Sermons tagged with Trust

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. Somebody's near those lights in the back. Can we hit them? Thanks, David. Both of them. There we go. I want to be able to see everybody, even Jim Adams in the back. Welcome to Grace. It's good to have you here. I'm so excited to be kicking off the fall. I really, as a pastor and just as a person who's no longer in school, hate the summertime. It is too hot. Nothing in my life calls for the temperature to be over 70 degrees. I really like football, and I really like two services, and I really like when small groups start. So I'm so excited to be launching into this new series. As a clerical note, as we begin here today, those of you that got the bulletin when you came in and you are my note takers and you like to fill in the blanks, I have bad news for you. I'm not going to use those today, okay? I'm going to use them kind of. There's going to be enough in the sermon that you can fill in the blanks if you really want to, but I went back to Alan running the computer and I said, we're just going to put the verse on the screen when I get to it. Other than that, don't worry about the notes because they're just going to mess me up this morning. Okay. So anyways, I just wanted you to know that. Don't get frustrated when you're like, I don't know what to write down. You're not gonna. It's going to be a big fun mystery. I want to take you to our staff meetings. We have staff meetings now every Tuesday, every Tuesday, full-time staff. So that's me and then Steve. Yeah, the one with the curly hair that comes up here sometimes. Steve, our worship pastor. Kyle, our excited student pastor. I'm a little worried that the stage is now too wide for him. It's got too much space up here. And then Aaron, our wonderful children's pastor. And then sometimes some of our part-time staff will join us for lunch and stick around for a meeting. So that's what we do every Tuesday. And so we go out to lunch and then we come back and we sit down in a room over there and we talk about whatever it is we need to talk about. And I don't know how your staff meetings go. I'm sure that you are all on staff or have been on staff in different places. You have meetings that everyone loves. And I don't know how well you guys stay focused, but I know for us, all of our meetings go at least 33% longer than they need to because all four of us are very prone to chasing rabbits. It can very easily go something like this. If you could please silence your cell phones, that would be super. I'm just messing around. I just always wanted to say that. We'll sit down in a meeting and we'll be like, okay, we got to plan the Hootenanny. Hootenanny's coming up. We got to plan it. Let's talk about it. What do we want to do here? And then I'll say like, what kind of food should we serve? And maybe Aaron will say, well, how about just hot dogs? Those are easy. Let's try hot dogs. And then Steve will go, oh, man, I was downtown, and I had the best hot dogs at Crazy 8's. They were so good. You guys have got to try this restaurant. And then Aaron will be like, yeah, Harris and I love that restaurant. That's the best. And then I'll hear about Harris, and I'll get excited and be like, hey, how's Harris doing? Is he doing okay? Has he been able to get out and golf lately? I know that dude likes golfing. And then Kyle will be like, yo, me and Harris just went frisbee golfing like yesterday. It was great. And I'll go, get out of here. Where did you go? And he'll say, we went to such and such park. And then Steve will go, Grayson loves that park. And then Aaron will say, I do too. And then I'll go, let's all get together and hang out at the park. What do we need to bring? Hot dogs? And then eventually somebody goes, hey, hey, hey, hootenanny. We've got to focus. And we go, oh, yeah, okay. And then we go. I mean, am I lying? That's totally how it goes. And we've got to stop. We get to wandering off. We get caught up in everything else, and then we have to refocus on what's important. And I bring that up because I think that that happens in life, right? I think that in life we all choose our priorities and our things that are important to us. If I were to ask any of you, what are the three most important things in your life, for most of the people in the room, even if you're lying because I'm the pastor, you would say, well, my faith and my family and then like job or friendships or whatever else comes next. We'd all say those things to one degree or another. But then as we get into life, sometimes that gets skewed a little bit because life just gets crazy. I was talking to somebody last week who said that they learned while all three of their daughters were in middle school, high school time, they got a new car, and they learned very quickly that the mom was putting 1,000 miles a week on her car just getting all the kids to all the different places that they needed to be. That's busy, man. That's hectic. We volunteer for stuff. We overextend. We fill our calendar so that we feel like we're doing something and we don't have any time in the margins. We got to go to meetings that we don't care about. A lot of us live our life out of a sense of ought. Someone asks us to do something and when we feel like since they asked me, I should say yes. And then we wake up in the morning resenting that thing that we have to do, but we go and we do it anyways because this is what good people do. And we just go on to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. And I think that sometimes our years get away from us. And this is why holidays are great. Because holidays force us to slow down and focus on this thing that we've designated as important. Right? This is how Mother's Day works. We go through the year, and I don't know who gave it to us, Hallmark maybe, I can't back that up with paperwork, but we're grateful to them. We go through the year, and if we have a good mom, we take her for granted sometimes. We forget to tell her that she's awesome. We forget to thank her for all the things that she does. We forget to call her when we should. And we just kind of go through the year doing that. And then May comes and everybody goes, hey, hey, Mother's Day. All right. Say you're grateful. Oh, yes, thank you. And then we do the flowers and the hugs and we go eat at the restaurant with the bad service, right? That's what we do. It's the same for our anniversary. If you're married, you go through the year. And often, I mean, it never happens in my marriage with Jim, but I've heard that other people take one another for granted and they just go through the year kind of forgetting and then your anniversary comes up and you go, oh, that's right. And for that day, you focus on what's important. And I think that this is what holidays do for us. I think holidays orient us on what really matters. Holidays remind us to focus on what's actually important. This is why I think God instilled some holidays in the calendar in the Old Testament. This is an aside. I couldn't move through the sermon without saying this because it's something I've been thinking about with the rhythm of life. We're going to spend the next six weeks looking at the six festivals or holidays or feasts that God installed into the calendar of his people that we see in Leviticus chapter 16. We're going to look at those six holidays and figure out what they mean for us and what we're celebrating now as we remember them. And I've loved diving into them. I've learned more, more quickly than I have in a long time because this represented a big gap in my biblical knowledge. And so one of our great partners gave me a stack of books that I've just been reading through for every holiday. It's been so enriching. But one of the things I've been thinking about is if holidays serve to reorient us on what's important, to take our focus off all the stuff and focus us in on what really matters. And this is the rhythm that God has installed so that every now and again, at a certain rhythm over the course of the year, before we get too far off the mark, God goes, hey, and he focuses us. Then isn't this what happens on Sundays? As he installed the rhythm of church, we go through our weeks, and before we can get too far away, God brings us back into church and focuses us on him and says, hey, don't forget about me, I'm important. And isn't that what's great about the rhythm of waking up every day and spending time in God's word and time in prayer? I've said a bunch of times that you can develop no more important habit in your life than to spend time in God's Word and time in prayer every day. And if nothing else happens, if this sermon this morning is a dud and you leave here, you're like, I didn't get anything out of that. I wouldn't blame you. If you get up and you read the Bible in that particular week, you kind of go, gosh, I just didn't get anything out of this. I just didn't see anything today. Isn't it good that if nothing else happened, there's this rhythm in your life of bringing your focus back to God every day through prayer and through scripture reading and every week through church and then every so often through the holidays that he instills. I think there's something to a rhythm of life that reorients us on what's important. But we're going to spend the next six weeks looking at the festivals that God installed in the Hebrew calendar. We're going to do this with a little bit of an awareness of why God did this and when he started these in history. So just so we're all on the same page, the Hebrew nation really looks at the people of Israel, God's chosen people, they really look back at Abraham as their founding father, as their forefather. For Christianity, he's kind of the forefather or the founding father of the faith. For the unindoctrinated, he would be like our George Washington, okay? Like he was the guy. And so way back in Genesis 12, God made Abram, at the time he wasn't yet Abraham, some promises. Three promises of land of people and of blessing. I'm going to give you the land that we know as modern day Israel. Your descendants will be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore. That's going to be the Hebrew people, the Jewish people. There's going to be a bunch of them. And then one of your descendants is going to bless the whole earth, is the promise. So in Genesis 12, God makes these promises to Abraham, and through those promises, he becomes the forefather, the founding father of the Jewish faith and of our faith, if you're a believer. Then from him, he had some sons, and a couple generations later, there's Joseph. Joseph is a guy who ends up down in Egypt. All of Abraham's family moved down to live with Joseph. The Bible fast forwards 400 years between the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus, the first and second books of the Bible. And then we have Moses sitting there in Egypt. They are a people who are enslaved by Egypt and God tasks Moses in Exodus 3 and 4, the burning bush, with leading his people out of slavery. So Moses leads the people out of slavery. They're in the desert. They're wandering around, and it's this fascinating time. It's fascinating biblically, but just historically, if you like to think about things like this. Here's this nation of people, maybe about 500,000 strong, between three and 500,000 strong, that are living as nomads in the desert. And they have to now figure out life. They have to figure out laws. They have to figure out a religion. They have to figure out a civil structure. And so Moses installs a government and God gives them laws. This is the Ten Commandments that he carries down from the mountain. They start meeting. They set up a tabernacle, and they have a whole group of people called the Levites, or the priests, who are in charge of setting up the tabernacle and performing all the ceremonies necessary at the tabernacle to relate to the God that's meeting them. They start to form this little society, this little civilization. And as part of the civilization, God says, I want you to have six holidays that you observe every year. And so for the next six weeks, we're going to look at those six holidays. Because what these holidays do is they teach us and they show us that our God is a God of remembrance and he's a God of celebration. Our God is a God of remembrance and he is a God of celebration. He wants us at each of these holidays to remember something that he's done, to look back at something that he's done. He wants us to celebrate something that he's done. And I kind of like pointing that part of God's character out to people. I think sometimes we get the idea that church needs to be somber and sober and serious and that I should be wearing a suit and that we should put on our best for God and that it needs to be just high church of the utmost all the time, when really God designed fun. He initiated fun. He gave you the ability to smile. He likes laughter. He likes hearing your laughter. He likes watching us laugh together and enjoy one another, which is why in a couple of weeks when we have the Hootenanny, there's going to be a bunch of silly stuff and a bunch of funny stuff around that. We're going to have competitions in the service, and if you win one, you're going to get a fanny pack, and it's going to be the Hootenanny fanny. And you get to wear it to the Hootenanny so that everybody sees how awesome you are for the rest of the day. You're going to be the king or the queen of the hootenanny. It's going to be great. And we'll laugh and we'll giggle and we'll share stories and we'll talk about fantasy football. I'm going to win the league this year at the church. Worst to first, it's going to be an incredible story. And listen, God celebrates that. God ordains that. When we have the moments in here where we cry and we're brought low, those are holy moments. But when we have the moments where we celebrate and we're brought high, those are holy moments too because God initiated those. He is a God of remembrance and of celebration and we'll see these in the festivals. So this week we want to look at the first festival that God orders in Leviticus chapter 16. It's called the Feast of Trumpets, and it's initiated by the sounding of a trumpet, which is why we had Brandon come up and play the shofar at the beginning of the service. If you didn't get to see that because maybe you rolled in a little bit late, then you have to stay for the beginning of the next service. It's just a must. So he sounded the trumpet, and it initiated the service, and that's what they would do for the beginning of the next service. It's just, it's a