Sermons tagged with Division

All right. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. First things first, to my Wolfpack friends, no jokes this morning. Well done. That was a fun run. You guys should have enjoyed that. I hope you had fun. I'm sorry it ended with an 8'11 buzzsaw yesterday, but that was a good run, lots of fun. I tried, just so you know, I pulled out, I have one shirt that's Wolfpack colors, a black and red flannel. I pulled it out this morning, and I'm fat, so I had to switch it out to the big boy shirt, but I was with you in spirit, I promise. Also, before I jump into the sermon, I don't normally do this, but there's something coming up I want to tell you about, and I want to tell you about it because of what's been going on, excuse me, kind of behind the scenes in discussions with our missions committee and on our elder board. So you probably heard Aaron say a few minutes ago something that we say regularly, which is 10% of everything that's given goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. It's our conviction to be generous as we ask you to be generous. And so the missions committee, which predates me, that was here before I got here, is the group of people from the church with a heart and experience in missions who determines where that 10% goes. They determine who we partner with. So we have three local partners and three international partners, and they're the ones that make sure that we're partnering with the right people in the right ways. And one of the things that they've been talking about, and one of the things that the elder board has been talking about, and so as two separate bodies, we've been talking about this together, is how can we get the partners of grace, you guys, more involved with our ministry partners beyond just passively giving and seeing 10% of that go to ministries outside the walls of grace. And so we've been actively looking for opportunities for our partners, church partners, to get involved with our ministry partners outside the walls. And so we've got that opportunity coming up next Sunday. Addis Jamari is one of our ministry partners that we support. They're doing wonderful work with families and orphans in Ethiopia. The thing that's near and dear to my heart is poverty is so pressing there that when a young family or a young mother has a child, she's very often faced with the decision of, do we give this baby up for adoption because we can't afford it, or do we lose our home or lose something else? Do we keep this baby because we're not sure that we can feed it? Which, to my knowledge, no one in faced that choice that's an excruciating decision and so by supporting them we're able to provide those mothers the resources they need to to keep their babies at home and not have to give them up for adoption which is a huge huge deal so to that end as we seek to continue to support at a story there's a trip this summer some of the teens are going and beyond the teens we have three adults from our church who are also going and so there's a fundraiser for that trip and it's a trip this summer. Some of the teens are going. And beyond the teens, we have three adults from our church who are also going. And so there's a fundraiser for that trip, and it's a way to get involved. There's a barbecue next Sunday. Wes, where is the barbecue? It's at Falls River Slim Club. That's right. Okay, so Falls River, the Greenway Club over at Falls River. There's a barbecue. You can go there. You can get some food. You can take it home, watch the Masters. You can also contribute food to that, and you can just show up and volunteer. It'll probably be a good place to hang out. There's more information about that in the Grace Vine, and you can talk to Wes after. He's one of our elders, and he happens to be married to the lady running the joint, so he knows more answers than I do. So I just wanted you guys to be aware of that as an opportunity for us to begin to partner with our ministry partners. Now, as Mike alluded to, this morning we are starting a new series called The Treasury of Isaiah. I am particularly excited about this series because I think this series was Jen's idea. Jen's my wife. I think it was her idea back in the fall when I was asking her what we should talk about, and she said you should do some stuff out of Isaiah. And that's tough because Isaiah is 66 books. It's a book of prophecy in the Old Testament. It's got all the themes of prophecy in it, and it's 66 books long. And if I tried to preach through the book of Isaiah, you guys would probably find another church, and I would probably find a new job. So I don't think that's what we can do. But there's so many wonderful, rich texts in this book that what this series gives us an opportunity to do is to dive into those and begin to learn them and see them and appreciate what they are because we don't often spend time in Isaiah on a Sunday morning. So we're going to do that for the next seven weeks. Now next week, I'm going to work to give you an overview of the role of a prophet and prophecy and what it is. And we'll look at a big sweeping view of the messianic prophecies in Isaiah, the prophecies about Jesus. But before I can even do that, I have to jump into this text in Isaiah chapter 1. If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I hope you're bringing your Bibles, I hope you're marking them up. This is a mark-up passage. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. In Isaiah chapter 1, we have these nine verses in Isaiah 10 through 18. And I know that I say that things are my favorite, but this is, and I mean this without equivocation, my favorite passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah. Okay? Maybe in the Bible, but definitely Isaiah. And I'm not even interested in approaching the rest of the book before we talk about this because I love the deep conviction of this passage. This passage kicks you right in the teeth. If you didn't come for that this morning, I'm sorry a little bit. But we see God speaking to his people in this passage about as harshly as you see him speak. And I'm the kind of person that needs you to do that to me or I'm not going to listen. So I love this passage. I love the conviction of it. I love the challenge of it. I love the relief of it. And in this passage, we find the very nature of the gospel. So my hope and prayer is that this passage can become for some of you what it has been for me for so many years. This is a hugely important passage. For just the slightest bit of context before I start to read it, this book is written to God's people, to the Hebrew people, to the Israelites. It is written to them at a time when they are spiraling morally away from God, when they have lost their way. And the role of the prophet Isaiah is to convict God's people. And that will become a very clear goal of his as we read this text. But God's chosen people, they have every reason to be following God. They know are they to me, says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of your blood? Listen. your worthless assemblies, your new moon feasts and your appointed festivals. Listen, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Yo, God is big mad at his people. He's incredibly angry at his people. You can tell it with the way he starts off because he says, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, you people of Gomorrah. Listen, Sodom and Gomorrah to the ancient Hebrew mind were synonymous with evil. Those cities represented what evil was. It would be like calling a conservative Southern Baptist the mayor of Las Vegas. All right. It's it's when they think of that place, they think of sin and evil and debauchery. And they think of themselves as a shining people city on the hill. We are the chosen people of God. And guys go, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen, you sinners. Listen, you evildoers. You've lost your way. And then he goes down and he details for them. Here's what's interesting. He's not mad at them for the traditional sins that we would think of God being angry about. He doesn't say you're debaucherous, you're gluttonous, you're filled with lust, you're sleeping around, you're selfish, you're greedy, you're hoarding, you're oppressing the poor, you're mean and unkind to one another. He doesn't say those things. He actually gets onto them for doing things that he's asked them to do. Did you catch that? Look. He says, God, you asked us to give these sacrifices. The blood of bulls and lambs and goats, they mean nothing to me. God, you asked us to do that, he says, I detest them. They are a burden to me. It wears me out to have to deal with you when you show up on Easter. These are harsh words from God. And the question worth asking, if God is this angry with his people, then why does God hate the very actions he's prescribed? They were told to do those things. There's a whole book, the book of Leviticus, that details in painstaking detail exactly what they're supposed to do. If you've ever tried to read through the Bible in a year, two-thirds of you stopped in Leviticus. And it was because the book of Leviticus is laying out all of these things. When do we offer incense? When do we offer prayers? When do we offer sacrifices? What kind? When? Bulls and lambs and goats. When do we do that? When are the calling of convocation? New moons, new Sabbath, all the festivals? How do we do those? That's all in Leviticus. God has given them in detailed instruction exactly what he wants them to do. And now here in the book of Isaiah, he is raining down fire on them for doing those things. So why is it that God hates the very actions that he's prescribed? Because what God wants is the heart behind those actions, not the letter of the law and the actions themselves. We are told by David that God can despise sacrifices, but a fearful and contrite heart he will not despise. That God requires mercy and brokenheartedness, not sacrifice. God is interested in the heart behind the actions and the motives behind the obedience. He wants to see day in and day out that they actually love him and care for him, not just when they show up at church and go through the motions. I think of it like this, how the people of Israel were acting and what God was frustrated about. When I was in college, I think Jen and I started dating when we were, I was 20. So somewhere around the age of 20, 21. We're dating. And I had not really been in a serious relationship before this. I had been in relationships, but they weren't serious. And I didn't really know how to be in a relationship. I'm still not positive that I do. I think it involves vacuuming. And so we're dating. She knew how to be in a relationship. And she looked at me one day and she said, I can tell something's wrong and I'm kind of probing. And eventually she just says, I just don't feel very special to you. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. You are. So I don't really know how I handled that conversation. But we parted ways. She went back to her dorm, and I went back to my dorm. I lived in an on-campus house named Beulah. She lived in a small women's dorm named Troy Damron, and they were kind of reasonably close to one another. I went back, and I thought, gosh, my girlfriend doesn't feel special to me. I need to figure something out here. So I came up with a plan. I went to Walmart, and I bought a king-size bed sheet. And this is not going where you think it's going. This is a Christian college. So I got a king-size bed sheet, and I lay it out on the living room floor. And my roommates are watching me do this, and I trace out in big block letters, Jen, you are very special to me. Love, Nate. I draw it out, and then I get the Crayola markers, and I'm coloring it in. I went through a whole pack. I was up to like 2 or 2.30 a.m. This is painstaking work here that I do, and then I sneak over to her dorm. We still have the sheet somewhere. I know that we own it. It's somewhere. I went over to her dorm and I tack it to the pillars on her front porch. So it's facing the front door. So everyone who comes out that door, the seven or eight girls that live there, they will see that clearly Jen is special to Nate and she will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what she means to me now. Let me tell you something. That did not get the response I thought it would. It turns out that what Jen wanted was for me, through the little things of day-to-day life, to indicate to her that I cared about her, that she was special to me. What she didn't want was a big, dumb, grand gesture with block letters that would provide sermon illustrations for decades to come. What they were offering God is the block letters. You are special to me, God. Happy? And God says, no, absolutely not. And what they were guilty of doing, and this is why God is coming down on them so hard, is they were going through the motions. They were going through the motions of their faith. They were doing the bare minimum required of them to be seen as in the faith. We're still good. I'm doing my sacrifices, God. I'm coming to the special assemblies. You know, can't make it every week, but Christmas and Easter, I'm your guy. And they were just going through whatever they decided was the bare minimum of what their faith required of them to prove to God and whoever else that they were in. And it's interesting to me that in the corporate world, we now actually have a term for this. It's a new term that we've been blessed with by the Gen Zers called silent quitting, where people who have corporate jobs understand that HR, God bless them, can sometimes make it really difficult to fire your butt when you deserve it. And they realize that they have some job security, not going anywhere, so they make a conscious decision to put in the minimal amount of effort possible that will still allow them to keep their job and collect a paycheck, while fairly clearly communicating to everyone around them, I couldn't care less about this job. Just in it for the check. Doesn't mean anything to me. Now, I know that's a harsh way of depicting that, and I do actually see some positives to it, but I'm not making a joke. I think work-life balance got ridiculous, and the next generation is course-correcting for us a little bit. It's just going to be wonky. Anyway, sorry, that's social commentary. What God is telling the Israelites is, you're silent quitting on me. You're putting in the least amount of effort possible to still