Sermons tagged with Healing

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday. If you're watching online, wherever you are, whatever you may be doing, thank you for doing that and joining us in this way. This morning, we continue in our series called Gentle and Lowly, where we're looking at the character of Christ. Is that Kyle and Ashlyn back there? They're here. Look, with the new baby. Hey, guys. We continue in our series called Gentle and Lowly. I was going to say that we have more books on the information table. We do not. So if you don't have a book and you still want one, first of all, that makes no sense to me because we've been talking about this for three, four weeks. But if you don't and you want one, reach out and we'll tell you where to find one. Okay. But in this series, we are looking at the character of Christ. We are marveling at and learning about and from who Jesus was. And the second chapter of the book points out that Jesus was characterized by his compassion. Jesus was a man of compassion. And that's where I want us to focus this morning. And I want to do it in such a way where we kind of build a case for the compassion of Christ, because I want you to see just how prevalent it was in his character. And to me, the most prevailing instance of his compassion is found in the shortest verse in the Bible. Many of you know what the shortest verse in the Bible is. You may not know its address, but this will not be unfamiliar to you. It's John 11, 35, and it simply says, Jesus wept. Now, I meant to do the research this week and forgot, but syllabically, from a standpoint of syllables, it is not the shortest verse in the Bible. There is one verse with three words that are all singularly, they have one syllable, and it's actually shorter technically speaking. But this we acknowledge as the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept. Without the context of it, we might not know why that is profound, or we might not know why I find it to be the greatest example of Jesus's compassion. But here's why. Let me give you the context for it. Jesus, in his life, had what many theologians and scholars believe were some besties. He had his very good friends that were not the disciples, that were not a part of the 100 to 120 people that would travel around with them, with him and his disciples. But it was Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus. These were, a lot of people presume, some of Jesus's best friends. It was kind of home base for him, and they lived in a city called Bethany. And this is, some scholars say, Jesus's favorite place on earth. These were his dear friends. I don't know if you're fortunate enough to have good dear friends, but when you're with close friends, you can be your complete, total, vulnerable self. That's what friendship is. And many people believe that that's what he had with Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And so one day, word comes to Jesus by way of Mary and Martha. He was two days away by foot. And they said, hey, Lazarus is dying. Can you come heal him? And Jesus said, yeah, I'll be there in a minute. It's a loose paraphrase. He waited two days, and then he began the journey. In the time of his journey, Lazarus passed away. So as he's approaching Bethany, they hear of his approaching, and Mary runs out to meet Jesus. And when she meets him, she asks the question that we would all ask. Why did you wait? You could have prevented this. My brother has died. What are you doing? Why didn't you come sooner? What was so important that you couldn't come do this for us? It's the question we would all ask. And that through history in different ways, we have asked at different times. And then after asking the question, Mary begins to weep. And Jesus' response to this question that makes sense to every generation was John 11, 35. Jesus wept. And here's where the profundity of this passage struck me for the first time. And I've told you guys about this before. You may remember this story. There's a pastor in California named Rick Warren who's been very successful, sold a lot of books, and his church does very well. And even amidst that success, his son at the age of 27 took his own life. And when he did, he stepped away and took a leave of absence for either six weeks or six months. I can't remember. And when he came back, he preached a series called How We Got Through What We Went Through. And I watched that first sermon back and he highlighted this verse. And he said, I'd love to understand why Jesus lets things like this happen. But he doesn't explain it to us because we're not capable of understanding it. And even if he did, it wouldn't take my hurt away. So what we have in Jesus is a Savior who doesn't offer us explanations. He offers us his presence and his hope, and he kneels and he weeps with us. And I found that to be an amazing point. And in this instance, when Lazarus dies, Mary weeps, and so does Jesus. But here's what makes this further compelling to me. Jesus knew the rest of the story. He wasn't wondering if he was going to go resurrect Lazarus, which he does. If you haven't read the story, I'm sorry, I just ruined it for you. But he goes and he resurrects Lazarus. He says, Lazarus, come forth. And he does. He comes out of his tomb and he resurrects him. When Jesus meets Mary on the road, Jesus wasn't wondering about what would happen. He knew that he was going to raise Lazarus. He knew that Mary and Martha would be overjoyed. He knew that he would have his friend back. He knew that. So listen to this. When he's weeping with Mary, he's not weeping because he is sad. He's weeping because he's moved with compassion and his friend is sad. That's the Jesus that we worship. He was so moved with compassion that because his not shed a man tear. The older I get, the more I cry. I cry so much that when I'm watching a show with my nine-year-old daughter Lily, and we're watching a kid's baking championship, and a kid has to leave once we get to the final four, she looks at me to see if I'm crying. And I am. I can't help it. We watch Hometown, which is a great show. I highly recommend it to everyone. Ben and Aaron are the best. We watch Hometown. When they do the home reveal and the people are thrilled at their home, do you know what I'm doing? I'm crying. But I'm not inconsolably crying. My nose isn't running. I've just got a couple man tears and I wiped them away. It's fine. And forget you if you judge me for that. I emit this salty liquid from my eyes and I'm moved by emotion. Those are not the tears Jesus was crying. He was weeping. His shoulders were heaving. His nose was running. He was a mess. And he was not a mess because he'd lost his friend Lazarus. He was hurting because Mary was hurting. And Martha was hurting. That's what compelled him. And I think that is remarkable about our Savior. To further my case about compassion being personified in Christ and him being a man of compassion, I have a litany of verses to go through. We're going to go very quickly, okay? But here's what we have. And me and Lynn, we worked on this before the sermon. We'll see how we do together. But here's the verses very quickly to show you the compassion of Christ. In Matthew chapter 9, what we see, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. In Matthew 14, when Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and he healed their sick. And Matthew chapter 15, Jesus called his disciples to him and he said, I have compassion for these people. They have already been with me for three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry. And Mark chapter 6, verse 34, when Jesus landed, he saw a large crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. In Mark chapter 8, I have compassion for these people. They have already been with me three days with nothing to eat. In Luke chapter 7, when the Lord saw her, his heart went out to her and he said, don't cry. There's more. Jesus at every turn was a man of compassion. And here's what strikes me about the compassion of Christ in those instances when he chose to heal and he chose to feed the 5,000 and he chose to spend time with one person. I think one of the more interesting questions about the life of Christ is, why did he not go around healing more people? If he had the capacity to heal and to make illness go away, why didn't you just teach them to wash their hands? Just basic science. Why didn't he go around healing more people? Why didn't he do it all day, every day? The only compelling answer to that question is because it's not what he came to do. What Jesus came to do was to live a perfect life, die a perfect death, and train young men and women to run the church that he was establishing. That's what he came to do. He came to live a perfect life, to die a perfect death on the cross for us, and to train people to run the kingdom that he was establishing with his ministry, which is what we call the church, which is where we sit now. That's what Jesus came to do, which means, and I know that this is a weird thing to say, especially for a pastor in this spot. It's not inconceivable to think about every miracle of healing as a distraction from his purpose. It's not altogether unfair to consider the feeding of the 5,000 a distraction from what he actually came to do. It's not unfair to think that the widow that he healed that was bleeding was a distraction from whatever his real mission was that day. And yet, being moved by compassion, he feeds the hungry. And yet, being moved by compassion, he heals the sick. And yet, being moved by compassion, he preaches to the masses. When we see Jesus perform these miracles, when we see him heal and we see him feed, I think it's fair to see those as times when he veered off the point of his ministry because he was so moved by compassion in his heart to help others, to serve others, to be distracted because his heart moved so much for the people around him in need. This was who Jesus was. If you don't yet believe that Jesus was a man of compassion, I would simply make this point. Jesus' dying words were words of compassion. We did a Good Friday service this last spring, and we focused on the seven things that Jesus said while he hung on the cross for you and for me. And one of the things that he said was, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The men, putting a spear in his side, driving nails through his feet and hands, putting a crown of thorns on his head, whipping him, blindfolding him and saying, you're a prophet, tell us who hit you. He said about those people, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. His dying words were words of compassion. And so here's the truth about Jesus. And here's what I want us to understand about his character and seek to emulate in ours. Hurt people hurt Jesus. Hurt people hurt Jesus. When Jesus sees people hurting, he hurts. When Jesus sees people suffering, he suffers. He suffers so much that he weeps, even though he knows the end of the story. He hurts so badly that he allows himself to be distracted from his divine purpose to execute this one. Hurt people hurt Jesus. And so, we talk a lot here about what the word sanctification means. And sanctification, as we understand, is the process between when we're saved and when we're glorified. When we accept Christ as our Savior and when we exist with Him in eternity. It's life. And through life we go through the process of sanctification. And sanctification, the easiest way I've ever found to understand it is to become more like Christ in character. And so, as believers, and some of you here are not, and that's fine. But this is a peek inside the curtain. If you are here as a believer, what God wants for you is to become more like Christ in character. Not in nature, because that's not possible, but in our character as we go through the years. And hopefully those of us who have been believers for a long time are slowly moving to be more like Christ and for our heart to beat with his. But if our goal is to be more like Christ in character, then we cannot do that without being people of compassion. We cannot do that without being moved by the hurt of others. So much so that we don't simply go, oh, that stinks. I hate that for them. But that we are compelled to go and do. We cannot be like Christ in character if hurt people don't hurt us to such a degree that we are activated to some action in service of God's kingdom for people who are hurting. How can we possibly, church, claim to be Christ-like if we are not people who are moved by compassion? Not just empathy. Not just seeing the floods and hurting for the people affected by them, but actually buying supplies or driving them out there. And that's just one example. And I'm not telling anyone that you should do anything except allow yourself to be moved by compassion. And we have stories in grace that I'm very proud of, of people being moved by compassion and doing great things. So here's the question for you this morning. How might we employ our compassion? How might we employ and deploy our compassion? We all have the capacity to be stirred. How might we employ it? Here's one of the things I'll tell you. When we think about compassion and being so stirred by the hurt of others that like our Jesus, we serve them and we help them because we can't stand it anymore. Here's one thing I'll tell you, and I can't presume or project my life upon you, but let me tell you about my day-to-day, okay? And you'll see if you relate. I wake up every day. I was going to make a joke there. I'm not going to make it. I'm going to be disciplined. I wake up every day. Most days take a shower, unless I don't have any meetings. Then I dress in basketball shorts and Crocs. But most days I take a shower. And then I take Lily, my daughter, to her private school. And I'm in the carpool line with a bunch of other people taking their kids to their private school. And I can only say that the car line at NRCA is not a place that moves me towards compassion. I don't weep for the people that I see. I'm in my ensconced, nice, safe bubble, right? And then I drive to church. And I get in the office. And I have this glorious hour where no one else is in the office. And I have it to myself. And then I loathe the first person that shows up and ruins my solitude. Usually it's Kyle. He's been mercifully on paternity leave for three weeks. Sorry, Kyle, I love you. And then I sit in my office and I have calls and I have meetings and I and I go to lunch yeah three times a week with someone and then Jen Jen jokes with me must be nice it's a nice life this last week I played in a golf tournament and I went to lunch twice look at me and then I go home or I go to soccer practice with a bunch of kids that whose parents $650 to play that season. That doesn't move me towards compassion. And then I go home in my ensconced little area. And we have dinner, and we watch Hometown, and I cry and my daughter makes fun of me. And then we go about our day. And I wake up the next day and I do the same thing. Here's my point. There's not a lot of spaces in my life where I encounter people who engender compassion. If your life is like mine, then you have to make a choice to go outside of your comfort zone and encounter people who engender compassion in you. You will not, most likely, come upon them honestly. You will not experience compassion if you do not choose to expose yourself to those who deserve it most. So if we want to be people of compassion, and if you're sitting here going, that is who my Jesus was, and I recognize that's what I need to do, then we need to be people who expose ourselves to being able to be compassionate and stirred towards hurt for others. If in our life, if what I'm saying is true, hurt people hurt Jesus, and in our life we have elegantly navigated a path to never encounter genuinely hurt people, then how can we possibly be hurt by their hurt? So we have to choose to engage outside of our bubble so that we might be moved as Jesus was. A great example of this in our church, and I've told this story many times. I'm so proud of