Sermons tagged with Presence

We are in the fourth part of our series now called With, where we've been reading through together and then discussing on Sundays the book With by a pastor and author named Sky Jethani. I want to thank Doug Bergeson last week for doing a phenomenal job filling in for me as we learned about life from God. Because I either have less courage or more sense than him, I'm not going to start my sermon by singing to you. I don't think that I could ever do that. If you missed that last week, watch the sermon at least for the song at the beginning that you may have missed. It was really, really great. As we've been moving through this series, we've been looking at different postures that we adopt before God that ultimately become harmful for us. They do more to hurt us than they do to help us. And this week we arrive at what I think is probably the sneakiest and maybe most damaging posture that we can adopt that is wrong. And I think that if you spent any time in the church, if you grew up, especially for those of you who grew up in church, if your memory, as far back as you can remember, when the doors were open, you were there, then I guarantee you this is going to be hitting on some nerves for you. If you've been a part of the church for any number of years, for any length of time, then there are going to be some things in this posture that resonate for you. I told you that when I read this book first in 2013, I've never read another book that caused me to stop, put it down, pray, and repent more than this one did. And this chapter in particular, this dude read my mail. So if it feels like at some point in the service I'm stepping on your toes, just know that that's not condemnation. That's not accusation. That's empathy. This is me. I almost made this sermon just a confessional, to just confess to the church body how I've walked through this posture. But as we approach this posture, this life for God, I wanted to share with you an experience that I had years ago. I think it was 2007, in about April or May of 2007. Jen and I, my wife, we were moving back home. We had lived our first year of marriage in Columbia, South Carolina, where I was going to go to seminary. We decided not to do that, so we moved back home, and I was going to pursue being a teacher, being a Bible teacher at a private high school. I didn't know which one. I was applying and hoping for the best. That's a really difficult job to get. I was really foolhardy in my efforts, but that's what we were trying to do. And there was a position that came open that somebody told me about. I didn't see it on any of the websites. Somebody told me about it, just word of mouth. And so I sent my resume in to them. And I ended up getting hired at this school called Covenant Christian Academy and became the Bible teacher there. At the same time, they were looking for a science teacher. And this is again in April or May. So this is, if you know anything about school world, this is after the hiring process. Hiring starts in February or March for the upcoming year. So this was actually too late in the year. So it was odd for them to even be hiring at this point. And they advertised very low key this Bible position and this science position at the same high school for three weeks. And in three weeks, I wonder how many resumes you think the science teaching position got. Three. I wonder how many resumes you think the Bible teaching position got. 60. In three weeks, barely advertised. And that's always stuck out to me. I thought that was odd. In my process to come here, I was looking for different jobs. This was back in 2017. There was a church in Kingsport, Tennessee, which if you know anything about that area of Tennessee, it's booty. There's nothing there. It is an undesirable area of the country. It just is. Being honest with you. I know somebody from there. They will confirm this. A church there had an open position for a senior pastor and received over 500 resumes from a search firm. Now, why is that the case? Why is it the case that this undesirable, this school that I got hired at, my starting salary was $27,000 a year in 2007. It was podunk out in the country, the far-flung suburbs of Atlanta with a school that had a cafe gym notarium. Like that's how, it was not this glamorous thing. Yeah, we got 60 resumes in three weeks. How's that happening? How is a church in the corner of Tennessee really not around very much at all getting 500 resumes in a year? Why is that happening? I think it's happening because of this life for God posture that we adopt as churches. The life for God posture says this, and I'll explain to you why I'm thinking this way in a minute, but the life for God posture says this, God's love for me, God's value for me is equal to my accomplishments for him. God's value for me, God's affection for me is equal to my accomplishments for him. The more I do for God, the more he values me. The more things I accomplish for God, the more he loves me and approves of me, the more valuable I am in his kingdom. It's this mindset that says, if I want to be a good Christian, then I have to go and do. I have to go and perform. I have to go and be a professional Christian. And this is why I think there's so many resumes when jobs like that open up because there's so many people who grew up in the church, who have been around the church and have been in this vice grip and this pressure cooker of if you're going to be a good Christian, then you need to be a professional one. If you really, really love God, then you'll go make a huge impact for him. If you grew up in the church, you felt this pressure of if someone's a really good Christian, they're going to leave everything and go be a missionary somewhere. They're going to go be a pastor. They're going to go start a ministry or a nonprofit. If you're just kind of a regular okay Christian, go get a business degree, make some money, and tithe so that the good Christians can go do the job. And now listen, I say that, and we chuckle at its absurdity, but you can't tell me that you haven't felt that pressure. You can't tell me that that hasn't felt true, that there's this economy within the church, that the more I do for God, the more valuable I am to him. The more I perform, the more he loves me. The more I do, the bigger the accolades get, the bigger crowd I draw, the bigger Bible study I have, the bigger following I have online, whatever it is, then the more the people around me and my God admire me. And this is a tricky, sneaky, pernicious posture, partly because it preys upon something that is in our very nature. It preys upon our desire to be valuable and to be valued. Every one of us is born with an intrinsic need for approval. Every one of us is born with a need in our hearts and our souls for someone to look at us and say, you're enough. I love you. You're good enough. I value you. We all need that. That's why my four-year-old daughter, Lily, everything she does, Daddy, watch me do this. She can't go down a flight of stairs without making me watch her jump down the last two. Now I watch her pause at three and consider it for a minute and then step to the second one and jump, right? Daddy, watch this. Daddy, look at this. Daddy, look at what I colored. Look at what I did in school. And it's all these little things. None of them are super impressive except that she's my daughter and I love her. But what is that in her except for the need to be approved of, the need to be valued, the need to perform, the need for somebody to look at her and say, yeah, you're good enough and I love you for that. And like, guys, we don't lose that need. We don't lose that desire. As you get older, you don't lose the need to be valuable and enough for somebody. That doesn't go away. We just have more nuanced ways of asking for it, right? We see this in young adolescent boys that brag about everything. All they're doing is begging you to tell them that they're valuable and that they're enough. As we mature past that, we let other people tell us that we're good enough, but we don't solicit it. Or we're really sneaky. In my early years of ministry, I used to ask people for feedback on a sermon or on a talk. And listen, I didn't really want your feedback. Don't be critical of me. Just tell me all the ways you think I did great. That's all I'm looking for. That's just a sneaky way to get you to tell me that I'm valuable and that I'm enough and that I performed. It's intrinsic in us to grope for that value. And this posture says the more I perform, the more valuable that I am. Another reason it's really particularly sneaky is we celebrate it in church. We celebrate the stories. I think of Sarah and Casey Prince who grew into adulthood here at Grace years ago, and then they go to South Africa to do God's work there, and we celebrate that, and we should. That's the problem. We should celebrate that. But what we don't do is celebrate like a faith leverant. I mean, she was the online partner of the week a couple of weeks ago. But that's not really celebrating. That's just a joke that's fun. She's a stay-at-home mom. She crafts lessons for her two boys and for her young daughter every day. She prays over them and pours into them and teaches them the Bible. And we don't celebrate that nearly as much as we celebrate someone leaving everything and growing across the world to preach the gospel, when in reality, both calls are the same. Both calls are equal. Both calls are from God. Timothy tells us that we are all vessels in God's house and he chooses which ones he will place where for noble purposes and for other purposes. We're all a part of the body of Christ. We all have our part to play. Yet some reason, for whatever reason, we value some gifts over others and some ministries over other ministries. And one of the reasons we do this is because it feels biblical, right? Like the Bible tells us to perform. If you know Scripture well, hopefully you've already thought of a few where you'd like to raise your hand and be like, but Nate, we're told to do ministry. We're told to preach the gospel. We're told that we should have an impact. And you're right. Paul tells us this over and over again. At the end of his life, he says, I've run the race. I've kept the faith. He says he's fought the good fight. He tells us to run our race as one who desires to win. That's performance. Jesus, as he leaves, his last instructions to the disciples are go and make disciples. The thing I did with you, now you go and do that. Go do missions. Go and do. He tells us to do that. When he calls the disciples, follow me and I will make you fishers of men. I will give you purpose. So he says in Matthew 4.19. So it seems biblical that we should adopt this posture of life for God. I'm going to follow God so that I can derive my sense of purpose and worth and value from him because he tells me to go and do these things. That's why it's pretty sneaky. And it's similar to the other postures, not life over God. Life over God says, I don't need God in my life. I'm going to be the authority in my life. I'm just going to extract his principles and apply them for maximum efficiency like a self-help guru, but I don't really need his authority in my life. That's a different one. But those other two postures, life under God, I'm going to live my life under his authority. Life from God, I'm going to follow God so that I can get blessings from him. Those seem biblical too. The Bible wants us to live our life under the authority of God. The Bible does say that if we follow him, we will be blessed. Those are in Scripture. But what I want us to see about those three postures, those two and this one this morning, is that these postures are the results of following God, but they serve as terrible reasons to follow him. They're the results of following God. When we follow God, those things happen, but they really serve as terrible reasons to follow him. When I follow Jesus, I'm going to live my life under his authority, life under him. That's okay. That's good. That's a result of giving my life to him. When I give my life to Christ, I'm going to experience blessings from him. That's a result of my walk with him. When I give my life to Christ, I'm going to do things for him. That's a result, but they make terrible reasons. And when these things become the reasons that we follow God, I think three really terrible things happen in our life. The first one is this. I want to walk through a little exercise before I tell you what it is. This exercise really stuck out to me from the book, and I wonder if it's true of us as well. I know it's gonna feel cheesy to do this. I have a very high cheese meter. I hate all things that are cheesy. So just trust me, I wouldn't ask you to do this unless I thought it was particularly effective. But I would like for you to close your eyes. If you're watching at home, close your eyes. If you're here, close your eyes. If I look at you and I see that your eyes aren't closed, I'm gonna shame you by name to everyone watching everywhere. But I want you to do this. Close your eyes and picture that you're in heaven and you're walking before the Father. You're in heaven and you can finally see the face of God. The first time after living the life that you've lived, you can now see his face. What does it look like? What's the primary emotion on the face of God as he looks back at you? What does he feel towards you? All right. You guys can look back up here. I would be willing to bet, just like it talked about in the book, just like I know what my answer is when I do that exercise, I would be willing to bet that a lot of us, if we answer that question honestly, how is God looking at us? We would say that he's disappointed. He's disappointed in me. I should have done more. I should have known better. He gifted me in ways. He gave me opportunities, and I didn't do as much as I could. My Father in heaven has got to be disappointed in me. He does this exercise in the book with a bunch of kids going to Bible college. And their answer was universally, he's disappointed in me. And listen, when we live a life where we feel like God's value for me is equal to my performance and accomplishments for him, I think we have no choice but to walk through life assuming God is disappointed in us. One of the terrible things that happen when we adopt this life for God posture is that we walk through life assuming that our good Father in heaven is disappointed in us and who we are. And sin is no longer this thing that damages our relationship with our Father. It's no longer this thing that necessitated the death of Jesus on our behalf. Sin simply becomes this thing that makes us less effective than we could be. We don't properly think about that either. I wonder if you can relate to that at all, the idea that God is disappointed in you. And listen, I said at the beginning, this chapter eats my lunch. This is me. Even as I sit here and I tell you in the next few minutes God's not disappointed in you, even as I finish talking about God's love for you, I'm just being honest with you. I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm not trying to make a point or be dramatic. I don't feel that. I feel God's stark disappointment in me. And if you're with me there, I wonder what that must do to us. What must that do to our psyches? There's an entire industry of counseling, a vast majority of which is based on helping people get over the fact that they feel like their parents are disappointed in them. We have a whole industry of counseling and psychology that sits down with people and helps them get over the wounds that their parents caused them by never being proud of them, by never telling them that they were enough, by not loving them the way that they needed to be loved. And we as adults have to move through that in our wounding and try to figure that out. There's a whole industry based around it. How much more then must it affect us for us to walk through our life convinced that disappointed in us when we're so sure that he loves everyone around us so much? If I were to ask you, close your eyes and imagine your spouse before God. Close your eyes and imagine anybody in this room or anybody watching online before God. What's God's face to them? You would say it's love. It's joy. It's happiness. So then why do you make his face disappointed at you? What must it do to the way that we think about God, to our heart for him, to just assume that he's disappointed in us? What must it do to the way that we raise our children and teach them about our good God? It's no wonder that maybe some of us have a hard time praying or spending time in the Bible because we think the God that we find there is disappointed in us, like an angry coach on the sideline waiting for us to come off the field. And because of that, because we so often walk through life assuming God is disappointed in who we are and how we've performed, I think it causes a lot of us to kind of give up on being able to earn God's affection that way. And because it does, we begin to look to our peers for affection and approval. And in this way, our service becomes currency for comparison. In this way, we use our service as currency for comparison to others. We do the exact opposite of what Paul talked about in Galatians. Paul in Galatians wrote this striking verse, verse 10. He said, for am I now seeking the approval of man or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ. Paul in Galatians says, listen, we don't live for other people. We don't live for the approval of our peers. We live for the approval of God. But when we adopt this life for God posture, when we try to perform at a rate that earns us his love and affection, we inevitably will realize that we fall short of that. And then we will turn our eyes to our peers