Sermons tagged with Obedience

Well, good morning, First Service. My name is Nate. I am the lead pastor here. It's so good to see all of you. Thanks for being here on this May Sunday, on the last Sunday of our regular schedule. Next Sunday for Memorial Day weekend, we're going to go to our summer schedule and have one service that meets at 10 o'clock through the summer, and then we'll kick in two services again after Labor Day when things pick back up in September. So I'm kind of looking forward to the one big family feel that we can afford ourselves over the summer and the things that that's going to provide for us. So I'm excited about that. So again, next Sunday, 10 o'clock, if you get here at the 9.30 time, then we'll just hang out with you until the service starts. And my feelings won't be hurt if you leave 30 minutes early. Like right when the sermon starts, you just bolt because that's been your hour. That's fine. But that's going to be our summer schedule. I'm excited about that. This morning is the second part in our series about the Holy Spirit called The Forgotten God, because we talk a lot about God the Father. We learn a lot about God the Son. But in some church circles, in a lot of church circles, we often forget about the Holy Spirit. And so we wanted to take four weeks and slow down and focus our energy and our effort and our intellect on the Holy Spirit and what he does for us and what his ministry is to us. So last week, we started off by looking at this absurd statement that Jesus makes in John chapter 16, when he tells the disciples, and by extension us, hey, it's better for you that I go, that you don't have my physical presence next to you all the time, because if I don't go, then you will not receive the helper or the comforter that we know as the Holy Spirit. And that feels absurd, because we talked about, man, how much different would life be if we had Jesus right next to us all the time? But then we went through the reasons that that's true. And what we discovered is that it's better to have the Spirit because the Spirit is omnipresent and with us all the time. If I want to be in the presence of the Spirit and the Spirit is at your house, I don't have to convince Him to come to my house. He's in me. We are the temples of the Spirit. So He's with us all the time. And then we realize that the role or the job of the Spirit is to continue the ministry of Jesus, both through us in the form of spiritual gifts that we're going to talk about this morning, and to us as He grows us and sanctifies us. It takes us through the process of becoming more like God in character. That's his ministry to us. That's the roles of the Spirit that we're going to talk about next week. And then the last week, we're going to answer a really difficult question. How do we synthesize what we've learned about the Spirit with what we've experienced of the Spirit? Because sometimes those aren't the same things. But this week, we're looking at the spiritual gifts, how the Holy Spirit continues the ministry of Jesus through us. To do that, I want us to think about the idea of this word privilege, okay? And I don't mean privilege in the politically charged, like CNN, Fox way, where individuals may or may not be more than others. I don't mean that. I mean it in just the good old-fashioned way of, man, what a privilege this is to be doing this thing. When I think about privilege, I thought about a couple of weeks ago, somebody in the church, one of our great grace partners, who is now incidentally my favorite grace partner, emailed me and said, hey man, I've got four tickets to the Champions Club at PNC Arena for the Carolina Hurricanes' last home game. If they win this game, we may go to the playoffs. They're probably going to clinch the playoffs at this game. Would you like to come and bring some staff members? Yes, I would. I would love to. I don't care what sport is playing. When you say Champions Club with free buffet, I'm there. It can be women's field hockey. I'm in. Let's go. Right? So I went. We brought a couple other folks with us. And we get there. And you walk through the arena. Well, first of all, you park like right outside the arena. Like if they had valet parking, we would say, no thanks. This is better. Like you're right outside. It was unbelievable. And you walk in. You're walking through the arena. Like if they had valet parking, we would say, no thanks, this is better. Like you're right outside. It was unbelievable. And you walk in, you're walking through the arena, and then you get to this part where they have a concierge like behind these booths, and they're very important. And you give them like blood and urine and social security, and then they let you in, right? They let you in. And then once you're in, it's carpeted, and there's fireplaces and mahogany, and it is swanky, man. And then they have these buffets of food, so you don't have to pay $12 for the Cruddy Stadium Burger. Like, you get the buffet right there. And then all the ice cream and cookies that you can eat. They give you little tickets to go to the bar and get you a drink if that's what you want to do. You can, like, float out of there on Coke if you want to. It's amazing, right? And then you sit down. You get your food, and you go, and you sit down. And you're in these plush leather seats as you look at the ice and then the other peasants that don't get to sit where you get to sit. And this really ruined me. I don't think I can ever watch a hockey game with poor people again. But it was just an incredible experience, right? And, like, towards the end of the game, the team that they needed to lose lost, and the Hurricanes were winning, and then they scored another goal to kind of cinch the game, and the whole crowd knows, oh my goodness, we're going to the playoffs. I haven't been to the playoffs in a long time, so the place is going nuts, and it was super fun, and it was a really kind of electric atmosphere to be in. And the whole time, I thought, my goodness, I don't deserve this. This is too nice for me. You know, there's a proverb where Solomon says, if the king invites you to dinner, don't look at the food. Like, don't get used to that. That's going to suck you in. Like, don't get used to that. Keep your eye on what you can afford for yourself. And the whole time, I'm trying to remember this proverb, don't get used to this because you're one of those people, right? You don't deserve to be here. And then I thought, man, there are other people who love the Hurricanes so much that this would be a huge deal for them to be able to be a part of this excitement. And I'm not a Hurricanes fan. I mean, I watched the playoff games. I cheered for them. But I went to the gift shop that night and thought, I should get something And then I looked at like the $26 hat and I thought, I don't want this $26 worth. I want this about $12 worth. So then I left. So like, I'm not even a fan, but I get to be here, part of this electricity. And I realized, man, what a privilege this is. Because a privilege is something that you haven't earned and you don't deserve, but you get to experience anyways. You get invited into this experience anyways. And you guys have had different privileges in your life. We could probably all tell stories about times when we got to do a thing or meet a person or be in a conversation or have an experience that we kind of looked around and thought, gosh, I don't deserve to be here. This is really incredible. So as we think about this idea of privilege, life has some pretty great privileges. I think of parenthood. Parenthood's a phenomenal privilege, isn't it? We have a three-year-old daughter named Lily. And daily I'm reminded of the privilege that it is to be her parent. Like I'm the one that gets to watch her. Like right now we're learning to go to the bathroom the right way. And so she's celebrating and she gets her M&Ms and she's figuring that out on her own. And like we get to celebrate that with her and be happy with her as she does that. We're the ones that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, we get to comfort her. We're the ones that when she's scared, she runs to. When she gets here for the second service, she's going to see me and yell, Dad, and she's going to run to me, and it's going to be really fun. And what a great privilege it is to be the recipient of those hugs. And if you're a parent, then you know that parenthood is one of life's great privileges. Well, I want to submit to you this morning this idea that ministry is one of life's great privileges. Ministry, being involved in the building of the church, is one of life's great privileges. And here's what I mean. Jesus spent three years on this earth. He could have come into adulthood, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for us and go to heaven, but he spent three extra years on this earth, I am convinced, to train the disciples to do ministry, to build the church, to leave to them the keys to the kingdom and say, this is my kingdom on earth. It is your responsibility to grow it and nourish it and grow others and love people towards me. And then the disciples trained the next generation, and then they changed the generation after that. And it got passed on down as this holy responsibility, a holy mantle that we carry until each living generation of Christians, it becomes our responsibility to carry the mantle of ministry. That's why Peter says in his letters at the end of the New Testament that we, Christians, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, then Peter tells you that you are a part of a holy priesthood, that you are a chosen nation, that you are cut from the same quarry as Abraham and David and Moses, and that it is your responsibility to carry on the ministry of Jesus. And when I talk about ministry this morning, it's an important thing to understand. I don't mean something that's organized. I don't mean vocational ministry, going pro and getting paid to be a Christian. I don't mean it like that. I don't mean something that's organized where you have to volunteer for something. I don't mean structured ministry. When I think of ministry, I think true ministry is simply loving others towards Jesus. When I say that we get invited into ministry by Jesus, when we get called to holy priesthood, when we get told that we are the torchbearers to carry on the legacy of the church, all I mean is nothing structured. All I mean is simply loving others towards Jesus. That's how we talk about ministry at Grace. That's what that means. And I believe it to be one of the great privileges in life for several reasons. One reason is this is God, the creator of the universe, who created you and knows the number of hairs on your head, who knows everything that's ever happened, and he is chiefly concerned with his kingdom and bringing other people into his kingdom and into a knowledge of him. That's his chief concern. That's what he wants. That's the whole reason you're left on this earth after you become a Christian is to bring as many people to heaven with you as you go, to love as many people towards Jesus with you as you possibly can on your way to spend eternity with God. That's the reason that we are here. And in ministry, Jesus has invited you in to participate in that plan. He's given you a front row seat to the most important thing happening in the universe. And here's the deal. He's going to get it done. The church is going to grow. And I hate to say it this way because I don't want to be overly flippant about it, but the church is going to grow with or without you. The church doesn't need your talent. Church doesn't need your money. Church doesn't need your intelligence. God doesn't need your ability. He's going to grow up with or without you. He's definitely going to grow up with or without me. But he's invited us in to participate in what he's doing. And that, to me, is amazing. He's invited us in to be conduits of the love that he shows us. He shows us a perfect love that is boundless, that is reckless, that knows nothing that can stop it. Nothing can take us away from that love. He offers that love to us and he invites us to be conduits of that love as we show it to other people. And I believe ministry to be one of life's great privileges because one of our biggest fears in life is to live a life that doesn't matter, right? One of our biggest fears in life, what all people do and what I've experienced in my friends and in my parents and in people that I've seen hit the back nine of life. I don't know how you define that. I don't want to throw out a decade and make anybody feel old. So people who begin to think about their legacy once they get through their really productive years, what do they always begin to think about? What's my legacy? What am I going to leave behind? What kind of difference has my life made? We want to know that we matter, and ministry ensures that our life matters. There's this great quote. I heard it from D.L. Moody, but it's attributed to a bunch of different people. But he said, one of the most tragic things in life you'll see is for someone to spend their entire life climbing the ladder of success only to get to the top and find that it was propped against the wrong building. Ministry insulates us against that. It makes us matter. It's an offer from God. Here's something that you can invest your life in that will matter for all of eternity. Here's a way to ensure that when you die one day and you look back on your life, you can be sure that you're sure that you're sure that it mattered that you invested your life well because he's invited you into the process of loving other people towards him. And I think that this promise, this insurance that our life will matter is incredibly important and maybe increasingly so in a world that lurches for ways to matter in all kinds of ways and screams out to everyone paying attention, we just want to matter. Jen and I were in New York City this last week, and it was very fun. It was pretty much an eating vacation. I walked about 11 miles a day and gained four pounds, so I don't know how I managed to do that, but it was fun. And one of the things we noticed everywhere we went, and as girls, I don't mean to pick on girls, but it was girls. It was girls posing for Instagram pictures. Everywhere. Like every tourist site that we went to, Central Park, we went to this thing called the Vessel at Hudson Yards, and everywhere we went, there was a couple of girls who were dressed nicer than everybody else there, had on the makeup and the hair and the fake eyelashes and the whole deal, and they're posing. They got their friend taking pictures of them. And they're posing like for all of these candids, you know, like that kind of thing, you know, and they're kind of like doing their hair. And Jen and I just started like, we laugh at it. We find them and we're just sitting over there going in this hilarious. But after a while, it started to break my heart because you know what those girls are saying? I want to matter. I'm going to post this somewhere. Will you please tell me that I'm pretty? This is how I gain my sense of worth. Will you please tell me that I matter? And we all do that in one way or another. We all preen to matter in one way or another. We all lurch for significance in one way or another. And ministry says, here, here's a way to ensure that your life matters and that it matters for all eternity. And I think intuitively we know that ministry is one of life's great privileges. I talked to Jen, who a lot of you guys don't know this, but Jen for her entire adult life has poured into groups of young girls, middle school, high school age girls. And I asked her, what brings you joy? What have been your privileges as you've done ministry? And we talked about one of her close friends, this girl named Elizabeth. When Jen got out of college, she began to teach fifth grade. And when those fifth grade girls graduated from elementary school and moved into middle school, Jen started a Bible study for them, and they would meet in her classroom early one day. And one of those girls was named Elizabeth. And Jen's gotten to watch Elizabeth grow into a young woman who loves the Lord, into a young woman who leads her own Bible studies and her own discipleship groups and pours into young women on her own. And she tells those young girls who have never met Jen some of the things that Jen shared with her. And so now there's multi-generational love and wisdom going on because Jen had the opportunity to pour her life into those girls. And she still gets texts from them and calls from them. And she still gets to celebrate with them. And she still gets to mourn with them. And when you minister to people and when you love on people, you get invited into these situations that feel like such a privilege, like, my goodness, I don't deserve to be here. This is incredible. We know experientially that when we minister, when God uses us in the life of others, we come alive. That's why I think it's one of God's great privileges that he offers us to be in ministry. The deal with ministry, however, once we become Christians and God says, okay, go grow the church, is that we're grossly unqualified to grow the church. We are grossly and radically unqualified to do ministry because ministry requires supernatural power. Someone has to realize that they're a sinner, that they need Jesus, and then come to Jesus and repent. Ministry is hard. Sometimes ministry requires saying the exact right word at the exact right time. Sometimes loving on people requires you to say challenging things to them that are really difficult and awkward and uncomfortable to say. Sometimes it means that you have to apply grace to them and not say the thing that you want to say because they need more time to develop on your own. Sometimes ministry means discerning between spirits so we really know what's going on here. Sometimes it means being able to explain the Bible in ways that are really difficult or difficult concepts that we're not sure what they actually mean. Ministry is difficult. Ministry works kind of like your first job. For most of us, we went to college, and after we went to college, we got our job. And at college, what'd they tell you they were doing? We're preparing you to go into the workforce. We're preparing you for your job. And then you get to your job, which is most of the time outside of your major, and you begin to work, and you realize oh my gosh, they did not prepare me for the workforce. I got to figure this out. And you do on-the-job training, right? Spiritual gifts that the Spirit gives us so that we can do ministry are God's on-the-job training. This is why we have spiritual gifts. God has called each of us to minister. He's invited us into and bestowed upon us the privilege of ministry, and he's acknowledging that we are grossly inept for this ministry, kind of like me finishing that sentence. We don't have what it takes sometimes, right? And so God acknowledges you don't have the expertise you need to do the job I want you to do. So here, through the Spirit, is a gift to make you more effective at ministry. And this is where we get the spiritual gifts. Now, the spiritual gifts we see at different places in the Bible. There's four or five places in the New Testament where they