Sermons tagged with Community

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along, and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks mailman Kyle. This week, Gideon. Well, good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. And if I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. Right now, while I'm preaching, probably wouldn't be an appropriate time, but after that would be great. As a pastor, I often find myself in conversations where questions like this are asked. Questions like, hey, people talk about being able to hear from God. I'm not sure that I can hear from God. How do I hear God's voice in my life? How do I know his direction? How do I know what God wants me to do? Sometimes that manifests itself in questions like, hey, I've got this job opportunity. We have this opportunity to move. We're trying to make a big decision about this or that or what to do with our children. How do I know what God wants me to do? Sometimes this conversation will take on the shape of, hey, I've been a Christian for a while, and I just feel like I'm in a rut, and I don't really know how to get it back. What do I need to do? How come I'm not grown further in my walk yet than I have already? Why is it that I feel behind? Or sometimes it's conversations with people who are new to the faith or relatively new to the faith. And they just kind of feel like they're not getting traction. It's not taken off for them. What is it that I need to do so that I can grow in my faith? And I think that to be a Christian for any amount of time is to, at some point, to have asked those questions or questions like them, or at the very least, to feel this sense of, gosh, I thought I would have grown past this by now. I thought I would, I see other people talking about this rich, deep faith, and they seem to hear from God, and they seem to have this courageous faith that other people would seek to emulate, but no one would seek to emulate me, and I don't know how to get from where I am to where they are, but I know that I'm not content here. If that's you, and if you've ever had a thought like that, then Gideon's your guy. Gideon may be the most relatable story in all the Bible. Gideon, I find to be a character that resonates with me and with us as I tend to go through it very, very much. Because in Gideon, what we see is we see typical Bible hero stuff. By the end of the story, he's threatening kings and he's conquering armies and he's sitting on, he wasn't on the throne, but on the magistrate seat, I guess, as the judge of Israel. And he judges Israel for 40 years and he's the unquestioned leader of the country right underneath God. And so that's typical Old Testament hero stuff and none of us can relate to that. You're not about to rule over the United States for 40 years, although it may go better if some of you did it. I don't know. But we're not about to do that, right? But the beginning of Gideon's story, he's timid and he's fearful and he's characterized by doubtful hesitancy. The beginning of Gideon's story, we can relate to very much. And so as we go through this story, there is this overarching question that becomes very important to us if we feel like we can relate to Gideon in any way, in his fear and in his timidity and in our uncertainty of how to live out our faith. The overarching question, I think, over the narrative of Gideon is simply, how does Gideon move from doubtful hesitancy to confident clarity. How does Gideon begin with this rickety, secondhand, doubtful, timid faith and move to a place where he is the judge of Israel for 40 years, moving and acting with confident clarity? Because the guy at the end of the story barely resembles the guy at the beginning of the story. So the question becomes, how does that happen to Gideon? To discover this, we should look at the story of Gideon. I love the story of Gideon. I know that I say I love all the stories that I tell you, and it's true. I do. But this one in particular is special to me because I had the chance to go to Israel in 2013. And I've always loved the story very much. And in the story, they go to a brook and some soldiers drink from a brook. And when I went to Israel, they take you to that brook and they say, this is the stream of Gideon and this is the field of Gideon. And in the crease of my Bible, I have grass from the field of Gideon that I'm not going to pull out because I'm afraid I'll break it, but I'll show it to you after the service. But I've got grass in here from Gideon's field next to the brook that shows up in the story. So when I get to tell the story of Gideon, I get excited because you could say that I get giddy about Gideon. That one just occurred to me. Where's Kyle Tolbert? Is he in this room? That was just for you, pal. That was it. I don't care if anybody else laughed, buddy. That's great. You guys don't know this, but after I preach or after Kyle preaches, we have about 30 minutes where we talk about each other's jokes and how they were like, we'll always make one joke just for the other person. Just so you guys know, it's a little inside baseball. Probably shouldn't do it. I don't know why I'm talking about it right now, but we do and it's great. So I'm excited to tell you the story of Gideon. When we pick up the story, we're in Judges chapter 6, and we find Gideon in a wine press milling out grain. And you might wonder, why is Gideon in a wine press using it for something that it was not intended for, hiding out from whomever? Well, that's because in the verses preceding it, we learn that the Israelites, God's people, were being oppressed by the Midianites. And that oppression didn't look like just coming in and taking all the way over. That oppression looked like just waiting for the farmers to till their land and produce their crop, and then just going in and taking whatever they wanted, taking all the wealth and all the fruit and all the vegetables and all the livestock back to their cities to use as they saw fit. So they had subjugated the Israelite people. And Gideon, he is experiencing this subjugation. And this is in the period of the judges. I explained this last week, so I won't belabor it this morning, but in the period of the judges, God himself was the king of Israel. He ruled over Israel, and they followed God, and they obeyed him, and they followed his laws, and they acknowledged him. And God would appoint a judge to serve as a judge, a magistrate, kind of a one-person supreme court, and rule over the different disputes that would come up in the land between families and between tribes and individuals. But occasionally, Israel would forget that God got them there, would forget that God was their God, and they would start to live by their own rules and do their own thing and not really care about who God was and what he thought. And they would say, God, your hand over us is kind of annoying. Would you please remove it so that we could just do whatever we would like to do? And God would say, okay, I will, but you're going to have to experience the consequences of your actions. And because he moved his hand of protection from the Israelites, because their actions and their attitudes and their devotion basically said, we're not really interested in your rules or your hand of blessing over us. So if you could get out of our way, that would be great. God said, okay, I'll get out of your way. And then sure enough, the Amorites and the Midianites and the Amalekites and the various ites from surrounding cities and towns would come in and they would oppress Israel until Israel would cry out and be like, God, we forgot about you. We're so sorry. These people are really bumming us out. Could you come in and save us? And God would appoint a judge and raise them up and they would overthrow the oppressors and they would live in peace again until they forgot about God. And so the cycle continues. Judges, before it gets really, really bad, that we meet Gideon. And we see him in the wine press in chapter 6. And an angel of the Lord appears to him, and it's pretty clear that Gideon's not yet sure that this is an angel of the Lord. It appears to him, and he says, and an angel of the Lord appeared to him and said, the Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor. Which is a really interesting comment. Because as far as we know, Gideon was neither mighty nor did he possess any valor. He's just a dude, tread and grain in a wine press. But the angel says, The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor. This guy and an oppressed people who's never fought a battle in his life and is by no means mighty and does not seem to display any courage in any way. And so it's like, what are you doing, angel? Like, are you making fun of Gideon? Are you being sarcastic here? Because if you are, that's a good one. But I think what's happening here is that the angel knew because God had told him. The angel knew who Gideon was going to become. The angel knew who Gideon was. The angel knew the path that Gideon was about to walk and what he would be as a result of walking it. So he called him what he knew he wasn't yet, but knew he would be, O mighty man of valor. And Gideon's response to me is one of the funnier responses in the Bible. Now the Bible's not really known for its jokes, so when I read it, you're not going to fall over laughing at this, but the honesty of it is interesting. Chapter 6, verse 13. So the angel comes to Gideon and he says, the Lord is with you, almighty man of valor. And Gideon says, are you sure? Because I'm down here. I'm treading this grain in this wine press. You sure about that? Because if God's with us, like our fathers say he is, then why are we oppressed by the Midianites? If God's with us, then what am I doing? And why has the God who's promised us that he's going to protect us, why has he forsaken us? Which I think it's interesting as an aside to see Gideon blaming God for decisions that he and his people made. Gideon, brother, God didn't forsake you. You forsook him. God didn't take his hand off of you. God didn't take his hand of protection off of you. God didn't take his blessing off of you because he just got tired of you. You didn't want it there. So he removed it. And now you're living in the consequences of your actions. And I think it's a good lesson for us. It's not the point, but I do want to make it. Sometimes in life, we walk through hard times because broken things happen in a broken world. People get sick. We lose people too soon. Tragedy strikes. It's not fair and it will never make sense on this side of eternity. And sometimes those things simply happen because this world is broken. But a lot of times things happen because we did them. A lot of times things happen because we kind of said, God, your hand on my life is uncomfortable. Your control and sovereignty over my life is uncomfortable. I don't like it. I'd like to be able to do whatever it is I want to do. So if you could kind of leave me alone for a little while, I'm just going to do my thing. And God says, okay. And then we get to the end of the consequences of those choices. And like Gideon, we're like, God, why have you forsaken me? And like Gideon, he didn't forsake us. We forsook him. So I thought it was worth it to pause. I have a note in my Bible from years ago when I first encountered this story in this Bible. It's interesting how Gideon shifts the blame there to God for something that Israel had done. But to his better point, if God's with us, why am I here? If God's actually good and he actually promised us this stuff, then what am I doing in this spot right here? Why am I down here? And I think that's a question that all of us can relate to at some point in our life. If God's so good and if he's so loving, then why am I down here? Whatever down here is. And so the angel responds to him. And the angel says, the Lord is with you. I promise he's with you. You can go in confidence. And so Gideon says this in verse 15. Please, Lord, how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house. And the Lord said to him, But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man. And he said to him, If I have now found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me. There's a lot going on there in those verses. But the first thing we see I think is very interesting. The angel doubles down and says, no, no, no, you're the one that God is going to use to save Israel. And Gideon says, but why me? My father's tribe, clan, is the smallest in all of Manasseh, and I am the youngest of all the brothers. You couldn't have picked a less significant person to lead your charge than me. No one's going to follow me. No one's going to believe me. I am not a mighty man of valor. I've never done any of this stuff before. You've got the wrong guy. But the angel doubles down and says, no, no, no, you are the one. God has chosen you. And so now Gideon realizes he's hearing from God. He's being told to walk in a direction, but he does so timidly. And he says, okay, I need to make sure that you're an angel from the Lord. I need to make sure that I think I'm hearing, that I'm hearing what I think I'm hearing. Will you stay here? I'm going to go make us dinner. And I need to see a sign. I need something so I know that this is the direction I need to move in. And so he goes back to his house. He leaves the angel under the tree. He makes some dinner. There's some hotcakes or something involved. And he serves dinner to the angel. And the angel takes his staff and taps the dinner. And the dinner catches on fire. It was baked Alaska, and he didn't know about it. And so he's like, man, this is amazing. I can't believe this. That's a neat trick and a pretty clear sign from God. Okay, I believe you, and I trust you. I'm in. What would the Father have me do? And the angel says, do you know? Now, this, the following dialogue is a loose paraphrase of scripture. It's in Judges 6, you read it. The angel says, you know those gods that the Midianites erected in the middle of town to kind of snub their nose at everyone and say like, hey, we're the boss now. Like those idols mean that, that's from that Tom Hanks movie. I'm the captain now. That's what those idols mean. Like we're in charge here now. Don't mess with us. We got you. And Gideon's like, yeah, I know the ones. And he goes, listen, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your dad's bull, the biggest one. And then I want you to take a young bull from your dad. And I want you to go and tear down the idol in the middle of town and then I want you to sacrifice the bull to our God. And Gideon's like, now what now? Because that, friends, is poking the bear. That is walking into the middle of town, these idols that the Midianites constructed in the middle of town to make everybody know we are the boss now. It is not you. Our God is superior to your God. We've got a handle on the situation. Go and tear it down. What do you think is going to happen when Gideon tears it down and the Midianites wake up and they see that it's been torn down? Do you think they're going to show up in the middle of Gideonon City and be like, all right, guys, now come on. Who did this stuff? Fix that idol for us. You guys are the best. That's hilarious. That's not going to happen. They're going to be mad. They're coming for blood. And Gideon's tribe knows that. So they wake up in the morning and word starts to spread. Oh my goodness, somebody tore down the idol. Who was stupid enough to do this? What in the world? We got to figure this out. And so they figured out it was Gideon. They go to Gideon's house. And they're there with their pitchforks, man. They're crying out to Gideon's father. Give us your son Gideon so that we can kill him so that we might mitigate the anger of the Midianites when they come crashing down the hill to come make us answer for this stuff. We've got to be able to show them that we did our part. Please don't hurt us. They're terrified of the Midianites. And Gideon's dad gives this impassioned speech about who they are and they're the chosen people of God and that they need to band together and that they can defeat the Midianites. It probably was a really cool speech. I'd love to see it in like an HBO or Netflix series, this big climatic moment where the tide turns, it shifts. And the people who came to kill Gideon by the end of the exchange are now ready to follow him into battle. Yeah, let's get them. No more. It's Braveheart crying freedom, right? So then word goes out throughout all of Israel. We have a leader now. His name is Gideon and he's going to face off against the Midianites. Send all your fighting men. And as that cry, as that call is going out to the nation of Israel to send Gideon your fighting men in Manasseh where there's going to be a face-off, Gideon gets nervous and he goes to God in prayer. And this is part of the story that you guys may know. It's the most famous part of the story. He goes to God in prayer and he says, God, if you really want me to do what I think you want me to do, if I'm meant to lead these men after a lifetime of never leading a single fighting man in my life, we see no evidence in the text that Gideon had even fought, besides the fact that he had brothers, so he probably got into a couple scraps. But we see no evidence that he was a soldier of any kind. And so he says, God, if you really want this guy who's not a soldier, who's the youngest of all the brothers in the smallest tribe and one of the smallest clan in the smallest tribe, if you want me to lead the people of Israel, I need to know that I know that I know. So please, can you do something for me? I'm going to put my fleece out when I sleep. I'm going to put this lambskin out in front of my tent when I sleep. And if I wake up in the morning and the ground around the fleece is bone dry, but the fleece has dew on it and is wet, I'll take that as a sign from you that I'm supposed to lead these men into battle in your name and that you will give us the victory. So Gideon goes to sleep, wakes up the next day, pokes his head out of his tent, feels the ground around the fleece and it's bone dry. He feels the fleece and it's soaking wet. He's got a sign. God showed him. Ride into battle, mighty man of valor. But that's not what Gideon does. Gideon does this. In Judges 6, verses 39, Then Gideon said to God, Let not your anger burn against know why you picked me either. I'm a total drag. But if you could just do that do trick again, but this time the old switcheroo, then I would certainly know that this is what you want me