it. I'm so proud that they call Grace home, and they predate me. They allow me to continue to be their pastor. But Suzanne and Wes Ward, some of you know their story, some of you don't. Suzanne was in youth group here. She grew up at Grace. And at some point, gosh, it's got to be six, seven years ago, if not longer than that, she went on a mission trip to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, with her friend Cindy. And she saw in Addis an orphan crisis where families literally can't afford to keep the children that they're having, and so they have to give them up for adoption, and those children end up in orphanages. And she saw with her own eyes that the young girls, 17 and 18, who age out of those orphanages, not educated, not eligible for college, have very few choices about what they can do in life. And most of them ended up in the kind of work that you're assuming right now. And they were moved with compassion. And so they started a ministry called Addis Jamari. We partner with them. They were moved with compassion for the plight they saw in the Ethiopian, so much so that they did something about it and they started a house. And it was a house for the girls who aged out of the orphanage to come and to live in, where they're taught life skills and they're discipled and they're taught about Jesus and they're launched out of there going to college or having the capacity to get a job so that they can avoid the life that they would have lived had not Addis Jamari stepped in. And then to further it, they realized, you know what, if we can get ahead of this on the front end, we can prevent orphans altogether. And so they started what they call the FEP, the Family Empowerment Program, where for, I think it's $80 a month, you can donate that to Addis Jamari. And those $80, listen to this, this is amazing, allow a family to keep their child at home rather than having to give them up for adoption. How simple is that? That's like, what, eight lattes? That's easy. Also, Starbucks is stupid, okay? Germaine to nothing, sorry. And so they started doing that. And now, instead of just a home with three or four girls occupying it post-orphanage, they have what amounts to a daycare with 80 children every day, with programs for moms to educate them, to feed them, to take care of their kids, with counselors, like degreed counselors to work with their children and with the moms and with the dads. Compassion drove them to do that. So that's a big one. I don't think all of you need to go start a ministry in Africa. Actually, you probably should. But that's not the point. That's a big step. And in life, sometimes God moves us to make big steps. And we get moved and it changes the trajectory of our life. Suzanne is one of my heroes. She does not yet take a paycheck from Addis Jamari. And she works tirelessly for them. Every day. All the time. Because she's moved by compassion and believes in this. And some of us, God wants us to take steps like that. Others, first time I went to Addis Jamari, was in January, was it 2020 that we went, Karen? I think it was. I think it was. January 2020. Yeah, Andrea was there too. And we went over and Suzanne told me a couple weeks before, she was like, hey, it's just you and a bunch of ladies. So maybe invite somebody. And I had to think of the retired people that I knew that might be able to go. And so I invited a buddy of mine, Emil Lasavita. And I was like, hey, come to this. He goes, what is it? And I was like, it doesn't matter. Just please come with me. And he did. But when he saw the ministry, he was so moved by compassion that he got involved too. And now he sits on the board. Now he serves. He and I had a conversation last week where he called me about the future of Addis Jamari, and we talked about it. He was moved by compassion, so he acted. We have people who have been going to Mexico for 20 plus years to build houses for people less fortunate. Because when they went down there for the first time, they were so moved by compassion that they go back every year. We have people who have been doing that for 20 plus years. My buddy Keith right here, who, trust me, I do not like saying nice things about. The stupid Steelers jersey in church and the whole deal. Keith went years ago and was so moved by compassion that he's been a grandfather to someone who's grown up in that ministry. He's sent baby pictures. He's sent wedding pictures. They reunite every year. He's watched him go from this kid volunteering to this man who's in charge of all the construction of the houses now. He's the project manager. What happened was Keith went on a trip that he didn't want to go on very much, but his heart was moved by compassion and it changed the course of his life. There's at least one good thing you've done, Keith. If we want to be like Christ, we have to allow ourselves to be moved by compassion for others. And if we're going to be moved by compassion, then we have to make choices to expose ourselves to something that can move us in that way. So where I want to finish this sermon this morning is to simply challenge you with this. What step can you take towards compassion? What step can you take to expose yourself to hurt people that might hurt you in such a way that you begin to take steps of compassion as a result of that? And maybe you're already doing it, and that's wonderful. Lean into those places. But if you're not experiencing that, and you're not serving anybody outside of your bubble, and you haven't been moved by compassion for a long time to help and to sacrifice. Maybe the next step is to just think about how can I expose myself to portions of our society or our world that will compel me to do that. So let's think about that this morning.

I was going to say it's an enormous privilege to be here and speak this morning. However, now that the cat's out of the bag and you realize that this entire morning is about service and missions, those of you who know me, when you saw me walk up here, might have immediately thought to yourselves, huh, he's an odd choice to speak this morning. He's never struck me as one of those super sweet, unselfish, salt-to-the-earth, missions-type people, always concerned about others, rarely thinking of themselves, always busy, busy, busy collecting things in the foyer, taking people meals, building habitat for humanity homes. On the contrary, whenever I've dealt with the guy, he's always seemed pretty self-absorbed. Now, if you did have these thoughts, I'm not going to ask for a show of hands. I don't blame you. Sadly, I'm not any of those things. Yet, strange as it may seem, I'm not that odd a messenger at all. First though, let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for all these people. Thank you for this morning. Just help me and use this morning to shake and stir our hearts as you see fit. And again, thank you for the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours and it's in Jesus name we pray amen to begin let's look at four passages from Scripture which I'll read and we will come back to them Matthew the first ones Matthew 6 19 through 21 do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal Verse 21. There your heart will be also. The second is from Psalm 34. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. And then from Isaiah 58. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke. To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter when you see the naked to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. I'm going to have to raise this because I keep losing my place. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noon day. And finally, from 1 Timothy, command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant and put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Those are all beautiful, profound passages which we will come back to. But first, I'm going to make an assertion, which I don't think is particularly controversial, although you might. Most Christians, certainly including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. I'll repeat that. Most Christians, including me, don't follow Christ with all our hearts because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life. Let me explain. Raised in a conservative Midwestern Bible church, my earliest conceptions of faith could be summed up with one verse, John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That was really good news to me, but also indelibly etched upon my young mind was its corollary, that having accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, I was supposed to be as good as possible from now on. And as I understood it, being good meant doing a bunch of things I didn't really want to do, as well as not doing a bunch of things that I wouldn't mind doing and that other kids had no problem doing. This sense that the Christian life was largely one of deprivation and opportunity costs only became more pronounced as I grew older. This all simmered on a low boil until I got to college in the mid-1970s, which is when the levies gave way, and I wandered far off the reservation for the next dozen years or so. Billy Joel had a hit song at the time, Only the Good Die Young, whose lyrics perhaps best captured my mindset. They showed you a statue and told you to pray. They built you a temple and locked you away, but they never told you the price that you pay for the things that you might have done. Only the good die young. They say there's a heaven for those who will wait. Some say it's better, but I say it ain't. I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. Sinners are much more fun, and only the good die young. But as edgy and rebellious as I might have thought myself, I was not breaking any new ground. In fact, the notion I was wrestling with, that God wants to put us in a straight jacket and walk the straight and narrow and denying ourselves of otherwise good things, goes all the way back to the original sin in the Garden of Eden. It's exactly the approach taken by the serpent, the devil himself, when he tempted Adam and Eve. The serpent preyed upon Eve by suggesting that God, in fact, did not want the very best for her, but was holding something back, something potentially good, and that the boundary God had set for humankind, not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was not a loving one established for our own protection and well-being, but was oppressive and a constraint on our own pursuit of happiness and fulfillment. This idea that God doesn't want the absolute best for us was a lie back in the garden, it was a lie when I was in college, and it's still a lie today. Nevertheless, a nagging doubt was planted in Eve's mind about God's goodness and gracious intentions, one that she was unable to shake. Convinced that she might know better, Eve and Adam opted to trust in their own judgment and their own understanding of what was good for them, what was bad, what was in their best interest, and what was not. In other words, they wanted to decide for themselves what made the most sense. And that's exactly what they did, as has every human being since. The legacy of Satan's first lie to humankind, the one I fell for in my late teens, still echoes and reverberates today, even among the most genuine and faithful followers of Christ. Perhaps the most subtle yet insidious form of this lie manifests itself in this pervasive view among believers that being a Christian requires us to be utterly and completely selfless in all we do, always placing the interests of others above our own. As with most effective and pernicious lies, there's a lot of truth embedded in it. After all, self-giving love is the fundamental tenet of Jesus' entire mission and ministry. And we, as his followers, are repeatedly called to imitate his example by denying ourselves, taking up our crosses, losing our lives to save them. Whoever wants to be first must be last and the servant of all, and on and on. But the genius of this lie and why it's still such an effective tactic in Satan's efforts to mess with us and keep us from experiencing the fullness of life in Christ is that it's only a half-truth telling only half the story. It focuses entirely on the unselfish part of the Christian experience and the self-sacrificing love we're to show others, but entirely avoids any mention of what following and becoming more like Christ might offer to us in this life and beyond. Let's be honest. For me, at least, it paints a grim picture of the life of faith, a long, slow slog in which I, against all odds, must risk my teeth and persevere, hanging on to the very end, give, give, give, and no take until finally, exhausted and spent, I'm rewarded in heaven when I die. I would bet for most of us, at a minimum, it results in an attitude toward mission and service derived more out of a sense of obligation, a must-do or a should-do, rather than of an opportunity, privilege, and joy. It makes the Christian life just not that appealing or motivating, which is its whole point. It's a lie designed to diminish, undersell, and underwhelm. And the lie is in what it omits, how it does not reflect the full testimony of scripture, which is actually brimming with all sorts of lavish promises of the good that will accrue to us if we seek it with all our hearts. We are consistently encouraged to relentlessly follow Christ and be more like him precisely because it is in our own best selfish interest. So in truth, and perhaps surprisingly, despite all the teachings in scripture about self-sacrificial love, the reality is that most of us are not selfish enough, not self-serving enough, not self-interested enough to seek all that a life in Christ has to offer. Rather, because we aren't completely convinced that it leads to the richest, most satisfying, and joy-filled life, we remain trapped in the land of the lukewarm and the half-hearted. This is by no means a new insight. In his sermon entitled The Weight of Glory, delivered at Oxford University in 1941, the author, scholar, and theologian C.S. Lewis stated the following, and I quote, The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ, and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased. End quote. Unquote. End quote. Unquote. What's the expression? End of quote. End of quote. It's locked in now. But a tragic consequence of our fallen nature is that it's left us with a constricted and impoverished view of God's goodness and what he desires for us, both in this life and beyond. Our field of vision is far too narrow and our view way too small. We are, as C.S. Lewis described, playing in filthy, muddy puddles, thinking it's great, when all the while there's a gorgeous Caribbean beach vacation just waiting for us. This maligned and diseased view of God's goodness so profoundly limits our imaginations as to what life following Christ could be like that it tempers our pursuit of him, making it so much easier and more likely that we get sidetracked and lured away. By so completely underestimating the joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment that a life wholeheartedly following Christ offers, we make trusting in our own judgment much more appealing and tempting by comparison. And that, of course, leads us to prioritize other things. So, if that's all true, where does it leave us? If the real surprise is not that we expect too much from this life, but settle for so little. If our struggle to take God's extravagant promises of truly abundant life at face value leads us to never pursuing or experiencing those promises to the full. What is the remedy? What are we to do? How do we overcome our constrained view of God's goodness enough to want to go all in on following Christ? How do we move all our chips, or at least more of them, to the center of the table? We need help. Thankfully, God, in his remarkable love, grace, mercy, and wisdom, does not leave us to our own devices. It comes to our rescue, once again, with what I'm going to call a secret formula. Although it's not very secret, just overlooked and underutilized. Since the advent of the smartphone, I've become somewhat