and begin to compare ourselves to them. I know I'm disappointing to God, but these schmucks think I'm pretty great, so I'm just going to keep performing for them. A good way to know if this exists in you is to answer this question honestly. And listen, I'm about to step on some toes. I would say I'm sorry. I'm not. But this is me. I experienced this too. How many of you have ever served on a team, participated in a ministry, accepted an appointment to a board or to a committee, or pursued a position in ministry somehow. Not because it was your earnest and fervent desire to use your gifts to further God's kingdom, but because you liked the way that position or that appointment made you look to the people around you. How many of you have served on boards because of how it's perceived by others? How many of you have accepted appointments or desired to be on a committee or on a team because of the respect that it would garner from your peers? Listen, I'm chief among these people. I know through counseling of my own that the whole reason I got into the pastorate was because it was the quickest path of respect I could find in my life. Where I grew up, the people around me, the people that we respected most were the pastors. So I figured if I wanted the respect of other people, I'll just go do that. I can run my mouth for a while. I hope over the years God has purified that motive in me. But I'm lying if I tell you that every week I don't have to fight the grossness inside me that just wants to be impressive to you. If you can relate to that, it's probably because you too have fallen victim to this life for God posture. The more I perform, the more my God will love me and the more of the people around me will respect me. And suddenly our service to the Father simply becomes currency for comparison. And when we do that enough, when we do that enough, one of two things happens. Either we give up and we say, I can't compare to the people around me. I'm nobody. I'm nothing. I don't matter. I'll never matter in the church. I'm just kind of doing my little thing. I'm just staying in my box. People aren't going to respect me and we just forget it. We become discouraged and disheartened and we walk away from all that. Or we just double down and we become me monsters and we just perform, perform, perform. Look at me, look at all the things that I'm doing. When we don't even really want to be doing any of the things anyway, we just want the respect that they'll garner. And what happens when we do that is this last terrible thing that comes from this posture. We become deaf, blind, and numb to God's relentless and continual love for us. When we try to perform our way into God's love, to perform our way into the admiration from others, we become deaf, blind, and numb to the continual stream of God's wonderful affection to us. I wonder how many of you feel that way this morning. I wonder how many of you feel blinded and numbed to the fact that God loves you. I told you earlier that even as I preach that we're not disappointments to God, that he looks at us and he loves us. He's a loving father. We're not disappointments to him. I confess to you that I don't feel that truth. Every time I read about the love of the father, I don't know how much I feel that love. I feel that this performance, this idea of accomplishing enough for him, creates this voice in our head that's so loud that we need to do more, do more, do more, do more, that we drown out the voice of God that is telling us over and over again that he loves us and that we're enough for him. And we know this is true. The Bible shouts it at us. It tells us that the Lord is gracious and slow to anger and abounding in love and he is good to us. It tells us that give thanks to the Lord for he is good. His love endures forever. It tells us that he is love. It tells us that he loved us so much that he sent his son Jesus to die for us. Listen to this. If you're in this room, you probably know that this is true. If you're watching online, you probably know that this is true. The Bible screams at us that God loves us. Do you realize that he loves you so much that when you sinned and you messed up that relationship, he sent his son to die for you. His son whom he loved and whom he was well pleased to die for you so that you could have a path to spend eternity with him. Do you understand? God wants your soul and your presence in his life so much that he sent his son so that he could spend eternity with you. That's the whole reason that he did it? Y'all, I don't want to spend a week with any of you. Right? We don't want to spend that much time with anybody. What would you do to spend a week with a stranger? Nothing. I wouldn't give anything. I don't want to do that. God loves you so much that he sent his son to spend eternity with you. There couldn't be a more clear message of love coming out of Scripture than that truth. But yet we convince ourselves that we're somehow, we're the one. Everyone else in this room, they deserve it. But us, we should know better. And we're the one who doesn't deserve God's love. We're the one who can't hear that voice. We're the one who can't let it wash over us. And so we either get more discouraged or we try harder. And the whole time we make ourselves blind, deaf, and numb to this message of love that comes out of Scripture. And so my hope this morning, more than anything else, is that maybe for a few minutes that voice in your head that tells you that you're not good enough, that tells you that you're not worthy of the Father's love, that tells you He's going to be disappointed in you as soon as he gets to see you, that that voice that tells you to push harder and to do more and that you're not doing your part, that maybe that voice this morning for just a second will shut up long enough for you to hear the actual voice of God pouring out of Scripture, telling you over and over again that he loves you, that you're enough for him, that he waits like the father in the story of the prodigal son with open arms and runs to you. And that if you are here this morning or you're watching and you don't know him, you don't know Jesus yet, he is pursuing you. He is chasing after you. He is leaving everybody behind and coming after just you. He wants you so much that he died for you so that he could spend eternity with you. Can we please stop muting that voice coming out of Scripture and hear it? And accept God's love for us and quit trying to perform for it? My hope as we wrapped up with this posture this week is that over these last four weeks that God has primed our hearts, that he's revealed some things in us about why we follow him, about why we call God our Father and Jesus our Savior. And that as he's primed and readied our hearts that as we come back next week for the proper posture, life with God, that we will be ready and eagerly and earnestly desirous of what that posture is and what it looks like to be before Father for all the right reasons and finally find a way to walk with him that is fulfilling and life-giving and enriching so that we can hear the voice of the Father saying to us every day that he loves us, that we are adopted sons and daughters of the us. You're gracious. You're slow to anger. You're abounding in love. May we believe that we don't have to perform for you. May everything that we do be an outflowing of the love that you offer to us. God, help us to quit trying so hard to earn a thing that we already have. God, if any of us have adopted this posture of living our life for you, and our service has become currency for comparison, and it's driven us to this place where we assume that you're disappointed in us because we're simply not doing enough, may we please just be still this morning. Just calm down. Sit in your presence and bask in your love. May we feel that even as we finish up and sing. May we feel that as we go throughout our week. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

This is good. I've been preaching to Steve for 22 weeks on Thursday mornings. This is great. This is the first morning. Jen and I moved into a new house in April, beginning of April. This is the first morning I've woken up in my new house Sunday morning and driven to church and now preach. So this is really, really great. So good morning to you, Grace. Good morning to you online. I wanted to say to those of you who are watching from home and just reiterate, you are every bit as much a participant in what's happening this morning and in this church as anybody who comes in person. And we are now in this new season of life as a church. This is the new season of grace. We are one church that meets in a bunch of different locations, both here and now, like Kyle said, all over the world online now. And this is what church is going to be for the foreseeable future. We're going to be like this for a long time. I don't know if you guys have thought that through, but this is a new season in the life of Grace as a church because we have to be one church in multiple locations. It's going to be a while before everybody feels all the way comfortable coming back. We're going to grow back into a need for children's ministry as that starts back up. And so this is the new season for Grace, which is kind of crazy to say, because I don't know if you know this, the last time we met in person, I was announcing to you the pledge total of our campaign. That's a thing that happened. And then COVID started, and here we are. So even though this plan, the way that 2020 has played out, and this new season of grace that we're facing is not our plan. God knew what was going to happen. His hand has been on us this entire time, and it will continue to be on us. He will continue to be with us. We have always said that God's hand is on grace. He's made it evident that he loves grace, and we are every bit as confident now that his hand remains on grace. And I need nothing more than this. I was talking with Joe as worship started this morning. Joe's the moderator of our board, and I went, this is great. I didn't expect this. All you brave souls to be here, this is wonderful to get to see everybody. So we are excited. And as we move into this new season in the life of grace, I did want to say just thank you a ton. There have been some people working behind the scenes, and whenever you want to call out any one individual person, it gets a little murky because so many people have been doing so very much. We've had people watching our practice online streams and giving feedback. We've had people showing up to work in the booth and help out behind the scenes. We've had Erin, her whole ministry, our children's pastor, has changed and she's just been killing it online. Kyle's switched everything to online. Everybody just up and changed their job in this quarantine and have done so much to push the church forward. But as we started this new season of grace, I would be remiss if I didn't point out to you the hard work of Steve Goldberg, our worship pastor. When we went in March, when we realized, hey, we have to go totally online. We have to find a way to record a sermon, release it online, and be totally online. And we'd like to have a virtual lobby where people can still talk to each other. And also, we need a new webpage. And we need somebody to record the sermon and edit it and upload it and be ready to go. Steve? And then when the elders, when we realized as elders that in June, we're going to have to go live. We're going to have to do a live stream. We really don't have a choice. We're going to have to be able to do this when we come back because when we begin to resume in-person gatherings, because not everyone's going to feel comfortable doing that. There's costs involved. There's technical attitudes involved. There's different things that you have to do. It's a big, huge stressor. And once again, as a church, we went, Steve? And he knocked it out of the park. So his job fundamentally changed in COVID. He has been a huge servant to the church and is the reason, the biggest human reason that we exist as a body right now because of the work that he's done behind the scenes. So we are grateful to Steve. Thank you, Steve, for that. As we jump back into the series, we are in the series called A Time of Kings. We're walking through the Book of Kings. We know it to be the Book of Kings. Our Bible divides it into two, 1 and 2 Kings, but it was originally all one big scroll that got divided in half because it was just too long of a scroll to carry around. This morning, we are in 2 Kings chapter 10. So if you have a Bible there at home, go ahead and turn there. If you have one here in the service, turn to the Bible. The Bible in front of you, in the seat back in front of you, has not been touched for over like six months. So it's good. It's clean. You can touch it. But we're going to be in 2 Kings chapter 10. In this chapter, there's a principle pointed out that reminded me of a book that was written back in 2001. It's almost 20 years old. If you're a business leader, if you're in the corporate world at all, you have probably gone through this book, Good to Great by Jim Collins. It's a great perennial book. It's one of these wonderful leadership books. Incidentally, in these leadership books, whenever you read these leadership books, how to be an effective leader, how to grow an effective company, whatever it is, the result of it is the author will always land on, after different studies by like Duke and Stanford and Yale and whatever else, that to be an effective leader, you need to be humble and lead without an ego. You need to be a servant leader and put others first. These are the most effective leaders we see in the world. And as a believer, you just kind of go like, oh, you mean to lead like Jesus? That's what your research tells you? That's just an aside. But in this book, Good to Great, he looks at companies and he's asking the question, how do companies go from good, effective companies to really great, knocking it out of the park companies? What's the difference between something that's good and then taking it to the next level and making it great? He's got a lot of good ideas in there that stand the test of time. But the one that he leads the book with that I think is incredibly effective is this statement that I was reminded of as I looked at the story of Jehu this week. It's a statement it's in chapter one of the book. Good is the enemy of great. Good is the enemy of great. And what he means is that when we settle for good enough, that's the enemy of actually pursuing greatness. That so many people, so many corporations don't reach greatness because they settle for good enough. They get to good enough and then they go, great, that's perfect. And they don't actually get to be great. So its premise is that good is the enemy of great. And this is true in the professional world. It absolutely is. You know this to be true in your own lives. It's also true in marriage. It's true in how we parent our kids. It's true in our physical health. Settling for good enough is always the enemy of great. And the story this week points out to us that not only is that true in the professional world, but it's true in the spiritual world as well. I think when we look at the story of Jehu, what we see is that spiritually, good is the enemy of great. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn, like I said, to 2 Kings 10. I'm going to give you a little bit of the background of what's going on here with this story of Jehu. By the way, I don't think there's ever been a more redneck pronunciation of this particular king's name, J-E-H-U, Jehu, right guys? But as I looked at him this week, it became apparent to me that this is one of the more tragic figures in the book of Kings. And I would have thought that two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, if you asked me, who are the characters in this book that make you sad? I wouldn't have named Jehu. But the more I dove into his story, the more my heart broke for him and the potential that he had that he messed up. If you've been following along, you'll remember that two weeks ago, we looked at the showdown of Elijah against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel. And you might remember that the king at the time was a guy named King Ahab, married to a woman named Jezebel. And Ahab, when he took over as king, for whatever reason over Israel, he installed Baal as the God. This is the God that we're going to worship. So he had 450 prophets of Baal. He had temples erected to Baal all over the country. And that was the predominant religion in Israel, which broke the heart of God because these are his people. These are his children, the descendants of Abrahamal on Mount Carmel. If you haven't seen that sermon, there's a spoiler alert. Elijah wins. God wins. And he kills the 450 prophets of Baal. He turns the hearts of the people towards the Lord, but apparently not all the way. Because when Ahab dies, Jehu is his successor. Jehu takes over as king. And he immediately, you'll see in the preceding chapters, stamps out the lines of Ahab and Jezebel, which is an uncomfortable truth, but that's just what they did in the time of kings. That was part of the deal. And the very next step he takes after making sure that Ahab and Jezebel are no longer a threat is he puts to death all the prophets of Baal and he burns down the temples of Baal. He says, no more with this religion, not in my reign, it's done. And it's because Jehu had a heart for the Lord. He said, this is wrong. We're not going to do this in the Israel that I run. He burned them all down. He ran out the prophets. He killed the ones that remained. And he said, in this country, we honor God. This is what we do. And it's a great thing. This is why I think Jehu is a tragic figure, because if you've been paying attention, you know that after Solomon, David and Solomon ruled over Israel, all of Israel. But after Solomon, his son Rehoboam was a dummy and he was so prideful that he split the nation. Now there's the northern tribes of Israel and the southern tribe of Judah. After the Civil War, there is a split. As you follow the history of Judah through the book of Kings, they have, depending on who you ask, either three or seven good kings. Israel had no good kings, not a single good king as it existed as a sovereign nation, if you understand good to be a king who turned the hearts of the people back to the Lord, a king that was faithful to God. Israel didn't have a single good king. And here Jehu is, at the beginning of his reign, taking this huge step, doing this really great thing, this thing that was very bold, this thing that probably would have upset a good portion of the people who followed Baal, this thing that was loud and prominent and good. And he wiped away the prophets of Baal and he wiped away the temples of Baal. And he could have been a good king that changed the course of the nation of Israel, that changed the course of history for Israel for all of eternity. But he didn't do this one thing. And that's where we pick up the story in verse 28. Chapter 10,'s good. God says you've done a good thing. You came in and with faith, because you love me, you got rid of the prophets of Baal, you got rid of the idols of Baal, you got rid of the temples of Baal, and you have followed me. And because of that, this throne is going to be in your family for four generations. This is a good thing. He is on the precipice of potential now, Jehu is, the precipice of greatness. All he has to do is finish the drill. All he has to do is take the next step. He's done the hard thing. And God says, good, I'm going to honor this. But God's not done talking to Jehu. We pick it back up in verse 31. But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God nation split, everybody was still practicing Jews. And for every festival and holiday, they had to go to Jerusalem. And in Jerusalem, they would pay the temple tax. They would pay for their sacrifices. They would pay for a hotel stay. They'd go to the restaurants. They'd do the whole deal. It was a trip. It was a pilgrimage. And Jerusalem was getting all the tourist dollars. And Jeroboam went, this stinks because Jerusalem is in Judah. So he made up his own religion with golden calves and he put them in Bethel and in Dan and he told the Israelites, hey, good job. You don't have to go to Jerusalem anymore. You can stay right here and leave your tax and tourism dollars to the nation of Israel. It was an economic choice. And in doing so, he sinned against the Lord. And those golden calves stayed there through many kings, virtually ignored. But to the heart of God, they were offensive. And when Jeroboam took the great step of getting rid of all of the idols in Israel, he didn't get rid of these two idols, the original ones, the ones that were there from the beginning. And I don't know why he didn't do that. I don't know why. Your guess is as good as mine. He could have thought these are part of the heritage of the country. I don't want to mess with this. I don't want to offend people. People go there. They're tourist attractions now. I don't want to fool with it. I've ruffled enough feathers with the bail thing. I don't want to do this thing. He could have thought that. He could have just thought, they don't matter. Nobody cares. Nobody's going to worship these golden calves. Nobody does that anymore. It's an antiquated religion. It's part of our history. It doesn't matter now. They're no threat to God, so whatever. But for whatever reason, he left them behind. And because he left them behind, he didn't turn his heart completely to God. Because he left them behind, he didn't do his part in turning the hearts of the people completely to God. And over time, the worship of those golden calves began to creep back into the culture. And over time, the hearts of God's people were turned away from him again. And over time, it says at the end of this that God began, in verse 32, that the Lord began to cut off parts of Israel. Bit by bit, portions of the kingdom were taken away from Jehu and his descendants until in four generations they were carried away as slaves because of this fundamental mistake that he made. And to me, the lesson from Jehu and his reign that echoes down through the centuries is that partial obedience leads to total failure. Partial obedience, a half measure, not quite full measure, leads to total failure. Partial obedience under Jehu led to total failure. The steps he took with Baal were big, and they were bold, and they were brave, and they were courageous. And he gets credit for that obedience. But because he didn't take the full step, because he didn't go the whole way and take the full measure, eventually it led to his total failure. And you know, the Bible is replete with these examples where half measures don't get the job done, half measures lead to total failure. The most prominent example to me is the transition between the book of Joshua and the book of Judges. The book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Bible that tells the story of the conquest of the land of Canaan. God brings his people, led by Joshua the general, into the promised land that's now occupied by other tribes and nations and city-states. And the whole book of Joshua is a book of conquest sweeping through the nation, and God has given them the divine instruction to get rid of everybody who's not one of my children. This is your land. It's nobody else's. I don't want them here. They're going to contaminate the holiness of my people. Get rid of them. And the whole book is about how God goes before Joshua and his armies and makes that possible. But then the next book, the book of Judges starts. And the book of Judges starts off by telling us, Joshua did right and swept through the land and cleared it out. But he left a couple of pockets of some tribes and some villages that he must have thought were inconsequential. I don't know if he was battle weary and just didn't feel like it. I don't know if he didn't see them as a threat. And so he left them. They could never oppose anything to Israel that would be bad for us. They could never hurt us, but he left them behind. He offered partial obedience. And because it was partial and not full, the author of the book of Judges tells us that because Joshua left them behind, that they were a thorn in the side of the nation of Israel. And in the book of Judges, we see those little inconsequential people groups rise up and oppress God's people in Judges. And they stay there and they remain so much so that generations later when David is in the valley fighting Goliath, he is fighting a giant that is a descendant of the tribes that Joshua left behind because he wouldn't be completely obedient. We see over and over again in Scripture that partial obedience leads to total failure. And what I want us to see this morning is that these stories, the story of Jehu and overthrowing Baal but not the golden calves, the story of Joshua not cleansing the nation like he should have. These stories are not stories about cleansing a nation. They're not stories about getting rid of idols. That's not really what they're about. These stories are about our ongoing battle with sin. They're about our ongoing pursuit of holiness. These stories matter to us deeply because what we should learn from this story of Jehu and his partial obedience is that partial obedience leads to total failure in sin and sin, in lowercase sin and in uppercase sin. For us, here's what I mean. I think the easiest application of this lesson is for us to think about that one sin in our life that just eats our lunch. That one sin in our life that over the years, decades maybe, we just have to battle with over and over again and we experience different seasons of victory and different seasons of struggle with this sin, this one big sin. Many of you, when I said sin, this one big sin, half the room and half of you guys there at home went, yeah, I know what that is for me. You don't have to do a lot of soul searching. You, in fact, think I'm preaching right to you right now that the Holy Spirit gave me a special message, and I know what your sin is. Let me tell you something, I don't. I'm so glad we're not Catholic, and you don't have to confess to me because I don't want to know. But we have those. These big sins that we struggle with over and over and over again. And if you have one of those, come on. You know what that struggle is. You've taken the big measures, haven't you? You've knocked down all the prophets of Baal. You've burned down all the temples for this sin. But you left behind some golden calves because you didn't want to admit that was tempting too. Because maybe you were a little battle weary. You were tired of fighting that when you thought, those can't possibly trouble me. And you left a little remnant. You left a little thing. You left a little window. You left a little foothold behind. And over the years, that sin evolved back into something that was more debilitating than before. You been through that cycle? Yeah, I have too. This story from Jehu is a reminder that partial obedience leads to total failure. The easiest example of this sin, I'm sorry guys, I don't mean to make us, hey, welcome back. Let me make you super uncomfortable for a minute. The easiest example of this is lust, right? It's a sneaky, pernicious sin, man. You can sneak in anywhere. Now, if that's something we struggle with, we can give in to that struggle any time there's cell phone service. And we've taken the steps and we've done the things and we've tried to move past it and we've confessed and we've done the hard stuff and we've sat there in shame and we've been met with grace and we've said, I'm not going to mess it up again. But we leave these pockets, don't we? We leave these little golden idols where we say, certainly that couldn't be what does it. And over time, it builds and becomes just as debilitating as it ever was. And it's not just true of that sin. It's true of pride, or greed,, gluttony, or sloth. So let me just encourage you. If this is you, if you've got one of those sins in your life that's just kicking your tail, that as soon as I started talking about this, you knew what yours was. If that's you, can today be the day that you draw the line in the sand and you go, God, just show me everything I've got in my life that needs to come down so that I can move past this. Show me what full obedience looks like. I'm tired of partially obeying you and then totally failing. So show me what full obedience looks like in this sin. Can today be the day you do that? If you have one of those sins, and you would honestly, in your heart, listen, you don't have to lie to me. I have no idea what you're thinking. The people around you have no idea what you're thinking. If you have that in your life right now, and you think to yourself, you know what? I know that my life shouldn't have this sin in it, but I really like it. And honestly, I don't want it to go away. I'm happier when it's a part of my life. Can you just be brave enough to pray today that God would change your heart? Can you just admit that to the Father? Say, God, I have this sin in my life. I know it doesn't belong there, but I like it there. Will you please change my heart so that I'm not happy with this being a part of my life anymore? Will you just pray that and let the Lord work through that prayer? But this lesson, partial obedience leads to total failure, isn't just true of an individual, lowercase sin, but of all sin, of the sin nature that lives inside of us, of the sin nature that Jesus died so that we might be able to put to death. We can only battle that sin nature with Christ. We can only battle that sin nature with the Spirit. So even as we talk about battling all the sin that is in our hearts, we have to first acknowledge that Jesus expunged that from our hearts and we wander back into it because we're broken creatures. But I think in a church full of Christians, this is probably the more applicable way to look at this story. For many of us here in this room and at home, wherever you are, we don't have that one big sin. Sure, we sin. Nobody's perfect. But we don't have the one thing that if people found out about it, it would just tear us down. We don't have that, but we have sin. And I think for many of us, especially church people, this is where good is the enemy of great really comes into play. Because we feel like we're good enough, right? Maybe you got saved as an adult. Maybe you came to know Jesus as an adult and you look at your life now and you compare it to your life then and you think like, man, I'm totally different. Like I cuss way less, which in Christian circles has to mean you're godly. I cuss way less, right? I don't do the things I used to do. I used to drink this much, now I drink this much. I used to party with these people, now I don't do that. I used to have those friends, now I have these friends. I go to small group, I do all the things. I'm pretty good. So you compare yourself to who you used to be, you feel pretty good about life. Or maybe you've been in church for forever. Maybe you're like me, and as far back as your memory works, church and faith were a part of it. And so you think you're pretty good. You're pretty squared away. And yeah, sure, I mean, I could read my Bible more, but come on, just pastors read their Bible every day, right? Maybe most of the elders. People don't really do that. You know that you could pray more, but you're like, I mean, come on, who has time to pray like 30 minutes a day? Isn't that for little old ladies? Like, I got things to do. And we're pretty good. We look pretty okay. We compare ourselves to the right people. We're pretty spiritually healthy. But that partial obedience, those partial measures, allowing God to change portions of your heart, and then when he shows you this part of your heart, you go, God, I feel pretty good right now. Maybe you don't say that. Maybe you'd never have the audacity to say that to God in prayer, but we say it every day with the way that we act, right? Those partial measures, they lead to total failure just as much as anything else does. And when I say they lead to total failure, what I mean is if we're just cruising along, settling for good enough, not pursuing the Father, not engaging in a relationship with the Father, not daily pursuing Him through prayer and through reading His Word, and then something happens and our life gets shaken to its core and we need our God. We have not been investing in this relationship with Him and we don't have anywhere to go or to grasp and He feels so distant when we need Him so close. Or we're called to ministry or our kids have a question or we need to pour out and we realize that we're pouring from an empty vessel because we haven't been filling ourselves up because we've been settling for good enough. We've been settling for partial measures. It can lead to total failure. But you know, you know what scares me more than that total failure? You know what scares me more for myself and more for you in settling for good enough? It's the thought of what we're missing out on if we would pursue greatness. Think about Jehu. All Jehu had to do is take the next step and get rid of two cows, man. Get rid of those two golden calves, take the next step, take the full measure, and he would have been the lone good king in the nation of Israel. He would have forever changed the course of that nation. He would have been held up as a spiritual hero, and now he's lost history. Many of you never even heard of him before you walked in or before you tuned in this morning. He could have had such a better legacy. What richness and blessings of God did Jehu miss out on because he was partially obedient and he settled for good enough? And for you, what blessings of God are you foregoing by settling for good enough in your life? How much better of a spouse could your spouse have if you would refuse to settle for good enough in your life and you pursued holiness as God instructed you to pursue it. How much, think of your kids. How much better can we disciple our children if we would, as parents, refuse to settle for good enough and pursue greatness and pursue holiness and always go the full measure in our lives and in our hearts and always be willing to tear down the next thing that God shows us. What richness and blessing waits for us on the other side of complete surrender and obedience? We're told that at the right hand of God there are pleasures forevermore, that in his presence there are fullness of joy, that Jesus himself came that we might have life and have it to the full. And I am convinced that the only thing that is keeping us from not experiencing those pleasures and experiencing those joys and experiencing the full life that God has for us is our offerings of partial obedience rather than complete surrender. So look at the story of Jehu. Don't be scared of the consequences. Be aware of what he missed out on. And let's be people who determine, God, I don't want to miss those blessings that you have for me. I don't want to miss that richness that you have for me. I don't want to miss the relationship that you have waiting for me. I don't want my marriage to miss out on that. I don't want my kids to miss out on that. I don't want my next decades to miss out on that. And let's be people who learn from Jehu and apply it to sin and sin. And let today be the day that we say, I'm tearing down all the idols and getting rid of that big sin. And let today be the day that we say, I am going to stop offering partial obedience and start being willing to tear down everything that God shows me in my life so that I can experience all the blessing and all the joy and all the peace that he has for me. Let's do that together as a church. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. God, I think about maybe some of the things that I've missed, some of the experiences that I haven't had or some of the joys that I would have loved that my half-hearted devotion to you has cost me. Father, may we not be a people of regret. May we not be a people of fear, but may we be a people with an anticipatory joy of what is waiting for us when we will simply surrender ourselves to you. And whatever situations we find ourselves in, whether it's facing a big sin that we're just so scared of, that's just so pernicious, or whether it's facing that sin monster in our life and the temptation to settle for good enough and not tear down the next thing. Wherever we are, God, would you give us the faith and the courage and the desire to take that next step? For those of us who are entrenched, admired in sin, would you simply change our hearts to not be happy with that anymore? Would you help us as a church walk in a pursuit of holiness towards you? Thank you for this morning, for this new phase of grace. We pray that your hand would continue to be on us as it has been in spite everything around us and sometimes in spite of us. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. I'm so excited to be with you in this way for the last time. God willing, this is the last time we will pre-record this message and show it to you this Sunday morning. Spoiler alert for those of you who haven't figured it out yet. We've been pre-recording these messages. This is Thursday morning as I'm talking, and then we release them on Sunday. That's been the best way to skin the cat since we haven't yet had the ability to live stream our services. However, next week, August the 16th, is the first time we're going to live stream our service, and I'm super excited about that. It's when we're going to resume our in-person gatherings. We're having church in our house or yours. So next week's going to look totally different. We're going to have full worship. We're going to have announcements, a sermon. It's going to feel more like a grace service. So whether you consume that here in person or at home, or I've seen people watching in the car with me up on their dash, if you consume it in that way, it's going to feel different and hopefully it will feel more like grace. And honestly, you know, that's been a tricky decision. As we approach that, there's been a lot of things to think through. What kind of precautions do we want to take as we come back? What are we going to do in here to make it safe? What are we going to ask you to do to make it safe? So if you're interested in returning next week to in-person gatherings, there's a video at the end of my sermon today that's going to tell you everything we're doing to make this safe, and it's going to also tell you some things that we're going to ask of you as you return in person. So stick around for that if you're interested in that. And I know that the decision to return to in-person gatherings and resume that is a controversial one. I know it's a difficult one. If we weren't going to do it next week, I'd have a group of people saying, hey, what are you waiting on? Let's go. We're ready for church. And by reopening next week, by resuming in-person gatherings next week, I know that there's a group of people saying, gosh, that feels foolish and irresponsible. And trust me, I wrestle with that every day. But there's two big reasons why we're choosing to resume in-person gatherings next week. And they're really this. The first one, and the prevailing one for me, is that, man, the church is a fundamentally communal institution. It's designed to be done together. Our souls need corporate worship. Our souls need fellowship. Our souls need to be around other people who love us and who love Jesus. We yearn for that. And to reduce church to what it's had to be for the past several months, to some video of worship that's prerecorded, and to me talking, to reduce church to that and to consume it in our homes, man, that is not the church that God designed. And so as soon as we can resume being together and expressing church in that way, I want to do that. I feel the impetus and the spiritual need to do that. I feel like some of us are spiritually wandering and this could draw us back in. And then on the practical level, one of the things that we realize as an elder board, and one of my prevailing thoughts is, listen, until there's a vaccine for this thing, we all have to do the math on the risks of what life looks like. We all have to decide how we want to live our life until a vaccine exists and is disseminated through our population. We're all, for the next several 12, 18 months, going to have to do this math on on what risks are worth it because it's not going away. And so it just made me realize that, man, we have a church full of people who are capable of doing that math. And so if in the equation you come out to, man, you want to resume in-person gatherings and you're going to be here next week and you're excited for that, wonderful. Can't wait to see you and wave at you from six feet away. If you are someone who you come out on that equation and you're not yet ready to take that risk and you don't know when you're gonna be, that's fine. I can't wait to see you. I'm glad we get to minister to you. I'm so glad that you're still connected to grace. But honestly, you know, it's been a stressful decision. I go to bed every night thinking about it. I wake up every morning thinking about it. I get people asking me, just about every day, are you sure we want to do this? How come we haven't done this sooner? You know, so-and-so thinks this about this. You know, so-and-so thinks we're running behind. We need to catch up. It has been a difficult decision because I can't remember a time in leadership when people have had to make more decisions with less certainty than what we have. And so it's been a difficult season. 2020 has been a difficult season. Listen, all of us, the stress isn't unique to me. All of us have faced uniquely stressful decisions. Some of you lead a business and you've had to decide how long you can keep people on. Some of you are an employee and you're not sure how much longer your position will be there. Or you've been furlough, or your salary's been reduced. We're all living under these different parameters. Man, my heart goes out. I mean, we're among them, the families who are sending children to school, and the math that all the parents are having to do. Gosh, should we do virtual? Should we do distance learning and just stay home and figure that out for families that have two parents that work? How in the world are you gonna keep all those plates in the air? And parents who have kids who are at these crucial points of their education where, man, your kid needs to learn to read and you know that you don't know how to teach phonics to your child. You know that you don't know how to teach these principles to your child. So what do we do? How do we not stunt the growth of our kids but also keep them safe? And is it reckless to send them back to preschool? Or is it more irresponsible to not get the social development that they need? How do we keep that in balance? My heart breaks for parents who have kids who are supposed to start kindergarten this year. Man, that's not what kindergarten is supposed to look like. That's a big moment, man. That's exciting. That's real big kid school. And they got to go and there's plexiglass and there's face masks and they don't leave their room and they eat right there and it's just they don't get to go to the playground. It's just not what it's supposed to be. My heart really does break for parents who are trying to do the mental math of, man, what do we do with our kids right now? And for the college freshmen who've been looking forward to this experience and it won't be what it's supposed to be. My heart breaks during this time, during 2020. Man, for those of us who struggle with anxiety or depression or loneliness, this year has been like a special kind of torture, hasn't it? Those who are given to depression, this is only making it worse. Those who are given to anxiety feel like they're swimming in it now, maybe about to drown. Every time you turn on the news or scroll through your phone, there's more bad news. There's more terrible things. There's more like, well, this kid got it over here and this whole community got it here and these terrible things have happened as a result of this. And that's just the pandemic, not to mention everything else that's going on in our culture right now. And what about those who are already alone, who already felt lonely before all the doors got shut and they couldn't go out anymore? What about people who just want a dang hug, man? This is a tough year. I've only scratched the surface on the things that all of us are walking through. I feel like this year has been uniquely distressing, uniquely depressing and anxiety-inducing. And that many of us, because we never expected that it would go this long. We never expected that we'd be in the middle of August still wondering when we'd come out of our houses. Still wondering when things are going to feel normal. For many of us, this year has been difficult in some pretty unique and impactful ways. And we may have at different points found ourselves pretty low, pretty distressed, feeling pretty beat up. That's why I felt that the story from Kings this morning was so appropriate. You might remember that we're in the middle of our series called A Time of Kings. That last week we talked about Elijah, one of the great prophets of God and his showdown with the prophets of Baal on top of Mount Carmel. And this week in 1 Kings chapter 19, so if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there, follow along with me if you can. And this week we find Elijah at what I believe to be his lowest point, his lowest moment. I believe, this is speculation, I believe that Elijah was a person who was given to depression. I believe that Elijah probably struggled with clinical depression. There's different pieces and bits of evidence in his life that he got pretty low and pretty sad pretty quick. In this passage, he's asking God to kill him. He's the point at which he doesn't even want to live his life anymore. What's happened is after he defeats the prophets of Baal and God uses him to convert a majority of Israel back to him. This is the height of life. This is the apex that Elijah could have ever accomplished. This is the best thing that a prophet could ever want. He defeats the opposing prophets. He shows them to be inept and empty. He converts all the people he's been trying to reach. This is the greatest possible victory a prophet could win. He should be on a mountaintop. And yet, as a result of his victory, Jezebel the queen promises that she's going to track down and kill Elijah. And so in chapter 19, we see Elijah run off and escape and in solitude is crying out to God. And he's telling God, I want to die. He says, I alone exist. I alone stand up for you. I'm the only one left of all the prophets, which by the way, is not true. Elijah's being dramatic here. He's being over the top. His emotions are running away with him. And if he'd stop and think about it for a minute, he would know that it's not true. But he's so worked up in his emotions that he says, I alone remain. God, please just take me. Now they seek my life too. Don't let them get to me. He is in the depths of despair and distress and depression. He's in a low moment. And to me, if we'll look at how God responds to Elijah in his low moment, we can be encouraged about how he'll respond to us and ours. So let's look at what God does and how he responds to Elijah when Elijah cries out from the depths of his soul, from the depths of depression, I just want to die, God. How does God respond to his low moment? We pick up the story in verse 5, chapter 19. This is depressed, and God sends an angel. But the angel wakes him up, says, hey, Elijah, you need to eat something. He gives him food and water. He falls back asleep. He wakes him up again. He says, listen, you need more food. You need more water. You need to eat this so it can sustain you for the journey. So he eats whatever kind of superfood God gave him in the moment, and then he travels 40 days to Horeb, the Mount of God. And so what we see in this instance, in the first part of this story, in chapter 19, when Elijah's at his lowest moment, when Elijah is distressed, that God sustains him. In Elijah's distress, the Father sustains him. And I use that word sustain because he gives Elijah what he needs, not necessarily what he wants. Elijah wants death. He's praying, God, please, can I just come to heaven now? Can my job be done? I don't want to do this anymore. Will you please take me? And God comes to him, sends an angel, but it's not an angel of death. It's not to give him what he wants. It's to give Elijah what he needs. In his distress, the father sustains him. And so with that sustenance, he goes and he travels 40 days to Horeb. And when he gets there, God sends him to a cave. And he says, I'm going to speak to you, Elijah. I have something to tell you. So I want you to go to this cave and I want you to wait. And I'm going to come to you and I'm going to speak to you. It's this, I love this moment. It's one of my favorite little moments in scripture just tucked away. Jen, my wife, it's one of her favorite moments in scripture. I've been excited to share it to you and bring it to your attention. For those who aren't aware of this story, to share it with you for the first time and for those who are to breathe fresh life into it. But I love what happens here. He goes off of his distress 40 days through the wilderness. Who knows where he's at emotionally now. He ends up in the cave and he's waiting for the voice of God. And this is what happens. We pick it up in verse 11. This is God speaking. It says, Put yourself for a moment in Elijah's shoes. He's been sent off to this place called Horeb, the Mount of the Lord. And God tells him, I want you to go and I want you to stay in this cave. I'm going to speak to you. So you're in this cave, you're tired and you're hungry and you're sad and you're depressed and you're huddled up and you're waiting for the voice of the Lord. And before the cave, it says this mighty wind blew and probably shook the cave and there was rocks coming down and trees falling outside. And you're thinking in this cave, certainly this is the Lord. Now God is going to speak to me out of this mighty wind, but the Lord is not in the wind. So you wait longer. There's an earthquake, and now it really shakes, and now the rocks really tumble, and now you start to really worry, am I safe in this cave? Surely the Lord is speaking out of the earthquake, and the Lord's not in the earthquake. Then the fire comes. And you're thinking, yeah, now God's talking to me. In the same fire that he sent down on the altar to defeat the prophets of Baal, the same fire that he spoke out of when he spoke to his servant Moses, now he's going to use that fire to speak to his servant Elijah. The Lord was not in the fire. And then there came a gentle whisper. And Elijah gathered his things and he went out to the mouth of the cave and he leaned in. And God whispered to him, Elijah, what are you doing? And some instructions follow after that. But I love this passage because we would expect the voice of God to be in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, to be loud and to be filling and to be shaking and to be awe-inspiring. But God often chooses to speak in the whisper. Because if you think about it, the whisper is intimate. It's close. Everybody hears the wind. Everybody sees the fire. Everyone feels the earthquake. That's for everybody. The whisper is for you. The whisper is just for Elijah. The whisper is only heard when we lean in, when we're close, when we're pursuing the Father. The whisper is only heard when he wraps himself up and he goes out to the Father to meet him, to hear him, to lean in and hear what he has to say. The whisper is intimate. It is caring. It's personal. And what we see is that in Elijah's distress, the Father speaks to him. At his lowest moment, when he most needs God, God shows up and he speaks to him. He speaks to him in a special way, in an intimate way. And I think that the way that the Father responds to Elijah's distress in 1 Kings 19 is such an encouraging message for us in 2020 in the midst of our distress. Because it's the same God and the same truth. And the fact is that in our distress, the Father sustains us and speaks to us. In our distress, at our lowest moment, when we feel down, when we feel beat up, when we need him most, when maybe some of us have even cried out to God and said, God, I don't even feel like this life is worth living. In those moments, our Father sustains us and he speaks to us. He did it then and he does it in 2020. And that thing about sustenance, I alluded to it earlier. God gives us what we need, not necessarily what we want. I think some of us are praying for things that we want and not looking around for the provisions that we need. I remember as COVID started, as the world changed forever back in March, you know, we have a four-year-old daughter. She's four and a half. She would point that out to us if she could. And she's in preschool. And when everything shut down in March, so did preschool. And her year got cut short. Her year got ended abruptly like many of your children's years got ended abruptly. And at the end of March, we moved into a new