory of the God and not only does it change his life, but he makes a decree so that every single person in his entire nation can know how big, how great, how eternal, and how awesome this God is. Praise be to God for that. The synopsis of Daniel that we talked about at the beginning of last week was this, that the Lord is in complete control of everything. Praise be to this God that has, that certainly that saved Daniel, but saved Daniel for the purpose of bringing this glory to the king and to all of the people so that they will know forever the glory of God, that they can witness and understand how great he is, how powerful he is, and how good he is. That is just awesome. That is a great story. That is a story that probably most of us know and most of us have read and gone through because this is a heroic story. But even though and while it's a heroic story, I think while we certainly place God where he needs to be is like look at this God who wants to make sure that not only his people, but all people recognize and see and understand his power and his glory. I do think that sometimes we misinterpret and we misrepresent who Daniel is in this story. Because so many incredible heroic things happen, we forget and we miss that Daniel doesn't really do any big, significant, heroic action in this. Like next week, we're going to be talking about, who are we talking about next week? Samson. Thanks, Nate. Thanks, Toccoa Falls alum, Nate. Next week, we're talking about Samson. When the Lord's strength is in Samson, that dude's taking out armies on his own. That's not the same thing that Daniel does here. He doesn't start an uprising. He doesn't storm into the king's quarters and demand that he reverses the law or says the Lord is going to strike you down if you, whatever. He just stays committed to spending time with God, trusting fully that his commitment and his relationship with God will put him in places where he can make God's glory seen. And that's what happens, right? In the beginning, we see that he's being elevated to prominence because of his character and because of his integrity, his trustworthiness. We know very clearly that that comes from his connection and his relationship with God. He has godly character. He can't be brought down by these people because of his character that comes from his commitment to God. And when his faith is put to the test, because he was already committed to his God, nothing was going to change. And when the Lord finally did put Daniel front and center, Daniel comfortably knew and recognized the Lord has me here because he is going to glorify himself through me. A lot of big and incredible things happened, but the only role that Daniel played was simply staying connected and growing in his relationship with his father. And if I'm right about that, if I'm right, if I'm correct in my assumption, or if you listen to this story, if you read for yourself and you agree with me that, yeah, this is kind of weird. I've always considered Daniel in the lines in that Daniel's kind of the hero of it, but he's not really doing heroic things. He's just living a life connected to God. He just daily connects to God through prayer and through praise. then what I'd argue with you is that a faith like Daniel's is waiting for us, is waiting for you and waiting for me, on the other side of consistent discipline in our personal relationship with God. Because the other thing I find noteworthy that I think we forget, because we kind of lump in biblical characters as these men and women whose lives are completely and consistently committed solely to God. Now, this is true of Daniel, but he's not like Paul where he's traveling to churches and reading scripture and making sure he understands scripture and understands Christ well enough to be able to send it out to the nations. This is a guy who's in politics. This is a guy who's in politics in a land where no one believes what he believes. And so his connection to God is his personal connection to God. Now, do people recognize and know it? Yeah. That's why the people know that they could make him fall because, hey, he's going to stay committed to God. The king, this God that you consistently are committed to, did he save you? They know that he's characterized by his faith, but he doesn't go into work as a minister and spend eight hours a day reading scripture and praying. This is about people who go into work and live for God because they're committed to him in their spare and quiet moments. Daniel three times day, spends time in prayer. I imagine he wakes up, he starts his day off with prayer. He goes during lunch and spends time in prayer. Before he goes to bed, he prays. I don't know. But the point is not that his entire life, every second of every day is dedicated to prayer, dedicated to reading scripture. The point is that his consistent daily time, just spending some time with God, allowing the Lord to work in his heart, just in the spare time that he has, creating some time during the day to spend time with prayer, that that saturates everything else in his life. I think it's the same with us. I think all of us would agree that the things that we care about and the things that we pretty consistently do, it kind of shapes the things that we do. Like, this is a silly example, but bear with me. I'm a big Frisbee guy. I like Frisbee. I like playing Ultimate Frisbee. I was watching ultimate frisbee all weekend. And so while I'm preparing for my sermons, I'm throwing the frisbee up and down the hallway over there. But sometimes I'm not allowed to do frisbee. Sometimes I have to stand in Aaron's office and talk ministry with Aaron back here. And as Aaron can attest to you, when I talk to her, I throw a lot of backhands. I throw a lot of flicks. I throw in the occasional hammer. I do it all the time. It's dumb. It's silly. But it's because, like, even though I'm not actively doing this thing, it's still on my mind, right? And it's still, like, literally body want to like do it and play it and throw it. When I drive around, when I see trees in a line, I'm like, there's a disc golf hole. It's not actually a disc golf hole, but that's what I see. You know, I mean, some of you in here maybe were skateboarders. And when some people see stairs, like, oh, that would be sick to ollie off of. I was always one of those, hey, skating is cool, and I'm bad at it. So I was like, that would be a sick thing for other people to skate. We recognize and we see things through the lenses of what we care about and what we consistently do. How many of us in here are or have been married or have kids? You can raise your hand. Yeah, nice. Congratulations. Now, I might be wrong about this. I'm only engaged. But I'll be married one day, and I think that this will be true. Raise your hand again if your marriage, your relationship with your wife or your husband, your relationship to your kids, the love that you experience from these relationships, if they impact not only the times that you're spending with them, but they impact the way that you live every part of your life. Yeah, man. Because the thing that we care about and the things that we spend time doing, and when we get to experience this love that makes us better and changes our heart, that doesn't only change our heart, and that doesn't only impact the way that we live just when we're doing those things. But it's our consistent connection to those things that continue to allow us to live out that love that we experience with and from our wife, from our kids, from our husbands. And the same is so, so, so true in our faith. As we daily spend time in the Word, daily spend time reading Scripture, just when we wake up, we read some Scripture, We spend time praying. Or maybe before we go into a meeting, we stay a quick prayer. When we consistently come and we meet together on Sunday mornings, when you meet with your small group and you grow and you build each other up, when those things happen, it saturates every other part of our life. Like Daniel, our character grows. Our integrity is deeper