appear as if you're a people of faith. But you don't really care about me and what I've asked you to do and where your heart should be. And if you are at all like me, in my old Bible, I had a note next to these verses that said, Dear God, please don't ever get this angry with me. I never want to give God a reason to be this frustrated with me. That he says to me that when you bow your head to pray for me, to pray to me, I will not listen to you. When you come to church, you are trampling my courts. When you get up on Sunday and you put on your church finest and you show up at church, it is a burden to me. I am weary of your hypocrisy when you show up and pretend like you love me. And I want to write, God, please never be this angry with grace. And if you're like me, you're wondering, when and how do I go through the motions? When and how in my faith have I simply been giving God lip service? When and how have I silently quit on my faith? When the things I'm doing are just to be seen, are just to be considered in. I thought about enumerating the ways we can go through the motions. But I really think the more interesting thing to bring up when we consider how we might do this is to think about two things. I know for me, if I want to be honest about examining my life, about when I'm going through the motions of my faith, when I'm giving God the actions but not my heart, is to think through what motivates me when I do spiritual things. When I get up in the morning early to read my Bible? Am I getting up to read it so that I can check a box and say I've been spiritual today? Or am I getting up to read it because I just want to know the heart of God more? Because I'm curious about the scripture and I want to dive in in a fresh way. Do I get up to read it so that my Bible can be on my desk and my daughter can come down the stairs and see it there and I get the good dad award for today? Or am I doing it because I want to pursue the very heart of God? When I listen to worship music in the morning with Lily in the car, am I doing it so that she thinks daddy listens to worship music in the morning? Or am I doing it because that's what sets my heart right for my day? When we go to Bible study, we attend small group. Am I doing that because I want the people around me to think that I'm spiritual and I'm the kind of person who reads my Bible and attends small group? Or am I doing it because I want to be spiritually nourished by my community of faith? When you come to church, are you doing it because you're supposed to and there's somebody that you want to see and you want to keep up appearances? Or are you doing it, are you getting out of the car with the thought, God, speak to my heart and move me closer to you today? When you perform spiritual actions, prayer for a service, prayer before a meal, leading a small group, attending a small group, showing up and partnering and serving with something in the community, what is motivating that service? Is it the way that service will make you appear? Is it how it positions you in the eyes of others? Or is it because you can't help but serve your God? Let me tell you. When we do spiritual things for the way it makes us look to other people, we are going through the motions, and our hypocrisy is burdensome and wearying to God. The other thing that we think about to assess if we're going through the motions. Can I say with authenticity that I'm the same person on Friday night that I am on Sunday morning? Is there one version of me that everyone in my life sees? And you see it on Sunday morning. You see it on Monday afternoon. You see it when my kids are driving me nuts. You see it on Friday night and I've got some freedom and I can cut loose. You see it on Saturday at the tailgate. Am I the same person everywhere I go? Or do I put on different faces for different people to appear in different ways at different times? Because if we are not the same person in all of the pockets and circles of our life, then somewhere we're going through the motions. Either we're faking being like the world, and we don't really mean it, or we're faking being godly, and we don't really mean that. And normally, people who are walking with Jesus and zealous about him don't bother faking it for the world. What motivates your spiritual actions? How consistent is your character with the people that you see? Are there different versions of you? Because if there are, you might be going through the motions too. And this temptation to go through the motions of our faith without meaning it with sincerity, without being properly motivated, is a trap into which the historical church has fallen in over and over again. There is not a single person here who's been a Christian for more than three days who has not at some point gone through the motions. You may be sitting right now in deep conviction, thinking, Father, I've been going through the motions for years. And if you are feeling that, good. I'm not going to disavow you of that. Sit in it. It's helpful. And we should be asking, if all of those things are simply going through the motions, then what things does God want from me? What does he want me to do? What actions does he require of us that can begin to shift our heart towards him and prove to him that we're in this for him? What does God actually want from us? I'm glad you asked because Isaiah answers that question. In verses 16 and 17, he says this, wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. What does God actually want me to do? If he doesn't want me to go to church and pretend, if he doesn't want me to just do sacrifices and tithe and go to small group, what does he actually want me to do? I'll tell you what he wants you to do. He wants you to stop doing evil. Learn to do right. Defend the cause of the oppressed. Seek justice. Defend the widow and the orphan. Care for those who can't care for themselves. That's what he wants his Christians to do. That's what he wants his children to do. He wants you to go do the things you can't fake. Go do the stuff you have to really mean. And listen, this verse 16 and 17, this resolution, stop going through the motions. Stop faking your faith. Stop being insincere and burdening me with your hypocrisy. Go and do what I actually want you to do. And what is it that he actually wants us to do? It's to defend the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow. It's to pursue justice and correct oppression. And I don't know of sitting with a group of men Friday morning talking about this topic and I became so frustrated with how I was taught my faith because I don't know where we decoupled justice and defending the cause of the fatherless and the widow and caring for those who can't care for themselves. I don't know where we decoupled that from the message of the gospel, but somewhere along the way in our churches, we made it optional and it's not. James tells us at the end of the Bible, true religion that is pure and undefiled before the Lord is to do this, is to take care of the widows and the orphans. Why is it widows and orphans? Because in the ancient world, those two were down and out. If you're an orphan, they did not have orphanages that you could go to that would feed you and care for you until you were 18 and send you to college. You begged in the street until you died. If you were a widow, your husband had died, and you did not have children to care for you and bring you into their home, you begged until you died. There's no social safety net. So when God says care for the orphan and the widow, does he mean specifically them? Yes, and he still does. But what he really means is those who can't care for themselves. That's why in the laws in the Old Testament over and over again, we see this principle of gleaning. When you're plowing your fields, leave the corners of them unharvested so that the sojourner, the alien, the homeless, the oppressed, the marginalized, the widow and the orphan can eat off of your field. That's theirs and it actually belongs to them. And if you harvest all of your field, then you're actually stealing from the oppressed and participating in the oppression. I'm not going to belabor this point too much because we may have a whole series about this coming up. But whenever we see the heart of God revealed, it is always for those who have less than us. When you see the idea of giving in the New Testament, it is almost always associated with giving to the poor. When you see Jesus handle the poor, he says, whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me. When Jesus begins his ministry, he goes to the poor, blessed the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. You see him caring for the oppressed. So if we want to do the things that God really wants us to do, then we have to, in a non-nebulous, very specific way, get involved with caring for those who can't care for themselves. Go to the Ades Jumari thing next week. Dip your toe in it. See what it's like. Start to talk to people in your community and find out how you can be a part of that. This is not a theoretical, metaphoric instruction. This is a literal instruction. That if we are guilty of going through the motions and the thing that God wants us to do is to care for those who can't care for themselves. So let's get active about that. Now here's the thing that I love about this passage. Because you might be thinking to yourself, why is this one your favorite? This is a little rough. Here's why. Because it doesn't end in verse 17. In verses 10 through 15 we have this tremendous conviction. You're going through the motions and your hypocrisy is burdensome to me. I'm weary of you. And then in 16 and 17, we have this very high challenge. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Stop being dumb. Learn to be good. Go and do it. What do I want you to do? I want you to care for the poor. Go care for the poor. Go. But then we get verse 18. And verse 18 is the best. And verse 18 kind of, to me, feels like this. Sometimes in my home, my daughter Lily and I can clash. We're very similar. And that means that sometimes our words get sharp. And sometimes there's a little battle of will about whose words are going to be louder. And I win those. But sometimes I wish I hadn't. And whenever we clash, whenever she's gotten in trouble and she feels bad, I always go find her or she'll come to me and I'll pull her alongside of me and I'll hug her and I'll kiss her little head and I'll say, I love you. I'm proud of you. It's going to be okay. You're going to do better. I'm going to do better. Because I don't want it to end with the conviction and the challenge. I want to call her alongside and I want to comfort her. And when I read verse 18, to me it has the tone of God coming alongside us, putting his arm around us, and telling us it's going to be okay. Here's what he says in verse 18. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. I love that verse because we experience the conviction of 10 15. And the challenge of 16 to 17 to go make it right. But then in 18, God sidles up next to us, puts his arm around us, comforts us and says, but hey, this isn't all on you. You've messed up, sure. But though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. How does he do that? Through shedding the blood of his own son that's prophesied about later in this book. So that when God looks at you, he doesn't see all the times you've walked through the motions. He doesn't see all the times you've failed to help the poor. He doesn't see all of your shortcomings and misgivings. And he is not burdened by you or weary of you. He sees you clothed in the righteousness of Christ and he is happy to pull you up alongside him and put his arm around you. So really, this is the reason why I love this passage. Because Isaiah 1, 10 through 18 is the gospel. It is the gospel. Do you see this? See, I think a big problem with the American church is that we start the gospel message at verse 18. We start the gospel message at verse 18. We begin it right there. Hey, guess what? Jesus died on the cross for you, so you're not accountable for your sins. Hooray. Just accept him and walk with him. And I think that's the reason why we have people going through the motions in their faith. Because all they need to know is, what's the minimum amount I have to do to stay right with God for that salvation to count for me? What are all the things I can do over here that I'll be forgiven for eventually? What's the minimum amount of the things that I need to believe so that I'm in and God loves me and that salvation accounts for me? And what do I have to do? What's the get in the door price for this salvation? Because we started the gospel at verse 18. But when we do that, we cheapen the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel operates in direct proportion of our realization of our need for it. The power of the gospel resonates more deeply with you the more deeply your own sin resonates with you. The more deeply your own shortcomings resonate with you. And that's why we experience the relief of verse 18 because we have the conviction of 10 through 15. Oh my goodness, God is so angry. And then we have the challenge of 16 and 17. Go and start doing right, but God, that's so hard. And then we have the relief of verse 18. And so what I want us to do now is I'm going to read all nine verses in the tone and inflection in which I think they're intended. And we're going to collectively feel the relief of verse 18 when we get there. And you in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who asks this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing me meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. New moon Sabbaths and convocations, I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your new moon feast and your appointed festivals, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. Though they are like crimson, I will make them like wool. That's the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel is to feel deeply the conviction in 10 through 15. And if you're here this morning, I've prayed that you would feel the necessary conviction. If you have been going through the motions, in part or in whole, it's not news to God. Confess it to him. If you're challenged by 16 and 17, and you think honestly about your life, and you go, gosh, I don't know what I'm doing for the poor and the oppressed. I don't know what I'm doing to correct injustice. Then let that conviction