must. So he sounded the trumpet and it initiated the service. And that's what they would do for the Feast of Trumpets is they would sound it and it would initiate and bring in the Jewish New Year is what it was a celebration of. Oddly enough, I don't know how it works out. Okay, I don't ask questions like this. Their New Year began in the seventh month of the year. It was a month called Tishri. It mirrored a large portion of September and the beginning of October. So according to the calendar, we're observing it and looking at it at exactly the right time. And I think that that's really cool because to me, this first full service, I mean, we had Labor Day, we did Grace Serves, and it was amazing. But this first full service in September, to me, initiates the new year at Grace, the new ministry year. And that may sound funny to you, but for me, the rhythms of the year kind of work like this. In September, everything's back, right? Small groups are back, people are back from vacation, and the church is full again, and people are consistent again, and schedules are a little bit more regular. And so September is a big month at Grace. And so we push hard in September. We get ready for it, and we push, push, push, and we go, go, go. And really, we push really hard until Christmas. And Christmas is a big celebration. And then we kind of take a deep breath, and we get ready because January is a huge month too. We gear up for January, then we push really hard to Easter and then through Mother's Day and then after Mother's Day, schedules kind of start to get irregular again. People go on vacation and we know that. That's perfectly fine. And then over the summer, we kind of take a deep breath and then we gear up for September again. So that's kind of the rhythm of church. And so to me, this Feast of Trumpets mirrors our new year as well. Their new year mirrors our new year. And so I thought it was a good place to start as we dive into these feasts. And they sound the trumpet because it was symbolic of a lot of things in Hebrew culture. The trumpet, the shofar, the ram's horn. And we have a small one, but you guys have probably seen those big, long, loud ones that would just fill the area with sound. You've probably seen those. Trumpets meant something to a Jewish person. There's the ram's horn, but then there was also a silver trumpet that was sometimes sounded. And the silver trumpet was emblematic or symbolic of the redemption that God buys for us, the way that he makes a way for us to be right with him. You would sound a shofar as a battle cry. You would sound it so that people would prepare for an announcement. It was sounded around the walls of Jericho. To me, one of the coolest things, because there's a parallel in our New Testament, is it would be sounded to call the workers in from the harvest. So it's time for synagogue or it's time for temple. One of the priests would go out and he would sound the shofar and all the people working out in the field would hear the sound far off and know to come in because it was time to gather for assembly. And I think that's really cool because in Thessalonians and in Corinthians, we're told that one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to claim his children to himself. And if you're here and you're alive, then you are a worker in the field. You are active. You should be about actively bringing other people along with you to heaven. We all have work to do. That's one of the reasons why at Grace we have partners. We don't have members because we kind of believe that members tend to consume and that partners tend to contribute. And we believe that we are an entity that is about getting something done. So we're looking for people to partner with us. We are laborers in the field and workers for the harvest. And one day Jesus is going to return and he's going to call us home. And do you know what we're going to hear when he does that? The sound of a trumpet. I would bet everything I have that it's a shofar. What a beautiful parallel there is from the Old Testament to the New Testament promises. But I think the most profound symbolism that we see in the Feast of Trumpets is that the horn that was blown is symbolic of the ram that was caught in the thicket in Genesis 22. I told you that Abraham was the forefather of the Hebrew people and that God promised him that through you, you're going to have a ton of descendants. This was an issue because Abraham and his wife Sarah had not yet had any children. And so very late in life, I think Abraham was 99, if I remember my Bible correctly, they had a son named Isaac. And a few years into Isaac's life, God says, I'd like you to offer Isaac to me. And so Abraham, in obedience, gets up and takes the physical manifestation of the promises of God to this land, to this region of Moriah, up onto a hill, and he prepares to sacrifice him. And right at the moment where Abraham was going to strike down Isaac, he hears a voice that says, Abraham, Abraham, do not touch the boy. And there's a ram caught in the thicket. And the voice tells him, go and get the ram and let that die in Isaac's place. And so he goes and he gets it and he kills the ram and the ram dies so that Isaac doesn't have to. And it's the picture of the sacrificial system in the Old Testament that says and acknowledges that when we sin, and sin is any time we put our authority in our life over God's authority in our life. God says, I think that you should do this thing, and we go, no, I don't think so. I think I need to do this thing. That's sin. Whatever it is, it's when we elevate our judgment over God's in our life. And when we do that, we're separated from God. And that separation requires a death. And so God in his sovereignty in the Old Testament installed the sacrificial system so that essentially that ram dies so that Isaac doesn't have to. It's a picture of what's called a substitutionary atonement. And the really cool part of this is, this is what the Hebrew people would remember. So on the Feast of Trumpets, the trumpet is blown. It stands for all these things, but it most pointedly stands for the ram caught in the thicket in Genesis chapter 22. And so God told them, I want you to remember the promise that I made to Abraham, your forefather, and then remember how I kept it in the form of a ram. And now here you are today at the time in the land of Israel with the promises of God kept. And so what the Feast of Trumpets is really is a time for us to celebrate and remember the promises that God has kept to us and anticipate the promises that God has made to us. And so for a Christian, as we look at this festival, what we understand is that it points directly to Jesus. Do you know what the picture in Genesis 22, when Abraham takes Isaac up on the mount, do you know what that's a picture of? It's a picture of the crucifixion of Christ. Do you understand that all of Israel looked forward? They would celebrate the Feast of Trumpets every year. They would celebrate, next week we're going to look at Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. They would look at that and how there was an atoning work done for them. And they would anticipate one day God's going to send a Messiah, his son, a messianic figure, and he will be the atonement for us all. He will be the ram for us all. And so it was a remembrance of the promise that God made to Abraham and a looking forward to the fulfillment of that promise. And as believers now in 2019, we look back and we see how God kept his promise to Abraham and his people by providing Jesus. That the sacrifice of Jesus to that point is the apex and the perfection of history. That all of history before Jesus looked forward to him coming. That the feast of trumpets was a yearly reminder that we anticipate the coming of Jesus. And then after that, we anticipate this perfect utopia that God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth where his children live in peace, and that Jesus brings that about. And as New Testament believers, we see that the ram is really a picture of Jesus. And so the shofar that is sounded at the Feast of Trumpets to us is not a reminder of the ram. It's a thing that points to Jesus. And it's our job to remember on a day like this the promises that God made to us and kept so that we can gleefully anticipate the ones that he will keep. To me, the Feast of Trumpets is a big ceremony that's existed for thousands of years to point us to what I believe is the most hopeful passage in all of Scripture. If you were to talk to an ancient Hebrew person on the day of the Feast of Trumpets, they would tell you that one of the promises they were anticipating, the main promise they were anticipating was being in eternity with God one day. It was a utopia that God is going to create with a new heaven and a new earth. And if you were to talk to a Christian and say, what are you hoping in? We would tell you, ultimately, we are hoping in an eternity spent with God. And in Revelation chapter 21, one through four, we see this eternity kind of synopsized in four verses. John writes this. The dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. If you are a believer, if you call God your father and Jesus your savior, then that is the hope that you cling to. When life doesn't make sense, when things get hard, when days are dark, that is the hope that we cling to. And we cling to that hope because Romans tells us that our hope will not be put to shame. We cling to that hope because we remember the other promises that God has kept. And if he's kept those promises, then I know he'll keep that promise. If he's been faithful to his church through Jesus and his death, then I know that he'll be faithful to his church through Jesus and his return. I know that I'll hear a trumpet again one day and I know that he's gonna call me into this promise in Revelation where all the wrong things will be made right and all the sad things will be made untrue. And all the things that you don't understand in this life will make sense. And so on the Feast of Trumpets, we reflect on the promises that God has kept. And we eagerly anticipate the ones that he will fulfill. We do that as a body of believers, as the church Big C Church. We do that as Grace, Little C Church. It would be right and good to reflect on where the church has been and how God has been faithful to us through the years and anticipate what we believe his promises are about our church as we move forward. And I think most importantly this morning, it's a time for us as individuals to reflect on the promises that God has kept in our life and be hopeful about the things that he will bring about in our life. Some of us are walking through hard times. For some of us, our anxiety level when we walked in here is up to here. We're struggling with depression. We're struggling with anxiety. We're struggling with sleepless nights. We're struggling with indecision or pain or hardship or grief. And if we're not struggling now, we know enough about life to know that those days come, that there's dark days too. And the Feast of Trumpets slows us down in the midst of our anxiety and focuses us and says, hey, do you remember all the things that God has done for you so far? He will see you through the next thing. And so I think it's right and good today for all of us, no matter where we are, no matter how we felt when we walked in the room, to remember the ways that God has come through for us in the past and know that he will come through for us in the future. I've shared with you guys before that the most difficult season of my life was our miscarriage. We struggled for a long time to get pregnant. We finally did, and then we learned that we had lost the baby. Those are the darkest months of my life. That shook my faith the most. That made me the most angry with God. Those days were the most difficult ones to pray. Those were hard. And I remember those moments. But now I have a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Lily. And she's the fulfillment of things. She's the promise of God. She's my physical manifestation of his goodness that he will come through for me. And every now and again, I get to put her to bed. Most nights not because Jen is her favorite and she makes that very clear. She will tell me, Mommy is my favorite. I do not like you today. Okay. Same as our friends. But when I do get to put her to bed, we do the whole routine. And then finally we lay down and I'm laying there next to her and I sing her some songs. And the last song that I always sing is God is so good. God is so good. He's so good. He's so good to me. And she doesn't know it. She thinks I'm just singing. But she's the goodness. And the last stanza, there's a bunch of different ways you can sing that song, but the last stanza that I always sing when I put her to bed at night is God answers prayer. He answers prayer. He's so good to us. He answers prayer in your life too. You have the manifestations of God's goodness in your life too. And the Feast of Trumpets, even in the hardest of times, focuses us on the promises that God has kept for us in the past and gives us hope even when we don't see how, even when we can't piece together why, that God will fulfill those promises in the future, that he will see us through again. So today, that's what we celebrate. I'd like you to pray with me, and then we're going to move into a time of communion together. Father, we love you. You are so good to us. You do answer prayer. God, you've seen us through so many seasons of our lives. You've come through in so many ways. Father, I pray specifically for those who came in with heavy hearts this morning for whatever reason. That you would focus them in on the things that you've done for them in the past so that they might have a little hope that the future is bright too. God, thank you for all the manifestations of the goodness in our life. I pray that we would take a minute today and realize those before we get out of here, before we run out and let life pick up again and forget what we should be focused on. I pray that we would each take just a minute and be grateful for your goodness in our life and the way that you've come through for us in the past. God, be with our brothers and sisters, our family members who are hurting. Pray that you would heal them. Pray that you would give them your peace. And we thank you that you are a God of celebration and that you are a God of remembrance, Lord. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, my name is Nate. They let me be the lead pastor here. If I haven't got a chance to meet you, I would love to get to do that after the service. We are finishing up our summer series called Obscure Heroes. I'm really excited about that. Yesterday, I got home from doing a wedding and then on my TV, there was football and it's less than 70 degrees when I woke up this morning and church is full and schedules are normal and small groups are starting, and all the things in life that I love are happening. Fall is the best, and summer is the worst, and this is the last Sunday of summer. Praise Jesus. And so next week, we do the Grace Serves, and then two services we launch into a series that I'm particularly excited about. It was not my idea. Somebody at the church gave it to me. One of our great partners suggested it. We're going to look at the six festivals that God installed into the Hebrew calendar in the Old Testament to see and remind ourselves that God is a God of remembering. He's a God of celebration. He's a God of commemoration. And all of that is worth learning about and celebrating. We're going to have a really fun, worshipful fall. We're going to have the Hootenanny, second annual one. Get your fanny to the Hootenanny. It's going to be the line there. That's going to be on September 22nd, along with some baptism. So I'm really, really excited about what we have coming up for you in the months of September and October. I think they're going to be huge months for Grace. But this morning, we want to finish up Obscure Heroes. I'm so grateful to Kyle for speaking for me last week, just so that you guys know that was planned for a long time because one of the things that I think is super important as a pastor is that you guys, as the church, get to hear other voices. And don't just hear me beating the same drum and playing the same notes every week. I would get tired of me. I know that you guys probably are already. So we want to have other voices and other perspectives speak into the spiritual life and have some spiritual authority here at Grace. So inviting other people up here to give the sermon is always going to be a part of who we are and part of how we do ministry, just so that doesn't surprise you guys as we move forward. But this week, I get to finish up our summer series. We've been looking at obscure heroes, characters in the Bible, people that we see in Scripture that we may not be familiar with, that we may not have heard of before, people who are a little bit less prominent, whose stories we may not know, and kind of asking the question, God, why are they in the Bible? Why do we hear this story? What can I learn from their story and their example that I can apply to my life? And I've enjoyed doing this series with you. This week, we're going to look at what I believe to be is a collection of the most obscure heroes in the Bible. We don't even get their names. They come at the end of Hebrews chapter 11, one of my favorite passages tucked into the most beautifully written book in the New Testament. If you're not familiar with Hebrews, it's a letter. It's towards the end of the Bible. There's this many pages in front of it and this many pages behind it. So it's towards the end, right? And it's a letter. We don't know who wrote it. We used to think that Paul wrote it, but increasingly we don't think that's the case. Basically, the thinking goes, it's too good for Paul to have written. So we don't think that he wrote it, but it's this incredibly beautifully written book. It has this incredibly high view of Christ as the Messiah, as the priest once and for all, as the sacrifice once and for all. And towards the end of it, in chapter 11, the author breaks into this discourse on faith. And he opens up the chapter and he defines faith and says that faith is the substance of things hoped for, it's the belief in things unseen. And then he chronicles all of these heroes, these heavy hitters of our faith, if you're a believer, of our shared faith, and shows us what they did by faith. And to a lot of folks in the church world and theological circles, Hebrews chapter 11 is actually known as the hall of faith. It chronicles a lot of the heavy hitters in the Old Testament. And he concludes it with this idea in Hebrews 12 that we're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, and so we should run our race too. But as he goes through the book, he highlights the different people. He starts at the very beginning. He starts with Abel, and he says, by faith, Abel offered the sacrifice that God asked for. He gets to Abraham. He says, by faith, Abraham moved from a place called Ur to a place called Canaan because God told him to. Some of us know the story in Genesis 22. By faith, Abraham offered Isaac when he was asked to. By faith, Joseph served Potiphar and Pharaoh. By faith, Moses led the Hebrew people out of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea and brought down the Ten Commandments. By faith, Joshua crossed the Jordan River and conquered Jericho. And then one of our obscure heroes, by faith, Rahab protected the spies and helped the armies of Israel. And so he chronicles all these heroes that we've heard of before. And as he gets to the end of that, the author's kind of made his point. And he says, should I keep going? Should I keep listing off names? And then he offers us some of the judges. Do I need to tell you about the faith of Gideon and of Samson and of Jephthah and of Barak? Do I need to enumerate what they've done as well? And then he starts talking about the prophets and some of the things that they've suffered. And then at the end of the chapter, he doesn't even refer to groups of people anymore. He doesn't even refer to people with titles. He's no longer using names. He just starts telling brief snippets of dozens, if not hundreds of people's stories. And I've always been fascinated by this passage. I think I came across it sometime in high school when I was beginning to read the Bible on my own. And I've always thought about the end of Hebrews 11. Man, who are these people? Because look at what he says about them. It looks like it's on your bulletin. It looks like a typo, like they printed the wrong verses. How could he possibly be preaching from these? But this is what it says. We'll just kind of pick them up mid-thought in verse 35. They wandered around destitute. They gave up their life. They were martyrs. They gave up probably well-being, maybe careers, maybe families for the sake of what we would call the gospel, for the sake of their faith. By faith, they took these steps of obedience that led them down these paths. And what we see, and these are people whose stories are incredible. Probably, if you could know them detail by detail and line by line, on par with any of the heavy hitters that precede them in the chapter, on par with what Moses did or what Abraham did or what Joseph did or what David did, on par with any of that. But there's just too many to enumerate, too many to note. It makes me wonder about all the stories of the people in the Old Testament that we don't even get to hear. And I've always wondered about these stories, about these people. Who were they? Where were they from? How did they come into faith? What did it look like for them? And what we see at the end of this passage, the beginning of chapter 12, when the author wrote the book, there weren't any chapters there. We added those in later. And so it's a continual flow of thought. And he says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us, is how chapter 12 begins. And that's the point of the whole chapter 11, is to tell us by faith we should run our race too. But he says, because we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, and he only lists off like 10, 15 people by name, but then a stadium fills the rest of heaven. And it makes me realize, we know the heavy hitters, we know the all-stars of the faith, but do you realize that heaven is populated with obscure heroes? Heaven is populated with obscure heroes. If you're a believer in whatever heaven looks like when we get there one day, we're not going to just walk through seeing all the heroes of the Old Testament that we recognize. It's populated with these obscure heroes, with people that are mentioned in verses 35 through 38 that are wandering around whose names are not mentioned in this book, who just had the simple faith and simple obedience and whose stories we don't ever get to know. And whenever I see this passage or read through it, I always think, man, what are the stories out there of faith happening on other continents or at other times or in our inner cities or just down the road that we'll never hear and we'll never know on this side of eternity? What are all the stories waiting on us of these faithful people who are these obscure heroes that we find out about when we get to heaven? Because I've always wondered that, what are all the things going on in God's kingdom that I don't know about? I was fascinated and felt privileged to meet somebody that I consider an obscure hero that none of us have probably heard about before in Honduras. About 10 years ago, I was with a school. I was a chaplain at the school and they had a mission trip that they took to Honduras, and so I went with them. And I met a man there that I will never forget. To me, he's a hero. A guy named Israel Gonzalez. This is a picture of Israel and I. This is the last time I got to hang out with him. That's like eight years ago, okay? That's baby Nate. This is what you guys are doing to me. I don't know if you realize that. Every time you text me past 5 p.m., I get another gray hair. But that's me. That's me in Israel, and we're in a house on a mountainside somewhere in a village doing some of the ministry that I'm about to tell you about. But Israel is one of the greatest people I've ever met in my life. I go down to Honduras and I get introduced to Israel and I start to learn his story. He grew up in Nicaragua. He was trained as an engineer, but at some point or another, and he married a woman named Floripe, who was a practicing medical doctor. Very successful family, but at one point or another, God laid it on his heart that he needed to be a pastor. So he said, okay. So he started a church. And eventually the church got to be too much responsibility. So he had to quit his job and focus full time on the church. And one of the things that the church did early on, they were based in a city called Saguarapeque in the middle of Honduras. And Saguarapeque is just in central Honduras. It's surrounded by mountains, and in those mountains are different villages. And when I say villages, I'm not talking about like a quaint village term. I'm not trying to minimize what it really was. I'm not talking like Nightdale and Rollsville here. I'm talking they were villages, just hovels, houses that were built out of cinder blocks, some that were just poles in the ground with canvas wrapped around them. Just groups of people who had lived there for generations and probably still will. Honduras is one of the poorest countries in our hemisphere. It's one of the most dangerous countries, most politically volatile countries in our hemisphere. But what Israel would do to spread the gospel, to spread the good news of Jesus, is he would go into these villages that surrounded Swagwatapeki. And he would need to build goodwill because he would want to tell them about Jesus, but you can't just show up and start telling them about Jesus because these villages are Catholic. And I don't have any problem in the world with Catholicism or a Catholic background, but this was a version of Catholicism in Honduras that was incredibly legalistic. That was very much, you are saved based on what you do and how you behave. You earn your way into heaven. And I have a big problem with any time we tell anybody that they have to earn their way into heaven, because that's not the Bible. They didn't know the grace of Jesus that says, you can't earn your way into heaven anyways, man. Just accept Christ. They didn't know that. They had not heard the beauty of the gospel, and he wanted to present them with the beauty and the mystery and the good news of the gospel, but he had to earn a little good faith with the community members before he could do that. So he would go in and he would throw parties. He would take people from his church, and they would go and they would cook hot dogs for the kids and they would do face painting and they would have games and they would give away little gifts. And then some churches from the states would find out about it. Not too many, mind you. He's only associated with probably five or six churches stateside. And start sending teams down there with little gift bags to give to the kids at these parties. And then Israel would always be off in the corner. He would either be talking and playing with the children, or he'd be off in the corner talking with some of the people who were like the village elders. And then when he would go into homes, they're still cooking on wood-burning stoves. So in these very poor villages in the hillsides of Sugatapaki, Honduras, these people are cooking on wood-burning stoves, and because of that, lung disease was rampant. And he looked at that, and he went, it doesn't have to be this way. And with his engineering background, he designed, invented a stove that can be built in these homes that reduces smoke inhalation by 90%. And we know it reduces it by 90% because some of the teams carried the designs back to Duke and the University of Indiana and said, will you look at these and see if these are legit? And they are. 90% reduced smoke inhalation. Vastly increases the quality of life. So he goes to the village elders and he can build these for $100 a pop. He says, hey, I've got enough to build two stoves. Who would you like to have them? And they start with the oldest women and then work their way down. And so while the party's going on, him and a team are over here building a stove. And after building this goodwill and meeting their needs, the village elders come to him and they say, hey, we don't just want your church to have to come visit us. Can you send us a pastor to start a church and we'll rally around him? So Israel thought, okay. So he began to disciple young men in his church and train them to be pastors. And when a village would ask for a church, he would send these young men out to go be their pastors. Do you know that Israel has founded 14 churches out of his church from young men that he's risen up and sent out. He's installed hundreds of stoves. He's done this with virtually no support from the United States. He doesn't have a big moneymaker here. He just does it. They just figure it out. And he does it