and deeper rooted in the things of God, and people see and people notice. I think a lot of times we view faith and we want God to do these huge, incredible things in our life and we want Him to use us to glorify Him. And ultimately, I think what the Lord calls us to do is stay rooted and connected in Him. And when that's the case, nothing else can happen except for him being glorified in us. And that's why Jesus gives this call and why Jesus charges us in John 15. This one's going to be up on the screen. We're going to read verses 4 through 5 and verse 8 together. I am the vine and you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing. This is to my Father's glory that you may bear fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples. When we are in Christ, we are connected to Christ. He is the vine, we are the branches. And if we want to produce fruit, all it takes is being connected to the vine. And we let the vine be what the vine is. Someone who produces fruit and elevates the glory of God. And that's our goal. Our goal is to remain connected to Christ. Always. And ultimately, our goal is to be someone who's defined as Daniel is defined, not only by name, but by the way he lives, but someone who is defined by God is my judge. I will stay connected. I will remain in him. And he, through me, will produce fruit. And he, through me, will glorify himself and do incredible things. It's not just for the biblical heroes. It's for every single one of us. We all, as we give our hearts to Christ, as we all believe in his lordship and in his sacrifice to us and his resurrection for us, that connects us to the vine. And when we continue to remain connected, when we continue to grow closer and closer as we continue to grow in him, grow closer to God, recognize and understand and realize his love more and more, then so too do we produce fruit and we show that love and we serve people the way that we've been loved and the way that we've been served through Christ. To close, I found, I was reading this book. It's by Andrew Murray called Abiding in Christ. I had a hard time actually with this sermon for a while because I was so excited about so many things. Like I kept pulling at things and being like, oh, I love this, and I love this, and I love this. And ultimately, on Thursday, as I was preparing, I ended up just reading like five chapters of this book called Abiding in Christ. I think I say that mostly to say, like, you should read it. But this book called Abiding in Christ is a book that is solely written connecting us and trying to help us fully and rightly and completely understand those verses in John 15 of what it means to abide in Christ, what it means to remain in Christ, what it means that God is divine and that we are the branches, what it means that through God we are able to produce fruit. And in that book, he writes a prayer that I really liked. And so if you would, please bow with me and we're going to pray. And I'm going to read this prayer that he wrote because I think it's really beautiful. heartedly surrender to abide in you alone brings a joy that is unspeakable and full of glory. May all of us who have begun to taste the sweetness of this life yield ourselves to be witnesses of the grace and power of our Lord to keep us united in him. And may we seek by word and walk to win others to follow him, to follow you wholly. It is only in such fruit bearing that our own abiding can be maintained. Lord, let us produce fruit solely by just being connected to you every day. We love you. Amen.

Sometimes in life, we simply need to pause. We need to stop and sit and rest and think and reflect. In these moments of rest, often what we need most is for God to refresh us. We need Him to speak to us and breathe fresh life into us. We need for God to move and restore and encourage. This is why we observe Lent. It is a moment for us amidst all the busyness of our years to pause and focus on Jesus. Lent reminds us of what Jesus has done for us, how much he loves us and how he relentlessly pursues us. So let us together right now, be still and set our collective focus on Jesus, asking Him to speak to us in this holy pause. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the senior pastor here. And it's been really refreshing for me to go through this Lenten season with you guys as a church. So I said at the beginning of the series in the first sermon that really I hoped that the Lord would move in your heart and in your lives through the devotionals that we're doing during the week, through our own prayer, through our own discipline of fasting, through the worship, and through what other people are coming and sharing in the services, which Kirk, thanks for that story about it as well. I love the background of that song, and it makes it all the more rich when we sing it. So I hope that you've been ministered to in ways other than just the sermon as we've gone through this series together. This week, if you read your devotionals, you know that we were focused on prayer. And so in preparation for the sermon this week, obviously I'm thinking about the topic of prayer. And just a little bit about me when I have to prepare a sermon. Before Lent, we did Colossians. I would do series like Colossians just every time to know it for the rest of my career if I could. Because when you prepare a sermon by opening up the Bible and reading a chapter and going, all right, God, what do you have for grace in this chapter? That is way easier than just talk about prayer, buddy. Like it's such a huge topic. It's really difficult to decide where to land and how to approach it and what passage will we use and where are we going to kind of spring out of in the Bible. I'd much rather just open a passage and preach the passage. When you give me a topic, it's kind of a hassle. So I've had this rattling around in my head for a while. What do we need to say about prayer? What does grace need to hear about prayer? And as I was thinking about this discipline of prayer, and whenever the discipline of prayer comes up, I always feel inadequate. I always kind of wince a little bit because I never feel like I do it enough. And you might be asking yourself, how much is enough prayer? Well, I would say probably just a little bit more. Whatever you're doing, just a little bit more is probably good. So I never feel great about prayer. And then my mind went to the other things in Scripture that we are told to do that sometimes we fall short of. Because I was thinking about the instruction in Thessalonians to pray without ceasing. And that's kind of like a mindset of prayer, an ongoing daily conversation with God all the time. And I've never quite mastered that, right? And then there's plenty of things in Scripture that I've never quite mastered, if we're going to be generous with that phrase. That I've just never gotten down. There's a prayer that David prays where he says, search me, oh God, show me where there's sin in my life so that I can repent of it. I was joking with somebody last week. I have never prayed that prayer. Like I've never needed to like, oh God, just if you could just show me where I'm wrong, I don't see anything. Search my heart, make it apparent. Like God, I'm good. Please don't do that., I'm good. We've got a lot of lessons before we get there. And there's a lot of things in Scripture that we're told to be that if we're being honest as believers that we know we fall short of. I mentioned a verse last week, Philippians 4, 8, whatsoever things are right and noble and faithful and trustworthy and are a good report, think on these things and don't let our minds think about things that are not those. Well, I don't know how to keep my mind focused on the things of God to that degree. I just haven't figured that one out yet. Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount that if our right hand causes us to sin, that we should cut it off so it can't do that anymore. If our eyes cause us to sin, we should gouge them out. And like, we're not doing that. We don't take it that seriously. I haven't gotten to that level of repentance yet. We see in scripture that we're to be people of prayer. We see in scripture that we are to delight ourselves in the laws of the Lord. We see in scripture that we are to go off and plant ourself near God, like a tree planted by streams of water, that we are to forsake everything else and seek out wisdom. We're told to be generous people, to give of our time and our talents and our treasures. We're told that our kingdom is not our kingdom, that it's God's kingdom. We're told that when someone strikes us that we should turn the other cheek and that vengeance is mine, says the Lord. That doesn't belong to us. We're told that if someone asks us to walk a mile with them that we should go an extra mile. That if someone asks us for our shirt we should offer our jacket as well. When you are a student of Scripture and you read the things that are peppered throughout the Bible that we're supposed to do, you can only come to one logical conclusion, I think, which is it is literally impossible to be everything that we are called to be. It is literally impossible to be and do everything that as believers we are called to be and do. We're leading a marriage small group right now. And one of the things we're talking about in that small group is that this marital love, that commitment is meant to reflect God's love. It's a picture. The way that we love our spouses in this sacrificial, self-giving love is designed by God to be a picture of his love for us. Our marriages are miniature gospels. They're pictures of the gospel. Your marriage needs to be so good that people look at it and go, man, what do they have? We're not there yet. Jesus tells us that when other people see our good works, that they should glorify our Father who is in heaven. That when we are believers, that when other people just watch you, when you just enter into and out of their presence and they just get to experience you a little bit, they go, man, I want whatever God that person has. And I bring all those things up because if I mention those things and you feel inadequate, if I mention those things and remind you of what Scripture teaches and you think to yourself, I'm really not doing great there. Look around. You have company. Everyone here feels that way. As a matter of fact, if anybody didn't feel that way, I read off all, I just listed off just a fraction of the things that we're supposed to do as believers. And you're sitting there going, I mean, I feel like I'm nailing it so far. Like, what else you got? You come preach, all right? Like, you come do this. I want to listen to you. We're all missing it. There is no possible way to be and do all that we are called to be and do except unless we have Jesus. And maybe that's why Jesus told the disciples in John 15 what he told them. The passage that Mike just read to us. I'll bring our attention to it again. John 15, verse 4. Abide in me and I in you as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. Listen. For apart from me you can do nothing. For apart from Christ you can do nothing. All the things, all the big long list of things that we feel like we're supposed to be able to do as Christians, be a good husband, be a good wife, disciple our children, raise them up well, be kind and gracious and compassionate people, enter into the public sphere with grace and generosity and don't make jerks of ourselves on Facebook. Enter into political discussions with humility and with honor, like to be who we need to be, to be generous of our time, to be generous with our spirit, to be generous with our finances, to be and do the things that we know we need to be and do is impossible without Christ. Without Christ fueling those things. And some of us, I would be willing to bet, if we feel like we have a spiritual life at all right now, came in here on fumes. And I just wonder if it's because we're trying to do and be all the things and we're not abiding in Christ. Because Christ says, abide in me and I in you and you'll do fine. You can do all the things. You'll bear much fruit. Don't worry about all the things. Just focus on me and the things will happen. But I think some of us get so focused on the things that we forget about Jesus and we just come in here on fumes wondering why things aren't working out for us, wondering why we don't seem to be living the spiritual life that we feel like we could or should live. And Jesus is very clear. Apart from me, without abiding in me, you can do nothing. And so the question becomes, well, what does it mean to abide in Christ? And we've talked about this before. And certainly we can experience the presence of Jesus in myriad ways. I believe that he's with us in the service. I believe that he speaks to us out of our word. I believe that out of his word, I believe that we find Jesus in service to him. That when we do the work that he does, that he is found there. Jesus says, whatever we do to the least of these, we do unto him. So when we help those who cannot help themselves, we find Jesus there. But I would still contend that the primary way to abide in Christ, to meet with him, to experience his presence, is in prayer. If we want to abide in Christ, I would contend with you that that begins in earnest prayer. And I believe that for a couple of reasons. First of all, we're told that as Jesus goes back up into heaven, where he is now waiting for us, that he sits at the right hand of the Father and he is interceding for us. So when we pray, Jesus is in God's ear going, here's what they really need. Here's what they really mean. Here's what I think about this person. I died for this person. I love this person. I'm covering over this person. He's sitting next to God, interceding for you. We're also told in Romans that the Holy Spirit translates our prayers to the Father in groanings that are too deep for words. Because we don't even know what to pray for. We don't even know how to pray as we ought. We don't know what to ask God for. And so the Holy Spirit listens to our prayers and says, Father, here's what he needs. Here's what he means. And Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father and he intercedes for us. So if we want to meet with Jesus, if we want to abide in Christ, if we want to pursue his presence, if we want to experience his spirit, then the first place we go is prayer because Jesus and his spirit and God the Father are waiting for us in prayer. So as soon as we kneel, as soon as we close our eyes, as soon as we begin to speak to him, dear heavenly Father, we enter into the presence of God. We enter into a divine space where the spirit and the son wait for us. It's part of the stillness that we talked about last week, that God creates a stillness so that he might meet us in it. So if you're going to ask me, how do we abide in Christ? Well, we begin with prayer. And I don't just think that that's true because of where Christ is positioned in heaven. I think it's true because of the practice and the pattern that we see in Jesus during his life. If we look at the life of Christ, here is, he was fully man and fully God. So here is a man who certainly has a relationship with his father, who certainly is abiding in God. Of course, he knew how to do that. Of course, he was with God in his service. Of course, he was with God as Jesus would reflect on his word. Of course, all the other ways he was with God and connected to the Father, but Jesus, even though he was as connected to God as anyone has ever been, even though he knew better how to abide in the Father than anyone has ever known, he still went off regularly to pray. We see time after time after time where Jesus does ministry and then he goes off to a quiet place and he gets up early in the morning and he goes off to pray. We see him pray in intense moments in his life. Before he begins his ministry, he goes out into the desert to fast and to what? To pray for 40 days. He sets up the model for the Lenten fast that we're observing now. The night he was crucified or the night that he was arrested, he goes to