neighborhood. So here we are with our only child, and we're acutely aware of that. Lily has even expressed that sometimes when it's just us in the house, she gets lonely. And that's hard to hear, but that's our reality. And man, our parent hearts are really concerned because here's our four-year-old daughter. She's been pulled out of school. It's so important to us that she's around other adult figures that have some authority in her life, but she can't come to church where that happens. She can't go to school where that happens, so it's just us. It's so important to us that our isolated four-year-old daughter would have social interaction with others, that she would have to get in fights and resolve conflict, that she would have to problem solve, that she would have to learn how to not get her way and not be selfish and play what other people want to play sometimes. That's important stuff. Those things that she was learning in preschool were incredibly important to us. And now we're in the middle of this schedule where there's no more preschool. She's not around those kids. We can't go to the playground. We moved into a place that has a playground 150 yards away from us that we're so excited about, but it has yellow caution tape over it. And every time we go past it, Lily asks us, how much longer are they going to tape up the playground? She can't play there either. We can't engage in our normal summer rhythms of play dates and appointments and Bible studies. And our parents' hearts are breaking, wondering, man, she needs this interaction so bad. And without us knowing, by what I believe was just God's providence, he places us in a house on a cul-de-sac that has 10 kids under the age of 10. And do you know that between 12 o'clock and 1 o'clock in the afternoon every day, one of those kids comes and bangs on our door and asks if Lily can play. And at this point, she doesn't even ask permission. She just goes speeding past us and runs out the door and is outside until 6 or 6.30 when we call her in. Every day. Every day she's sweaty and gross and stinky. She has bug bites up and down her legs. Underneath our front porch is several wrappers of those Popeye's popsicles and beads jammed down into the crevices and the remnants of kids playing and our creaking swing getting swung too hard from half the neighborhood being on our front porch. And it's God's sustenance. I'm so grateful for those things. That God looked out for my daughter and said, I know that this is going to be a difficult time, so here, here's what you need right now. And God is sustaining you too. God has provided for you in ways this year that you may not even be aware of yet. I think sometimes we have to stop and look around and say, we may not be getting what we want, but God, how are you providing me what we need? Because I think he's still doing that. And I think that God is still whispering to us. I think that if we lean in and we listen, we can still hear the voice of God. Back in 2013, I had the opportunity to go to Israel. It was an incredible opportunity. I've been saying since I got here that I want to do a year-long study through the Bible and then take that Bible study to Israel and go on a tour together, and I still want to do that. You guys need to hold my feet to the fire about that. I would love to take people from grace over to Israel. But one of the things we did when we were in Israel is we went up on the Mount of Beatitudes where Jesus supposedly gave the Sermon on the Mount. And there's a Catholic monument built there. And so there's a little stone wall that you could go sit on. And I was in the habit, whenever we went to a different site, of finding in my Bible the events that happened in this place and reading through them and praying through them as I just kind of experienced this place. And so on the Mount of the Beatitudes, I went off in a corner by myself, and I was sitting on a stone wall, and I can remember looking down, and I was looking down into this valley, into kind of a plain and then the coast of the Sea of Galilee as this mountain, as this hill kind of spilled into it and I'm at the top of the hill and in front of me about 10 or 15 feet away, there's a tree over here and the branches of the tree are sweeping in front of me and I just remember looking down and grabbing my Bible and reading through the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus preached there in Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. And as I was reading, I remember praying, Father, I want to see you today. I want to see you here. I want to experience you here. Help me to feel your presence, God. And towards the end of the sermon, Jesus says, look to the birds. Look at the birds. Some translations say, consider the birds. And when I read that phrase, I just kind of felt like, I felt this prompt to pause. I know this might sound funny to you. I know this might sound weird, but I felt it in my soul. Hey, just stop reading for a second. And so I read that phrase, look at the birds. I felt like I should stop reading. And I looked up and I had been hearing birds over there while I was sitting there, but none had come near me. And in the moment that I looked up, this one lone bird flew over and lit on a branch right in front of me, about 10 feet away, and looked me dead in the eye for five or 10 seconds. It felt like much longer than that. And then just flew away. And I have this big note in my Bible about that moment when the Lord whispered to me, and you will never convince me that he didn't bring that bird over to look me in the eye to tell me, I hear you. I'm listening to you. I'm with you. I'm right here. And he whispered to me. He whispered to me, I think, because it was intimate, because I was leaning in, because I was pursuing him. And I asked him, Lord, show me your presence. It was an earnest prayer. I didn't mean, I wasn't doing it to show off. I didn't tell anybody about it that day. I just kind of, I think this is the first time I've told anybody that story. I just kind of experienced it. And the Lord is whispering to you too. And it's really easy to get distracted by the earthquakes and by the wind and by the fire. It's really easy to think that the voice of the Lord is in all the huge things that are going on around us. But often what we need to do is quiet down those voices and get in a place where we can finally listen. Sometimes we produce the noise ourselves, don't we? We turn on the TV or we pull out our phone or we glance at the computer or we listen to the radio with every spare second so that there's no possible way that even if the Lord is whispering to us, there's no possible way we would hear it because we're drowning him out. In the meantime, we're distressed and we're depressed and we don't know what to do and we're just covering ourselves with all these other things that aren't the voice of the Lord. And if we would just stop and go to the mouth of the cave and lean into the Father and beg him to speak and listen, I think he's still whispering to us now. I don't know where you are. I don't know what this year has been like for you. I know for many of us, this has been a challenging year to say the least. I know that there are some of us who can absolutely relate to Elijah in this passage and just feel low. I want all of us to know and to be reminded that in our distress, our Father still speaks to us. He still sustains us. This week, let us look around for that sustenance and let us lean in for the whisper. Let's pray. Father, give us eyes to see what you're doing. Give us ears to hear what you're saying. For those of us who have clutter and noise, help us sweep it away and lean into you and hear you whispering to us. God, may those who need it most hear you this week, hear you today. God, give us eyes to see the ways that you're providing for us that we may not notice. Help us to see that even in our lowest moments that you are sustaining us. And to understand and appreciate the wisdom of even if we're not getting what we want, Lord, you are absolutely giving us what we need. God, I pray for those who are stressed about decisions. Give them clarity and confidence. I pray for the parents that face impossible choices in uncertain times, for the leaders that face difficult choices in uncertain times. God, be with us all as we try to listen to you. And let everything that's happening in this year and in this season point us back to our need for-person gatherings here very shortly on August the 16th. As we get prepared to do that, we know that everybody's not in the same place. Everyone doesn't have the same level of security and comfort as you go out and venture out into the world. And some of you may simply not be in a place where you're ready to gather in person, and that's all right. But if you are ready to gather in person, if that's something that you're looking forward to and you're considering doing, then I just wanted to let you know, first of all, some of the things that we're doing to make church as safe as possible for everyone who's going to come here, and then some things that we're going to ask you to do if you choose to come participate in the live services. What we're doing, first of all, is we're cleaning the whole church every week. We're sanitizing it, all the surfaces, every bit of it, 48 hours before anyone's going to be in this building on Sunday. So the very latest Friday morning, the whole building will be clean, will be spotless, will be sanitized, and will be ready to go for Sunday morning with kind of be sealed off so that nobody else is allowed in the building until it's time for services on Sunday. Another thing that we've done is we've mounted hand sanitizers at the entrance of every door to the auditorium. So that's going to be there, it's going to be ready for you. If you have to pull your own doors or grab a bulletin or anything like that, we're going to have that hand sander there ready for you, ready to go. Speaking of holding doors, our greeters are going to be at the doors leading to the outside and they're going to open those for you. So you won't have to worry about this. It doesn't have to stress you out. Our ushers are going to be holding open the auditorium doors. So you're going to be in great shape there. We've also mounted some offering boxes at the back of the auditorium. We understand that we can't pass baskets now so because of that there's going to be boxes at the back of the auditorium as you leave every Sunday you can put your offering in there you can submit your connection card whatever else you'd like to do we're going to have those at the rear of the room so that you can put the cards and the offering in there so that we don't have to pass the baskets. We're also going to take the bulletins and just go ahead and place those in your seats. So there's not going to be any need to grab those from an usher or for many people to touch the bulletin. Those are going to be in your seats on Thursday or Friday morning, and no one's going to touch them until you get there. Lastly, these services are for families. Everyone's invited. Kids Ministry isn't going to be open just yet. So all the families are invited to come and participate in the service on the 16th. To that end, our wonderful children's workers, our kids minister, Aaron, and our assistant, Julie, have put together some busy bags for small kids and specially designed sermon notes for some of the bigger kids to keep them entertained and engaged so that you can pay attention to the sermon and whatever else may be going on in the service on Sunday. That's what we're going to be doing for you. Now, here's a few things that we're going to ask you to do for us. We're saying on August the 16th that we are going to be meeting in our house or yours. So if you're choosing to meet in our house, then these are kind of our house rules. Our first house rule is that we're going to ask that everyone over the age of 10 is wearing a face mask inside the church. I know that's inconvenient. I know that's not fun. I don't want to preach to a room full of face masks. But for us, wearing a face mask is about being considerate of others. It's about making other people feel more comfortable in an environment. It's about taking the extra step to protect our brothers and sisters. It's really about doing the right thing. So we're gonna ask that everyone over the age of 10 wears a face mask just to take care of everyone and make church as safe as possible when we do return. Our second house rule is simply, hey, no touching please. We know that some of us are ready for hugs and handshakes and fist pounds and I get it. I am too. I can't wait until we can just act normal. But the deal is that not everybody who comes back is going to be comfortable giving a handshake or a hug or a fist pound or even an elbow bump or whatever else. So for the sake of not creating awkward situations, for not making someone else feel uncomfortable, we're just going to ask that while we're in church, we just keep our hands to ourselves. If some of you are married to a spouse where this might be difficult, let us know in advance. We'll send some zip ties to your house and you can lock their wrists down to their belt loops and everyone will be on their best behavior when we get to church. The third thing we're going to ask from everyone is to maintain a two-seat gap minimum between you and the next family, between your family and the next family over. We've removed every other row in the auditorium to maintain some social distancing as we sit, but we also know that with those rows is the opportunity to sit right next to each other. So we're just going to ask that if you didn't come with that person, if you haven't talked to them already about sitting with them, please don't sit right next to somebody. Please leave that two seat gap between you and the next family. Okay, this one's pretty simple. One at a time in the restroom, please. For the time being, all of our restrooms are now effectively single seaters. All right, that's what we're going to do. I know that some of our restrooms have more space than others, but just for the sake of clarity, just one person at a time, let's be respectful of that, should be pretty easy. Fifth, B-Y-O-C. Bring your own coffee. Coffee bar is not going to be open right now. Just wanted to let you know that ahead of time. So if you like a warm drink while you participate in a worship service, then feel free to bring that from home. But we're not going to be able to provide you with any of that for the time being. Lastly, we would ask that you would help us keep the lobby clear. I know that that's a disappointing one. That one bums me out. I love the lobby. Grace loves the lobby. It's a sacred and special place for us. We love to congregate and be together. It's the whole reason why we're resuming these gatherings. But we're going to ask that for now, since our lobby is also the tightest place in the church, that we would congregate outside or in the auditorium. Laugh and giggle and catch up in those places so that we can leave the lobby clear for those who simply need to pass through without worrying about being too close to someone else as they go into and out of the doors and into and out of that space. I know it's weird to come to church with all these rules and these precautions and these things that we're going to ask one another to abide by. I don't like it any more than you do, but I tell you what I really don't like. I really don't like preaching to an empty room. I really don't like experiencing church from my couch. I really don't like not getting to see any of you. So for those who are ready, we're excited to come back. I'm really, really excited for corporate worship to do that together and just to live stream it. So even if you're at home, you can worship with us from your house. I'm really looking forward to kind of re-engaging in what feels like a more normal church. And I appreciate those of you who are willing to abide by these things and take those baby steps with us as we inch back to something that feels like normal. For those who are willing, I can't wait to see you that Sunday.