of a sucker for shortcuts and secret formulas. Always intrigued when someone touts a quick and supposedly effective way to become smarter, healthier, financially more secure, better looking, a better spouse, a better parent, a better gardener, etc. Because I am a sucker, my phone is now bombarded unceasingly with tempting prompts carefully curated just for me. For example, I recently discovered the one fruit I should eat every day. It's the kiwi. The three thoughts truly happy people think each day. The five must-have perennials for any southern garden. The seven behaviors to say goodbye to if you want your kids to appreciate you as they get older, to name a few. But the one hook that never fails to grab my attention, drawing me like a moth to flame, is belly fat. Or more precisely, any sight purporting to know how to lose one's belly fat. That is my holy grail. And as I refuse to consider any changes to my heating, eating, or drinking habits, I'm basically just left with exercise. Downloaded on my phone, I would show you, but it's too small, is the app Lose Your Belly Fat, a six-pack in 30 days. Let me tell you something. If not completely false, this app is certainly misleading. And I've even become a bit disillusioned. Now well into my fourth year, roughly... Seriously, roughly 1,200 days in, not 30 days, 1,200 days, there is no six-pack to be seen, not even the faint glimmer of one on the far-off horizon. But unlike my app, there's no false or misleading advertising with God's secret formula, which is revealed in those three short verses from the book of Matthew that we read earlier. treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for where your treasure is there your heart will be also we are called to follow Christ and become more like him so that's what we try to do but if you're anything like me it is a struggle not only are we hamstrung with a maligned and far too small view of God's goodness, which makes it that much easier to want to trust in our own judgment, as we've discussed, there is also the problem that it's hard to make yourself feel something that you don't. As the great country singer Bonnie Raitt lamented in her song, I Can't Make You Love Me, she observes, because I can't make you love me if you don't. You can't make your heart feel something it won't. Absolutely one of the most gorgeous, honest, and sad songs ever written. It acknowledges a fundamental truth about the human condition. It's hard to genuinely make yourself more loving, more forgiving, more tolerant, more generous, more kind. I've been a Christian a long time, and Christlike is not the self-description that first comes to my mind. Knucklehead, yes. Christlike, not so much. But in these three verses in Matthew, Jesus cuts straight to the chase by essentially saying, you're doing it all wrong. Of course you can't make yourself feel a certain way. You can't manufacture that on your own. But I'll tell you what you can do. You can start moving your treasure. That's the ticket to becoming more like me and having a heart like mine. We worship a God of great mystery, one who is far beyond our full comprehension. But that does not mean we are somehow mysterious to him. Having conceived of us, created us, and imbued us with life, he knows exactly what makes us tick, which is why Matthew 6.21 is so powerful and potentially life-changing. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The beauty and the power of it, the secret formula part of it, is that you don't have to feel a certain way to begin. You just begin moving your treasure, never mind how you feel about it, or if you're ready. The feelings will ultimately take care of themselves. When we start spending our time, our energy, our financial resources on the things that God thinks are most important, as night follows day, our hearts will follow. And that means so will our priorities, our passions, our hopes, and our joy. When we take steps to invest our treasure in more lasting and eternal things, we inevitably become more like Christ as we increasingly view things as he does and care about the things he cares about. We also begin to remedy and rehabilitate our fallen nature's view of God's goodness by experiencing it firsthand. Perhaps Psalm 34.8 captures this dynamic best. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed is the man or woman who takes refuge in him. By moving our treasure, even in small ways, we place ourselves in a position to taste and see God's goodness, which in turn helps us to take another step. Ideally, our time on earth becomes a lifelong journey of tasting and seeing that the Lord is good, transforming our hearts along the way to become more like Christ, caring for what he cares most about. And when we do put ourselves out there, tasting and seeing the Lord's goodness, we begin to grasp how the inherent contradictions of scripture's lavish promises, that on the one hand, we are to love sacrificially and be the servant of all, yet on the other hand, that very posture is the best thing that could possibly happen to us, can both be true at once. And the more we move our treasure, the more we taste and see God's goodness, the more we experience this paradoxical truth that giving of oneself leads to life. Far from being all give and no take, the promises contained in such sweeping passages as found in Isaiah 58 become more credible and real to us. Is not this the type of fasting I have chosen? To loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke? To set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter? When you see the naked, to clothe him and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood. Then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear. Then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer. You will cry for help and he will say, here I am. If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday. In closing, God, in his love, grace, and wisdom, offers each of us the life and eternity-changing privilege to transform our human hearts and begin to experience life to the full. Moving our treasure surely looks a bit different for each of us. What I do know is that it's a process incomparably worthwhile embracing and that there is no better time than the present. As we most resemble our Savior. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way, they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of life that is truly life. Let's take hold of life that is truly life. Thanks so much for listening.

All right. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this June Sunday. If you're watching online, thank you for joining us wherever you are and whatever you may be doing with your summer. This is Father's Day. So happy Father's Day to those to whom it applies. I am a dad myself, so I don't have to show any sensitivity about Father's Day. This is what I love about Father's Day is on Mother's Day, I saw on TikTok this week, which means it has to be true, on Mother's Day, that is the single highest call volume day of the year every year in the United States, because obviously people are calling their moms. That is not true of Father's Day. I saw that Father's Day is ranked 20th as far as like online traffic and phone calls and yada, yada, yada. And I saw a comedian say, I can't even think of 18 other holidays besides like Christmas and Mother's Day. And what I really love about Father's Day is on Mother's Day, we go out to eat, we celebrate mom, we fuss over her, we do all the things. And on Father's Day, all the dad wants is just leave me alone for a day. In some seasons of life, for a day, just leave me alone. If you want to silently snuggle with me while I watch the U.S. Open, fine. But don't tell me about your monsters today, okay? This is our day. So happy Father's Day for those to whom it applies and in all sincerity, if today for any reason is a was on the dad, I was on the phone with my dad this morning talking about Father's Day. He just mentioned to me that Moses is his favorite character in the Old Testament, and he's one of mine too. So it's going to be fun to continue to go through his life this summer. Last week, we looked at Moses in the burning bush. And I said, we're going to spend two weeks in this passage because the lessons in this passage are so profound that they're worth it. I honestly think I could spend six weeks in this passage, but I think I would bore a majority of you if I did that. I may risk boring you this morning with just two weeks, but last week we approached this passage with this, and so this is simply a reminder of how we approached last week. We are all meant to build God's kingdom. We are all meant to be kingdom builders. And I said this last week, I spent time on this last week, but I was talking to a friend who is a regular church attender who looked at the, this is in the lobby 15 minutes ago, who looked at all of the traits of grace across the glass doors on the top of it. And he goes, this looks different. What's different? Did something change here? And I said, yeah, in like September. And he's like, well, I mean, I didn't know. And he goes, what are these? I said, these are the traits of grace. And the apex trait is that we would be kingdom builders. So clearly I need to continue to repeat it so we all get it. But we are intended to build God's kingdom, not our own. And that is the conversation that's happening here where God is telling Moses, I want you to go build my kingdom in this way. This is the good work for which I created you. Now you go walk in it. And we talked last week about how we have, we looked at the five excuses of Moses that ended in, oh God, please choose someone else, which is a wonderful excuse that we all have as we seek to build God's kingdom. And as he presses on us, what we need to do to build his kingdom. But this morning, I want us to focus on one of the responses of God, where Moses asks God, what is your name? When I go, and I'll read the verses in a second, when I go, who should I say sent me? And to my recollection, I could be wrong about this, but in my recollection, I can only think of one other time where God the Father is asked a direct question and kind of his feet are held to the fire. Hey, I need to know the answer to this. Where all of humanity leans in and says, yes, God, what's the deal with this? There's instances in the gospel, because Jesus walked among us, where Pharisees or pastors by or disciples would press on Jesus and kind of demand answers from him. But we don't see this happen to God the Father, in my recollection, but one other time in scripture. And the only other time where I see God being questioned directly is in the book of Job. Now, I hesitate to bring this up this morning because I fear that I will create more questions than answers with this particular example, but I think it's worth pointing out. The book of Job, for those who don't know, a very quick synopsis. Job was the most righteous man on the earth. Satan asked God permission to mess with him, and God said, go ahead. He's not going to betray me. This is a loose paraphrase. And so things start happening to Job. He loses his family. He's wrecked with illness. It's so bad that his wife looks at him and offers the wonderful advice of curse God and die, which Jen tells me that all the time. Just twice though. It's just two times. No, but his wife offers this advice, curse God and die. His friends are offering him advice. Surely you're wrong. And he's not wrong. He's righteous and he is not sin. And he goes to God finally in Job chapter 38 after cycles. And if you've read Job, you know, after cycles of bad advice and back and forth. And he finally goes to God and he demands an answer of God. Hey, why am I suffering? And what he's asking is why are bad things happening to a good person? I, I demand an answer from you. And I had a professor in seminary that was to the whole class was on the book of Job. It was one of the best classes I ever took. And I think of Job as like theology 501. It's not 101, 201, 301, 401. It's graduate level theology. You have to develop, and this is why I hesitated to bring it up, a robust and appreciative and in-depth view of God before you can really appreciate the theology and lesson of Job. But I had a professor say that Job went to God to have a man-to-man conversation and found that he was one man short. So when Job goes to God and says, why are these things happening to me? You owe me an answer. God's response is, it's one of the best lines in the Bible. It's in Job chapter 38. You can look it up. Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Which is what I say to Lily when she argues with me. Right? Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? And you can see, you can feel it in the text. Job goes, whoops. I'm sorry. And so God starts to berate him. Where were you when I hung the earth where it goes? Where were you when I created the moon and stars? Where were you when I created the behemoth and the Leviathan? And I told the tides of the earth and the oceans that you will go this far and no further. And he starts to ask him questions. And Job says, and this is another great line, he says, I am sorry, Lord. I have spoken once. I will speak no further. And God's like, yeah, I'm not done. And he goes on for three chapters and it's the equivalent. It's, it's the conversational equivalent of that movie, uh, that came out years ago. I think it was in the nineties. This may be too old of a reference to use anymore in 2025, but a few good men when, when Tom Cruise is playing a a JAG lawyer, and is it Jack Nicholson or Nicholas? Nicholson? I always get it confused. Thank you, Jeffy. I always get it confused. Jack. We'll call him Jack. Jack Nicholson is a colonel, and he's being put on trial. And there's that great moment where he says, what do you want? And Tom Cruise, I want the truth. And Jack Nicholson screams back at him, you can't handle the truth. Right? This is what God is telling Job. It's an elaborate way of saying, until you can understand and answer the questions that I've asked you, you could not possibly understand my explanation for why I'm allowing these things to happen to you. So maybe just be quiet and trust that I am God. It's the only other time in scripture where I see God's feet being held to the fire and someone is demanding an answer. And God's answer is, yeah, I'm not telling you. Another profound time is in Jesus's life when his best friend, Mary of Beth Bethany shows up and says, why did you let this happen? And Jesus' response is, yeah, I'm just going to weep with you, but I'm not going to answer you. Similarly, in this passage, when Moses asks God, what is your name? We find God's response to be insufficient. Intuitively, it feels insufficient. But I want us to look deeper into this name of God and understand its all sufficiency. Because I think that this is probably, as far as building a theology and an understanding of who God is, one of the most, if not the most, important passage in all of Scripture, or at least the Old Testament. So let's look at these two verses in Exodus chapter 3, verses 13 and 14. And then we're going to spend the rest of the day talking about the profundity that is found within these words. Verse 13, Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they ask me, what is his name? Then what shall I tell them? He's holding his feet to the fire. God says to Moses, this is his answer. I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites. I am has sent me to you. And at first glance, I think we hear that and we go, what are you, Dr. Seuss? This is how you're answering this question? What is your name? When I go to the elders and I tell them that I need to lead the people out of Egypt, I need to do it in your name. What is your name, God? It's the only place in scripture where God has asked his name. God has many names in scripture. We see most often in the Hebrew Elohim, but Elohim is a placeholder for God. It just means God or Lord in the Hebrew language, but that's how he's most often referred to. And we see other names of God