the garden of Gethsemane and he prays. Before he leaves, before he gets arrested and he sets in motion the series of events that are going to lead to his arrest and to his crucifixion, he sits down with the disciples in this same discourse where he's talking to them about I am the vine, you are the branches, John chapter 15, two chapters over in John 17, we see what I think is the greatest prayer in all of Scripture is Jesus' high priestly prayer that he prays over the disciples and the ones that they would reach in the future. So he prays for you and for me in John 17. Before Jesus commissions them to do their work, what does he do? He goes and he covers it in prayer. And so if we want to abide in Christ, if we want to be connected to the Father, if we want to be filled by, if we want to be connected with the Spirit, if we want to be able to hear the Spirit, the first place we go is prayer. It has to begin and end there. And I thought, no wonder we struggle so much with all the other things that we're supposed to do, because we're not blanketing them in prayer. We're not doing this fundamental thing, or at least I'm not. And not only did I just kind of think about this myself, but sometimes on a big topic like this, I'll go back and I'll read the old dead guys and I'll say, what did they say about prayer? C.S. Lewis and Charles Spurgeon and John Piper, who he's not, John Piper is still alive, praise Jesus. Tim Keller and C.S. Lewis. I'll go read guys that I go to so often, these pastors and theologians and scholars that I go to, and I'll say, what do they say about prayer? Maybe that will spark something in me. And what they said to a man over and over and over again is, you need to do it more. You need to do it more. You need to cover everything in prayer. You need to be a people of prayer. How could we possibly seek to take on the eternal, to do and be all the things we're supposed to do and be without prayer? One guy even wrote, Charles Spurgeon, he wrote that a pastor that is not spending two hours a day in prayer over his people is shortchanging them and they deserve better. And I'd just like to tell you, I'm doing three, baby, so you guys are good. No, I'm sorry. I'm not praying for you guys two hours a day. I read stories about that, about people who manage to do stuff like that, like pre-screens, and I'm jealous of them. But the overwhelming sense that I got from the people that I read was that we just need to do it more. And as I read scripture and think about what scripture has to say about prayer and how Jesus models prayer and how Paul, with almost every letter that he writes, accompanies that letter with a specific prayer that he prays for the church. I became convinced that we need to do it more. We need to go to the Father more. And one of the primary reasons to do that is that prayer in and of itself is an admission of inadequacy. Prayer is an admission of inadequacy. When we go to God and we pray, whether we realize it or not, what we are doing is agreeing with him that we can never do and be all the things we think we need to do and be. We are agreeing with him that we are inadequate for those tasks. When we pray and we kneel, which is why, by the way, I think it's a helpful posture to kneel before the Father. If you can, if your knees will let you and your back's good with it, I would highly encourage you to kneel down, get on your knees when you pray. Because it puts you in this posture of submission and of inadequacy. And when we go to God and we ask for things, or we present things to him, it is a tacit admission that we are inadequate for those things. When I kneel beside Lily's bed and I pray for her at night, which I don't do every night, but some nights I sneak in there, and it's one of the great privileges of fatherhood is to be able to kneel beside your sleeping children and pray for them. Some of you have grown children. You don't get to do that anymore, and you miss it. So while we have them, parents with children, let's do that. But when I kneel beside her bed and I think of all the things that I want for her, I pray, one of the things I pray for her almost daily is that she would know God soon and love him well. And that she would know him better than I do. And that she would teach me things about him. When I kneel beside her bed and I pray for that, it's an admission that God, I'm totally inadequate to be the dad she needs me to be. It's totally impossible for me to do that. And it's a reminder that I try way too hard to do it all on my own most of the time. When we get on our knees and we pray for our marriage, God, restore it. God, protect it. God, help us here. God, give us direction there. It's a tacit admission that we're not enough for that. And so when we bow our head and we pray to the Father and we invite him into these areas in our life, into all the places that we need to do and be, and into all the things that we get concerned about, that we care deeply about, when we invite him into those spaces, it is a tacit admission, God, I'm not big enough for this. It's a tacit admission of the first point of this sermon. It is impossible to live the life that you've called me to live without you. So I'm abiding in you. I'm calling on you. I need you for these things. And the more I began to think about this and the necessity of prayer, this occurred to me and I wanted to share it with you, that prayer is to spiritual work what food is to physical work. If you decided randomly to fast, let's say that you had a bunch of yard work you wanted to do that weekend. I mean, I've got to do it at my house. My yard looks a mess. It looks terrible. I haven't touched my grass or anything all winter long, and all of a sudden everything's blooming at once, and I desperately need to get out there, except it's just a soggy mess back there. Anyways, there's a lot of work to do, and you've got to pour the mulch, and you've got to edge, and you've got to trim, and you've got to do all the things. Well, let's say that you decided to get out in your yard, and you decided to do that, or spring cleaning, or whatever it is you do this time of year. But on that same weekend that you decided you were going to do that, you thought, you know what else I'm going to do? I'm going to not eat. Let's just, let's see how this goes. And you haven't eaten since Thursday night and Saturday afternoon, you're out there trying to spread mulch and you can't do it. You've got a headache. You can't focus. You're spreading mulch in the middle of the ground, in the middle of the yard because you're delirious. Like you're not, you can't do it. Is it any wonder why you would struggle to do manual labor if you haven't fueled yourself with food so that you might have the energy and the strength to do it? Well, how come when we start to fail and falter in life and we're spreading mulch in the middle of wherever the heck and because we're just delirious and we are not plugged into God, why don't we stop and pray and admit, how did I ever think I was going to be a good parent without prayer? How did I ever think I was going to be able to navigate my career and all the things I'm supposed to do without prayer? It just, it's made me wonder this week how, why I don't spend closer to two hours a day in prayer over this church. Who am I that I think that being a pastor is so easy that I don't hit the ground every morning when I wake up overwhelmed with the responsibility and offer it to God in prayer? Who are we in our parenthood that we just wake up and shuttle the kids here and shuttle the kids there and don't stop as often as we can to pray for them and to pray for who they're going to become? Who are we in our marriages to think that we can just go through the years and just tie days into weeks into months into years and decades without covering over our marriage and prayer and somehow hoping that it turns out to be this thing that honors God in the way that it's supposed to be? How do we undertake the things that we undertake in our life and we don't absolutely saturate them with prayer