All right, good morning everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace, and I am so thrilled to be able to be preaching this morning to you. Before we get into it, I've got to give you a quick warning. Because of just how excited that I've been for preaching and just excited anticipation, I didn't sleep very much last night. And so I say that to say that this morning I got here and as I was going through my message, making sure everything was good, my voice started kind of cracking a little bit and got a little hoarse. And so feel free to laugh at that if it happens throughout this message. But I also did want to let you know that because of that, you could possibly hear me cough once or twice. And I just wanted you to know that it's only the annoying type of cough, not the dangerous one. But anyways, we're going to be continuing in our study of Acts this morning. We're going to be jumping into Acts 16 and really focusing on the story that starts at verse 25. And so I would love for you guys to grab your Bibles, open them up, and read along with me. Before we jump into actually the verse 25 and beyond, I want to give a little bit of background of what's going on. And so definitely be opening up your Bible as I'm doing that. And so as we start off, we see two men named Paul and Silas. We've talked a lot about Paul and Nate did a whole sermon about Paul's conversion, that the Lord brought Paul out of this place of killing Christians and brought him and said, Paul, you are going to be my tool. You are going to be the person who brings my joy and the joy of myself in Christ to the Gentiles, to all people that are not Jews. And so if you didn't listen to that, go and check it out because I think it was incredible. But here we have Paul doing just that. He's going and he and Silas are bouncing around from place to place, city to city. They're worshiping God. They're finding places to pray and worship. And even more so than that, going and finding places to preach the good news and tell people about who Jesus Christ is and who their God is. And that is absolutely awesome. And so in the middle of chapter 16, we find them coming to a river in Philippi. Now, as they go down, they encounter this group of women, and there goes my mic. Let me just pull that back real quick. They encounter this group of women that they're like, hey, these are people. And so they go up to them and they start preaching to them. They start telling them who God is and, you know, about who Jesus is and what Jesus did for them and that this salvation is offered to them, not just to Jews, all this stuff. And so as they're saying these things, a woman named Lydia is so excited to hear and so excited to learn about God and about Jesus and everything that they're talking about that she actually gets baptized on the spot. Her heart is saved for eternity. And how incredible is that? And then in the next small passage, they encounter another girl. This girl doesn't have a name. She's called a slave girl that they come in contact with. And she was possessed by a demon spirit. Now, this spirit was one that gave her the ability, or the spirit through her was able to be a fortune teller, was able to tell people their fortunes and predict the future. So this obviously made her really valuable to her owners. Her owners had used this ability and used the spirit and this demon that was inside of her to gain just a ton of money. Well, Paul and Silas encounter this girl and as she kind of follows them around, the spirit continues to call out through this girl. And finally, Paul turns around and he basically says, through the power of Jesus Christ, I tell you to leave this girl now. And the spirit immediately exit this girl's body. This girl is set free from the spirit that had taken over her entire life. And so once again, you're like, wow, look at how incredible this is. Look at the amazing things that Paul and Silas are getting to do through the power of God. And it's just awesome. And it's super exciting. But the bad part is that what made this girl valuable was her ability to tell fortunes. And so her owners were furious. And so they go over, they grab Paul and Silas, they forcefully take them to the marketplace and take them to the magistrate and say, these people are just doing all of this stuff, all of this awful stuff. What is it? They say that he, I don't know. It's funny. But they basically lie. They say these people are running amok in the city. The whole city is going nuts and they're freaking out and they're doing all of these things that Roman citizens should never do. These are Jewish people who are doing things that are anti-Roman and they deserve to be punished. And they're in the marketplace. So what happens? People start joining, and people start seeing what's going on, and they begin to get furious as well. And they're all yelling and freaking out about it as well, basically saying, these people deserve to be punished. So the magistrates say, okay, we agree with you. So they said, have these men stripped, have them beaten, and have them thrown into prison. Not only just thrown into a jail cell, but have them bound by the stocks. Have them bound by the stocks in a way that they have to be upright to where they can't even lay down and go to sleep. And this is where I want to pick up and actually just start reading through the scripture as they are beaten and as they're thrown into prison and what happens once they're thrown to them. Suddenly, there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once, all the prison doors flew open and everyone's chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, don't harm yourself. We are all here. The jailer called for lights, rushed in, and fell trembling before Paul and Silas. He then brought them out and asked, Now I want to do some quick living room participation. I know that I can't ask for hands to be raised and I can, you know, call people out that are raising their hands and whatnot. So I'm calling you out to raise your hands if you've heard this story before. All right, take it one step farther. And the reason why I'm really asking is more because who has heard this story a lot? Because I know I have. I know this is the type of story that you grew up and you learned like constantly when you were a child. You know, like when you're able to look at the little cartoon drawings or watch the cartoon about them sitting in the jail, and then you hear how God brought a hurricane that was able to set them free, but they actually stayed and they saved a man's life and his family's life for eternity and all this stuff. And it's incredible. It's awesome. I absolutely love this story, and I love to hear it preached and talked about over and over again. But as I read it this time, there were a couple things that stood out to me. There were a couple things that I thought, that I thought, man, I hear this, I hear these stories preached in a way, in the same way super often. But I think that there's more here. I think that there's some underlying things within this passage that may be even bigger and more important than what we often talk about. The first thing that I think people talk about is, man, look at how great the Lord is. Look at how the Lord has worked through Paul and through Silas to save these two women. One, save them for salvation. The other, to literally get rid of a spirit, to remove a demon, evil spirit out of this woman. And then look at how big and how strong God is that he can bring a hurricane that is so big that it makes a guy say, I want to know who this God is. And let me tell you that all of those things are so right. They're so incredible. They're so accurate. And praise God for how incredible he is. And praise God that he uses his people like Paul and Silas to do his work. That is amazing and that is awesome. But I think sometimes what skipped over as I think a huge factor for why that jailer was interested in being saved is not just the hurricane that he witnessed, but what actually happened and took place in verse 25. So let's return to that. About midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Can you imagine what the other prisoners were thinking? Can you imagine what the prison guard was thinking at that time? Like, I'm sure they were super confused. Like, these are two guys that had just come off of getting beaten and thrown into prison. And here they are in the middle of the night, just joyfully singing praises and hymns to their God. I imagine it was shocking for a couple of reasons. The first is because I bet that it wasn't just shocking because there was like noise, right? Like, of course, people probably in jail were like, you would probably hear grumblings or people that were like aching or hurting from being beaten before thrown into prison. Or maybe, you know, probably what's more common is people are yelling at the jailer or heckling the jailer because the jailer had thrown them into prison. You know, probably a few expletives were yelled at this prison guard in his day because they don't want to be in prison. But instead, they get this joyful singing and praising, and it didn't make any sense. I'm sure it was a 180 from what they were used to hearing from two people sitting in a jail cell. And the other reason I think that probably had them wondering and listening and a little bit confused is, why are they praying to their God, and why are they singing hymns that are praising their God and the goodness of their God in the midst of them sitting in a jail cell after being beaten? What do they have to praise God about? Sure, like praise God when you saved Lydia. Praise God when you released a girl of an evil spirit. But while you're sitting in a jail cell after you had been beaten, what are you doing? And I'm sure it just confused them. And I'm sure it, like, I would probably be the same if I didn't understand who God was of just sitting there and being like, I've got to listen to this. I've got to understand what these people are doing. One, because I don't get it and I need to understand. But two, maybe even in a deeper and more spiritual sense, they've got just as much going wrong in their life that I do. How is it that they're able to have peace? And how is it that they are able to have joy in the midst of going through the same thing I'm going through, sitting in a prison after being beaten? I love the way that William Barclay puts it as he talks about Paul's worship. He could sing hymns when he was confined in stocks in the inner prison at midnight. The one thing you can never take away from a Christian is God in the presence of Christ. When God, with God there, is freedom even in a prison, and even at midnight, there is light. And bouncing off of that, the other thing that you hear when you hear this passage taught and when you hear this passage preached is how incredible it is that the Lord is always there, is always with you, is always providing this joy and this peace in your heart if you will just turn to him. That if you can learn to worship and to love God, not simply because of the blessings that he's bestowed upon you or not simply because of all the great things that are a part of your life, but because of how good he is and because he has gifted you with this eternal salvation, guess what? The joy of how great God is and the joy of an eternal salvation is never soured. It never goes away. It's never changing. And guess what? Once again, what a beautiful, incredible message that is, that we are able to experience that peace and that joy, and our hearts can forever be impacted by that love of God, not simply when things are going well, but when things aren't. But oftentimes people stop there, but I think that there is one more thing going on underneath all of this that isn't quite as talked about, but I think may be an even more valuable component of worshiping through hardship. And that is that it not only impacts your hearts, their worship didn't only bless the hearts of Paul and Silas, it didn't, the presence of God wasn't simply within their hearts, but because of their worship, because of the joy that they exuded and the peace that they exuded, it impacted the people that were around them. When we are able to worship in the midst of tragedy and hurt and anger and frustration, anybody who's around you that's able to experience it is going to be impacted. Especially, especially, especially non-believers. Alistair Begg is a pastor and he puts it this way. He says, While I think he is in general saying this, I would rephrase it to even go further. And I would say not only is praise possible when the circumstances seem to dictate otherwise, but worshiping in the midst of those circumstances can be used to evangelize in a uniquely special way. There's something uniquely special about not simply worshiping when everything is great, but worshiping when nothing is. It's special for you, but it is impactful to people who don't understand. Think again about how the jailer and how the prisoners thought. Like what must have they been thinking? All it says is they sat and they listened. I'm sure they were curious. I'm sure they wanted answers. I'm sure they wanted to understand like what is this? Why is this happening? I need more facts. I need more information, just like the curiosity within them. But underlying that curiosity, I bet it's more of a hope because though they didn't know God, they knew the exact suffering that Paul and Silas were going through. And I bet that the thought of being able to experience joy and peace like they had been exuding is something that they surely could get on board with. This reminds me so much of a story of my best friend Brandon from senior year. Brandon, super electrifying personality, just fun, energetic, funny, hilarious. Like people, like when he's in a room, people gravitate towards him. He's hilarious. He's funny. He's goofy. Just all of the above. He just has this type of energy that it's just like, I got to be around this guy because he is just great to be around. And I say all of that, but I think probably the main reason why people love to be around him and love even more than that to befriend him is because he just loves people well. He just loves people in general. He just loves people so much. And while I think that's definitely just a character trait and a characteristic of him, I think that that has been sown so deeply into him because, man, there are not many people who I know that love the Lord more than Brandon. And because he loves the Lord so much and because he also loves people so much, he wants everyone to be able to know and love the Lord the way he does. He wants people to experience the love he's received from the Lord. And so he does everything he can to be that love to everybody that he comes in contact with. Not just his family, not just his youth group, not just his close friends like me and our group of friends in high school, but every classmate, every teammate, all of these people, whether they know who God is, whether they're completely anti-God, he wants them to know how much God loves them, not simply through his words, but by his actions. That's the type of dude Brandon is. Brandon, he's got the heart of like, we used to do this thing called prayer chapel where Brandon has, he's an incredible worship leader. So he was normally the one, we would go to this small chapel just at a local church and we would just take some time where normally it'd be Brandon. He would just sing and lead worship and we would sing and worship with him or we would pray silently or pray for people, read scripture. It's basically just a time to come and to celebrate and worship God. And we all loved it. It was just kind of our group of friends that went and did it. But man, every single week, Brandon would go all through classes and invite everybody to come and do it with us. Or he would throw it on Facebook or he'd send texts to all of these people. And not just like believers, like people who weren't believers, people who he just like was friends with in class. And he just wanted everyone to come and do it. And people didn't really come, you know, like it wasn't a thing people did, like, you know, which kind of makes sense. Like going to something called prayer chapel, that's just kind of this intensive type worship type thing is probably not the most like exciting thing for someone who doesn't, you know, believe in God or is not a Christian. And so, you know, but it's just kind of the guy that Brandon was. He wanted anyone who, he wanted everyone to know they were welcome. And more than that, he wanted everyone to just have some opportunity to get to know who God was. So fast forward to the end of senior year. Only a few weeks left in the school year. And Brandon feels a lump on his lymph node. And so he goes to the doctor and obviously he gets it tested. And so you have the kind of limbo, the amount of time that you kind of sit and you wait before you get any results. During that time, Brandon had really devoted himself to just praying, devoted himself to really like going to the Lord and saying, you know, like, God prepare me for this. And as he did so, two things he said were just very clear and very evident to him. The first is that God had him. He said more than ever before, he felt the presence of God and he felt, he heard God's voice in a sense and just felt God saying, Brandon, you are in my hands forever and always. I love you. I've got you. We're going to get through this together. And so because of that, he was able to experience the same type of peace and the same type of joy that Paul and Silas had even when they had been beaten and thrown into prison. The second thing, and I think probably because of his experience and how vastly he was able to experience God and God's protection over him, is he knew for sure he had cancer. He didn't need to hear the results. He didn't need to get them back. He knew. And so that whole time while people are sitting and praying and waiting in fear, Brandon was pretty certain of what was to come. He was pretty certain of the result. And the Lord had prepared his heart in a way that he was completely at peace about it. So the day comes that he gets the results and it hit us pretty hard. And by us, I mean me, his close friends, I mean his family, my family, a lot of grief, a lot of hurt. But I also extend that to say kind of the school. It kind of just hit the school really hard, all grades, but especially seniors and the people that were in his classes, because this is the same Brandon I was just talking about that is just so loves people so well and so therefore is loved by so many people. And so when this happened and when people heard this, there was just utter grief and hurt and like this sense of just like sadness and melancholy and depression within the student body. People were mourning because guess what? At the time, not many of us even understood cancer in general anyways. We didn't know what it meant. And so we were like, we've heard of what cancer does to people. And so everyone's just kind of terrified and freaking out. Well, guess what? In the midst of that, in the midst of people reacting in that way and reacting out of fear and sadness and just overwhelming sense of just like, what is going on? Guess who's not responding that way? Brandon. Why? Because Brandon had trusted in God and Brandon had the heart to go to God in worship and in prayer, knowing that this is the same