Sermons tagged with Scripture

Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Erin, and I get the privilege of being one of the pastors here. And thank you for being here this morning, whether you're joining us online or whether you're here in person. We are just grateful that you chose to carve a little bit of your Sunday out to spend it with us. This morning, we are actually continuing in our series, as Mikey kind of reminded us, in Gentle and Lowly, where we've actually been looking at the character of Christ. We've looked at his compassion. We've looked at his humanity. We've looked at him as our gentle priest. And last week, we looked how he is our intercessor, as well as our advocate before the Father. And this week, we're going to jump ahead. We're now in chapter 18, and today we're actually looking at his yearning bowels. That one took a minute to sink in, didn't it? For those of you all that giggled and or wanted to laugh but chose not to, may that middle school boy that lives inside of you remain there forever because they bring such joy and interest to life. And for those of you that the yearning bowels may have brought up unfortunate thoughts of explosive bowels, I apologize on that front as well. And I hope that in this morning I can erase those visions from your head. And you can't blame me for today's topic. Nate holds that one firmly on his shoulders because he's the one that picked up the book and went through chapter by chapter and decided what he felt is what Grace needed to hear. So he's the one that chose that y'all needed to hear about yearning bowels today. But in actuality, if you dig into the chapter, what the chapter is about is about God's yearning love for us, about his tender and his compassionate heart that reaches in and grabs us in the depths of our sin and wants to pull us out. And as I read this and I continue to read over this, I have to admit, and I stand before you very transparent as one of the pastors and say, I struggle with this. And I struggle with what this says. I know it to be theologically the truth but I have moments when I look at it and say hmm there's a God that loves me down to the depths of his being to his core. He loves me that much and I struggle with And I ask sometimes, how is that truly possible? For those of you that know me, this next statement will not come as a shock, but I am a people pleaser by nature. And for as long as I can remember, I've sought the approval of others. It's just who I am. It is part of my wiring, I truly believe. If you go into all the personality tests and you look at all the things, like I'm a helper. I don't know all the numbers and letters. I just don't. But that's just who I am. That's how I'm wired. I also think environmentally there was an impact. My dad was in food retail. We moved a ton when I was a kid. I was in four different elementary schools before I hit fifth grade. So I spent a lot of time trying to fit in, trying to find new friends, trying not to be labeled as, you know, the new girl. That's not something I wanted to carry. I just wanted to fit in and be part of a group or like just a little cluster. The other thing is, is that I didn't in those elementary years have a foundation in God's love for me. I grew up with parents who were believers, but we were also a family that were Christers. For those of you that don't understand that terminology, we went to church on Christmas and Easter. That was my exposure to the church. Good or bad, again, that's just what it was. I also had a brother who played travel hockey, so we were always on the road. These were choices that my parents made, and I don't hold any of it against them by any means, but I think it helped to form who I am and how I continue to do. Because from childhood and even into adulthood, my world's been marked by a lot of striving. This striving to be accepted, this striving to prove myself, to somehow earn a place. And then after I became a Christian, that striving also fell into, I think, and shaped how I viewed God. I knew that I loved him. I knew I believed in who he is and who he says he was. I knew that what scripture said about him was 100% true, but I still doubted sometimes that he could love me the way that he said he did in scripture. Because y'all, I knew I'm messy, I'm stinky, I carry lots of baggage. I carry lots of shame, lots of regret for my past. And so for me to think about that kind of love hitting home for me is hard sometimes to wrap my head around. And so as I was continuing to prepare, Nate and I have met a few times. And again, this might be shocking to you all. He came to me a couple times and said, you have too many words. You need to parse it down just a little bit. But he challenged me to find one thing, just one thing that out of this chapter and out of what I've studied, that I would hope that you guys would walk away with. And so, Nate, I apologize ahead of time because in looking for my one thing, I may have veered off course from what we had talked about originally. So this is what we've got, though. But he challenged me to think about one thing for you all to walk out of here with today as we talk about God's love for us. And the thing that hit me somewhere in all of this was from John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. And what that says is, a new commandment I give you, love one another as I have loved you, so you must love one another. And by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. Y'all, when I read that, when I went back to it and I read over it and I read over it again, and it hit me right in the face. How is it that we can love others if we don't believe that he loves us? He states in that commandment, he wants us to love others like he's loved us. But if I doubt or if I don't believe in the love that he's given me, how then in turn can I give that love out to others? And I think that's why our world today is starving. It's starving for the kind of love that Jesus offers to us. This love that's real. It's not a political correctness or tolerance. It's not a kind of love that is social niceties, but it's the kind of love that is rooted in stays, forgives, it heals. So when he says for us to love others the way he's loved us, he's not asking us to try to do better. I think what he's doing is he's inviting us to be transformed. Transformed by the love that he has for us first. Because see, we can't love others like Jesus until we trust that we're loved by Jesus. This is it. If you hear nothing else I say today, this is it. That we ourselves can't love like he asks us to love others until we trust that we're truly loved by him. And this love that he has for us and is asking us to give out to others, it's not a cautious love. It's not a distant love. But it's a love that is actually drawn into our need and our messy. Which that's the part that I think for a lot of us is scary, right? So when we're at those places down deep, and this is where I said before, I have messy, I have lots of background baggage, right? But that's the place that Jesus wants to meet us and dig in, in that place of sin and love us all the more. So in those places where we feel the most unworthy or the most unlovable, the most ashamed, he wants to meet us there. We have to learn how to wrap our heads around that. And I think that there's a lot of us in this room that may be like, yeah, well, he extends that to others around us. I've seen it. I've seen it. I've seen that love extended to other people, but he's not going to give that to me because, you know, not after what I've done, not after the fact that I have yelled at my children for the 10,000th time, not after I have attempted and yet failed one more time to quit alcohol or drugs or pornography. Or after I have had the abuse that I have in my past. He can't love me there. He can't. And so instead of resting in his love, what we do when we put up that wall that says he can't get into those down, dark, dirty places with us is we start striving to earn love in other places. We have somehow to prove to others around us that we're lovable, that we're worthy of the love that he has or that somebody else has. I'm lovable. If I just keep doing, if I keep striving, if I keep somehow, somebody's going to think that I'm worthy. But when we doubt, when we doubt, when we strive, it doesn't do us any good. And in actuality, it makes us poor lovers of the people around us. He calls us to love others the way that he's loved us. But if we're striving to get that love from other people and from other places, then we are in a place where we have no capacity to give love if we're always striving to try to grab it from something. And when we doubt that we're loved, we tend to withhold our love from those around us. Because you know what? It took me an awful lot to feel this little bit of love that I've got right now. I'm not ready to give that up. And so we hold on and we're not doing a good job in loving other people. And so when you look at how Christ loved, we go back to where he was when he gave this commandment. He's in the upper room. It's the night before he's to go to the cross. The night before he makes the sacrifice of his life where he takes on your sin, my sin, your neighbor's sin, past, present, and future. So that we can have a relationship with him and that we can in turn be with him forever. So it's the night before he's getting ready to do that for us. He's sitting in a room with his 12 best friends and he knows already that Judas is about to betray him. He knows that Peter will deny him and he knows that by the time that the sun rises, all of the disciples will have scattered. He knows that. And yet he makes a very conscious choice to kneel down and to wash their feet. Y'all, if that was me and my humanness, that would not have been my response. Think about it. I might've been angry. I could have been, you know, or like, like, just not going to talk about this. You're going to be hateful, ugly people to me here in about 12 hours. I'm done with you. But that's not how he chooses to respond. He chooses with love and action. He chooses to serve when it is the least deserved. And he chooses to move towards those who are failing him. He knows it. And that's what he does for us too, right? He moves towards us in those places where he knows we're going to fail him, where we're not doing what we feel or what we should be doing. And then he continues on and he says to them, as I have loved you, so you must love one another. So he's just knelt down. He's just given them that love that they didn't deserve, that love that met them in this place of complete and total failure. And he says, have to receive it before you can give it because love starts with receiving before it becomes doing. We get that backward all the time in our humanness. We get that backward all the time. When we're not anchored in his love for us, all we end up doing is making ourselves exhausted making ourselves defensive and disappointed I said before that I am a people pleaser and one of the things that people pleasers do so beautifully is they put others before themselves quite often to your detriment. Many of you guys know that my parents passed away within 17 months of each other, and sandwiched in between there, there was lots of running back and forth to Pinehurst, lots of hospital visits, lots of taking on responsibility and helping my dad and aunt. There was a whole litany of things that I could add in there. In there also, I was trying to be a good wife. I was trying to be a good mom. I was trying to be a good pastor here at Grace. And I can stand before you and tell you I failed miserably at all of that during that period of time. It wasn't pretty. I was short with my family. I know I let people here down. I let my coworkers down. It wasn't pretty. And I know it. And I was constantly running. I had my kids later admit to me that there were things that they didn't tell me during that time because they didn't want to add anything else to my plate. And as a mama, for those of the other mamas in the room, you know that just breaks your heart to think that they just can't come to you. I just was not a good human at that moment or during this time. And I can also admit to the fact that I would get phone calls periodically from my dad after my mom had passed. And I remember seeing his name pop up on the screen and literally just staring at the phone and in moments dreading answering it. I love my dad to my core, but I knew to answer it there would be questions and he was very needy at those moments and I didn't have anything left to give. I was done. I was exhausted. I did answer it, by the way. But still, in that moment, there was always that thought and that hesitation as I looked at the screen because I was like, oh, no. And the thing is, I neglected myself, and I realize now that we can't, you can't pour out what you haven't first received. I was working from an empty cup, a very empty shell, because I was running myself absolutely ragged. And this goes back to the fact that we can't love like Jesus if we don't trust that we're loved by Jesus. If I'm not filled up by Jesus because I trust that he loves me, I am not loving others well. And I think that there's a lot of us in the world like this today. And I think that this emptiness or this constant striving and this constant motion trying to earn something, trying to pour ourselves out from empty cups is why the world can feel like it does sometimes, where we're living in this place where we're quick to divide and quick to assume things and slow to forgive. And we see that often sliding into the church as well because the church is made up of a lot of humans, right? And it slides into the church as well. You don't need me to tell you that. You all have seen it at some point in time. All you have to do is look online. And it makes you sad. And I think back to what Jesus said about his disciples loving others. And I wonder to us too, if we classify our followers, ourselves as followers of Jesus, what would it be like if the people of Jesus were known not for being right or righteous or all the things you could add there, but for being rooted. Being so secure in his love that we freely give out our love to others. That we are so rooted in his love that we no longer compete, but we serve, that we're so rooted in his love that we no longer compare ourselves to others, but we celebrate each other, and that somehow when we're so rooted that we no longer condemn, but we just choose to forgive and to offer grace. Because I think then the world will start to take notice. And the world's going to recognize us as Jesus followers by our love for one another. Our love, this love that is so rooted deep inside of us, is meant to be living evidence of who he is. It's meant to be that living evidence to the rest of the world that he is real and he is love. Not our striving love, not our performing love. That's not the kind of love that we need here. What we need here is that secure love, the love that is flowing from a heart that is rooted and anchored in grace. And I know some of you all are now looking at me going, okay, that sounds really good. And you've not met my mother-in-law or my father-in-law or whoever it may be, my coworker, my brother, my sister, whoever it may be that says, and you're going, but loving like Jesus is going to be really hard in those circumstances. Yeah, it is because we're human and we run out of patience and we run out of kindness and we run out of, in a lot of cases, just run out of ourselves. But I go back to that commandment that he gave us. And I don't think he gave it to us to be impossible. I think he gave it to us as a reminder and an invitation to draw us back to him and to remind us that that same love that he gives and that same love that saved us is now going to be the love that empowers us to love others. And that that love and that grace that he met us with in the middle of our messy, stinky mess is now going to be the love and grace that helps us to meet others in their mess. It's an invitation and a reminder that even with those that are super hard to love, we can't work it up sometimes. We can't just walk into the situation going, I'm going to love them better today. I am. I'm going to love them better today. It doesn't always work that way because our ability to love doesn't come from some sort of willpower. I truly believe that it comes from being willing to be loved. I had the opportunity last week to hang out with some sorority sisters. We did this the year before. It's just a sweet time. We get to reconnect. This year, my old roommate got to join us, and I was so excited. I had not seen her in probably seven or eight years. And Shelly and I got to actually room together again on this trip, and we spent many nights just chatting and talking and catching up. And I asked her about her sister and