and then get surprised when they're not going the way that they should? How can we expect to do things of eternal import without praying. Without covering it in prayer. I heard one pastor, and it stuck with me, so maybe it'll stick with you too, who said, never initiate what you cannot saturate in prayer. Never initiate what you cannot saturate in prayer. If you can't cover it in prayer, then maybe we just shouldn't start it. Maybe we just shouldn't do that thing. And I think one of the things that we do with prayer is we kind of treat it like it's optional. Like one day when I'm a better Christian, I'll pray more. Like when I really double down on this life and I really mean it and I set those things aside and as I get older, one day I'm going to pray more. I'm going to pray about that thing more. We'll get moved to do this or that or the other thing, but we treat prayer as if it's this discipline to be gotten later, like it's a diet. Like, I know I should be on one, but I also like cinnamon rolls, so I'm not in this moment on a diet. I know I should pray, but I also like to not be praying, so in this moment, I'm not going to pray, and we treat it like it's optional. And when we treat it like it's optional, I think prayer gets relegated to inflection points and to crises in our life. Something goes really, really wrong. Our marriage feels broken and we're not sure if it's going to work. And so we hit the ground and we pray and say, God, please rescue this. That's good that we're doing that, but how much better could our marriage be if every day we pray that God would protect it? Why wait until it's a mess to fall on our knees and pray about it? Often we relegate prayer to crisis points that could have been prevented if we would have just prayed about them regularly. Why fall on our knees and pray about this huge decision that we have to make in our career when every day we could be getting on our knees and say, Father, my career is your career. Whatever you would have me do, please just make it clear to me. What if we prayed that prayer every day for five years? How much more prepared would our heart be? How much more in tune with Jesus would we be when different opportunities came up? Our kid starts making bad decisions, gets in trouble, whatever the case. And so in desperation, we go to God in prayer, and we should. But are we going to him daily, lifting up that child, asking for wisdom and guidance and grace as we raise them? It made me sad to think about in my own life how, yes, I pray regularly and I try to lift up the church regularly and I try to pray for my family regularly, but what are all the things in my life that I don't pray about until they're a pain point, until it's a big decision or until it's a crisis or until it's a big huge need that I could have been praying for all along. So as we think about prayer this week as a church, let us follow the practices and patterns of Jesus. Do it regularly. Abide in him through prayer. Know that he waits on us in there. Let us not begin things that we have not covered over in prayer. Let us realize that if we feel spiritually famished, if we feel spiritually exhausted, maybe it's because we have not been giving ourselves the fuel of prayer and meeting Jesus there where he waits on us. And let us not, as we close, think optional what God has rendered as essential. Let us not treat prayer as optional when God has told us it is just as essential to your soul as food is to your body. And so, as we go, how much should we pray? Just a little bit more than we are. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we love you so much. And I, for one, am sorry for my patterns of prayer. For sometimes how little I entrust to you or how irregularly I will come to you. God, I'm sorry that there are things in my life that I allow to come to crisis or pain or inflection points. And then and only then do I bring them to you in prayer. God, let us be people of prayer. Let us be people who know your presence well, who are constantly drawn there, who learn how to pray without ceasing. God, for those of us here who may not pray very often or very regularly, let us do that this week and find you in those spaces. Let our souls be revived by seeking your presence in that way. God, make this church, make our grace partners people of prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.

The Yo, good to see everybody. Thank you again for being here. This is the sixth part in our series going through the book of Revelation. I have really very much enjoyed going through Revelation with you all. And honestly, you guys have been more enthusiastic about it than I expected because Revelation can be a slog. It can be tough. We just took three weeks working through the tribulation, talking about the wrath of God and all the mechanics of the tribulation best we can. And to me, that feels tedious, but you guys have been incredibly supportive and incredibly kind. And it seemed like y'all have enjoyed going through this with me. As folks have asked me, how is Revelation being received? I say, it seems universally good. However, no one's going to tell me it's bad. No one's going to email me and be like, just so you know, really are looking forward to when this series is over and we can talk about something else. So that might be out there. And if that's you, I'm so sorry. Thank you for hanging with us. But for those of you who have enjoyed this, thanks so much for the encouragement because it's been really, really neat to get to go through it with you guys as a church. This morning, we arrive at Christ's return, the return of Christ. And I said last week that this needs to be the best sermon that I've ever preached in my life, to do adequate justice to the grandiosity of what's happening in Revelation 19. This will not be the best sermon of my life. I just wish that it could be, okay? So let's temper our expectations now. This is a B minus, all right? But in this sermon, we arrive at Jesus' return, at kind of the culmination of God's wrath, the final nail in the coffin. I said we've been walking through the tribulation. We've kind of looked at it through three different lenses. We looked at it in the first week to understand the wrath of God that's poured out in the tribulation, and we defined it. We defined it that week when we looked at Revelation 4 and 5, and Jesus steps forward as the Lamb of God, qualified to open up the seals and begin to open up God's wrath on his creation. We said he's beginning the seven-year process of tribulation. Now, what is tribulation? Well, we define that as the seven-year process of God pouring out his earned wrath on his creation and reclaiming what is rightfully his. And this week, he reclaims it. This week, he does the last part of the tribulation. Then we looked at kind of the flow of it, the seals and the trumpets and the bowls, and then we looked at the figures of it, and we'll talk a little bit more about the beast, the Antichrist, today. But where we're at in the narrative of Revelation is we're at the end of the Tribulation. God has poured out his wrath. We've had this great battle. There's been a great earthquake. God has sent darkness onto the kingdom of the Antichrist. And then he sends his son to finish up the work. He sends his son to answer the voice of the martyrs that cries out in Revelation chapter 6, the fifth seal. The voice of the martyrs below the throne of God that say, how much longer, God, before you avenge our death? You know who killed us. You see us suffering as your children. How much longer will you let this keep going? And we talked about in that week how we cry out with the martyrs, that every time something in our life happens that seems difficult or hard to understand or seems unfair, every time there's a school shooting, God, how much longer are you going to let this go on? Every time we lose someone too soon, God, how much longer will you let this world be broken? Every time we see something that we can't understand, we cry out with the martyrs and we say, God, how much longer, oh