God it had always been. And the same Jesus had died for him now, just like he had before Brandon had cancer. And within that, Brandon said, you know what we need to do? We need to have a prayer chapel night. I want to do prayer chapel tonight. Why? Because I want to worship my God. I want to lead a time of worship and I want to lead a time of just getting to pray to God and praise God with the people that I love. So I wish I could say I had the same type of faith, but obviously I was going to be there for him for that. But I was not excited about that. I was pretty frustrated with God at the time. But anyways, we do that. You know, he does all the same stuff. And you know, hey, we're doing prayer chapel tonight, whatever, on Facebook, text, all that stuff. And we show up to about 90 to 100 people in this small little chapel. Not just family, not just close friends, not just people in the youth group, people in the church. I would say the vast majority of these people are these classmates and these teammates and these people who Brandon had spent his life loving, that though they had been turned off or though they had been closed off to Brandon's faith and to Brandon talking about God and all of those things, they still loved Brandon so much because he just loved them so well. And so at this moment, I think they thought two things. One, I think they thought, man, I want to be there for Brandon. Brandon has loved me so well, and he's been there for me for anything that I needed. I want to do the same for him. But you know what I also think? What I also think is these people for the first time were asking the question of, what? Are you kidding me? Are you serious? Why in the world would you want to put together a night of worship where you stand up in front of everyone, the person who just got the news that he has lymphoma, you stand up in front of everyone playing piano and singing praises to God. Why in the world would you want to do that? And I think they needed to find out. Because it made sense to them before. While they didn't believe in God, they fully understood that somebody who did believe in God would just absolutely radiate joy and absolutely praise God just with all of his might. While he's got just all of great friends and great family. And he's an excellent tennis player who's going next year to play tennis in college on a scholarship. He's got his health. He's got all of these incredible things. And guess what? It makes a lot of sense to worship God when all of those things in your life are going well and going right. But when Brandon wanted to worship, when Brandon wanted to praise his God for how good his God was when his whole life had just fallen apart. When he went from going next year to play college tennis to now not in a month, his whole body is going to just break down because of chemotherapy and he's clearly not going to be able to do that anymore. Fear of losing his life, fear of what's to come, fear of next steps, all of these things. Now this doesn't make sense. Brandon, how are you still worshiping this God for being good? I don't get it. I've got to come and I've got to figure it out. And so they came. They showed up. And boy, did they witness the presence of God. I talked to Brandon a couple weeks ago on the phone as we were kind of reliving that night and as I was talking to him about the sermon and stuff. And we just both agreed that there was maybe never a time before or since then that the presence of God was so prevalent and so present in a room. Filled with people who didn't know the Lord, filled with people who didn't know about Jesus and about Jesus's sacrifice. And there they are sitting in this room, listening and witnessing people worship and people give their lives in worship to God, talking about and just praising how good he is and experiencing for the first time how incredible, how amazing, and how immaculate the presence of God is. Nothing changed. Nothing about Brandon changed. Nothing was different about him. He loved God the same way. He treated all of those people the same way, And he worshiped the exact same way. He didn't make the night anything special. He simply just wanted to have another prayer night. He just simply wanted to have another night to do prayer chapel. The only difference was his circumstance. And that circumstance led to such a large, more vast audience and in such a larger space for God to impact people's hearts and to impact people's lives. There's simply an aspect of worshiping in the midst of tragedy that captures the attention of non-believers who otherwise might just be completely indifferent. I can't stand in front of you and say that there were tons of people who gave their lives over to the Lord. I can't tell you that all those people became Christians. Unfortunately, I would say a lot of them didn't. But for the first time, they were willing to be open to hearing it because they saw something that didn't make sense and they had to figure out what it was. And that was somebody who had just received the worst news in their entire life saying, I want to praise God for how great he is and I want to show my love for him. And it was the same with Paul and Silas. Paul and Silas had experienced the goodness of God. They've experienced God doing great, incredible, powerful things. seen, as soon as the jailer found out that Paul and Silas were still there, he sprinted to them. He fell at their feet and he said, how can I be saved? Was that because he witnessed the amazing size and power of God who had just brought a hurricane? Yes. But I think it was also because prior to that, he had found and he had been able to hear that this is clearly a God that loves his people so well that even in the midst of brokenness, even in the midst of bruises, even in the midst of prison, they would still praise his name. That power mixed with that love is something he needed to know and needed to be a part of. And because of that, he and his entire family heard the gospel that night and were saved. Not only is praise possible when circumstances seem to dictate otherwise, but worshiping in the midst of those circumstances can be used to evangelize in a uniquely special way. Worshiping amidst tragedy, amidst heartache, failure, isolation, struggle, not only impacts your heart, not only does it provide joy to you and peace to you in a time where there might not be either on earth, but it impacts the hearts of the people around you. It impacts the hearts of people who don't understand and want to. It piques the interest of people who cannot understand why you would be praising God for his goodness when everything is so bad. And it impacts them because while not everyone knows they need Jesus, that they need a Savior, pain, struggling, hurting is universal. And intrinsic to that pain is the longing for peace and the longing for joy that seems absent within it. Everybody who hurts wants to feel peace. Everybody who's feeling pain wants to feel joy in the midst of that peace or in the midst of that hurting and in the midst of that pain. Intrinsic to that pain is the longing for peace and the longing for joy that seems absent within it. And so when non-believers catch a glimpse of someone whose faith leads them to joyful worship in the midst of pain and in the midst of suffering, they want to know more about what it takes to experience the same, to see that joy, to feel that peace, to know those in the midst of anything that life throws at them. And what a beautiful way to share with someone the goodness of God. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you, God, that you are the same today, tomorrow, forever. God, thank you that your blessings, that though they come at times and at other times we maybe feel like there aren't so many around, that the blessing of you and that you have saved us forever is the only one we need and therefore the only one that should provide us with the joy and peace we need to roll through this life. God, I pray that you give us the faith to be able to praise you in the midst of anything going on. Give us that joy and give us that peace in our hearts, God. Even more than that, God, allow us to share that with people around. Allow us to never miss an opportunity to praise you, not simply when things are going well, but when things are going poorly. Because it's noticed. Because you can't fake praise and you can't fake all glory to God when not everything is going well. Allow us to be your vessels in this way, God. Allow us to show people what your joy looks like regardless of circumstance. We love you so much. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace. It's so good to get to be with you in this way again. You know, I was thinking, typically in the summer, attendance and engagement in church, particularly in Grace, will fall off a little bit because we're all over the place. We're going to the beach, we're going on vacation, we're visiting people, and that's great. We love that we have the opportunity to do those things, but watching sermons this way and having church this way is actually kind of a nice thing as we get into the teeth of the summer that we can all come together from wherever we are. I know that by the time we are previewing this or premiering this, Jen and I are going to be at the beach watching it. So it's fun that we can all kind of scatter but still participate together as we come back for this moment. Last week, we took a break from our series in Acts, and we addressed the issues of racial inequality and racial injustice that we believe are still existent and pervasive in our culture. I can't imagine that you're watching this sermon and participating along with us at Grace and somehow missed that one last week, but in case you did, I would appreciate it if you would watch that. It was a special thing for me to share and a direction that I felt compelled to go. This week, however, we jump back into our series going through the book of Acts together called Still the Church. And the idea is kind of twofold. It's to help us understand where we came from. It's to help us understand that these are our roots, that we stand on the shoulders of this church, that these are our origins or our genesis, that the book of Acts depicts for us and details for us in a beautifully written letter by Luke. The activities and the behaviors and the events of the early church. I kind of picture a baby deer learning to walk as we watch the machinations of the church in Acts and we see it come to fruition and become the institution that we know it as today. But also as we go through Acts, we become familiar with that story and we see our roots and our heritage as people, members of the church, the body of Christ, children of God. So we're reminded that that's our heritage, but we are also extracting from it practices and principles and philosophies that still apply today. And we're saying that the church that we see in Acts is still the church that we should emulate now. What this church looks like is what grace looks like or should look like. And so when we started, we kind of have moved through the narrative. This is one of the narrative books in the New Testament. And it starts just so we can kind of orient ourself in the story today. Jesus goes to heaven. He leaves behind the disciples. He says, wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit and then go and share the gospel in all the corners of the world. That's your job. Go and build the church. That's what he leaves them there to do. So they go into this upper room and they wait for the gift of the Spirit. While they're waiting in this upper room, thousands of people in Jerusalem are clamoring around to see what they're going to say and what they're going to do and what's going to happen next in this great movement. And they receive the gift of the Spirit like flaming tongues on the day of Pentecost. And they go out on the balcony and they preach. They preach the gospel. They tell the story of who Jesus is and who he was. And the people hear it and they're moved and they say, we want in, what do we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized. And we talked about that repentance being the fundamental repentance of the church. That before we can become a Christian, that the very first thing we must do is repent of whatever we thought Jesus was and accept that he was who he says he was, that he is who he says he is. That's the repentance on which the entire church is built on. And then after that, we saw that after that repentance, 3,000 were added to the church. The church is now a mega church. It's's booming in Jerusalem. It's this movement. And then in Acts 2, verses 42 through 47, we have the quintessential passage that describes the early church. And we spent two weeks in that passage pulling out what we refer to as early church distinctives. What are the things that characterized the church then that should characterize our church now? After that in the story, as Luke, the author of Acts, shares, Peter and John are called into the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin is the religious ruling body of Israel. They're called in and they have to give an account for what they're doing. This movement is getting traction and they're put on trial for it. And at the conclusion of that trial, we see one of my favorite bits of advice in the Bible. This is a freebie. I can't go through Acts without bringing this up. I wanted to do a whole sermon on it, but it just didn't work out. But it's this advice from Gamaliel, one of the rabbis, one of the Pharisees, who is speaking to the Sanhedrin as they're trying to decide what to do about this movement. Do we quell it? Do we stamp it out? Or do we let it breathe? And Gamaliel says, if this is for man, then it will fade. But if it is from God, then there's nothing we can do to stop it anyways. And so they relent, and they watch, and they see this movement of the church begin to take off. And soon it's not just the disciples who are teaching, but it's others around them who are hearing and learning and who are being moved and who have the gift to teach. And so they're going out and they're doing that. And one of the people who's going out and teaching is a man named Stephen. It says that Stephen was teaching around the synagogue of the freedmen, which was a group of Hellenistic Jews. The synagogue of the freedmen, we assume, were former Roman slaves who had been freed. They were likely Greek-speaking Jews and not Hebrew-speaking Jews. And so they got together in their own synagogue and they met there, the synagogue of the freedmen. And apparently Stephen was working some signs and wonders that were having an impact on them. When we see Stephen in Acts chapter six, he's doing these things, he's performing signs and wonders, legitimate miracles that are drawing people into his ministry. And we assume based on their reaction that he's drawing people away from the synagogue of the freedmen. And so some of the leaders within that synagogue, we assume, it just says people in the synagogue, but we assume that they were the leaders, begin to get offended. They begin to get upset. They begin to get resentful of Stephen and his witness and his ministry and the power and efficacy of what he's doing. So they, we think, a lot of scholars think that they probably had a formal debate, a dressed debate where people came and attended and they argued back and forth with each other. But we know whether it was formal or informal that they debated and that the power of his words and his wisdom blew them away, that there was nothing they could do to touch Stephen. Everything they threw at him that he had an answer for. Everything he said they could not refute. He was leading this new church in this new way towards Christ away from what they were teaching at the synagogue of the freedmen. And when they couldn't defeat him in debate, they decided that what they would do is just levy false charges against him. That they would drum people up, that they would stir people up. Basically, what they did is they went to the Sanhedrin and they went and they told the principal. They told the teachers what they did. They were having a quarrel. They were having a spat with Stephen. They couldn't win. Stephen always got the better of them. And so they took their ball and they went home. They went, well, we're gonna go tattle on you. And so they went to the religious establishment and they told on Stephen. If you have a Bible with you this morning or wherever you're watching this, you can turn to Acts chapter 6. That's where we pick the story up. Acts chapter 6, I'm going to start reading in verse 12 and go all the way through 7-1. This is what the people from the synagogue and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council. And they set up false witness who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us. And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like that of an angel. And the high priest said, are these things so? So his enemies, the people who opposed him, can't beat him in debate. They can't put down his movement or the movement that he's shepherding and participating in. And so they drum up these false charges and they stir up the people and they go and they throw him in front of the Sanhedrin, in front of the ruling body. And they levy these claims against them that are so funny and I think easy for us to understand. I think one of the big issues going on in our culture right now is the lack of nuance in our discourse. We don't know what news sources to trust. We don't know what tweets to trust. We don't know what Facebook posts to trust because what we do inevitably is the opposing side puts out a message or shares a thing or there's a speech or there's a statement or there's an action or an event. And