how things were going. Shelly had a sister who about 15 years ago had a brain tumor, multiple surgeries, etc. Left her sister with basically some traumatic brain injury. She had short-term memory issues. Long-term memory was very much intact. Her physical ability is very much intact. So she could live somewhat independently. It was always nice just to have some people around to check on her. And about seven years ago, she moved up to be close to Shelly and her family. Lived a couple houses away, so very involved in her life, constantly looking after, checking in on her, and all the things. In 2022, her sister caught COVID, and because of her compromised health, landed her in the hospital for a great deal of time. It accelerated some of her decline. And because of that, she ended up in a rehab facility. And Shelly's comment in all of this to me was, I don't understand why it's her and it's not me. There was a lot of guilt in that respect. And, you know, we talked about it, and she's a believer as well. And I'm like, I don't have an answer for you on that one. There isn't an answer for why it's her and not you. And then she went on to say that one of the things recently that Amy has started to do is that every time they go to visit, Amy just looks at her and says, God has been so good to me. And it's at every visit. And Shelly looked at me and she said, I don't know how she can say that. After 15 years and all she's gone through and all the struggles and all the things, I don't know sometimes how she can say that. But this time I knew I could look at Shelly right in the face and go, I know exactly why she says that. Because of you. You are her personal representative of God's love. You who shows up and loves on her unconditionally. You who takes her out. You who does all the things for her and with her. To her, you represent God's love. So when she says, God has been so good to me, she can say it because of the way that you love her. And I hope, Grace, that we can be that to other people as well. Nate often states that we can't be the big C church, but we can be Grace. And we as individual people can impact, we can work on ourselves, we can impact our families, we can also then impact this body and the communities around us. And so when you think about Shelly and you think about her willingness to love so unconditionally the way she did. I think about us and myself. This is me talking to myself too. But what would it be like if we chose to believe the best about one another because we know that that's what love does? What would it be like if we showed up for people who were hurting? Even when we didn't want to because their hurting is hard. But we did it because we know that that's what Jesus would do. What would it look like if we were forgiving before it's earned? Because we know that that's what grace would do. And what would it be like if we had all the patience with those that are just new or learning? Because again, we know what grace and love would do. Because I think every act of love then becomes this small reflection of the greater love that we've received. Because we can only do that, however, when we're sure of his love for us. And when we're secure in his love, we stop striving to earn it and we start living to spread it. And so today, I don't believe in my being that this is an invitation for us to walk out these doors and try to love better. I don't think that that's what this is. I think what this is is an invitation to us to let ourselves be loved deeper. To receive his love for us. All that Aaron and the team sang about. How much he loves us. That's what we have to receive first. And when we truly trust that we're loved by him. Freely, fully, without any condition. That will be the moment that we will turn and love others like he loves us. So we can't love others like Jesus until we trust that we're loved by Jesus. And so what is it, Grace, that you guys can do this week as you walk out these doors to root yourself deeper in the love that he has for you today? And will y'all pray with me? Thank you. Thank you, Lord, that you love us. Thank you, Lord, that you give so freely of your love. We just ask that we are willing to receive that, that we put down ourselves, that we quit striving to earn our love from someplace else and quit striving to earn your love. But somehow, by staying rooted in you, that we learn how very deeply you love us. That down deep in our core and our soul, that you love us that down deep in our core and our soul that you love us that much and by doing so challenging us to then take that love and spread it to those around us thank you Lord for your love thank for your son. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you yet, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Real quick, before I just dive in, I believe next week we're going to Mexico. Is this correct? Yeah? Raise your hand if you're going. Pipe down, Howard. All right. Good, good. We got a crew that goes. You need to cheer for something. It's not going to be UNC right now. I'll tell you that. Sorry. Sorry. That was not fair. That was uncalled for. I repent in dust and ashes, Howard. But this is something I failed to do. They're going. They've been going for years. It's a good core group of people every year. A couple new people go. But while they're here and while we can do it, let's just pause in the service and pray for them and their team as they prepare to go that God will do some incredible things in and through them as they go. So pray with me for our Mexico team, and then we will get started. Father, thank you for impressing upon the people of grace, the very heart of grace, your heart for others. Thank you for this Mexico trip. Thank you for what it means to us and the relationships that we've built there. Thank you for the people who are going for the first time and for the 20th time. I pray that your hand of protection would be on them. I pray that meaningful relationships would be developed and cultivated. I pray that your love would be felt both by the folks we're going to see, but also by the folks who are going, and that they would mutually minister to one another, and that it would be a good trip with great stories. We pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Speaking of praying for people as we dive into what I think is part five of our Gentle and Lowly series, something that happens almost every Sunday morning that most of you have no idea about is something that humbles me tremendously. Most every Sunday morning, there's a group of elders and resting elders. And resting elders is someone who served as an elder before, and they're not an elder now, they're a resting elder. They get together in my office at about 935, 940. Now, they didn't do it this morning, and all of you who normally do it are here, so I don't know what gifts. Maybe you just didn't care about this particular service. But almost every Sunday, not by my request, they get together in my office, and they pray for the church, and they pray for me. And being a pastor is a tremendously humbling experience in some ways because it is with great regularity that I look out on the faces that I see on Sundays or interact with you in the lobbies. The lobby, we don't have more than one. And just feel tremendously humbled that you guys choose grace, that you guys choose to listen to me. I don't take that for granted, and I don't take for granted the men and the women who gather in my office, each of whom I respect deeply, and they pray for me, and they pray for the church. And another thing that happens on Sunday morning that you probably don't know about is Aaron Gibson, Gibby, and I get here early. I get here usually beforehand, but we both get here early. And one of the things we do before we engage in our morning is we sit down in my office and we just say, what are you bringing in here this week? What do you got? What's going on in your life? What other things are you thinking about besides what job God has for you to do this morning of preaching or leading worship? Because I don't know if you know this about your pastors, but you guys have had the Sunday mornings where you're coming in here with your hair on fire. You and your spouse had a bad day yesterday. You're upset with each other. Things aren't good right now. Your kids are driving you nuts. I walked in the door this morning and there was a mom walking her children out to go next door. And I saw her and she's usually a pretty chipper person. And I said, hey, how you doing? And she goes, I'm here. It was one of those mornings. We've had those mornings where you're yelling at the kids, you're stressed out, work is hard, there's stresses in life that are impacting you, and you come in on two wheels and then you sit down and then you get a moment of quiet. Well, I have news for you. I don't know if you know this about your pastors, but we're people too. And we have mornings like that. We have Sundays like that. And I love knowing that my friend Aaron is going to pray for me and I can tell him anything that's going on in my life and, and he will pray for it. And I love him knowing that he can have whatever's going on in his life and I'm going to pray for him. And some days we'll look at each other and I'll go and one of us will go, I don't have it. And the other person will go, well, I'm feeling it. I got you. Let's go. And the spirit is great. He always shows up. He always gives us the strength when we don't have it. But I love knowing that I have him to intercess for me. And I love knowing that we have people who gather to pray for grace because it reminds me that it's not all on me. It's not all on me to preach a great sermon, to be a good leader, to do all the things. I have people who care about this place wrapped around me and gathered around us that are lifting us up too. And I know that many of you pray for me and for the service and for the church. I got a text this morning from my dad, hey, praying for you. And I can't tell you how much it lifts you up to know that you're being prayed for. And I say all that because you also have someone praying for you. We see this person in Hebrews 7, verse 25, where the author writes, Therefore he, being Jesus, is able to save completely, or to the uttermost, those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Hebrews tells us that Jesus still has a job. And his job is to sit at the right hand of the Father and intercede for you. And the way that the author of Gentle and Lowly explains this, I think, is a beautiful way to understand it. Jesus is quite literally praying for you at all times. We have this misnomer of an idea that Jesus did his work. He came and he lived a perfect life and he died a perfect death and he hung on the cross for you and for me. And now he's just sitting in heaven, biding his time until act two, when in Revelation 19, he comes crashing out of the clouds and is coming to wreck shop and make all the wrong things right and sad things untrue. It'll be the greatest day in history. We have this misnomer, I think, sometimes without really cognitively being aware of it, that Jesus did the work then, and he's going to do the work later, and right now he's just chilling out. Certainly not blessing Falcons football. I'll tell you that's what he's not doing. But he's just hanging out in heaven. Not true. Hebrews tells us. He's an intercessor for us. He's actively praying for you. And I don't know how to explain in his divinity, his ability to pray for you and to pray for me and to pray for him and to pray for her at the same time in the same way. But that's what Jesus does. He prays for you constantly. He intercedes for you constantly. He's lifting you up constantly. And Jesus' intercession reminds us that it isn't all on us. Knowing that Jesus is praying for you should remind you in the same way when I'm reminded people are praying for me that it's not all on me. Jesus is praying for you. It's not all on you. Your marriage is not all on you. Your job is not all on you. Your parenthood is not all on you. Your friendships, your stability, your health are not all on you. Your success or failure is not all on you. Your moral goodness, your sanctification process, becoming more like Christ in character, is not all on you. Your moral goodness, your sanctification process, becoming more like Christ in character, is not all on you because we have Jesus interceding for us on our behalf, literally praying to God for you. And time, if he's your constant intercessor, that Jesus prays for you when you don't have the strength or the inclination to pray for yourself? Last week, we talked about Jesus is gentle with sinners. He's gentle with those who sin ignorantly and he's gentle with those who sin on purpose, the wanderers. Do you know that in your season of wandering, and maybe you're in one right now, And maybe you haven't prayed for yourself in a long time. Maybe you haven't prayed for your kids in a long time. Maybe it's been a minute since you prayed for your spouse. Maybe you've been floating for a while, not really spiritually engaged. Or maybe I was talking to a friend this week who told me that he was just dry. I want to want Jesus. I just don't right now. And I don't know what to do. Maybe you're in a season of dryness. Maybe it's simply been a minute since you prayed for the people and the things in your life, including yourself. And maybe when I say that and you go, oh, shoot. Yeah. Maybe it hits you right between the eyes. Maybe you can relate to it in part. But I think our reaction to that, to our attention being arrested to that truth, man, it has been a minute since I prayed for my spouse. It has been a minute since I prayed for myself. It has been a minute since I prayed for my kids. Do you know who's never stopped praying for those things on your behalf? Jesus. Even in your wandering, even when you're far off, do you know who's praying on your behalf that you would come back to the Father? Jesus is. Do you know who is your strength when you don't have it? Who says your prayers when you don't say them? Jesus does. And his prayers, I'm so grateful for the prayers of the elders and the resting elders. And sometimes I sit in and I listen to them. And I love hearing people pray who've walked with God for a lifetime. I love hearing people who have a generation or two on me pray. I love to listen to that. Sometimes they invite me to pray. I'm like, I don't want to. I just really prefer to listen to y'all pray. I want to hear how you talk to God. And I covet those prayers because they pray better than me, right? But do you know how much better than them Jesus prays? And he's praying that for you, over you. And it brings us to this principle that I think is foundational to Christianity. It's a quote from the book. Dane puts it like this. It is the most counterintuitive aspect of Christianity that we are declared right with God, not once we begin to get our act together, I'm going to read it again. We have this mindset sometimes about pursuing the Savior, about our spiritual health and journey, that we kind of need to get our act together before we can really go to the Father, before I can really go to small group, before I can really start to consistently go to church, before I can really engage in any sort of service. I really have to get my act together. I have to clean myself up before I can go to Jesus, because if I go like this, I'm not going to be good enough for him. So I have to make myself a little bit better so that I feel better about going to Jesus. It's this silly idea. We treat it. We treat sometimes going to Jesus like I do going to the doctor. Now, listen, I'm going to say some things here. And what I don't want is 30 moms momming me after the service about my need to go to the doctor. So please don't make me regret this. Okay. I'm 44. I'm, I'm getting old. And those of you who are older than me and you think, Oh, that's not old. I mean, what are you calling me? I'm not calling you anything. I'm just telling you I'm old. Okay. Matter of fact, this week, um, I met with our architect, which by the way, there's going to be an email coming out this week that's going to share about the progress that we're making towards getting this building built around the corner. I know that there hasn't been a lot of information coming out, but there has been a lot of work being done trying to get some certainty around what we can share. And so that's going to come out this week and then hopefully more news after that. But I saw our architect this week, and I hadn't seen him in about two years. And the first thing he said to me walking down the hall, I said, hey, Jim. And he goes, hey, you got a few more grays in that beard, don't you? Thanks, buddy. Good to see you. This dude's like 75, whatever. I just want to be like, Jim, you're just blanket old. Like, I'm getting there. You just, anyways. I'm