to do. And so it happens. The fleece is dry, the ground is wet, and Gideon knows that this is what he needs to do. And so he goes and he leads. And it's worth noting at this point in the story that Gideon, he's frightened out of his mind. He's scared senseless. He is timid. He is doubtful. He is hesitant. He does not want to step forward and do this. He needs assurance from God at every turn. And he is right and good to be terrified. He would have been terrified to pull down the idols and have to face off with his townsmen and know that he's going to have to go to battle. And now a call has gone out to make him the general of all the armies of Israel. And he's never led a single person before. He knows he's wildly inadequate for this task and he is scared. But he steps. And it's worth noting that terrified obedience still counts. Terrified obedience? God, I don't know what's going to happen here. I don't know what's on the other side of obedience. You're asking me to jump over this fence. I don't know what's on the other side of it, but I know that this is what you want me to do, and I'm scared senseless, God, that I could take this step of obedience, and it could cost me this friendship. It could cost me this relationship. It could cost me money. It could cost me experience. It could cause animosity between me and my wife or me and my husband. It could cause me to take the wrong step with my children that there's going to be ramifications for for decades to come. God, I'm terrified of taking this step. And yet terrified obedience still counts. I would say it's probably the most forming kind of obedience. Some obedience is easy. You get lunch with your friend and you say, I really, I've got this decision to make. I really don't know what the Lord wants me to do. I'm trying to just discern. I feel like God wants me to move in this direction, but I just want to be sure. It's this new job. I get a lucrative signing bonus, better hours, more flexibility, 40% more money, and I get stock options. I just don't, does God want me to take this step? Yes, yes, he. Take the step. Take the step. And then you take us out to dinner. Alright, take the step. That's easy obedience. Some obedience is hard. Some obedience terrifies us. Moving six and a half hours away, taking your one year old away from their new grandparents with a wife who's not sure about whether or not to go. That's scary. That's scary obedience. But scary obedience is some of the most formative obedience. And so it still counts. And we're all called to it at some point. So Gideon decides to obey. He's going to be the general of the Lord's armies. And 32,000 men show up from all over Israel. It's like an act. We don't know. I searched the text. We don't know how many men the Midianites had. And by this point, they had partnered up with the Amalekites because they see that there's a revolt going on in Israel and they're trying to thwart it. So 32,000 fighting men show up and God looks at that and he tells Gideon, listen, that's too many men. If you guys go into battle and you win and people hear about it, they're going to think that you did it, man. And they need to know that I did it and that you had nothing to do with this. That's too many guys. Go to them and tell them that if anybody's scared, then they can go home. So Gideon goes back to them and he says, if any of you are afraid, if you're trembling, if you've been forced to be here against your will, if you don't want to go, if you don't want to fight, then you go home. No harm done. No one's going to hold it against you. Go home. It'll be fine. 22,000 men leave, leaving 10,000 behind. Which, if I'm one of those 10,000 men, and let's be honest, I would not have been. I'd have been like, all right, we'll see you later on the first chance. But if I'm one of those 10,000 men, I'm going, I made the wrong choice. But we're stuck here now. Let's rush to death together, boys. And God looks at those 10,000 men and he goes, yeah, Gideon, I'm sorry, buddy. That's too many. We need less than that so that people know I'm the one who brings victory. So he says, here's what I want you to do. I want you to take your men down to this brook to get a drink of water. There's going to be two kinds. There's going to be lappers who put their face in the water and lap it up like a dog. They just hoover it right in like some animals. And then there's going to be scoopers who keep their eyes on the horizon and scoop the water and drink from their hands. All right? I want you to keep the scoopers and send the lappers home. The lappers are weird. We don't need them anyways. The scoopers have their eyes on the horizon. They're good soldiers. Let's keep them. So that's what Gideon does. And when he's done with this winnowing process, there's 300 men left, 300 scoopers. And he's like, okay, God, what's the plan? God says, here's what I want you to do. Arm all 300 men with a clay pot and a torch. And I want you at night to go to the camp and surround the Midianites and the Amalekites. And when you give the signal, everyone's to shatter their pots and scream a sword for the Lord and a sword for Gideon. And then you're going to win. There's at least 30,000 men in this camp. But this is the plan. And God in his goodness to Gideon says, if you need a sign, because I know you're that kind of guy, if you need a sign, you don't have to ask for me this time. Take Pura, your servant, and sneak down the hill and listen at the camp of the Midianites and I'll give you a sign. So that's what Gideon does. He says, he could have gone right then, but he takes the sign from God, and he goes down, and he sits next to a tent, and at that tent, he hears some Midianite soldiers talking to one another, and one of them says, I just had a vision, and the soldier says, what was your vision? And he says, there's a man named Gideon. He's an Israelite, and he's going to come down, and he's going to kill us all. And upon hearing this vision, Gideon does this in Judges chapter 7 verse 15, as soon as Gideon heard the telling of the dream and its interpretation, he worshiped. And he returned to the camp of Israel and said, arise for the Lord has given the host of Midian into your hand. There's so much to learn from that response. We can make the whole sermon that response. What was Gideon's response to the good news from God? He worshiped. What should be our response when we get good news from God? We should worship. What should be our response when we struggle to know what to do? We should worship. What should be our response when we're sad and we're down and we're low? We should worship. What's our response when we're at peace? We should worship. He turns and he worships God. And then he goes to the men and he says, let's go. God's given the Midianites into our hands. So they go down and they surround the Midianites and the Amalekites and all 300 of them and at Gideon's signal, they light their torches and they bash the clay pots and there's this great clamor and they yell a sword for the Lord and a sword for Gideon in unison. And the Amalekites and the Midianites wake up, they come out of their tents and they look. And as far as they know, in total darkness, they're surrounded by 300 torches. And on the other side of those 300 torches are the 32,000 fighting Israelite men who have come to destroy them. And so they wake up and they just start fighting whoever they can see. They start to fight each other because they can't recognize who's in their army and who's not. All they know is that there's an invading force trying to kill them in the middle of the night and they start killing each other. And listen, I know that might sound crazy, but even though I have never been a part of hand-to-hand combat, which I know is surprising news, but I've never been a part of hand-to-hand combat, but I have watched a lot of Viking and medieval shows, okay? And I've seen this happen a bunch of times. So I can tell you from pretty good second-hand knowledge, based on the way that the director chose to depict it, that these are incredibly chaotic scenes. And often I watch them and I wonder, they don't have uniforms. They're not wearing flags. How do they know who belongs to who and who's fighting for who? So they rushed out of their tents and all they know is that guy has a sword and I don't know him and I'm going to defend my life. And if anybody tries to escape, we presume that Gideon's army just kind of steps over. It's like, no, no, I don't think so. And then they kill that person. They just kind of wait until they defeat both armies at once. The Midianite king escapes, gets out with a small contingent, and Gideon goes to chase him. The Midianite king goes, and he goes through intentionally territories that are favorable to him, that are going to let him pass through their land without hassling them. But when Gideon tries to go through their land, the kings of those lands are like, hey, buddy, you can't bring your army through here, all right? We don't want to have to support you and your whole crew, so you've got to find another way around. And Gideon, without missing a beat, without waiting on a sign from God, says, hey, listen, listen, listen, listen. We're going to go, listen to me, we're going to go and we're going to kill him. And if you don't let us stay here, when we get done killing him, we're going to come back and kill you. So what do you want to do? And the kings go, we're sorry, Mr. Gideon, you just please use all the land you need. And he goes and he kills the Midianite king and he overthrows the oppressors. And scripture tells us that he faithfully judges Israel for 40 years. And the question to me is how did he go from this fearful timidity in the wine press to this confident courage on the field of battle? Because those are two totally different dudes, man. Those are two totally different guys. The guy in the wine press that talks to the angel, oh yeah, if God is with us, then where is he? Because I don't see him and I'm down here hiding out from everyone because I'm scared. The guy who needs a sign from the angel, who needs two signs from God, who needs to feel good about attacking, like the guy who's needed God's pushing all along the way and can barely hear him and barely obey him. By the end of the story is threatening kings and moving decisively and with confident clarity at hearing the voice of God and acting on the instructions? What changed for Gideon? He experienced God. He experienced God. At the beginning of the story, we get some insight into who Gideon was. He says, if God is here, if he's up there, then why am I down here? And then, I don't know if you saw in the text, he calls him the God of our fathers. If the God of our fathers is real, he didn't call him my God, the God of my fathers. See, at this point in Gideon's life, I would surmise he had only heard about God. Other people had only told him about who his God was and what he did. God was an experience of other people, of the people who came before him. God was not someone that he had personally experienced. He was still their God, the God that he had heard about. And I think this is so important because for so many of us, for so many years, God is the God that other people talk about. God is the God that Nate gets up and preaches about. Jesus is the Savior that other people sing to, that other people experience, that other people cry out to. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit that guides other people, that speaks to other people, that convicts other people. But we haven't personally experienced those things, and we kind of wonder when it's going to be our turn. And I think so many of us can relate to Gideon because to Gideon, God was someone that other people talked about. And to so many of us, so often, God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are things and gods and people that other folks seem to experience and talk about. But we haven't experienced them. And so we talk about them like I talk about Viking battles, secondhand from what I see. And so I think what changed with Gideon is that he experienced God. He walked in terrified obedience. God shows up and says, hey, I want you to go tear down those idols, but I can't, I'm gonna get killed. Just trust me, do it. Okay, can I please get a sign? Yeah, I'm gonna burn your dinner. Okay, I'm gonna go do it. And he does it. And he does it in the middle of the night because he's fearful of the ramifications. But God's faithful to him. And instead of having him be killed by the mob, the mob now wants to follow him. And then all of Israel is coming to follow him and Gideon says, God, are you sure I'm the guy? Are you sure I can do this? And he gets a sign and then another sign and with timidity and fear he steps out and he says, okay. And then God widows down his army to 300 men. And he says, are you sure, God, I need to do this? Yeah, I'm sure. And those 300 men conquer 30,000. And then we see him walking with confidence. Do you see this transition that happens in Gideon? This man who hasn't experienced God and doesn't recognize the voice of God and isn't sure if he can trust this voice of God becomes a man who, without blinking, recognizes God's voice and walks in confidence that God will do what he said he was going to do. So what happened to Gideon, what moves him from this doubtful, timid hesitancy in his faith to courageous clarity in his faith is nothing that he did. It's not following the rules better. It's simply walking in obedience to God. And in taking those steps of faith and walking the path that God called him to walk, he experienced the goodness of God and the faithfulness of God and the reality that God is one who keeps his promises. And Gideon learned the lesson that as long as I step in the path that God has laid out for me, nothing can happen to me that God doesn't want to have happen to me. He will keep his word. He will be faithful to his promises. And the same invitation is extended to us. Quite simply, if we want to experience God and grow in our faith, we need to obey. We need to take a step of obedience. In a few weeks, I'm going to do a whole sermon on the fact that at Grace, we define discipleship and spiritual growth as taking the next step of obedience. So I won't belabor that point now except to say that we believe that everyone has a next step of obedience that's been placed in front of them. And I would contend that if we feel weak in our faith, if we feel timid in our faith, if we feel like our faith hasn't progressed to where it should, if we feel like God is someone that other people talk about, but that we haven't experienced that maybe, maybe, maybe it's because we haven't been taking those steps of obedience, the easy ones or the fearful ones, to watch God come through for us. So we train our spiritual ear to hear the voice of God, to see him in circumstances, and know that's the way that he wants us to walk. And so for all of us, in light of the story of Gideon, as we move from timidity to courage, as we sing, I'm no longer a slave to fear. I am a child of God. As we sing in a few minutes and we say over and over again that God makes us brave. Let's understand he makes us brave by our obeying him, even when we don't know what's on the other side of obedience and trusting that when we get there, God will take care of us. So God, even though I'm scared and even though I don't know how it's going to work out and even though this is a really difficult step for me to take, I'm going to take it and I'm going to trust that you're going to be there for me when I get there. And I'm telling you, the more you do that, the easier the step gets the next time. Not because you've got it figured out and you're great and you're awesome, but because you know that you can trust your God to come through when he says he's going to come through. And so we become brave as Gideon became brave. I don't know what your step is. I have no doubt in my mind that with this many folks in a room, some of you, your step is right here. You know good and well what God would have you do. It may be terrifying. Terrified obedience still counts. Maybe it's to have a conversation that you've been putting off and dreading and avoiding. Maybe it's to mend some fences and offer forgiveness in a place where you're not quite ready to do that yet. Maybe your simple step of obedience is to actually set the alarm 30 minutes early and get up and spend time in God's word and time in prayer like we talk about all the time. Maybe your next step of obedience is to actually turn around and invest in your spouse and invest in your marriage and double down on it instead of finding small ways to escape it whenever you can and see what goodness comes from God in that. Maybe it's to be present for your kids and not try to avoid them so much. Maybe it's to take a step and begin to trust God with your finances and give generously. Maybe it's to deprioritize some things that are getting too much of your time. I don't know what your next step is, but I know that you have one. And I know that if you take it, as happened to Gideon, you will experience God in the taking of that step. You will experience him come through for you. You will walk with bravery as you take step after step, and you will become the person who God has created you to be. So, grace, go from here, mighty men and women of valor. Go from here, wise men and women of grace and patience, kind men and women of goodness and mercy, and obey God and let him make you brave in that step. Let's pray. Father, thank you for being the one constant that we have, the one thing that we can count on, the one constant in our life that will absolutely never, ever let us down. Lord, I pray that you would make clear for those who can hear me what our next step of obedience is. God, what would you press on us that we need to do? What step would you press on us that we need to take, God, and give us the courage to take it? Let us embrace the fact that terrified obedience still counts. You'll take it, and it is sometimes the most formative obedience. God, as a church, make us brave. As a church, give us the faith to take the step of obedience that you lay out in front of us. Let us move as one as you seek to impact corners of the community of the city of Raleigh and Wake Forest and the surrounding towns. Make us brave as individuals so that we might be brave as a church and so walk in your might and in your truth and in your identity and serve you well as we go. It's in Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.