determine you to find ways to get involved in that. And then, and then, once we've sat in the conviction and we've sat in the challenge, then sit in the comfort of verse 18 and the gift of the gospel and allow that gratitude from his fullness. We have all received grace upon grace. Allow that grace that has been poured out from you from his fullness that it's not all on you to go do all the right things, but that God is already working in and through you and you are forgiven for the times when you've fallen short. Let the gratitude of that motivate the right behaviors and let the things that look like going through the motions be an outpouring of the faith that you've expressed through helping the poor and seeking justice for the oppressed. But we will never do those things if we do not allow God to bring us to a place of tremendous gratitude and comfort of the words of the gospel and the promise that we can reason together and though our sins are like scarlet, he will make them as white as snow. So I'm going to pray. And as I pray, if you need to pray to God on your own, do that. If you need to confess to God that you've been going through the motions of your faith, confess it. If you need to confess to God, I'm not doing anything for justice or oppression, confess it and ask that he would show you what to do. And if you are not overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the gospel and him covering over your shortcomings, ask God to fill you with gratitude. And if you are filled with gratitude, express that to him. As I pray, you pray, and then we'll have a chance to sing together. Father, thank you for your servant Isaiah. Thank you for the power of your words through him. God, we know that at different times and in different ways, our hypocr forget the conviction, but that we will allow the power of your word to rest on us. Father, I pray for myself and openly confess I go through the motions all the time. But Lord, I pray that you would imbue my actions with a sincerity filled with gratitude. I pray that for the people here as well. God, give us the courage to be convicted and to confess. Show us ways to get involved with what matters most to you. And Lord, would we leave here with just a deep gratitude for your sending your son to cover over our sins. And though they are like scarlet, you will make them white as snow. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making us a part of your Sunday morning. Before I just launch into the sermon, a couple of things. First off, NC State has been the butt of many of my jokes, so I need to stand up here and take it like a man. Well done, NC State. Good job. We'll look forward to your disappointment in the first weekend of the tournament. And then we've got more, far more importantly, we've got two rows of students over here. They just did a, what, Kyle, what was the weekend called? I don't even know what it's called. Great. That's perfect. That's what we're preaching about this morning. Pay attention, kids. This is for you. That's right. That's right. Because they knew. They're in a preaching schedule. That's great. So they've had a great weekend. God's been doing some cool stuff there, so it's great to see them. This morning, we continue our series. I forget what part we're in, six or seven, of our series called Final Thoughts, where we're looking at the Upper Room Discourse, which is this collection of things that Jesus said from chapter 13 in John all the way through chapter 17. It's the last things he said to the disciples before he was arrested and tried and crucified for me and for you. And so we arrive at the end of it in John chapter 17 with what's famously called the high priestly prayer. And this is a fantastic prayer. It's hugely important and we can't miss the context of it because Jesus is praying over the disciples. Now it's 11 men because Judas has left to betray him. It's these 11 men who are going to be leading the church. They are in charge of making sure that the message of the gospel goes into Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth, to the corners of the globe. These men are in part the reason why we sit here on a separate continent 2,000 years later. And so Jesus has been training them for three years. And here's the catch. They still don't even yet know what their job's going to be. They still think, and I don't have time to get into all the context of it, but they still believe that in a little bit, Jesus is going to ascend to the throne and they're going to be the vice president and the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War and agriculture and all the rest they think they're going to be important in this Israeli government that Jesus is going to set up they still don't understand what he really came to do and one of the things he came to do is to train them to lead the church so right before he dies and initiates that process, he prays over them to God. And John, one of his devoted disciples, captures this prayer. And here's what's remarkable about this prayer, and here's why every Christian ought to know it and read it. Because at the end of this prayer, do you know that Jesus prays for you and for me? He prays for us. He prays for the church, for those who would believe according to the words of the disciples. And because our Savior prayed for us, we ought to spend some time there. We ought to know this passage, be familiar with it, and know what Jesus' petition is. So I'm going to read the portion where he prays for us. It's longer than I normally read in a sermon because I've been in services before, and I believe that when someone reads a large swath of Scripture that it's noble to do that, it's also disengaging and hard to listen to. So I don't do it very often. But this morning, we're going to read the whole part where he prays for us, all seven verses, and then we're going to come back to verse 21 for the bulk of what we're going to be talking about this week and next week. But look at what Jesus prays for us. Beginning in John chapter 17, verse 20. My prayer is not for them alone, meaning the disciples. I'm not just praying for the disciples is what Jesus is saying. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message. That's us. Brought to complete unity. We could spend 12 weeks in that prayer. But I want to draw your attention to the beginning of it. I want you to notice what Jesus prays for us. I want you to notice what he asks God to do in us. And I want you to realize it's his only petition in this prayer on our behalf. He says this in verse 21, that all of them, Father, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you, may they also prayer before he prays in Gethsemane, that he prays for the church. He prays for all of those who would come to believe in his name from the message of the disciples. And in that prayer where he prays for his church, he makes a singular petition. Jesus's unity is Jesus's only petition for his church. That we would be one as he and the father are one. Unity is Jesus' only petition for his church. It's the only thing he prays for. He prays that others would come to know. He prays that we would know their glory. But the first thing he prays for and the only petition he makes that he asks of God is that we would be unified. That we would be one. And then Paul echoes this in Ephesians. Ephesians chapter 4. If you have a Bible, you can turn over there with me. I have mine marked, so I'm cheating. I'm definitely going to beat you to it. But in Ephesians chapter 4, he talks about it in verse 3 and then down in verse 13. Paul writes this, make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. And then he gives them some more instructions and caps off that section, verse 13, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. So what we see, based on what Jesus teaches us and what he prays for, would they be one so that the world may believe in me? And then what we see in Paul, would they be one so that they might be mature? Is it this idea of unity, unification in the body of Christ, big C church and little c church, what we see is that unity is essential to evangelism and maturity. It's essential to evangelism and maturity. The church can never be as effective at reaching a lost world when we are not unified. And according to what Paul writes, we will never reach a state of congregational spiritual maturity if we cannot find ways to be unified in this congregation. It's amazing to me how important unity is to Jesus, how many times it shows up in the Bible. David even writes in the Psalms how lovely it is when brothers dwell in unity together. It's amazing to me how common the message of unity amongst the body of believers is in the Scripture and how little we talk about it. Myself included. I've preached here, I'm finishing seven years. I don't know how many Sundays I've sat in John 17, but it's not been enough. And I don't understand why this message for unity isn't something that all Christians take very, very seriously. It's a command of Jesus. It's his only petition for his church, that we would be one and that we would be in him. And so if unity is that important to our Savior, then we need to talk about it. So we're going to talk about it this week and next week, and we're going to talk about it and frame up the conversation like this. I want us to think about, and this is what I've been thinking about, what are the biggest threats to that unity in the church? What do we see in the church dividing us, causing us to section off, causing us to judge Christian brothers and sisters as right or wrong or godly or not? And so the first thing I see that's a threat to our unity as a church, and when I say as a church, I mean Big C Church, but I have to talk specifically about Grace, because we don't have any say in any other churches. What I see as a threat to the unity of our church, one of them is our beliefs. The insistence through the decades and through the centuries that all Christians think the same thing about all the things. This is why we have so many different denominations. Why we are fundamentally disunified. We're going to talk about that next week. The other thing that threatens our unity as much as or more than anything else in America in 2024 is politics. So we're going to talk about that this morning. And I know that when I say that, the air goes out of the room. I've just stuck my face in the wood chipper, and we're going to see how this goes. I know some of you, this is your first time. I hope you've watched online before and know that we don't do this every week. Some of you brought your parents today. Great. Have fun at lunch. As they encourage you to find a new church. But I think that the disunity in our culture has gotten to such a fever pitch that we have to talk about it. And just so you know, everything that I'm going to say this morning, I've run by the elders. We started talking about it in the fall. I told them I knew that we were going to need to do this in 2024. The response was not enthusiastic. And then a few weeks ago, once I finalized my outline, I sat down with them at an elder meeting and I went through it with them. I've only done that with one other sermon in my tenure here. And I finished and they all said unanimously, that's a good message, church needs to hear it. And I said, great. So I'll have a job in May. And my least favorite elder, Doug Bergeson, looked at me and he grinned because he can't help. And he says, well, there's a lot in the delivery. And then what I saw this morning, he just walks up to me and stuck out his hand. He goes, good luck. And then walks away. Okay. There's two big reasons I feel like we need to talk about this as a church. The first is a personal conviction of mine that when there's something that enters into the national conscience of import, something that matters, like Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey entered into our national conscience. We were all thinking about them the whole time during the football season. That's not really important. I don't need to address that in church. But when there's something of import, of weight, that enters into the national conscience, something that we're all thinking about as we go throughout our weeks, something that we're all talking about, something that to various degrees we're all aware of. Some of us are really, we have a lot of political opinions. We feel very strongly about what we believe and what our ideology is and why we believe it. And we're very involved and we watch, we consume all the news and all the podcasts. That's great. Some of us hate it. We just put our head in the sand because we want to avoid it because we wish it wasn't so divided and tough right now. But wherever we are, we're all thinking about it. And to me, as a pastor, it's my conviction that when something of weight enters into the national conscience and I don't address it, at best I'm negligent and at worst I'm cowardly. So we have to talk about it. And we have to talk about it because we should all be asking this question, and I know that we are. How should a Christian navigate the divisive climate of 2024? How should a Christian navigate this divisive climate of 2024? And we've heard this said in plenty of corners, and I don't think it's inaccurate, that this is one of, if not the most, divided time in our nation's history. There's been other times in our history where we've been divided. Obviously, the Civil War was pretty divisive. The era of Martin Luther King and the Vietnam War, I did not experience that, but I understand America was divided then. But I'm not sure that our country has ever been more ideologically divided. So extreme, so combative, and frankly, so judgmental of the side that's not you. We saw this in COVID. We saw it play out where we make everything political. There's a worldwide pandemic. It's a health and science issue. And how long did it take us? How long to run to our corners and begin to lob grenades at the other side for not thinking what we thought about how this should be handled? How long did it take us? Weeks. Before we kind of figured out, okay, who's going to be on what side? And what do I need to do to align with my side? And then we begin to judge the other side for not being as smart as us about science. And I remember in COVID, me personally, but I think you guys can relate. Thinking that everyone who took their mask off before I did, everyone who started going maskless in public was a right-wing lunatic. And everybody who wore their mask a little bit longer than I thought was necessary was a flaming liberal. That's what we thought. Sides had a uniform in COVID. It's ridiculous. I've lived this one out personally. Talk about how everything's divided and we assign politics to everything. The first few years I was here, I drove a Nissan Leaf, okay? And I got made fun of viciously for that. And here's the thing, I should have, all right? If you drive a Leaf, you're a nerd, okay? Deal with it. I did. But do you know that because of what I drove, and I drove it to save money, by the way, which I did. $220 cost of ownership in three years. It was worth it. But do you know that because of what I drove, people assumed I was a Democrat? Because of the car I drove. Not anything I said or preached. Not because of which news channel I consumed from, which that's a dead giveaway. They thought because of what I drove, I was a Democrat. And if you drive a Ford pick-em-up truck, people probably think you're a Republican. And if that pick-em-up truck is a Ranger and it's more than 20 years old, you are definitely a libertarian. 