getting old is my point. And I know that at 44, I need to go to the doctor. I didn't have, you're not going to believe this, some of you will. I did not have a primary care physician until I was 39 years old because I had to go for the gout, right? I had to go for that. But after I had Dr. Mann until I was 18 years old. And then after that, nothing. I went to urgent care like twice to get a Z-Pak for a cold. No doctors for me. I'm not doing annual checkups. I hate going to the doctor, but I'm getting old and I know that I need to go. But here's my thought and here's why I haven't gone. If I can just lose a little bit more weight and do a little bit more exercise, then I'm going to have a better blood pressure and all my levels are going to be good and I'm going to get a clean bill of health and that's what I want. So if I can just get myself ready a little bit, get my act together, then I can go to the doctor. I don't have anything to worry about right now. If I go to the doctor, he's just going to be like, you're fat and sedentary. And I'm going to be like, yeah, I know actually not anymore. Cause I've lost a lot of weight since last year, but that's why I didn't go last year. Cause I was trying to lose the weight. Now that I lost the weight, I should probably go. But he's, he, he's just going to say you're sedentary and out of shape. Like you need to do things. And I know that I need to do things. So my thought is, let me just do the things and then I'll get a good bill of health, right? And I think we treat Jesus like I treat the doctor. I just need to take care of some stuff and then I will go to him. Then I'll be ready. Then I'll be acceptable to him. Now here's the difference. I can actually get myself in better shape and get a better doctor's report when I go. That is possible. It is not possible to clean yourself up to make you adequate for Jesus to get a good bill of health from him. The only way to go to Jesus is to finally put down your sword and admit that you can't get yourself in good enough shape to go see him. We have to fall helplessly into his arms and say, Jesus, I know that I'm not enough. We sing that song. I'm broken, but I'm not forsaken. I am who you say I am. Jesus says we're a child of God. He says he loves us. He says, as Aaron pointed out, that he calls us and he purposes us and he knows who we are and he knows where our shortcomings are and he intercedes for those things. We are who he says we are. But we will never get ourselves there by trying, by white knuckling and being try-hards. We have to fall into the beautiful, glorious, comforting intercession of Christ. So, Christians, those of us that would seek to pursue righteousness need to know that our pursuit of righteousness begins and ends with our pursuit of Jesus. Our pursuit of righteousness begins and ends with our pursuit of Jesus. Our pursuit of righteousness begins and ends with our pursuit of Jesus, of joining in with him in that intercessory prayer, of agreeing with him what he must be praying over us and over our families and over our children and over our careers and over our friendships and over our relationships and over our marriages. If we want our marriage to be better, it begins and ends with our pursuit of Christ. If we want to be better grandparents, if we want to be better parents, if we're realizing, oh my goodness, I haven't prayed for my kids in a long time. I haven't prayed for my spouse in a long time. Where do you think the impetus to pray for others comes from? It comes from a pursuit of Jesus so that he is filling you up so that your cup now spills out on those around you. I love that verse. I remind you of it often. And from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. It's like Jesus is so full of grace that it spills out of him and onto us. And if we are there for it, if we are there to receive it, if we will pursue him, if we will be in relationship with him, our cup will be filled to overflowing and we will pour that grace out ourselves on others. And so what I would say to you gently and a non-accusatory way, because it certainly applies to me too, if it's been a minute since you've prayed for yourself, since you've prayed for your children, since you've prayed for your spouse, since you've prayed for your friends, if it's been a minute since you intercessed on someone else's behalf, perhaps it's because you have not been pursuing Jesus consistently either, and so your cup is not full. If we want to be the kind of people who reflect Jesus's intercession for us and pray for others in our life that we love very much and pray for things that matter a lot to us. If we want to be people of prayer, the impetus to pray begins and ends with our pursuit of Christ. So if we're dry there in our prayer life, my suspicion is that we are dry here in our pursuit of Christ. And then maybe we're just trying to lower our blood pressure just a little bit more before we go to him. Our pursuit of righteousness, of all things good in life, begins and ends with our pursuit of Christ and leaning into his intercession. But this morning, I've coupled two things together because Jesus does not just intercede for us. First John chapter two, verse one tells us of another role of Christ that I think is all the more encouraging. John writes this, my dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. He says, I write this to you so that you don't sin. But if you do, we have in Jesus advocacy. If you do sin, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, not simply interceding for you, but he is advocating for you in the places where you do sin. And when I say he's advocating for you, there are times in my house when I have to advocate for John because Jen is just mean to him and I have to defend him. John is four and a half. He's four and a half, right? Sure. He's four. I don't know if we've gotten to half yet. Half years matter a lot under 10. But he's all boy, man. He just like, if he doesn't run around enough, he just kind of gets, like have you ever seen a dog get the zoomies and just buzz around a room? Which is another reason why they're dumb. John gets this energy coursing through his veins where he just has to scream. This is not something that we experience with Lily. Lily, when she was four, sit down and color for like an hour and let mommy and daddy talk. John, no chance. No chance. That kid is annoying. He is there all the time. And we love him. He's hilarious. But he just has this energy. And one of the things that he loves to do is show you how hard he hits. And he's been told, just hit daddy. You can hit daddy whenever you want. Do not hit your sister. Do not hit your mom. Just hit me, whatever you want. And so he'll come up, and I can see it in his face. I know that he's just about to get me. And he just, I kind of, you know, I kind of turn and just kind of let him get the leg and he just will roar and beat on my leg for like 30 seconds. Stick around. He'll probably do it after the service today when he sees me. But sometimes he and Lily get to horsing around and Lily's playing with them and they're having fun and they're laughing and giggling. then that just boy rage will come up and he'll just start wailing on her. And then she gets mad and she'll cry or she'll cry out and she'll play act like it hurt and then you have to put up with that and like whatever. Watch you stub your toe harder than that. But it's all a big deal. And before she can react, because he's about to get walloped, you know, he's about to get taken out. Before she can react, I'll have to jump in and I intercede for John. I advocate for him. And I say, Lily, he's four. He's not trying to hurt you. He's not trying to be mean. He's playing. This is how he plays. This is how boys play. So don't be mad at him. Be nice to him and just know that he doesn't understand what he's doing. And then I have to pull John aside and say, this is why we don't hit the girls. We hit daddy. When you feel that, you hit me. Okay, Daddy. And then he hits me. But I have to advocate for him. Hey, Lily, he doesn't know what he's doing. Let's calm down the anger. This is what Jesus does for us in our sin. And I think that that's remarkable because it is in our sin when he advocates. It is when we mess up that he somehow doubles down on this intercession and is in the ear of God saying, hey, I've covered him. I've covered her. They're good. They're righteous. They're lovely. They're your children. They don't know what they're doing. There's that famous advocacy when he's hanging on the cross, when he looks at the Roman soldiers and he says, Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. This is a picture of the advocacy of Christ. And the thing that I love, and I would just make this point real quick. So the way that we think about it is intercession is proactive and advocacy is reactive. Intercession is proactive. It's always happening. He's always praying to the Father on your behalf. It's ongoing. Advocacy is reactive. Advocacy happens when you sin. It doesn't happen when you're healthy. It doesn't happen when you're righteous. It doesn't happen when you're walking the right path and you're doing the right things and your cup is overflowing and you're giving grace out to everybody around you and you're praying for everybody around you and you're following Jesus' intercessory model for the people in your life. That's not when he advocates. He advocates when you're low. He advocates when you mess up. The mornings that you wake up and you feel like a failure and you don't want to look anybody in the eye and you don't want to look in the mirror. Those are the mornings when Jesus is fighting for you the hardest. Those are the mornings when he advocates for you most. I write this so that you do not sin. But if you do, you have an advocate in Jesus. Someone who is in the ear of the Father advocating for you, Father, forgive them. They're your child. We love them. And I thought about this this week, too. And maybe some of you have gone there in your head. Why is it that I need an intercessor and an advocate between me and God the Father? Is God the Father so disposed towards wrath towards me that I need Jesus there to be running interference the way that I get in between Lily and John when John's taking things too far? Is God so predisposed towards justice and wrath and anger that he needs Jesus to talk him off the ledge when he watches us do the thing again? And this is where the Bible gets really tricky and understanding the person of God gets really tricky because it's difficult to understand. God can't fully explain himself to us. God can't fully explain himself to us any more than I can explain literature to John. I just got done. This is going to, I almost decided not to share this because it sounds like I'm bragging, but I just got done reading a book. Okay. Like a whole book. I read East of Eden by John Steinbeck. And I love reading the classics. I love reading books that have been in circulation for more than 50 years, because if they, if they are, there's a reason. And the thing I love reading books that have been in circulation for more than 50 years because if they are, there's a reason. And the thing I love about old literature, about books that are 50, 200 years old, whatever, is the incredible insights the authors have into the human psyche. The incredible things that they have to say in those books. The commentary on humanity that's so nuanced where it will sometimes articulate thoughts that I've been loosely aware of for a decade and then here in a paragraph it's lucid and detailed and cogent and helpful. And it articulates things in a way that I would have never done on my own. It teaches me. If you guys were to ask me what was East of Eden about, I could give you probably a longer answer than you actually wanted, so I would not advise that. But if John asked me what it was about, how much would I have to dumb down the plot? How much would I have to simplify it for him to get even an iota of an idea of what that 650-page book was about? That's been in circulation for 75 years. Right? John can no more understand literature. And trust me, my understanding of it is incredibly rudimentary. I regret that either I didn't take English literature in college or I didn't pay attention. I can't remember which one it was. But I've never sat in a classroom with a professor telling me how to plumb the depths of literature. How to really, what was happening in the author's life and what the point was and what the critics say and how deep you can go. I have a very rudimentary understanding of it. It's just kind of, I read it and what I think is what I think. How much less so can John understand literature at the age of four. The gap of understanding between me and my son is infinitesimally small compared to the gap of understanding between us and God. So sometimes God is left to explain himself to us Neanderthals, and he's limited by what he can do and say and express. And so the more I thought about this question and the way that God is choosing to express it through Scripture, depicting Jesus as an intercessor and an advocate, I do not believe the point of that is to remind us that God is predisposed towards wrath against us. I do not think that the point of it is to point towards the Father and his character at all. Rather, I think it's simply to get across to us the very heart of Jesus towards you and the heart of your Savior, of your gentle and lowly Savior on whom we are focusing this fall. his heart is predisposed towards love and grace and mercy, so much so that he never ceases to intercede for you and pray for you on your behalf, so much so that when you are at your lowest, he doubles down and advocates for you. I do not think that those two truths are placed in Scripture to depict to us what must be the character of the Father and leave us to determine that. I think they are left in Scripture so that we would know the heart of Jesus towards us. So, what do we do in light of his intercession and advocacy? We pursue Jesus. First and foremost. The beginning and end of our pursuit of righteousness is our pursuit of Jesus Christ. What do we do in light of this wonderful Savior whose job is not done, who still works every day praying at the right hand of the father for you and at your lowest advocates for you. What do we do in light of that? Well, first of all, we mimic it as his followers. So we intercede for others. And if we're not interceding for others, maybe we should start interceding for ourselves so that we might be filled up with grace and then begin to proactively pray for others out of the overflow of our hearts. We advocate for people. We see the best in them. We hope the best in them. And we speak the best of them. But we can never do any of that if we don't pursue Jesus. So what I want to leave you with this morning is, how can you leave here and pursue Christ? What can you do? What step can you take? I say often, I haven't said it often enough lately, that the single most important habit anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. So if it's been a minute since you had a quiet time, start tomorrow. If you don't know where to start, these are in the lobby of the information table. This is a daily devotional guide that I wrote up last year. It just gives you a practical approach. I want to have a quiet time. What do I do? If that's a question you have, pick this up. I wrote this to answer that question. It's not as long as East of Eden. You can get it done today. If you don't even know what version of the Bible you want to read, I get that question sometimes too. I wrote a translation guide so that you'll understand the options that are out there. I do not advocate for one over another. I just put in front of you, this is how you can understand translations. So maybe there's one out there that would work better for you. But those are out there. So the first thing if we're going to pursue Jesus is we read his word and we pray. In a minute, we're going to have a chance to sing again, right? Yeah. We're going to have a chance to sing again. Call out to Jesus. Praise him. Rest easy in his intercession. Be present with him in that moment. Engage in your small group. Engage in church. Come ready to hear from God. And here's a big one. Invest in spiritually nourishing friendships. Lean into the people in your life that encourage you spiritually. And maybe for some of us, take a step back from the people in our life that don't. Lean into the ones that refresh you and give you life and make you more desirous of Jesus when you're with them. I don't know what you can do to begin to pursue Jesus today. But as I'm praying, I hope that he'll put something on your heart and I hope that all of us will move with obedience towards him as we go from here. Let's pray. Father, we are grateful for the way that you've chosen to depict your son. We don't imagine, God, that you are angry with us, that you're disposed to wrath. But, God, we are grateful that your son prays for us, that he advocates for us. God, I know that there are those in this room that even right now need that intercession desperately and are reflectively grateful for what's already been taking place. As he pleads to you on our behalf. God, those of us who have been brought low by poor decisions we've made. God, thank you that your son advocates for us in those moments. That he doubles down on the intercession and he raises us up in front of you. Help us be people who mimic those things, who pray for the people around us and who think the best and speak the best of the people who even may have wronged us. And God, as we go from this place, we pray that you would develop in us a hunger and thirst for you and for yourself. So much so that we would overflow with your fullness of grace upon grace. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your September Sunday. Happy kickoff day to those who are celebrating. If you're joining us online, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing, we are grateful for that. This morning is our own kickoff of sorts as we kick off our new series called Gentle and Lowly, titled for the book, Gentle and Lowly, that we still have available in the lobby. We got 20 more copies last week, so there's some out there. Those are available for $10 a piece. Just grab some on the honor code. You can drop cash in the acrylic boxes on the way out. You can put them in the baskets if and when they come by. You can send us a money order and I will sign for it. Whatever you want to do for your $10, you feel free. But take a book if you'd like one. We're going to be going through that this fall together. And I have found that the church always thrives. There seems to be kind of a greater pulse. We kind of come alive a little bit when we all have a shared experience, when we're doing some of the same things together. And so this is an opportunity for that. It's how we kind of, you might not know this, but at Grace on staff, for me, as I think about the year, our ministry year starts in September, and then we sprint all the way to Memorial Day, and then we kind of, we have summer extreme, then we take a breath and then we get ready for September again. So I wanted to start our ministry year on the same page together, going through this book. This is a book that the staff has gone through. Kyle, our now family pastor, recommended it to us. We went through it as a staff. It was a very impactful book. We've had a small group go through it and they really loved it. And so I thought it would be good for the whole church to move through this book as well. Now in the book, there's something like 16 chapters or maybe more. And this series is only eight weeks. So clearly I'm not going to cover every chapter. I've chosen the ones that I feel are most relevant to grace, which is by the way, one of my favorite things about being a pastor of a small church is that I feel like we know each other and I know you. So when I go through a book like this, I can pick the chapters that will probably be most relevant to us, which is something that I take. I feel a great privilege in being able to do. But if you want the full experience, then you'll need to read it on your own as we move through. We will move through the chapters chronologically, but I will not hit each one. So I would encourage you to grab that book and be reading it this fall as we go through it. As we begin the series, I want to start with a little thought experiment, okay? And now this is going to require us to activate our calcified, recalcitrant imaginations, okay, that many of you have not used in a long time. I have a four-year-old son. I'm 44. I'm too old to have a four-year-old son, especially one as imaginative as he is. That kid will talk to you for 10 minutes straight, and 85% of it is complete nonsense, untethered to reality. He's got the most active imagination, and I'm bad at imaginative play. I would have been better at 24, but not much better. Okay. I haven't used my imagination since I was three. And then I, then I, then I cut that guy off. It was like, that's useless. That's not practical in the adult world. And I moved forward. Some of us are like that. We haven't imagined anything in a long time, but I want to ask you to dust it off and imagine this with me. okay? Let's pretend, and I know, I just said pretend and you guys are like, you lost me. Let's pretend together that you're going to go see a movie. And this movie you've seen from the trailers is about a creator, a deity that builds a world. And this world, the people or the beings that inhabit it, rebel against him, do not follow his rules, do not care about his presence. Most of them live lives that essentially ignore him. And they turn themselves from him. Now, I know that this is not difficult to know where I'm going. But I do want you to depict that world in your head. There is a deity. He is the main character of the movie. He creates a universe. And the center of that universe is a world. And the people, the things occupying that world are made in his image to glorify him. And yet they don't do that. They turn against him. They rebel against him. They do not care about him. And so to rectify this deity, to rectify this creation back to himself, he sends his son and says, go fix it. He sends his son to this creation and he says, I want you to go get these, get my beings, get my creations rectified back to me, facing me, serving me, and right relationship with me. Go fix what's broken. If you're imagining that with me, it's a movie that we're going to go see, and this character is sent down to creation to rectify creation back to the creator on behalf of the Father. Let me ask you this question. How would he have the right to describe himself? How would he have the right to describe himself? How would that character be able to describe himself? This character comes down, the son of the deity comes down. He says, I'm here to rectify this and to get you facing back towards God, back towards your creator. How would that character have a right to describe himself? Angry? Authoritative? Vindictive? Powerful? Just? He would have the right to be ticked, wouldn't he? He would have the right to bow up and say, you are humans, I am deity. I'm more important than you. I'm a bigger deal than you. If you don't listen to me, I'm going to get you right. Wouldn't he have every right to come down here, to be angry, to go down there, sorry, and be angry and be upset with the inhabitants and get right and say, you better cower in front of me because I'm not a problem that you want to have. And right now you do. If we imagine that movie and we imagine that character, I think it's very easy to imagine how that character might describe himself when asked. The parallel is very simple and very easy, and you guys spotted it as soon as I started the idea. But this is what Jesus does. This is the movie that we live in. God created us. He populated at the center of the universe. He populated this world with people that were made in his own image. And those people have rejected their God. And so God sends his son to rectify the situation and to turn creation back to him. He sends his son Jesus and says, go fix it. And then we ask, how would this person have the right to describe themselves? What would make sense? How would you describe yourself? How would you expect him to describe himself? And this, to me, is the arresting principle of the book Gentle and Lowly. Because according to the author, Dane Ortlund, there is but one place in Scripture where Jesus describes himself. There is but one place where Jesus gives a description of himself. In the Gospels, he's described many, many times, but it's always by his followers. It's always by the people around him. Jesus never goes on about himself. He never describes himself. He's very humble like that. But we have one place where he does. And this to me is the arresting principle of the book. What is the one place in scripture where Jesus describes himself and what does he say about himself given how he has the right to describe himself, which is any way that he wants, given what his attitude, what we would expect it to be if we were watching that movie. Given all of that, Jesus describes himself in one place. How does he do it? Matthew 11, 28 through 30. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is the one way that our Savior describes himself. And I memorized this verse as a kid in the King's English. So to me, it's still, come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. For I am gentle and lowly in heart. This is the one descriptor Jesus gives of himself. And it is profound in myriad ways. So this morning, I want us to sit in these words and reflect on what they mean with the goal of launching us into a series in which we will marvel at our unexpected Savior. That's where we want to end today. But where we begin is with the words of Christ when he describes himself. And the first thing he says is, Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. And as I thought about that, this occurred to me. We come to Jesus when we come to Jesus, we are exhausted. Have you ever thought about that? When we in our lives reach a place where we reach out for Christ, where we turn our countenance towards him, where we say, God, I need you. Jesus, I need you. Jesus, I welcome you. Jesus, I'm done with this. Whether it's for the first time, and maybe there's those of you in here who would not yet call yourself a Christian, but you're kicking the tires because spirituality seems important to you right now. And you're not quite sure, and you might not have all the answers, and you might not be totally on board with have all the answers and you might not be totally on board with this church thing and you might not be totally on board with this Bible thing, but you know that you need something. So here you sit in church curious about spirituality. And so maybe for the first time in your life you're considering reaching out to Jesus. Or maybe like most of us, you're here and you've had times in your life when you've reached to Jesus. You've had times in your life when you've forgotten. Times in your life when you held him at arm's reach. Times in your life when you allowed yourself to get too busy and you didn't prioritize him in your life. But something happens to bring you back to him. To cause you to reach out for him, to cause you to recognize your need for him and to be relieved by him. And do you know what we have in common, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, when we reach out to Jesus, do you know what's common about that that I think is remarkable? Every time you do it, you're tired. We reach to Jesus when we are exhausted. I've never known anyone who is crushing it. Their days are good. Their burden is light. Everything's going well. They're in cruise control. Their kids are awesome. Their marriage is happy. Business is good. Everything around me is great. That person doesn't tend to go, you know what I need? Jesus. That person just tends to love the goodness of life. But the people that I see in my life, again, whether it's for the first time or for the 12th time, who are reaching for Jesus, you know what they have in common? They're tired. Life feels heavy. It feels hard. There's this latent unhappiness or discontent that I can't seem to shake. Every now and again, we'll have a good day and we'll have a good smile and we'll have a good interaction and that feels nice. But then when we just kind of get back to ourselves, we just kind of shrink back in because we're exhausted and we're tired. And so I think, and I don't know this to be sure, I cannot interpret the intentions of Jesus himself, but it would make sense to me that Jesus says, come to me. When he invites people, come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. Come to me, those who are exhausted, because I think it's possible that Jesus knows there's no other way that we go to him until we are exhausted, until we have worn ourselves out, forgetting about him and going about our lives however we want. And then there's an emptiness in that that causes us dissatisfaction. And eventually, in that exhaustion, Jesus in his goodness invites us to him. And so I think he says, come to me all you who are exhausted because that's the only way we go. Energized people don't run to him. They think they're fine. And so maybe simply today, if you have been crushing it and you have been cruising, maybe today we don't drop something on the ground and wait for it to break to start asking Jesus to pick up the pieces. Maybe today we go to him before we get tired. Maybe this fall, as we commit to this series, and we commit to going through this together as a church, maybe September isn't just the start of our ministry year here. Maybe it's a renewal of the fervency of your faith. Maybe you are tired. Maybe you are exhausted. Maybe it doesn't feel like summer was long enough, or if you have young kids, it feels like it was way too long. And maybe you are just catapulting into September and all the things and you're already tired. You need a vacation from your vacation. Let this, this verse, Jesus's invitation, be a lighthouse to us, beckoning us in to go to Jesus this fall, to reconnect with Jesus this fall, especially if we are tired, especially if we are burdened. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden. If that's you, let's go to Jesus this fall. If we're tired, let's turn to him. He beckons us. But he doesn't stop there. He follows it with this interesting statement. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light, which is an interesting, oh yeah, this is what that means, which is an interesting thought. It's an interesting verbal flourish, right? Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. It's, we kind of get the connotation. We understand that a yoke, at least I hope you do, if this is new information to you, your school failed you at some point, but a yoke is the thing that goes across the back of the ox so that they can pull the plow or they can pull the cart or whatever it is. It's the thing that goes over the animals so that they can pull it and be used. So he says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And so we kind of understand that imagery on a visceral level already. But here's what you may not know about that word yoke and what it means. In Jesus's time and in the times in Israel prior to, rabbis were the teachers. And I'm not going to go through what it takes to become a rabbi, but there wasn't a lot of them. It was like making the NFL. And the rabbis, they were the religious teachers. They were the ones charged with teaching God's people about God's word. But there was differences in interpretation. And different rabbis would see things differently. One easy example of this is, it's said in scripture that you should remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. You were not to work on the Sabbath day, which for them was Friday night to Saturday night, those 24 hours. And some rabbis looked at that and interpreted very, very strictly and very piously. And they said, if you have sandals that use a nail to fasten the leather to the sole of the sandals, those sandals have metal in them, and you can't wear them because it's requiring more of your body to pick up your foot, and that counts as work. So you cannot wear those sandals on the Sabbath. And other rabbis went, that's absurd, wear whatever you want, right? Those would be our rabbis, right? Nobody in this room is like, I'm pro-nail guy. That's the one I want. There was disagreements. If your donkey falls in a ditch on the Sabbath, can you pull it out or do you have to leave it there until Monday? When you tithe, what do you tithe? When the laws contradict each other, do I lie and protect somebody or do I tell the truth and get them in trouble? When the laws contradict each other and you don't know which way to go, that's what the rabbis were for. And so they had, they each had a way of understanding all understanding and applying and teaching all of the rules and the law and the old Testament. And that way of understanding those things was called their yoke. So when you would follow a rabbi, you would take their yoke upon you and follow the rules their way, which is not very much different than our current day denominations. Some people think that we should sprinkle water on a head of a baby, and that's baptism. Some people think that baptism is you get maximum wet, and it's for professing believers. We have difference of opinion on that. So we started the Presbyterians and the Baptists, right? Methodists have different ways that they interpret things. Lutherans, Pentecostals, we