I wonder, pals, how long has it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks mailman Kyle. Today, Samson. All right. Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's been a minute since I preached. The elders were kind enough to allow me to take the month of July off from preaching. And as I said last week, thank you so much for being a church that lets me do that. I'm sure that as I converse with people and continue to process what the month allowed me to do, one of the things that I'm coming out of July with is a profound gratitude for you. I'm so grateful that I get to be your pastor and that I get to be in this place. It is one of the most profound joys of my life. So thank you for letting me serve you in this way. As we jump back into the series, Kids Stories for Grownups, it's kind of born out of this idea that there's these stories. If you grow up in church, there's these stories that we learn all along the way, right? David and Goliath and Noah and the Ark and Jonah and the Whale. We hear those stories and then when we grow up and we still sit in church on Sunday mornings, we don't talk about kids' stories. We talk about important theology and Romans and things like that, but we don't revisit the kids' stories. Sometimes when I put Lily to bed, my six-year-old daughter, she'll ask me for a Bible story, and I love telling Lily Bible stories. I love telling Bible stories to anyone, especially if they haven't heard them before. And it's funny how I'll remember the stories that I liked when I was a kid and I'll think, oh, I'll tell her about Noah and the ark. Oh yeah. I mean, the animals are cute, but like the whole world dying. That's, I don't think she's ready for that yet. So let, not that one. And then, well, maybe I'll tell her this one. Ooh, that's a, that, that, that, that, um, the holy war is, is tricky right now. Let's, uh, let's, let's wait on that one. And then, well, maybe I'll tell her this one. Ooh, that Holy War is tricky right now. Let's wait on that one. And you kind of realize, my goodness, these are not intended for kids at all. These are intended for adults. And there's no story to me that personifies that better than the story of Samson. When you read, when you're a little kid, if you grew up in church, and this isn't everyone's experience. Not everyone grew up in church, and I understand that. And maybe if you didn't grow up in church, you've heard of Samson before, and you know he was like superhuman, like Bible Hercules, that was him. But when you're a little kid and you grow up in church, especially if you're a little boy, Samson's the best. Samson was the Hercules of the Bible. He accomplished things of superhuman strength. He killed 1,000 people with the jawbone of a donkey. And when you're eight, that sounds amazing. When you're 41, you're like, but why did he do that? What's the matter with Samson? That's awful. And when you revisit this story, you realize this guy was a jerk. And I'm saying he was a jerk because it's church and I'm on the stage and there's children in the room. But that's not the word I want to use. I would like to string together more colorful words to describe who Samson was. And so when you go through the story of Samson, overshadowing everything is this constant why. Why did God use him? Why is he in the New Testament referred to as one of the heroes of the faith? How? Why? Why does God continue to use him and bless him? This doesn't make any sense. And I'll just tell you up front, the goal for this morning is not to answer the why question. The goal for this morning is to see what we can see in the life of Samson and how God interacts with him and how that might inform how we interact with God and how God pursues us. But we're going to take a stab at that as we go. But the story of Samson is not the story of a hero of the faith to me, or at least not what you would think it would be. We pick up Samson's story in Judges chapter 13, where we learn that there is a, and I would encourage you to grab a Bible. There's one in front of you. Judges 13 through 16 is where we're going to be today. If you're at home, follow along there. But just double check me and make sure I'm not making this stuff up because it's going to sound like I am, but I promise you I'm not. His life was just nuts. So in Judges chapter 13, we pick up Samson. We learn of a woman who was married to a man named Manoah, and she was not able to have children, but she desperately wanted some. And so she's praying to God that God would allow her to have some children. And this is what God says to her. In Judges 13, verses 3 through 5. Okay, so there's a couple of things going on there. First of all, you see that he can't, no alcohol, no touching unclean things. You cannot cut his hair ever. It's a Nazaritic vow. He was going to make a vow of the Nazarite. And that just means someone who is set aside intentionally and purposefully from birth to be used by God. And so the vow incorporates no alcohol, no haircuts, no touching unclean things and following God's law. So before Samson is born, God goes to his mom and says, I'm going to give you a son and your son is going to be used by me. He's going to take the Nazaritic vow and he can never drink and his hair can never be cut. And I am going to use him to overthrow the Philistines. At which point it's helpful for me to explain that what is going on in the period of the judges. As we read the book of Judges, we're in an era of Israel called the Judges before they had kings. So it's after they wandered into the desert, they've established themselves as a nation, or rather God has established them as a nation. And now they do not have a king or a ruler, rather God is their king. And in his rule, God appoints a judge to sit and do just that, to settle disputes, to help people figure things out, to say you're right and you're wrong and you have to pay them punitive damages and all those things. He appoints a judge during peaceful times to keep everything harmonious. But the role of the judge was also at times to overthrow the other tribes oppressing God's people in Israel. Because the cycle of the judges is God would establish them and freedom and they would be in charge of themselves. He's their king. They would have a judge and they serve him well and in peace. But eventually they would forget about the blessings of God. They would begin to make their own choices, follow after their own gods and go into a stage of rebellion against God. And to get their attention, God would allow them to experience the consequences of their actions by removing his hand of blessing from his nation of Israel. And they would get oppressed again by the Midianites or the Amorites or the Philistines or some other ites until they would cry out to God, we've messed is, I'm going to give you a son who will take the Nazaritic vow, and he is going to become a judge over Israel and will begin to overthrow the Philistine oppressors. That's the promise God makes to this woman. So she has a son. They name him Samson. And we don't know a lot about his childhood. When we see him come on the scene, he's walking back and forth to this village that was, I guess, a neighboring village to where he was, except it was a Philistine village. And one day on his way, it says a young lion attacked him. And it says that the spirit of the Lord came upon him and he ripped the lion apart with his bare hands. So this is where we see Samson's gift from God is this kind of superhuman strength. And while he's in this village, he meets a girl. And he goes back to his parents, and he says to his parents, hey, I've met a woman, and I want her to be my wife. Will you please make the necessary arrangements with her parents, which fellas, if only it were that easy, right? So they say, and this is the response. I love this response. You can find it in the text. When he says, I want to marry this woman over here from this Philistine village, his parents are troubled because he's supposed to marry an Israelite girl. He's supposed to marry a Jewish girl. That's kind of part of the deal. When you're part of the Jewish faith, you don't intermarry with other faiths. You stay with your faith. This is something that's really important to God and the Old Testament. It's really important to Samson's parents, but Samson doesn't care. And so their response when he says, hey, I've met this Philistine girl and I'd like to marry her. Can you make the arrangements? His parents' literal response is, Samson, have you considered your cousins? That's the response. Now imagine some of you have kids that are of marrying age. Let's say they bring them home and you guys are talking and that person goes off to bed or they go to the restroom or whatever it is and you lean over to your child. How bad would that person have to be for you to say, have you considered your cousins? Like what about your family at least? They didn't want to marry her, but he did. And for whatever reason they allowed it. You get the impression that Samson's not the kind of person that you can say no to, so they make the arrangements. And he's on his way to the village for the marriage celebration. It's like a seven-day celebration. It's like a seven-day long wedding reception, which is my nightmare because I hate wedding receptions. But there, which I'm sure no one's surprised by that. Like, I didn't see that one coming, Nate. Yeah, I don't like dancing. All right, they're the worst. So it's a seven day reception to go to for a wedding. And on his way there, he passes by the lion that he killed, except now it's a carcass and some bees have built a hive in it. And there's some honey in there. And so he's like, well, that looks nice. And so he scoops some honey out and he eats some of that honey, which seems like an inconsequential thing, except it's a violation of his Nazaritic vow. He's not supposed to touch unclean things and that was dead. So it's unclean. So Samson already is pretty cavalier about the vow that he made to God, that his parents asked him to make to God, and about his fidelity to this God that's empowering him to rip lions apart with his bare hands. And he gets down there, and at the reception, he's been assigned 30 companions. They've chosen 30 men from among the town to be his companions, to be his friends, which that's 30 is a lot. It's a large wedding party and also does not sound very fun. Like, hey, to celebrate your wedding, here's 30 people that you're going to spend the week with that you don't know. But that's how they did it. So those are his companions. And on the first day of the celebration, he says, hey, I'll make you guys a bet. I'll bet you that I'll give you a riddle. And if you can solve it, then I'll give each one of you a set of clothes. And if you can't solve it, then each of you, all 30 of you, has to give me a set of clothes. And apparently, this was a pretty high-stakes bet, all right? There was no Old Navies. We're not running to the store to buy shorts for $12. Clothes were very expensive. They were handmade, and having one or two sets was a pretty big deal in life. So betting 30 of them is a pretty large gamble, except, and you can read it, it's kind of a dumb riddle, honestly, but it's a riddle that's impossible to solve. The answer to the riddle is this carcass that has honey in it down the street, but you're never going to guess it. So it's a totally impossible riddle. And now you're just going to beat your heads against the wall for seven days. And then I'm going to take all of your money. This is great. So he's made a jerky, impossible bet to his new friends. So as the celebration goes on, the 30 companions are really putting pressure on Samson's fiance to tell him, hey, figure out what the answer to this riddle is and tell us. Like, he's going to come in here and embarrass all the Philistines ever. So you got to figure it out. You got to figure it out. So she's pressing on him to figure it out. He won't tell her. He won't tell her. Finally, on the seventh day, he tells her. So she goes and she tells the guys, and then the guys publicly say, hey, we got it. And they give him the answer to his riddle. And he's so incensed and so angry that they used his fiance to figure it out that they came about it in an unfair way. They didn't just figure it out on their own. They had to cheat to win and now they've won and now he owes them 30 sets of clothes. So Samson, in his rage, goes into town and murders 30 people, and then takes their bloody clothes and goes and pays off his bet like that. What? He just goes into town and kills 30 people, and then takes their, I'm sure, blood-stained clothes and goes and gives them to the people to pay off the bet and then storms away. Samson's evil, man. That's crazy. That's maniacal. That's like the first three murders, okay. But then 27 more. Are you kidding me? That's so bad. So after a period of time, I don't know what kind of cooling off period you need after 30 murders, he goes back to the father of the bride and he's like, okay, I'm ready to take my bride now. And the father of the bride's like, oh, you were, you were so angry that I didn't think you wanted anything to do with the family. I gave her to one of your companions. I have another daughter if you'd like to talk about her, which seems like a totally reasonable response. I just did a wedding this weekend. I went to rehearsal on Friday morning, and then the ceremony was yesterday afternoon. If in between the rehearsal and the ceremony, the groom murdered 30 people associated with the bride, I would just assume that the wedding was off. Like, I don't need a confirmation email on that one. I'm just not going to go. So it's a reasonable response. And Samson is so mad that he then goes, the Bible says, and he captures foxes, 300 of them, we are told. And he ties their tails together and he puts a torch in their tails and he sends them through the fields of the Philistines. Now, I'm not an animal lover, okay? You guys know this about me. That's still crazy. That's still wildly evil to just do that to animals and burn down all the crops of the whole city. These farmers didn't have anything to do with Samson. Just the huge impact that would have on that town. Now, yes, God has raised him up to be a judge and to overthrow the Philistines, but like this? When the Philistines hear about what happened, they send an army after Samson. Samson's cornered, and all he has is the remains of a donkey, so he grabs the jawbone of the donkey, and he starts fighting, and God's spirit was with him, and he slayed a thousand Philistines that day. Now, it's wild to me that after the first, like, 20, he didn't grab one of their swords and make it a little easier for himself. He's like, no, I'm riding with this jawbone, man. It got me here, so let's go. And he kills 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. And in the aftermath of that battle and that life lived so far, we have these verses that kind of sum up this place where the story pauses. And he was very thirsty. No kidding, Samson needed some Gatorade. And he called upon the Lord and said, you have granted this great salvation by the hand of your servant and shall I now die of thirst and fall at the hands of the uncircumcised? God split open the hollow place that is at Lehi, and water came out. And when he drank, his spirit returned, and he revived. Therefore, the name of it was called