faithfully. Do you know that Floripe used to, when they would go into the villages, his wife, these people need medical care. So she would treat them. But there was never enough time in a day to treat everybody that they were going to see. So eventually, God made it possible for them to build a permanent medical facility, a clinic that people come to every day. Get dental care, get medical care, take your kids in to get shots. Minor surgeries happen there. And this is the life that they lead. And now here's the thing, and here's why I marvel at Israel. You might not know this because not all y'all are plugged into this or care, nor should you. But there's like a thing, and it might be gross, I don't really know where I'm at with it, to be honest with you, like Christian celebrity. Once you start a church, and that church grows, you get invited to conferences, you get to speak, you write a book, you do a podcast, and everybody starts to know who you are, and then you get more campuses, and then you do a video video projection and you teach at those campuses too. And now I'm a robot pastor everywhere, right? And bigger grows my kingdom. And I don't know, it would be so hard to protect your ego against what that does to you, but it happens in Christian circles. And these people who build churches, who have 14 churches and a medical clinic that their wife runs, we know about them. They're famous. They show up on preachers and sneakers on Instagram. Like we know about them. But not Israel. Because he's working away in Honduras. And he's one of these obscure heroes. That when we get to heaven, we're going to go. I want to meet the Israels. These people who are serving God in obscurity that most of the world will never, ever know about. I marvel at those stories. And you may be thinking, Nate, that's neat, man. Love 35 to 38. It's people at the end of the chapter. They populate heaven. That's wonderful. That's not gonna be me, man. Probably not gonna be so on and to for my faith. Praise God for that. I'm probably not gonna go to Honduras and like start a clinic. So I don't know what you want me to do here. How are these people, these heroes of the faith, these obscure heroes that did stuff and can't even be named, how is Israel, how are they like us? These people that populate heaven, how can we relate to them? And I was thinking about that this week. And as I was looking at it and working through it, one of the things I realized is, what do these heroes all have in common? They all took simple steps of obedience. What do all these people have in common? As you read through chapter 11 and you look at these heavy hitters of our faith, what do they have in common? The people at the end whose names we don't know, what do they have in common? When I tell you the story of Israel and the things that he's done with his life, what do they all have in common? They all took simple steps of obedience. Simple steps of faithful obedience. None of the people in chapter 11 woke up and said, I want to be great. I want to be a great Christian. We have this terrible thing that we do where we think that the better Christian I am, the more known I'll become for my Christianity. Like pastors are the apex of the faith or something. And that's gross. I don't have any marketable skills, so God placed me here, okay? Like it's not a big deal to be a pastor. We think that Christianity should be lived out publicly and that the better you are at it, the more people notice you. And that's just not true. It's just taking a simple step of faith. Abraham didn't wake up and say, God, I want to be great. I want to be written in your Bible and remembered for thousands of years. He wasn't thinking any of that. God said, I want you to move. And he said, okay. Yes, Lord. And he took that step. He said, I want you to offer me your son. Yes, Lord. And he took that step. He didn't have visions of grandeur. In fact, the one person in chapter 11 who did have visions of grandeur, Moses, he grew up in Pharaoh's house. He thought he was really going to be something. You know what God did to him? He sent him to the desert for 40 years until he got rid of those visions. He humbled him. And then out of a burning bush one day, he said, hey, you ready to take that step? And five times Moses said, no, I don't think so. You got the wrong guy. Until God said, Moses, take it. And he took the step of obedience. We've looked at Rahab. We know that she didn't think she was going to be great. She was a prostitute in Jericho. She didn't have high hopes for being a champion of the faith. She just took the step that God put in front of her. Are you going to protect these spies or not? All these people, all they did, and all Israel, if Israel could be with us here today, what he would tell you he did is just simply what God asked him to do. You understand that the kingdom of heaven is built by simple people taking simple steps of obedience. The kingdom of heaven is not built publicly. The Christian life is not lived out publicly. The Christian life is not lived out to applause and everyone noticing you and going, that's so great and you're so godly. That's not how it works. And I'm saying this because I think so many of us here have been living out a quiet and humble faith day in and day out, taking little steps of obedience, being loyal to your God and being loyal to your beliefs. And sometimes in those things we feel forgotten. Sometimes in those things we feel cast aside because people aren't looking at us and giving us credit for who we are and how we're obeying. And I want you to know that based on Hebrews chapter 11 and these people that are listed here, I think that God sees us. I think that God sees you and that the kingdom of heaven is built on your shoulders. The kingdom of heaven is built on the Stephen ministers who just get up and quietly go sit with people who are grieving and they don't say anything. They just listen and they show up. Those are wholly heroic moments. And you might think, man, being obedient doesn't make you heroic, but I would disagree. It might not make you heroic to everyone, but it makes you heroic to someone. I have some friends. They grew up, each of them separately, without great examples in the house of what it meant to have a good godly marriage. They didn't see examples from all of their parents about what it meant to be a wonderful parent. So when they grew up, they had layers of things that they acquired in those homes, and then they looked at each other and they said, let's put our messes together and make a bigger one. So they got married, not knowing how to do any of that because they never had a good example of it. So now they're flying blind trying to figure that out. And they weren't people of faith. I don't know how you navigate that. And then they said, you know what we should do? This is a mess. Let's have kids. Say it too. And then they're trying to figure out how to be parents to those kids. And somewhere along the way, Jesus gets a hold of them. And they started taking these little steps of obedience. They say, you know what we need to do for our family? We need to prioritize church. And even though they're busy and even though they're tired, even though weekends is the only time they have to rest, they prioritize church and so they show up. And even though they're busy and they're tired and they're coming in on two wheels, they prioritize small group. And even though there's a cost to it, they prioritize things that help them be better parents and help their kids be better kids. And I've watched them slowly develop into this household of faith. And I look at that and I go, man, that's heroic. To take those steps when you don't have to, because they're the right thing to do. When you're flying blind, but you're determined to figure it out. So you just take the next step of faith in front of you, and you do it quietly, and no one sees it, but you just do it because you want your kids to have something different than what you had. Listen, we might not ever know about that, this side of heaven, but they're heroes to those kids. My dad grew up without a dad, and he's not a perfect dad to me, but he's a good one. And I'll never know what it is to not have a dad who's not proud of me. You want to tell me that's not heroic? That simple step of faith that he took? The kingdom of heaven is built on people taking obscure steps of faith, taking obscure steps of obedience that we may never see on this side of eternity. It's built in there, holding the crying baby just a little bit longer so that mama can actually hear the sermon and participate in the worship this week. Or maybe just tune out and be sane for a minute. The kingdom of heaven is built by people that we have in this church. I think of Ginger Reith. Some of y'all are not Ginger Reith. I'm sorry, although she's lovely. Ginger Gentry. Just kidding. Ginger Reith is the worst. Let's put that on video. Ginger Gentry. She leads our prayer ministry. And you may have never met her or heard of her. But every week, if you put a prayer request on the card, it goes to staff and elders, but it also goes to Ms. Ginger. And Ms. Ginger lives alone now. And she sits in her house and she puts those things out and she prays for those. And she makes sure that you get a card and she makes sure that people know about it. I had somebody last week come up to me and they're like, man, that Ginger, like she works, man. I said, what do you mean? And he goes, I've been praying for something for months. And so finally I put it in. It hasn't worked out until finally I put it on the connection card so Ms. Ginger could pray for it. And it happened this week. I'm like, yeah, you don't mess around with Ginger, man. And nobody would ever know about that, about the hours that she spends in prayer. I'll tell you some other heroes we have around here. It's about time I publicly embarrassed them anyways. I don't know if y'all know Harris, Winston, or Howard Sauls. If you don't, you're not missing much. But they're married to our children's ministers. And I marvel at them, and I have since I got here. Because let me tell you something about them. Next time we all do something together, on the 22nd, we're going to have the hootenanny. It's going to be great. Look around. While everybody's having fun and talking and laughing, think of what's the cruddiest job that I could be doing right now? What's the thing that nobody here wants to be doing? You figure that out and then you look and one of them's gonna be doing it because they're servants. And we might not otherwise ever notice that or care. Let me tell you something. The kingdom of God is built on those steps of obedience. The Christian life is lived out by just day after day choosing to be obedient to God. Jesus tells us, if you love God, you'll obey me. He makes it as simple as every day taking the next step of obedience. We don't have to have a plan. We don't have to know what the goal is. We don't have to see the whole story arc. All we have to know is, what's my next step of obedience? And so as we finish up the series and we reflect on the heroes that we've learned from for the past eight weeks, I want to put that question in front of you. What's your next step of obedience? What simple heroic act has God placed in front of you? And don't discredit it and don't say, oh, that's not heroic or oh, that's not a big deal. Yes, it is. Whatever that step is, it's a big deal. Maybe it's to get baptized. Maybe it's to make a public profession of a private decision. Maybe God has impressed that upon you, and next month we're going to have a service. If that's you, write that on your card or reach out to me somehow. Let's talk about that. Maybe your next step is to get rid of that thing in your life that doesn't need to be there. To shed some light on some dark places and take that step. Don't tell me that's not heroic. That's hard. Maybe your next step is to have the conversation. It's to volunteer for the thing. Maybe your next step is getting home and putting down your phone and engaging with family. Maybe it's finally developing the discipline of spending time in God's word and time in prayer every day. Some of you know what your next step is, and you're thinking right now, dang it, I didn't want to come today. Sorry, sucker. Now you're here. I don't know what your next step is, but I know that the kingdom of God is built by you taking that simple step that no one may ever see but him. And that heaven is populated with obscure heroes like we have here at Grace, like you probably are. So I'm just hoping that we can commit as we move into the fall, that we can commit to taking those next steps together. Let's pray. Father, we sure do love you. Really and truly, God, thank you for making faith so simple. Sometimes we make it complicated. Sometimes we make it harder than it has to be. And God, a lot of times we want to know more than we need to. Give us the faith to take the next step. God, if there's someone here and they don't know you today, would they would just, I pray that they would just prioritize finding out. We all have roadblocks. We all have things, God. Maybe their next step is simply digging into those and figuring out what's there and why they're hesitant. Give them the courage to do that. Give us all, Father, the strength and the courage to take the next step. Give us the vision to see it. May we be like the people that were written about in Hebrews. May we be like the people that we'll find out about in heaven. I pray that you would fill grace with these obscure heroes of the faith who quietly build your kingdom for your glory. And it's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