100%. Our culture is crazy divided. And I've been watching as a pastor for years. And I'm telling you, the way the church has behaved in that division grieves my heart. And we're talking about it in church because that divisiveness has begun to creep into the church. And since it's beginning to divide the church, we have to talk about it in the church. And here's how I know it's entered into the church. Because of this one question that we've heard, that we've asked, that we've been asked. How could you be a Christian and vote for blank? How could you possibly be a Christian and vote for blank? I told Laura, the lady running our slides this morning, that I left that blank open for her. She was free to put whatever she wanted there. She really wussed out. How can we be a, how could, this is, we asked this. How could you be a Christian and vote for him or vote for her? How could you claim to have a faith and back a party that is not aligned with your faith according to what I think your faith should be? How can you be a Christian and be happy about that policy, be happy about that ruling? How can you be a Christian and be sad about that policy or that ruling? Where what we do, and this is so important, is we begin to judge people's faith by their politics. The way that we think about politics should flow from the way that we think about our faith, that they should matter and be related. But where we get into trouble is when we start to judge the faith of a Christian brother or sister based on their politics and guys I'm telling you judging a Christian by their politics makes no more sense than judging my politics by my car it's foolish and we should be bigger than that. But we hear it over and over and over again. And so I would say this to us this morning as a church. If my politics cause me to question or cut off a Christian brother or sister, then I hold my politics too tightly. If I hold my political ideology so firmly that I judge the faith of a Christian brother and sister who doesn't vote like I do, or just overall intelligence, then what that tells me is that I'm holding my politics too tightly and I need to recalibrate. And listen, I know that this happens in this church because you have confessed it to me. Because I have had conversations with you on both sides where you will say something to me, you know, I love so-and-so, I just have a hard time understanding how they could vote that way. And it causes me to question them sometimes. On both sides. And that's damaging to the church. That's damaging to our unity. Can I just tell you? I've had the privilege of talking with plenty of folks from Grace about political issues who disagree with me a lot. But in that disagreement, and in our conversations over beers or dinner or whatever, you know what I have found about the side that thinks differently than me? That they love Jesus. That they know their scripture. That they're thoughtful in their vote. And that they deserve just as much credit for their ideas as I do for mine. There's this damaging way in the world where we frame up the side that doesn't vote like us as ignorant or silly or stupid or uninformed. And it's so funny to me how both sides think the other side is deceived and that they're the ones that know the right ways. We both think that of each other. Can we, this year, as believers, give people who don't vote like us the benefit of the doubt? Can we assume about them that they've put as much thought into their vote as I have into mine? That their vote is actually reflective of Christian values that they love and hold dear? And we just play those things out differently? Can we this year at Grace give the other side the benefit of the doubt? Let me tell you the biggest reason that we should do this. It's actually because of something that Jesus says in his prayer. I'll refer you back to John chapter 17, this time in verse 14. He says, I have given them your word and the world has hated them for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. He's talking about the disciples. And he says, they are not of this world any more than I am of this world. And I have a note in my Bible off to the side that just says citizens of heaven. And I think that's such an important principle for believers to understand. Once you are saved, once you accept Christ as your savior, once you believe that he is who he says he is, believe that he did what he said he did, believe that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. Once you do that, you become a citizen of heaven. You are not of this world anymore. I brought this up in January to plant a seed of this idea in the congregation that we are citizens of heaven because I knew I was going to come to it in March when it came time for this. Guys, we are citizens of heaven. We are not citizens of the United States of America. We are, but that's beneath our ultimate citizenship. We are aliens here. We do not belong here. We are sojourners. The only reason God doesn't snap us right up to heaven once we become a Christian is so that we can take as many people with us along the way as is humanly possible. It's the only reason we're here. But we are citizens of heaven. We are not citizens here. Listen to me. This is so important. The church is above partisan American politics. We're above it. Politics are beneath us. Do you understand? The church is above that. We exist above the fray. We ought not get mired in silly Facebook debates and arguments with people that only lead to anger and are not productive. We're above that, church. We're citizens of heaven. Our fidelity is to God. Our nation is in eternity. This temporal stuff, see, to people who don't believe, to people who don't have a faith, politics is a huge deal because it's how you bring about change and it's how you affect the world and it's how you form it into what you want it to be. But we skip a step, guys. We're not going to American politics. We're not looking at the president of the Supreme Court or the Senate or the governor or any of that to bring about the will of God. We're looking to God to pull those levers. We serve something higher. And when we get mired in the divisiveness of the world, in the grenade throwing and in the lobbying and in the attacking and in the judgment, we forget who we are. And I'm not saying this to upset anyone or to offend anyone, but maybe it can help us frame up the way we think about ourselves and what our relationship to politics ought to be. And listen, I'm not saying that Christians shouldn't have political opinions. I have a ton. I'm not going to say a single one of them from here. But I'd love to talk with you about them. I'd love to have a conversation. I get so much from talking about different ideas with people. I love it. Be as interested as you want. I have nothing to say to you about that. Be as disinterested as you want. I have nothing to say to you about that. My goal this morning is not at all to tell you how to vote or to even get you to think about your vote. My only goal this morning is to get us to think about how we think about people who don't vote like we do. So here's my prayer. And here's what I want to invite you into with me. Let's all pray that in 2024, grace can be an oasis of unity and a desert of division. Let's make it our prayer that this place, we don't get to impact Big C Church, but we can decide who we want to be here. That grace will be an oasis of unity and a desert of division. This is actually something I'm proud of Grace about. We are a purple church. We have people on both sides. And we play nice together. And I'm so grateful for that. But I think that we have strides to take. I think that we have room to grow. And I want to know that the people of grace, as we're interacting in the community, as we carry ourselves through the rest of this year, and guys, it's only going to get worse. It's only going to get worse. The division and the disunity and all the lob throwing and all the garbage, all the crud, it's only going to get worse. What if, as that happens around us, we can be this oasis of unity that sees ourself above the fray, that understands that we are citizens of heaven first, loyal to our Savior before a country. And we're actually unified. And we actually love each other. And we refuse to allow the divisiveness out there creep into here and disrupt what God wants to do with us. So in 2024, please pray with me that grace will be an oasis of unity and a desert of division. Thank you for listening and for not walking out. If you have questions about anything, I'd love to get an email and have a conversation. I'm going to pray and then in a show of unity, we're going to shout out to God together. Let's pray. Father, we are sorry for where we have allowed our political ideology to color the way we think about your children. And Father, we ask that you would remove that sin from us. Father, I ask that you would remove it from me. Lord, the enemy and the world would seek to distract your church by dividing us with small fights and squabbles. Would you remind us, God, that we don't belong here, we belong with you, that we are citizens of heaven, and that we are above what's happening now. Help us be agents of peace and unity in our various circles of influence. Help us to be beacons that shine above the fray as this is going to be a hard year for our country and for our communities. God, unite us under you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Like I said earlier, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday. I'm just stating this for the record. This morning, Jen went to Atlanta on Saturday with Lily, with our daughter Lily. And so I'm solo dadding with our two and a half year old son, John, which means this morning I got us both up, showered, product in our hair, presentable for church, and here on time. So I don't know if the sermon's going to be any good, but that was pretty good, and I'll take it. Yes. Thank you. And to boot, the sermon doesn't even have to be good because worship was so great, I could send you home now, and we've all been ministered to. So that was really good, too. You got one clap, two. There we go. Dang it. Aaron got a whole clap last week for his sermon, and now he's getting clapped for for worship. He's going to get a big head. Y'all don't know what it's like to deal with him during the week, I'm telling you. This morning, we arrive at this concept of abiding in Christ. And I think it's one of the most profound concepts in scripture. It's one that if we can grasp it, if we can instill it in our brain, if we can make it our mantra, it changes our entire life. This concept to me is so profound that when I was originally planning this series, the whole series was going to be called Abide. And we were going to look at what it meant for us every week to abide in Christ. But as I dove into the text, I realized that I wanted to talk about the broader conversation happening around those verses, which is why we ended up with a series called Final Thoughts. I'll remind you it's called Final Thoughts because this series is entirely in John chapters 13 through 17. In the back half of John chapter 13, Jesus has just been betrayed by Judas. They are at the Last Supper. It's the last time he is going to be in the room with his disciples before his death, burial, and resurrection. And before he goes, he has some final thoughts for them in what's referred to in theological circles as the upper room discourse. So in this discourse, Jesus is just telling the disciples all the things he wants them to know before he leaves. So it's worth it for every Christian to look into these chapters to see what Jesus has for them there. This morning, we arrive at the concept of abiding, but to help us understand why this is such a profound concept, I want to tell you about the life of my friend, Tripp. I thought about telling you about my own life, just the details and the stresses, but it feels a little bit self-serving and whiny for the pastor to get up and talk to you about how stressed he is and how much the church demands of him. So we're not going to do that. Plus you guys are really, really great and really don't demand a whole lot. Just show up on time and preach for 30 minutes. But my buddy Trip, he's probably my closest friend in the world, and we talk pretty regularly. And he's a couple years older than me. He's got a wonderful wife named Hannah, who I adore. She's wonderful. And they've got three kids, ages, I think, eight, six, and three. And then they made the decision about six months ago to add a Bernad Doodle to the lot. How do you show that you have money in America today? You have the name Doodle at the back half of your dog, and you have a lot of money if there's a Berna in front of it. It is a huge mammoth of a dog that's really annoying, and it was a terrible choice. And I'm not saying that because of my typical shtick of not caring for animals. I'm saying that because introducing that dog into that family in this season of life was dumb. And he knows it. He regrets it deeply. But Tripp and Hannah, they both have jobs. Tripp is an entrepreneur. He can work from anywhere. And he works very, very hard. But because he's running his own shop, he has to kill what he eats, right? So he's switching hats between being a salesperson, being a marketing person, closing