pop up. There's two really definitive lists, kind of more authoritative lists that we see in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans 12. And in your notes there, I've listed out some of the gifts that I found in those passages. In 1 Corinthians 12, we have a longer list. We have wisdom and knowledge, faith, healing, miraculous power, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation, apostleship, teaching, and administration. And then in Romans 12, we have some of those and then some extras, right? And so those are the lists of the gifts. And I would say this about the spiritual gifts that God gives to us. These are not exhaustive lists. I don't think that Paul's intention when he begins to write the spiritual gifts, who's the guy that wrote these books, I don't think his intention was to make an exhaustive list of the gifts. I don't think he was trying to list all of them for you. I think he's more giving you categories of what they could be. I think it's possible that there's more gifts outside of what's mentioned here. I don't think either list is definitive. I've seen places where guys try or girls try to make one list more authoritative than the other, and I don't think that it's fair to do that. My personal view is that there's no exhaustive list in the New Testament of what the gifts are. But these are what he gives us, and he gives us these gifts, the Spirit does, so that we can continue the ministry of Jesus. And now every time you talk about spiritual gifts, you really have two questions. There's really two questions that come up in the church. If this is your first time hearing about the spiritual gifts, then maybe you're already forming these questions. If not, then you know how to anticipate these questions. What are they? Like, what are the gifts? What do they mean? How do we define them? And which one's mine? Right? That's what we want to know. We want to know how do we define these gifts and which one are mine? Which one's mine? Well, to answer those questions first, how do we define these gifts? How do we explain them? Some of these are pretty self-explanatory, okay? When it says the gift of serving, you are smart adults, most of you. You don't need me to explain to you what that is. It would be patronizing to do it. The gift of hospitality, what's that? You don't need me to explain that to you. You know. And I don't think it would be a very wise investment of our time to go down the list of gifts and tell you how to define them. You're pretty smart. You can figure it out. If you don't, Google's the thing. There are some, however, that are more confusing. Usually people want to know about the gift of tongues. That's one that we've heard. People speak in sometimes known languages, sometimes languages that we don't know that sound like utterances. What's the deal with those? How do we figure those out? And then we also want to know about this gift of prophecy. What's that mean? What are prophets? Do we still have them? How does that work? And so because I don't have time in this sermon to talk about those, and because that's really not the point of this sermon, what I'm going to do this week, sometime this week, is I'm just going to write up my thoughts on what the gift of tongues is and what the gift of prophecy is and how those work. And I would invite you, if you look through these lists or you can think of others that you've always had questions about that you'd like to know more about, write that on your connection card and put that in the offering when it comes by or email me and I'll add those into what I write up. Now, please, you can mention them to me in the lobby afterwards, but I'm just telling you on Sundays I forget everything. So if you mention it to me, I'll go, yeah, that sounds great. And then it will not be written up. Okay, so email me or put it on the connection card and I'll give some more detail to those this week. That's how we're going to address how do we define the gifts. But then the other question is, what's mine, right? What's my gift? And we like this question because it's about us. This kind of feels like the personality test that we like to click on on Facebook, right? This is like, which friend are you? Are you Ross or Rachel or maybe Chandler? Like, what color is your personality? Like, what's your spirit animal? And we don't tell anybody. Like, we take the test and it says, do you want to publish to Facebook? Lord, no, I don't want to publish to Facebook. I don't know why. I don't want anybody to know that I actually spent 15 minutes doing this and learned that I was a horse. Like, that's not what we want to do. And so when we see spiritual gifts, we approach it the same way. Ooh, which one am I? And we actually did this, a church that I used to work at, we did a series on the Holy Spirit. And whenever you do a series on the Holy Spirit, you do a sermon on the spiritual gifts as part of the deal. And we covered it like that. And at the time I was younger in ministry and my job, what was assigned to me was to find a test that everybody could take so that we could send you to a website and you could take a test and then you would know how best to serve at that church. And it all felt just very self-serving and kind of ridiculous. And the truth of it is, when I got online to look for these tests, they were all stupid. There were none of them good. They were all ridiculous. I ended up calling them spiritual preference tests. What do you want to do? Everybody comes out with the gift of teaching, right? It's silly. And it was self-serving because the gifts are not about serving the local church. It's about serving the big C church. That's what they're for. And the more I looked at it and the more I examined the passages, the more I realized Paul's goal here is not to help you figure out which one you are. It's the reason why we spent 20 minutes on the introduction of ministry as an incredible privilege and the last 10 minutes on spiritual gifts when the sermon's supposed to be about spiritual gifts. Because guess what? It's not really about the spiritual gifts. If you look at the passages where he's talking about them, in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans 12, in both passages, the context around the spiritual gifts is, hey, we are a body. We are the church, and we have a job. Incidentally, it's why at Grace we have partners, not members, because we believe that we are a part of the body and that we are partnering together for ministry, for the purpose of loving other people towards Jesus. And in both chapters where he talks about the gifts, Paul is saying we are part of a body and we have a job and we are to build the kingdom of God through the church. And everybody has a part to play. Everybody's been invited in. Everybody is a part of the royal priesthood. And to some people, he gives the gift of serving and to others, hospitality, and to others, contributing, and to others, teaching, and to others, leading, and to others, mercy, which is my gift, and to others, compassion, which is another one of my strong suits, right? That's what he gives people. And the whole point of it is so that we can build the church together. The point is not which gift do I have? The point is you have the gift of ministry. That's the point. In fact, following this in 1 Corinthians 12, he talks about all the gifts at length. There's two different sections where he mentions them. He says, but those are the gifts and those are great and you should desire those. But then he finishes 1 Corinthians 12 this way. He says, and I will show you a still more excellent way. And then he opens up with the famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clinging cymbal. And he goes through and he lists the gifts. If I have prophecy, if I can teach, if I can do all these things, but I have not love, then my life doesn't matter. And it is not the point. The gifts are not the point. The point is loving on others. And then he goes into the love passage and defines it. Love is patient and is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It keeps no record of wrongs. And then in the end, it says it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. Love never fails. The whole point of him going through the gifts is him showing you that you've been invited into the privilege of ministry, gifted to do the ministry of loving on other people, which is the whole point anyways. I feel like we always miss the point when we approach the spiritual gifts because we go, what do they mean and which one's mine? And that's not the point of any of the passages where they're mentioned. The point is that we're called into ministry to go love on other people. I do still think it's important to know what our gift is, but if you really want to know what your gift is, don't go take a test. That's a waste of time. You'd have more fun figuring out which animal you are. If you really want to know what your spiritual gift is, then go love other people. And what you'll find is that your gift is what others affirm in you as you love them. Don't worry about what your gift is. What's my gift? Am I serving? Am I compassionate? Am I hospitality? Am I teaching? Am I leadership? Don't worry about that. Just go love people. The people that are in your life, go love them towards Jesus. That's your ministry. Go love them towards Jesus. And as you love them towards Jesus, they will affirm in you what your gift is. I can only share with you my own path through that realization. As far back as I can remember doing ministry, I was invited to teach in different settings. Nothing big or extravagant. I mean, I've shown up to a lot of 6 a.m. FCA's where there's 20 kids who don't care. I've talked to a lot of youth groups. I've done youth group retreats with like 18 kids in North Georgia woods. Like I've showed up to a lot of places to teach, but I kept getting invited to teach. And people would affirm in me, hey, that was effective. You were good at that. And I began to suspect that maybe that's how the Spirit has gifted me. But honestly, I'm so uncomfortable with that. It took me a long time to maybe kind of admit that maybe that's how the Spirit has gifted me. Now, some of you are sitting in here and you're going, dude, this is super boring. This is not your gift. And you may be right. We may find that out together as we go down in flames of glory here in a couple of years. Who knows? But enough people began to say, hey, that was effective. Hey, you're good at that. Hey, I appreciate that. But at some point or another, I quit fighting against it and just acknowledged, I think maybe my gift is teaching. And that's what I need to do. But you don't need to worry about what your gift is on the front end. Just get busy loving people towards God. And they will affirm in you whatever your gift is. And that's how you'll identify it. And what I want us to see as we think about the spiritual gifts and how often we miss it and go, oh, what's mine? How do I do this? What do they mean? How do we talk about them? We miss the point. When we think about spiritual gifts at Grace, I want us to think about them in this way. Spiritual gifts are an affirmation of and an invitation into the privilege of ministry. If we believe ministry to be one of the great privileges in life, to be invited into the lives of others, to be able to be the person that they call on when they mourn, to be the person that they call when they don't understand something, to be the person that gets to celebrate with them when they get pregnant or when their kid does something great or when they get a promotion. If we want to be invited into people's lives in that way, if we want to love on people in that way, if we want our life to matter, to know for certain that it's going to matter and that what we're going to do will ring for all of eternity, then we believe that ministry is a privilege. And we understand that the gift that the Spirit gives us to be more effective at that ministry is an affirmation of the fact that we are saved, that he calls us his child, and that we are to be used in that ministry, and it is an invitation into one of life's great privileges. So here's what I want you to do this morning in light of the spiritual gifts. I want to ask you, what's your ministry? Not organized, not structured, your ministry is not the coffee bar. Now that's a way to love on people, but let's not reduce your life to that. The people who serve the coffee are lovely, wonderful people. They are far more capable of other things besides brewing coffee. On some Sundays, they're not very capable of brewing coffee. Am I right? Not today. Today it's good. That's right, baby. What is your ministry? Meaning, who has God called you to love? Who is it that God has placed in your life that you are to love towards him? Sometimes it's structured. It's your small group. It's the kids that you volunteer to lead and to watch. It's the students that you pour into. It's the other people on your board or on your committee. Sometimes it's unstructured. It's the people at work. It's your family. It's your friends. It's your tennis team. It's the folks you hang out with. But I think this morning the question is not, what is my gift? But it's a realization of, man, I have been invited into one of the great privileges of life. And as I'm invited into that privilege of loving others, God, who have you assigned to me to love? And in that way, we are all ministers. And if you're not sure who that is, then my encouragement to you this week is to just beg the Spirit to show you. Who do you want me to love? Who do you want me to love? Who do you want me to love? And as you get busy loving other people towards Jesus, they will affirm in you whatever your gifting is, and you can lean into that more and more and experience the joy in being exactly who you were created to be. All right. I'm going to pray, and then we're going to continue with the service. Father, thank you for loving us. Thank you for your spirit. Thank you for the gift of ministry, for the gift of being conduits of your love to other people. Lord, I pray that we would get to, all of us, experience the incredible privilege that it is to be used by you. To know that you're using us in a way that makes our life matter. To know that you're using us in a way that when we get to the end of our days, we will look back and know and get to say like Paul did, that we were poured out like a drink offering. Father, I pray that you would show us who to love, that you would give us the courage to love them well, that you would gift us exactly how we need to to love them effectively, that we would be comfortable with whatever shape that love takes based on how you've wired and gifted us. God, I pray that Grace Raleigh would be a place where other people feel loved. I pray for those who go on from this place to different areas, God, that they would love people there as well. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning, Grace Raleigh. Good morning. Oh, thank you. First service didn't do that. So, appreciate it. Nice, warm welcome. As Nate said, I am Erin. I'm one of the pastors here, and I am beyond thrilled to be up here this morning. I'm getting a chance to kind of hang out with you. You know, there's a calendar kind of in the preaching world, and that's very interesting. And so Nate just did 12 weeks on John, and then he starts next week with the forgotten God. So there was this blank Sunday that just kind of sat in the middle. And so I get to be that middle, which is a really cool place to be. But I also meant that I got the chance to kind of pick what I wanted to talk about, which is even cooler yet. So not being part of the series, I get the opportunity to do my thing. I'm not alone kind of wrapped up the John series, and I was caught at that moment by this interaction between Peter and Jesus. As he wrapped up the John series, he talked a whole lot about Peter's restoration, and there's this moment that after Peter has denied Jesus, Jesus has died, he's risen, he comes back to his followers, and he has this really sweet moment with Peter. And he says, Peter, do you love me? And Peter's response is, yes, Lord, you know I do. And at that point in time, Jesus looks at him and he says to Peter, then go and be who it is that I created you to be. Stop dis believing a lie that somehow his past and all that he had done previously was disqualifying him for being all that God had created him to be and to do. And so I wonder who else out there has actually believed this lie? Because like I know I have. About seven years ago or so, I joined Grace Raleigh's staff team as an interim. I came on, I was a long-term volunteer inside of the kids program and there was a need and they tapped me and said, you're going to come do this, right? And I said, excuse me, long-time volunteers take that into consideration what happens. So they tapped me. I said, yes. I stepped in as the interim and about thinking, you know, they're going to hire somebody else and we're all good. Well, nine months later, there's still no director. And at this point in time, God is starting to do a little work in my heart that says it's time for you to step up and to make application. Wrong. That was my response to God. I actually looked at him. I kind of unrolled this long litany of reasons why I was not the right person to do this job. Here, let me tell you why, Lord. Let's see. I work already with my husband. I have two kids at home. I have to shuttle them back and forth. Let's see what else. Oh, wait. These might be biggies. I don't have a degree. I have no seminary training. I am not your girl. Thank you. End of discussion. And so again, like Peter, I'm choosing to believe that because I don't have a piece of paper or I don't have some sort of, pedigree that I can't be used by God in the way that God wants me to be used. I have somewhere, somehow forgotten who God is and who he has said that I am. So Grace Raleigh, what lies are you guys believing currently? Are you a parent who maybe looks at your kids and goes, Lord, why? Like, why did you trust me with these kids? I yell. I know I'm somehow going to warp them. They're going to come out rotten children. Or maybe, yeah, I've done it, y'all. I have said that in my head before. Lord, please don't let me warp them. But or maybe you're the parent that believes that your child's poor choices are somehow a reflection of you and your parenting skills. Or maybe you're in a relationship. Spouse, not a spouse. Maybe you're just in a relationship. And you're all of a sudden looking at this going, we've got a problem. I can't be this spouse. I come from a broken home, which means that ultimately my home's going to be broken too because I don't have what it takes to be the good wife or to be the good husband. Or maybe there's a broken relationship between you and your parents and you're like, done. End of story. I've done way too much. I can't make that connection again with them. Whatever it may be. Or maybe, just maybe, you're sitting in this room going, but Erin, my past is just too colorful. It's too full of sin. It's too full of mistakes. There's no way that God could possibly use me and all of my baggage. So today what I want to do is I want to introduce you to a guy. His name is