My name is Nate. It's good to see you. Thanks for being here on this August Sunday. I hope that you've had a good summer as they're winding down. We're winding down our summer series as well called Obscure Heroes. And if this is your first exposure to it, the idea is we kind of know the heavy hitters in the Bible, right? We know some of the main characters. We know the Davids and the Moseses and the Abrahams and the Pauls the John's and Peter. We know those folks. But tucked away in the Bible. Sir, if you could please find your seat. I just always want to do that. Tucked away in the Bible are these folks that we just see for a chapter or two. We just get little snippets or little glimpses into the lives of these folks, but the examples that they leave through their stories are profound. And we wanted to take some time in the summer and focus in on some of these stories. So this morning, we're looking at the story of a woman named Rahab. Rahab, when we meet her, we meet her in Joshua chapter 2. Now, Rahab lived in a city called Jericho. To understand why that's important, what we have to realize is that the people of Israel, God's chosen nation, have come out of Egypt. They've come out of slavery. They've lived in the desert for 40 years, and now they're about to cross over the Jordan River. They're on the east side of this river. They're about to cross over the river and go on a conquest to conquer what we know as the modern day nation, land of Israel. To them, it was the land of Canaan. And Joshua was going to lead his armies over the river and then through the nation to sweep through and take over all the cities for themselves per God's orders. And like good war planners do, they had to go get some intel. So Joshua finds two spies and he sends them into Jericho to go see what they could see and come back and they would come up with a strategy on how to attack this city. So when the spies go into Jericho, they end up in the house of a woman named Rahab. Now Rahab was a prostitute. And I like to think that these men were there not because they were of a weak moral fiber, but because it made sense for people coming in and out of town to spend the night at her house, because this was something that was done a lot. So this would kind of throw people off the scent. It makes sense for some transient businessmen to come in, spend the night there, and then leave the next day without raising too many eyebrows. So I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt. But when we meet Rahab in Joshua chapter 2, one of the first things we learn about her is that she was a prostitute. She was used to this kind of thing. But the men come in and somehow or another, the king of Jericho, the authorities in Jericho, get word that there are some spies in their city. And so they start trying to find them. And then they hear that they're probably in Rahab's house. But Rahab, who has every reason to hand them over to the king, she doesn't need this stress in her life. She doesn't need this drama. I don't know what her life looked like at the time, but I'm sure it had plenty enough drama that she didn't need to be hiding spies from the government. It would have been way easier for her to just let the king in and say they're right there and go get them. But that's not what she does. She actually, we see, she goes up to them. They're sleeping on the roof. And we see in Joshua 2, verse 8, that this is Rahab's response when she encounters God. Before the men lay down, she came up to them on the roof. Verse 9, and she said to the men, I know the Lord has given you the land and that the fear of you has fallen upon us and that all the inhabitants of the land melt away before you. And she goes on. She goes on and she's talking about their fear and she makes a deal. She says, so here's the deal. I'm going to hide you. I'm going to protect you. I'll lie to the king for you. I'll give you an escape route. But I need to know that when your armies come through Jericho and conquer us, that you're going to protect me and my family. I'll make a deal with you. And I love this response from Rahab because what we'll see as we move through her story is that Rahab's response to God was faithful obedience. Rahab's response to God was faithful obedience. Think about it. This is a woman that's presumably grown up in Jericho. We don't know what their religion was, but it was what we would refer to as a pagan religion. She didn't worship the God that we worship. She didn't worship the Hebrew God. This was a land and a time when each civilization and each culture had their own gods, and they would always vie for power with each other. That's why the 10 plagues in Egypt was actually a strategic affront to 10 different gods of Egypt to show the nation of Egypt that the Hebrew God is more powerful than your God. And so if you had any national pride at all, if you had any cultural pride, you would always say that your God was stronger than the other gods. Except when she encounters the Hebrew God and hears of the stories of the Hebrew God and what they're doing and what he's doing for Joshua in his army, she responds in fear. And then that fear produces obedience because she had a choice. She can hand over the spies and do what's easy for her, or she can protect them and take that on. And she chose in faithful obedience to protect them. And I call this obedience to God. And here's what I think is super interesting about this step of obedience that Rahab took. Would we call her a Christian? No. Was she a believer? Was she in? Was she a Hebrew? Was she practicing? Was she following the law and performing the sacrifices and going to temple? Did she know the Torah, the first five books of the Bible? Did she know even who Moses was? Did she know the story of Abraham or Noah? Did she know any of this stuff or any of the things around the religion that she was being obedient to? No. She just knew that God was coming and she wanted to be on the right side of things. So she took the step of obedience that was in front of her, and she helped the spies. I love that response from Rahab. So she tells the spies, I'm going to hide you. I'm going to lower you out of my window because she had, her house was actually in the city walls of Jericho. She says, from your window, then we promise that we will protect you and anybody who is in this house. They say, okay, deal. So she lets him down. Sure enough, King knocks on her door. She gives him the old that away. You know, they went over there and lies to him, which is an interesting thing to know because God counts this to her as righteousness. So sometimes lying is okay. Just so we're clear, there's a hierarchy of things that we're supposed to do to love others. And in this situation, she was supposed to love on the spies and obey God by deceiving the king. So this absolutism of morality doesn't really work sometimes. It's just a useless aside for you. But she lets him down the window. They get away. She sends the king in another direction, and everybody's safe. And then a little while later, we have the famous Battle of Jericho, where God's strategy from on high was to march around the city seven times, which seems, first of all, ineffective, and second of all, tiring. But I've actually gotten the chance to be at Jericho and see the size of it and actually look down in a dig and see the excavation and the layers of the walls. And towards the bottom, there's this one black layer of soot from the walls being burnt down this one time, which is super interesting. And the whole size of Jericho is maybe the size of the parking lot that's across the street. So walking around it seven times in a day isn't unfeasible. It's not like a triumph of the human spirit or anything. So that's what they did. And on the seventh time, the walls fell down, the armies of Joshua swept into Jericho, took over the city, but because the cord was hanging from Rahab's window, they protected her and her family and grafted her into the nation in a way that you'll see in a minute. And I think that Rahab's faith is remarkable. One of the reasons I think it's remarkable, and I don't know how much time you've spent thinking about this, probably not much. I tried to really think through it this week. And I have to make some guesses here, but I think that you'll give me the license and the liberty to make these guesses? What was Rahab's life like? What happened in her life that she ended up as a prostitute? Women in that day, and it goes without saying that it's totally wrong, but women in that day had very little value outside of being a wife. They could not have a profession. They had no opportunity to make money. And so to be on your own as a woman is to have very few options. And so she took the only option that was in front of her. And so what it tells me is she either experienced loss or rejection or both in her life. Maybe she had a husband and he passed and so now she had to fend for herself. Maybe she wanted to be married and she couldn't. Women in that culture very much wanted to be married. They had no way to provide for themselves. They needed to get married. And so it's safe to say that almost every woman in that culture had this innate desire to find a husband. And for whatever reason, she finds herself without one, either through loss or rejection. I wonder what kind of number that would have done on the psyche, on the self-image, on the hope of this woman. More than that, she's a prostitute in ancient Jericho. What was that like? There's no justice system there. If there was, it was nothing like ours. It was a place where might made right. It was a patriarchy. I don't know what she had to do to avoid abuse from some. I don't know what she had to do to gain the protection that she was afforded. I don't know the kinds of awful things that she saw that if we closed our eyes, we would still be seeing. I don't know what that woman's life was like, but I guarantee you it's harder than mine. I guarantee you she saw and experienced things that you can't unsee. I wonder what it would be like for Rahab to sit in the office of a therapist or a counselor. I wonder what layers would have to begin to get peeled back from her about trust that she lost early, about feeling worthless, about feeling shame over who she was. I wonder what it was like when Rahab was being honest to look in the mirror. I think that Rahab was a broken woman. And in that brokenness, when confronted with God, without understanding all the ramifications about it, she chose obedience. And for that, it's amazing, for that, this foreign woman who had the worst job that churches think you could have, she is put in the Bible dozens of times. God shares her story throughout the Old Testament. She's mentioned again and again. And she shows up two places that I know of in the New Testament. And in the New Testament, she shows up in one of the most famous chapters in the Bible, Hebrews chapter 11. We're going to finish the series with looking at Hebrews chapter 11. Some people call it the hall of faith. The book of Hebrews is easily the most beautifully written book in the New Testament. We don't know who the author was, but it's so eloquent and good that we go, that probably is not Paul because we've read a lot of his books. It has the highest view of Christ, of Christology in the New Testament. It really holds him up as the high priest and the sacrifice and the Messiah once and for all. It's a beautiful book and absolutely worth delving into. And in chapter 11, the author wants to make the point of how important faith is, how impactful faith can be. And so the author goes through the heroes of the Old Testament and says, you know, by faith Noah built the ark, and by faith Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac, and by faith Noah or Moses led them through the desert. And he goes on and on and on until he gets to Rahab, who by faith protected the spies in Jericho. And here this foreign broken prostitute is laid right next to these Jewish men who are heroes of the faith. And God says, the things that they did to me are the same. The things that they did to me have the same faith, have the same obedience, have the same heart. And she's held up as a hero of the faith alongside with these men who made the choices that they made. And God says they're equal because she responded to God with faithful obedience. That's remarkable to me. It's remarkable to me because do you know how concerned God is with the Jewish lineage in the Old Testament? He tells them over and over and over again, do not intermarry. When you move into this nation, do not take wives or husbands from the surrounding cultures. And he even punishes them for doing it sometimes. He'll ostracize them for doing it, but yet here in Rahab, he's grafted in someone into his people, into his family, who is a foreign woman of ill repute. And it goes to show us that God was never concerned with protecting the genetics of his people. He was always concerned with protecting the faith. He doesn't care about what our makeup is or what we look like or how we were born. He cares about our faith as we respond to him. And so because Rahab responded with faith, he grafts her into his family. But to me, as I researched this, I knew that Rahab was in Hebrews chapter 11, so I turned to that and I read through that and kind of let that soak in. But I also know that she shows up in one of the most boring chapters in the Bible, Matthew chapter 1. Matthew chapter 1 is the begats. It's so-and-so had so-and-so had so-and-so had so-and-so had so-and-so all the way down. It's a whole chapter. It's really fun to read it out loud and see how good you do at pronouncing the names. It's fun if you're like a huge Bible nerd like me. It's like a great time. Let's sit around with our friends and pronounce Bible names. But you can go through that, and it's just super boring, man. It's hard to read. Like if that one shows up on your quiet time that day, you're going to fold it up and be like, God, I got nothing. I'm so sorry. There's actually a great sermon there, and I want to do it one day, but I have to get my ego out of the way because I really want to say that I've done a sermon out of Matthew chapter 1. But there's really a great sermon there. One day I'll share it with you. But Rahab shows up there too. And we can put it up on the screen. This is where she shows up. I thought it was remarkable as I read this. It says that she married a man named Salmon, and together they had a son named Boaz. And Boaz with Ruth had a son named Obed, and Obed had a son named Jesse,. There's a whole lot going on there. Now, I'm going to make some guesses about Rahab if you'll give me the chance to do this. Rahab married a man named Salmon. Maybe the Jews pronounced it Salmon, but I can't bring myself to do it. She married a man named Salmon. Salmon was from the line of Abraham. Salmon took great pride in his forefathers. He had to have. The whole line of Abraham did. It would have been a huge deal for him to marry a foreign woman who used to be a prostitute. So my guess about Rahab is, after taking that initial step of obedience when she encountered God, is that once she got grafted into the Hebrew culture and the Hebrew faith, and she began to look around, and she began to step into synagogue where she would find community, and she began to adopt the values of the people around her, that she continued to respond to God and his word, and that she grafted herself into the faith, and that she continued to take steps of obedience. I doubt very