that are given to him by us. I jotted down a few. We see El Roy. When Hagar says that he is the God who sees, he's called El Shaddai, which means all sufficient. He is called Jehovah Jireh, which means he is the God who provides. He's called Adonai, which means Lord and Master. Jehovah Rapha, the God who heals. And Jehovah Shalom, the God of peace. When I was growing up, my mom cross-stitched. Raise your hand. Anybody in here ever cross-stitched? Has anybody done that? David McWilliams. I'm expecting all women, David McWilliams, knocking it out of the park. Good job. Good job representing the dudes with cross-stitching. My mom does that. And in the church lobby, in the church where I grew up, she had cross-stitched this big list of more than a dozen names of the names of God. But these names were ascribed to him by us. God does not name himself, except in this passage, where he says, I am. You tell them I am has sent you. And before I get into kind of the points that I want to make this morning, I do want us to pause here in reverence of the holiness of that. And I do think it's important to revere this moment. So I'm not preaching to you or at you right now. I am sharing with you so that we might feel the weight of what is happening here. These words, I am, were so holy that the Hebrew scribes and rabbis refused to give that a word. They wrote initials. In English, it's translated Y-H-W-H, Yahweh. And we sing, who pulled me out of that grave? He did, he did, Yahweh, Yahweh. And we just sing it and we declare it. But they held that name so much more preciously than we do. I don't think, I tried to think of something that would be relevant in our culture for how they held it. And there's nothing because Americans are irreverent by nature. But this name was so holy that they dared not speak it. They would not say out loud Yahweh. That's why he's referred to as Elohim in the Old Testament. Because they dared not say the name Yahweh. It was unspeakable. And when they had to write it in scripture, they would pause. They would be transcribing scripture, copying it from one piece of paper to another, from one scroll to another. And when they got to Yahweh, where they would see that in the text, they would pause and get up and go ceremonially wash their hands and kneel and pray and then sit back down at their desk and write those four characters and then pause and pray again and then continue with their work. We have no parallel for that kind of reverence in our culture. But this is how the Hebrew people held God's name. This is how sacred this moment is. And I just wanted to say that to you so you would feel the weight of what's happening in this passage. Now, as we jump back and we kind of ask the question, how do we process that? How do we process I am? I am who I am. You tell them I am sent you. There's really two things I would point out here. There's certainly more to learn from this name. But I think this name is frustrating because it's insufficient. It feels dodgy. It feels like God is evading the question. And in some ways he is, but when we understand why, we'll be grateful for that. Because it's's wonderfully so but the first thing that I would that I would say about this name that we should learn and that we should know and that we should reflect on is that when God says I am what he means is this I am all that you need all the time I am all that you need all the time. I am all that you need all the time. In the ancient world, cultures developed pantheons of gods. And the context in which we find this, the Egyptians were the major power. They had a pantheon of gods. And next week, as we look at the 10 plagues, we're going to see how those 10 plagues were a direct assault on 10 of the gods of Egypt. There was, there's pantheons of God. If you studied North Norse mythology, there's pantheons of gods and Viking lore. There's pantheons of gods to the, to the, to the Celtics. There's pantheons of gods to the Greeks and to the Romans, every major society, the Aztecs, the Incas, the Mayas, they've all had these pantheons of gods. And the Jewish tradition is the first one to come out and say, no, no, no, we have one God. And he is all that we need. He is Jehovah Jireh. He is all sufficient. He is all the things. And so when God says, I am, he says, I am all that you need all of the time. I am all sufficient. I am El Roy. I am the God who sees. But you are not going to call me El Roy and suspect that I am only the God who sees because I am also El Shaddai and I am all sufficient. But I'm not just going to limit myself to El Shaddai because I am also Adonai, your Lord and master, and you need to follow me. But I'm not just going to call myself that because I'm also Jehovah Rapha and I heal. And you should pray to me in times that you need. But I'm not just Jehovah Rapha or just Adonai, the Lord and Master. I am also Jehovah Shalom, the God of peace. And I give that to you when you need it. I am all that you need all of the time. And this is wonderful. This is wonderful because we don't need the same God in every situation. We need certain things at certain times. And while I'm here, just let me step aside and say this. We also, for my Catholic brothers and sisters, don't need a patron saint of healing. We don't need a patron saint of fertility. We don't need an additional saint to advocate to our God because our God says, I am. I am. You can pray to me. And what I find wonderful about this is sometimes what we need from God is for him to pick us up. Sometimes we are on the map. And we need the God who heals and encourages. And we need him to lift us up. And we need him to breathe life into us. And we need him to help us see hope and joy again. And we need a God to build us up. But sometimes we need a God to tear us down. Sometimes we're killing it. And we get a little full of ourselves. And we think we're somebody. And we need God to bring us down. We need God to send us to the desert for 40 years to humble us, to prepare us for the work. We need the God that sent David into the wilderness for 20 years to humble him before he could lead. We need the God that sent Paul into the wilderness for seven years to humble him before he could preach. And then other time, Moses needs the God to pick him up and to encourage him and to say, I will supply you with all that you need. Sometimes we need God to bring us low. We need the God of humility. Sometimes we need the God of encouragement. Sometimes we need the God who heals. Sometimes we need the God who hurts for our own sake. Sometimes we need the God of wisdom so that we might speak wise words into a moment. And sometimes we need the God of wisdom so that we might shut up and not say dumb words in the moment. God is all that we need all of the time. And here's what I like about this answer. There's this old Seinfeld bit. And, you know, just for the record, I love Seinfeld. He's the best. It's a running joke in my friend group that I may as well be Larry David's spirit animal. There's a lot of similarities there in our views on life. You take that for what it's worth. But there's this old bit where Seinfeld talks about getting on a plane and how the plane will come over the intercom. And he's like, yeah, passengers, this is Gary. This is your captain speaking. We're going to go up to about, we're going to take off in another 15, 20 minutes here. We're going to go up to 30,000 feet. We expect to cruise all the way to New York City. There's a little pocket of clouds and thunderstorms over West Virginia, so we're probably going to just go around that. And then we expect a smooth landing when we get there. And Seinfeld's like, yeah, whatever. I'm going to get on the plane. You take off. You land in New York. I don't need to know all the details. I don't care what you're going to do. Fly directly through the storm. It doesn't matter. Just land me in New York in an hour. That's what I need from you. I don't need to understand all the things. And this passage to me is God going, what, do you want me to explain it all to you? Do you really want Gary, your pilot to be telling you over the intercom, the, the, the, the nitty gritty of what's going to happen through life? Just sit down, get on the plane, buckle your seatbelt. I'll bring you some peanuts in a minute. And then we're going to land in New York when we're supposed to. All right. I am, I got this, whatever you need, I am your God. And so what we see is that what we think of as an insufficient answer in its insufficiency is all sufficient in its lack of clarity is perfectly clear in In what we would perceive as a lack of meaning and an incomplete answer, upon further reflection, what we find is it's fully complete. Because he says, I am. I am all that you need all of the time. And here's the other thing that we see in this answer. And I've made this point before. I made it in FAQs when we talked about doubts. But I think it's such an important point that we need to reflect on it as much as we can. The other thing that this answer means, beyond I am all that you need all the time, is this. I will not be confined to your boxes. You will not name me. I will not limit myself to El Shaddai, to El Roy, to Jehovah Rapha, to Jehovah Nisi. I will not limit myself. Jordan spoke very eloquently about Emmanuel God with us. But that is not all I will be. I will be more than that. I will be all sufficient. And you and I will not be limited to your boxes. And I love this idea. That we are constantly trying to understand God and limit him. We're constantly trying to put him in boxes. And God says, when we hold his feet to the fire, in one instance in Job, when it's like, hey, what's the deal? Why are you letting this happen to me? God says, you can't handle the truth. All right. So just worship me as sovereign God and trust me to get you where you need to go. And in the second case where his feet are at, are held to the fire, he says, yeah, I'm not good. What's your name? And God said, I'm not going to give you that, man. I'm not going to tell you that. I'm not going to let you name me. I'm not going to let you confine me with a title. Because I can't be reduced to a name. And if I give you that, you'll try to put handles on me and confine me to what that is. And that's not who I want to be. And what's remarkable to me is how little Christians acknowledge this. God never intended to be fully understood. Do you know that? God never intended to be fully understood. If you sit down and you read the Bible cover to cover, when I know many of you have, you'll take away a lot of things from that experience. But one of the things a thoughtful reader will take away from that experience is, goodness, it doesn't really seem like God's that interested in being completely understood by us. Because I don't know if you've ever thought about it, but he had all the chances in the world. He wrote the Bible. He could have made it more clear than this. What are we doing with Esther, man? What's that about? He could have made it more clear. He could have made it a systematic theology. In my seminary and in my training, I took a class called, I think it was two or three systematic theologies where there was this very thick book where the author and all of his wisdom and all of his learning tried to write down all of the things about God. This is how we understand who God is. And these are the boxes and this is how they go. And this is how things relate. And when this happens, this is why. And when this happens, this is why. And it's a book intended to give you a full and robust and workable and applicable theology of God. And the reason that you don't understand why things happen is because you haven't read systematic theology. But I have, and I understand, and now I'm the pastor, and I'm going to explain God to you in this perfectly systematic way that holds up in all the seasons of life. Isn't that dumb? Now listen, that's an easy joke. The men and women who write those are very learned and very thoughtful and would probably agree with my sentiment that it is an adequate effort. So I'm not trying to deride those books. I'm just saying it's tilting at windmills to try to write them. God, do you ever think about this? God waited thousands of years to give us the rules. He gives the law to Moses. We'll talk about that in a couple of weeks. He could have given the rules to Adam. All right, Adam, here's the one rule. Don't eat the fruit on that tree. Oh, you did it. Well, shoot. Well, here are the rules. He didn't do that. He could have given the rules to Noah. He destroys the whole world with the flood. Noah and Hamshim and Japheth are left and their wives. And he could have said, okay, you guys kind of screwed it up that last time. So for the reboot, here are the rules. No. Could have given them to Enoch, who was so righteous that he lived and then he was with God. Could have given them to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. He didn't. He waited thousands of years and he gave them to Moses. If God's goal was to be perfectly understood, wouldn't he have done that sooner? Wouldn't Jesus have spoken in more clarity than intentionally speaking in riddles to thin the herd? Didn't God have every opportunity to present himself to us in a perfectly systematic way that fits inside a book so we can understand him all the time? Yeah. He had every opportunity to do that, but he didn't. So either God's dumb or we're silly for thinking that we can understand him and reduce him to our intellect. And so when God says, you tell them I am sent you, he is saying, yes, I am all that you need for all of the things. But he's also saying, no chance, buddy. I'm not telling you what my name is. I'm not going to let you reduce me to that because you can't possibly understand me. And despite that message being replete throughout scripture, we skip over that and we continue to pursue our systematic theologies to try to understand him. We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just for David. Yeah, yeah, that's just for them. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Let me try to understand God. And we can't. And we try really hard to understand God. We try so hard to understand God and what he's done that we have this organization called CERN in France and Switzerland. And it is one of, if not the greatest scientific achievements in our generation. That's right. If you're over 60, I just lumped you into my generation. Okay. So we're all one generation today. It's one of the greatest achievements we've ever seen. It's, it's a Hadron collider that's under the ground on the border of France and Switzerland. It's 27 kilometers long and it has magnets inside of it that are colder than space. I don't know how that works. I just read it on their website. Okay. I'm not making this up. Colder than space. I would assume they mean like the cold parts of space and not like next to the sun. That'd be really easy. And what they do is they speed particles around this cylinder, around this tube, under the ground, and they slam them into each other. And the whole point of it is to try to figure out what happened at creation. They are literally simulating the Big Bang. And they're learning all that they can about the way that particles, and I don't know the right words, protons, neurons, whatever. I didn't pay attention in chemistry. My science teacher in high school was a retired Vietnam vet named Mr. Owens. And if you just sat with your test long enough and went to him and said, I don't understand number 10, he'd go, here you go, baby. And he'd write down the answer. You go, thank you. And then you go back to your seat. And then you just wait a few minutes. Mr. Owens, I don't understand number 11. And you think I'm kidding. There was a constant line of three or four dudes. It was always dudes in line to talk to Mr. Owens about the test. And he'd fill it out for you. You go, okay, thank you. And then you'd get an A. So I don't know the words for the things. I think electrons are involved. But they would slam together. And then they would the reaction. And they do it over and over and over again. And they've learned so many things. But do you know that at the height of human achievement, trying to understand the nature of the universe and what God created and how he created it in our terms, that's not what they say they would be doing. Some of them might be believers. I really don't know, but they've created more questions than answers. They've gone in with a theory, a standard theory, and they've tried to disprove it and they can't, but they don't understand why they can't. They're watching particular particles behave and they assume certain things about those particles. And then their experiments reveal to them that the things that they have assumed are not right, but they cannot explain the behavior of those particles. And so the more they dig into God's universe, the more questions they have about how it works, the less clarity that is brought about. Now, they're better questions. They're learned questions. They're more important questions. And here's what I would say, too, just a careful caveat. I've sat in rooms before where a Christian pastor was deriding atheistic scientists. They don't know what we know. They're not as smart as we are. That's dumb. They are. They're smarter than me. They have more degrees than me. They're very learned. They're paying attention to everything. I'm not questioning their intelligence at all. All I'm pointing out is at the apex of human understanding, as we seek to understand God and who he is, we just develop more questions than answers. And here's what I know for sure, that they't know because they can simulate what happens milliseconds after the big bang, milliseconds after creation. But if you say, okay, so those particles slammed into each other and then universe happened. Yes. Great. Where did the particles come from? We don't know. What activated them in such a way that they would collide with each other? We don't know. Does this point to a God? We don't know. Einstein himself, as he studied the fabric of the universe, concluded there must be some intelligence orchestrating the things happening behind us. We try and we try and we try to understand our God. And he told us in Exodus, stop, you can't. We can know our God. We can know his character. We can know that we can trust him. We can know that he loves us. We can trust that he created us. There are things about our God that are revealed to us. There are things about him and about his character that he does choose to share with us. And we can take comfort and solace and courage and faith in those things. But what we cannot do is seek to fully understand him. Because at the burning bush, when Moses holds his feet to the fire and he says, what is your name? God says, no, I am. I'm all that you need and you will not not understand me. And you will not confine me to your intellect. I am too big for that. And so, when we encounter God, and we look at the name Yahweh, and we hold it with the reverence that it deserves. We should respond to God with awe-filled wonder. The same way that Moses did. The same way that the saints of the Old Testament do. The same way that Paul does when he's confronted on the Damascus Road. We should, as believers, respond to God first with awe-filled wonder. This is why Proverbs tells us that fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. Because until we respond to God as he intended us to respond at the revelation of his name being I am, we cannot hope to understand the rest of scripture and appreciate it and him for what he is. And in all actuality, we should be thanking God for answering Moses' question in that way. Because it feels like an insufficient answer, but upon further thought, it reveals his all-sufficiency. It feels like he's shortchanging us, that he's being dodgy and that he's being mysterious, but what he's doing, he's doing us a favor. Because we can say, thank you, God, for being the God who heals. Thank you, God, for being the God who humbles. Thank you, God, for being the God that lifts up. Thank you, God, for being the God that is sufficient, that brings peace, that brings everything that I need. Thank you for being the God who provides. Thank you, God, for being the God who sees. And thank you, God, for loving us enough for not allowing us to limit you to the boxes we'd like to put you in. Thank you, God, for being so wild and so wonderful and so awe-inspiring that you're too big for a name. So the right response to Moses in the burning bush is to be filled with awestruck wonder and to say, thank you, God, for how big you are and for apparently how much you love me. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are and what you've done. Thank you for in telling us your name, not telling us. We thank you that you are. That you are who you are and you always will be who you are. Thank you for the solace and the comfort and the peace that we find in that. God, we thank you that there are ways to understand you, that there are ways to know you, that there are ways to become familiar with you. But God, we also thank you for being so wild and so wonderful that you will not fit in our boxes. Thank you for being a God that's bigger than we understand. Thank you for who you are and how you've loved us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. I'm Erin. I do get the privilege of being one of your pastors. And as my daughter just said a second ago, an all-purpose pastor. I just found that one as a funny little whatever. So thanks, Zoe. I appreciate that. And I appreciate everyone being in the building today. I know how easy it is when you hear that Nate isn't preaching to just say that you're going to sleep in that day. I get it, and it's okay. So thank you for coming and giving me someone to speak to. I do appreciate that. And a little, for those of you guys that don't know, Nate is on his way to Istanbul, Turkey. He's going to participate for the next week in helping to train up some Iranian pastors so that they can go and preach the gospel. So he's excited and thrilled. And I just spoke with Jen and the update is, is he's in the air. He's left Germany and he's next stop is Istanbul. So keep him in your prayers as we kind of move forward this week. That would be appreciated. So I wanted to start our morning this morning with a question. And my question to you is, what are you afraid of? And I got to thinking about people's fears. I know what some of mine are. And I decided to do just a little research and see exactly what other people were afraid of. And so I Googled it. And that does count as research. Don't judge. It counts. But I Googled it, and it's amazing how many top ten lists you can find when you Google things. So a couple of ones in no particular order that popped up was aerophobia, which is the fear of flying. And I know there's probably somebody in this room that is kind of up in that category. There was also acrophobia, which is the fear of heights. I fall squarely in that category. You can ask my family. They have lots of stories of me in heights. And none of them are pretty, I promise. There was also arachnophobia. And I know this one is quite a few of y'all because they made a movie about this. It's the fear of spiders. I have an aunt who, strong woman, nurse, nothing bothered her, but a spider could send her screaming in a pass down the road. It was bad. And then there was another one called glossophobia, but it's the fear of public speaking, which, as you can, that one's not one of mine. I know it happens to be a lot of other people's. I've had conversations, and people have told me that they'd rather die than actually stand up in front of a group of people. And so, guess what? Death and dying is also up there on that list. And so are snakes. I may fall in that category too. So there's all of these different fears out there, things that people are afraid of. And this will all make sense in a minute, but you're going to see where my brain goes sometimes. So I was like, what is a fear? What, what, what is a fear? So I looked that one up too. I love Google by the way. Um, and Webster's dictionary defines a fear as a strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger. So basically it is some sort of physical response to keep, it helps to keep us safe. It's a way that we're wired that helps to keep us safe okay so that makes a lot of sense but then I got to thinking to my fear of heights is not something that keeps me up at night I don't think your fear of spiders is what wakes you up at 3 a.m. questioning all the things. Am I right? Yeah, probably so. But does that mean that it's not a fear? No. The things that are keeping us up in the middle of the night are things like fear of failure or fear of loneliness or fear of change or inadequacy or judgment or rejection and I think the list could go on and on and you have yours, whatever it may be. These are still real fears, but these fears are caused by a belief system. Something that we've heard, felt, or otherwise. It's not a reaction to danger. It's coming from someplace internal. So how do you combat these fears then? I know how to combat fear of heights, right? I just don't go anywhere where it's tall. That's easy. You can stay away from spiders. Those are easy things that you can avoid. But how do you combat the things that are waking you up at 3 a.m.? What do you do? Again, I googled it. What's the opposite of fears? It's something called faith. The definition of faith is a complete trust or confidence in someone or something. And the writers and Hebrews actually state that having faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see. And that sounds like a really spectacular place to live. Confident in what I hope for, assured in what I do not see, and I wish I could stand before you and tell you that's exactly where I live my life. But I'd be lying. And you know, that's kind of looked down upon in church. So I'll be completely honest. I wish I had that faith every single day. But you know, I'm just like everybody else. I struggle with all these things that happen in my head. I'm a people pleaser. So lo and behold, I'm always afraid. Have I made somebody mad? Or are they judging me? Or am I truly equipped to do what it is that I do? And so the thing about that, though, is that those fears and those things that swirl around in my head, they don't discount the faith that I do have. Because the thing to remember here is, is that when you're afraid, you can still have faith. Because faith isn't the absence of fear, but it's trusting God in the face of it. So your faith is not going to happen without fear. Because what we're called to do then is to not allow this fear to take over, but to learn to trust and lean in to God. And in doing so, our faith starts to become bigger than our fears. So today I want to jump into Mark 5. So I am going backwards from where Nate was. It's just the way I do things. I can't follow along in his pattern. I have to do it my way, right? So I'm going to jump over to Mark chapter 5. We're going to start in verse 21 through 24. I'm going to read those to you, but if you want to grab your Bibles, you guys can follow along. I'm going to do a great deal of probably summarizing as we continue through, just because this is actually a long passage. So 5, 21 through 24, and a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. So here we meet Jairus, who is a ruler in the synagogue. An important point to kind of make here is that this doesn't mean he's a religious leader. He's not exactly a Pharisee or Sadducee. What he is is probably equivalent to one of our elders. He actively takes place in what happens inside of the synagogue. He helps to take care of the building. He's going to be well established in his community. He'll be well thought of in his community and respected. And here he stands with a daughter who is dying. The word that's used here is death is imminent. Like this isn't a long, drawn out process. She's probably got hours to live is what it's referring to here. And so he is coming to Jesus at this moment in his life. And I think back to what are the fears that he had before he took those steps. What fears were going through his brain like what goes through ours. And you can only imagine as a leader in the community. He's possibly fearing loss of status in the community. Or fearing the fact that he's going to lose respect. The other one too is that currently the religious community was not too keen on Jesus, right? They're still not sure who he is at this point. He's out teaching, he's out healing, he's out doing all of the things. He's drawing large crowds everywhere he goes. People aren't quite sure who he is, but the religious community had taken note, and they weren't real happy with him. And so for Jairus to step out, there's a risk, right, of him losing his status completely inside of the religious community. But he does it anyway, right? And Jesus' response to him, which I absolutely love, is he doesn't say a word. Jairus is at his feet and he says, come heal my daughter. And all Jesus does is follow Jairus to his house. Doesn't call him out. Doesn't make a big deal out of it. Just follows him. And so they head off to his house. And if we continue on in scripture, and I'm not going to read this, this is part of the areas where I'm going to kind of summarize things. We meet, they, as they're headed in this large crowd of people on their way to Jairus' house, they come across a woman who is physically ill. She has, scripture states that she's been bleeding for 12 years. She has spent all of her money and all of her resources trying to find a cure. Very unsuccessful. And at this point in time, she's actually worse off than what she was when it started. So she's going to be physically weak. She is an outcast in her community. But she has a belief in her head that if she can only get to Jesus and if she can only touch his garment, she just knows that he can heal her. But what does it take for her to get to him? Because can you imagine what's going through her brain? First of all, she's physically weak. So there has to be this fear of what happens if I don't make it? What happens if I can't get to him through all of these people? I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life. Like my last shot at healing. There's also, I said before, she's an outcast. The thing here is that Jewish ceremonial law stated that she was unclean because she had been bleeding. And by being unclean, that meant that anything or anyone that she touched, she made unclean also. And then there's a whole litany of things that must be done to make that person or that thing clean again. So people avoided her. She had no contacts. She was not allowed in the synagogue at all. We don't know, according to scripture, if she even had a family. But if she did have a family, she would not have been with them. She would have been secluded from them. So I can't even imagine how this woman felt. There was no human touch for 12 years. No one looking at her and making contacts for fear of them becoming unclean. So she makes a choice and she chooses to go to Jesus. Both Jairus and this woman's example to us are huge. That when life gets hard, we can either give in to our fears or we can step forward in faith. Both these people in the midst of places of desperation, places of being like their life was just super hard. They made a conscious choice to choose faith over fear. And I promise you, and I know this in my life, sometimes it's easier to give in to the fear. It's just easier. Because when life's hard, those voices in the head get louder and louder, and sometimes it's just easier to give into that. The step of faith is the hard part, but it's in that hard that we grow and that our faith continues to grow as well. 20, 25 years ago, there was a leadership team inside of a large church in Raleigh. A very large, successful church in Raleigh. There was a lot of things happening inside of this church at this period of time. It was successful, yes, but internally there was stuff going on. Stuff with the denomination people weren't sure There