Gideon. And Gideon is just like us. He's living in this place of being doubtful of who he is. He's living in this place of fear and saying there's no way that he can be used by God. So today we're going to hang out in Judges chapter 6. So if you want to grab your Bibles, you can do that to follow along. You don't have to. We'll throw scripture on the screen. It's totally up to you. But Judges chapter 6 is where we're starting. So let's give you a little background to help maybe understand where Gideon was. Judges chapter 6 is a place where we meet the Israelites or see the Israelites, which were God's chosen people. And they're in between Joshua, who led them into the promised land, and then their king in Saul. So they're in this period where there's not really a leader or a ruler, and so they're kind of left on their own. They're hanging out in this land that God's provided for them. So it should be a great place. But there's also other people that live in this land. And the other people that live in this land follow other gods and do bad things, for lack of a better word. And so what happens in Judges is this moment with the Israelites were left to their own accord. They start to follow the ways of the others. They start to worship other gods and they start to do, as scripture put it, what's evil in the sight of the Lord. Well, as you and I both know, the Lord doesn't sit really well with all of that. So he takes them and he says, okay, well then it's time for a little punishment. He sends in an oppressor. They spend a period of time with the Israelites, pushing the Israelites down to a point where they then all of a sudden, at a point of desperation, they cry out to God and say, save us. And because our God is so merciful, he looks at them and says, okay. He sends them a judge. The judge helps them to defeat their oppressors. There's peace in the land. And then the judge dies. And guess what happens? It starts all over again. In our house, when my kids were little, we called this the vicious cycle. Somebody's got to be willing to hop off or the cycle continues, right? So Israel, though, isn't willing their oppressors. And so the Israelites lived in this beautiful, fertile valley. They would go in and they would plant their crops and they would raise their animals and the world was just fabulous. And then guess what? Here comes time for harvest. And instead of seeing the Israelites go into their valley and do their harvest, you saw them run in, grab what they could possibly grab, and run for the hills. They'd hide in caves and cower in fear because if you looked to the east, here comes the Midianites and all of their friends. It wasn't just the Midianites. It was the Midianites and all of their friends. They decided to have a party. They would come in and drop into this valley. And once they were there, they ate all of the grain. They took their animals. Then, because they were so numerous in number, and Scripture states that you couldn't count them. There were so many of them. They would in turn just destroy the land. Once it was done, there was nothing else for them to plunder. They would pick up camp and they would leave. Our poor Israelites would then come back out of the mountains down into this desolate hole where it's laid waste. There's nothing. And they'd have to start over again. So here they are. And when we see them, they're in the seventh year of this. Somehow after year one or two, I would be like, hey, God, help me out. But no, they're a little prideful, a little stubborn. Seven years into this, they're still at this place of desperation. I imagine they're tired. They're hungry. And so they finally come to a place where they cry out and say, hey, God, can you come help me? Because we're kind of done here. We've got nothing, absolutely nothing left in us. And so that's where our God, because he's so wonderful, begins this process of sending to them their next judge. And so when we pick up in verse 11, we meet the angel of the Lord and Gideon. The angel of the Lord is hanging out underneath the tree. And our friend Gideon is in a wine press hiding from the Midianites and actually beating wheat. There's a couple interesting things about this passage. First of all, the angel of the Lord is there. But Gideon doesn't see him, y'all. It just states that the angel of the Lord is just kind of hanging out underneath a tree. Gideon's hanging out in his hole in the ground. And so why is it that he doesn't recognize him? We're not sure. The rest of the places in scripture talk about the fact that when an angel appears, everybody gets excited and then they end up on their face because they know it's an angel. They know it's come from the Lord. They have this knowledge. At this point in time, Gideon's clueless to the fact that he's even sitting there. And what we see is that we see that Gideon is hanging out and hiding in his wine press, beating wheat against a wall. And what's so interesting about that is the fact that during the normal harvest, when the wheat was cut off, it was actually supposed to be taken to a place called the threshing floor, which would have been up on a mountain or up on a high hill, completely out in the open. And so what they would have done is they would have taken all of this wheat, they would have thrown it onto the ground. They then would have brought in like an ox and had this ox run circles, stamping it out so that they were separating the chaff and the grain and getting it all chewed up, for, again, lack of a better word. And so then what would happen is that after all that, they'd reach down, they'd grab it, they would throw it in the air. And at that point in time, all the useless chaff, the wind would blow away, the grain would fall to the ground, they could collect the grain and then take it off the store to use for food later. Well, guess what? Gideon, y'all, is in a winepress in a hole. A winepress was a hole in the ground. It's not out in the open. There is no wind around it. He's literally hiding in a hole. There's no ox. There's nothing that you would normally have to do this process. Instead, he has his little shoots and stalks of wheat, and he's beating them against a wall trying to get them to separate. So it's this moment where you see Gideon at this place of desperation. He's trying very, very hard inside of his little hole in the ground to do all the work himself, to find just a little something for his family. They're tired. They're hungry. But his circumstances have gotten himself so desperate and so overwhelmed that he doesn't know what else to do anymore. So he's going to try to do something. So where is it that, like, we get stuck in those moments when we feel like we're in this place and we've got these circumstances that are just us down, and we're like, the only thing I can think to do, and you grab at straws, literally, just trying to do something to improve your situation. But the really cool part is, and you'll see in the next verse, in verse 12, this is where God meets us so very often, is in our wine press. Because verse 12 states that the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon. Why all of a sudden Gideon looks up and realizes that there's an angel standing in front of him, we don't know, but it just states that he did. They make eye contact, and the angel looks at him and says to Gideon, the Lord is with you, oh mighty man of valor. Some of y'all's verses may actually call him a mighty warrior. I'm sorry, at this moment I thought about what was running through Gideon's head, and I can only hear him going, can I interrupt for just a minute? Did you not notice, A, I'm a farmer, and B, I'm hiding in a hole right now. There's really nothing, absolutely nothing about me that you would call courageous or mighty. And then he also proceeds to say in verse 13, he's going to have to argue just a little bit with God at this point about the fact that he says the Lord is with him. And when I read this passage, I thought wine, like whiny. I was like, hmm, because Gideon says to him, please, my Lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has this happened to us? Why? Like, can you hear that? Like in your head, He's like, but why is this happening to me? And why is the Lord allowing all of these bad things to happen? Do we not do that sometimes? Like, come on. Why me? Why? Why? So he asks all these. He asks these questions. And the Lord responds to him in the next verse. But the Lord says to him, What do you notice there? He didn't respond to the why. He didn't respond to sweet Gideon's little rant about, like, why am I in this position? And, y'all, it's really the best thing that I can come up with as I read through this is that he did it because, Gideon, you know why you're here. Y'all have done evil on the side of the Lord. You've been doing it for seven years now. That's kind of why you're stuck in this place. So you know the answer to this. But I don't want you to think about what's happened in the past. What I want you to do is focus on the fact that go in this might of yours and do what I've called you to do, and that's to defeat the Midianites. Which is all cool, because here God is seeing a potential in Gideon that Gideon has never seen in himself and probably never will unless. But he chooses at this point in time not to believe these words that God speaks. Because Gideon is still stuck in his wine press. He's still in this place where his circumstances are still so heavy on him that he can't, for anything, see past those. He can't see that mighty man of valor that God says he is. And so what he does is he then replies to God with his list of excuses. Just like we have ours, Gideon responds in turn with his list of excuses. Excuse me, Lord. Hey, remember I'm a farmer. I'm not a soldier. So there's one. And let's see. Oh, my clan that I belong to happens to be the weakest in the area. If you didn't know that already. And oh, wait, here's the cherry on top. I am the weakest in my family. So there is nothing about me that's mighty, and I just can't do what it is that you want me to do. So again, Gideon, just like we are, has this huge line of excuses as to why he can't do what it is that God says he can do. But thankfully, we serve a very merciful and very patient God because he turns and he says to Gideon what I would say are five of the most life-giving words in the Bible. And those words are, I will be with you. So keep up your excuses, but I will be with you. When he calls us, he's going to provide us with anything and everything that we need. Those places where we're the weakest, he's going to give us the strength to do what it is that he has called us to accomplish. Because guess what? It's through his strength then that he's glorified. Because if it was through our strength, God's not the one getting the glory. It becomes all about us and not about him. There's some really cool moments where this I will be with you pops up. Moses, God calls him and says to Moses, Hey, I need you to go be my mouthpiece with Pharaoh and free my people from Egypt. And Moses looks at him and he's like, Have you not heard me talk? Y'all, I have a small speech impediment, God. God says, no problem. I will be with you. And then when Joshua, now all of a sudden is charged with taking the Israelites into the promised land. That wasn't what was supposed to happen. Hey God, it was supposed to be Moses. Like what? God says, it's okay. Just like I was with Abraham and how I was with Moses, I will be with you. If you go into the Psalms and you read through, the Psalmist tells us over and over and over again, the Lord is with you. The Lord will be with you. And Paul speaks of a time when he's in Corinth speaking to a whole group of people. He's got all of this oppression on all sides. And it's hard. And he's in one of those places where the circumstances are starting to do this. God appears to him in a dream and says to him flat out, don't stop speaking. I will be with you. Wow and wow. Because the thing is right here, these guys all believed it too. They all heard God say it and then they believed it. And you can't do it if you don't believe it. Gideon, you are a mighty man of valor. You are going to defeat the Israelites. Gideon's still in his hole. He hears this again and again, and he has to make a choice. Is he going to believe that I will be with you and step out of his hole? Or is he going to stay there with his overwhelming circumstances and just continue to try to do things in his own might and his own power? Because see, the thing is, is that our capabilities are directly proportioned to our beliefs. What we can accomplish through God or God can accomplish through us is directly proportioned to what we believe. And so here it is. If we choose to believe what the world tells us about who we are, we're not good enough. We're not strong enough. We don't have the right pedigree. Whatever the lie is, if we choose to believe that lie, then what God can accomplish through us is totally limited. But if we instead choose to believe and operate in who God says we are, then what God says and what he can do through us is limitless. And as I was doing some research, I found this excerpt from a book called What God Thinks About You. Just listen and a worker. And through Jesus, you are victorious. You have a glorious future believe that through Christ we're victorious and that we are an ambassador for his son, what he can do through us is limitless. It puts us in this cool place for his power and his glory to be shown. And you know, seven years ago when I took that step of faith, it was a step of faith and I had to make a choice. And I promise you, though, each day for the last seven years, I've had to rely very heavily on the I will be with you. Because guess what? Nothing about my circumstances or my situation has changed. I still don't have some advanced degree. My kids are different now. So you can take that one into consideration. They're all older and on their own in a lot of cases, but I don't have the things that should or that the world says I should have, especially to stand up here in front of y'all today. But I had to choose to believe who God said I was, and I have to choose to believe in him and his, I will be with you. So if your capabilities, Grace Raleigh, are in direct proportion to your beliefs, what are you all believing today? Are you going to believe what the world says? Or are you going to choose to believe, like Gideon did, that who God says you are? Because that just might mean that somewhere along the lines, he may look at you and call you my mighty man or woman of valor. Will you all pray with me? Lord, thank you. Thank you that you love us and that you promise that when we step out in obedience to what it is that you have called us to do, that you will walk with us. We just ask that you don't allow us to believe the world, that you don't allow us to hear the voices that tell us that we're not good enough, but instead we hear all of those voices that tell us that because of you, we are victorious. And we love you. And it's in your son's name we pray.

Well, good morning. Happy Easter to you. My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. It's great to see everybody in their bright Easter colors. My wife picked this shirt out for me. She told me that she was going to get the dry cleaning done because there was that pretty Easter colored shirt in the dry cleaning to be done. And I said, oh, which one was that? And she described it by saying, oh, it's the nice one that you got a couple of years ago. It was too big for you then. I think it'll fit you now. And as I buttoned it up this morning, I thought, dang it, if she's not right. So here I am. Listen, this is the 11th part of our series in John. We've been moving through John together. We've been timing it up to arrive at this sermon on this Sunday because this is Easter, man. This is the best day of the year. It really is. This is my favorite day of the year. This is the day where Jesus wins everything for all of eternity. This is the day when the disciples find an empty tomb, and what it means is that Jesus conquered death, and what it means is that we have a way to be reconciled with our Creator God for all of eternity. It is the victory of victories. It is absolutely, as Christians, what we claim, what we stake our hope on, and what we hold fast to no matter what. And Easter celebrates that day. So it is like the Super Bowl of Sundays to be able to preach to you on Easter. This is my third Easter that I've gotten to spend with you at Grace. And back in the fall, I knew that we were going to be going through John in the spring. And so I was reading through John in part in preparation for this series. And I arrived at a story in John chapter 20 about doubting Thomas. Some of you probably know the story. Thomas was a disciple of Jesus who, when he heard that Jesus had resurrected from the dead, he said, I don't really believe that. And then Jesus appears to him and he gives Thomas the proof that he needs to show him that he's actually Jesus and that he's actually risen from the dead. And I thought, man, what a great thing to be able to share on Easter how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts. And so that's what we prepared for, and that's what I prepared for, and that's what I had in mind as we approached Easter, and we mapped out the series, and I knew what all 12 weeks were going to be. And a couple of weeks ago, we made a video, and we showed it in here, and we said, hey, on Easter Sunday, Nate's going to preach about Doubting Thomas and how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts, and it's going to be great, and you should invite people. And that's been the plan. We even, we put it on Facebook and then Steve told me, Steve's our worship pastor, who they did great. Steve told me, hey, we boosted it on Facebook. I don't even know what that is. But I've been boosted on Facebook. I'm kind of a big deal now. I mean, some of you may even be here because we boosted it. And if you did, you're going to be bummed out because I'm not preaching what I told you I was going to preach. Last night at about 10.30, I'm not making this up, I saw a tweet of all things, and I knew that I had to do a different message. My wife is out of town. She's at home with her family, and you'll find out why in a second. And I was going to bed. I grabbed Ruby, Jen's dog that I don't like, and I went to take Ruby outside as just the final hassle of the day to let her go to the bathroom. And while I'm outside, I grab my phone. And my buddy, who I used to work with, a guy named Heath, had tweeted this out. And I saw it in the morning, but I really just kind of passed over it. But for some reason, it was at the top of my Twitter feed, and I saw it. And this is what it says. It says, Holy Saturday, silence, sadness, sorrow. At some point in our lives, we all go through a season of this day. Darkness surrounds us. Nothing is happening. Hope seems lost. Today is the best reminder that the silence of God does not equal the absence of God. Sunday's coming. And as I read that and reflected on what's going on in my own life, I knew that I could not trot out here this morning and preach to you about how Jesus responds to our doubts. Which is a shame because I had a nice