have these different things. And so back to this point, and now we can put it back up there, Laura, yoke equals religion. Yoke equals religion. It's not just an image. It's not just a metaphor. It really does mean religion. Way of thinking about faith. Way of following the rules. Way of living up to the standards of God. And so Jesus says, and this is what makes it remarkable, come to me you who are exhausted for my yoke, my religion, my way of living out your faith is easy, and my burden is light. And here's the way he makes it easy. Jesus does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He does not seek to encumber us with rules, but to liberate us with relationship. He says, at one point in his ministry, somebody asked him, what's the greatest commandment? And he asked it back to them, what do you say it is? And the person answers, to love your Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, amen, and to love your neighbor as yourself. And Jesus says, you have spoken wisely. On these hang the whole law and the prophets. And what Jesus meant in that statement is, if you'll simply love God and love others, you will capture all the Old Testament. You will live out the truth and the rules that are found in the Old Testament law. The 630 something rules that Moses brought down the mountain. If you will simply love God and love others, you will fulfill those things. And then he further simplifies it in the upper room discourse in John 14 through 17. We spent a spring there one time. They're, to me, the greatest collection of chapters in the Bible. It's God's, it's Jesus's final instructions to his disciples. And he says in John 14, this new command I give you, this new command I give you, do you know what it is? Go love others as I have loved you. He drops off the God part. And he says, this one command, you live by this one command, this one rule, this one thing encumbering the yoke. And that's what I'm asking you to do. And it might feel odd that he leaves off the God part, but what Jesus knows is there is no possible way for us to love others sacrificially unless Jesus himself is the one empowering and infusing that love. I cannot love you the way that I'm supposed to love you the way that Jesus loved you. I can't even sniff at it unless I am actively, adamantly, and ferociously loving God first. Then I can love you. That's why Jesus sums it up this way. And he does not encumber us with rules. Because rules are tricky anyways, aren't they? Think about one of the most basic rules. Honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. Great. What if your dad's a degenerate? What if he left the family? What if your mom's abusive? What does it look like then to honor them? What if they tell you to do things that are actively wrong? What does it look like to honor them? Maybe you have great parents. What does it look like to honor them when you're eight? And what does it look like to honor them when you're 48? That simple rule, honor your father and mother, gets tricky. And so you know what Jesus says? Let's not worry about the pedantics of that. Let's simply love others as I have loved you. How did he love? Sacrificially. He gave of himself. Always. Always patient. He was always gracious. He was always kind. And in this way, he forces us into relationships. This is why we say at Grace that we exist to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. Because our faith necessarily presses us into relationship with Jesus and then into relationship with others as we are tasked with loving one another as Jesus loves us. So when he says, come to me if you're tired, my yoke is easy and my burden is light, it's not to encumber us with rules. It's not to encumber us with do's and don'ts. It's simply to love your neighbor. We can make a rule that you shouldn't flip somebody off in traffic when they cut you off. We could make that rule. We could write it down. We could agree to it. We could abide by it. We could probably find something in Scripture that would lend itself to this idea that hanging your finger out the window is probably not a great idea in traffic. We could do that rule. But doesn't just love of our neighbor dictate that we would never do that anyways? And in this love, doesn't it make the relationship more genuine? What if every Monday, Jen sent me an email, and she said, this is what I need you to do for me to feel loved this week. And it was just a to-do list. And that was the basis of our marriage. And I did the things, and by Thursday, I'm lovable. I did them all. We good? Yes. She gives me a big hug and a kiss. Yes. Great. Now, here's the thing that she and I both know. I wouldn't do it. I'd want to. I'd really be up for it. I kind of like that policy. That makes things a lot simpler, doesn't it? But that's not how relationships work. So that's not how our relationship with Jesus works. So if we're compelled to go to him, it's not a list of do's and don'ts. It's a relationship that we lean further into with him, and then we lean outward into others. And the love of Jesus is what makes those relationships possible and makes us able to love well. So I would say if we are tired and we're not loving others well, maybe it's because we haven't been fueled by Jesus in a long time, and we should again choose to go to him. Now, that sentence is hugely important for who to know who he's inviting and what he intends for us. Come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We go to him for relief. But this is the part where he describes himself. And what's remarkable is he describes himself as gentle and lowly. But it's important to understand Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Jesus is required to be neither gentle nor lowly. Do you understand that? He doesn't have to do that. If we go back to the movie and think about what that character might be who comes down from on high to rectify creation, what attitude might he be carrying with him? Again, how would he have the right to describe himself? And we don't actually have to imagine this very much. There's actually an example of this movie in scripture. If we keep turning the pages of Matthew, eventually we'll get to this parable that Jesus tells. And it's a picture of the Old Testament prophets and Israel's reaction to Christ. And he says there was this owner of the vineyard, and he rented it to some workers with the agreement that they would give him an allocated amount of the profits, of the goods goods they would take, they would take some of the harvest. He would take a big portion of the harvest. And so when harvest season came, he sent some representatives, the owner of the vineyard sent some representatives to the workers, three of them. And it said, okay, it's time for us to collect the owner's share of the harvest. And the workers killed one, beat one up and st stoned the other one, and sent the two back to tell the owner, get lost. And so the owner sends some more of his representatives, and they do the same thing. And they tell him to get lost. And so then the owner says, I'm going to send my son. Surely they will respect him and give me my profits. And then when his son shows up, they kill him. Because now we can claim the inheritance for ourselves. This is a picture of the prophets that God sent to the Hebrew people in the Old Testament. They rejected them and they stoned them and they beat them up. And then eventually sending Christ. But again, if you're the son going to these ungrateful workers, what would your attitude towards them be? How might you feel towards them? What might you want to say? I remember I was playing a pickup soccer game in South Africa one time. And my dad and I were playing together. And dad he dad was I think was playing in goal and somebody was coming approaching the goal we're playing indoors and they kicked the ball and they kicked it as hard as they could and it hit my dad right in the face and snapped his snapped him back and it was like point blank it's from like me to Tom and it's indoor and we're all having fun there's's no reason to kick the ball that hard. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I saw red. I like, and I, it couldn't be helped. As soon as play started again, I ran into that guy as hard as I could. And I took him out in front of all the kids and in front of the people that we took there. I was one of the leaders of the trip. He was one of the people that we were ministering to. He was one of the camp leads. I flew 10 days to minister to him out of the overflow of the goodness of my heart. And when that ball hit my dad's face, I didn't care who he was. And after I did it, I was like, well, that's probably not the best way to handle this. How might that son feel going to that vineyard to rectify those people back to his father? Angry, entitled, knowing that he could squash him like a bug if he wanted to. And yet, gentle and lowly in heart. And I don't do this often, but that Greek word heart that's used in the text means center of your person, essence of your being. It is who you are in character to your core. And our Savior, who has every right to be angry. Who has every right to chide us for our betrayal. Who has every right to squash us under his thumb. Who has every right to say, I am here and you better come to me for I am fierce and I am angry and I am powerful and you've got about three seconds to cower before I prove it. Instead, he says, I am gentle and lowly at my core. It is the essence of who I am. And that word gentle is so interesting. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Have you ever experienced the gentleness of God and how he works to turn our hearts towards him? Where there's something in your life that you know doesn't need to be there. You know it's wrong. You know that attitude or that behavior or that pattern is unacceptable to God. You know that. And yet you persist. And God has every right to crack you over the head with a two-by-four, to come running at you and knock you over in the middle of a soccer field. He has every right to just sweep your legs out from under you and force you in your humiliation to see the errors of your ways and begin to walk right. Doesn't he? But he almost never does. Gently, humbly, graciously, he massages the areas of our life as he cradles us and offers us comfort and walks us humbly into a profound submission and conviction of our sins. Have you ever experienced the gentle conviction of Christ? Maybe you're experiencing it now, this morning, as you hear Jesus calling you back to him. And maybe it's not some big thing. Your life's not going to blow up. He's not going to hit you with a two-by-four, but maybe this morning he's gently urging you back towards him. Jesus describes himself as gentle, and I don't think that we often enough marvel at how profound and meaningful that is. Because he didn't have to. And then he said, he's lowly in heart. He's humble. And this morning, what I want us to understand is that to be lowly is to be accessible. To be lowly, the way that Jesus is talking about, is to be accessible. And now, imagine, let's go back to the movie. This deity comes down from on high to right the wrongs and to rectify us back to our creator. Do you think you're going to get a face-to-face with that person? Like, do you think you're going to get to talk to them? Who's going to talk to that person? Who's going to talk to that entity that comes down? World leaders? The Pope? Rich people? Let me tell you what I'm sure of. That person comes down tomorrow to rectify the world back to the Creator. He's not taking a meeting with any of you. Years ago, and I still kick myself to it because it was a complete waste of time. Years ago, I emailed a United States Senator. I'm not going to tell you which one, and I'm not going to tell you what about. But I emailed a Senator because there was something happening that concerned me, and I wanted to express it. And here's what I know happened. Some 23-year-old intern read it and went, this is dumb, and deleted it and never told a soul about it. I wrote an email to an unnamed intern is what I did. It was a complete waste of time. We understand accessibility. This person who comes down from heaven is not someone that is accessible to the likes of us, unless, he says, I am lowly and gentle. I am meek. I am accessible. And we learn that he is accessible through his Holy Spirit. And we learn that where two or more are gathered in his name, that Jesus is there also. Jesus' presence is with us now in this room today. He offers that to us. He makes himself accessible. So that when we pray, when I pray in a few minutes, if you pray with me, the Holy Spirit is uttering things too deep for words to God to tell him what I really mean through the heart of my prayers. And Jesus himself is sitting at the right hand of the Father as he offers us his presence and he is interjecting to the Father on our behalf. He is that accessible. So here's what I want us to do this fall. Here's what I want us to do with gentle and lowly. Let us this fall marvel together at this unexpected Savior. Let us just take these eight weeks and read through this book and learn more about who our Jesus is and let us collectively marvel together at this unexpected Savior who comes down and he says, are you tired? Then you're who I'm looking for. Are the rules hard? Let me invite you into relationship. And let me tell you about myself. I am gentle. I don't have to be. But I am gentle at my very core. I am accessible and lowly at my very core. I hold on to none of the rights and privileges that you might impugn upon me. I am the most unexpected of saviors. And so this fall, what I want us to do is marvel at him together. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for who you are. Thank you for your son and how he loves us, how he shows up for us. Jesus, thank you for being gentle when so often that gentleness is not what we deserve. Thank you for being humble and lowly and accessible that we might come to you. Thank you for being an unexpected Savior. Father, thank you for sending him to us. Jesus, thank you for leaving us with your spirit. I pray that we would together marvel at you, Jesus, and who you are, and that we would be more desirous of you with each week that goes by and that for those of us who are tired that we would use this morning as a reminder to run to you and seek rest. Jesus, it's in your name that we ask these things as you advocate for us to the Father. Amen.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on Labor Day Sunday. Thank you for joining us. If you're watching online, must be nice. Maybe next year I can live stream from your place. But for those of us here, I hope we're having a good Sunday morning. This is the last part in our series in Moses that we've been going through all summer long. And so I believe that this is the 13th installment. It's 12th or 13th. So thank you for hanging in here with the life of Moses. And I hope that it's been rewarding for you and encouraging to you to go through that life and see how much we have to learn from this miraculous man and figure in the Bible. This morning, as I was trying to decide where are we going to land the plan on the series, where are we going to focus, I thought it most appropriate to focus on the death of Moses, because Moses has, I was going to say pretty unique death, but it is a unique death in Scripture and in history, I believe. And so I thought it would be appropriate to focus on that. Not only because that's where the story ends as we end our series, but I've always found the story of Moses' death to be one of the more puzzling stories in the Bible. It's one that it took years for me to wrap my head around and felt like I even understood God's actions in it. Because I think that there's some stories in the Bible where the actions of God perplex us a little bit. What we know about God, or more often than not presume about God, would lead us to believe that what he did is out of step with his character. It's out of step with who he says he is. We can't make sense of it. And because we can't make sense of it, we kind of think, well, maybe, maybe God got this one wrong. And I think that this is one of those instances. So before the death of Moses, Moses is punished. God tells him that because you did this thing, I'm going to punish you. And we see this punishment being levied in Deuteronomy chapter 32. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Deuteronomy. And I would tell you to go ahead and turn to Deuteronomy chapter 35, because we're going to cover almost that entire chapter before we're done here today. But in Deuteronomy chapter 32, we find this, and I'm going to read you a lot of verses, more didn't stumble over any of those names, so I am very happy. Second, more importantly, here's the context for what God has said. So, God says, you and Aaron sinned against me in a river, in a particular land a few years ago. Because you did that, you will not enter the promised land. And so here's the offense. You can find this offense in Numbers chapter 20, verses 1 through 13, if you're interested. The offense is they have been moving through the desert for, at this point, plus 30 years. 