were some decisions that were being made by the large denomination that the leadership team was unsure of There's lots of prayer happening and so on and so forth there was a decision that eventually was made after much prayer except that the leadership team was going to step away from the church and start their own church. They had fears, as you can only imagine. It's a large church in a large area, well-known, well-respected, and here is a group that says, we're going to leave. So there's a chance for loss of reputation. They also know that there's a chance that there's going to be some hurt that happens as they make this decision to pull away. There's lots of places of fear. They also are walking away from a steady paycheck in a way that they're taking care of their families. But they stepped out. They did it. And then they got together, they prayed, they did all their things. They found a little outdoor pavilion to hold a first worship service to see what would happen. And lo and behold, they got there that morning, they set up their little PA system, they put out some chairs, and they waited. And God did his thing. Because over the hill came car after car after car. And all of a sudden, all of the chairs are full. And the next thing you know is there's a full hill of people sitting in the grass. And I was one of them. And I had my husband, my sweet husband was with me. And Zach was there as well as a two-month-old and a car carrier. And we And so just like Jairus and just like the woman, they followed Jesus. They didn't give in, and they kept moving forward. And just like what happened with Grace, the same thing happens with Jairus and with this woman. And Jesus' response to their faith is immeasurably more than they could have ever asked or imagined. Because in the story of the woman, she now reaches out and she touches Jesus' cloak and she is immediately healed, but Jesus isn't done with her. He knows that she's physically healed. Her bleeding has stopped and she's now physically healed, but he knows she's not healed mentally or physically or mentally or emotionally yet. And that's where he has to take her. So in the middle of this crowd that's pushing all around him, he stops and he says, who touched my garments? Okay. There's a lot of people touching your garments, Jesus. Lots of people. But that wasn't for anybody but that woman. And so many times I've read that passage and I kind of, in my head, I heard Jesus like it was an accusation. Like he kind of wheeled around and was like, who touched me? But really, it was the opposite. It was him reaching out with an invitation. He's like, who touched my garments? He's calling to her to come to him, not to embarrass her, but to continue her healing. And that's what she does. She comes forward. She comes forward in fear and in trembling, and she falls at Jesus's feet. And scripture tells us that she tells the whole truth. This is her whole story. She lays out the good, the bad, the ugly, all of the things from the last 12 years, all of the things that she tried to do to fix herself and was very unsuccessful. All of her pain, all of her suffering, all of it, she laid at his feet. When was the last time any of us laid it all at Jesus's feet? When was the last time we followed her example with whatever our circumstance, whatever it is that has us, and we just laid it at his feet and said, this is my story. This is where I am. This is what hurts. This is where I'm mad. This is where I don't understand. This is what I've tried to do on my own. And hey, I'm sorry. When was the last time any of us took the time to do that? When did we actually give it all up? And you can see here the example that Jesus gives and how he's going to respond because he looks at her and he says, daughter. It's such a term of endearment. And he tells her, your face has healed you. Go in peace and be free of this disease. So those words right there and this interaction with Jesus, what he's now officially done is not only did he heal her physically, but by calling her out, he just healed her in her social status. He just said to everybody that's standing around, she's clean. She can come back to you. So after 12 years, she can now, if she had a family, she can go back to her family. She can go back to the synagogue. She's now reunited with her community. And lastly, I think this is an example to Jairus. Because so often God uses our circumstances and our stories to encourage others. Because remember at this point in time, Jairus is still here. He's not mentioned right now, but he's still here. He's standing there. Jesus has led him to this spot and then stopped it. And can you imagine Jairus at this moment? You have a child who's on the verge of death. You were on your way with your healer. You knew she was about to be healed. And all of a sudden it stops while the healer goes off to take care of somebody else. What goes on in my head is Jairus is like pacing. Like he's got to be like, wait, hey Jesus, like what about me? Don't forgive me. My daughter's the one that's dying. I know she's sick. Well, you can come back. We gotta go. Like, time is urgent here. We need to go. And he's wringing his hands and he's pacing and he's doing all of the things. And yet Jesus is still focused straight in on this woman. And the wait. Jesus, you brought me here and now you're going to make me wait. I don't understand. And so what do we do in these waiting moments? When we know Jesus has brought us to this place, I'm here because you brought me here. Why am I sitting and spinning? And what's happening? Where are you in this moment? And so if we go back to grace, I can say that in hindsight, it's 2020. Remember that? This was a long time ago, but I can look back on what happened with grace and say, in our waiting, it was not our finest hour. The church itself, after that first meeting, took off. It was thriving. We had a building. We had thriving ministries. We were well-known and respected inside of the community. I think at the height of all things, there were five services a weekend. We actually had to take over more space because we were like outgrowing the space that we were in. And it was a lot of space. Let's just say that. There was a lot happening inside of the life of the church. It was fantastic. But somewhere in there, there's a but, right? There's always a but. Because somewhere in there, we, I don't know, we started to lose some focus, maybe. Maybe we got a little too big for our britches. I'm not sure. But our leadership started, and this is my opinion here, but I felt like there was a place of leadership making decisions out of fear and not out of faith, which will guide a church and it will guide all of us in not the best path. And as we continue to have these decisions being made and things happening, we had turnovers in leadership. We had turnovers in staff. We had members that were, and they were members back then. We had members that were leaving. We had, and of course, as members leave, finances shrink. We still had all of this property and all of these bills to pay and money is not quite what it used to be. So there was a whole lot of fear that came into our world and we became so much more focused on our circumstances and how to fix our circumstances. We got to a point where we lost another senior pastor. We were drowning in debt. The staff, by this point in time, I'm on staff. The staff was mentally and physically and in some instances spiritually just exhausted from trying to hold it all together. And I promise you there were some Sundays that we just didn't know if we had it in us to do another Sunday. And that also was another Sunday not only physically, but did we have the money to have the lights on? And so as I look back on it now and I look back in these moments of the wait, right? We were waiting on God's plan for grace. We were waiting to see what God was calling us into because he had led us there. There is no doubt in my mind that we were right where we were supposed to be. But it also felt at this moment like he wasn't there anymore. And we acted like that. We acted like that out of that place of fear. But the thing is, thankfully, we serve a very faithful and loving God. He hadn't abandoned us to ourselves. And just if you check back into where Jairus is and this feeling like he's been abandoned. Lord, you brought me here. I don't know why we're still here. And while he's standing there, his worst fear is imagined. A messenger from his house arrives and he looks at Jairus and says, your daughter has died. And the next words out of his mouth are, basically, don't bother the teacher anymore. Because remember, he had come to Jesus to heal his child. Well, your child is now passed away. There's no healing needed. So release him, come home. And this is where I say, Jesus doesn't abandon us in those moments of our waiting in those moments of our worst fears ever. And I imagine what happened next. And this is how I pictured it, and you all may picture it different, but this is me, is that Jesus looked at Jairus and he took Jairus' face in his hands and he said to him, do not be afraid, just believe. And at that moment, I also read that and went, excuse me, that's easier said than done. But remember, Jairus has just witnessed this miraculous healing of this woman. He's just witnessed all that Jesus did after he physically healed her. And he came somehow knowing that Jesus could do something for him, right? So somewhere in his head, he knows that Jesus is his answer. And all Jesus says to him is choose me. That's all you have to do is choose me. Because you get to choose who you listen to. You get to choose if you listen to fear and doubt or if you listen to Jesus. It's your choice. It's our choice. And I promise you, every time I step up on this stage, I have to choose Jesus in order to drown out all the voices in my head. No judgment on that one, please. But there's a lot, there's a lot in my head that tells me, you know, things like you're not equipped. You don't have anything to say that these people want to hear. Who do you think you are that says that you can get up there and stand and speak? Like those are the voices. Those are the things that are in my head. But I have Jesus take my little face too. And he says, don't be afraid. Just believe. Choose me. And in this story with Jairus, that's exactly what he did. He didn't listen. He chose Jesus. They turned and they went to his house. And as in the end of the story, you can read it for yourself, but they go to his house and his daughter has died. But Jesus says, nah, she's asleep. Come on inside. Takes takes the parents in takes a couple of disciples and he grabs hold of the daughter's hands and he tells her to arise and to walk and guess what that's exactly what she did she stood up she walked Jairus came to Jesus to heal his daughter. And in the end though, his faith was tested. He was pushed into those extra hard places that said, you got to wait a minute to get your healing. You got to hold on with me and choose me. Don't listen to the other stuff because guess what? I've got you and I'm going to make this right. And lo and behold, by choosing Jesus, that's exactly what happened. Because if he had listened to the faith and his fear and his doubt, and he had just gone home, he would have lost his daughter. But instead, she's very much alive. So choose me. You come to this place where your worst fear is realized. And so somewhere right around 2016, 2017, Grace Community Church was at that place. We were at our worst moment. We had, yeah, we were in a bad place. Let's just put it that way. And I would say we were limping along, but, and I'm going to put the but in here, because again, there's a switch. What was left of Grace Community Church in 2017 was a core group of people who loved each other, who loved Jesus and who loved this little church. That's what was here still. And because of that and because of their want and desire, you begin to see us come out of the wait and you begin to see where, hey, Jesus has been with us the whole time, but where he starts to make his move. Because in 2017, I believe too, we had been pruned. We have our core group of people. We had surrendered it all. We were no longer the big cool church on the block. We were just this little peeled back tiny church who, mind you, was selling off stuff all the time. We were, that's where we were. We were in a bad place, but we gave it up. We quit trying to fix it. We quit being afraid all the time. And somewhere in there, something happened. We were gifted this building as much as we all have things to say about this building currently. In 2017, this building, oh, it was beautiful because it took our expenses and cut them dramatically. We could now focus on getting ourselves out of this horrible debt that we were in. Now, we still don't have a lead pastor at this point in time. And so our leadership teams, our elders are coming together saying it's probably time that we find somebody to lead this little pack of ragamuffins, for lack of a better word. And so the search begins. Now, the other thing just to mention is for an experienced lead pastor, we did not have a pretty resume and we didn't look really good. It's not someplace that they were just clawing to become a part of. So we had to step out in faith and take a chance. And that's what we did. Because remember, we're coming from a place of faith and not fear. And we hired a 36-year-old associate pastor who had zero experience leading a church. And his name is Nate, by the way. But the thing was, is that Jesus knew that Nate was the person for this church. And so he put him in place. And from that point in time on, we continued to walk this path of faith. You watched as our teams got healthier. You watched as we were no longer Grace Community Church and we became Grace Raleigh. We began to find our identity and who it was that God was calling us to be as a community, as a body, and then who we are to be to those around us in our community. You began to see the health. Our partners are all here and part of what it is that's happening inside of Grace. And guess what? These decisions are being made now. We have no more debt. We've actually purchased land. We've gone ahead and we've designed a future building. We have asked you as partners to come alongside us and where we believe that it is that God is leading us in our next step of obedience. And that's to build this building. And I stand before you today and I honestly believe that we as a church stand in our Jairus moment. That moment where God is looking at us and holding us by the face and saying, do not be afraid, just believe. This is the path that I have called Grace Community, Grace Community, sorry. This is the path I have called Grace Raleigh to take. Step out in faith with me. I've got you. And so I ask, what are you as the partners of grace believing for our sweet little church? Are you believing that our next step of obedience is to build this building? And if you truly believe that that is your next step of obedience, what are you doing to walk in it? And so as we close this morning, I will also say to you too, what fears do you have that keep you from all that God has for you? What is it that holds you back from realizing what it is that he has in store for you, the plan that he has as you take your next step of obedience? What do you need to lay at his feet? And what do you need to do to clear your brain, your mind of the fears and the doubts and choose him? Will you pray with me? Lord Jesus, thank you. Thank you for these examples of people who trust you, who love you, who choose you. Thank you for the example that they give us of doing it scared. Those next steps of obedience are not easy. The next steps of obedience are scary. But we know that you've got us. If you brought us here, you're going to walk with us through it. So thank you for loving us. Thank you for being faithful to us. And thank you for loving this little church that you call Grace Raleigh. And Lord, we love you. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.