alliterated point at the end. It was very pastory. It said, in the face of our doubts, Jesus responds with patience, pursuit, and provision. And I was really happy about that. Isn't that fancy? But I knew as I read that, I can't, on Easter, that because my life feels like a Saturday right now. At Grace, we're real. We're authentic. We're honest. I feel like it's part of our secret sauce. I feel like it's what makes us us. And as a pastor, it's what makes me me, that we tell the truth and we go from our gut. And I felt like to preach what I had planned to preach would be dishonest with you this morning because my life feels a little bit like a Saturday and I need Easter this year. I don't know if you've ever thought about the disciples' perspective on Saturday, but we've been going through Holy Week. And in Holy Week, Jesus on Palm Sunday enters into Jerusalem and sets in motion some mechanisms that are going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. And he knows to his resurrection the following Sunday. And each day during that week over history has been given a name like Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. And Saturday is called Holy Saturday. And I don't know if you've ever thought about Saturday from the perspective of the disciples. But the disciples were men who had walked with Jesus every day. They woke up every morning with him. They listened to him. They followed him. They loved him. They left their jobs for him. They left their lives for him. They put everything on hold for Jesus. The Bible tells us that Jesus says that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. So they followed Jesus even though they were basically couch surfing for three years because they believed so much in what he was doing. And over the course of those three years, they came to love that man and respect that man and want to mimic and emulate that man. And they had high hopes for that man. And on Friday, it all came crashing down. On Friday, they watched that man put up on the cross and get crucified. And we talked about that last week. They watched their hopes and dreams die on that cross. And I imagine on Friday, though there was sadness, there was also shock, not really knowing what to do, trying to process what had happened. But on Saturday, the disciples are sitting in a room with the door locked because they're fearful of the authorities that they're going to come in and get them and arrest them. And so they're sitting there with the door locked in sorrow and in silence, not knowing what to do. And it feels very much like their God let them down. It feels very much like God is not present. We had hoped in him, we had believed in him, and now he's dead and we don't know what to do. And they look to each other for hope and there was none there. And what the disciples don't know is what we know is that the next day they're going to find an empty tomb and that Sunday is coming. But on Saturday, they didn't know that there was hope for Sunday. On Saturday, it's just death. And on Saturday, death wins. And on Saturday, evil wins and despair wins and sorrow wins on Saturday. Because that's where they are. And that's what they know. And Saturday is sorrowful. It's solemn. And it's silent. And as I thought about that, and thought about how much my life feels like Saturday right now, and thought about how much I need Easter right now, I thought I can in good conscience roll out there and talk about doubts tomorrow morning. My life feels like Saturday right now because three weeks ago, they found a mass on my father-in-law's pancreas. My father-in-law is a man named John. I love John a lot. I have a deep and abiding respect for John. I've said this to some people and I mean it. He has, to me, character that looks more similar to Jesus than anybody I've ever met. There are times in my life when I don't know what to do, and I think, I wonder what John would do. And I try to emulate that. Jen loves her daddy very much. They're very close. Lily calls him Papa. That's what I called my Papa. And so it's been a tough three weeks. Three weeks ago, they found a mass, and then it's just a series of appointments and different things, and you don't get the answers that you want. If you've walked through it before, you know it's painfully slow. And then yesterday, on Saturday, we find out that it's stage three. The Internet doesn't have a lot of good things to say about people with stage three pancreatic cancer. And so it's sad, and it's hard, and we're hopeful. On Monday morning, he meets with one of the best pancreatic surgeons in the world who has devoted his whole life to eradicating cancer from the pancreas. If anybody can help him, it's this guy. And so we hope in that, and we're happy about that. And I was on the phone with his wife, Terry, yesterday, telling her, listen, we don't know anything for sure yet, so we cling to hope. But it's hard. And I'm texting with Jen yesterday because she's down there with her family. How you doing? How's it going? And she just says, it's really hard. My daddy's really hurt. He's not really himself. He doesn't have any energy. And for three weeks, we've been doing a lot of praying, but we don't feel a lot of answers. And so my life feels like a Saturday. God, where are you on this one? He's a good man. It doesn't feel like it's the time. And here's the thing. You have your Saturdays too. You've walked through some Saturdays, haven't you? You've walked through some times in your life that were hard, where it felt dark, where you looked around and you said, where's Jesus here? And you didn't know where the hope was going to come from. You've sat in some Saturdays. Some of you are in them right now. And Saturdays don't all look like loss. I know since I've been here for two years, I've walked with some people. I've watched some people in the church walk through Saturdays. We've walked through the stories of miscarriages together. That's a Saturday. That Saturday's happened in my life before. There are people here who have lost spouses far too soon and walked through that Saturday. One of our very special partners lost his 58-year-old brother a couple of weeks ago out of nowhere. That's a Saturday. Our old pastor lost his son this year. That's a Saturday. Those are Saturdays. And they come in other ways too. I had breakfast with somebody on Monday of this week. And he said, man, my life has just been really hard since about December. I really need to hear from God and I can't. I don't know where he is and I don't know what's going on and I don't know how this is going to get better. It's kind of hard to cling to hope right now. And I wish that I'd had my mind wrapped around this sermon when I met with him because I could have just said, dude, it's Saturday. It's Saturday. And sometimes it's sin that brings it on, right? I was prepared. Sometimes it's not just things that happen around us. Sometimes we bring on our own Saturday, if we're honest. Sometimes our life feels so dark because of the things that we've allowed into it, because of the addictions that we walk with, because of the private shames that we hold close to us, because of the things in our life that are in the dark corners of our life that we don't want to shed light on, that feel like they're owning us and feel like they're eating our lunch. And what we really feel like is we're hopeless in this situation. And I see the freedom that other people walk in, but I don't think I'll ever walk in that. I don't think I'll ever be a whole person. I don't think I'll ever experience the happiness and the freedom that the Bible talks about because I don't believe if you were to ask me, can I overcome this sin, you would say, I don't think so. That's a Saturday. And so last night, at about 1045, I realized, I got to talk about Saturdays, man. Because here's the thing. The disciples had a Saturday too. And they got up on Sunday and they went to the tomb. Actually, it was Mary. And she was expecting to go in and find the corpse and dress the corpse of Jesus with some perfumes and some oil and maybe pray over it. And she found an empty tomb there. Jesus wasn't there. But there was an angel there who looks at her and says one of the greatest lines in the Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, for he is risen. What are you doing here, Mary? Jesus isn't here. He's alive. And she rushes back and she finds the disciples locked in that room in sorrow and silence. And she tells them and they run to the tomb to see it for themselves. Peter and John run out there. And in John's account, he makes sure to tell you, we started out neck and neck, but I dusted that old man. I beat him to the tomb. I had plenty of time to look around and get my bearings. And when they get there, they find that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has conquered death. And that's Sunday. And they realized for all of eternity, Jesus has taken the sting out of death. Jesus has given us eternal life. Jesus has beaten all the things that would seek to take us down. It's why Paul can write in Corinthians, why he can quote the Old Testament and say, oh death, where is your sting? Where are your shackles? You have no power over us anymore, death, because Jesus rose on Sunday. Because on Sunday, the tomb was empty. Because Jesus overcame it and gave us victory and gave us hope. A hope that we can cling to. A hope that Paul says in Romans 5 will not put us to shame. Jesus won eternal victory on Sunday. And the sadness that was Saturday became the joy of Sunday because Jesus has conquered the grave and conquered hell and conquered sin and death and he's delivered that victory to you for all of eternity. All you have to do is believe that he did it. And then death can't touch us anymore. And then sorrow can't touch us anymore. And I knew that I had to preach about this and I knew that I had to tell you this story and I knew that I had to tell you about Saturday going into Sunday because here's what Sunday means. You understand? Here's what Easter means. Easter reminds us every year that Jesus always comes through. He always comes through. Without Easter, the internet tells me and my family that we have a 12% chance at happiness. Easter says, I've already beaten it. You've got 100% chance of joy. Without Easter, there's no hope. But Easter tells us that Jesus always comes through, that he never fails and that he never lets us down. And here's what I know. Because of Easter, because that tomb was empty, and because Jesus conquered death and delivered eternal life to all of us, including John, here's what I know, that because of Easter, he's going to come through for John too. It may be in the form of giving him some more years. He may get to watch Lily grow up a little bit longer. It may be in the form of taking him to heaven where he will wait, but make no mistake about it, John's going to hold Lily some more. And he's going to hug Terry some more. That's the victory of Easter. That's what today means. And if you're on a Saturday, today is a reminder that Jesus always comes through. Jesus always wins. And even if you can't see how he's going to come through, I will just tell you that he will. Either in this life or the next, he's going to come through. Either now or in eternity, you place your faith in him and he's going to come through. And now I don't have a 12% chance of happiness. I have a 100% chance at joy. And so does Jen, and so does Terry, and so does her sister Lauren. Because 2,000 years ago, Jesus beat cancer. And he beat sadness, and he beat tragedy, and he beat heartache, and he beat your Saturday too. That's what Easter is. Last night, when I decided I was going to be the least prepared pastor on Easter Sunday in America, I made a pot of coffee because I was tired. And I went outside and was just thinking and drinking the coffee. And I looked up and it was cloudy, but on the other side of some clouds I could tell the moon was there. And I knew that on the other side of those clouds was the light of the moon. And I kept my eye on it, and wouldn't you know it, in a couple of minutes the clouds parted, and it was a full moon, and it was bright. And it was like this little reminder from God. It's Saturday now, and it's dark, But that's my sun shining on that moon. And in the morning, it's going to be bright. Because in the morning, it's Easter. In the morning, it's Sunday. And on Sunday, we're reminded that I always win. And it may feel like night in our lives sometimes. We may feel the darkness of Saturday in our lives sometimes. If you do, look to that moon that's reflecting the light that God created and know that whether we know it or not, whether we understand it or not, in a way that we might not be able to predict, that Sunday is coming and the sun will shine again. And 2,000 years ago, Jesus won a victory for us over all the things that would seek to darken our days. And that's what we celebrate on Easter. Pope John Paul said, we do not give way to despair. We are the Easter people. And hallelujah is our song. So no matter how dark it gets, Christians, we sing because we know that Sunday is coming. No matter how silent God seems, Christians, we listen because we know that God will speak. No matter how sad we are on Saturday, Christians, we know that Sunday is coming and Jesus always comes through. And that's why Easter is the greatest day of the year, because it reminds us that Jesus has come through for us in more ways than we can possibly imagine. So I'm gonna pray for you. And my prayer is that you have a good Easter. And my prayer is that if you're in a Saturday, that you will know that because of Easter, you can know that Sunday is coming and Jesus is gonna come through for you too. Let's pray. Father, you're good. You're good to us. More than we deserve, more generously than we deserve, you love us in ways that we don't deserve. You are good. We thank you so much for Easter. We thank you for what it means and for what it represents, for the hope that you won when you conquered sin and death, when you came roaring like a lion out of there, giving us hope for all of eternity. Father, I pray that those of us who feel like we are in a Saturday would take solace in Easter, that we would cling to the hope of Sunday, that we would cling to the hope of you. Let us believe, God, that you've won this victory already, that it's yours. Let us celebrate Easter in the hope that it brings well. Let us reflect on you as we do it. Be with those who are sorrowful, God. Let them hold on just a little longer until your light shines. We thank you for Easter. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. How you doing? A couple of things. My name's Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. I love seeing everybody here for the second service. There's a lot of space at the first service, so feel free. And in case you're wondering, does God smile more when you come to the early service? He does. He's smiling a little bit now, but man, the grin on his face when you get up that much earlier is really something special. The Lord moves in that first service. The other thing I want to mention is this. I'm super excited about this. It may not be the case. You never know what's going to happen for the rest of the tournament. But for now, Jen, my wife, is beating all of us in the churchwide bracket challenge, which is a pretty big deal. If you know Scott Hunter, he's in dead last, and that's fun too. All right, we're in the eighth part of our series in John, and I really enjoy getting to move through the book of John with you. This morning, we arrive at what I think is a critical seminal teaching of Jesus in this book. And to help us think about it, I want us to go back to that first day of a class that we took in college, okay? If you didn't have the experience of doing that or you haven't had it yet, you're not missing much. It's overrated. But for those that had to do it, there's this common experience on the first day of class in college. And I'm talking about back before the internet was a thing, when us old people went to college. It's not often that I get to lump myself in with the old people, but this week I do. This was before we had the Internet. You didn't know what to expect in your class, right? And so you'd go on that first day. You're taking whatever it is you're taking, Philosophy 101 or English 101 or whatever it is, and you don't know what to expect. It's the great unknown. What's this professor going to be like? What are my assignments going to be? How do I achieve success in this class? We all bring a different set of goals to the class. I mean, some of y'all are nerds, and you wanted to get an A, and so you thought, like, what am I going to have to do? And I don't mean that really. I wish I would have cared more about getting good grades. But some of you guys really cared about your grades, and so you're thinking, what do I need to do to get an A in this class? I just want to know the work that I'm going to have to do. For me, my academic goals were literally just, what do I have to do so that my parents aren't furious at me at the end of the semester? They were helping out with college, so what do I have to do to keep the gravy train rolling? That's the amount of effort I'd like to give to right? And there are some of you, you got there and you flipped to the back and you look at the assignments and you went, I will never step foot in this class again, right? Because there's too much work there. That's what we did. You get to class. For those that don't have the experience, you get to class. The professor gives you the syllabus. You grab it. And then at the top of the syllabus, you always read this thing. It says that the successful student will be proficient in yada, yada, yada, right? Or the successful student will be proficient in these things. And so you're like, okay, well, this is the goal of the class. This is what it looks like to be successful in this class. Now I know this, but then what are you really interested in? You're really interested in the assignments. What am I going to have to do to achieve the success? And then in the syllabus, you'll remember he or she would have like the philosophy of the class and their philosophy of teaching and all the goals and all the different things. You went, yeah, I don't care about that. You flip to the back of it, and that's where they had the assignment load. And you wanted to see how many tests, how long is the paper going to have to be, right? What am I going to have to do in this class to pass? And that's when some of us went, I don't think I'm coming back to this place because it was just too much work. But we've had that experience. And to me, regardless of what kind of student you were, whether you're a straight A student or you're a slacker like me, you would go to that class with a set of goals. I want to accomplish this in the class. And then you would love the syllabus because that would bring, that would make the unknown known. It would tell you, this is what's expected of me here. This is how they're defining success, and these are the things that I have to do to be successful. And we like this mindset. We have this mindset about a lot of the things that we do. We all, all of us, if we're old enough, have jobs, or we've had a job