35 years, I don't know. They were in the desert for 40 total years, and this is towards the end of the journey. And the Hebrew people had this very familiar, consistent refrain and grumble, which was when things got hard, when food got scarce, when they couldn't find water, they would cry out and they would say, Moses, why did you bring us to the desert to die? We were better off as slaves in Egypt. We were better there. And they were upset that they had been freed from their oppressive masters to come and wander in freedom in the desert because now desert life is hard. And Moses, frankly, got tired of it, as anybody would, as any leader would, with people coming and complaining to you all the time about everything. And so he went to God. They came and grumbled to him. And so he went to God. He says, your people are thirsty. Can you provide water? And God says, yes, go to the rock in this river and speak to it or go to the rock in this place and speak to it and water will flow from it. And so Moses says, okay, got it. And he walks out and he gathers the people, the assembly around this rock and he chews them out and they deserve to be chewed out. You whiny little babies. God always provides. He's going to provide again. Here, look. And he hits the rock with his staff twice. Because the last time he brought water from a rock on behalf of God, that's how he did it. He hit the rock with his staff. But this time God told him to speak and he didn't. But in anger and frustration, he hit it twice and water flew forth from the rock and the people were satisfied. But God pulled him aside and Aaron after that. And he said, because of your impertinence, because of your sin against me, because you struck the rock and you did not speak to the rock as I instructed you, you stole some holiness from me. You impugned my holiness and my dignity. And because you did that, I will not allow you to reach the promised land. And just so we're clear on what kind of punishment that is for Moses, Moses is, according to Scripture, probably about 110 to 115 years old right now. He got called out of being a shepherd at the age of 80 and told to go lead God's people. He performed miracles. He led the plagues. He confronted the Pharaoh. God used him to destroy the Egyptian army. He performed miracles in the desert. He set up something to heal from snake bites that we didn't even get to in this series. He went on top of a mountain and met the very face of God, so much so that he shone for three days afterwards. He was the one charged with bringing the tablets down the mountain, with issuing the law to the people. The first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses forevermore. He had been a faithful servant and everything in him was journeying to the fulfillment of his life, which is going to be to enter the land that was promised to his forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And he was going to get to be the one that did it, and he was going to finally get to set feet on this land that he had never seen in his whole life, and it's what he lived for as he served God. One day, I will be on the promised land. And God says, because you hit that rock two times instead of speak to it, you can't do that, which feels unfair. Does it not? The punishment feels like it very much outweighs the crime. And I hate it when that happens. I feel bad for anyone when that happens. And when I was a senior in high school, it happened to me. I was in class one day, Jen, I'm very sorry for this story. I was in class one day, and I had a friend, she was sitting a couple desks over, and I just got a wild hair that it would be funny to write her a little note and see if I could make her laugh in this class where we had a really strict teacher and you weren't allowed to do that. So I was trying to mess with her. And so I wrote her a note and in the note, I proposed to her that maybe after school, we'll meet at my car and we'll engage in teenage activities. Not married people activities, okay? It wasn't crass. Teenage people activities. Now, important to the story is I went to a very strict Christian school. That was not a lot. And it worked. She laughed. And then we laughed about it later. Well, fast forward six weeks. Some stupid eighth grade kid finds the note and reads it and is so deeply concerned in their conscience about it that they hand it to a teacher. The teacher confronts me. and she says, I don't know what to do about this. This could get you in big trouble. And I said, I can't tell you what to do with it, but it was a joke. I won't do it anymore. And she's like, okay. The next day, I get called into my principal's office, which happens to be my soccer coach. And he calls me in, and he says, Nathan, because I was Nathan at the time. By the way, my name became Nate instead of Nathan when I began to work at Macaroni Grill at the age of 19, and I had to write it on the table, and it's just shorter to write Nate. That's the only story there is for that. So he says, Nathan, I saw this note. It's completely unacceptable. And listen to me. I wish I still had it. I would let any of you read it. And you would think, this is funny. You would not think a teenage person deserves to be punished for this. But he was like, I don't know what to do with it. And I'm like, well, what's the normal punishment? He says, well, I need to suspend you. And I was like, oh, that's a bigger deal than I thought. And at my school, if you got suspended, you couldn't participate in athletics for three weeks. Well, I was the captain of the soccer team, and we were about to enter into the state playoffs. We won the state championship last year. We were probably favored to win it this year. And I was Allstate, okay? I was good. But being Allstate in that league is like being the best toy on the island of misfit toys, okay? I was never good. Sometime post high school, thinking I was good at soccer, we played a team that gave away scholarships and they were actually good at soccer. And I was oh I'm not athletic so not bragging I'm just saying in the moment this is how this is how big it was for me this was my moment right and he suspended me and I didn't get to play in the playoffs my senior season and it always felt incredibly unfair and to me that's what this punishment feels like from God. And if you're watching closely, yes, I am comparing myself to Moses. That's what this punishment feels like from God. And in my case, in my case, one of the things that helps me reconcile that is first of all, it really wasn't my principal that suspended me. It was my dad. Because my principal called my dad and made me read the note to my dad. And then my dad said, what would you do if he wasn't on the soccer team? And my principal says, I'd suspend him. And my dad said, suspend him. And he kind of hung up the phone. But one of the things that helps me reconcile that is knowing that there's probably a dozen other things that I did that deserve suspension that I did not get caught for. So it kind of worked out in the wash. But for Moses, that's not the case. This is what is said about Moses. In Deuteronomy 35, these are the last words, these are the last verses of Deuteronomy. These are the last verses of the books of history. I believe every Christian or faithful person who's lived since then who looks at the story of Moses, if Moses were to make an appeal and say, God, can you let me off with a warning for the whole rock hitting thing? Can we maybe look over that one and still let me put my toes in the sand of the promised land? Can maybe we still do that? I think all of history would be like, God, he makes a good point. Like of all the people that God should let off the hook, why doesn't he let Moses off the hook? And you would think that maybe he said that early on. He said that at the river when it happened or at the rock when it happened. But then eventually over time, it would wear off and he'd be like, all right, Moses, you're fine. Like you've lived a good life. You can still enter into the promised land. Like you'd think he'd let him off the hook, but that's not what he does. Look at the beginning of 34. This is the tragic story of the enforcement of that penalty. Then Moses climbed Mount Nebo from the plains of Moab to the top of Pisgah, across from Jericho. There the Lord showed him the whole land. Now these words you're about to hear and read are, these are the tribes of Israel. These are, this is the territories of the different tribes. This is like someone taking us up on a mountain, God taking us up on a mountain and saying, that's where North Carolina is going to be. and that's where Virginia is going to be, and that's where South Carolina is going to be, and that's where Tennessee is going to be. That's what that means. So he says this. The Lord showed him the whole land, from Gilead to Dan, all of Naphtali, the territory of Eph He said to I'm not going to let you in. And then he didn't. He took him up like he said he would. And he said, I wanted your eyes to see it. This is what it is. This is what I promised on oath to your forefathers. This is where you've been leading my people. And I know that you thought you were going to lead the procession in. But I'm only going to let your eyes see it. I'm not going to let your feet touch it. And so I've struggled with what to do with this story. Because it seems out of sync with the character of God. But I do think that here's one of the things that we can take from this story. And it's a very simple thing, but it's true, and it's not something we like to confront very often. But the reality is actions have consequences, both natural and punitive. The things that we do have consequences. Both natural and punitive. And so when we commit a sin, when we make a choice, those choices have consequences. And that doesn't go away because we're thousands of years removed from this. It didn't go away when God applied the law to his people and said, if you were guilty at one point, you were guilty of all, which Moses did. You're guilty at one point, so you are condemned. That was the deal. It's a picture of why we need salvation, because we are guilty in at least one point. And that's why we can't get into the promised land by ourselves, because we have sin in our past. But that sin and those actions have consequences. And we don't like to think about that, and we don't like to deal with that. And I think sometimes we have an attitude of, yes, I've done this, but God, if you would please expunge the consequences from my future, that would be great. But the truth is that our actions have consequences. And those consequences are both natural and punitive. And if you're a parent, you understand what that means. This makes sense to you intuitively. When you're a parent and you're guiding your children to become who they need to become, who God created them to be, you have to either allow consequences or you have to apply consequences. Sometimes you watch your children or your child doing something and you know they're cruising for a bruising, right? You know this is going to end poorly. But you think that the best way to love them as a parent is just to let it play out and let them learn from their own consequences. One of my favorite things about grace is that every Sunday, all the little kids are running around the room and I think it's great. And it brings life and vibrancy to the church. And I don't mind that they bang into the wall. And sometimes we'll somebody, we have a kid one time that just took a marker and ran down that whole wall. Just the whole, just, they just, we needed a racing stripe. Okay. Um, I don't mind that. And they knock over people's coffee. They bump into us out there. I don't care. I think it's, I think it's fun. And one day I was in here and my son, John is four. And he was over in this corner and I was standing up there next to the doors. And I looked over and he was running up to a child that was sizably larger than him. And John likes to hit right now. He just, and he hits like that. And so he ran up to this kid and just hit him in the back. And instead of running over and grabbing him and say, we don't hit, you know, I thought, let's just see how this plays out. And the kid turned around and was mad and hit John back and knocked him on his butt and made him cry. And John came running to me. Daddy, so-and-so hit me. I said, yeah, I saw. This should teach us not to hit people that are bigger than us. Don't do that. Don't do that, son. You see me? I've never picked a fight in my life. You know why? Because I don't like to cry in front of other people. And so I could have run up and I could have stopped and not let the other kid hit my son. But I thought the best thing to do was just to let the consequences play out. And so sometimes we watch our kid cruising for a bruising and when they fall on their rear end, we pick them up and we go, yeah, don't do that again. The reason you're in pain now is because your actions chose it. Our actions have consequences. Other times as parents, we need to make the consequences punitive, don't we? We need to punish, to teach a lesson so that they don't do that again, to help them remember that that's not the way they're supposed to act or behave or the attitude that they're supposed to have. In our house, screen time's a big deal. You bring up screen time and there's tears right away before you even say how much screen time is going to be lost. And some actions require a punitive consequence. When they get older, you take the car keys or whatever it is. But as parents, we understand these things. That when we're in charge of a child and we're in charge of raising them, it is absolutely irresponsible to try to raise them in an environment in which their actions do not have consequences. It is completely unhelpful for life. And in understanding this principle, we understand that this is what good parents do. And so the other thing is, this story reminds us that God is our father and we are his children. God is our father and we are his children. God is the father of Moses and of the Hebrew people. And when Moses, one of his sons, sinned, God had to apply a punitive consequence. It was not a natural consequence that Moses experienced. By all accounts, he could have gotten there and gone across the river. But God applied this punitive consequence for this action to correct it. And to set an example for the rest of his children that no one gets off the hook. God is a fair God. But because God is our Father, he must also, as he looks down on us as his children, apply to us both natural and punitive consequences. God cannot run over and protect us from the larger child when we choose to take an action that we shouldn't. He's not going to do that. He will allow us to experience natural consequences of our choices. If we choose, and I know this from experience and unanswered prayers, if we choose to eat like a garbage can and avoid exercise for a couple of decades, we're going to end up in poor health. And we can't just pray that God will make us magically healthy. These are consequences of our actions. If we volunteer for everything and we say yes for everything and we overextend and we can't say no to anyone and we end up stressed and exhausted, that's not God punishing you. That's the natural consequence of your actions and your choices. But sometimes we like to blame God for things that we brought on ourselves. I remember at my last church, this was easily over a decade ago, and my last church, it was a larger church, it was about 2,000 people, and I was on staff. I was a staff pastor. And if you called the church and you said, I need to talk to a pastor, they funneled that call to me, which makes total sense because I ooze tenderness. And so I took a call this one day. I don't know why y'all are laughing so hard at that. Jeepers. It's a little funny. I didn't know it was that funny. I take a call one day from this guy, and it's like early 30s. And he says, hey, I just need to talk with a pastor. I just got something going on in my life. I just can't make sense of it. I was like, all right, what's going on, man? And he says, well, because I got this girlfriend that I really love. I'm like, well, that's good. And he goes, yeah, but I've also got some problems with drug addiction, and I'm kind of in and out, and it's a real struggle for me. And a few months ago, she gave me an ultimatum. She was like, you know, clean up or I'm out of here. And he goes, and I just messed up a couple more times, and she left me. And I'm devastated. And