Lord, will you put up with this? And when he begins to open up the seals and begin the process of tribulation, he says, no more. And when he sends his son Christ, when we see Jesus in Revelation 19, that is God putting the final nail in the coffin of evil and saying, now I will make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Now I will rectify things. Now I will restore creation. Now I will answer the groanings that Paul talks about in Romans chapter 8 when we are told that all of creation groans for the return of the king. When we're told that we yearn inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons and daughters to experience eternity in the marriage supper of the lamb, we wait for this. We long for this. This is the hope that persists in our faith and keeps us anchored to our savior because we believe that revelation 19 is going to happen one day, that he's going to come get us, and that when he comes back, you guys have heard me say this before, he's not coming back as the Lamb of God. He comes back as the Lion of Judah. And we see this description in Revelation 19, beginning in verse 11. So if you have a Bible, you can read along with me. I love this description of my Jesus. Every time I read it, whether it's out loud or just in private, I get chills. I love this picture of him. And I don't know, I don't know if everybody can relate to this. This may just be silly. This may just be me being a dummy, and that's fine. I'm familiar with this territory. It's not unfamiliar. But when I read this passage about my Jesus, that part of me as a little kid that loved to see the hero win in movies, that teenage boy that loved to watch Braveheart win, that loved Gladiator and seeing Russell Crowe's character stick it to him, that little boy that loves Star Wars, that loves to see the hero win against evil, against all odds, that part of us, and I'm sharing that with you because I think that God lays that in us intentionally. I think we love the hero because the hero is a shadow of this reality that Jesus becomes. We grow up learning to love when the day is saved and when the hero makes an appearance because God wove that, I think, into our hearts to appreciate the appearance of his son when that hero returns and appears once and for all. So it's with that preamble that we'll read the description as Jesus comes back to reclaim his creation. This is the description of him that John records. Chapter 19, verse 11. And behold, a white horse. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty on his robe and on his thigh. His name is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Gosh. That's Jesus, man. That's Jesus. That's our Savior. When we think of Jesus, when we pray to him, when we sing to him, when we think about him, when we think about being reunited with him in heaven, I believe that it's our tendency to think about the gospel of Jesus, to think about the crucified Christ. And I don't think that's anybody's fault. We have four gospels. We spend time there all the time. I revisit a gospel every spring with you guys. We focus on Jesus at Easter. We focus on Jesus at Christmas. And we see the teachings from Jesus come out of the gospel. And so it's right and good to think about our Jesus as the crucified Christ. It's right and good to think about our Jesus as gentle and lowly. We're actually reading a book, as the staff right now, called Gentle and Lowly, and what it tells us, and I did not know this, but that the only time that Jesus is ever asked to describe himself in scripture, or rather the only time that he actually does it, he describes himself as gentle and lowly. And I think that when we think about Jesus, we think about a humble Nazarene from the country. And that's fine and that's well and good. But that's Jesus in human form. Revelation 19, that's Jesus. You understand? That's who's waiting on us. That's who's coming to get us. That warrior king written on his robe and on his thigh, king of kings and Lord of lords as a callback to Isaiah so that we know exactly who it is. And when you read through this passage, it's unbelievable to me how rich it is with allusions to other parts of scripture so that there is no doubt about it that this is Jesus coming from the very beginning. It says that he was called faithful and true, capitalized. This is a deity. This is Jesus coming. And then it says that only he knows his name, which is, that's Exodus chapter three and four, when God refuses to share his name. That's a throwback to that. And then he says that he was called the word of God, which John is referencing his own writings at beginning of John, the gospel, when he says that the word was with God in the beginning was the word, the word was with God, the word was God through him, all things were made without him, nothing was made. And then at the end, king of kings and Lord of lords. John, in this description of Jesus is weaving together all of the scripture to point us to our savior. This is the Jesus, the one who has fire coming out of his eyes and a sword coming out of his mouth with which to strike down the nations. The one who rules with the rod of iron, who has the armies of heaven arrayed in linen, following down as he thunders down to conquer the beast and the dragon and the antichrist. That's the one that sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you. That's the one that rules for all of eternity. That's the one that we pray to. And that's the one who's coming to get you. So I want to at least take some time this morning to encourage you. When you sing to Jesus, when you pray to him, when you think of him, when you anticipate meeting him, anticipate the conquering Christ. Anticipate this Jesus. Anticipate the warrior king coming down to settle the score. Anticipate the lion of Judah coming down to wreck shop. To once and for all sweep evil off the face of the planet. And when you do that, when you focus on the conquering Christ, to me, it really caused me to think about this a lot this week, that the conquering Christ renders the crucified Christ all the more miraculous. The conquering Christ, Christ conquering renders Christ crucified all the more miraculous. Because this description in Revelation 19 with a robe dipped in blood and a sword coming out of his mouth and a rod of iron that he rules a nation with, he's gonna tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God with all of heaven's armies arrayed behind him, thundering down to wreck shop. That Jesus hung on the cross for you. That Jesus walked away from all of that, condescended to take on our form, walked with us for 33 years, nurtured disciples to birth a church that would become his true kingdom that he's coming back to rescue so that you and I can sit in here 2,000 years later. He did all that, meek and mild. And when he describes himself as gentle and lowly, yeah, you're not kidding, man. Because look who he is in earth and look who he could be this whole time. This description, this guy, this God, this warrior king, he hung on the cross for you. Not just some sage from the hills of Israel. God condescended for you. He chose to hang on the cross. So I love that moment with Pilate. He's like, are you really a king? And he's like, don't worry about it, Pilate. If I wanted to, this whole place would be smashed. At any moment in Jesus' life, he could have called down these armies and just crushed anybody who opposed him. Caiaphas, the high priest, is sitting there thinking he's got Jesus right where he wants him, and Jesus is just thinking, you have no idea who I am. He dies, he's separated from God. Satan thinks he's got Jesus right where he wants him. Jesus says, you have no idea who I am. Christ conquering, to me, renders Christ crucified as all the more miraculous. And when I think about my Jesus, this is who I think about. He comes to get us and to take us back up to heaven and to start off eternity. And when he comes to get us, he takes us back, we're told, to what's called the marriage supper of the Lamb. He's defeated the beast. He's defeated