before. You get to that job, and what do they do? They give you a job description, and at the top of the job description, it says, this is what this position is for. This position will do this and this and this and this. And then there's objectives underneath that. This is how those things are going to be accomplished. This employee will do this thing and this thing and this thing. We like having a very clearly defined version of success, and we like having clear steps to achieve that success, don't we? And we often apply this to our faith. In every Bible study that I've ever been in, I've been in church my whole life. I've been doing ministry for about 20, I went pro in my Christianity about 20 years ago. And in every Bible study that I've ever been in, and a lot of conversations with with my friends and a lot of different small groups, this idea gets presented. And it happened again a couple of weeks ago in the young person small group that my wife and I are leading now. One of the girls said, wouldn't it be nice if there was like a to-do list for our faith? If there were just some clearly defined parameters in the Bible so that we know what to do and when to do it. Wouldn't it be nice if we kind of had a syllabus or a job description for our faith? And this is a commonly expressed desire because the Bible can be very confusing and it can be very intimidating and there's a lot in there to learn. And there are some churches, and then Christianity in and of itself, there's some churches that think this way about an issue, this issue is terrible and it's wrong and you should never do it. And then there's churches over here who are like, no, that's actually pretty okay and we encourage it and we think that you should do it. And there's churches all over the spectrum and there's different ways to interpret the scripture. There's tons of different denominations. And sometimes it's really difficult to figure out, man, what is it that I'm supposed to do? And if you're a new believer or a non-believer, I think a very natural thing to think is, I'm considering this faith, what is it going to require of me? Or, I'm a Christian now, I'd like to be a good one, what does that mean? Is there a to-do list? Is there just something simple where I can know what to do? How is success defined? And how do I achieve that success? Which is why I think John 15 is such a great passage, because I think that Jesus gives us our course syllabus for Christianity. So a little bit different this morning is your notes on the back of the bulletin that you received, you have notes on the back of that. The back of that is actually a course syllabus for Christianity 101. So if you don't have the notes, I'd like you to slip up your hand and the ushers will try to get one to you. Is there anybody that needs one? Some of the ushers have some and they're going to go around making sure folks have those. This is Christianity 101, okay? This is your course syllabus for this morning. You'll notice on it, I am your professor, Professor Rector. I do that. I'm not going to get the chance to do that probably ever again in my life, except for when I pretend at church. So I'm your professor this morning. Class is in session. We're going to take a lot more notes than we normally do. I would encourage you to get out a pen. There's one more, a couple more over here. Just send the whole pile down. I encourage you to get out a pen and write along with me, okay? If you don't have any now, we're out. So you're just going to have to go old school and cheat with your neighbor, okay? You have to look on to theirs. I believe, one more, she's auctioning it off. She's auctioning it off. I believe that Jesus gives us our core syllabus for Christianity in John chapter 15. I'm going to read the first five verses, and then we're going to talk about why I think this is true. If you have a Bible, you can open to it. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But this is what Jesus says. He says, That's important. We're going to come back to that later. Verse 5, this is the clincher. All right, so this week we arrive at one of these great I am statements that Jesus makes. In the other Gospels, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we have the parables. You're probably familiar with them. They're made-up stories that Jesus tells to make a moral point. And in John, we don't have any of those parables. What we see is Jesus making these I am statements. I'm the bread of life. I'm the living water. I'm the way, the truth, and the life. I am the good shepherd. And now this week, he says, I am the vine, and you are the branches. And this is said to an agrarian society that understood what it was to grow grapes and try to make wine from these grapes. It was part of that culture. They were very familiar with this terminology, and that's what he's talking about. I am the vine, you are the branches, you're going to grow grapes. Connect to me and you will bear much fruit. And so in our terminology and way of thinking of it, it makes more sense to say that I am the tree trunk and you are the branches. But what he's saying is, I'm the source of life, I'm the source of joy, and you are attached to me. And when you abide in me, when you are attached to me and you remain attached to me, you will bear much fruit. All right, that's what he's saying in this verse. And so in verse 5, when he says, I am the vine, you are the branches, abide in me, and I in you, and you will bear much fruit, that really is a packed statement. There's a lot of questions that come out of that statement. For me, the first thing that I see is what does it mean to bear fruit, and why is he talking about that? And I think that that helps set us up for the goal of the course. So at the top of the syllabus you have the student will be proficient in these things. So if we're thinking about Christianity as a course, we're trying to figure out what it is we need to do, then what we need to know is that the course goal is that the successful student or Christian will show proficiency in bearing fruit. Okay, if you're a believer and you want to know if you're successful, if you're thinking about becoming a Christian and you want to know what's going to be expected of me. If you're a new believer and you want to go, okay, well now what do I have to do? The successful student or Christian, the person who is successful in Christianity will be proficient in bearing fruit. And I say that because this seems to be the goal of the passage. Jesus says, abide in me, get attached to me, remain attached to me, and you will bear fruit. Do this, follow my commandments, obey me, love me. Why? So that you can bear fruit. It seems to be that the point of the Christian life, the reason that Jesus leaves us here rather than taking us to heaven immediately upon salvation is so that we can bear fruit. So if you want to know what's the whole point of the Christian life, why are we here? Christianity 101, the successful student will show proficiency in bearing fruit. That's the point. So then you have to ask, okay, what does it mean to bear fruit? And those of you who are church people, you've heard this before, you know this passage. And if I were to ask you, hey, it says that if I'm attached, if I abide, that I will bear fruit. What does it mean to bear fruit? You would probably go, well, it means that you should, well, now hang on. Because it gets a little complicated, doesn't it? What does it mean? Some people would say that it means that we should bear the fruit of the Spirit that Paul talks about in Galatians 5. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. We should become more like God in character and develop those traits in our life. To bear fruit means to bear the fruit of the Spirit. Other people would say, well, it means to bear the fruit of ministry. It means that in your life, you're leading people to Jesus, you're discipling people, bringing them closer to Jesus, that there is actually evidence of ministry and people what I think Jesus would say is that it's both. And I think that he says this in what we talked about last week in John chapter 13. If you weren't here last week, in John chapter 13, Jesus tells the disciples, I'm giving you a new commandment that you should love one another as I have loved you. That's the new commandment. That's what we're supposed to do. And then the question becomes, how do I do that? So last week is kind of, what are we supposed to do? We're supposed to love one another as Jesus loved us. And this week is, how do we do that? Well, we do that by abiding. And so what it means to bear fruit, I think, is this. When we love somebody as Jesus loved us, not as we love ourselves, a higher standard, Jesus' love. When we love somebody as Jesus loved us, it is impossible to do that without bearing the fruit of the Spirit in our life, right? How are you going to love other people as Jesus has loved you if we're not bearing love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control? How are we going to be able to do that if we're not becoming more like God in character? We can't. So part of it is to bear the fruit of the Spirit. But then the results of this love, if we love other people as Jesus loved them, when Jesus loved these people, what did they do? They drew more closely to him. And so when we love others as Jesus loved us, it's going to have this natural effect of drawing them into the Father, of drawing them towards Jesus. And so I think it's safe to define for the purposes of the course, again, in our syllabus, that bearing fruit will be defined as loving others towards Jesus. When we're looking at this and it says that we should bear much fruit, what does it mean to bear fruit? It means that we are proficient in loving others towards Jesus. Loving them in such a way that when they look at our impact in their life, they go, I am closer to Jesus because of them. To bear fruit simply is to look at the wake of our life and the people that we know in our life and have people who would point to us and say, I love Jesus more because of the way that they love me. I love Jesus more. I feel closer to Jesus because of their influence in my life. That is fruit. It's both a character, that has both a character aspect and a ministry aspect. But that's what it means to bear fruit, is to love people towards Jesus. So that's the goal for the course, right? That's what success looks like. The successful student will be proficient in bearing fruit or loving people towards Jesus. So now, how do we do that? And that's what this passage answers. And it gives us, I think, our assignments. And so the coursework, the objective, the first objective, our first assignment, the first thing we have to do is abide in Christ. Plain and simple. Abide in Christ. And if you're a church person, you've heard this before. You know this passage. This is a famous passage. You know how this goes. But I think it works pretty similarly. If I say, what does it mean to abide in Christ? I think sometimes we have a hard time explaining that or understanding that. And so I really wanted to dive into it this week so I could do a good job hopefully explaining it to you. And one of the things that I learned that I thought was most helpful was this idea. See, Jesus is talking to the disciples at the end of his life. We are in the middle of Passion Week in the chronology of the life of Christ. In a couple of days, he's going to be arrested and crucified and then raised from the dead, and we celebrate Easter, right, in the story of Jesus. So he's very near the end of his life. He's been moving through life with the disciples for three years now. He's been doing ministry with them. He's been ministering to them. He's been discipling them. He's been training them. He's been teaching them. He's been loving on them. He's been developing them. And so over these three years, there's this intimate relationship that has formed between them. And to me, it's very interesting that here at the end of his life, he calls the disciples to abide. Abide in me are his instructions to the disciples. But that's not what he said when he met the disciples. When he met the disciples and he called them to himself, what did he tell them to do? Follow me, right? So three years ago, it was follow me. Three years later, after spending all this time together, it's abide. And I love that there's a relational maturation to the calling of Jesus in this passage, where at the beginning he says, I want you to follow me. And when you follow someone, there's a distance there. I'm watching what you're doing and I'm trying to do those things. But when you abide, there's this relational aspect to it of knowing someone intimately, knowing them well. Let your heart beat with mine. Let what brings me joy bring you joy. Let what breaks my heart break your heart. Let my goals be your goals. There is this relational dynamic to abiding. The word there in the text literally means to get connected and remain connected like a branch is to a tree. So over these three years with Jesus, we see this relational component where we're supposed to know him intimately. I think if we want to make it our goal to abide in Christ, one of the very first things we have to do is find time in our day, every day, to spend time in word and spend time in prayer. If we want to abide in Christ, if we want to know him intimately, if we want to pursue him, what do we need to do? We need to get up every day, spend time in God's word and spend time in his presence through prayer. We have to do that. That's an integral part of our life. And this is actually this idea, abide, we are to abide in Christ, is where we get this idea of having a personal relationship with our Savior. You guys have heard that before. Even if you're not a believer, you're here because someone drug you here. First of all, I'm so glad that you're here, and I'll try to go quickly for you. But second of all, you understand, and you've probably heard this term before, that we should have a personal relationship with Jesus. And sometimes we talk about how this separates us from other religions, that we're actually invited into a relationship with our Savior and with our God. But it's a very natural question to go, okay, I'm invited into a relationship with Jesus, but how do I have a relationship with this person or this entity that I don't interact with the same way as I do everyone else? I can't see him. I can't touch him. I can't see the look in his eye. I can't hear the cadence of his voice. How do I get to know somebody that I can't see or feel or touch? How do I have this intimate relationship with what feels like at times a distant God? That's a very fair question to ask. And Jesus actually answers this. I was nervous about how to explain it. How do we abide in Christ? How do we have this personal relationship with him? How do we experience the connection that the disciples felt? And I was actually kind of nervous about explaining this to you until I got to read the passage and really study it. And what I found is that Jesus answers this question in verse 10. And so really this is the second part of, this is our second assignment, our second objective. We want to be successful in the class of Christianity. The first thing we do is we abide in Christ. The second thing we do is we abide by obeying. We abide by obeying. In verse 10, Jesus says this. He says, If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. If you keep my commandments, you abide in my love. You want to know how to abide in Christ? Obey him. You want to bear fruit? You want to be a successful Christian? You want to do what you're supposed to do, what you were put on this earth to do? Then abide in Christ. You want to abide in Christ? Well, Jesus says, obey him. You want to abide in me? Obey me. That means all the things, right? That means that when Jesus says in Matthew, in the Sermon on the Mount, that when someone hits us in the face that we need to turn the other cheek and not seek revenge, that we learn what that means and that we do that. That means that when someone asks us to go a mile and Jesus tells us to go an extra mile, we go an extra mile. When Jesus tells us that when someone asks for our fleece, we should give them our coat as well, we give them our coat. When Jesus tells us that we should be generous and that we should care for the poor, then we be generous and we care for the poor. When he tells us that, when he redefines and correctly defines the commandment on adultery, that it's not simply sleeping with another person's spouse, but it's looking at anyone with lust in your heart, then we define that as our definition of adultery. If we want to abide in Christ, then we walk in lockstep with his commands and we submit our life to his word. John 1 says that Jesus is the word of God, so we obey God's word, right? That's what we do. But here's the thing. Being obedient to the Bible, being obedient to Jesus's commandments, it's pretty challenging. It's pretty difficult. It takes a long time to get proficient at it. Some of us have a hard time with it all the time. And as I think about what it means to really obey God, I kind of think about it like I think about a golf swing. Back in 2013, I went to the Masters for the first time. Now, the Masters is a golf tournament in Augusta, Georgia. It's the greatest sporting event on the planet. If you don't agree with that, take it up with someone else. I'm not into frivolous conversations, okay? This is actually, I played golf a little bit when I was a kid. This is my Pawpaw Six Iron. He taught me how to play. I like to have pieces of him up here whenever I can. But I learned to play a little bit when I was a kid. But I left it to play other sports. I had ADD big time, I think. It was undiagnosed, but man, it was there. And so I liked to play soccer, and I walked away from golf a little bit. But in 2013, I went and I saw the Masters, and I thought, I've got to play this sport. This looks super fun. And so I grabbed a set of clubs, and I started going to the range as often as I could get there. A shameful amount of time. I neglected gym for golf. And so I started playing, right? And once you start playing golf, you start learning that the golf swing is pretty stinking complicated. It doesn't look complicated. You watch it on TV, it seems like a pretty simple thing. But man, if you've ever tried to hit that ball any distance, even just in the air, you know it is difficult, okay? And so I started learning to play golf and you start to learn, man, there's all these technical aspects to the golf swing. Now, some of y'all know the golf swing a lot better than I do. So please don't judge me too harshly. But you do the golf swing and you wanna square up to the ball. It's called a dress, okay? The's on the ground. You want to address it, so you want to make sure your club head is facing the right way behind it. You want your feet to be spread about shoulder width apart if you've got an iron in your hand. Not too far, because you'll look ridiculous like a sumo wrestler. So you just want it right there, right? And then you've got to grip the club. And there's actually a way to do this. They, like, tell you. I went and got golf lessons one time. And the first thing the guy said is, show me how you grip