this is the kicker. I just don't know why God would allow this to happen to me. What? And I was nice. I didn't just be like, you're dumb and hang on the phone. But I tried to say, like, our actions have consequences. But I think a lot of times in life, something difficult will happen to us. And sometimes we can throw ourselves a pity party and we can think, why did God allow this to happen to me? Why did God make this happen to me? Why did God allow this to happen to me? And if we look, it's like, well, you took some steps to lead to this consequence. God didn't allow that business deal to go bad. It was a bad business deal. God didn't allow you to lose your job. You just underperformed for a few months or years and your boss got sick of it. Like sometimes there's natural consequences in life. Other times God does bring, we see in scripture, punitive action into our lives to correct our behavior and direct us to the right place. We know this is true because not only do we see it in the life of Moses, but we also see it in the life of David. When David, the second king of Israel, you may have heard of him. He's a pretty big deal. He got towards the end of his life. And in 2 Samuel chapter 16 and 17, David has this conversation with God. And he says, he says, Father, I want to build your temple. You'll remember from the story of Moses that God instructed them to build a tabernacle, which was a fancy tent with a big square tent in the middle. And the Holy of Holies was half of that tent. And that was where the presence of God rested. And it was built to be nomadic, to be able to take it up, move it, and set it back up. That was the job of the Levites, setting up the tabernacle, taking down the tabernacle, moving the tabernacle, setting up the tabernacle. That's what the Levites did. And so when they finally got into Israel, into their promised land, into Jerusalem, and David's sitting on the throne. He says, Father, I want to build you a permanent home. And God says, David, I can't let you do that. There's too much blood on your hands. That's a punitive consequence. I can't tell you exactly what sins are involved in too much blood on your hands, but David did a lot of killing. And if you read between the lines, he did a lot of sinning. And so God said, no, you're not the one to do this. You haven't lived the life of the person that I want to allow to do this. So you can't do it. That's a punitive consequence. And we know it's punitive because before he died, he gathered all the materials, everything that was needed, all the cedars of Lebanon and all the rocks from the quarry were put on the job site so that when the next king became king, he could say go and he could have the honor of building the temple. So by all accounts, he could have built it by the end of his life. This was not a natural consequence of his actions. This was punitive by God. The biggest result or example we see in Scripture of someone suffering a punitive consequence is that. It's Jesus on the cross. He was being punished. He was being punished as a consequence of our actions, of your actions. That's a punishment that we deserve. That's a punitive consequence that should have been laid on us, death. But God chose instead to punish not his children, but his child. Do you see? So we know in scripture that God exacts punitive punishments for consequences of our actions. Now, I don't know how to tell you how to parse out what in your life is a punishment and what is a natural consequence. I really don't know how to tell you to do that. I thought about it this week and I'm like, I'm not even going there. I don't know how to tell you to do it. I just know that both are true. But that far more often than not, the hard things that we are experiencing are natural consequences of our actions. And so we see in the story that our actions have consequences. Our sin has consequences. And it makes me wonder, I wonder what our sin has prevented us from. I wonder what our sin has prevented us from experiencing or doing. In the example of Moses and David, Moses, God took an opportunity from him. You will not enter the promised land. David, God took an opportunity from him. You're not going to be the one that builds the temple. The opportunity, the thing that Jesus had to give up is staying in his perfect divine form forever. He had to take on human form. He had to condescend to become flesh. And so if that's what happens with sin in the Bible is opportunities are removed from us. God's going to use us in smaller ways or in different ways. I wonder what I've missed out on because of my sin. I wonder what opportunities I've squandered because of the way I've chosen to behave and exercise my faith for the last decade. I wonder if you think it might be possible that you've missed some opportunities in your life because of some actions that you've taken in the past. And I don't know that God is ever going to take any of us up on a mountain and go, do you see what you missed? But maybe it'll happen in heaven, I'm not sure. But it makes me wonder, the story makes me wonder, what opportunities am I missing out on because of the actions that I've taken in the past? But here's the thing I love about this story that dawned on me this week as I sat with it and for the past couple of weeks. This isn't just a story about punishment. This isn't just a story about consequences. This is also a story about comfort. Let me show you. In a second, we're going to look at verse 5 in Deuteronomy 34. You'll remember the first four verses are God taking him up and going, this is the land of Gad, and this is the land of Naphtali, and this is the land of Ephraim, and this is the land that I swore on oath to Abraham.? I'm going to let you see it with your eyes. You cannot touch it with your feet. But then he takes him. He's the only person I'm aware of that died in the presence of God. And he's the only person in scripture that's buried by God himself in a secret grave that no one has ever found. And so what we see is that we have this God of consequences, but we have a God of comfort. And so in this passage, what I see is God holding consequences necessarily in one hand, because if he doesn't, he's not a loving father. But in the other hand, he holds comfort. And as he's exacting consequences on Moses with one hand, he's immediately comforting him with the other. I think that's amazing. So because he loves us, he holds consequence in one hand and comfort in the other. This is true of the story of David too. This is true of the story of David. When he says, David, no, you cannot build my temple. There's too much blood on your hands. The immediate thing coming after that, in the passage, the immediate thing that God says is, but I will allow your son Solomon to build it. And my son, the Messiah, will sit on your throne for all of eternity. Consequence, you can't build the temple. Comfort, here's what I can promise you. That's the passage that becomes the Davidic covenant. Consequence in one hand, comfort in the other. Now here's what's really cool. I told you the example of Jesus being punished for us. Consequence in one hand. But Jesus, but that's our punishment. Those are our consequences that he's holding. But in Jesus, we also find our ultimate comfort, right? We also find our ultimate comfort in Christ because on the cross, death was defeated. I did a funeral the other day and I got to say, as you get to say at funerals of people who believe in Jesus, this is not goodbye. This is goodbye for now. There's hope here. We know where she is. We know she's looking down on us. We know she loves us and that she's seen the face of her Savior and that we should be jealous of her and where she is. So on the cross, death lost its sting and sin lost its chains. And so it is the source of the greatest comfort for anyone in the gospel. That because of our actions, we deserve profound consequences. And whether they seem disproportionate to us or not, Jesus paid for those. And in that payment, he also becomes our comfort. And so God doesn't have to say, this is going to happen, but this is going to happen. He says this is happening. This, to me, is what the story of the death of Moses is about. I've told you repeatedly, everything points to Jesus. And I believe that this story points to the gospel in multiple and profound ways. And I want us to remember as we go, whenever we are experiencing consequences, whenever we feel like life is hard, life is dark, like life is deep, in our darkest days where our sin is so great that we feel we can't move. And I've had those days when I was so wracked with guilt for my sin and my choices that I felt ashamed of who I was and I didn't want anyone to know and I didn't want to look anybody in the eye. When we have those days and we are experiencing the consequences of our actions, we can always, always, always look to the cross and be comforted that God still loves us, that he covered this too, and one day we will be in eternity with him. Whenever we experience consequences, we are also offered comfort. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being a good father. It may be odd to pray and scary to say, but thank you for consequences. Thank you for the things that direct us. God, I pray that in our lives, when hard things are happening, that we wouldn't immediately blame them on you, but we would stop and assess ourselves and say, well, maybe this is my fault. God, if there are instances where we do think maybe we're being punished, God, I pray that we would trust you in that punishment and that we would remember in Hebrews that we're told that the Lord disciplines the ones he loves. We're so grateful that you're a good father. We're so grateful that every story can be woven in such a way that what we find is it's really pointing us towards your son and your love for us. Thank you for loving Moses the way you did, and thank you for loving us the way you do. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So grateful for this church and for Grace folks this morning. We are continuing in our series on Moses. This is the penultimate week. We'll do this week and then next week, Labor Day Sunday. And then we're going to start a new series. I don't, Gibby, what are we calling the series, or Carly? We're going to call it Gentle and Lowly? Okay. I never know. I just say here's what we're going to talk about, and then the graphics department, they tell me what it's called. It's going to be called Gentle and Lowly. It's based on a book by Dane Ortlund, which is, to me, a tremendously impactful book, And I know that some of our small groups have gone through it in the past. And so as a church, I think it's a really wonderful thing whenever we can have a shared experience and we can be reading through a book and everyone's thinking about it and we're talking about it. And this is an experience that we share. I think it's a good thing. So from time to time, we like to encourage those. And so the Sunday after Labor Day, we're going to start this new series called Gentle and Lowly. It's going to be an eight-week series. It's like a 16-chapter book, and I've just chosen to highlight eight of the chapters. But we're going to have a reading plan for that book, and it's available on the table which is which is right behind that wall right there and just grab those are ten dollars grab them on the honor system put put a 10 in the acrylic things that hang next to the doors or a 20 and then make change for yourself we trust you or just donate $20 for the book because someone else is going to steal one and you want to cover for them. You can Venmo me $10 and just we'll see if that ever makes it to the church. But we'll just, they're out there. Take them. Pay for them however you want. And then if we run out, we'll order more or you can order them online. But that's going to be, I think, an important thing for us in the fall. Before I just dive into this Moses sermon this morning, we do have a fun announcement. And I'll just be honest with you. I'm a mess about this. I talked with Kyle Tolbert, our student pastor, now family pastor. He's a dad now. Here's Hayes. I'm not faking it, I literally can't look at it. Jen, when we were worshiping, she said, did you talk to Kyle this morning? And I said, yeah, it was a huge mistake. Kyle worked. This is indulgent, and I'm sorry, but just so you understand why I can't keep it together right now. He worked for me at my last church. Kyle and I have worked together for 10 plus years. He's a little brother. And so this is great. Hayes is his name. Women care about this. He was eight pounds, eight ounces. I don't know why that matters to you, but you always ask, what did the baby weigh? It's like, who cares? But you do, so there you go. We're so excited. We're thrilled for them. Everybody's happy and healthy, so that's good. This is the reason for the tissues. Also, I don't anticipate crying during the sermons. I might. I might. I don't know. We'll find out together. Okay. Moses. A good friend said to me, last week we talked about the law and what that means and how it points towards Jesus. And I was on the phone with a friend who I care about very much and I trust their judgment very much. And they said, hey, and they were being honest. They said that was a good sermon. Always nice to hear. They said, but it really didn't have a lot to do with Moses. So like, what are we doing here? Because the theme is the life of Moses. And I said to him, yeah, sometimes I'll tell Jen what I'm going to be preaching about. And she was like, that sounds like a good sermon, but it doesn't really have anything to do with the series. So like, why are you doing that one? And I'll be like, I don't care. Like, I'll just do the sermon anyways. This also does not have a lot to do with Moses this morning. I'll just tell you. It's a little bit. It leans esoteric and professorial. And it's not. There are some sermons that are like, hey, how do we have better faith? How can I be a better dad? You know, like, how do I be a better employee or something like that? This is not that. The goal of this sermon this morning is for us to understand in a greater way the way that the Bible is miraculously woven together for this incredible, sovereign, articulated picture that God has intended since before time began. So you may not walk away from here being like, well, that's how I'm going to be a better father. But I hope that you'll walk away from here with a greater understanding of what the Bible is and what it articulates. And I think we find that focal point in the delivery of the law and God's request after that. So that's where we're going this morning. Before we go there, I want to take us back to 1992. In 1992, at some point that year, I became 12 years old, or maybe it was 1993. And my dad and mom made an agreement with me. It was time for dad to buy a new car. And so he said, hey, listen, I'm going to buy a new car. I want you to pick it out with me. Because when you turn 16, if you'll commit to washing it every other week for the next four years, when you're 16, I'll hand you the keys. That was the agreement. And so we went out and we looked at cars. We looked at a Mazda. It was stupid. We looked at a Mitsubishi Eclipse. Do you guys remember those? Yeah, there we go. David, did you have one of those or do you just like them? I wanted one. Yeah, me too, pal. Me too. I couldn't convince dad to do, he's a respectable accountant. He can't drive around in a sports car. That's not what accountants do. They drive Accords. And so that's what we bought. Incidentally, I did the math a few weeks ago. I've driven seven versions of an Accord. That's how big of a nerd I am and how much I like reliability. Those are my priorities. Anyways, we bought an Accord, but it was pretty cool. It was black. It was two-door. It's a coupe. It had a spoiler. It was a sport. That was the class, Accord EX Sport or whatever it is. And this thing for me, it's pretty sweet. And I used to love riding in it, knowing one day this is going to be my car. And so the agreement was, son, if you watch this every other weekend, when you're 16, I will give it to you. What we entered into there, and this is what I want us to understand this morning is, I entered into a covenant with my parents. And a covenant is this, and this is important to understand. A covenant is two parties commit binding actions to one another. A covenant is when two parties enter into an agreement and they commit binding actions to one another. Meaning, if you do this, I will do this. If you agree to these terms, if you agree to this behavior, I will agree to this behavior. And so between my parents and I, it was, if you wash this car every other week, then we will agree to give you the keys when you're 16. That will be our behavior. So we entered into a covenant. And it's important that we understand this morning what a