Enhachor. It is at Lehi to this day, and he judged Israel in the days of the Philistines 20 years. How about that last sentence? I bet you didn't see that coming, did you? This guy that just murdered 1,030 Philistines and burned down their crops and in no way at any point in his life has honored God or seemed to care about him at all. Doesn't care to marry a Hebrew girl like he's supposed to. Doesn't care to honor his vow like he's supposed to. doesn't care to try to be tempered and measure in his character at all like he's supposed to, and then, great, let's make him the judge of Israel for 20 years with God's blessing. What in the world? How can God use Samson? How is that allowed or fair or right? You know, I don't know. But at this point in the story, when you see who he is, you see his stripes, and yet he ruled Israel peacefully for 20 years that God gave him. I can only conclude that it's because God faithfully uses the profoundly broken. He faithfully uses the profoundly broken. We see this over and over again in Scripture. Moses was a murderer. David was an adulterer. Noah was a drunk. And on and on it goes. But we, all of us, ought to be grateful that God faithfully uses the profoundly broken. Because there is not a person in here who isn't. There is not a person within the sound of my voice who has not been at different times in their life for different reasons profoundly broken. Scripture says that God's law is a mirror that we hold up and essentially see our ugliness and therefore need for God. You cannot be a Christian and walk with God for any period of time and not be well acquainted with just how sinful you are. And not at some point be disgusted with what's in here and what you're capable of. Every one of us has walked through a season and gotten to the other side of it and turned around and thought, who was that person? If you have never been profoundly broken, I have good and bad news for you. You will be, and it's for your better. So lest we look at Samson and think it's unfair that God would use him, let's be reminded that God faithfully uses the profoundly broken, those wandering far off, those who do not seem to have a life that's in harmony with the faith that they claim. God still uses those people, and we ought to be grateful for that. We sang, all three songs that we sang up to this sermon were about that. It was about God's pursuit of us, how God doesn't give up on us. This God of revival, pour it out, pour it out. There was no one in need of revival more than Samson, and God continues to faithfully use him. And I've told you guys before, I tell you as often as I can, Ephesians 2.10, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. God has a plan for you. God has a purpose for you. God designed you and intended you to be used and deployed in his kingdom. Who cares if it's in a big way or a small way? They don't matter, but it's in a way. God intends to use you and he will continue to use you despite your brokenness, despite your rebellion, despite your wandering. And the other reason, the other thing that we see in God using the profoundly broken is the fact that he is a God who keeps his promises. He promised that woman before she ever had Samson, I will use him to overthrow the Philistines. He made a promise. And we serve a God that keeps his promises. That's what this means. That's what that tells us. That's what that reminds us of. The cross is a symbol of the fact that we have a God who keeps his promises. There's a scholar named N.T. Wright who defines God's righteousness. If you want to say, what does it mean that God is righteous? How do you define God's righteousness? It's his commitment to keeping his promises. The cross is a reminder that God keeps his promises. That's why I say that to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. That he kept those promises and he's going to keep the ones in the future. God made a promise to that woman. And so despite Samson's best efforts, he keeps it. He keeps his promises to you too. We pick up the story 20 years later. Samson's in Gaza. And in Gaza, he goes and he sees a prostitute and he's like, yep, she looks nice. And he goes and he lays with her. They find out that he's there. They want to kill him. He leaves. He rips the gates off the hinges of the town and he throws them into the ground. I don't know why he does it or why it's in the Bible. It's just kind of showing off. Look at this thing I can do that God lets me do. So he just does the gate thing. And we all probably have gifts that God gives us that we've misappropriated somewhere. That's definitely one of them. But the casual nature in which it's written tells me that this was not the first time that Samson went to see a prostitute. If you think that just because it's the first time it shows up in Scripture that it was the first time he did it, then I think that you are stupid. From there, he meets a woman named Delilah. We often think that Delilah was a prostitute as well, but there's nothing in the text to indicate that, that I saw. So she was a Philistine woman. And you guys know how the story goes. The Philistines saw that they were in a relationship and the officials come to Delilah and they're like, hey, we'll pay you a lot of money if you'll figure out what the secret to his strength is so that we can subdue him. She's like, all right, I'll figure it out. So she goes to Samson. Samson, if you love me, if you trust me, if you really want to be with me, you know, all the things, then will you please tell me the secret to your strength? And after a little bit, he relents. And he says, sure. If you get seven fresh bow strings and bind me with them, the strength will leave me. I'll have none of it and I'll be easy to subdue. But don't tell anybody. I added that last part because it makes sense for him to say that. He goes to sleep that night. She gets seven fresh bow strings. She binds him with them. And she tells the Philistines, I've got him. He's in big trouble. And they come in and she says, Samson, Samson, the Philistines are upon you. And he breaks the bow strings like they're nothing. And he takes out his assailants and he defeats them and he's not arrested. And then she goes to him, and this is remarkable. And she says, Samson, you've embarrassed me in front of my friends, okay? You told me that it was bow strings, and it wasn't. And now, don't I look like an idiot? I have no idea about this exchange. Why, Samson was like, yeah, yeah, I mean, that's fair. I did lie, but you also tried to have me murdered, so. So he's like, you're right, baby. I'm so sorry. Here, let me tell you the real secret. Weave my hair into a loom and then that's going to get me. So that's what she does. Falls asleep. She weaves his hair into a loom. Samson, Samson, the Philistines are upon you. He breaks out of there and he defeats them. The assailants are defeated and he's not arrested. And she again, Samson, man, I'm so mad at you. I've got a bone to pick here. You've embarrassed me in front of my friends again. What are they going to think? She presses on and presses on him, and Samson says, okay, fine, listen. If you cut my hair, it's never been cut. The Spirit of the Lord will leave me. I will not have any strength. I'll be like a baby. Which I can only guess. Like, why would Samson tell her that? She's done the other two things to him that he said, and he knows what's going to happen. She's going to do it. The only reason can be that after 20 years of Samson doing what he wanted in the spirit of the Lord being with him, that he started to think he was the man. And he forgot he wasn't. And he forgot he was reliant upon God for that strength. And so he said, yeah, you know what? Forget it. Yeah, cut it. See if I care. I'll be fine. So he tells her. And she cuts it. And they come in. Samson, Samson, the Philistines are upon you. And they take him because he has no strength. And they pluck his eyes out and they put him in a mill grinding grain to live out the rest of his days like livestock. And he is brought low. And it's at this low point that my favorite verse in the story occurs. If you just read the story yourself, my guess is, like I did the first several times, you're going to miss this verse, but I want us to stop and look at it at this low point where his head is shaved, he is bald, he has broken every vow that he's ever made, his eyes are plucked out, he has been forced to live out his days like an ox in a mill. And he was supposed to be the leader of Israel. We get this gem of a verse at the end of chapter 16. But the hair of his head began to grow again after it had been shaved. Just this little pause. Just this little transition in the story. Yeah. Yeah, God says they shaved his head. They didn't scalp him. That hair is going to grow back. And my promises are still true. And I'm still here for Samson to call on whenever he decides he needs me. And I love that verse because it reminds us that at our lowest, God still sees a future for us. At our very worst, at our very least, at our bottom of the barrel moment, whenever that is and whenever it occurs, wherever we are, God still sees a future for us that we have not forfeited. He still envisions a purpose and a plan for us that our sins are not too great for. At our lowest, at your lowest, God still sees a future for you that's better than the one that you would imagine for yourself and it's better than the one that you deserve. While Samson was milling, they came in and got him. There was a large festival going on wherever the Philistines had festivals to their God. And we're told that he was placed in between two pillars for the people to gawk at. He was the entertainment. Look at the mighty Samson. Look at the one who's killed thousands. Now look at him. Look how pathetic he is. And he's placed between two pillars, and on the top of this roof was a couple thousand Philistines, and in the courtyard was a couple thousand Philistines. And Samson asked the girl next to him, can you place my hands on the stones? I just want to feel them. And he cries out to God right as a last act in Judges 16, 28, then Samson called to the Lord and said, Oh, Lord God, please remember me and please strengthen me only this once. Oh, God, that I may be avenged on the Philistines for my two eyes. So there's like some positive and negative there. Oh, God, please be with me this one last time. Like he remembers. He remembers what he was supposed to do. He remembers that it was God who provided him the strength. And so he cries out to God. But then he tacks on to the end of it, so that I may avenge my two eyes. Not like, so that I may avenge you, God, not so that I may bring judgment on the Philistines, not so that I can be your servant once again, but so I can get them back for me to the very end. Samson, jerk. But he cries out to God, and God blesses him. And it's interesting to me, and I missed this, we're going to go back and get it, but it's interesting to me that God only allowed Samson to experience the full consequences of his action once his betrayal was complete. Did you catch that? That hair that Samson allowed Delilah to shave was the last thing tethering him to his God in any way. It was the last acknowledgement, either implicit or explicit, that Samson was tethered to God in any way. It was the last symbol of his fidelity to a God that he had long rebelled against. When he scooped up the honey out of the carcass, he doesn't care about his vow. You're trying to tell me that Samson never had wine? When he's sleeping with the prostitutes, he doesn't care about his vow. When he's marrying the Philistine woman, he doesn't care about his vow. Nothing in his life shows that he cares about his God and fidelity to his God at all, except his hair. It was the one thing tethering him to his father. It was the one symbol in his life that God still mattered to him. And when Delilah shaved it, he said, yeah, you can have that too. And his betrayal was complete. And it's just interesting to me that God did not allow him to experience the full consequences of his actions until he had completed his betrayal. This is not for everybody what I'm about to say, but for some of us who think we've been getting away with things and that we'll never really have to experience the consequences of those actions. Maybe God is just giving us enough space to see if our betrayal will be complete. As he continues to pursue us, and we continue to make rebellious choices. When I saw it as I prepped, I paused. And so I wanted to pause here too. And just submit that to you for you to consider. Now from the life of Samson, what do we learn? What do we see? What can we take from that? I think we're tempted to look at Samson and to look at what he did and to say like, I'm not capable of that. I can never do those things. I'm not going to murder 30 people and sleep with a bunch of prostitutes. I'm not going to do all that stuff. Know what? I would say you're probably right. But here's what Samson did. Samson did whatever he thought he could get away with. Samson did whatever he wanted that he thought he wouldn't have to suffer the consequences for. You've done that, right? We've all done that. Had seasons of life where, you know what, we're just going to do, I'm just going to do whatever I want to do that I think I can get away with. And in that way, we're all like Samson. Because of that, I think we need to acknowledge this morning that a rebellious life is built on small rebellious choices. A life of rebellion is built on small rebellious choices. Look at the progression of Samson. He just wanted to marry the girl he shouldn't marry. He wanted to break that rule a little bit. It's just scooping the honey. It's not that big of a deal. Everybody likes honey. It's got a little sweet tooth. Who cares? It's all going to come out in the wash. I'll just give this impossible riddle and take their money. I'm taking advantage of them. But, you know, everybody does this sometimes and then it's murder and then it's theft and then it's sleeping with people that he shouldn't, and then it's a total betrayal of all of his fidelity to God until one day he breaks the last tether. And he ended up with a life of rebellion, but that life was built on small rebellious choices. I'm going to cheat here. I'm going to lie over there. It's just small lies. It's not that big of a deal. I just need to save face in front of my boss. Just a little flirtation there. I'm out of town. It's not a huge deal. I'm never going to see this person again. We're not going to actually do anything. I don't think I really need to go to church. I'm just going to hang back. I'll catch it online when I can. Not this week. Not small group this week. Not reading my Bible this morning. I'll start that next week. This week's busy. A full life of rebellion is built on just small, inconsequential, rebellious choices, where before you know it, this is just our MO. And here's what I would say based on the life of Samson, that a life of rebellion will always come crashing down around you. A life of unrepentant rebellion will always come crashing down around us. We cannot continue to take these rebellious steps. We cannot continue to move away from God, to wander away from him, to have these seasons where we just don't have any faith and we have very little fidelity to the one that is faithful to us. We cannot walk like that forever and not have that