the club. And I'm like, you're weird. Just tell me how to swing the club. But apparently it's important. You have to interlock your fingers in the back. Or if you're fancy, you can cover over your fingers in the back. But you don't do it like this. That's what crazy people do, okay? You can't do that. You have to grab it like this. And this hand needs to be in a certain place. And did you know that your thumb has to go in the crease of your hand right there? It took me two years to learn that. I don't know why they didn't tell me that. But you have to put your thumb right there, and then you hold it. Your knuckle's got to be in a certain place. If you rotate your hand too far under, you're going to hook it. You don't want to do that. And if you do it too far this way, you're going to slice it. You don't want to do that. So it's got to be just right. And then they tell you, once you get the club, that you just want to hold it like a baby bird, okay? Like you just want it to be real gentle. I've got like this death grip on there, and people have told me, you're going to strangle that bird, man. You need to let it go. So you got to be gentle with it, you know? Just hold it like pillow soft, like you do a lot of dishes or something. And then you want to take it back. And when you take it back, you want to keep your left arm straight. And you want to keep your left wrist flat. I do this sometimes or this. You don't want to do that. You want to keep it flat, right, so that when you meet the ball, like it's flush. And so you come back. And when you come back, you want to bend your left leg, but not too much. You don't want to look like a crazy person. You got to do it a little bit. And then I had somebody one time on my backswing tell me, you want your back pocket to face the target. And I'm like, well, how do you, I don't know what that looks like. Like, I don't even, I'm not, maybe that dude was a gymnast. Like, I don't even know how to make that one work, man. And then you go and you do the thing and you follow through. And sometimes I'll follow through and people will say things that I don't understand. Like, I'll hit the ball and it didn't do what I wanted to because it never does. And people will go, oh, you double crossed that one. And I'm like, what are you talking, I don't know what that, I don't know what it means to double cross. Or sometimes people will tell me, your hands got a little fast on that one. And I'm just thinking to myself, like isn't that the point? Don't we want our hands to go fast in a golf swing? Like I'm thinking that slow hands is not good for golf. But it's super complicated, right? And so here's what we know about golf. When you're golfing with your buddies and somebody's struggling and you want to give them a little tip, I'm going to coach you. I'm terrible at golf. I have a 20-plus handicap, but I'm going to coach you. I'm going to give you the thing that's going to make you good at it. You can give somebody one tip to start thinking about one thing. Your backswing's a little fast. You want to slow that down, and it'll screw them up for the rest of the round. They won't be able to hit that because they'll be thinking about all the things. They won't be able to hit that for anything. So here's what they tell you in golf if you want to improve your swing. You get what's called a swing thought. When you're swinging the club, you get a swing thought. You get to think about one thing. Just do one thing. There's so many aspects to the swing. It's so technical and so complicated. You could think about 12 different things if you wanted to, but if you want to get better at it, you think about one thing. I played an entire round of golf focused on keeping my left heel on the ground when I would swing the club. The whole round, that's all I thought about all day. You get one swing thought. Because if you take more than that, you won't be able to keep up with it. It'll be a messy jumble in your head and you won't see success. But the way they teach you to get better at golf is you take one swing thought and you get better at that. You don't think about all the other things. You get better at the one thing, whatever's most urgent for you. And then once you get that down, you get that into muscle memory, then you do the next thing. That's how they teach you. And I think obedience works the same way. There's so many things to focus on. There's so many areas. We need to grow in our kindness. We need to grow in our generosity. We need to grow in our patience. We need to grow in our humility. We need to stop doing this one sin that's kicking our tail. We need to start doing this thing that God's been tugging on our heart about for a long time. There's so many different things we could do to try to obey God. But I want to submit to you that the way to really learn obedience is to just have one obedience thought. Just take the next thing. Just take the next step. I'm not saying that we don't worry about all the other things. When you're learning a golf swing, you don't forego everything else you've already worked on to work on the next thing. You keep those intact too, but then you work on the next thing. And I think our Christian life is much the same way. We should have, and we are wise to have, an obedience thought, a next step of obedience, a thing that we can do to begin to obey God a little bit better and a little bit better. And the beautiful thing about this is, I think all of us have a next step of obedience. Whether you've been walking with God for five days or for 50 years, there's always the next thing that you can work on. There's always the next thing that God would have you, the next step of obedience that he would have you take. If you were to go to a PGA event and talk to one of the guys who does it professionally and ask him, what are you working on with your swing? None of them would ever tell you, nothing, this is as good as it gets. They would always tell you that they're working on something. And this is how it is with our obedience to God. No matter how many years we've been walking, no matter how mature or immature we are, every one of us in the room has a next step of obedience that we can take. And if we're going to learn to obey God and follow Him and abide in Christ, then I think it boils down to simply taking our next step of obedience. So objective three, our third assignment in how we abide in Christ, is by praying, stepping, and trusting. We pray, we step, and we trust. Under that, I have a prayer for you where I'm encouraging you to pray, Father, show me my next step of obedience. And that's a prayer that I would encourage you to pray now and pray every day this week. Father, show me my next step of obedience. What would you have me do? So we pray about it. God, what's my next step? What do you have for me? What's the next thing you want me to do? Maybe it's to get more serious about church attendance. Maybe it's to get more serious about a small group. Maybe it's to get up every day and spend time in God's word. Maybe it's simply to consider Him, to read a book or do some research or have a conversation with somebody that would help us grow in our faith a little bit. Maybe it's to start the discipline of tithing or giving. Maybe it's to actually have the conversation that we've been having. Maybe you know exactly what it is because God's been pressing it on our hearts for weeks or months and we haven't listened. But we should pray that God would show us our next step of obedience that he would have us take. And then we trust. We step. We take the step. We obey him, and then we trust that it was the right thing, and we trust that life is going to be better on the other side of obedience. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about obedience, and we talked about this idea that sometimes the reason we're not obedient to God is because we believe that life is better on this side of obedience. And so to actually step into obedience requires a degree of trust that life is actually going to be better for us on the other side of obedience, that that's where we find God's grace and God's love. And so often obedience takes faith in God and the courage to actually take the step. But here's what happens when we do this. I love this. This is my favorite part about this teaching. When we take a step of obedience, however difficult it is, God impresses something on our hearts. I want you to do this. I want you to get up 30 minutes earlier and I want you to spend some time with me. I want you to actually give to this thing. I want you to actually have that conversation. It's a difficult step when he shows it to us. But if we'll take it, and when we take that step in our fear and what we're met with is God's grace and goodness, we'll see that we can actually trust him. And because we've had this experience of taking a step in faith and being met with God's goodness, it'll give us more courage to take the next step, won't it? And then the next step, and then the step after that. And then for our life, we are simply taking these steps of obedience as we grow closer to Jesus and abide in him. And then here's what happens as we take these steps of obedience. We abide in Christ. And Jesus says that when we abide in him, we will bear much fruit. And here's what I love about that. If you think about an apple tree, if you think about a branch attached to an apple tree, that tree decides when and what kind of fruit that branch is going to bear. That branch doesn't get to decide, you know what? I want to give us apples in the wintertime. I really like apple pie. I'm doing winter apples. That's what's happening this year. That's not how that works. The tree decides when that branch is going to bear fruit. The branch doesn't get to go, you know what, fellas? I'm really thinking pears. They're in. Turkey and brie, it's really good. That's what we're going to do. The tree doesn't get to decide, I'm tired of being in an orchard, I want to be in a mangrove. We're doing oranges this season. That doesn't happen. The tree decides when the branch will bear fruit and what kind of fruit it is. Look at this. When you abide in Christ, when you are connected and you stay connected and you're following him and you know him intimately, when you're connected to the tree, you will bear much fruit. And it's not up to you when and where you bear that fruit. It's not up to you what kind of fruit that is. It's not up to you when the season is when you bear it. The tree decides that. You remain connected to Christ, and Christ says, I'll decide when and where you bear fruit. I love the freedom of this. And my role, my heart is for grace. We've given our lives to build God's church here. So I want to see grace grow. I want to see the kingdom expand here. I want to see lives impacted. I want to hear the story about somebody coming, visiting with us over VBS or Summer Extreme, and their kid coming to faith who didn't know Jesus comes to know Jesus here. And then that kid goes home and tells their parents what they saw here. And then their parents come, and their parents get plugged into a small group, and they accept Christ. And then they grow in their faith by taking their next steps of obedience and then there are elders and there are leaders and they're leading their small group. I want to see that story. I want to see marriages rescued here and strengthened here. I want to see little kids that grow up here and then grow up to follow Christ so well and so closely and know him so good that they disciple us. I want some of the kids that are in there to preach up here one day and tell us what they've learned about God. I want to see all this stuff happen in our church, and I want to see you guys live healthy and vibrant lives in spiritual faith. I want to see that. Do you know how we bring that about? Do you know what my role is in bringing all those things about? Getting up every day and spending time in God's Word and time in prayer and trying to take my next step of obedience, abiding in Christ. If I want to see that fruit at grace, if I want to see God do incredible things, you know what I need to do? Abide in Christ. Obey Him. He'll decide when and where we start bringing fruit. It's not about strategy. It's not about how good I preach. It's not about how good Steve does. It's not about marketing campaigns. It's not about follow-up. It's not about any of that stuff. It's about abiding in Christ, and Jesus will handle the rest. In your lives, you have kids you worry about and you pray for. You have ministries that you're involved in. You volunteer in different places. You have companies or groups of people around you that you want to influence and draw towards Jesus. You want to have a wake of people in your life who would say, I'm closer to Jesus because I knew that person. We want these things. You know how you get those things? Abide in Christ. Obey him. Get connected, stay connected. Take the next step of obedience. Pursue him daily. And guess what? He will decide when and where you bear fruit. But here's the promise. You will bear much fruit. Just simply abide in him. Pursue him. Obey him. Have the confidence and the faith to take the next step that he shows you, and you will abide abide in Christ and then the tree will decide when and where you bear fruit. There's a glorious freedom to this. And when we bear much fruit, you should know two things happen in this passage. Two things happen as a result of our bearing fruit. We are pruned and we are proven. We are pruned and we are proven. The second verse of this passage, Jesus says, when you bear much fruit, the Father will prune you so that you can bear more fruit. And make no mistake about it, that pruning hurts. That's the branches getting cut. That's when they lose a piece of themselves. I don't have time to delve into what pruning is like all the way this morning, but I know that for years and years, Jen and I prayed for a baby. We prayed to get pregnant, and it took a lot longer than we wanted it to take. We finally got pregnant, and then we miscarried. I've shared that with you guys before. That was four or five years ago. That was a super difficult thing. That's the hardest thing we've ever had to walk through as a couple. But I am convinced that that was a pruning period for us. Because how could I come lead a church? And how could Jen partner with me in this ministry if we didn't know grief? If we didn't know tragedy? If we didn't know what that was like? How could I teach about God's view of grief and how he's with us in our suffering unless I had experienced that? How could I empathize with someone who would shake their fist at God and say, why me, this isn't fair, unless I had walked through that in my life as well? I believe that part of the reason for that was a pruning to make us more effective in what God would have us do. I'm not saying that's the reason for all of our pain, but I'm saying that's the reason for some of it. God prunes us. That's why I hate the health and wealth gospel. We're not promised prosperity and a tragic free life. We're promised that if God prunes us, it's so that we will be more effective and bear more fruit, which is the whole point. And then, in that bearing fruit, we are proven. Every Christian ever has wondered, am I really saved? Did I do it right? Did I say the right prayer? Do I really have faith? If I were to die today, do I really know I'm going to go to heaven? You know what proves your faith? Fruit. Jesus says in this passage, you will bear much fruit, and so prove that you are my disciples. You want to not doubt your salvation? Look at the wake of your life and see if there is fruit there. When we bear fruit, two things happen. We are pruned and we are proven. And then as a result of all of this, all of these things, this idea of taking steps of obedience and finding God to meet us there in trust, of abiding in him and just focusing on him and not worrying about the end of the passage, verse 11. He says, these things I have spoken to you. So this lesson, what I've just taught you about the vine and the branches, these things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. All of these things, knowing Jesus, abiding in him, obeying him, bearing fruit, being pruned and being proven, all of these things conspire to fill you with joy. Because in simply abiding in Christ, we are relieved of the pressure of productivity. We are relieved from the pressure of results because it's not our responsibility to bring about the fruit. We just follow Jesus. We are relieved of the sense of hopelessness that sometimes comes from pain because we know that it's serving a purpose to prune us and make us more effective at bearing fruit for God's kingdom. And we are relieved of the worry and the anxiety of, am I actually saved? Am I actually going to persevere? Because the proof is in the fruit that we have borne. God relieves us of all of those things and frees us up to simply follow him, to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, spend time in prayer, and to say, Father, what's the step of obedience you would have me take today? And when we do that, we experience the fullness, not of our joy, of his joy. So that's my prayer for you. That you would go from this place and that you would abide in Christ and experience the fullness of Jesus' joy. And my challenge to you is that you would pray now and every day this week, Father, what step of obedience would you have me take today? Father, please show me my next step of obedience. And I believe that by doing that and taking the step that he reveals to you, that we will abide in Christ and that by abiding in Christ, his word will be true and we will bear much fruit. And that by bearing much fruit, we will experience the fullness of the joy of Jesus. I'm going to pray for you. And as I pray, I want to encourage you right now to go ahead and begin asking God, what's my next step of obedience? Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for this morning. We thank you for your word, how clear it is. We thank you that your son boiled things down for us to this place where we can understand it. I pray that we would simply abide in you, God. Create a fire in each of our hearts to know you, to abide in you, to walk with you, to obey you. Give us the strength to pray the prayer, to ask what our next step is. Give us the courage and the faith to take the step. Give us the clarity to see it. Give us the gratitude for your grace that meets us there. God, whether it's a big step or a small one, I pray that we would take it. I pray that this would be a church full of people who are abiding in you and with you. And God, we can't wait to see the fruit that you bring about here in our lives and in this place. It's in your son's name we pray, amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for being here. This is the seventh part in our series going through the book of John. We're going to continue this series through the week after Easter. So I'm thrilled to see all of you here. Hopefully, as I've been encouraging you every week, you've been reading along with us. I think it's hugely important for you guys to be reading the Gospel of John on your own as you process it and we go through it as a church so that my perspective isn't the only perspective that you're getting on this book. That's why it's such a bummer that I realized yesterday I forgot to update the reading plan and the one that we have out there is not current. So I'm real sorry about that. I had a wedding to do yesterday and then basketball, so I didn't get a chance to do the reading plan. But we'll have that done for you tomorrow. We'll get it out online and we'll have a physical copy for you next week when you get here. If you are following along in the reading plan, just read the next two chapters. We've been going at two chapters a week and you'll be good, okay? But as we've been going through this week, I had a sermon planned out of John 11, looking at the story of Lazarus and the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept, John 11, 35. And I had been looking forward to that sermon. But as I got done last week and looked at the chapters that we had to cover this week, there's a portion, there's something happening in John chapter 13 that I just, I didn't feel right about doing a series in John where we don't cover this. There's been a ton that we've skipped over in the book of John. We didn't even stop on the most famous verse in the world, John 3.16. We haven't talked about that, which again is why we should be going through this on our own. But I just didn't feel like it was right to go through a series in John without focusing on what Jesus says in John chapter 13, verses 34 and 35. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's a seat back in front of you. And then later when I read the passage, it will be up on the screen. And I think we have it in your bulletin. There's really no reason, unless you're illiterate, to not read John chapter 13, 34, and 35 with us, okay? So in this verse, Jesus gives a summation of all of his teaching for the disciples. He's left with just the 11 faithful disciples that are with him, and we'll get to this in a minute, but he's giving them a summation of everything that he's ever taught them. And I find summaries like that to be the most helpful teaching or the most helpful advice, right? We know that good advice summarizes all the other advice and makes it a little bit more memorable. I think something that we can all relate to is many of us in this room have had kids. And we know that when you're about to have a kid, this is the time when you are receiving the most unsolicited advice you have ever received in your life. The only other thing I've ever experienced like it was when I was about to become a pastor. I had been named the senior pastor, and so I had kind of a month to get my affairs in order and then get up here and take over, at the time, Grace Community Church. And so everybody was giving me advice on how to be a senior pastor, including my atheistic uncle, who hadn't been in a church in like 35 or 40 years. I'm literally, I'm golfing with the guy. It's the last time I'm going to hang out with Uncle Dick. And he's in the fairway practicing, and then he like steps off the ball and he goes, Nathan, you know, I've been thinking about you becoming a pastor. And I'm like, what in the world is going on here? He goes, I just had something I wanted to tell you. And I'm thinking like, just like everybody else, come on, let's go. You haven't been in church in 40 years. Let's see what you got. It was okay advice, but I just thought it was hilarious that an atheist cared about advising me on being a senior pastor, right? And when you're a parent, you get all this parenting advice. It doesn't matter if they've had kids before. It just matters that they've read a book or seen something on Facebook. They will tell you what they saw. And sometimes this advice is even contradictory in nature, right? You got the camp over here saying you should use cloth diapers. And I'm like, you're crazy. And then you got this camp saying you should use regular disposable diapers. I'm like, these are my people, right? You got the camp that says when you get home, you do not let that child sleep in the bed with you. You put them in their room on night one or they are going to develop dependency issues. And you're like, holy crud, that sounds really hard. And then you have other people that are like, you let that child sleep in your bed until they are eight if they need to. They are your precious angel, you know? And Jen's reading books the whole time. Jen's my wife, not just some lady who reads books for me. So she's reading books the whole time. And she's getting all this advice. And it's contrary. This book says this thing, and this book says this thing. You're like, well, which person knows more about this? Who knows? Can I speak to their adult children to see if this worked out? You just don't know, and you're getting so much all the time. But one guy, this was super helpful, Kyle Hale, the worship pastor at the church that I was at at the time, I was on staff with him. He came up to me one day. He had three boys under five. So he had earned his dad's stripes, right? And he comes up to me and he goes, hey man, listen, a lot of people telling you a lot of stuff. And I'm like, yep, and here comes your thing. And he goes, listen, just for the first three months, just keep the kid healthy and stay sane. Whatever you have to do. Don't worry about what you're going to do to them. You're not going to do any permanent damage. Just keep the child healthy and stay sane. Try not to yell at Jen. That's it. Just do that. And I thought, this is good advice. I can do this. I don't know about all the other stuff. I don't know about the five S's and all the things, but I can do this. I can just try to take care of them, and I can try to not yell at Jen. This is good. This is actually how I still parent. Just make sure she's good and try not to get mad at Jen. That was good advice. It was a summation of all the other advice, right? It was memorable and easy and executable. And this is what Jesus does for the disciples in John chapter 13. Here's what's happening in John 13. I actually, I feel a little bit badly about the way that we've done this series in that we haven't done a lot to follow the chronology of Jesus through his ministry and through his life. We've dropped in on snippets of what he's taught and things that he did, but we haven't done a good job of following the chronology of Jesus. So here's what's happening in John chapter 13. Jesus has moved through his life. About the age of 30, he goes public with his ministry and begins calling disciples to him. And then they do ministry together through Israel. Israel is a relatively small country. It's really a small country by any measure. And so all over Israel, they're doing ministry and they're following Jesus around and he's teaching them how to do what he does. He's preparing them to hand them the keys to the kingdom. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but why didn't Jesus just come to earth, live perfectly, become an adult, and die for our sins? Why did he dabble for three years with this public ministry? Why was it essential for him to do this in order to die on the cross for our sins? And I think the answer is Jesus knew he was going to have to leave behind his kingdom in the form of the church. And he knew he was going to have to entrust that to people. And so he wanted to invest three years of his life into some young men so that he can hand the church off to them as passing them the keys to the kingdom. So I'm convinced that he spent an extra three years here on planet Earth with us for the main purpose of training the disciples to get them to a place where they were ready to take over his kingdom called the church and propel it into the future, which they absolutely did, or you guys wouldn't be sitting here in a different continent 2,000 years later, right? So that's what Jesus is doing with the disciples. So about age 30, he goes public, he calls the disciples to them, he trains them for three years, and then at the age of 33, he's crucified. And that week leading into the crucifixion is called Holy Week. And we're in the period of Lent that's leading up to Holy Week now. So Palm Sunday, which this year we're going to celebrate on April the 14th, is the day that Jesus goes into Jerusalem. It's called the triumphal entry. He enters as a king. But this sets in motion a series of events that by Friday has him crucified. We call that Good Friday. And then Easter is when he resurrects on Sunday. So he is in the middle of Holy Week here. It is the end of his life. He's sitting around one night with the disciples. If you were here the first week, we know, you know, that Jesus has just looked at Judas who had betrayed him and said, the thing that you are about to do, go and do it quickly. So Judas has left. He's at the end of his ministry with the 11 faithful disciples who he will hand the keys to the kingdom to and entrust them with the church. And he looks at them and he says, I have a new commandment for you, which is an interesting thing. Because the Bible says that Jesus had that all authority on heaven and on earth had been given to him. He had come down from heaven as God. He was God in the flesh. He could have added all the rules that he wanted to. He could have been given out commandments left and right. He could have done anything that he wanted. He could have made any rules that he wanted. And he waits three years to do it. And right before, like a couple of days before he's going to go be arrested and die for us, he says, oh, by the way, I have a new commandment for you, in verse 33, he calls them little children. Come to me, little children. Jesus doesn't play the little children card a lot. That's like maximum God card, right? Because they're peers. He's a dude, they're dudes. But in this one, he says, little children, listen to me. So this is like, hey, pay attention. Jesus is playing the God card here. He doesn't do this a lot. What's he about to teach? He says, I have a new commandment for you. So we should be leaning in. This is the one rule that Jesus makes. He could have made any rule his whole life. He's made one, and it's going to be this, and it's going to be a summation of all his teachings. So Christians, church, we should lean into this. If you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, you should be very interested in this new commandment that sums up everything that Jesus ever taught and did and said. Non-believers, if you're here and you're considering faith, you should be very interested in this because in this one commandment is the whole of the faith that you are considering. This is a hugely important, crucial passage. And this is what Jesus says to them that night before he prepares to go to heaven. He says this in verse 34. He leans in and he says, little children, disciples, church, for the rest of time, I'm going to give you, I have a new commandment for you. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. This is how the whole world will identify you from this moment on. I want you to love one another as I have loved you. Now, if you've been paying attention in the book of John, you should have some questions. How is this a summation of everything that Jesus teaches, and how is it different than things that he's taught in the past? Because at the beginning of the Gospels, in the beginning of Matthew, and at different places in John, he tells us that we are to, what, love our neighbor as ourselves, right? We know this commandment. This isn't new. This doesn't feel different. We know that we're supposed to love our neighbor as ourselves. In fact, it was commonly known then. Then there's a story where Jesus is talking to a lawyer, a young man who's been studying the law, which incidentally is the Bible, and he asked the lawyer, what do you think are the greatest commandments? And the lawyer says, love your God with all your heart, your soul, and your mind, amen, and love your neighbor as yourself. This was a commonly accepted teaching. So how is this different than this commonly accepted teaching? There's another theme that runs through John of what Jesus teaches. Over and over again, he continues to come back to this idea that it's our job to believe in him. We looked a couple weeks ago when people asked him, what do we do to inherit eternal life? How do we labor for eternity? He says, believe in the one that the Father has sent. When he prays, after he resurrects Lazarus, Lazarus is a friend of his who dies. Jesus shows up at the grave. He brings him back to life, and he prays, and he says, Father, I knew you were going to do this. I did this so that they would believe that I am who I say I am, so that they would believe in the one that you have sent. So over and over, we see this theme in John that Jesus admonishes us to believe in him as the Son of God. And if we see those themes, it's already commonly accepted practice and commonly accepted teaching that we should love our neighbor as ourself, and we know that we should love God as well, and that it's our job to believe in God. How is this a summation of those things that Jesus has taught us? Well, we start when we understand this. When you look at the command to love your neighbor as yourself, do you understand that you are the standard of love in that scenario? That when the admonishment, when the instruction is, love your neighbor like you love yourself. And to love somebody for all intents and purposes is simply to want what's best for them and to act in a way that would bring that about. We love somebody, so we want what's best for them, and we act in a way that would bring that about in their life. That's what we do. And so when we love somebody as we love ourselves, then we are the standard of love in their life. So however we love ourselves is how we ought to love other people. And that's a problem because we are imperfect and we love ourselves imperfectly. There have been seasons of my life where I did not do a good job at loving myself. And if I were to love you like I love myself, then I would probably owe you an apology, right? There are seasons of your life where you love yourself imperfectly. You're not taking care of yourself very well. You're not making the best decisions for yourself. You're not bringing about the best things in your life. And so if you started to love other people like you loved yourself, if we're honest, that's a pretty low bar. When we say that we should love our neighbor as we love ourself, that sets the bar at us. And you'll notice that Jesus says this at the beginning of his ministry, before the disciples have watched him relentlessly love everyone around him. But at the end of his ministry, when they've watched him for three years, graciously and patiently and givingly and sacrificially love everyone around him all the time, Jesus raises the bar on this command. And he says, it's no longer good enough for you to love other people as you love yourself. No, no, you need to love them as I have loved you. You need to go and love other people as you've seen me love them. And when that's the commandment, do you understand that Jesus is now the bar on that love? Before we set the standard, go love others as you love yourself. That's our standard. And he says, no, no, no. I want you to raise it to my standard. Go and love other people as I have loved you. He says this to the disciples who have watched him over the years. Bring sight back to the blind. Make people who can't walk be able to walk again. Love on people who are found in the middle of sin. Restore people who the world would condemn. Argue with the Pharisees. Teach the multitudes. Perform countless miracles. Sit patiently with them. They've watched all of this. And Jesus says, as you have seen me love on you and minister to you, I want you to love one another that way. He sets the bar at himself, not us. But the question then becomes, if I am to love other people as Jesus loved me, how is it that Jesus loves me? And how does that fulfill the instruction that we should believe in Jesus and love God? How can this possibly be a summation of everything that he's taught? And to answer that question, we need to look at the way that Jesus loves. Now, I'm going to give you kind of three categories or ways that Jesus loves us. I would encourage you in your small groups this week as you discuss this, you guys can probably think of more ways or more categories of ways that Jesus loves us. But here are my three this morning. There are three ways, main ways, I think that Jesus loves us. I think Jesus loves us sacrificially, he loves us restoratively, and he loves us recklessly. Sacrificially, restoratively, and recklessly, I think, are ways that Jesus loves us. Sacrificially is obvious, right? If you were to ask anybody, believer, non-believer, anybody who has a cursory knowledge of Scripture at all, how does Jesus love us? One of the answers would be sacrificially. He died for us, so he sacrificed, he gave of himself for us. But it's not just that he died on the cross for us. That's the biggest of sacrifices. But we see him time and again in the gospels give of his time and give of his energy and give of his attention and give of his patience. We see him constantly choosing other people over himself. He even chose homelessness. He has foxes have holds and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. He just wandered around loving on other people, not being concerned with himself. So if we're going to love like Jesus, we need to love sacrificially, which means that we need to give of our time and our effort and our energy and our resources in his name and for him. And this happens a lot. We have people over there who are watching kids so that young families can sit in here and go to church in peace. And some of these families just need to sleep right now. I'm not even mad at them for not paying attention because they just need rest because it's hard to be a parent sometimes, right? So we have people who are giving of their time on a Sunday morning and loving on them so that they can be in here. We have people who are teaching the kids in there, loving on them, giving of their time. We have servants all over the church who are loving well through sacrificing. I see that happening a lot in Grace. Once a month, we do this incredible thing when we go to Pender County that was impacted by the floods. And Florence came in, the hurricane came in, there was floods, and we're good, and everything's settled, everybody's got power. Except out there, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of homes that have been impacted by the floods that are unlivable. Insurance can't help them out, and these people have no options. And so Grace actually sends a team of people down once a month to go and help restore these people and restore their lives and fix their homes. And so the men and women who do that on a monthly basis are going and loving sacrificially. They are giving up a Saturday to be down there, which is a big deal, particularly in NCAA tournament time, to give up these Saturdays. Incidentally, the trip this month got canceled and got moved to this upcoming Saturday. So if that's a way you'd like to love sacrificially, you can sign up for that online or indicate it on your communication card, and that's fine. And so there are all these ways to go out and to love others outside