All right, well, good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, and if I hadn't got a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that. Thanks for coming on Time Change Sunday. I know that we're all, our wagons are dragging a little bit, but that's all right. Before I just launch into the sermon, I do have a bit of a retraction to print. Last week, I maliciously and falsely accused my wife, Jen, of smoking a cigar in college. We did not agree on the story, and that afternoon, she texted her friend Carla, her roommate, and I know Carla very well, and she asked her to confirm her side of the story, and Carla said, no, I was there. You pretended and gave it to me, and I'm the one that smoked it. It was a black and mild. It was disgusting. So I was wrong. Jen, as usual, was right. She's at home now with a sick kid. So anyways, if you see her, let her know that her character has been restored. One thing that is true that Jen and I do, and I bet that you've had the same conversation with your spouse if you have one of those or you're a good friend or something like that but I don't know about y'all but for us every time the a Powerball lottery gets up but like a ridiculous amount like 330 million dollars or something like that like so much it gets so big that your mom starts buying lottery tickets just in case it's God's will that she have that money to use it for his kingdom. You know, that's how we Christians justify the lottery ticket purchases. But every time we see that, when we'll see the billboard or mention it or something like that, then what conversation do we immediately have? Right, nodding heads. What would we do if we won the money, right? So then we get to have that fun conversation, and it goes, by now we've had it enough times that it goes in some very predictable ways. Out of the gates, you know, you have to sweep aside, get rid of the practicalities. Like, don't tell me how you're going to invest it. That's boring. Don't be a nerd. Like, what's the fun stuff you're going to do? What are the extravagances that you're going to allow yourself? And it always starts small with us because we're trying to be humble because we're trying to be humble people. We're not going to be ostentatious. But the one extravagance I always lead with, this one's consistent for me, is a private chef. I want a private chef to just live at my house and make me food all the time. That's what I would like. Jen will eventually admit that she wants to get a condo in Manhattan. And those are our extravagances. And then I'll be like, and maybe, you know, I mean, the car's got a lot of miles on it. So maybe I need a new car. Maybe you need a top of the line Honda Odyssey. You know. You guys know that's what I want. Maybe for travel, we should just buy into a private jet, like a share, not our own, but maybe we'll just share. We try to stay humble, and then as we have the conversation, it just gets more and more absurd until we're the Kardashians, so then you just laugh and whatever. But those are, that's fun to do. That's a fun game to play. What would life be like if? And then you imagine this life that maybe you would have one day, and I don't know what you guys would do if you hit it big, but it's fun to play that game of imagining what life could be like if. But one of the things that we all do, even if you're not ridiculous like Jen and I and daydream about what it would be like to win the Powerball, what I am convinced of is that every person in this room, every person who can hear my voice, does have plans and hopes and dreams for their life that are real, that are substantive, that actually matter to you because they're actually attainable. This is so ubiquitous in our culture that we have a name for it. It's the American dream. People move to this country in pursuit of what you have access to because we live in a place where we are allowed to dream our own dreams, we are allowed to make our own plans, and we are allowed to begin to pursue those. And so everybody here has hopes and plans and dreams for their life. And those are less funny. Because I'm probably never going to have a private chef. Probably not. I might be able to hire one for ad night to make me stay. I'm probably not going to ever have a private chef. I'm not going to mourn that. We'll probably never have a condo in Manhattan. I'm not going to mourn the loss of that potential condo, but I do have hopes and dreams in my life that if they don't come to fruition, I will mourn that. If I don't get to do Lily's wedding, that's going to make me sad. If I don't get to meet my grandchildren, that's going to make me sad. If I'm not still married to Jen in 30 years, that's going to make me sad. So we all have hopes and dreams that we marshal our resources around, that we pursue with our life, that we intend to execute. And some of us are less detailed than others. Like I've got a good friend in Chicago, and they were as meticulous as when they were first married before they had kids, they moved to Chicago and she had an opportunity to get her master's at Northwestern, get her MBA there, which is an expensive prospect. And they basically said, hey, if we do this, and we're going to borrow that money, then we are committed to both of us having full-time jobs and using our resources to pay for a nanny. That's just how our family is going to be. And they said okay, and they executed that plan and they've done that. And now they have three kids and a two bedroom condo in Chicago off of Lake Michigan. And their plan now is in 2026 or maybe 2027, they're going to move to the Atlanta suburbs to be closer to his family, to be closer to his mom. So they've got their plans mapped out like that. And maybe that's how you do your plans, and maybe it's not. But you all have them. You all have, if you have kids, you have hopes and dreams for your kids. It could be as minuscule as the kind of job you want them to have. It could be as broad as the kind of person that you want them to be. If you're married, you have hopes and dreams for that. If you have a career, you have hopes and dreams for that. But we all do this. As soon as we kind of come online somewhere in adolescence and realize that one day our life is going to be our own, we begin to imagine how we want to build it. Nobody in this space doesn't have plans and hopes and dreams for themselves, however broad or humble they might be. And I bring this up because the passage that we're looking at today in Mark chapter 8, if you have a Bible, you can turn to Mark chapter 8 verses 34 through 37 is where we're going to be focused. As we continue to move through Mark, we arrive this morning at one of the most challenging teachings in scripture. It's this incredibly high bar of demand that Jesus sets on our life. And it is one that we may not even be familiar with. It's one that I am certain that we don't consider enough, that we don't come back to enough, that we haven't wrestled with enough. It is one of the most impossibly high bars that Jesus sets in his ministry. And what we see in that bar is this, is that God has a dream for you, and it's better than yours. You have hopes and dreams for your life. You have things that you want to see come to fruition. Maybe you want to have a long marriage. Maybe you want to have a good career. Maybe you want to be a generous person. Maybe you want to be a good friend and a good member of the community. Maybe you want to see your kids flourish. These are all good things. Very few of you, if any, have terrible dreams for your life where you want to go do evil things. I'd like to be like Vladimir Putin. I don't think anybody's doing that. We all have good things that we want to see come to fruition. But here's what I'm telling you, and here's what I want you to begin to think about this morning. God has different plans for you, and they're better than yours. All right? With that preamble, let's look at, bless you, let's look at what Jesus has to say as he's teaching the crowds and the disciples, and let's look at what this high bar is for us. Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Here's what Jesus says. He gathers the crowd around him. He gathers the disciples around him. And he says, if anybody wants to be my disciple, they must take up their cross and follow me. Now there's a lot about that statement that we need to understand. As kind of an aside to the flow of the sermon to where I want to go, I do want to stop here. And I want to look at that word that Jesus chose to use. Whoever wants to be my disciple must take up their cross and follow me. Whoever wants to be my disciple must do what I'm about to ask you to do. And one of the things that we've done in Christianity, in Christian culture and church world, is we've taken the terms Christian and disciple and we've made them mean two different things. We've said that a Christian is someone who's got their foot in the door. A Christian is someone who's going to go to heaven. They are saved. They are in right standing before God. They believe God is their father and Jesus is their savior. The way we talk about what it means to become a Christian at grace is to simply believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. And once we believe those things, we are ushered into the kingdom of God as a Christian. And then at some point in our life, if we want to begin to take our faith very seriously, then we can become a black belt Christian, which is a disciple. Yeah? Like, Christianity is like discipleship light. We've separated those words. We've made them two different things. I'm a Christian. Are you a disciple of Christ? I don't know. That's pretty serious. Let's not get crazy. And listen, you know I'm right about that. And here's the thing. That is not how Jesus defined those terms. Jesus never used the word Christian. They were known as the followers of the way for years after his life. We made up Christian. Jesus called them disciples. And that's what he told the disciples to do. The end of his life, the great commission, go into all the world and make disciples. Right. Not Christians. Not converts. We think Christians are converts and disciples are people who take it seriously and try to make more converts. And to Jesus, he says, no. You are all the way in being a disciple of mine, following me, becoming more like me in character, doing the work that I do, becoming a kingdom builder, building the gospel, reaching people with the gospel. You are all the way in, or you're not following me. But we've made it possible to be a Christian who's not a disciple. And I just want to point out this morning, it's not the point of the sermon, but I just wanted to stop here and point out, that's not how Jesus defined it. So if in our heads we separate those terms, then we don't understand them the way that Jesus does. And we should have to decide if we think we're right or he's right. But he says, if you want to be my disciple, you must take up your cross and follow me. Meaning, you must take up your life, you must take up your sacrifice, you must take everything that you have and walk it to Calvary with me. And sacrifice your life with me for the sake of the gospel. The way we say it here is you must become a kingdom builder. Quit trying to build your own kingdom. Start getting on board with building God's kingdom by growing it in breadth and depth. He says, if you want to be my disciple, it's not about getting in the door and becoming a convert. It's about taking up your cross, taking up your life, taking up everything you thought you wanted, laying it down at the altar and following me and letting me do with your life what I would like to do with it. And he says it. It's very clear. It's explicit in the text. For the sake of the gospel. And he even uses the term, whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it. But whoever loses their life for me will save it. Jim Elliott, famous missionary, I believe in the 40s and the 50s and the 1900s, died trying to reach some Ecuadorian tribal people who were cannibals. And he said, prior to that trip in his writings, that he is no fool who gives up that which he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. It is absolutely in keeping with this teaching of Christ. If you call yourself my disciple, here's the tax. You give up your life. You give up, listen to me, you give up your hopes and your dreams and your plans. You give up the career you thought you wanted. You give up the goals for your children that you created. You give up who you thought you were going to be. You give up your finances and your time and your treasure. And you set those aside. And you go, Jesus, what would you have me do with these things? Are these the things that you want in my life? Or do you want now to choose a different life for me? But that's why I say that this is an incredibly high bar. Because he says, listen, if you want in, if you want in, let me tell you what the tax is. Let me tell you what it's going to cost you. It's so funny. When I was growing up, I used to hear this phrase all the time. Salvation's a free gift. Can't be earned, can't be deserved. And I'd always go like, yeah, but it does cost you something. Jesus tells you. It costs you your life. That American dream that you have, you've got to give that up. That's what Jesus is demanding. In fact, what we see from this text is Jesus insists that we trust his dream more than our own. Jesus in this text insists, you've got to trust my hopes and dreams and plans for your life more than you trust your own. That's the tax. You've got to give up your own. You've got to let me replace my vision for you for your vision for you, and you've got to go. And you've got to get to work sharing the gospel for the sake of the gospel. That's what he asks us to do. And this is a remarkably high bar, particularly for those of us who come into faith as adults, or even for those of us who begin to take our faith seriously as adults, because the toothpaste is out of the tube. We're already down the road. We got a mortgage. We got things that we're responsible for. We already have our life ordered, and so it's a really difficult thing to hand our life plans over to Jesus and go, if you want to change them, if you want