life come crashing down around us. So when I look at the story of Samson, to me, it's a story that's very confusing, very tricky to understand, but also it's a story that's incredibly sad. Because when I look at Samson, I think of the life that could have been. What joys did God have stored up for him that he could have walked in? I think of what if Samson had believed the Psalm of David that would come generations after Psalm 1611 that says, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. What if Samson had chosen a life of obedience rather than rebellion? What if he would have trusted, yeah, I want these small joys now, but God, I know that you have a much better plan for me. I know that that's who I want to marry, but God, I know that if I follow your plan and your path, that in your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hands there are pleasures forevermore. I know that the life that I envisioned for myself could never be the life that you have for me. And when I look at the life of Samson, I wonder what goodness did he forfeit? What did he give up? What kind of peace could he have had with the family? What kind of peaceful reign could he have enjoyed? What kind of children could he have had around him? What kind of goodness could he have built in a community of nurturing and loving? Kindness. What did he miss out on by choosing that life of rebellion? I think that we each have a choice too. We have a choice to live a life of small rebellious choices. Or we have a choice to live a life of faithful obedience to the God who is faithful to us. I would put to you in reflection on the story of Samson, which are you going to be? Which life will you choose? Because that life can begin to be built this week. If you, up until this very morning, have lived a life of rebellion, let the hair on your head begin to grow back. God still has a plan for you. God still has a purpose for you. Anytime you want to choose him, you can. He's there. He's waiting. Many of us live a life where we try to straddle the fence. Seasons of rebellion followed by seasons of repentance and obedience. Get off the fence. Let us take the story of Samson as a sobering warning to choose a life of obedience where there are pleasures forevermore, where we'll sit at the right hand of the Father and experience the fullness of his joy. Where from his goodness we have all received grace upon grace. This week we looked at a life of rebellion and we see the results of that. Next week we come back and we talk about Gideon who lived a life of fearful and faithful obedience. And you're going to find out exactly what happens for those who choose to build their life that way. But for now, I would press on you. Which will you choose? You can start building an obedient life anytime. Let's pray and then we'll worship together and close out. Father, you are so good to us and patient with us. Lord, if there are people who hear me, who have wandered, who have left you, who have allowed you to be faithful to them while they are not faithful to you, would you bring them back? God, if there are people who hear me who have lived a life of rebellion, God, would you pull them back to you before they experience the full consequences of their actions? Would you save them in their wandering? Could this morning be a marker for them? Where their hair begins to grow again? And God, would you strengthen those saints who are living lives of faithful obedience? May they experience the depth of joy that you promise us when we walk there too. It's in your son's precious name we pray. Amen.

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

I wonder, pals, how long has it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along, and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks mailman Kyle. This week, it's getting hot in here, the story of the fiery furnace. All right, nice. Good morning everyone. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here. You can see me in films such as that video you just watched, most notably. But I am so excited this morning to be continuing in our series, Kid Stories for Grownups. In the next two weeks, we're going to be in Daniel, and we are going to tell two of the great kid stories of our faith. You know, I see a lot of people who grew up in church. These are stories you probably know back and forward, not only because you grew up listening to them, but you probably grew up telling them to your own kids as well. These are fun ones. As I was reading through here and as I'm prepping, I feel like I'm prepping myself to give a message that's basically just like a series download or like an episode download of VeggieTales. These are two of the great VeggieTales films, episodes of all time. But this morning, we find ourselves talking about the fiery furnace. But before we actually dive into the fiery furnace, well, before we actually dive into the story of the fiery furnace, I feel like it's important to have a little context, a little background of what is going on and how these men have found themselves being thrown into a fiery furnace. And so we open up in Daniel. We're going to be reading a decent amount in Daniel. So if you would be interested in opening that up, I actually am using this Bible, so I can tell you that you can find that on 873. And it's going to be on the screen as well, but like we're going to be reading a decent amount, and I would love for us to be able to open up our scripture together. But we find some background and some context that we need at the very beginning of Daniel chapter 1, verses 1 through 2. It says, That gives us some background because we see this nation, Judah, which is a part of Israel, and they are being taken away from Israel and brought to Babylon. They are becoming exiles to Babylon. Now, the reason for this, we find had a covenant with his people. The people of Israel, if you will serve me and love me and worship me as the one and only true God, and if you will live up to the Ten Commandments that I've given you, the laws that I've given you,. And they turned against him. They began worshiping themselves or worshiping other gods or other idols. They began to seek after self-satisfaction instead of the satisfaction of the Lord. The kings became power hungry and wanted them to be the most powerful as opposed to seeking the guidance of God, who they would have to argue is somebody more powerful than them, and they didn't want to deal with that. And so now we find ourselves at this moment where the Lord has allowed these people, Babylon, an enemy of Judah, to come and to take over this nation. Now, when we jump in here, we see that there's kind of, when we look at Daniel, there's kind of a decent summary that I can give you of Daniel, and it's this. One, God is in control. And two, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have complete faith and trust in that truth. We see it from the very beginning. God's people are being taken over, but they're only being taken over because the Lord is allowing it to happen. And so they begin to bring people. So what happens is, because King Nebuchadnezzar is a smart king, as they take these people over, what he doesn't want to happen is, hey, we have now taken you over. And so now you are like our servants, or now you guys living in exile are now enemies of us. He doesn't want to take over nations and have an entire nation of people hating him, and so he starts to try to work on his cultural appropriation. And so what does he do? He reaches out and he says, hey, will you bring to me from the nation of Judah, people in the royal family, people of nobility, of high birth, will you bring to me some of these men so that I can start bringing them in to my council? Maybe putting them in my armies or putting them as wise men in my council in different places and in different areas in different ways like that, which is a smart move, right? And you guys will never guess what four men were part of the group that they invited to come up. Yeah, right? Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. I know it's crazy, but just bear with me. And so they get brought in, but the problem is that even though they were welcomed in as friends, they were welcomed in upon conditions because ultimately the goal is, let me build these people up. If they're going to be in my armies, they need to be well-fed and they need to be of right stature to be able to be in an army. And along with that, I'm going to teach them our ways. I'm going to teach them our culture so that they can dive into it and they can be a part of our culture. It sounds great, except for there are different cultural things that are against what Daniel and his friends think are true and accurate and right with the God. One of those is the food that they were being asked to eat and the wine that they were being asked to drink. They found that if they were to partake in those things, that it would defile both them and their God. And so they go to a guard, a servant who's bringing them the stuff and says, hey, here's the deal. We feel like we're defiling ourselves and we're kind of like making a mockery of God or whatever it is. By doing this, do you mind if you just gave us water and vegetables? That's all we want, and then we'll be good to go. And so it says, once again, the Lord is in control. We've talked about this. The Lord softened the heart of the man that they asked and allowed him to hear them out. And so he's like, yeah, but like, here's the problem with that. If you do that and then you don't build up and if you don't grow up to the stature that all of the rest of these men grow up to, then not only are you in trouble and probably going to get killed for doing the wrong thing, but so will I, because I gave you the wrong nutrients that didn't allow you to grow. But Daniel and his friends, they stand together and they say, if you give us 10 days, I promise you, our God is good and he's going to deliver. He's going to allow us to be in the same stature. And he was right. At the end of those 10 days, when they took stock of, hey, what do all of these men look like? Here are these four men that looked most ready and most nourished by what they had eaten. The Lord had provided for them. they were given the name Shadrach, Meshael, and Azariah. Background, those are the three names of the men that they were given. But when they moved to Babylon, they were given the names Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. So we'll go back to that. So they entered the king's service. In every matter of wisdom and understanding about which the king questioned them, he found them 10 times better than all the magicians and enchanters in his whole kingdom. Daniel remained there until the first year of King Cyrus. They chose to serve God because they knew that, and they had faith that the Lord would pull through. And so here they are. Now they're brought in, and they are a part of the council of the king. Now they are within the king's inner circle, which should mean that they're set now. They're good to go. They are separated now from harm's way. But there's two problems with that thinking. The first is that King Nebuchadnezzar is like pretty unhinged. He's a pretty unhinged guy. He flies off the handle pretty quickly, gets pretty angry. And two, once again, they still find themselves within a culture that is polytheistic, that though they're totally fine with, hey, you guys are welcome to pray and serve and love your God, as long as you pray and serve and love these other gods. It's too narrow-minded of you to think that the God that you serve is the one true and only God. Well, that presents some issues. So we then go into chapter two. And in chapter two, what we see is Nebuchadnezzar has this dream. This dream is very troubling for him. He's very, he's upset. He's figuring it out. And so he goes to his wise men, the wise men closest to him. And he says, here's the deal. I need you to tell me what my dream means. But, but here's the kicker. I need you also, because how do I know you're not just making up, how do I know you're not just making up your own interpretation as opposed to the correct interpretation? The only way I'm going to actually trust that you're telling me the right thing is if beforehand you also tell me what my dream was. So not only do I want to know what my dream meant, but you have to tell me what I dreamed. And if not, I'm going to get angry. Well, the men naturally say, King Nebuchadnezzar, that is literally impossible. There is no way for us to tell you what you want. Sure, if you want to tell me your dream, I've got wisdom for you. I've got wisdom for days, but we don't have this. Well, the king, as we previously discussed, becomes unhinged. He becomes so angry at the fact that these people are acting like they can't tell him. He's like, okay, fine. It's time to clean house, find some new people. So he says, okay, all of the wise men that are here, all of my wise men in my council, I'm making a decree. I'm going to kill you all. You're all meant to be put to death. Well, Daniel hears this. It upsets him. But he goes and he says, can I have some time with the king for tomorrow? Whatever. And after he does so, he goes back. He goes back to his home. He finds Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And he urges them, he says, guys, right here, right now, we have to come together and we need to pray and just beg God for God's grace and God's mercy that he will show and reveal to them this dream so that they might be saved. Faced with a problem and his solution is, let go, find my friends, sit together, pray and praise God, and hopefully the Lord will reveal. And the Lord does. The Lord reveals the dream. They respond by praising God for his goodness, and then he goes and he talks to King Nebuchadnezzar, and he makes it very clear to the king. He says, no man, no man could ever do this, but the Lord, our God, has revealed the dream. Back story of the dream, basically the point of the dream is God has put Nebuchadnezzar in charge for now. God's in control, but right now he's allowed Nebuchadnezzar to be in control of this place. At some point that will end, and at some point the Lord will take back over. But the Lord will take over Nebuchadnezzar's reign and for the Lord's people. But nonetheless, Nebuchadnezzar is through the moon. He instantly falls to the ground. He falls at the feet of Daniel and basically just starts praising Daniel's God. Your God must be the God of gods. It must be the king of kings. And he just begins to worship and finally begins to understand how great Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's God is. And that is where we come to chapter three. And that is where we finally get to turn to and talk about the story of the fiery furnace. This isn't the first time that these three men, the story that a lot of us know so well, this isn't the first time they are standing up for their lives or standing up for their faith, even if it means their life. This is now going to be the third time that they get to do so. So it's been a few years, and certainly the king now understands that their god is one of the gods, but he doesn't quite understand yet that he's not, he doesn't quite understand that he's the one true god, and the only god. And so a few years pass, and as these men have been elevated, Daniel is now separated from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. And so this story just includes the three. And what happens in this story is the king goes, and he basically has this giant golden statue idol made, and he puts it down. It's, let me make sure that I've got the name of the area correct. Oh yes, the plain of Dura in Babylon. The reason why I wanted to make sure of that is that's the same place that years before they had tried to build the Tower of Babel, trying to put themselves on a level playing field with God. And so here they are back in the same exact area, creating this giant idol to serve and to bow down to. And the decree is, hey, when all of the music, you can worship whatever God you want to, but when all of this music starts playing, you must fall down and you must praise and you must worship this idol that I have placed in the center of this town. Well, I think you can probably imagine what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did with that, and that was absolutely nothing. The kicker was, a part of that decree was not simply, hey, you have to do this, but if you don't do it, we're going to throw you into the fiery furnace. He said the title. They didn't care though. They went about their business. They served and they loved and they praised their one God. Well, some of the other people in the council of Nebuchadnezzar were not too thrilled about that. So they go to Nebuchadnezzar. they say, hey, the three Jewish men that you have in your wise council, not only are they not falling down and praising this golden idol that you've given us, so whatever, they don't pray to any of your gods. None of your gods they pray or praise to. And Nebuchadnezzar gives way to his being unhinged and gets furious. But as he calls them in, he reels it back in a little bit, and he offers them this. If you'll just pray to this idol the next time that the instruments play, if you'll now begin to praise and pray to these other gods, I'll let you walk. And almost in a way of cutting them off, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego respond this way in Daniel 3, 16 through 18. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego replied to the king, O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up. We have full faith and assurance that God is strong enough to deliver us from this. But we also have full faith and assurance that even if he doesn't, we're still going to only serve him because our God is not the God of right now. Our God is the God of eternity, and that's all that matters. So you can give us whatever deal you want to. We're not going to abide by it because our God is the only God. And so Nebuchadnezzar, as you can imagine, was very cool and understanding. He was furious. It says that he ordered the flames to be elevated to seven times as hot, like I guess the flames to elevate to his level of anger, which I think is funny because if you're burning people alive, then like, it seems like fire would be fire, but whatever, he decides to do that. So here we are. What's a few extra degrees, but you know, he wanted it, so they did it. And that's where we come to the rest of the story. That's where we get to close out. And I would love for us to be able to read the rest of the story together. And shouted, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, servants of the Most High God, come out, come here. So Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego came out of the fire, and the satraps, prefects, governors, and royal advisors crowded around them. They saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies, nor was a hair on their heads singed. Their robes were not scorched, and there was no smell of fire on them. Then Nebuchadnezzar said, Praise be to the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be cut into pieces and their houses to be turned into piles of rubble, for no other god can save in this way. Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the province of Babylon. That's good stuff. That is an incredible story. So far, we're three chapters in. You feel like it holds up to the bill that I delivered of a summation of Daniel is the Lord is in control. And that Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego have complete and utter faith in the fact that the Lord is in control. Every step, every moment, every discussion, all orchestrated by God to reveal his glory, not only to his own people, but to these other people, to show himself to these people who don't know him. And that's worthy of praise, man. It's worthy of praise, and it's worthy of excitement to say this God who's completely in control throughout these stories is the same God who is completely in control right now over every one of our stories. It's why we come and we stand and we sing and we raise our hands talking about the goodness of God, that all of my life you've been faithful, all of my life you have been so, so good to me, and I know that you will continue to be so, and I know that forever I have you because I've given my heart to you. That is worthy of an amen. That is worthy of praise. That is worthy of excitement. But that second part of the summary sometimes becomes hard for me. I look and I go, you know, I have an easier time putting my feet in the shoes of some of our other people in this series. I see myself more, and I can take more, I feel like, from the stories of Thomas and Peter when they doubted, but then in their doubt, the Lord pursues after them and shows them great love and grace in their doubt and still continues to use them in spite of it. I feel much more connected to the story of Jonah that Aaron Winston talked to us two weeks ago about, or last week about. Someone who loves God, certainly, and has a complete faith in God, but sometimes his selfishness got in the way, and sometimes his fear got in the way of what he knew the Lord wanted him to do. But in spite of those things, the Lord still works through him, works through his heart and he allows his glory to be revealed through a man who has a faith that isn't perfect, I feel more comfortable there. I see myself in the fear and in the doubt, in the selfishness. And I feel uplifted that in those things, the Lord still uses me. But man, to continue to look in the face of danger and evil and death and to unwaveringly say yes to Christ and to stand in faith and to stand in the glory of God and no other, it feels too big and too much. It feels like this story is one where I go, that was so nice. I love that so much. How good is God? Amen. Now let me go back to my broken faith. Good for them for being heroes. That's not me. And so as I'm thinking through this, then the question, the impossible question that I'm asking myself and presenting to myself is, okay, so then how do you attain an unattainable faith? This feels completely unattainable for me and for most humans. And as I continued reading and as I continued to dive in and dig in, what I realized is, ultimately, the product of these men's great faith was huge and feels unattainable. But when we leave here and we come back to here, when we come and look at the root of these men's faith, and we look at the characteristics of what drives these men to have such great faith, I think we begin to see roots that are far more attainable than what we see on the surface. The first one that I see is that these are men that compare their circumstances not to their own power, but to God's. If that sounds familiar to you, it means you've been keeping up. That was Nate's point when he talked about David and Goliath. This tiny, young, teenage kid looks at this nine-foot giant or however big and says, who does this guy think he is? He's disrespecting our God, and God will not stand for this. And so while an entire army looks and says, there's no way we can fight this man because there's no way I'm strong enough to do this, this kid doesn't look at the circumstance that he's in and say, I can't fight this. He looks and says, God can fight this. This is what these men do. They say, God is in control of all this. God wants his glory to be revealed. If it was left up to them and if it was left up to their power, there's nothing. But left up to God's, never any doubt. We can be people who are reminded that it's not about our power, it's about God's power. The second one I see is they have their ark. This is a little insider language, but Aaron Gibson, when he preached on Joshua fighting the battle of Jericho, he talked about that these people were asked to do something that seemed pretty insane. Instead of trying to take hammers and all this stuff to these walls that they're trying to take down so that they can fight Jericho, God says, I'm going to take care of the wall. I need you seven days to walk around this wall. They're going seven days, and it doesn't talk about on day three, wow, look at all the bricks who have fallen already. Wall is standing up tight. Doesn't feel like anything's moving. Why would they continue to go? Well, because when they look back, they see that they have the Ark of the Covenant. The Ark of the Covenant holds the Ten Commandments and it holds these different treasures of their faith that are reminders to them that God provided for us then, and God was good then, and so therefore now, even though I don't quite see him, and even though I don't quite understand why he's asked me to do what he's asked me to do, I know that he'll provide for me again, and I know that he is still good because he was good then. And ultimately, like they say, they say, but even if he doesn't, even if he doesn't save me, what they ultimately know is the Lord is good for eternity. And they can get on board with that. But the problem becomes, once again, we're still left at a place where if you're telling me these things, then I'm saying, yes, I agree with both of those. But I think a lot of us have this. We know. We know the Lord is in control. We know that he is stronger than we are, and we know he's been good in the past. So why is it, Kyle, why is it that I still can't stand? Why do I still choose myself over my faith? Why do I still not do this? Well, that is where I come to a third characteristic that I see that I think kind of drives the point home a little bit better, not only for these people, but for us. And that's that they grow and that they stand in their faith together. I think a lot of times we find ourselves feeling the same way that Paul does. When he writes in Romans 7.15, bear with me here because this is a lot of, there's a lot of do's in here, so just bear with me. I do not understand what I do. Amen, right? For what I do, or excuse me know full well what is good and what is right to do, but then when it comes to actually doing it, we do something else? I mean, I know that is for me. The last time I was consistent in working out and lifting weights and stuff was ninth grade. I know full well how important that is and how valuable it is to be healthy, to eat healthy, to work out, all that stuff. But ninth grade was the last season I played a football. And when the weightlifting coaches are football coaches and the other people in the weightlifting class are football players, everyone is pushing each other because ultimately you are going to that same goal because we are best if you are at your best. And so I'm going to make sure you do what you need to do. You're going to make sure I do what I need to do. And the coaches are going to make sure that it all gets done. But then when I was away from that team, when I wasn't on football team anymore, then it kind of was up to me. Do I want to continue doing this? Do I want to continue this hard work and this hard grind? I know I should. It'll be best for me. It'll be best for all of the things. But when it's left up to me and I feel like it's up to my own devices, a lot of times it just doesn't happen. I mean, gosh, even in my relationship with Ashlyn, man, like, I see the way that she, like, the way that she values health. I see the way that she values loving and caring for people. I see the way that she values building up and encouraging people, random encouragements to friends, friends that are close, friends that are far away, valuing getting on the phone with friends that I have fallen far from connected to, even though I love them so much. All of these things I know to be true and good and right. I should love people. I should serve people. I should be more connected to the people around me and the people that I love that are not currently around me. But man, until I had somebody that I could see doing it with me, it was a lot harder to do it. And until I had somebody who encouraged me in those things and in those ways, I had a hard time figuring it out. And look at how these guys handle all of this. They come together, and together they stand and say, we're not eating these things. We're only going to eat these things. Daniel finds out about this, and instantly he goes to his friends, and he says, guys, we need to sit together in a circle right now, and together we have to pray to God. These three guys say, we're not going to serve this God, even if it means we're getting thrown into the furnace. And if we are going to be thrown into the furnace, we're going to be thrown in together. They stand on top of what they believe in, and they stand together, which gives them the power to do so. It is very hard, I would say nearly impossible so you don't need to find it, but will you just read it with me as you see it on the screen? Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess for he who promises faithful. What is he saying there? Let us hold without, like unswervingly. Let us never veer away from loving God and holding to our faith. How? How are we going to be able to do that unswervingly? That's why we have 24 through 25. And let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day approaching. We spur one another on towards our love, towards the good deeds that we do in our faith. We don't give up meeting together, but we encourage one another. We uplift one another. In here on Sunday mornings, we stand and we praise together. In small groups, we're vulnerable. We talk, we discuss, we sit down in prayer with our brothers and sisters in Christ. We encourage, we love, we hold accountable. That is how we grow, and that is how we build up this type of faith. Because ultimately, our goal is this, to have a faith like Martin Luther discussed when he says, Because of it, you freely, willingly, and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love, and praise God. It's not just about looking death in the face. It's about looking every single person you see in the face and showing them love and serving them however you possibly can. That's our goal. And how we accomplish it is together. Let's pray. Lord, I'm so thankful that you have your hand on us and you are completely in control. Lord, I pray that I consistently remember that and that we consistently remember that. But God, I pray that as we try to build and maintain our faith, Lord, and as it gets hard, allow us to realize and remember that we have each other. God, I thank you for giving us such a beautiful and wonderful community as you've given us in grace. God, I pray that we are a people who love and meet together and serve each other, uplift and encourage one another so that we can do your will to the fullest effect. Lord, we love you so much. Amen.