of our homes and to kind of step into the lives of others and love sacrificially, show up for the food drive and love the people, the kids who might not be able to eat over spring break. That's good. But to me, the surest test to know if we're really loving others sacrificially is whether or not we're doing that in our home. It's easy to go out in fits and starts and to kind of drop in and make an appearance and love here and then retreat back to those who know us best and be selfish and need our space and our time and our TV and all the stuff, right? That's easy to do. It's easy to step out and love for a couple of hours and then step back into our shell. I learned this lesson when I was in high school. I was 17 or 18 years old and I had just gone off to summer camp, right? A place called Look Up Lodge in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina. And it made a huge impact on me. I had grown up in the church, grown up, I think, as a Christian. But this was the time, this was the week where I really, really got it. Something switched for me, and I understood Christianity in a way that I never had. And so I'm on fire for Jesus, right? I'm like the classic mountaintop experience kid coming back from camp. Like I am, I am so fired up. I'm ready to charge hell with a water pistol. And it doesn't have to be one of those pump kinds. It can just be like the single action. Like I'm still in, bring it on Satan. I'm coming for you. Like I am ready. And I'm, my hair is on fire for Jesus Jesus. I come back and I'm telling my parents who raised me in the church and who love God and who love me, are super involved with the church. I'm telling them all the things that I'm going to do. I've made all these commitments. I'm going to do all the things. I'm going to start all the Bible studies. I'm going to lead all the things. I'm going to teach the little kids. You've never seen a Christian like me, Dad. I'm going to change the world. Dad says, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I'm like, man, you really cut the legs out from under a guy. And at the time, I thought he was kind of a jerk for saying that. Maybe he still is. But the point that he made is right. That's great. That's wonderful that you've had this mountaintop experience. That's wonderful that you love Jesus. Be nice to your mom and love your sister. It's easy to run out and fake it and sacrifice for others. It's hardest with the people that we know best. That's why we're meanest to the people that we love the most. That's why we have the shortest fuse with them. That's why we sometimes fail to offer the grace to others, the grace inside our home that we offer outside our home. If we want to love sacrificially, then it looks like, for me, this is something that I struggle with, when I come home sometimes, I know we make jokes about pastors and our job, and it is stressful looking at Facebook and golfing a lot, but there are times when I do come home and I am stressed. I've had a lot of meetings and a lot of things, and we've made decisions, and I've had to work hard, and the last thing in the world I want to do is sit on a chair that is too small for me and make Play-Doh donuts. I don't want to do that. I want to sit on a couch that is too big for me and eat donuts. That's what I want to do. But if I love Lily and I love Jen, then I'll come home and I'll sit down and I'll play. And I'll give Jen the space she needs to do the things she needs to do because she hasn't had that space all day and I'll engage with my daughter. If we love our family, we'll come home and we'll sacrifice for them. If we love the people around us, then we will consider their needs before they have to consider their own. I think sacrificial love shows up first in the people that we know best. Jesus also loves us restoratively. He seeks to restore us. There are so many examples of this. A couple weeks ago, Kyle did a great job preaching about the woman at the well, who at that time had had five husbands and was living with the sixth man who she was not yet married to, which by any account throughout all of history is generally referred to as scandalous, right? And Jesus doesn't bring it up. He just mentioned it as if it's true, but he doesn't seek to condemn her about it. He's far more concerned about restoring her and letting her know about who he is and the promises that he makes and her need for him. In the book of John, there's a story that some versions include where there's a woman who's brought to him in adultery in the city streets. And the Pharisees, the religious leaders say, should we stone her? And he has this impossible question to answer. And he does this thing where he makes everybody, he convinces everybody to go away by riding in the dirt. And once everyone is gone, he looks at the woman and he says, is there anyone left to condemn you? And she says, no, Lord. And he says, and neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. He's not there to condemn her. He's not there to convince her, hey, you know adultery is wrong and you really shouldn't do it. You know that the thing that you were doing was shameful and that I don't like it. And that when you do that, you trample on my love. Like I'm here to die for you because you do stuff like that. Could you maybe knock it off? He doesn't say that. He says, neither do I condemn you. Now go and sin no more. We've extended this series a week so that I can preach to you about the restoration of Peter after he messes up. Peter messes up big time. And Jesus comes to him and he has every right to get onto him and condemn him and he doesn't. He simply restores him. What we see in the ministry of Jesus over and over and over again is that he is far more concerned with restoring you than condemning you. And in the church, when we look at other people, it gets so easy to identify that as sin. Is that person sinning? Is that person doing something that's wrong? Look at what they're doing in their life. Doesn't that count as sin? And Jesus says, yeah, maybe, but how about we love them first? He doesn't let them off the hook. He says, go and sin no more. Go and don't do this thing anymore. But first, he says, neither do I condemn you. He's always, always, always more interested in restoring than condemning, in restoration than condemnation. And if we are going to love other people like Jesus loves us, then when we approach others, we should always be primarily concerned with their restoration to spiritual health, not condemning them and defining what they're doing. We restore people. We do not condemn. That's the Lord's job. And Jesus loves us recklessly. Now, I like this one because we're going to sing a song after the sermon called Reckless Love. I think it's called Reckless Love. I never know song titles. It should be called Reckless Love. And it's about the reckless love of God. And it was a popular song in Christian circles. But we had some debates and some discussions about it as a staff because part of the concern was that it was erroneous to call God's love reckless because reckless kind of infers that there's mistakes made, that it's just like reckless abandon, that there might be some mess up or some error to his love or some misjudgments within his love, but it's good and it's fine and we like God's love and so that's okay. So that maybe it was almost theologically inaccurate. But after we talked about it some more, we decided to go ahead and sing the song. And I'll confess to you that the first time I ever even looked at the lyrics of the song was when we were singing it on Sunday morning because I'm really bad about keeping current with worship songs. We do a playlist on Spotify with the songs that Grace Raleigh does, and that's my worship. That's what I listen to. And if it's not on there, I don't listen to it. So I had not heard this song before. And as we're going through it on Sunday and I'm looking at the lyrics and it talks about how he leaves the 99 and he comes after us and he always chases us and he always pursues us and there's no wall that he won't kick down and there's no mountain that he won't climb to come after us. What I realize about the recklessness of God is that it's talking about this emotional recklessness where he has no regard for how much we hurt him. He is always going to pursue us. That's the recklessness of God. It doesn't matter how many times someone rejects him. It doesn't matter how many times someone makes him a promise and says, God, I'm never going to do the thing again. And then they turn around and they do the thing. It doesn't matter how many times we betray God or we walk away from him or we break his heart or we break his rules or we hurt his spirit, he is always going to forgive us and he is always going to pursue us. It doesn't matter how many times he extends a hand to us and we knock the hand away and we say, I'm not interested. He is still going to extend the hand again. He recklessly pursues us. This is the picture that he lays out in the Old Testament when he has a prophet named Hosea marry a prostitute named Gomer. He says, I want you to go and I want you to take Gomer as your wife. She doesn't deserve you. I want you to go marry her anyway. So Hosea, in obedience, does it, marries her. Inevitably, she cheats on him, goes back to her old life, and God speaks to Hosea again and he says, go back and get her and marry her again, regardless of the toll that it takes on you. That's the reckless love of God. Because there is something very human and very natural to this idea that once our heart has been broken, once someone's turned us down enough times, once someone has disappointed us enough times, once someone has required our forgiveness more than a few times, there's a very natural human thing to do to recoil and to withdraw our love from them and to not pursue them as hard and to not go after them as hard because it's hurt us so many times in the past. And so we recoil out of this sense of self-protection and we build up walls and we don't let other people in because we've been hurt so many times, and we've been damaged so many times that we don't want to experience that again, so we learn to protect ourselves from the possibility of other people hurting us. And God's reckless love says, I don't care how many times you hurt me, I'm gonna get up and I'm gonna pursue you. That's the recklessness of God. And if we want to love like Jesus, then we love recklessly. This is how Jesus is able to tell Peter how many times to forgive people, right? Peter goes to Jesus and he says, Jesus, how many times should I forgive someone when they wronged me? When someone wrongs me, when they disappoint me, when they let me down, when they break my heart, when I thought I could count on them and they show me that I can't and it really, really hurts, how many times should I forgive them? Up to seven times seven. As many times as it takes, you forgive them until they do it right. You forgive them as many times as you have to. You recklessly pursue them with your love. That's what it means to love like Jesus loved. We love sacrificially, we love restoratively, and we love recklessly. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking about how to love in that way, what becomes very apparent is we are not able to do that. We are not able in and of ourselves to love in those ways, to love perfectly sacrificially, to always empathize and love with restoration in mind. We are not able to love recklessly. We do not possess the ability to do that. And this is how it fulfills Jesus' teaching that we ought also to believe in him. Because what we understand is it is impossible to love others like Jesus loved us without Jesus's possession of and power in our hearts. You see, unless we believe in Jesus and he has taken up residency in our heart and has possession of our heart and his power is working in our hearts to change our ways and our desires to his and our ability to love to His. Unless He's doing that, unless we've loved God enough to believe Him and place our faith in Christ, there is no possible way we can be obedient to the command to love one another as Christ has loved us. So in this, we come full circle in seeing that it is really a summation of everything that Jesus has taught. It raises the bar on the commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. It fulfills the commandment to love God and fulfills the commandment to believe in the one that he has sent because it's impossible to do it without believing in Jesus. And in that way, it's a summation of everything that Jesus ever taught. Simply go and love. Andy Stanley says it this way. He's a pastor in Atlanta. He says, when you don't know what to say or do, just love others as God through Christ loves you. That's what we do. We love other people sacrificially. We love them restoratively. We love them recklessly. And then Jesus says, this is how the world will know that you are my disciples. This is how I want the world to look at you and know that you belong to me. This is what I want to be your defining and distinguishing characteristic. This should be the way the world identifies you to look at the way you love one another and you love others. That's what I want to define you. And this is something that I think the church gets messed up sometimes. He does not say that the world will know that you are my disciples by what you stand against, by how you define sin, by who you choose to condemn, by what you stand up and rally against in Washington. That's not how we are going to be defined. We're not going to be defined and identified by the world by our good doctrine or dogma or theology. We aren't made known to the world by winning a Bible knowledge trivia contest. We're not made known. The world will not know that we are his disciples by how well we know this book. Now, all of that flows out of our love for him, but it is not our definitive thing. It is not our distinguishing characteristic. Our distinguishing characteristic is who and how well we love. That's what Jesus wants to define us. All the other things are important, but if we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we believe. If we fail to love others first, nobody cares what we're against. If we fail to love others first, then nobody cares how well we serve. We are first to love others sacrificially, distortively, and recklessly. And this is how we will be defined. This is how the world will know that we are his disciples. What would it look like for you to be known in that way? What would it look like for the people around you to say whatever it is they want to say about you, but at the end of the day, that person loves people well? What would it look like to love people so different and in a way that was so other that when people saw you doing it, they were drawn to your God because there must be something else going on here. Nobody could possibly love others that well. Nobody could possibly sacrifice that much. Nobody could possibly mean it. You know how when you meet somebody who's super nice and super gracious and they're very kind to everyone, you think to yourself, they're faking it. You think to yourself, what do they look like when they're down? What if you never were? What if you weren't faking it? Because that love was fueled by Jesus and you loved everybody just as hard as he did. What if this was the distinguishing and defining characteristics of our homes? What if when someone entered into your home and spent some time with you and your family, when they left and they got in the car and whatever else they said about your home, I really like her napkins or those curtains or that's what cozy farmhouse looks like and that's what I want to do. Like whatever else they said about your home, the one thing that they took away was, man, those people love each other well. Man, I felt loved in that house. What if your kids growing up in your house, the one thing they'll say about mom and dad is, listen, they did some crazy stuff and there's some crazy, I got to knock off of me here in adulthood, but man, they love me well. And when I brought friends over, they loved them too. What if that's what was said about your house? That they showed the love of Christ there? What if that's what's said about the church? That when people come to Grace Raleigh, they walk away, and whatever else they experienced here, sermon was okay, music was great, announcements were outstanding. Whatever else they experienced here, they walk away and they go, those people love well. Those people loved me. And I'll brag on you a little bit because I don't think we're too terribly bad at this. Last week we had a guy here, we're getting our website redone. He's our web developer, a guy named Hugh. And Hugh is here. I invited him to just see the church and kind of learn more about us. And so he came in, and he came in after the first service, stayed in the lobby, came to the second service, and then I talked to him afterwards. And I just said, hey, you know, thanks for coming, whatever. And he said, dude, I love this place. I said, really? He says, yeah, these are the friendliest people I've ever met in my life. And he wasn't kidding. He said, they were so nice. He lives on the other side of Cary, like 40 minutes away. He said, if I lived closer, my family would start coming here next week. This place is incredible. So good on you if you were a part of that. I think this is one of the things we do well, but I think we can do it better. What if we were a church where no matter what other people experienced, they walked away and they said, those are some of the friendliest people I've ever met. What if that were everyone's experience? What if when you brought a visitor here, you brought friends or family here, they walked away and they said, that place loves well. It starts in the individual, it goes into the home, and then it comes here. And if we could be a church that loves other people well, that's what we become known for, that's the kind of church I want to be a part of. And you're here, I know, because that's the kind of church you want to be a part of too. But it begins with us. It begins with us pursuing Jesus and asking him and praying, help me to love other people as you have loved me. And what I love about this teaching is Jesus knows he's about to leave the disciples on earth. He's been a physical presence there. He has been the representative of the Godhead there. But he is about to leave and they're going to be the ones who carry the torch. And what better way as the torchbearers of Christ to represent him to the rest of the world than to go and be the embodiment of love to them as Jesus was. Let's pray. Father, we do love you. We love you imperfectly. We love you inconsistently. We love you often half-heartedly. Often, God, we love you forgetfully. God, please continue to work in our hearts to draw us near you that we may love you more. And that out of that love, we might love other people more. Give us the grace and the patience to love sacrificially, God. Give us the sympathy and empathy and insight to love restoratively and give us the strength and the faith to love recklessly. God, may we, may our homes, may this place be known and identified for how well we offer your love to others. It's in your son's name I pray. Amen.