the Antichrist. He locks them up. It begins the thousand-year reign. We're going to talk about that next week. There's an encore of evil, and then Jesus once and for all throws them in the lake of fire, and that's it. But he comes down. He captures the beast. The armies conquer. He takes his children, he wipes evil off the face of the earth, he purifies his bride, and then we have the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I feel bad for how I'm covering the marriage supper of the Lamb in this series. Because I'm not gonna do it justice. I'm not gonna adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this series. Because I'm not going to do it justice. I'm not going to adequately cover it. And I'm not saying that in this way of false humility, like, oh yeah, I'm really not doing that good of a job with it. Like, no, I'm not. We just don't have enough time to sink in to everything that's here and even all the symbolism in the marriage supper of the Lamb. But a simple way of thinking about it is the marriage supper of the lamb is the greatest celebration feast of all time. It is the greatest celebration feast that ever was and ever will be. And this should hit home with us. Because what do we do? What do we do when we want to celebrate? I got a little bit of good news last week. Such good news that I went straight to the butcher's market. I bought myself a big old ribeye and I had that for dinner when the kids went to bed. I had myself my own personal private celebration feast. When your team wins, what do you do? You have a feast. When something good in life happens, when you graduate, you have a feast. When people come into town, what do you do? You have a feast. What are we going to do this week? We're going to get together with friends and family. We're going to reflect on the blessings that God has given us, and we're going to have a feast. This is what we do to celebrate. When your kid gets married, and you celebrate kind of transitioning into that season of life. This one has passed. We've formed a new family. What do you do? You get all your friends together and you have a feast. This is what God is doing. It's the greatest celebration feast of all time. In the days of old when kings would conquer and they would come back from conquering another king, what did they do? They feasted. And Jesus is bringing us back to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Why is it called the marriage supper of the Lamb? Because Jesus is getting married. Who's he marrying? Us. The church. His bride. We see throughout Scripture that the church is referred to as the bride of Christ. We see in Ephesians that God purifies his bride. He prepares us. We are made pure for Jesus so that we might marry him in eternity. I don't know how all that works out. It's a word play, but we are made pure by our savior. How are we made pure? By the crucified Christ hanging on the cross. He died for us. He covered over you in righteousness, made you good, purified you, prepared you for this very moment, for the marriage supper of the Lamb, where the church and Christ are united for all of eternity and perfect bliss. And so it's right and good to have a feast to celebrate the marriage. And this feast, man, it's going to be a good feast. The ones that you've lost, they're going to be there. I don't know for certain. I can't find it in Scripture. But I'm pretty sure they're going to serve catfish at this feast. Because my papa is going to be there. He loves catfish. And I know he's got some waiting on me. Your loved ones are going to be there too. Your dads are going to be there. And your moms. And the children that you never got to meet because you lost them too early, they're going to be there. All the saints who have come before us, all the saints that you've loved, they're going to be there. And listen to this. They're going to be the best versions of themselves. They're not going to be sick. They're not going to be unhealthy. They're not going to be unwell. They're going to be the perfect versions of themselves. They're not going to have all the brokenness that hurts us sometimes. Do you understand what I'm saying? Your dad, who you loved, but man, that guy had a temper. In heaven, he doesn't have a temper anymore. He's just love. He's just all the best parts of him. The people who we love, who made it sometimes hard to love them. Jesus has prepared those brides too. Their brokenness is wiped away. And they love you with purity. And you're made perfect too. All the crap in your life, all the stuff that you wish wasn't true of you, all the things that you hope nobody finds out, all the brokenness that spills out of you and hurts the people around you when you don't want to hurt them and you hate that side of yourself, that side's gone at the marriage supper of the Lamb. You're made perfect there. You're made your ideal self there. You're made your eternal self there. And you can love other people finally with the purity that God loves you with. We see the best versions of the folks we love. I am convinced of this. We finally walk in the best versions of ourself and don't have to wonder what it would be like to not have to walk through life as a selfish, egotistical jerk. That one's just for me. I don't know what your thing is. That feast is going to be remarkable. And everybody's going to be there. And Jesus is coming to take you to that. And I think that's pretty great. And as I thought about these things this week, the triumphant return of Christ and the marriage supper of the Lamb and all that it represents and what Jesus really won with that victory. What does it mean for us? Yes, evil is smited. Evil is gone and all the wrong things are made right and all the sad things are made untrue. All that is very true and God wins once and for all and that part of us that loves a hero gets to see the actual hero come storming out of the clouds. He wins those things for us. We see our God claim victory and that's great. But there's something else that occurred to me too. I was prepared. I knew this was going to happen. We're not even to the hard part yet. Jeez, old Pete. Something else occurred to me as I kind of asked the question, what has Jesus won? And what are we celebrating at the marriage supper? And I was reminded of this idea that I have long carried with me, but I've not heard too many other people talking about it. I've actually never heard a pastor talk about this. It doesn't make it a unique idea. It's just one that I've not heard other people mention. And maybe it's because pastors aren't supposed to say things like this and the other ones know better and yours doesn't. But I've long carried with me this idea that faith and hope are burdens. Faith and hope are hard. We celebrate faith and hope in our belief system. We're told that the greatest of all these things is faith, hope, and love. We celebrate faith and hope. We want those. We name our children faith and hope. They are good things. But I, in my life, in my most honest moments, experience them often as a burden, as something to be carried, as something to be chosen. Because faith is a belief in things that you can't see. Faith is what we choose when facts fall short of certainty. Do you understand? There's things that we can know about the universe and about our God and about scripture and about the claims and about life. There's things that can be scientifically proven and broken down and rendered as factual. And then there's what we choose to put our faith in. Then there's certainty. And when facts fall short of certainty, we fill that gap with faith. Whether you're a Christian or whether you're an atheist, there's no way to be totally certain of what you think's going on in the universe. So when we reach the end of facts and we have to arrive at certainty, we fill that gap with faith. So faith is a choice. We choose it. We exercise it. We learn it. We let God speak into it. We let him strengthen it over the course of our life. The longer you walk with God, hopefully the stronger your faith gets, but it