seriously that after the battle of Jericho, Rahab ever returned to her previous profession. I think God got a hold of her and moved in that way. Can I tell you the main reason I believe that? There's this old saying, I don't know if you guys have heard it before, but you can't fake good kids. When there's a group of brothers and sisters coming out of a house and they're spiritually strong and they love God and they have good character and they're great folks, you have to, whether you like them or not, give credit to their parents. You have to look at their parents and go, I don't know what they were doing, but it was good. You can't fake good kids. Now, sometimes kids can come out of messes and become really great humans, but that's not typically how that story goes. Usually, if you have a great kid, you can find some great parents. Rahab and Salmon had a great kid. Their kid was a guy named Boaz. Boaz stands out in the Old Testament as an example of what the Messiah is going to look like. You understand this? There's a girl named Ruth. She was a Moabite woman who had no options and no hope. She wasn't very different than, I guess it was her grandmother Rahab. Or was it mother-in-law? Is that how that works? I don't know. I should have planned this part of the sermon. She wasn't very much different than her. And she comes in. She's hopeless, she's a beggar, taking what she can at the corners of fields. Boaz says, we need to protect her, nobody lay a hand on her. And then going to look like when he gets here in the New Testament. And that's Rahab's kid. And I don't think that he comes from that home with those values if Rahab doesn't continue to respond to God in faithful obedience. And Ruth and Boaz have Obed, who has Jesse, who has David. Because of her faithful obedience, God didn't just pluck her out of the life that she was living and give her a new life. He didn't just put her on the pages of Hebrews thousands of years later to be displayed for all of time with an equivalency to all the other people of faith who had preceded her. He wrote her into the genetics of his son and used her to bring about two pictures of his son in David and in Boaz. God had an incredible story written for Rahab. And so as I look at her story, and I think about this woman in Jericho who must have felt hopeless and broken, and what God saw in her, and why we even get to see the story of Rahab in the Bible. What I see is that God made beauty out of her brokenness. God made beauty out of her brokenness. I picture Rahab as this vase or a bowl or a vessel that's just been shattered on the ground. I wanted to bring in like a clay pot and shatter it, but that would have been dangerous for like Holly and other people around me. So I had no way to do that. But that's how I picture Rahab, just broken and shattered on the floor. Irrevocably damaged. And in different ways trying to grab pieces of her life and put them back together in a way that feels whole, in a way that feels healthy, in a way that can at least look from the outside in like it's beautiful. I imagine her trying to assemble the pieces of her own life, and I think many of us can relate to this. I think many of us are broken. Listen, if we're being honest, we all are. We're all broken. And I don't mean that in some dramatic way. Some of us are walking through really difficult things. Some of us have walked through incredibly difficult things, and it doesn't feel like our life is ever going to be the same. Some of us can relate to the brokenness of Rahab, just sitting amidst your life feeling like it is in shatters. Some of us remember that and have pieced things back together. Some of us, maybe we're not broken into a thousand pieces, but it's a couple. We all struggle with value. We all struggle with feeling good enough. We all struggle with unselfishly loving others. We are all, in our own ways, broken. And so as I thought about Rahab and her brokenness, and us and ours, I wanted to find a picture of something beautiful being made from something that's broken. So I did what any good pastor does and I googled things. And I found the perfect picture. I want to show you guys this bowl. That bowl is an example of the Japanese art of kintsugi. That's how you know I Googled it. I don't know what that is, man. I just started learning about this this week. That's an example of the Japanese art of kintsugi. And what kintsugi is, is to take something that's broken and fashion it back together in a way that is beautiful. And what they would normally do, what you normally try to do when your bowl was broken is you try to piece it back together so that nobody would ever know it was broken, so that when you used it as a dinner party, people wouldn't know that you had dropped it on the floor once and no one would ever know that it had been broken before. But Kintsugi says, no, we're not going to do that. We're actually going to make the brokenness beautiful. We're going to fill the cracks with gold. And we're not going to try to hide the past from anybody. And in doing this, it actually becomes more beautiful than it was before. And I think that this is a picture of what God does with us. God took Rahab, this broken prostitute from Jericho, and wrote her into his family story. So that when we look at her story now, when we look through Matthew now, when we look at those names, married to Salmon and then had Boaz and Obed and Jesse and David and on down all the way to Jesus, we see the bowl. We see the thing that God pieced back together. We see the brokenness and all of its beauty. And God doesn't attempt to hide it. He doesn't say that there was a woman of faith from Jericho. He tells us who she was. He doesn't attempt to hide her faults. He makes them beautiful. And I want us to know this morning that if you feel broken, whether it's completely shattered or just missing a couple pieces, if you've been scrambling to kind of try to fix your life and put it back together in a way that makes sense, in a way that feels whole, in a way that feels beautiful, in a way that gives you meaning, I want you to know that God is doing that for you. And that you don't have to hide those cracks. And you don't have to pretend like you were never broken. And you don't have to pretend like you were always right. Because God is making something beautiful out of you. And all we have to do is respond with faithful obedience. Now some of you might not believe me. Some of you might think I've heard stuff like this before. I've got too much sin. I've got too much stuff. God's not going to use me. He's not writing me into his family tree. He doesn't have any big grand plans for me. I guarantee you, if you went to Rahab a month before those spies hit out at her house, and you said, hey, Rahab, you want to know something cool? The Hebrew God that you're scared of, he's going to use you. He's going to set you up for all of history on par with all the heroes who have preceded you. He's going to write you into his family tree. And he is making beauty out of your brokenness. She would have told you you were crazy. She would have sat right where you are, thinking right what you're thinking. Not me. Not possible. That's silly. Here's what I want you to know. When God looked at Rahab, he didn't see what she was. He saw what he was going to make her into. When God looked at Rahab, he didn't see what she was. He didn't see a broken prostitute in Jericho living a hopeless life. He saw the great, great grandmother of King David. He saw the mom that he was going to entrust to raise Boaz. He saw somebody that he was going to write into his own son's family tree. When God looked at Rahab, he did not see what she saw. He saw what he was going to create. And I want you to know that God looks at you with those same eyes. And all Rahab did was respond with the next step of obedience. She didn't understand all the things. She didn't get all the religion. She didn't know where it was going to go. She didn't understand the Bible. She couldn't quote to you verses. She didn't even know what theology was. She wasn't even a Christian. She just took the first step of obedience. And God began to craft beauty out of her brokenness. And I want you to know this morning that God wants to make something beautiful out of you. Not just in the way that he removed Rahab from her life immediately, but as he wrote a beautiful story about her for generations to come. God has beauty that he's creating you into. You have no idea who your children will come in contact with. You have no idea what kind of grandchildren they're going to have. But God sees them already. And he's fashioning you into that beauty. And all we have to do is to continue, like Rahab, to respond with faithful obedience. And I believe that God will make beauty out of our brokenness as well. Let's pray. Father, thank you so much for the story of Rahab. Thank you for including people like that in your Bible. God, we love to learn about David and Moses and these men who were leaders. But God, sometimes that feels so far away from us. We thank you for regular people that you used in extraordinary ways. Father, if we are broken, I just pray that we would trust you to restore us and to make beauty out of that. Father, I pray that we, me, maybe most of all, would see what you see when we look at ourselves. We thank you that you don't see us now as we are, but you see us as what you want to make us into. And I just pray for us that you would give us the courage and the faith to take the next step of obedience as you make beauty out of the things in our life that are broken. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

This is the, I don't know, the fourth or fifth part of our series called Obscure Heroes. We've been looking at people that exist in kind of the nooks and crannies of the Bible. We all know of some of the main characters, some of the heavy hitters, some of the more prominent players in the Bible that we see, some of the more prominent people through history. One of them is David. We know King David, right? We've heard of him, and we actually spent a couple summers ago, my first summer here, we went through the life of David for 11 weeks. It was one of the more fun series I've ever gotten to do. And we know about Moses, we know about Paul, we know about Abraham, but there's other people tucked away in some of the corners of the Bible that give us incredible examples. And their stories are in there for good reasons. And so this week, the hero that we're looking at is actually my namesake, Nathan the prophet. I double-checked with my parents. I was named after Nathan. Just so you know, the name Nathan means gift from God. So I'm just throwing that out there. But if my aunts and uncles taught me anything at Christmases growing up, it's that not all gifts are good. So you guys can just figure out if I'm good or not. But we're looking at Nathan in a conversation that he has with David in 2 Samuel chapter 12. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat in front of you, and we'll be looking through that story. To understand what's going on with the conversation with Nathan and David, we have to know what David did. We have to know what's leading into this moment. David was the king of Israel. He was the second king of Israel. The first king was a guy named Saul, but God said some terrible words. He said, I regret making Saul king. And he took the kingdom away from Saul, and he handed it to David. And David, God said himself, was a man after God's own heart. We know about David. There's prophecies that when the Messiah comes, Jesus, that one day he's going to sit on the throne of David. The flag that flies over Israel now bears the star of David. He's the greatest king that Israel has ever seen. But David's human. And like a lot of us, like all of us, he messed up. And he had a lot of mess ups over the years, but this was the worst one, and God in his sovereignty chose to chronicle it in the Bible so that we could see it. So David had been king for a little while, and it says that it was in the spring when kings are off to war. And a lot of people like to make the point that David was in a place that he shouldn't be. Whatever was going on, he probably should have been on the battlefield with his men, leading them into war. And instead, he decided he was going to sit this season out, and he stayed at home. Maybe he was holding out for more money, I'm not sure. But he stayed back at the palace while his men are off to war. And one day, he decides to go out on the rooftop in the evening. And from what I understand, I've done a little bit of research about this, from what I understand, that was kind of like bath time in the ancient world, and that the baths were on the roof, and that it was kind of common practice to not go out there. If you could see on other people's roofs, kind of give people their privacy or whatever. And David chose to go out on his roof to see what he could see. And he knew very well what he could see. There's a woman named Bathsheba who lived next door to him apparently, and he saw her bathing on the roof. Now Bathsheba was the wife of a guy named Uriah the Hittite. Uriah was a bad dude. I don't know the rank, but Uriah is what is called in the Bible one of David's mighty men. Uriah was part of David's SEAL Team 6. He was a bad joker. And this means that David had fought many wars with him, many battles with him. I would be willing to bet that David and Uriah knew each other personally. You don't live next door to the king if he doesn't know who you are, especially if you're in his army. And Bathsheba was married to Uriah, but David was the king. And we know what men in power do. Often, when they're not being responsible, they take what they want. And he wanted Bathsheba. So he sent, he told the guys that worked for him, I don't know, go over there and get Bathsheba for me. Brought Bathsheba over to his quarters, and then he did what men like that do, and they slept together. And he sends her home. Well, word gets back to David somehow. We don't know how. Maybe they're talking. I don't know. Word gets back to David that Bathsheba is pregnant. And so David, you can just see the wheels turning. And it's so human to see this part of David. The actions that he takes, you can see the wheels turning in his head. Oh, shoot. She's pregnant. I have to cover this up. People can't find out about this. I have to make sure this doesn't get out. Because David, man, he's writing psalms. He's singing songs to the Lord. He plays the harp sometimes. He's a spiritual guy. Part of his leadership is established on his moral