then what the opposite side will do is pull the different things out that will fire up the base of their side and say, hey, this side said these things. When it's not an accurate picture of everything that they said, it's the worst possible picture of these little things that they said. And this is exactly what the synagogue of the freedmen is doing to Stephen. They're not giving the whole picture of what he's been teaching to the Sanhedrin. They're pulling out these little things that they know will be most offensive to them and accusing him of those things. They're saying he's claiming that Jesus of Nazareth came to overthrow the laws and the customs of Moses. Now that's an audacious claim because the laws and the customs of Moses, that's our Old Testament. That's what they refer to as the law and the prophets. That's their law. That's their Bible. That's everything that they know and cling to. And so for them to accuse Stephen of teaching that Jesus came to overthrow those things and to change them, that's a bombastic claim. That's salacious. That's a difficult thing to defend if it's true. And then to say that he intends to tear down the temple. That is the most holy place in Israel. That is the seat of power. It represents the very presence of God. It is the center of Hebrew worship. And to say that Jesus intends to tear that down, it's a big deal. And they get fired up too. The Sanhedrin hear this, they're upset, they're fired up, and they look at Stephen and they say, is this true? Is that really what you're teaching? Now listen, Stephen knows what's at stake with his answer. Stephen knows that if he navigates this poorly, he's going to die. And he knows that it's not an easy death. He knows that if he navigates this poorly, that they are going to kill him and they're going to kill him by stoning him. And just so we're all clear on what stoning is, they tie your hands around your back and push you off a cliff and drop big rocks on you until you die. It is death by blunt force trauma. Stephen knows that if he navigates this poorly, that that's what's waiting on him. When they ask him, what do you say, Stephen? He knows that if he answers poorly, he's going to pay with his life. And so I wonder, at this moment, if we put ourselves there in Stephen's place, how would we respond? What would we expect of Stephen? I wonder how I would respond. I think that I would expect Stephen, and I'm pretty sure I would want to calm everybody down. It's happening in a whirlwind. Emotions are there. They've misrepresented my story. I would want to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, hey, hey, let's just take it easy. Let's just take a beat. Let's talk about this. And if you're Stephen, you can correct how they've been misled. You can say, yeah, Jesus is going to change the way that we adhere to some of the laws of Moses, but he said himself that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. He's the fulfillment of those customs. Yes, Jesus did say that he's going to tear down the temple, but in a way that he makes the need for it obsolete because the temple is the very presence of God. And now in this New Testament, in this new way, since the righteous one has died for us, we have the Holy Spirit in our hearts and we are now the new temples of God. That temple is good and we should respect it and it is wonderful, but it's no longer needed. If I were Stephen, I would want to show the Sanhedrin, listen, we're on the same team. We follow the same God. The things I'm preaching are a continuation of the things that you believe and have taught. I would want for them desperately to see that all I was doing is teaching a continuation of what they've always believed. And I would want them to see that Jesus was actually the fulfillment of all the things that they hold dear. I would want to throw the temple of the freedmen under the bus and say, they're just mad because they're losing people. They're just mad because they can't beat me. They're just upset. This is just sour grapes. Let's just calm down. And if that wouldn't work, because maybe the Sanhedrin would be resistant to that defense anyways, maybe that would be blasphemous, I can make a pretty good argument. If I'm in his spot, and I've got this successful ministry going on over here, people are being added to the church day by day, people are believing me, I'm working signs and wonders, and we see this movement happening now that's spreading out of Jerusalem, and I'm a vital part of that, I can totally see the validity of the thought process of just thinking to yourself, I'm going to say whatever I have to say to survive this day. I'm going to just do whatever it is I have to do to live through this. Whatever they want to hear from me, whatever I have to admit, whatever I have to confess, I'm just going to get through today. I'm going to tell them what they need to hear, and then I'm going to continue on with this ministry because it's valuable ministry. And honestly, if that's what Stephen did, I'm not sure that I would judge him. I would understand it. He's doing good things. Shouldn't he want to preserve those things and not die right here on the spot? That's what I would expect of Stephen. That's what I would do. But for the rest of chapter seven, we see Stephen's response. He goes on for a long time, 53 verses. And Stephen's response is not what I would expect. If you look at chapter seven of Acts, it is the best summation of Genesis and Exodus that exists. It is an incredibly succinct summary of the events that unfolded that led to the nation of Israel. If you're unfamiliar with that portion of Scripture, if you've never read through Genesis or Exodus, I would highly encourage you to read the cliff notes that we find in Acts chapter seven. It's a very good read. And so in the midst of these false accusations, in the midst of the stress, in the midst of the urgency, in the midst of the anger and the Sanhedrin, pressing upon Stephen and saying, hey, is this true? Are you really teaching this? Stephen, knowing that he was facing death, tells them their own story. He tells them a story that they all know. And he starts with their father Abraham, the one from whom all Jews have descended. And then he moves through Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph. And then he fast-forwards the 400 years to Moses. And he talks about different events in Moses' life where he murdered the Egyptians and he has to flee to the wilderness. And he comes back 40 years later after being moved by the burning bush, compelled by God in the burning bush. And he frees the people and they move through the wilderness and he installs the law and they get to the banks of the Jordan River and Moses passes away and Joshua leads them across and they move into the promised land where they all now, Stephen and the Sanhedrin and the synagogue of the freed men and all the people watching where they all now sit. And he tells them a story that they already know. He tells them their story. And it's a story that they could all tell. Every one of the men sitting there judging Stephen, assessing the situation, they know the story. They know their Bible. They can all tell it. And so it makes you think that Stephen's building the case to do exactly what I said I would do, to say, hey, we're on the same team. Listen, I know all your history. I share it. I'm with you. And you feel like as he's saying it that he's going to end up making the point of we're all on the same team. Listen to this clarity. But he finishes telling the story and he punctuates it like this. It's unbelievable to me the confidence and the boldness that he has in this moment. Stephen finishes telling the story and then he says these things, beginning in verse 51. Yo, he stuck his face in the wood chipper, man. He just put it right in there. He tells the story. He brings everyone along. He shows that he has an understanding and a grasp of the scriptures like they do. And then he calls them uncircumcised of heart and eyes, which flares up the whole room. Because you have to remember in this context, circumcision was a sign of the covenant. If you were a Jewish circumcised male, then you were saved. You were in. You and God were good. That was the sign that your parents had committed you to the same God that was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the rest of their forefathers. It was the visible sign that you are in, that you are what we would refer to as a Christian or saved, that you and God are good. And Stephen says, no, forget it with your circumcision. You're uncircumcised in the heart and of the eyes. You're uncircumcised where it matters. You think you're saved. You lean on this tradition that you have, but that's not it at all because you don't mean any of the things that you teach. You've missed the point. You've gotten it wrong. You're not even a Christian. You're not even a believer. You don't even preach. You don't even live out the stuff that you preach. He's calling them hypocrites and false teachers. And then he associates them with the people who killed the prophets. The very prophets that they uphold, the very prophets that they teach, they consider the prophets their fathers. And Stephen says, no, no, no, no, no. You're not descendant from the prophets. You're descendant from the ones who killed the prophets. And then he goes to the last prophet, John the Baptist. You even killed him when he came and was preparing the way for the righteous one, for Jesus. And when he showed up, when God finally sent his son, the promised Messiah that you're supposed to have been looking for, you know what you did? You murdered him. He says, you've received the word of God from angels and you did not uphold it. Stephen, with boldness and audacity and faith, blasts the Sanhedrin. He spoke truth defiantly and righteously to power. And they respond exactly how you think they would. They rush him, they yell. It says that some of them covered their ears, a bunch of drama queens the Sanhedrin were, and they run at Stephen and they seize him and they carry him outside the city and they stone him. They bind up his arms, they bind up his legs, they drop him off of a smaller cliff so he's incapacitated and then they drop big rocks on him until he dies. And it says that in that moment Stephen looked up and he saw the Son of God at the right hand of the Father and that he prayed for them because they didn't understand what they were doing. I've read this story a few times in preparation for this week. And every time I read it, I've had to just kind of put my Bible down and sit there for a minute and marvel at the boldness of Stephen. Marvel at how brave he was. And note that what Stephen did in that moment was Stephen chose the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction. He chose the consequences of action. He knew that what he was going to do, he was inviting it. He stuck his chin out. He said, let's go. I know what's going to happen, but you need to know the truth. He invited it in. He chose action and invited the consequences of those actions rather than sit in comfort and inactivity. He could have placated. He could have lived to fight another day. He could have chosen comfort. But he stepped away from comfort and into fear. And it is a profound story. I'm honestly tempted to just leave it here because that's in some ways what Luke does. He just tells the story, sits it in the middle of the narrative. We don't come back to Stephen. I'm not entirely sure why he shared it with us, except to let us be moved by the boldness of Stephen, except to allow us to be inspired by the faith of someone who was facing certain brutal death. And part of me wonders why he did it. Why didn't he try to convince the Sanhedrin that he was right? Why didn't he try to convert the Sanhedrin? Why wasn't he more gentle with them? And I think that the answer is because when Stephen said those things, when he called them uncircumcised of heart and he said that their fathers were the ones that killed the prophets, that they murdered the Son of God, that they received the Word of God and that they did not hold it up. When he says those things, he's looking at the leaders, but he's not talking to them. I think he's talking to all the people who can hear him. I think he wants to inspire all the listeners, all the other young pastors who are watching him to see how he's going to handle this moment, all the people that he preached about the goodness of God to that are watching him to see how he's going to handle this moment. He's not talking to the Sanhedrin. He's talking to everyone around him. He's talking to the crowds because they needed to hear the truth. I think he knew that the truth was going to land on deaf ears when the Sanhedrin heard it, but he also knew that what they need, that what the crowds need, because it matters, is to hear the truth. And the truth to the crowd is that your leaders have let you down. They are false teachers, and Jesus was not. And so he chose boldness for their sakes. And I think all of this presses a question upon us. What is worth our boldness? What's worth our boldness? What in life is worth choosing the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction? What in life is worth stepping into that fear of the unknown, of giving up our comfort and our safety and security and saying, no, this is actually a place I'm willing to plant my flag and I will not be pushed off of this. Hopefully we all have things in our life that push us to boldness. Hopefully we all have things in our life where the comfort of inactivity is just simply no longer attractive enough to not choose the consequences of action. But as I thought about this question, we have different answers. But one answer that we can and should share in common is that if it matters to God, it is worthy of our boldness. If it matters to God, it's worthy of our boldness. If God says, hey, this matters to me, then it should matter to us. If God says this matters to me, then we should be willing to run from the comfort of inactivity towards the consequences of action. That's why last week I felt like I had no choice but to be bold. I would have much rather preferred to just stay comfortable. Not risk ruffling feathers, not risk being divisive in a church that I love so much. But I meant what I said when I said that oppression and injustice matters to God, that it breaks his heart, and it should break our heart too. So we step forward as a church in boldness, choosing the consequences of action. What matters to God is worth our boldness. And what matters to God more than anything else is the souls of men. What matters to God is that people would become his children. So your neighbor, the one that you've been getting closer to in quarantine, the one that you've had more conversations with in the last three months than you have in however many years you've lived there prior? Jesus died for that person. He was so bold that he faced death for them. They matter to God. They're worth your boldness. Have the uncomfortable conversation. I know it feels weird to start talking to people about faith. I know it feels weird to ask them what they believe. I know it's uncouth. I know it's uncomfortable. I know we have to leave the comfort of inactivity to do that. I know that we have to choose some consequences that might scare us, but I'm telling you, be inspired by Stephen. It's worth it. Be bold for the sake of your neighbor. Be bold for the sake of your children. Fight for them. Don't let things slide. Impress upon them the good news and the love of God. Be bold for the sake of your Christian brothers and sisters. Do you know somebody who might be sliding into sin? Do you know somebody who might be making choices that are leading them on a path that doesn't have a good ending? Do you know somebody who's dropped their guard a little bit? And you're seeing some things begin to leak out of their life that aren't good, God loves them. God wants that person near to them. They're worth your boldness. Have the conversation. Invite them to coffee. Invite them to the back porch. Talk to them. They're worth your boldness. Your marriage is worth your boldness. Your marriage matters very much to God. God designed marriage to be a picture, to be a manifestation that people should be able to look at and say, that's the way that God loves the church. And that's the way that Jesus loves us. That's why our marriage should be a picture of the gospel. And if it's sliding, and if it's unhealthy, if it's rocky, if it's murky, if it just feels distant, be bold for your marriage. Say the hard thing, have the hard conversation, Choose the consequence of action. And be bold for your marriage. The things that matter to God are worthy of our boldness. Listen, I mean this. Write the book. Start the ministry. Have the conversation. Send the email. Say the prayer. Open yourself up. Let us be inspired by the boldness of Stephen who in the face of certain death told the defiant and righteous truth. And let us, like Stephen, in the places where it matters most and the things that matter to God, choose consistently the consequences of action over the comfort of inaction. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. We thank you so much for your servant, Stephen, and for his story here. Thank you for moving Luke to share it with us so that we could see it and revisit it and marvel at his sacrifice. Thank you for his boldness, for wiring him in such a way that he did not lilt or fade away from that moment, but that he leaned into it. Give us a little bit of that fire, God. Give us the strength to lean into things. Give us the faith to know when we ought to do it. Give us the courage to face consequences of necessary action. Make us a church full of Stevens. In Jesus' name, amen.