gets stronger because it's been tried and it's been tested and it's been a burden that you've chosen to continue to carry. Hope is a burden. Hope is a belief that one day something can be true that I want to be true. Hope, to even have hope, is an admission that right now things are not the way that I want them to be. Right now things are less than ideal. Right now things are not what I want, but I hope, I believe that one day the things that I want can be brought about. Hope is an admission of a shortfall. People who are not yet parents and desperately want to be hope that one day this can be true of us. We, as believers, we read scripture, we hear the stories of Jesus coming down out of heaven, and we hope in that day. We place our faith in that day. We believe that there's going to be a marriage supper. We place our hope in that. We place our hope and our faith in the idea that our prayers are working, that they get to God, that they are powerful and effective and they're not just bouncing off the ceiling. But sometimes, life makes hope heavy. Sometimes life makes hope heavy. When you lose someone too early and your Bible teaches you that your God could have done something about it and you have to be confronted with the fact that he just simply didn't. In that season, you choose hope. And in that season, it's heavy. And sometimes, when life gets hard, and when faith and hope become burdens, and they become heavy, we see people put them down and walk away from them and say, I can't carry this faith anymore. I don't know how to believe in a God that would let that happen, so I'm gonna set down this faith. I don't know how I can still cling to hope when I've been disappointed in these ways, so I'm going to set down this hope. Sometimes faith and hope get heavy, and they get hard to carry. When you grow up in church, being taught a simple faith, and then you become an adult adult and there are things that happen in your world that just don't align with what you were taught when you were a kid and you have to learn how to find this new faith. You have to cling to it and you have to hope and you have to choose hope and you have to find ways to make what you were taught and what you're experiencing mesh and you have to find a whole new way to understand scripture and understand God and to understand how he speaks to you. In those moments, faith can get hard and hope can get heavy and we have to choose them. And I am convinced that the Christian life is simply a series of the decision to choose faith and to choose hope in Christ over and over and over again until we make it to the finish line. My prayer as I prayed before I preached this morning was that if there is anybody in here that's carrying heavy hope that it would get lightened just a little bit today. That we would have the strength and the faith to continue to carry it for a little bit longer. Just get down the road just a little bit further. Because sometimes faith and hope get heavy. And I hate that we don't talk about that as much because we should. And if that's true, if I'm right that they can be burdens, then one of the best things that Jesus wins when he comes sweeping out of the sky is on this day, he lays to rest faith and hope forever. And he says, here, you don't need these anymore. You don't need faith and hope anymore. Maybe that's why Paul writes in Romans 8, he says, for in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. When Jesus shows up, we don't need hope anymore. When he shows up, we don't need faith anymore. There's no more gap between facts and certainty. There's just Jesus. There's no more hoping for one day. There's just Jesus. One day has arrived. Do you understand that when Jesus sweeps down out of the sky, that he lays to rest for us for all eternity, faith and hope. And he says, you can set them down, weary traveler. You're here now. Let's feast. And I think that's a remarkable blessing. Because to be a Christian is to believe that one day these things will be true. To be a Christian is to believe that one day God will set all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. One of my favorite songs in the world is this song called Farther Along. Farther Along, I like the version from a guy named Josh Gerrels, and it opens up. And he says, I wonder why the good man dies and the bad man thrives and Jesus cries because he loves them both. And the chorus is, farther along, we'll know all about it. Farther along, we'll understand why. And it's just this acknowledgement, I think, that faith and hope are hard. Faith and hope are hard, but one day, I won't need those anymore. I can lay that and everything else down at the feet of my Savior. And on that day, when Jesus comes back, there are no more one days. On this day, Revelation 19, marriage supper of the Lamb, on that day, there are no more one days. It is one day for all eternity. There's no more wondering, there's no more hoping, there's no more struggling, there's no more pain. Because on that day, he puts an end to waiting on one day. And I kind of wonder now if that's why Paul didn't say what he said in Corinthians. When he gets to the end of talking about all the spiritual gifts and he says, but now these three remain, faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these, Paul says, is love. And I've always read and accepted that teaching, and it's made sense to me. Love binds. Love is the very nature of God. Love is what unites us together. It makes sense to me that love would be greater than faith and hope. But now I wonder, in light of what I've thought through this week, if maybe love isn't the greatest because when Jesus comes back and lays faith and hope to rest, that love is the only thing that exists for all of eternity. Maybe love is the greatest because it's the only thing left after Revelation 19. And we live in an eternity of perfect love that God designed us for, finally. As I was thinking through this sermon this week, I was pacing in the lobby. And as I was out there, just kind of walking back and forth, thinking through these things, asking myself the question, what has Christ won for us? I noticed on the information table, a bracelet, like a little ringlet. And I picked it up and I saw an inscription there. And I thought, oh, what is this? God, are you talking to me? Let? Speak, Lord, your servant hears. I'm working on the sermon. There's a bracelet here. You've got to be working in this. So I reach over, and on the bracelet, it just says, it is well with my soul. Also, if that's your bracelet, it's right out there. It just said, it is well with my soul. And I thought, oh, I love that song. But that's not really helpful. Okay, God's not speaking. And I just kept pacing. And I got done and I kind of had a fully formed idea. And sometimes on Tuesdays when I get a fully formed idea, I get a little bit excited about the sermon and I'll go and I'll tell Kyle because Kyle's always up for a conversation. I said, Kyle, I got it. Listen, I told him about this idea of faith and hope being burdens and that Jesus is going to put those to rest for us. And Kyle started to get a little teary eyed. And he said, he said, that just reminds me of my favorite song, my favorite line from my favorite song. And he quoted me these lines from it as well. And I was like, oh my gosh, God is speaking. I'm just dumb. I always say God speaks in stereo. And Kyle quoted these lines. And he started crying. And I got misty, and I knew that this is what we were supposed to share, and I knew that we were supposed to end the service today with it as well. Because in these lines, we see the author of this song admitting what we've just talked about today. The faith and hope are burdens, and so it is well with my soul. We often sing this song in a response to grief as an admission that I am going to choose faith and hope even though it's heavy today. Now let's sing it looking forward to the day we can lay those things to rest and Jesus has won the final victory and forever we will say it is well with my soul. Stand and let's sing together.