purity, his moral excellence. So he can't let word get out that behind the scenes he's not what he seems he is. So he starts scrambling, how am I going to cover this up and make Uriah not mad at me? So he hatches a plane and says, I know. He calls Uriah back from the front lines, back from the battlefield. He welcomes him in and he gives him this speech about how great he is and I just value you so much. And because I value you so much, because you're such a loyal servant, I wanted to just give you a night with your, resting at home with your wife, enjoy yourself. We'll send you out to bat on the next day. Very clear what he wants to have happen there. Wants Uriah to go in, spend the night with Bathsheba, leave the next day, and in nine months he thinks that's his kid. The problem is Uriah was so, he had so much integrity that he said, I cannot in good conscience sleep under a roof in a soft bed while my men are on the battlefield sleeping under the stars. So thank you, David. I appreciate this means so much to me, but I'm going to sleep outside. And he slept on the front stoop of his house. So the whole neighborhood knew. Uriah didn't go in there. He didn't see Bathsheba. And then he's about to head back to the front lines the next day. And the wheels turn with David again. He's like, okay, well, plan B. So he writes a letter to his general, Joab, seals it, gives it to Uriah to deliver to Joab. Uriah is so loyal that David didn't even think that he might peek in there to see what this letter said, because if he did, things would have changed. The letter told Joab, tomorrow in battle against the Philistines, I want you to put Uriah in the front lines, which was not typical of the mighty men. You put meat shields in the front lines. You put new people there. You don't put Uriah there, okay? He waits and he cleans up the mess. But he put them in the front lines. He says, then I want you to advance into the Philistine army. And when you give your signal, I want you to withdraw so that they surround him and kill him. Joab was a good soldier. He was a good general. He was trusted by David. So the next day, that's what they did. The army advanced with Uriah in the center, and then they withdrew. I would love to have seen Uriah. I bet Uriah fought the fight, man. But they withdrew, and they murdered him on King David's instruction. When news of Uriah's death gets back to Jerusalem, David, finishing out the plan, totally despicably, plays the part of the grieving king and the magnanimous husband and says, Bathsheba, you poor widow that has no one to provide for you. I will care for you. I will make you my wife, presumably in honor of my friend Uriah. And the sin is covered over. Now, that is a despicable thing that David did. And maybe a month's time, a couple weeks' time, David became a lying, thieving, adulterous murderer. One of, I think, the worst sins recorded in the Bible. And then he covers over it. And that's it. And I would have to imagine, I don't know for sure, I don't know this for sure, okay? This is just, sometimes I walk over here when I'm just making wild guesses and I have nothing to base this on. So pretend I'm talking from right here. David, he wrote most of the Psalms. I would be willing to bet in the time between he sinned with Bathsheba and the time to the story we're about to cover that he didn't do muchm writing. I would be willing to bet he felt pretty distant from his God during that time. I would be willing to bet he woke up most days thinking about how profoundly that act had changed his life, trying to get over it, trying to find a way to look himself in the mirror. I can't imagine how heavily that weighed on him. Maybe it didn't. And if that's the case, I can't imagine all the other stuff he had to do up to that moment to get a conscience that wasn't seared by that, or hurt by that, rather. But in Samuel 12, we see a conversation that Nathan has with David about this sin. Nathan was a prophet. Prophets, we understand in the Old Testament, they're not charged with telling the future. That's a very small percentage of what they do. When we think prophet, we think somebody that tells us what's going to happen at the end of times. And really, a prophet is someone with their ear to God and their mouth to the people. They're listening to God, and then they're telling the truth to the people even when it's hard, and that's what Nathan had to do. He was tasked by God to go and confront David about his sin. So he goes into David humbly, and he tells him a story. He says, David, in your kingdom, there's a rich man. He's got a ton of sheep on a ton of hills. He's got everything he could possibly want. His neighbor was poor. His family had one sheep. And because they only had one sheep, they couldn't bring themselves to slaughter it. It actually became like the family pet. They would bring it in and use it for milk and use it for wool, and they would feed it from their own table. They loved this sheep like a family member. And one day, an unexpected visitor came to see the rich man. And it's important that we understand that in this culture, hospitality is a huge deal. Someone comes to your house, you cook some stuff, you get it ready, like you show them a good time. You want to be hospitable. So it is incumbent upon the rich man to feed his guests. And the rich man, for whatever reason, he's cheap, he must have drove a Nissan Leaf, he decides to go next door and take his neighbor's lamb and murder it and feed that to their guests. And then Nathan says, what should be done to this man? And Scripture tells us in 2 Samuel 12 that it says that David was enraged. And he says, this man surely deserves to die. He should pay back what he took fourfold. And Nathan says, that's interesting, David, because that man is you and the poor man is Uriah, and that's what you did. And then he proceeds to detail to David from God exactly what the punishment for this action is going to be, including losing the child that is a result of this sin. And David responds, and he could have responded in a bunch of different ways. He could have said, get out of here. He could have had Nathan killed. He could have covered it up again. He could have been rebellious. He could have been defiant. But David says, I have sinned against the Lord. And he immediately repents. Now, as a side note, I've long thought that what made David a man after God's own heart is not the lack of sin in his life, is not the perfect moral life that he lived, but it's his repentance and sorrow in the face of sin. Because he went back to Psalm writing after this, most pointedly Psalm 52 as a result of this sin. And we see his brokenness there. And I think that's why David was a man after God's own heart. But I want us to understand as Nathan goes in and confronts David exactly what's at stake when he does this. Think about if you would do this. If you're the prophet in ancient Israel and the king has sinned in this way and God has tasked you with being the one that confronts him about it. Because you're not the only one that knows. All the servants that were around that day, they know. They know good and well what happened. They absolutely know what's going on. But none of them told David, did they? None of them for a second told David, hey, but you probably don't want to do that. Hey, David, wait. You can't do that to Uriah. David, don't send that letter to Joab. They could have, but they didn't. And we can call them cowards for not doing it, but maybe we should call them smart because they can get killed for saying something like that. This is the king, man. There's not a justice system. He's the justice system. I would love to be there when God tells Nathan, hey, I need you to go do this thing. If I were that Nathan, I'd be like, you got to find another guy, man. That does not sound like a good prospect. He could lose his life for this. At the very least, he could lose his position. Think about it. This is his career. This is what he does. This is the empire that he's built. He is so good. I mean, from a human perspective, he's so good at being a prophet, at being a spiritual leader, that he has risen above all the other spiritual leaders in a very spiritual nation to be the advisor to the king, to be the prophet that's allowed in Israel, in Jerusalem, into the palace. He's the guy. And to do this, at the very least, if it doesn't throw away his life, it throws away his career. He might have nothing after this. And I've even thought if I were Nathan, I could make a pretty good argument to justify not doing this. Right? How hard is that? Wouldn't you just have to say, well, you know, I mean, if you had friends around and you say, hey, I felt like God's asking me to do this. I don't know what I should do. Couldn't you convince your friends if you said, listen, my concern is I'm happy to do it. I'm happy to go confront David. But my concern is if I do that, he's going to shut me out. He's not going to listen to me anymore. David doesn't have any other spiritual voices in his life. I'm his pastor. I'm his spiritual leader. He doesn't have anybody else in his life that he's listening to, and he's in a bad place right now. He needs people in his life influencing him towards God. And if I go in and I say something, he's going to shut me out and push me away, and there's not going to be anybody influencing David, and he's just going to run amok with whatever he wants to do. So it is better for the kingdom if I keep my mouth shut and maintain my influence with David? Who's going to tell me I'm wrong? But Nathan doesn't do any of that. He hears the instruction from the Lord, and he goes in, and he confronts him. And he did it. He had to have done it believing this is going to cost him his position. It could cost him his life. It's going to cost him his influence. It's going to cost him everything that he has with David. It's going to cost him his friendship with David and all the perks that come along with it. But what I think is remarkable about Nathan, and the reason that he's the hero today, is that Nathan was somebody who decided that he loved David more than he loved David's friendship. Nathan was someone who had decided that he loved David more than he loved David's friendship. He cared so much for David that he could not bear to see him go down this path. That he loved him enough to jerk him out of it, to hold a mirror up to himself and say, dude, this is you. You've got to stop it. Knowing full well this could cost him his friendship. He loved David more than he loved David's friendship. The easy application for us is that we need to be like Nathan. The people that are in our life that we love and care about, we need to love them more than we love our friendship with them. We need to be willing to say the hard things to them if it's the right thing, even if we don't know what it's going to cost us. And for some of us, this is the right application today. Some of us hate confrontation. Some of you would rather peel your skin off of your body and run away from that lump on the ground than actually confront your friend about sin in their life. That's a super difficult thing. And so for some of us today, we need the application of, man, you need to be like Nathan. We need to love the people in our life more than we love our friendship with them. For some of us, that's a very good application. But I think that there's a better application today. I think the better application is that we need to invite Nathans into our life. Not just like me for lunch and golf, but we need to actually invite Nathans into our life to hold us accountable for things. People who embody the verse. It's in Proverbs. Profuse are the kisses of an enemy. Faithful are the wounds of a friend. Our friends, the people who really love you, are willing to hurt you when it's the right thing. We need people in our lives who are willing to hurt us when it's the right thing. Do you know who wrote that verse, by the way? Solomon. Do you know Bathsheba was his mother? That his older sibling died as a result of his father's sin? That his spiritual heritage was a result of Nathan having the guts to go and confront his dad? And then years later, Solomon writes, faithful are the wounds of a friend. You don't think that carries some special impact? And here's why we need Nathans in our life. Nathans are life-changing. People who confront us, who are willing to tell us the truth, who are willing to love us more than they love their friendship with us, they change our lives. I remember when I was 20 or 21 years old, I worked at a summer camp called Look Up Lodge in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. There was a camp director there. He's still there named Greg Boone. Greg is to this day one of the most formative spiritual influences I have in my life. I saw him when I was 17 years old as a camper in the summer that changed my life. I walked in. I sat down. I'd heard things about him. I didn't know who this guy was. He walks out on the stage barefoot. That was his thing. It's Traveler's Rest, South Carolina, man. You can do what you want. So he walks out on the stage barefoot, and I still remember the first words that came out of his mouth over 20 years ago. And so when I had an opportunity to go on staff there, I wanted to work for that guy. I wanted to learn from him. I wanted to be around him. What he thought of me and my still relatively adolescent brain was hugely important to me. And it was the second summer that I was working there, learning from Greg and some of the other people. And time was tight during the summer. You worked 11 weeks. You didn't get any time off. When you got time off, it was like 24 or 36 hours, and you had to be back by a certain time for the meeting because we were kicking off camp. It was really serious, and that's fine. That's the way it should have been. But I had a little girlfriend running around in Charlotte that I wanted to go see, right? And so we get one of these windows where we get some time, and I'm like, I'm out of here. I'm going to go to Charlotte. I'm going to go see somebody. And I went over there, and we hung out. And the next day, I had to come back, and I had to be back at camp at 1030. I still remember. And I was rolling in late. It was like 1045, 11 o'clock. And I come walking into camp. I come walking into the meeting. I'm in the back of the room. Everybody's turning around, seeing me. They're kind of snickering. I'm kind of grinning like, you know, sit down. No big deal. It was a dumb meeting anyways. It was the same thing every week. Like, I get the drill. I've been doing this for two