deals, customer care. He's a creative guy. He's basically creativity for hire. He can do videos. He can host. He can help you brainstorm for your marketing thing or for an idea for you. So he's got a bunch of different irons in the fire. And to be a friend of Tripp's is to every, I would say, about 18 months, escort him through an existential crisis in which he questions what he should be doing with his career. It just always happens. And you kind of put his eye on the ball, and then he goes, but it's because he has so many different things going on. In the midst of that, Hannah, his wife, is a VP for a company that works with churches, and not just churches, but also schools and stuff like that, to create curriculum for students and children and for the parents. And her office is 30 minutes away, and her job is very demanding. And so when she goes into the office, she can't really be going back and forth, and sometimes she needs to stay late, which means that Tripp is going to be balancing the kids. And because they each have careers that they deeply care about, I think life is so much easier when there's one career in a marriage where you go, yeah, that's the more important one. For them, it's 50-50. Neither of them takes precedence over the other. So everything in their house, if you've got kids, you know, is highly negotiated, right? You are responsible for putting this one and this one to bed. I will get this one and this one up. If this one wakes up during the night, that's on you. If this one wakes up during the night, that's on me. If the dog wakes up during the night, I'll probably just let it out and hope it runs away. But they have to highly negotiate all these things. You take them to school. I'll pick this one up. And then one of them gets sick. And so when they get sick, they've got to sit down in the morning, and they've got to be like, okay, what are your meetings today? What are the things that I have to move if I'm going to stay home? They have to figure all of this out on the fly, and it is highly tense sometimes. So they're trying to juggle all of that, and I don't know what it is about them, but their kids are sick all the time. And then if one of them gets sick, you know how it goes, parents. They're upstairs down for the count. You should be at work, but instead you're taking care of the kids and the dog for three days on end. And one of their kids, they just got a diagnosis of some pretty strong ADHD. And they've been having some big behavioral things going on with this particular child. And it's been a real challenge, and it's put tension on them and on their marriage. And they're trying to balance that. They also, in their extended family, there's different tensions like there often is, and that's impacting them and how they balance all of those things. And then he's an extrovert. He loves his friends, so he wants to have time for them, but then everybody needs time to unwind and recharge, and so he needs his alone time as well. And for him, when I look at his life, it's just chaotic. And I think that our lives might not look exactly like that, but many of our lives are some version of that. If they're not now, they have been. And I know that I'm biased. I'm in the season of life where I have young kids and nothing ever gets done all the way. You can clean the house, but then this is going to go to pot. You can fix this thing, then the house is going to be a disaster. You can't do all the things when you have little kids. It's a profound season of hustle, I think. But I'm not naive enough to think that life gets a whole lot easier when they're teenagers. I'm sure that's a totally different set of stresses. I remember back to when I was like 26 and married and thought I was busy. If you're under 30 and kidless and we all just laughed, I want you to know we were not laughing with you, okay? Laughing at you. You don't know, man. But even then, even in that season of life, there's stresses and concerns. Am I going to get married? Are we going to have kids? Is this the right career for me? Is this what I want to be doing? How do I manage all of these things? And then when you're older and you have adult kids, am I doing the right, a good job with them? Am I being a good grandparent? Am I stewarding them along well? In life, we have, especially in 2024, so many concerns and things pulling us in so many different directions. I feel like we live now in a culture of confusion and chaos. There's so much stuff going on around us, and it's so hard to know the right thing to do and what to focus on and what to give our attention to in the moment. To that, to that confusion and chaos, we apply this principle that we find in John chapter 15. If you have a Bible, I would invite you to open there. If you didn't bring your Bible with you this morning, there's one in the seat back in front of you. You can open and read along there. I would encourage you, if you do have a physical Bible, I hope you do, to open it up when you get home and make sure that this passage is highlighted for you. This is an absolutely must-do highlight passage. But this is what it says. John chapter 15, verses 4 and 5. By the way, you may notice that I have a Bible that I've not used before. Last week, Gibby preached, Aaron Gibson preached, and when he did, he had a new Bible, and I touched it, and I was like, I have to have that Bible. So now I have a new preaching Bible, and I love it. So anyways, verse 4, Jesus says, Now this is what I get for switching from ESV to NIV in my Bible translation. Because the ESV and a lot of other translations, that word remain there And it actually goes along well with the picture that I use to explain salvation sometimes. But Jesus says in our vernacular, I am the tree trunk and you are the branches. And so the idea is we are, God created us and he attached us to him. We are a sprout off of him. He is the source of life. And that when we sin, when we act against the will of God, when we pretend to be God in our own life and follow our own rules, what happens is we are separated from God. And so the picture is the branch falls off the tree. It is cut off or sawn off. It falls off the tree and it is on the ground and it will surely die because it is no longer connected to its source of life. And when we are saved, what Jesus does is he picks us up and he grafts us back onto the tree so that now we are attached to our source of life. We will continue to live and continue to bear fruit. And in keeping with that imagery, Jesus here says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. If you are attached to me, if you remain attached to Christ, you will bear much fruit. And here's what I think is interesting about that. When a branch, when a healthy branch on a healthy apple tree remains there, it yields its fruit in season. That branch does not get to decide what it wants to produce, when it wants to produce it, or how much it wants to produce. That branch doesn't get to go, you know what? I'm feeling pears this year, and I'm going do it in December just for funsies. It doesn't get to do that. That branch grows apples and that branch grows apples when the tree decides it's supposed to. And that branch grows as many apples as it and the tree are capable of producing no more, no less. So what Jesus is saying is, if you abide in me, if you walk with me, if you remain attached with me, if you walk through every day with an awareness of my presence, if you begin and end your days with me, if you carry me into meetings with you, if you carry me into the workplace, if you carry me into interactions with your spouse and with your children and with your friends, if you abide in me, if you bring me along, then I promise you that you will bear much fruit. Here's why I think that's remarkable. And it's how I want us to think about the invitation to abide. The invitation to abide is a gift of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. The invitation to abide is a gift that God gives us of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. When it feels like there's so much pulling at us, when it feels like there's so much that we're supposed to do, so much that we're supposed to be good at, so many different irons in the fire or plates to keep in the air, there's so much put on us. Jesus says in the midst of all that, he sweeps it away and he offers us this invitation to abide. And he says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you pursue me and bring me everywhere you go, then you will produce the exact fruit that you're supposed to produce. I'm kind of reminded of Jesus's admonishment of Martha in Luke. In Luke, it might be chapter 10, but I should have looked it up and I didn't. Jesus goes to Mary and Martha's house. And it's a famous story. You probably know it. When he goes there, Martha is scurrying about. We call it bustling in our house. Just bustling. Every day I'm bustling. We bustle in our house. So Martha's bustling around, getting everything ready, making sure that everything's good for Jesus. I mean, if Jesus is coming over to your house, you probably want to be on your P's and Q's. You know, you probably want to look pretty good. So I don't blame her for the stress that she feels at hosting the Savior of the universe in her home. And so she's bustling around doing everything. Mary, meanwhile, is sitting at the feet of Christ, just taking him in, taking in his words, taking in his presence, being his friend. She's being with him. And Martha gets on to Mary. She says, what are you doing, lazy? Come help me. Don't you know Jesus is here? And Mary's attitude is like, yeah, I do know Jesus is here. That's why I'm sitting at his feet. And Jesus says to Martha some version of, Martha, Martha, you're worried about so many things, but only one thing matters. Mary's right. Focus on me. It's this gift of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. And I think it helps us a lot as we face life's big questions, as we assess ourselves. You know, this weekend, I had the opportunity to go to two funerals. One of them I led, the other one I attended. And it never ceases to arrest my attention of what's said about people at their funeral. The kinds of things that are always shared. I believe at a good funeral that a close friend or a family member who knew them well will share memories of the person who has passed. That's always my favorite part of the funeral. And they always talk about how that person loved. They always talked about how that person gave. They always talk about the good things. They don't typically talk about accomplishments. And whenever I go to a funeral, maybe because I'm a narcissistic jerk, I always wonder, what would people say about me at my funeral? What kinds of things would they mention? Who would come and what would they have to say about me? And I think about one was a funeral for a mom, one was a funeral for a dad, and so I think about my parents. If I were to share at my mom's funeral, what would I say? If I were to share at my dad's funeral, what would I say about him? And I think it's natural to wonder that and reflect on that and wonder at your funeral, what are your children or friends or family members going to say about you? Will they say everything that you wanted them to say? And I think in our life there's more big questions than this, but as we think about trying to do the right thing, trying to be the person God wants me to be, trying to live the right kind of life, I think we are, at least I am, constantly asking myself these two questions. There's two big questions we're asking ourselves. Am I making the right choice? And am I being a good fill in the blank? Am I making the right choice? Are we sending our kids to the right school? Am I handling this situation with my child in the right way? Am I doing a good job nurturing my child into adulthood as they are now adult kids and I'm trying to shift my role with them? Am I making the right choice in my career? This time, this space that I spend all of my time, a majority of my waking hours, I spend pursuing this career. Am I making the right choice? Is this the right career for me? Am I making the right choice by remaining in my career and not retiring? Am I making the right choice by retiring and not remaining in my career? Am I making the right choice in who I'm going to marry? Am I making the right choice in choosing that now is the time when we want to start trying for children? Are we making the right choice that now is the time that we want to buy the new house? Am I making the right choice in it feels like maybe it's wise to get rid of the old car and buy a new car. But as I do that, how much do I be indulgent and spend? And how much do I hold back and save? Am I making the right choice in those things? Are we making the right choices in who our friends are and how we assign our time and our talent and our treasure? Are we making the right choices? Are we doing the right things? I think if we don't, if you don't wonder that about yourself, I want to meet you and I want to know where you get your peace and your confidence. I think this choice, this question hounds all of us. Am I making the right choices in all of the right places? And then we're also hounded, or at least I am, am I being a good blank? Am I being a good pastor? What more can I do and give? Am I being a good father? Am I being a good husband? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good acquaintance? Am I just generally kind to people? Yes, of course I am. Are you being a good aunt, a good uncle, a good grandkid, a good grandparent? Are you being a good boss? Are you being a good employee? We're constantly assessing ourselves. Am I making the right choices? Am I doing the right things? And am I being good at the roles that God has assigned to me? All of that reminds me of one of the verses in Ephesians that I like to point out to you often. You can even jot this down in your notes if you're a note taker, but it's Ephesians 2.10. Ephesians 2.10 says, And it carries with it this idea that the Bible tells us that God knew you before you were knit in your mother's womb. So before you were even an idea in the eyes of your parents, God knew that you were going to exist. He knew that he wanted to claim you as his child, and he knew that he was going to imbue you with certain gifts and talents so that, because you're his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. Why? For good works, for the purpose of doing good works, that you might walk in them. So before you were ever created, God knew you were going to exist. He was going to give you gifts and good works to walk in in your life. That was going to be the purpose of your life is to identify your good works. Hey, Father, what is my good work? And then how do I walk in it? Incidentally, parents, this is, I believe, how we are to parent our children. To raise them, to identify the good works that they're supposed to walk in, and to give them the courage and the competence to begin to walk in those good works. And another way of asking, am I making the right choice and am I being a good blank, is to say, do I know my good works and am I walking in them? Because God created us before time to build his kingdom, not our kingdom. We are all of us supposed to be kingdom builders. And so we've got to be asking ourselves, God, am I building it in the right way? Am I doing the right things? And as we wonder that, and likely beat ourselves up for not doing that as much as we think we should, we come back to this principle of abide. Abiding promises. We will be what we are supposed to be, and we will do what we are supposed to do. I love that promise. The promise isn't abide in me and I in you, and you will have the best possible shot at bearing fruit. Abide in me and I in you and you probably won't be disappointed. No. Abide in me. Follow me. Pursue Jesus. Bring him with you everywhere you go. Wake up. Spend time with him in word and in prayer. Carry him through your day. Talk to him. Pray to him throughout your day. Be a person who walks with Jesus, who abides in him. And the promise is you will bear much fruit. And here's the fun part. What fruit? Does the apple tree get to decide what fruit it produces? No, nor does it decide when, nor does it decide how much. You don't worry about what fruit you're going to produce. You don't worry about what it is you're supposed to do. You focus on Christ. You be merry. This one thing I will seek. This one thing I will give my attention to. And by focusing on Jesus, by following him every day, we are assured that we will do exactly what we are supposed to do. That we will be making the right choices. And we will be exactly who we are supposed to be, that we will be walking in, that we will walk as God's workmanship in the good works for which he created us. And we don't have to worry about what those are. All we have to do is worry about abiding in Christ, following our Savior. That's why I say it's a gift of simplicity and a world of confusion and chaos. Where do we send our kids to school? Well, the more you're abiding in Christ, the more clear that answer is going to be. Am I in the right career? The more you're pursuing Christ, the more clear that is going to be. Are we raising our kids the right way? Am I being a good spouse? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good church partner? The more you abide in Christ and focus on him and invite him into your days and into your meetings and into your going and into your coming, the more you do that, the more certain you will be that you are walking the path that he has laid out for you. He gives us this remarkable gift of simplicity. You don't have to figure out if you're doing it the right way. You don't have to second guess if you've made the right decisions. You don't have to wonder if you're a good fill in the blank. All you have to do is abide in Christ and he will take care of the rest and you will produce much fruit. What fruit? Whatever fruit God has decided you're going to produce. We know the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So I think the fruit that we produce as we abide in Christ looks something like those increasing in our character. I think it looks like us expounding those into others in our life. I think it looks like us being used by God to do His work and build His kingdom. But the wonderful invitation is, hey, hey, hey, hey, you worry about focusing on Jesus, and he'll worry about everything else you're supposed to do. This is why I say, whenever we are evaluating or deciding, we should ask if we are abiding. As a general principle in life, whenever we are evaluating or deciding, we should stop and ask ourselves if we are abiding. I can't tell you how many times as a pastor that I've had a difficult conversation on the horizon. Somebody that I worked with that I was going to have to approach and say some hard things. Somebody with whom there was conflict and it needed to be resolved. Somebody who's disappointed in me and I need to reconcile. And how when those, I don't know about you, but when those hard conversations are on the horizon, I think about them all the time. I chew on them. I stress over them. I worry about them. I think, what angle are they going to take? And how can I be prepared for that? And how can I, I've got to get on to this person. How can I best do it and not demoralize them? Like, I think about them all the time. And I'll come up with an approach. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to say. This is how I'm going to attack it. And then something will happen and it will occur to me. Hey dude, have you been abiding? Not in this. Maybe I've had a couple of weeks where I've not been super consistent with my quiet times. Maybe I've been thinking about this conversation so much but I haven't prayed about it. And when I realize that's happening in my life, I put that conversation on the shelf. And I say, I'm not going to have that conversation until I'm prayed up on it. I'm not even going to think about how I want to approach that until I know that I have been spending some time with Jesus. And I put it on the shelf and I focus on my relationship with Christ. And then in that, I begin to pray about that conversation. Without fail, the conversation goes exponentially better than I ever thought it would when I have been abiding before I evaluate or decide. And also without fail. Funny how this works out. I'm always gentler after I pray. I'm always kinder and more gracious after I pray. If you're in your life faced with a big decision right now, what's the right thing to do here? Let me just ask you. Have you been abiding in Christ? Have you been walking with him? Have you been inviting him into your days? If you haven't, let me encourage you to put that decision on the shelf. Set it aside. Pursue Christ. Once you feel connected with Christ, pull it back off and see what he wants you to do. Have you been evaluating yourself? Which usually leads to beating yourself up. Are you someone whose voice in your head is a jerk? Is way meaner to you than anybody in your life? You're not good enough at this and you're not good enough at this and you're not good enough at this and you're failing at this and you're letting them down. If you have those voices, can I ask you, have you been abiding? Have you been pursuing Jesus and abiding him into all of your days? Are you listening to what he has to say about you? Or are you drowning out his voice with your own? Conversely, if you think you're doing great at everything right now, you're not. You abide in Christ. You're not. You need him to tell you. The question now becomes, as we look at this gift of simplicity that Jesus offers in a world of confusion and chaos, the question becomes, okay, Nate, I get it. I need to abide in Christ. I need to remain attached to him. I need to pursue him. I need to make him my singular focus. And everything else will kind of take care of itself. Decisions will become more clear. And his opinion of me is the one that I will adopt. That will all become more clear. I get it. I need to pursue Christ. How do I do that amidst the confusion and chaos? It's not like we get to call a time out on life and just do a spiritual retreat for the next two weeks so we're real connected. You all have stuff to do right after this. So how do we abide in Christ day in and day out in a practical way? That's what we're going to come back next week and talk about. So I hope you can be here for that, and I hope that it will be a tremendously useful and encouraging week next week. This week, I just want us focused on this gift of simplicity that Jesus offers, to simply abide in him. And in doing that, we can rest assured we will be who we are supposed to be, and we will do what we are supposed to do.. Let's pray and then Aaron's going to have some final thoughts for us. Lord, God, I thank you for a room full of people that do want to do the right thing, that do want to become who you created them to be. I thank you for a room full of people who do want to walk in their good works, who do want to build your kingdom. God, I pray that you would instill in us an increasing desire to do that. Lord, I pray that we would abide in you, that we would invite you into our days, that we would bring you along wherever we go, that you would give us your peace that passes understanding, and that you would create in our hearts a stronger and stronger desire for you. Lord, help us to abide, and in doing so, help us to enjoy the fruit that we produce by following you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Thank you, Mikey. I have prepared some dazzling things, so you guys should be duly excited. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. And as I always say, thank you for making grace a part of your Sunday. Mikey's right. We are launching into a new series called Final Thoughts that covers what theologians refer to as the Upper Room Discourse. It's found in John chapters 13 through 17, the back half of 13 and through 17. I'm going to tell you more about what that is and why it's so important. It should matter to every Christian. But for now, if you have a Bible, go ahead and open it to John chapter 13. We're going to be to the back, the last few verses in 13 and the first seven verses in 14 today. So open up your Bible and get there. We are going to be in this series. It's going to carry us to Easter. So my hope is that you'll bring your Bible with you on Sunday, that we give you some things that are worth noting down, that are worth highlighting, that are worth underlining and notating, and that you can kind of carry this series with you in your Bible. Now, this is what I'm thinking of as our spring series. And I know that it doesn't feel like spring because it's Super Bowl Sunday and we're in the dead of winter. But for me, every year as your pastor, this is my, believe it or not, my eighth spring with you guys, which I know time flies and we haven't even been having that much fun. It just goes quick. Every spring in the weeks preceding Easter, we sit down as a staff knowing that what we want to do is put a series in the plan that's going to be focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ. And the purpose of which within the series, the purpose of the series is to begin to prepare the hearts and the souls and the minds of the church to celebrate Easter. Easter is the greatest holiday on the Christian calendar. I know that Christmas gets a lot of attention, and it should, but Easter is when the victory is won. And so Easter is the most holy of holidays, in my opinion. And in the liturgical Christian calendar, it's all set up to get us ready for Easter. And so the purpose of each of our spring series is to prepare our hearts, minds, and souls to celebrate Easter together as a family of faith. And so we tend to do that by focusing on the person and work of Jesus Christ. In the past, we've looked at Hebrews that compares Jesus to other things and says he's the greatest. Last year, we did the table where we looked at Luke, this gospel of hospitality, and said that ministry happens around tables. And then we've looked at the life of Christ through the gospel of John. We've looked at the parables before. This year, we're going to look again at what's called the Upper Room Discourse. Again, it's found in John 13 through 17. And John is my favorite gospel. John is a unique gospel. The other three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are referred to as synoptic gospels. They all follow the same kind of timeline and they cover roughly the same events. Whereas John wrote his last and covered the life of Jesus much differently than the others. And the detail that we find in these chapters is not found in the other three gospels. What we have have in the Upper Room Discourse is the longest, nearly unbroken recording of the words of Christ just to his disciples. So we have the Sermon on the Mount, and in Luke it's the Sermon by the Sea, where we see the teachings of Jesus. Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7, it's a prolonged big box of words that Jesus uses to teach the masses. But here in John 13 through 17, what we have is this nearly unbroken discourse. It's not a dialogue, it's a discourse. It's almost a monologue. Very few times the disciples deign to interject. And in it, what we have is the final thoughts of Christ. Because when he's done with this discourse, when he's done with the unity prayer in John chapter 17, the high priestly prayer, he gets the armed guards of Caiaphas, the high priest, come. They arrest him. He's taken to Caiaphas' house. He's put through a kangaroo court. He's arrested, beaten, crucified. And then he raises on the third day, and then we have the book of Acts where we see what these disciples do. But before he goes, he has some final thoughts for these young men that he's training up to build his kingdom and to build his church. He has some final instructions for them, some things he wants to communicate again intimately for just his disciples. Most of the time when he's communicating with them, especially at length, he's doing it when there's other people around. He's doing it for a big audience. This is just for his disciples. I don't know if you realize what's about to happen. These are the young men to whom he is entrusting the keys of his kingdom. He came here. He lived a perfect life. He's about to die a perfect death. But he stayed for 33 years. He had a public ministry for three years. Why did he bother having a public ministry for three years? Why didn't he just come, live a perfect life, die a perfect death, and then bring us to heaven with him? Because he needed to leave behind the disciples to build his church. Which is what happens in Acts. And to do that, he trained them personally, intentionally for three years. And he's about to give them the keys to lead this kingdom. And he is their plan. There is no plan B. He is the plan and the way through whom he intends to reach the whole world. He is placing in the disciples trust and hope that one day, 2,000 years from now, there can be a group of people that gather in Raleigh, North Carolina, a city that did not exist and a continent that was virtually unknown back then. And he's going to trust them to spread the word of the gospel all throughout the corners in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. So the thoughts that he has for the disciples here are profound. They're remarkably important. I have been fascinated for years with the upper room discourse and the things that Jesus thought was important to share in the final moments of his life. Now for a little context of what's happening here. The disciples are confused and dismayed. They've been following Jesus for three years. They entered Jerusalem the better part of a week ago. And they've been watching Jesus' ministry. And they've been watching with a certain expectation. Hopefully, you've heard me say before on stage, if you've been in my men's group, you've definitely heard me say this. But hopefully, you've heard me say before that there was only a few people. I think there's really only two people in Jesus' whole life who really knew who he was and what he really came to do. And I would argue, just for fun, that that was Mary Magdalene and John the Baptist. I think those are the only two people in the life of Christ that really understood who he was and what he came to do. Everybody else, including the disciples, misunderstood who Jesus was and what he came to do. They put expectations on him based on a poor interpretation of Old Testament prophecies that he simply did not ask for. You see, they thought Jesus came to be an earthly king and establish an earthly kingdom. They thought that when the Messiah showed up in this context in the first century A.D. or last century B.C., however you want to phrase it, that he would show up. In this case, Israel is a far-flung province of the Roman government, the Roman Empire. They thought that this Jesus person, this Messiah, when the Savior arrives, he will overthrow the king. He will sit on the throne of David. He will rise Israel to international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and be the king of kings and lord of lords. And we're going to have an Israeli empire that's going to dominate the whole earth. That's what the Messiah is going to come to do. And the disciples believe this so much that a week ago, before this conversation, a week ago, Jesus is coming into Jerusalem in what's called the triumphal entry. And James and John and the other disciples are behind Jesus arguing about who gets to be the vice president and the secretary of war and the secretary of agriculture in the new regime. They still didn't know what was going to happen. But over the course of the week in Jerusalem, they began to suspect that things were not what they expected them to be. Something seemed amiss, afoot, if you will. They could sense things moving towards a climax, but it wasn't the one they expected, but they still weren't sure what was going to be happening. And Jesus keeps dropping these hints. I'm going to tear the temple down and rebuild it in three days. He keeps dropping these hints that he's not going to do what they think he's going to do. And it's all kind of coming to a head. And in the midst of that tension and those expectations, at the Last Supper in the upper room, that's why it's called the upper room discourse, Jesus addresses his disciples in an intimate and sometimes clear way. Jesus was remarkably unclear. He liked to mess with us in that way. Because of that, because of the context of what is shared here, I would say to you that Christians should have deep interest in the upper room discourse. If you're here today, you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, whether you're here for the first time or the thousandth, whether you ever intend to come back. One thing I can tell you for sure is if you call yourself a Christian, which I always say is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. If you believe those things, then the upper room discourse should be of great import to you. It should matter a great deal to you. So here's what I want to challenge you to do, Grace. During this series, first of all, I'd love you to commit to being present with us on Sunday morning if you can be. If you can't be present with us on Sunday morning, try to keep up with us online because I believe that every one of these weeks is important because they're all reflective of the words of Christ. Second, I hope that you'll read it. I hope that you'll spend time on your own steeping in John 13 through 17. And I hope that at some point, preferably early on in the series, that you'll read it straight through as it was presented and as it was intended. Take 15 or 20 minutes. For some of my friends, maybe 30 or 45. I don't know how you are. It's sounding out words. But take a few minutes and read through. You know what I'm talking about, Kentucky, right? Read through John 13 through 17. When you sit in the front, Rob, you're right there, buddy. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I can't help it. That's right. It's okay, buddy. Take some time between now and Easter. Read it all the way through. Let it wash over you. Then go back and read it bit by bit. I'm sure it's broken down in our reading plan that you can follow and read along if you want to. But take some time to do that because this Upper Room Discourse ought to be of great import to us. It's a hugely impactful text. And my prayer is that God will use this series to move you closer to him. and maybe change the way we go about some things in our life. The first thing I want to point out to you is really kind of parenthetical to the sermon. This is not what I'm talking about this morning, but just the way that it opens up, I think, is so profound that I wanted to at least point it out, and then we'll move move into the sermon and we'll focus, like Mikey said in the announcements, on that statement that Jesus makes, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through me. We're going to get there. But before we do, a little bit of context within the conversation of what they're talking about can be found in John chapter 13. I'm going to start reading in verse 33. It's not going to be on the screen. I did not tell the production team about these verses. So if you want to read along with me, please do. If you'd rather just listen, that's fine too. But John chapter 13, verse 33, I'm going to read through 14.1. So we know what's happening here. Jesus says, my children, speaking to the disciples, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me. And just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now, where I am going, you cannot come. A new command I give you. Love one another as I have loved you. So you must love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. We're going to come back to that verse. That's a whole sermon. We're going to spend a whole week there. So I'm not just glazing by it. Simon Peter asked him, Lord, where are you going? Jesus replied, where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later. Peter asked, Lord, why can't I follow you now? I'll lay down my life for you. And Jesus answered, will you really lay down your life for me? I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you'll disown me three times. And then verse 1. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God. Trust also in me. So Jesus has got the disciples assembled. It's an intimate circle now. We don't talk about this a lot, but there was not just when we think about Jesus and the disciples, we think about Jesus and the 12 disciples, but really there was probably 100 to 120 people traveling around with Jesus at any given time. So the moments of intimacy between just Jesus and his disciples were not as common as you might think. So it's just them now, and they can sense something's up. And he tells them, boys, you can't come with me. You can't come with me to Caiaphas' house. You can't come with me to the dungeon where I'm going to be held overnight. You can't stand with me while I'm being beaten and being spat upon and being blindfolded and hit and being demanded to prophesy who hit me. You can't be with me when they drive the crown of thorns into my head or the nails into my hands and my feet. You can't be with me when I do that, and you can't be with me as I die and I go. You can't be with me in those places. But you can come in a little while. And then, because the disciples, you've got to understand, are completely and totally dismayed and confused by this. They do not know that in a few hours Jesus is going to die on a cross, that he's going to raise himself from the dead, and in doing so is going to conquer death and sin for all time. They do not know that he is making a way into a perfect eternity in heaven with him and with his Father. They do not know that. They do not know that they are going to be left to be the leaders of the church and to bring as many people as possible with them to heaven on the way. They do not understand that yet. What they think is that Jesus is supposed to be the king of Israel and they're going to be with him as he rises to prominence. And so when Jesus starts talking about this stuff, where I'm going to go, you can't come, they're like, wait a second, that's not the deal. The whole reason we've been doing the whole bread and fish thing and sleeping on rocks for the last three years is so we could come with you. So you're kind of breaking the agreement here, Jesus. He says, where I'm going to go, you can't come. And Peter, you're about to deny me three times. I know you don't think you will, but you're going to. All of this confuses and dismays them. To which Jesus, as he launches into the upper room discourse, opens it with, let not your hearts be troubled. Do not worry. Do not be anxious. Don't let your hearts be troubled. His first words out of his mouth to his confused and dismayed disciples are those of comfort and of peace and of healing. And so it occurs to me, and again, this is parenthetical. That's why in your notes, it's literally in parentheses. And on the screen, it's literally in parentheses. This is not the point of the sermon. I just couldn't breeze past it without making the point. Worry and anxiety are not God's will. To carry constantly worry and anxiety are not God's will for you or your life or for the people around you. If you feel confused and dismayed and anxious and concerned and worried, that is not from God. That is not something that God wants you to feel. That is not his will for you. This does not mean that we can't be anxious and that we can't be worried or that we can't be concerned. But what I want you to know is that when we feel those things and they are pervasive and we live in a pandemic of anxiety, those things are not from God. Those things are not his will. And I believe us, I believe whether it's through counseling or conversation or prayer or devotion or small groups or service or whatever it might be, that God gives us every tool that we need to overcome the enemies of worry and anxiety. But what we see reflected in the heart of Jesus is that he doesn't just launch right into instructions for them without first comforting them and making sure that they felt peace. And he has that same desire for you and for me. I don't want to guilt anyone who walks with those things, but I do want you to hear your pastor say from stage that those things are not God's will for you. And he gives you the tools to begin to combat those because he is ultimately a God of comfort. Now, let's look at what else he says. John place where I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and you have seen me. I don't know about you guys and maybe no one can relate to this, but when I read those words, I'm going to prepare a place for you. In my father's house, there are many rooms. When I was a kid, I learned at many mansions, which sounds better. I don't want a condo, God. I'd like a whole, you know, whole place. In my father's house are many rooms. I'm going to go there. I'm going to prepare a place for you. If it were not so, I would have told you. I don't know how far back into your memory church goes, but for me, I don't have memories without church. And so I don't know how to describe it other than when I read these words, it feels in a way that I'm already going home. It feels like this warm blanket of these familiarly trodden paths, and I just love returning to them. When I read those words, I'm going to prepare a place for you. If it were not so, I would have told you. It already feels like welcome home. And this is the idea that we get where this is the whole place where we get the idea that Jesus is preparing a place for us, that there is a home in heaven for us, be it an apartment or a mansion. When we get there, we're not going to care at all. And it's also where I believe that I've done funerals before and I've lost loved ones. And for the ones that are hospitable, for the ones that love to have people around, it always occurs to me that they're going to go and they're going to work with Jesus to begin to prepare a place for us. This passage is the reason I believe that when I get to heaven that my papa will be there and he will have a fried catfish and creole spread out waiting for me and there's going to be a big dinner. Now I can't back that up theologically. I don't know for sure that's going to happen, but it doesn't hurt me to think it. So Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us. And here's what I love. Here's what I love. He says, I'm going to this place. I'm going to prepare a place for you there. Talking to the disciples and in turn, anyone who ever believes in him. And he says, you know the way to where I am going. And Thomas interjects. And Thomas gets a bad rap. Thomas is referred to as doubting Thomas. But I just think Thomas was the guy who was willing to say what everybody else was thinking, Thomas. And I got a lot of respect for that guy. Because I try to be that guy. And sometimes it doesn't work out. You got to be careful when you think you're thinking what everybody else is thinking. And then you throw it out there and people are like, we were not thinking that you jerk. Cool. Sorry. But Jesus says, I'm going to go to this place and you already know the way there. And Thomas goes, I don't, I don't think we do. And to that Jesus says, yes, you do. Because I am the way. And I am the truth. And I am the life. And no man comes to the Father except through me. And in that sentence, in that phrasing, what Jesus does is extend comfort and assurance and an invitation to Thomas. Thomas says, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know where you're going. We know he's talking about heaven. He says, I don't know how to get there. And Jesus says, you do so. You've known me for years. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I'm the only way you get to the Father. From now on, you know the Father because you know me. Don't you see that what Jesus is doing here is, first of all, he's assuaging Thomas' concerns and fears. He's comforting him, and he's extending him an invitation into eternal life with him and the Father. This verse, this statement, I am the way, the truth, and the life, as Jesus intended it, was an invitation into fellowship and eternal life with him. It was a statement of comfort and assurance and welcoming. Which is why how the church has treated this verse historically makes me really sad. For some of you, what I'm about to say, you will not be able to relate to at all. You don't have a church background, or if you do, they didn't talk about this in your church. And listen, you're lucky if you can't relate to what I'm about to say. But some of you can relate to exactly what I'm about to say. Because in the evangelical conservatism that I grew up in, this verse was used as a virtual cudgel to play whack-a-mole against world religions. It was used as a weapon to knock doubting middle schoolers back in line. Do you understand what I'm saying? We would refer to this verse, how do we know that the Muslims are wrong? Because Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me. So they're out and we're in because we believe in Jesus. Some middle schooler raises their hand in youth group, I'm not sure if I understand. I'm not sure if I believe. Well, you better believe because Jesus tells us right here in John 14, upper room discourse. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except through me. And the way that I've seen this verse used in the last couple decades of church history is as a weapon to keep people out and to win arguments rather than an invitation extended to invite people in. It's the last nail that we drive into the coffin of apologetics to prove that we have an airtight argument against all comers that don't believe in Jesus. And listen, you can use it that way if you want to. If you want to reduce this verse to that, you can. If you want to take from this verse what Jesus is saying and make it mean the Muslims aren't in and the Buddhists aren't in and the Confucians aren't in and the Hindus aren't in and the Pantheists aren't in and the Atheists aren't in, and the Hindus aren't in, and the Pantheists aren't in, and the Atheists aren't in. They're all out, and we're all in. Praise God that we're not going to burn. If you want to use it that way, you can. But frankly, you look like a tourist wandering around Gatlinburg taking pictures with an iPad. You can do that if you want. You can take a picture at Ripley's with your iPad if you want to, but you look stupid. The iPad was invented for other uses. Can you take pictures with it? Sure. But you're probably over 65 if you're doing it. I'm just saying. Technically, it will do that. That is not the purpose for which it was intended. Technically, if we want to, we can use that verse to draw lines between us and others, between out and in. But I simply want to point out to you that when Jesus made the statement that became the verse, that is not what he intended. Jesus was not attempting to draw lines here. Jesus was not giving us a way to tell people whether they were in and out according to how we understand theology. He was not attempting to set up an apologetic fence so we would know who to include and exclude. Jesus was offering comfort and an invitation to Thomas. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And the people of the early church believed in this statement so ardently. And those around them in the cultures in which they were surrounded, in Ephesus, and in Rome, and in Corinth, and in Thessalonica, they believed in this principle so much that did you know that the early Christians, the first few generations of Christians after Christ were not called Christians. They were called the believers of the way. The followers of the way. Every now and again you'll see the church of the way. This is why. It's a stupid name for a church, but it's where they get it. And when Jesus said it, it was an invitation, not a weapon. When we use this verse as a weapon, we are more concerned with winning an argument than saving a soul. We can repeat this verse as a defense of the faith and as a way to draw lines between us and them. But when we do that, I think it belies an underlying desire that has more to do with being technically right than winning people over to our Jesus. It shows me that we're more concerned with drawing lines than inviting people in. This is such an important concept that when we get to the unity prayer, I'm going to spend a whole Sunday morning talking about the sins of the church and our insistence on looking at other churches and other Christians and other denominations and telling them, you're not Christian enough. You need to be Christians like us. When Jesus nowhere does that. But for this morning, in our corner, in our small corner of the kingdom that God has entrusted to us at Grace Raleigh, let's not use this verse as a weapon to draw lines, as a cudgel to defeat world religions, as an apologetic staple to win the argument. Let's use it for what it was intended, an invitation to us and to everyone we've ever met to come to know Jesus. See, I believe, based on Romans 1, where Paul writes that God has revealed himself as nature so that no man is without excuse. Based on Romans 1, I believe that Jesus has, when he says that verse, you already know the way. I believe that's true of every person that's ever existed. And that what evangelism looks like for a Christian is to help people see that Jesus has been showing up in their lives since the day that they were born. And you already know the way. And he desperately wants to know you. And he is the truth and the life and he is the way by whom you come to the Father. He's going and he is preparing an eternity for you. And he desperately wants you to join him there. He wants you to join him in eternity so badly that he condescended and took on sin and hell and death for you. And he endured the most painful death that mankind has ever invented so that he could go and pray. He made a way so that he could prepare a way so that you could follow the way until we are there for all of eternity. That's the invitation that Jesus extends to us in this verse. That's the comfort he offers to Thomas. Thomas, you already know the way. I've been working in and speaking to your soul since the day that you were born. You've been lucky enough to walk with me for three years. You know the way. And I believe that when we share the gospel and the good news of Jesus with our friends and our brothers and sisters who don't believe yet or may even believe something different, I believe that Jesus has revealed himself to them, that there's something in them that knows the way. And when we extend the same invitation that Jesus does, we move them a little bit closer to seeing that Jesus has been speaking to them for their whole life. So I want to plead with you to use this verse. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father except through me. I want to plead with you to use it as an invitation, not a weapon. As a welcoming end, not a dividing line. I think it's a much more rich and frankly textually consistent way to understand that passage than to pluck it out of its context and use it as a weapon. So what do we do with this? What's the takeaway here? Whenever I think about a sermon, I think about the so what. What's the so what? Okay, that's true. I have a better understanding of that. I see it in this context of Jesus extending this invitation to Thomas. What am I to do with that? Well, Jesus answers this question for us. If we were to ask Jesus, I believe you, that's true. Now, what would you have me do with it? He answers this in John chapter 14, verses 11 and 12. So if you just look down the page in your Bible just a little bit further, verse 11 he says this, Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do greater things than these because I am going to the Father. What are we supposed to do with this realization that Jesus is the way? That he's extended an invitation to us that we are to in turn extend to others. But verse 11, he tells us, he says it plainly. Believe in me. Believe in me. What are we supposed to do with the revelation that Jesus is the way? Believe in him. Have faith in him. Two things occur to me here. The first is just how much I love the symmetry of scripture and what Jesus teaches. Because those of you who were here for the first Sunday of the year on January the 7th, well, I guess it was the second Sunday of the year, but the first one that we observed this Sunday, for the first service of the year on January the 7th, I preached about the Ephesians prayer, and I preached about Paul's opening desire. What does he pray for his churches? That through the power of God, through the movement of the Spirit, that Christ would indwell their hearts through faith. The riches of God, the power of the Spirit, that Christ would indwell their hearts through faith. What's his first prayer and priority? For everyone that he encounters, that they would know Jesus. That in our words, they would be saved. What does Jesus want us to do in light of the revelation that he is the way, the truth, and the life. He wants us to be saved. He wants us to believe him. It's also Jesus's first prayer and priority for anyone that he meets. You know what's so wonderful is I've had some conversations since that first Sunday of the year with some people who are beginning to express the faith, who had faith, but it was young and immature and brittle and maybe never took hold, and then they left the faith because of questions that they had. But now God has been moving in their hearts. Jesus has been revealing himself to them. They're coming to recognize him as the way, and they've articulated to me, we believe, but we want to believe more. We want a stronger belief. And so, if you were here that Sunday, and you heard me encourage you, pray for your children that they would know God. Pray for your family that they would know God. Pray for your friends and your loved ones that they would know God. He's answering those prayers. Keep praying them. And we come back to the very beginning of this series. And what's the point this morning? Believe in God. That Jesus' first prayer and priority for everyone that he encountered, like Paul, was that they would be saved. That they would know him. So the first thing we do is we continue to pray that prayer for ourselves and for the people around us. The second thing we do, and this occurred to me as we were singing. The disciples say, what are we supposed to do with this? And Jesus says, believe in me. Does it occur to you that they already did? They already believed who he was? A few weeks prior, he told people, if you want to go to the kingdom of heaven, you got to eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. And everybody was like, that's weird. We're out. And they left. And he looked at Peter and he says, what about you? Are you guys going to leave? And Peter says, you are the Christ, the Son of God. You have the words of eternal life. Where are we going to go? We believe. We don't understand all the time, but we believe. We're in. And then he teaches this to the disciples. I'm going to go someplace. You can't come yet. You will be able to come. I'm going to prepare the way. We don't know the way. Yes, you do. You know me. I'm the way. That's how we do it. What should we do in light of this? Believe me. Trust me that I am who I say I am. That I did what I said I did. And that I'm going to do what I said I'm going to do. And it's moving to me that to a room full of people who already believed, Jesus' first petition to them was to continue to believe. And to you, most of whom already believe, Jesus' petition to you is to continue to believe. Because if you've believed for long enough, you know that there are battles and scars and hurts that would seek to rob you of that belief. And Jesus says, continue to believe. Through the ebbs and flows of life, through successes and failures, through sin and through victory, continue to believe. With that belief in place, with our assurance of the invitation of Christ being the way intact and understood. We're ready to approach the rest of the lessons that Jesus has for us in the Upper Room Discourse. I hope that you'll be a part of the series and that God will use it to prepare your hearts to celebrate Easter. I'm going to pray and then we're going to move into a time of communion together. Jesus, we love you. We are moved by you. We are in awe of you. We are unworthy of you. God, I pray that if anyone here doesn't know your son, that they would come to know him. That the people in this room and listening to my voice would recognize where Jesus has already been moving in their hearts, would recognize that he's already been speaking to them, he's already been showing up, and that there is a part of them, a part of their soul that already knows the way. Would they just see that for what it is? Father, would we use your words not as a way to draw people in and out of your kingdom and your will, but would we use your words as they were intended as an invitation for others to recognize that Jesus has been working in them all along? And God, would we see even this year people come to know you through our extension of that invitation? Would you give us the faith to continue to pray for the salvation of those we love the most? And God, would you give those of us who already believe the strength to continue to cling to that belief, trusting that you are the way? It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. 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.