All right, good morning. You guys can have a seat. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thank you for being here on this holiday weekend. As I always like to remind people who come on holiday weekend, God does love you more than the ones who are not here right now. He loves you less at the beach. It's just how it goes. So thank you so much for being here to celebrate Ministry Partner Weekend with us. This is a really special Sunday for us. We like to remind you as often as we can that 10% of everything that's given here at Grace goes to ministries going on outside the walls of Grace. And so the way that we are structured is we support three international partners and three local partners. And you're going to get to hear from most of those this morning through video or from them being up on stage. Speaking of people being up on stage, we're going to hear from Addis Jamari. Towards the end of the service, I get to talk with Suzanne Ward, who helped to start that. And we get to find out more about that ministry. But I'm also really excited this morning to have David Rodriguez with us from Faith Ministry. I got to meet, you'll have a chance to cheer. David's not that big of a deal, all right? Just messing around, David. Love you, pal. I got to meet David in October of 2017. I had started here as the senior pastor, and that was the trip that we do in our church. And so we went to Mexico, and I felt like I needed to go to Mexico because missions are important to me as well. I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. And as soon as I met David, I thought, man, Grace would love this guy. Grace needs to see this guy. Grace needs to hear his heart for missions and what's going on down in Reynosa. And so I've been wanting to find a time to get him up here, and finally it's the time. So he's going to share with us a little bit about God's heart for the world, and then I'm going to have a chance to talk with him on our behalf to find out more about faith ministry and what's going on down there. Buenos dias. Puedo hacer esto en español, verdad? Todos hablan español. I was going to ask Nate to translate this for me. I feel more comfortable speaking in Spanish. I know you are an expert, but I'm going to give you a break today, my friend. So thank you so much. It's so good to be here, guys, with you. It's amazing. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity. And you know my name is David Rodriguez, and I'm Executive Director of Faith Ministry, whatever that means. I have no idea what that means, but I'm the Executive Director of Faith Ministry. And as I was walking here, I just saw those beautiful familiar faces, and thank you so much for coming and doing this with us. And I was talking with some of the youth that used to come to faith ministry years and years ago as students in high school, and now they're grown up and married and with kids and all of that, and that did not make me feel old at all. So thank you for doing that, but it's just a beautiful, beautiful time. I think the last time I was here at Grace, it was 2015 or something, something like that. I don't remember. Don't trust me on that, but it was a different world right then, 2015, a reckless world when they put in front of us a birthday cake and we blew on the candles and then we gave the cake away. What were we thinking? Gosh. But it was a different world right there, but it was just great to be here with us. And they asked me to share a little bit about God's heart for missions and for partnerships. And I know for a fact that it runs really deep in the DNA of church, right? Missions and programs and all of this. And I know for sure it's important for this church. I was hired in 2002 to work with faith ministry. And by the summer of 2003, I was introduced to Grace Youth, right? With 50 or 40 or 80 kids coming. and I wanted to run away right there. But I was introduced to the beautiful leadership of this church with everyone that you know from years and years ago, and I can see how much love you have for the communities. I can see how much you put into the ministry and how much you love everyone. And every time that the team came to the area, it was a fiesta, not only for the ministry right there, not only for us, for the whole town. You know, everyone got really excited about that, and it was just wonderful, wonderful to have. And then I was introduced to the adults, right, that they're a little crazier than the kids, so, but beautiful adults, and every time they come, I have tons and tons of people coming to the ministry, because they want to take pictures with you guys, and they call you family, and they call you my friends, and they call you, and they feel that you you belong to them and they belong to you. And it's just a wonderful, wonderful feeling about that. And that's how much you appreciate the partnership and we appreciate the partnership with the ministry. That's the fiesta, that's family. And that's how God sees us without putting ourselves first and our minds and our cultures and our languages and our ideas and all of that. We put it on the side and we say, you're my brother and you're my sister. Regardless of everything, we are family because we belong to Jesus. And that's it. That's the important part. That's the heart of God working through all of us. God loves us so much. That beats me because I know me, right? It's how come God loves me? I have no idea. I don't know about you and yourself, but you guys look beautiful and it looks like you behave very well. But God loves you so much. And that's the important thing, that we can give back that love because of what we receive. That's the responsibility that we have. We are, God is counting on you, by the way. God is counting on me to go out and to share that love. If you're expecting an angel that came from heaven, you know, to do the work that we are supposed to do, I have news for you. It's not coming. The closest thing that you're going to have to an angel is Nate here and me. Let me tell you, you are in troubles right there, right now, right? You look like an angel, by the way. I'll send you the invoice later. You are in troubles. There's not going to be fire from heaven in showing people the love of God. God is depending on you. God is depending on me to get involved in organizations like this, to go out and to share that love of God with the people that is in need. I witnessed firsthand the love that you guys have and how comfortable you are, how good you are in that field. But let me tell you something, this world is an expert on throwing things at us that make us, you know, discourage us from going. You name it, COVID or financial crisis, or you put the name there that discourage you to go out in the field and do this. And when I was growing up, I learned this the hard way because my dad was a principal, a director of a ministry at Bible College. And that's what they did all the time, going out and doing mission work and going in different fashions. And one of those fashions was singing. He had a choir, a group of people singing, and I thought that was fun. He's like, let me do it. You got old, good old David thinking that that was beautiful, and I wanted to join that team, go all over the place and sing and all that. I didn't count that my father was a perfectionist, and he wanted to deliver quality. So they were practicing and practicing for hours and hours because he wanted the harmonies. He wanted the first voice to match with the second voice. And then it was all of that. And it seems like he wanted me to join one of those voices. And I was singing not on first voice or second voice. I was singing on reverse because he was always speaking on me. So I became uncomfortable with that. I became like, this is not fun. I don't want to do this anymore. And I talked to him about that. It's like, I don't feel good about this. I don't want to do this anymore. And he looked at me. It's like, do you really thought that this was going to be fun? Do you really thought that this was going to be something easy? You think it's about your feelings? You think it's about you, how you feel, how comfortable you feel, how happy you feel about that. Let me tell you something. It's not about you. It's not about how you feel. It's about the responsibility that we have to share that love of God with the people that have never seen the love of God. So put your feelings on the side. We have work to do. And I keep on trying to sing. I keep on trying because this world makes and produces problems. And we know this wonderful God. this loving God that we need to share with the community. In Romans 5, 8, it speaks loud about this. God demonstrated His love while we were sinners. Christ died for us. And I keep thinking, how fun that was for the Lord. How easy that was for the Lord. And that's the question. How good He felt about dying on a cross for you and for me. I guess it was not fun. It was not comfortable. It was not easy. But He did it for you. And He did it for me. He loved us so much. He loved us so deep that He died for you and he died for me. He cleaned me. He saved me. He put me in a place that I don't deserve, but he deserves and he's in me. And now I have a big responsibility to go out there. God cares for me. God cares for the people. Let's go out. Let's get involved. Let's go out and tell the people from Raleigh, from people from Mexico, people from Africa, from people from all the way in the world that we have an awesome God. That God cares. That God loves us so much. And they need to hear this good news. There's plenty of bad news. Just turn on your TV. They don't need that anymore. They need to know about this God that you have. And that you can share those great news with everyone. Thank you for this opportunity. Thank you. It's so good to see you here tonight. I mean, today, tonight, tomorrow, yesterday. I don't know. But it's so good to see you here. And we love you and we appreciate the partnership that you have with us. And I heard that there's going to be tacos later on, so I'm going to be quiet now. Okay, let's go for tacos. So let's pray together. Lord, thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity to be here and to be with people, family. I know you love us so much, and I know you have saved us and cleaned us. And give us that desire, Lord, to go out and to share those good news with the people that needs to know that you are God and that you are your throne. This world is upside down, but you are not. Thank you for everything that you are doing for us. In your name we pray. Amen. God bless you guys. Thank you. Amen. Yeah, have a seat, my friend. David, I'm so excited that you committed to me on the way to church this morning that you'd come back and preach to us for the next two, three weeks. We're looking forward to your series on missions. You got it. People are not going to be happy in Mexico, let me tell you. Thanks so much for sharing that with us. I'd ask David just to share a little bit really about the heart of God and why God cares deeply about the ministries that we're focused on this morning. And thank you so much for doing that. A simple message of it is our job. God's counting on us to spread his love. And David's actively doing that with his staff down there. The folks that we've highlighted on video are actively spreading the love of God. We at Grace do everything that we can to actively spread the love of God. Suze is going to talk about that in a little bit. And so now what I want us to get a kind of a sense of is faith ministry and what they do and what David's role is there and moving forward what we're looking forward to next. And then ultimately, how can we partner with them in moving God's love forward and spreading the love of God to other people? And so really, if you're here this morning, what I would really encourage you to do, or if you're catching up online, I would encourage you to think through, God, how can I partner with one of these ministries? How can I do something? How can I help spread your love in a way that I'm not currently engaged in? What's the thing that I can engage in and help with? So just allow the Holy Spirit to kind of speak with you as we hear more from these folks that we partner with. So David, first of all, I got to hand it to you, pal. When I told you, you know, take about 10 minutes and share, I didn't think there was any chance in the world that was coming in under 10 minutes. I thought for sure we were going to be 15, 18 minutes. I'm just going to be sitting there and be like, well, I'm just going to interview him for two minutes. That's it. That's his time. So I'm, first of all, very impressed. Thank you. So tell us what Faith Ministry does. And let's pretend that there's people here who have never heard of Faith Ministry before and don't know what it is. Educate us on what you guys do and where you do it. Well, I thought you say 10 Mexican minutes. I was going to go for 20, right? But I said maybe, Jimen, you know, 10 minutes, actually 10 minutes. You did good. I appreciate that. Well, Faith Ministry is an organization that creates opportunities, opportunities to meet the Lord, to meet Jesus in different fashions, different ways. What we have is people that they leave their hometowns. They leave South Mexico. South Mexico has nothing for it is extreme poverty that is over there. It's beautiful areas, but it has nothing for them. They move into big cities like Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterey. But you need education to succeed. And Monterey is my hometown. It's four million people. So it's an industrial capital of Mexico. So it's hard for them to do it. So they come to the border, not because the border is beautiful. It's because they want to jump in the United States, right? It's the American dream. And they get stuck in the middle. They cannot come here. They cannot go back home. So they're stuck with nothing, nothing at all, with no hope, no things like that. And that's, I'm sorry, my phone, it's saying that he didn't understand what I say. So it's listening somehow. So, beats me. Your phone is mocking you from the audience. I know, right? That's great. It's throwing jokes. I didn't understand that. Can you repeat that? Okay. And that's what we do. We meet these people where they are, and we tell them that we have an awesome God. But it's hard to tell somebody that has no house and no food and no medical attention, and they cannot send their kids to school, that God loves you, right? And you go and say, God loves you. Jesus loves you so much. And they look at you like, really? You're making a mistake. I have never seen the love of God in my life. And that's why we begin doing things and we've been building houses and providing meals. We have three churches that we support and we provide meals for 150 people a month. And we create all these opportunities to tell them with actions, God loves you. And that's faith ministry. That's faith ministry in action with all of that. Yeah, great, great. And as I understand it, you guys kind of have, a little bit, you kind of have your summer focus, and then you have your focus during the year. So tell us about those two different focuses. And during the summer months, what do you focus on? And this is when teams go down, and this is how Grace has a relationship with faith ministry. And then during the year when teams can't come down as often, you're focused on other things locally. So tell us about your summer focus and your year-round focus. The summer looks beautiful for us. You know, for a few years it was awful with everything happening. But now every week we have a team. And that means that there's a group of people from a church organization coming our way. And we focus on that week and that church. And they come to build a house. And they come and there's nothing. And at the end of the week, there's walls and there's columns and there's a ring and there's a house for families. And we keep telling families, God is awesome. God is good. Perform miracles. And then there's a team coming and building a house for them. And that makes that team an answer to their prayers and how beautiful that is. So that's the summer. They come on a Sunday. They leave on a Friday. And the next team comes either Saturday or Sunday. and that's team after team all the summer. Let me interject real quick before the rest of the year, because one of the things that was interesting to me is to go down, and when you're there and you're helping build the house, and when I say help, I use that term very loosely, because I am no help. I lay the worst cinder block. I'm terrible at it, and I'm never going to do it again. That's what people