covenant is because that's what the whole sermon is about. Just to tie a bow on the story of my covenant with my parents, I washed that Honda Accord about four times in four years. And when I turned 16, my dad sold it, bought a car that he wanted, and didn't give it to me. He kept his, yeah, yeah. He kept his end of the bargain too. And he should have. That's funny. I've been preaching to you guys for eight years. The only time I've ever heard applause is for my dad not giving me a car. Okay. That's what a covenant is. And it's important this morning that we understand what covenants are. Because I don't know if you know this or not about your Bible. And, you know, if you're here and you're not a believer this morning, I'm going to say things like your Bible and your faith, and it may not be yours. And I don't want to attribute that to you. But if you are a believer and you do believe in the Bible as God's word, then what I can share with you, or if you're just curious and you want to understand the Bible better anyways, the Bible is actually divided into five major covenants. Five covenants that God makes with mankind, with his people, with humans. And so I want us to understand what a covenant is, because whether you realize it or not, the faith to which you ascribe, that you give yourself to, the text that is the foundation of that faith is divided into five of those agreements. Agreements that are, I will bind myself to you by these actions and you will bind yourself to me by these actions. The five covenants are, you don't need to know this or write this down, but I just want us to have a framework for where we're going. And I've told you at the beginning that this is professorial, so I'm giving myself an excuse to be a little bit nerdy here. The five covenants that we break down the Bible with begin with Noah. It's the Noahic, the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, the Davidic, and the New Covenant. Now let's go back. Noahic Covenant. It's the covenant with Noah. God floods the earth. At the end of the flood, he puts them on dry land. He puts the rainbow over and he says, I'm never going to destroy the earth like this again. I promise you that. That's God making a covenant with Noah. And what's interesting about this covenant is that it doesn't require a binding action from Noah. He just says, hey, I'm going to do. I'm going to do this. And so he does it. Then there's the Abrahamic. The Abrahamic covenant is in Genesis chapter 12. And he says, hey, Abraham, here's your binding action. Move. Go to this place where I will show you. But after that, there's no other binding action for Abraham. That's all he has to do. The binding action for God is, I will make your descendants like the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky. I will give you this land, Israel, which we still see God's faith in today. And then I will, one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. That's the threefold promise that God makes to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12. That's the Abrahamic covenant where God says, you do this, you move, which Abraham already had. And I will do this. This is my binding action. Then the next one is the Mosaic covenant, which we're going to talk about this morning. We're going to see what that promise is and what the two binding actions are. Then after that is the Davidic. And the Davidic covenant is in 2 Samuel chapter 17 that he makes to King David where he says, the Messiah will sit on your throne. He promises that to David. Interesting about that covenant, no reciprocal binding action required. David, you don't have to do anything to keep this covenant. You don't have to do anything to make this true. The Messiah will sit on your throne. Then the last one is the new covenant. That's Jesus. And God makes a promise to us with Jesus, which is simply this. You believe in him. And I will redeem you. That's Jesus. And we're going to talk about that a lot more. But what I want us to see this morning is how those covenants all tie together and what the relationship is between the Mosaic covenant and the new covenant, because I think it's very compelling. So let's look at that Mosaic covenant. What was it that God promised to the people? And what binding action did he ask of them? And what binding action did he promise in response to theirs? What is the Mosaic covenant? And I think answering that question is probably more important to you than you thought it was when you walked in this room. So let's look at it and let's understand the Mosaic covenant. Here's what's happening before God says this. We're going to go to two different places. So what's happening is God has descended on Mount Sinai. And we talked about this last week with the law and the week before that with the fear of God being the beginning of wisdom. But God has descended on Mount Sinai. His presence is before his people. And he's asked Moses and Aaron to come up and talk to him. And they go back down the mountain holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. And they issue the law to the people. And they say, this is the law. This is what we do to make ourselves right with our God. And so it's this really kind of pregnant moment in the Old Testament and really in history. And so God gives them the law. And in response to the law, here's what he says in Exodus chapter 25 verses 8 and 9. And this is going to feel out of context, but I'll contextualize it for you. Chapter 25 of Exodus verses 8 and 9, as after he gives all of the instructions, and Zach, you're fine, just leave it up there. After he gives all of his instructions, here's what I want you to do, here's how I want you to follow the law. on from here. And he says, to host my presence, I want you to build an ark, which is just a fancy chest. It's a thing that opens that you put blankets in. But except for blankets, it's the staff and the law and manna. And then over this ark, they were told to build two golden angels whose wings touch in the middle. And the surface that those wings formed was referred to as the mercy seat. And this was the seat of the very presence of God for the Hebrew people and for our people. So after God, and this is what we need to pick up on, after God says, here's the law. If you read through chapter 24, what he's telling Moses is go down the mountain and go tell everyone that they have to obey this law. Keep faith in me. Put no other gods before me. Obey me. Follow these rules that I'm giving you. This is your binding agreement. And my binding agreement is this. I will be present with you. So here's the Mosaic covenant, okay? Obey me, and I will be present with you. That's the agreement. I just gave you all the laws. You walk down the mountain with them. You're going to read them to the people. And you tell them, if you follow these laws, I will be present with you. And just so we're clear, here's what that presence means. We have this in Deuteronomy. And Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible are the books of Moses, the books of the law. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy, that word means the law repeated. So Deuteronomy is kind of a synopsis of everything that just happened in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. And if you've ever done one of those read through the Bible programs, you know those can be tedious books. So we're grateful for Deuteronomy because sometimes it summarizes things in a more succinct way that makes them more approachable. In this case, this is true. So in Deuteronomy chapter 11, we see God again talking about the Mosaic covenant. And he says, this is just a snippet, but here's the sentiment. Talking about what it means, why it matters that God offers to be present with us. Chapter 11, verse 13, he says, so if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today to love the Lord your God and to serve him with your heart and your soul, then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn he goes on and he says, And he basically says, hey, if you obey me, I will offer you my presence. And in my presence, here's what that means, your fields will flourish. I will care for you. I will protect you. And if we just want to boil it down to really simple thoughts so that we can understand it together and move on with the greater principle, then what we do is what God is saying here, hey, if you'll obey me, I'm going to do God's stuff for you. Right? I'm going to protect you. I'm going to make sure you flourish. You're going to win wars like this nation will exist. So what we see here in the Mosaic covenant that happens at length in Exodus 19 to 25, we see synopsized for us in Deuteronomy 11. But the ethos of it is, here's the binding agreement. If you obey the laws that I just gave you, then I will offer you my presence. And here's what we might not understand about God's presence. When we see it in this context, he doesn't mean just today. You know? He means for eternity. The Hebrew mind didn't, they didn't grasp that. And our minds at first blush don't either. But God means it for eternity. You obey me and I will offer you my presence. Not just now for protection, but in eternity so that we no longer fear sin or death. Right? I had somebody this week, a dear friend at the church. I was on the phone with her yesterday. And she lost her mom. It was an expected thing. But in speaking with her, I said, how you doing? And she said, I'm good. Mom's in the presence of God now. So when God says, I'm offering you my presence, build some space for it, he doesn't just mean today. He means forever. So the Mosaic covenant is you follow my laws in this life and I will be present with you for all of life, for the next one too. That's what this means. And I don't think we noticed that at first reading, but that's what it means. And so here's the thing that's always been tricky for me about the Mosaic covenant. I know we're very far in the weeds now, but hopefully you're thinking along with me. A covenant is when two parties agree to binding actions. And one person's or one party's fidelity to that action necessarily binds you to yours, right? But here's the problem with the Mosaic covenant. And here's what it's hard to make sense of. I can see some of you smiling. You know what I'm going to say. They didn't do their part. We didn't do our part. They didn't follow the law. God said, here's 630 laws. Follow them perfectly and I will offer my presence to you. And they immediately, golden calf, while God was still on the mountain and they could see his presence, they immediately got right back to the business of sinning and breaking the law. No one has ever kept their part of the deal worse than humans. Ever. They broke it. They didn't perform their binding action, but God continues to perform his because he has a fidelity to this promise. And so we go, well, why did God keep his side of the deal? Why did God's presence remain with his people? Why does God's presence remain with us? And why do we have access to God's promise still, even though we haven't performed our binding action? And it's always bugged me as I've thought about it, because the others, Noahic, Abrahamic, Davidic, those covenants, God says, I'm just going to do for you. The Mosaic covenant is the only covenant in the Old Testament that requires a performance from the other side. God says, your binding action is existing. My binding action is to do this for you. And then he does it. But for the Mosaic covenant, he says, no, your binding action is to obey me perfectly. And mine is to offer you my presence. And then we immediately fail. So why does God continue to offer his presence? Here's why. Because he knew this. One day, someone will fulfill their part of the deal. God knew what they did. He knows what we might not immediately think of when we read the Mosaic Covenant. And a casual reading of Exodus 19 through 25 might not bring us to this point, but it's important that we express it now. God knew that one day he was going to send his son and that his son was going to fulfill the covenant on our behalf. He was going to perfectly execute the law to excuse anyone who had never done that, which is everyone, and be redeemed by God. God knew. So when we ask the question, why does God remain faithful to this promise to which we remain unfaithful? Because he knew that one day someone would be faithful to it and that that would fulfill the binding action. He knew he was going to send his son Jesus to fulfill the promise that we fall short of. And what's wonderful about God's foreknowledge in that is to be able to see this, that this feels like a clumsy point, but I'll tell you more about it. Everything points to Jesus. The Mosaic Covenant is designed to point us to Christ. Last week, I did a whole sermon about the law, and I said the whole point of the law is to point us to the cross. The whole point of these covenants is to point us to Jesus. God made the Noahic covenant. He said, I'll never destroy the world like this again. You know how he knew he could make that covenant, that promise? Because he knew that he was going to send his son who was going to redeem the earth back to what it was intended when it was created. And he knew what was happening at the end of time. The Noahic covenant points us to the relief and the redemption of Christ. When he promises Abraham, I'm going to make you a great nation and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. Do you know who that descendant was? Jesus. The Abrahamic covenant points us to Christ. The Mosaic covenant, follow this law perfectly and I will always offer you my presence. And who followed that law for us was Jesus because we can't do it because the law points us to our need for him. And when he makes the Davidic covenant, do you know who that points to? Do you know who the Messiah is that's going to sit on the throne of the universe? Jesus. And the new covenant and the New Testament, I don't know if you know this or not, but the whole new testament is about Jesus. All of it points us to Jesus. The covenants that make up the Bible and our faith all point us to Jesus. He's the point. It is to him that our gaze should be directed. And if we read the Bible carefully, what we find is that every part of it is trying to gently grab our little baby faces and point them towards our Christ and point them towards our Savior. The point of the Mosaic Covenant is to focus us on Jesus. And here's what occurred to me this week that I just think is frigging awesome. Okay. Do you understand that Jesus fulfills both sides of this covenant? Think about the Mosaic covenant, what it is. Think about what I just articulated to you. You follow my law perfectly and I will offer you my presence. Jesus followed the law perfectly by being present with us. Do you see? He followed the law perfectly by being present with, by offering us his presence. And then in an ongoing way through the Holy Spirit, he is with us every day. Jesus is with us in this moment here. Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I will be also. Jesus is here with us now. His presence rests and resides in this room. He is with us. The promise that God made his people is true. And it's true because Jesus fulfills both sides of that promise by both following the law perfectly and fulfilling it for us. And also by being present with us here in this day, in this moment, and not just present here, but present in heaven, advocating for us, whispering in the ear of God, the father, bringing us into eternity where we will spend forever with him in his presence, which is what is promised in the Mosaic covenant. And I don't have anything for you to go do this week. So this week, think about this. I don't have an application to this sermon. I just want you to see how beautifully woven, not just scripture, but history is by the intentionality and the sovereignty of our God who knew when he made this binding agreement with us that we would not do our part. And he already knew how to fulfill both sides of that promise by allowing his son to become human and to fulfill it for us and be the very presence that he promised for all of eternity. And I happen to think that's pretty neat. Let's pray. Father, thank you for making promises with us when you know that we can't keep up our part. Thank you for loaning things to us when you know that we won't pay you back. Thank you for agreeing to deals that you know we will not hold up. And then for loving us anyways. And for holding up our part too. Thank you for the promises that you made to Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and to us. Thank you for upholding them. Thank you for that odd music during my prayer. God, we love you. We are grateful for you. We are grateful for the ways that you love us. And God, I pray that maybe today we would just be astounded by your love. In Jesus' name, amen.