me to do something else, if you want us to go somewhere else, to live somewhere else, if you want to change the way I raise my kids and what our values are, if you want to change the way I'm married, whatever you want to do, do it. I trust you. And in a sense, give up our plans for our future. That's a really tough ask. I sat with someone this week, a dear friend who in the last several years, her marriage has just become really, really bad. Just really awful and hard. And it's to a point now where it's very clear that the best thing for her and for her children are to not be in the house with him. Because that's not a good environment. And that's a really tough decision to make. And as I sat with her this week, she said, you know what? I'm not even really sad about him. I fell out of love with him years ago. But I'm grieving the life I thought I was going to have. And finally admitting that I'm not going to have it. She sat in the playroom and watched her children divide up the stuffed animals, deciding which ones were going to mommy's house and which ones were going to daddy's house. That was not her plan. That was not what she wanted to experience. When she walked down that aisle, her hopes and dreams and plans for her life were to be with him for the rest of their life, to see their grandkids and go on trips with them together. That was their hopes and dreams. And so now she's in the middle of mourning what she thought she was going to have. And so it's, I'm acknowledging, it's a big ask, midstream in life, to hand over everything that you had planned for yourself to Jesus. And so you do with this what you want. And if that causes you to mourn something you thought you wanted or you thought you needed or you had marshaled your resources around pursuing, then so be it. But Jesus says, go ahead and mourn. Get it over with. Because we've got work to do. And it's here that I want to say this. As we listen as adults and we try to process this and think through it and how to integrate it into our lives, what do we do with it if we want to apply the truth? As I mentioned a little bit ago, the reality of it is that the older you are, the more challenging this instruction becomes. Until you retire, then it's like, whatever you want, Jesus, I've got all the freedom. At least that's how I assume retirement is. I don't know. But the further down the road you are, the harder this gets to be obedient to. You know, I think about Zach and Haley over here. I just did their wedding in the fall. They don't look at them. They don't know anything about anything. They don't know nothing. But they're also at the cusp of life and can respond to this in a way that has more freedom than the way that others of us can respond to it. So we acknowledge that. Here's what else that implies because we have a lot of parents in the room who are still raising children. You can get ahead of this. You can get ahead of them creating their own hopes and dreams for themselves. You can start to raise them, reminding them all the time, God has plans for you. God made you on purpose. God's gifted you to do things in his kingdom. And it's my sacred duty as your parent to guide you to those. I remind you guys all the time of the verse in Ephesians, Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. My most sacred duty, I believe, as a father, is to tell Lily and to tell John as often as they will listen, you are Christ's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that you might walk in them. My sacred duty is to help you see those good works and walk in them. It sounds counterintuitive, especially for Americans. I don't want John and Lily to create their own dreams for their lives. I want their biggest dream for their life to be to walk with God. Hold me close and teach me to abide. We just sang it. I want their biggest goal for their life to be to abide in Christ. And that one day, when they get to heaven, to hear, well done, good and faithful servant. That's what I want for them. I'm really not very interested in them creating their own dreams. Because God has bigger ones for them that are better than theirs. And this makes sense, doesn't it? So I'll get there in a second. But to the parents, you raising your kids, you have a chance to get ahead of it now and to help them become young adults who know my life is not my own and God has plans for it and his plans are better than my plans so I'm going to follow them anyways. We can get ahead of this, guys, for the rest of us, as we try to integrate these things into our life. The problem is, that's exactly what we tend to do, isn't it? That's exactly what we tend to do. This isn't revolutionary information. It might be packaged in a way that we haven't thought about in a while, but it's not revolutionary information that Jesus asked for our life and wants us to live our life according to his plans. But when we hear that, trying to be good Christians who we don't yet know if we're disciples, we try to integrate Jesus' plans into the nooks and crannies of our plans, right? We try to take the life that we're already living and the path that we already chose. And then we try to work Jesus into those things so that being obedient to his word and choosing his dreams over ours doesn't cause very much pain. So we don't have to mourn a possible future. So we don't have to change a lot of things. So we don't get too uncomfortable. We just do a tiny little course correction and we feel better about ourselves because now we're giving Jesus this part of our life when that's not what he asks for. Take up your cross. Deny yourself. Follow me. If you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. If you don't, you will lose it. And here's the thing that I was thinking about as I was thinking through this. As we think about the idea of choosing our plans for our life or choosing Jesus' plans for our life. Your plans, I know this is a little whatever. So go with me or don't. But my hunch is your plans are just an amalgamation of who you were in childhood and who your parents were and who your friends were when you were in high school and college and you were developing your values. Your plans are just a hodgepodge of stuff that you receive from the people around you. If you had good parents, you wanted to be like them. If you had bad parents, you didn't want to be like them. And so that's at the correction of your life. If you had good friends in high school and college that had decent values, they pointed you in one direction. If you had bad friends, they pointed you in another direction. Very few of you ever sat down with a legal pad and research and wrote out a plan for your life in a thoughtful, meaningful way. Your plans are an accident, man. That's my point. Whatever you think you chose you wanted to intend, no, you didn't. No, you didn't. You stumbled into it by accident of birth and culture. But we cling so tightly to the plans and the dreams that we have for our life that were made by flawed, finite brains. When what Jesus is offering to us are plans that were made by a perfect, divine brain that sees everything all at once. And yet we still stubbornly and ignorantly choose our own. C.S. Lewis once said that the kingdom of God is like you're a child in your backyard. He said making mud pies, which I guess is what you did for fun in like the 1910s, is you're like, mom, I'm going to go play with mud. Okay, be safe. He said it's like being offered to go on a one-year holiday, on a one-year vacation around the world to see all the greatest sights in the world, and instead we choose to sit in the backyard and play with mud. Here's the thing about these plans that Jesus has for you, about his desire for you to spend your life building his kingdom, not your own. And here's why it's okay for him to ask him to give up everything you thought you wanted for what he wants, because they're better than yours. And Jesus is not a tyrant. He's not a dictator. He's not interested in making your life worse at all. In fact, we have verse after verse in Scripture that assures us that Jesus actually wants us to have a good life. One of my favorite verses that's in my office, I use it a lot, it brings me comfort a lot, is John 10.10. The thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come, Christ says. I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus wants you to, literally, he wants you to have the best life possible. Now here's the deal. He probably doesn't define best life like you currently do, but his definition is better than yours. A couple more, and then I'm going to make a point and we'll wrap up. David writes in two different places in Psalms. In one place he writes, better is one day in your courts than thousands elsewhere. And then in Psalm 1611 he says, at your right hand, God, there are pleasures forevermore. In your presence there is fullness of joy. Does this sound like a God who's interested in making you miserable? Does this sound like a God that doesn't have better plans for you than you do? Your plans are an accident. His are intentional and divine. Lastly, in Scripture, I often point out to you the Ephesians prayer, Ephesians 3, 14 through 19. We did a whole series on it last January. I pointed it out at the onset of this year. It's my prayer for grace and my prayer for you. And the heart of the prayer is that everything that happens in your life would conspire to bring you closer to God. That's the prayer. But I always stop when we go through it at 19 because you have to stop somewhere. But if you keep reading and you get to 20 and 21, you see one of the most amazing, encouraging little passages in scripture. It says this, it says, now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine according to his power that is at work within us. To him be the glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations forever and ever. Amen. He finishes up that segment of the letter by offering the prayer to God, by him who is able to do immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. I know it's a high bar for Jesus to set, to say, I want all of your hopes and dreams. I want all of your plans. I want you to sit down and prayerfully consider with your career if that's what I want you to be doing. Prayerfully consider with your finances, is that really how I want you to invest in those? Is that really the future that I have dictated to you, or is that what you want? Jesus asked that we sit down and we think through these very difficult things that the answers could potentially make us deeply uncomfortable. But here's what we know. He's going to hand you better plans. He's going to hand you better dreams. And here's what I know experientially. I would never ever pretend to be someone who's always living life according to Jesus' plan. I would never ever pretend to do that. And you may be thinking, you're a pastor. You've committed your life to Jesus' plan. Not really. I became a pastor because I wanted people to respect me and think I was cool. That's why I became a pastor. Just full disclosure, that came out in counseling like six years ago. I know that that's true. God has sanctified those motives. Now I don't care what you think. That's not true either. But God has sanctified those motives and helped me not do this for myself and for the sake of others. So I know what it is to not live according to God's plan. I know it very well. But I've been blessed in my life that there have been pockets where I did accept his plan over mine and I did live his plan for me rather than my own plans and I can tell you without reservation or hesitation or exception when I am living my life according to God's plan my life life is richer, fuller, better, more lovely, more wonderful, more alive. Without exception, my friendships get deeper. Without exception, my marriage is better. Without exception, I find it easier to get up and I'm more motivated to do the things that God has put in front of me that day. Without exception, I hold my children tighter. Without exception, I cry more happy tears and experience a fullness of life that never comes when I live by my plans. And I don't want to paint a falsely rosy picture here. You can live according to God's plans and experience pain. You can mess up and pursue your own plans that weren't God's plans, and as a result, you're in a ditch somewhere. As a result, your life got sidelined. As a result, you were in the middle of great pain and hardship. But make no mistake about it, that's probably not because you were ardently following God's plan for your life. It's probably because you're following your own and he's trying to get your attention. But those of you who have lived your life according to God's plans for even a season cannot deny that that season in your life was one of the best ones. And that those seasons are some of the best ones. And there will be pain in the midst of living according to God's plan. We do not judge the raindrops of tragedy because we're believers. But, on balance, if you invest your life following God's plan for you rather than your own, if you take up your cross and follow Jesus and give up your life for the sake of the kingdom, I promise you, you will live a better life if you do it. I promise you it will be more rich and more full and more lovely. I promise you it will be immeasurably more than you can ask or imagine for yourself. I promise you. So as we finish this simple thought, and then I'll pray. Jesus is asking for your life. Do you trust him with it? Do you trust him with it? Let's pray. Father, you are lovely and good and wonderful and we are grateful. God, it is a scary thing to hand our hopes and dreams over to anyone else outside of our control. But Father, I pray that we would trust you with ours. Help us trust you with our children, with our careers, with our financial goals, with our friendships, with all the things we want to accomplish, all the things we want to acquire, and all the things we want to accumulate, God. I pray that we would trust you with those things. Give us the strength and the courage to ask hard questions and to receive hard answers and replace our cruddy hopes and dreams with your incredible ones and help us be people who live our lives for you. In Jesus' name, amen.