say in Mexico about you as well. Yeah, I know. I'm probably a legend down there. There's no kidding around. There was one afternoon I worked all afternoon on a wall to get it to this high, and one of my buddies who goes here, Keith Cathcart, he's not here this morning, but he's a jerk. And he was there working as well, and he came around the corner to give me a hard time about the bad job that I was doing and saw the abject stress and terror on my face and left me alone. Can you imagine how bad the wall looked for him to leave me alone? And then when Angel, the foreman, got there later the day, he had to literally, I'm not making this up, take a sledgehammer to the wall to get it back aligned to where it needed to be. So help, the word help is very loose there. I will never attempt to help in that way again. But sorry for the digression. That doesn't count as part of your time. When you get there, usually they have the families on a bulletin board or something in the kitchen of where you're staying and kind of telling you the stories of the family. A single mom who works in an electronics factory and makes a little bit more than a dollar a day, and she's got two kids who are in school, and they're trying to figure it out. So I would love, just off the top of your head, I know I'm putting you on the spot, just an example or two of the last couple of houses that you built, who they were for, what was going on with the families. And then I think it's also important for the folks to know what qualifies you to get a house built for you by Faith Ministry. Well, we have a lot of examples. I'll tell you one that it's a lady that works for us and she injured her hand and she cannot work anymore. She's broken her hand and they have family, extended family with a mentally challenged kid with mobility issues. And for them to build a house, it's horrible. They can say for years and years and years and nothing is going to happen about that. And then there's a team coming in one week building a house for them. And you have to see their faces and their smiles and their tears saying, well, think this is a miracle for us. You know, this is something that God has given us. Years ago, I was working in Miguel de Man with many of you who work and a lady came to me and say, I need a house. And I told her, we cannot build a house anymore. Our summer is done. We have all the teams coming. We're not going to be able to build a house anymore. And she began crying. It's like, what's going on? Tell me. Why do you need a house? And I was not ready for the answer. And she looked at me and said, well, I need a house because I'm dying. I'm going to die. And I said, well, we are going to die, right, one way or another, sooner or later. She's like, no, you don't understand. I'm dying right now. I have cancer in my stomach. And I have two kids that they depend on me. And it was three kids that depended on her, the're little kids, so I'm gonna go and I'm gonna leave them with nothing. So I want a house for them to stay to go in because I'm gonna die and they're gonna thrown out of the street. I was speechless. What do you say to somebody like that? I didn't have any teams coming, everyone was already committed to a house, and it was that need, and I began telling her in the interview, oh, we have an awesome God and a mighty God and a God that makes miracles. And when I hear all of that, I say to myself, David, you and your big mouth, right? Now we're going to have to do something about it. And it was amazing to hear one of the teams calling in and say, David, we told you that we're going to build one house. And guess what? We have the money to build two houses. So you need to find me another family. And that was the miracle right there. So we built a house for her. That was the first member of the Miguel Aleman Presbyterian Church that got baptized. And she got baptized in her bed. And the pastor called me, he's like, David, she passed away, and she passed away with a smile on her face. And that's the impact that you do when you come to the community because you're sharing the love of God right there with people in extreme need. And that's great. Thank you for sharing that with us. And as I understand it, to get a house, to have a house built for you, you have to have someone representing your family who agrees to work for faith ministry. What's the time period on that? How long do they have to work with you guys? It depends. If they bring me tacos, it's a short period of time. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Right. But if they don't. Right. Those jerks. Yeah. Yes. We always ask the families to come in and work because we want them to get involved. We're not a construction company. We don't build houses for people. The house is just an excuse to share the love of God with them. But we want to tell them, if you work hard, you help, good things are going to come. So eight months, we ask them to get involved. And the first thing that they do is not building their own houses. They begin building some other people's houses. And by the time that they build their own house, they already help 10 different houses or 15 different houses by the time they build their own house. And then everyone else is going to join them and build this. And their reward is at the end of the season, they're going to to have a beautiful beautiful house not the wall is not going to be straight all the time no no right but we call it art you know it's like it's it's abstract handcrafted yeah exactly exactly so well there's so many more questions i want to ask you, David, but we are running out of time. So I would encourage you, hang around afterwards for tacos. I've even heard there's going to be an after party after the tacos at Compass Rose where we can hang out with David a little bit longer. So make a plan to stay and hang out and ask him personally what else happens during the year at Faith Ministry and most importantly, how can we get involved as individuals? I would think the biggest way to get involved as an individual 22nd through the 29th, we are taking a trip down there as a church and you can go and see faith ministry. David is really, really good on site at mixing concrete and doing all the manual labor. Very, very impressive at those things. He will be right there alongside you. David doesn't do any of that stuff. He wears khakis every day and says, good job everyone. Which is why I want to be like David. All right, David, thank you so much for your time. God bless you. We look forward to hanging out with you more afterwards. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Hey, Suze. Hey, Nate. I'm glad I don't have to follow David. I don't envy you one little bit. I'm going to do the best I can. I know you will. I know you will. So, again, we'll start off. Suze is with Addis Jamari, a ministry based in Ethiopia that you and your pal Cindy started how many years ago? Six years ago now. Wow. Yeah. Look at you. Okay, so tell us what it is and why. Well, I think it's more interesting to say why it started. You went over there, you saw some things, and then this started, and then tell us what it is. Yeah, so back in 2014, said yes to a mission trip and went to Ethiopia for the first time, and we worked in orphanages. While we were there, the level of poverty that we saw was on a level I'd never seen. But more importantly, the children that were aging out of orphanages were very young. And what happens to them when that happens? And we came home with this bird. What does happen to them when they age out of orphanages? Well, I have a 15-year-old, and that's a similar age to the girls aging out of the orphanage. And they fend for themselves. And that comes with not being educated to find jobs that can be self-sustainable. They end up having to do work that you would not want any child to have to do. Slave labor, sex trafficking, things of that nature. And so this burden was laid on our heart. Because once they age out, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but once they age out, just for our American brains, there's no government infrastructure for them anymore. They've aged out. They've just exited the government infrastructure. Now they're 15 and there's nothing to help them and there is no education. Yeah, basically they're given a small stipend, some pots and pans, maybe a pillow and a good luck. That's it. And so that burden was on our heart. We came home and we said, you know, this is not right. We can do something about this. So we went back multiple times over the next few years and just began to learn, partner alongside other ministries. And Adishamari was launched in 2016, where we first opened a home for orphaned teenage girls. And it was a safe landing place for girls that had aged out to have a loving home with people that could care for them, got them back into school, really taught them about the love of God, that they're valued and worthy. And that's how Adishamari began. Right. But now, if you work in a country long enough, you begin to understand the root issue. And some of the girls in our home had living mothers, but they just couldn't afford to care for them because of poverty. So they had to make that hard decision to relinquish their child to the orphanage, knowing they would have a better chance of getting a meal there than they would at home. So the poverty in Ethiopia, and it's the capital city. We're in Addis Ababa, which is the capital city. I always forget if it's Ababa or Adaba, and I have no confidence to say it, but the capital of Ethiopia. They're there, and these women, and sometimes women and men, sometimes it's couples. They already have children. They have another child, and they are really faced with the decision of, does this child have a better chance at a decent life if we hand them over to the government to feed them because we can inadequately care for our children? Like that's the excruciating decision that their decision point that they're coming to. And some of them are realizing their best shot is to hand them over to the orphanage. Yeah, that's right. So that's how they end up having living mothers. So we noticed and learned that some of our girls in our home had living mothers. And we had this thought, well, what if we had come alongside Zelphy's mom before Zelphy was in the government orphanage and then in our home? And we gave her tools and education and things to thrive. And that's where our family empowerment program kind of came to life, where the AJ Home combats the orphan crisis. The family empowerment program prevents it. So we want to be alongside those families, giving them the tools so they can keep their children at home. So what does the family empowerment program do? So if there's a family that's partnered up with you guys in Ethiopia, what are you providing for them? And what are you asking of them? Yeah, so when you become part of our family empowerment program, we come alongside you with education. We're teaching financial literacy, English. English is very important in Ethiopia. If you know English, you can get better jobs. You can make more money. We do economic empowerment. We're teaching them how to put business plans into practice and business management. We're doing discipleship because none of this really matters if you don't know Christ and the love of God. And then social support, medical assistance, counseling. Most of these families come from immense trauma. And so in order to really make a family whole, you have to get to that root issue of what's causing some of the rift and some of the things that are holding them back from thriving. And I think what else you guys stumbled upon, if I remember correctly, is you look at the scope of the ministry you're able to do. How many girls are you able to have in the home at once? We have six, and we do that intentionally because you can really pour into six. You get many more than that, it becomes orphanage. Yeah, when I was there, you had three. How many families are you serving through the Family Empowerment Program? We intentionally keep that small as well and only do 50 because we want to really, we'd rather pour deep than spread thin. And so we do that so we can really get to know the families. My family is different than your family and different than your family, and we all have different needs. So you really want to get to know the family on an individual basis so you can serve them best. Right. And I think it's, I don't know if you picked up on that, but when they went over, it was to care for girls aging out of orphanages. And then they realized, man, we can be so much more effective if we'll focus on families and prevent it on the front end. And even intentionally keeping it small, three to six compared with 50, and I know that they want you to do more. I know that there's opportunities to take it. You could probably take on another 50 families in the next week if you really wanted to do it. And I also think that that's a wise thing that they're doing because they're a growing organization. So staying small on purpose so we can do it well and grow with wisdom instead of just grabbing all that they can grab and then being overwhelmed and doing a bad job. So I always think highly of you guys for the pace at which you're kind of going through that. So, and I would say this, she's not going to say this. If you want to partner with Addis Jamari, you can sponsor a family. I think sponsoring a family every month is 60 bucks. That's one Chick-fil-A Coke a day. Just don't go to Chick-fil-A just like once a day. Or I went the other day. That's two meals. That's two family of four lunches. It's just two. It's so expensive over there. So just don't go to lunch at Chick-fil-A twice a month. Support Addis Jamari and you're done. It's fantastic. But that is an easy way to get involved. Suze will be at a table out there, and you can find out how to support a family for the FEP program and know that what's happening over there is really, really an effective use of God's resources to love on those families. So as we wrap up, what's next for AJ? What's on the horizon? What are you most excited about? Yeah, July's a big month. We get our second set of 50 families. We are moving FEP centers. Inflation in Ethiopia has been at a rate of 35%. And so our landlord so kindly told us recently the new cost to stay at the center. And unfortunately, we had to make a move. But with that comes great blessings. So we're moving to a new FEP center. We have 50 new families coming into our program. And we also have a new girl joining our home tomorrow. So if you guys can be praying for all of those things. What's her name? Her name is Solita. Solita. Yes, I love that name. So yeah, she comes with a really hard story. So just prayer that she will feel like God's presence from day one, that the other girls in our home will wrap their arms and love around her and that she'll just immediately feel like she's home. Good, good. Great. Well, will you join me in prayer for these ministries and for Solita? And then I think, are we closing out with worship? We're not? We're canning it? Oh yeah, I'm supposed to ask everybody to do a thing. All right, let's pray. Father, thanks so much for this morning. We lift up Solita to you and just are so grateful that it was your will to acquaint her with Addis Jamari. We pray that your hand would be on her in the transition to yet another new place with yet more new faces, but that these would be faces that reflect your love. These would be eyes that carry your acceptance and your support, and that these would be arms that are your arms wrapping wrapping around her and that when she moves out, however many years from now she does, that she would be an equipped young woman with a heart for Jesus and want to go share the love with others that she's received from the home at Addis Jamari. We pray for AJ as they move into July and all the exciting things going on. And we know that even though it is difficult to change homes, God, that your hand is in that. And I pray that they would see evidence all over the new complex that this is exactly where you want them to be as they look to move forward. Thank you for David and what he's doing in faith ministry and how you're using him to share your love with the people in Reynosa and Mago de Arman. And God, we just are so grateful for the opportunity to partner with them. I pray that we would continue to partner with these ministries boldly and cheerfully as a church, but that we would also do that as individuals as well. Show each of us how we might partner with them in what you are doing in those places around the world. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.