summers. I sit down. We kind of giggle. Meeting picks back up. Whatever. So then at the end of the meeting, I'm leaving, and I hear Greg say, hey, Nate, let me talk to you for a minute. Shoot. And I know the song and dance, right? Like, getting in trouble is not a new thing for me. So I'm like, I know the drill. Like, I'm really sorry. I was late. I shouldn't have been late. You're right. I'm the worst. Like, I know. I'm sorry. You're right. Like, I'm wrong. You're smart. I'm stupid. I get it. My bad. Like, I get it. I know how to do this. And I was ready for that. But he sits me down, and he says, Nate, let me ask you a question. If before this weekend, I would have gone around to all the staff members, there's about 20 of us, and said, hey, somebody's probably going to be late to our Monday meeting. Who do you think it's going to be? He said, how many staff members would have said you? And I said, I mean, probably all of them. He said, yeah. And you know that about yourself. He said, listen to me, son. You don't start taking things seriously and taking your ministry seriously and taking yourself seriously, you're never going to amount to anything. You're probably going to get hired by some church because they'll like you, but you're just going to bounce around from place to place and you're never going to make an impact for the kingdom. You need to get it together. Understand? And I said, yes, sir. And I went up to our dorm and cried for 45 minutes. It broke me down, man. It was hard to hear. But I remember it verbatim 20 years later. The conversation changed my life. It changed how I thought about things. Because Greg loved me enough to tell me the truth about myself. And it hurt. At the end of the summer, we didn't leave it there. We had a nice make-up conversation. But he meant what he said, and he was right. Nathans change our life. It's one of the reasons I've always said that we changed our mission statement to connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people. And I always say when I'm talking about being connected to people, that we need people in our life who love us, who love Jesus, and who have permission to tell us the truth about ourselves. I think we all need that. And if you've been here for any time, you've heard me say that. We need people in our life who love us, who love Jesus, and who tell us the truth about ourselves. Have permission. We've invited them in to do this. Because if somebody loves us and loves Jesus, we might not have invited them in to call us out on our sin. And that's not for everybody to do, okay? That's a relational thing that's earned. If I don't know you very well and you come up to me after the service and be like, you know, I'm glad you preached that sermon. I've got a couple things I've noticed about you. You can keep it, okay? That's an earned thing. That's a relational thing. So we need permission. Now, if they love you and they have permission, but they don't love Jesus, I'm not saying that they're bad people, that their advice wouldn't even be good. But what I am saying is, if their advice isn't godly, biblical advice that's going to line up with God's priorities for you in your life, then it's not the best advice possible. So they need to love Jesus. And if they just love Jesus and love permission but don't love you, maybe give it a minute, all right? Let them come around and invite them in. We have to do those things. And we have to give people permission to do this. And the way that David responded, he gave Nathan permission. He responded by saying, I have sinned against the Lord. But what if David had nobody in his life that could have gone to him? What if nobody had permission to say anything to David? I thought as I went through the story, what would have happened if nobody ever said anything to him? And I think one of the things that would have happened clearly is that David would have been emboldened in his sin. He would have been callous to the Lord. He would have said, I got away with this. I can get away with whatever I want. And then there goes the ball steamrolling down the hill, right? But I think more importantly is, David, if I'm right about my guess that he wasn't doing much psalm writing right after this sin, I think David would have existed and lived his life with this idea that there was a wedge driven between him and God and that he could no longer be used by God because he had profoundly disappointed him and God would never care to see him used again. I think he would have carried around this guilt that went unresolved, assuming that God wanted nothing to do with him. And Nathan actually fixes this. I love this verse. It's towards the middle of the chapter, verse 13. After Nathan has detailed all these things, he tells him a little parable about the owners of the sheep, and David says he should die, and he said, that's you, and here's your punishment. After all those things, and this is what's said, David said to Nathan, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan said to David, this is great. David is a heap. He's a mess. He is at the height of shame in his life. Nathan the prophet is a representative of God that came to convict him about the wrong thing that he did. And as soon as David repents and says, I have sinned against the Lord, Nathan says, the Lord also has put away your sin. You shall not die. David says, I have sinned against the Lord. And Nathan says, you have. And you need to know that you're forgiven for it. If Nathan doesn't confront David, David never finds out that he's forgiven. And he walks with this sin for the rest of his life without knowing that he's forgiven for what he did. Nathan says, nevertheless, what you did was abhorrent to the Lord, but listen, it was a terrible thing, but you need to know that you're forgiven. And if Nathan never arrives in David's life, I'm not sure that he ever finds that out. The other thing is I thought more about this and inviting Nathans into our life is that we don't just need to invite people who love Jesus and who love us and have permission to tell us the truth. I think a crucial part of this, I want to amend that statement, is not only do we need people with permission, but also with access. Right? It's great to just throw out to your buddies, hey dude, listen, I know that you love me, I know that you love Jesus. Or your girlfriends, I know you love me, I know you love Jesus. If you see anything in my life that I need to fix, you have full permission to tell me the truth. I want to know about those things. Help me see my blind spots. It's one thing to say that. It's another thing to give people access so that they can actually do it. I had somebody one time, we went out to lunch together and he said, hey dude, listen, you're my pastor and I've just been thinking about something. Sometimes in meetings at my workplace, I get a little bit of an attitude. I have a tendency to kind of be mean to people. Sometimes I can steamroll folks. Sometimes I'll kind of say stuff that I regret. And that's really not who I want to be. That's not the witness that I want to have. So can I just, when I'm in these meetings, if I feel that coming on, can I just text you just a word or a phrase? And will you pray for me in those moments I said, man, I'd love to. That's great that God's brought you there. They came to somebody who loved them, who cared about them, who loved Jesus, and they gave me permission to say, hey, listen, I'm praying for you. How's that going? You know what they didn't give me? Access. You know how many texts I got from that guy about that? None. What's it matter? Who cares that we had that conversation? If he never texts me, how can I help? If we don't invite people in and give them access, how can they really speak into our lives with any truth? We need to invite people in to have access. You want to talk about access? How about we send each other screenshots of our screen time at the end of days? How about we start sharing locations with people if we really want to take this seriously? Because here's what I know. David was a good dude. David was a good man. David would have been an elder in any church that he went to. He would have been respected in any group of people that he spent his life with. Everybody that knew David would have looked up to him as a spiritual leader, as a dude with his head screwed on straight. He was the guy in church that when you dealt with your own crap, you'd look at David and be like, maybe someday I could be like him. David messed up. We don't invite people into our lives and give them access and permission because we're doing good. We invite them into our lives and give them access and permission because we know that what was in David is in us. One of the things I always say when I see the sin of other people is I'm two bad weeks away from that. And I think that's generous. What if David had given Nathan access? What if Nathan was like in the palace? What if he had so much access that he was around David all the time as a spiritual advisor and Nathan caught wind that Bathsheba had been invited over and he was able to duck his head into the chambers and be like, David, you good? Like, you just checking up on her because her husband's at war? Like, what's going on, buddy? Mind if I sit in here while you talk to her? Maybe I can bring her some comfort too if that's what you're doing. Maybe we can just do this together, keep everything above board. If Nathan had had access to David, this would have never happened. If people have permission and access for us at our best, then when we have those days and weeks and months and sometimes years when we're not at our best, they can be around us making sure, acting as boundaries, making sure that we don't get to our worst. I hope that if you need some Nathans, that you'll have the courage to ask them. I hope that if some of us are caught up in a sin that is our worst, that we'll have the courage to invite people into that. I have never once, not once, not with me personally, not with people sharing things with me, not hearing stories of other people sharing with others. Heard a story of someone opening up about a sin in their life and not be met with grace and love and kindness. Have the courage to do it. We need Nathans in our life. We need people who love us and who love Jesus and who have permission and access. We don't need them for the good times. We need them for when we're not so strong. And if you don't have them, I would really encourage you to pray about finding some. Let's pray. Father, we love you. You're so good to us. You provide for us in ways that, gosh, we just will never know about on this side of eternity. Lord, if there are folks here who don't have anybody with permission or access in their life, I pray that you would help them even as they think and process. Show them who they can trust. Give us the courage to take steps of radical accountability, of radical permission, of radical access to one another just so we can keep ourselves within some boundaries that we think are good and that you think are good. Father, I pray that if there's anybody here who's caught up in stuff that just isn't good for them, Lord, that you would help them see and find their way out. I know they don't want to be caught up in it. I know that it eats them up. Give them a glimpse of hope this morning that it doesn't have to always be the story. Father, we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. For the unindoctrinated, for those who haven't been a part of the series the whole time, what we've been doing for our intros for every sermon is we have a song that is loosely about heroes because the series is called Obscure Heroes. So if you're like, why in the world are they playing that song? That's why, because adults aren't in charge and we think that that's funny. So that's what we've done. I do have to tell you that my sermon in no way fits with that song. In fact, it is very far out of place. It's why I woke up on Monday of this week. I knew what sermon that we had planned in the series. And I woke up on Monday and I thought, I don't want to do that sermon. That's a hard one. That's a heavy one. It talks about like pain and grief, and that's not like summertime fare. Like we're going to do some stupid song to start off the sermon, and it's supposed to be just light and fun. And so I had myself convinced that I didn't need to do the sermon. And then on Tuesday afternoon, I had, or maybe Monday, I can't remember, I had lunch with another pastor in the area, actually, because they talk to me sometimes. And I said, hey, man, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that I'm going to bail on this, and I'm going to do this instead. What do you think? And he's like, well, what would you talk about? And I kind of told him and he goes, I don't know, man. Sounds like you need to pray about it. People need to hear that. And I thought, darn it, you and the Holy Spirit. So I knew that I needed to do this one. It's a heavy one. It's a hard one. But my hope and my prayer is that it's exactly what some of us need, and that it's exactly what we need to hear. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to pray. I'm just going to pray that this would be a good time and that God's Word will be taught transparently and correctly, and that maybe we can take some comfort out of what we look at today. So let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you for a place where we can have fun. We also thank you for your word. And we understand that life isn't always fun. And it's not always sunshine and lollipops, God. And in those moments, you show up too. And so we just ask that your word would be used to bring comfort to us today as some of us hurt, as some of us grieve, as some of us recover from those things or face those things. Lord, just be with us and in this time today. In Jesus' name, amen. So I want to look today at the story of Eli. We find Eli at the beginning of 1 Samuel. We're going to be specifically looking at a story out of 1 Samuel chapter 3. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, they have free ones on your phone, so you can use those too. Eli was the high priest. Now this is a time in Israel when Israel didn't have a king. They came out of Egypt, led by Moses. They wandered in the desert. Then Moses passes away. Joshua is named the leader. He leads them into Israel. They conquer what we know as the modern nation of Israel. They divide it up amongst the 12 tribes. And now they're living in these territories with God as their king. They have no king. And so the high priest is the mouthpiece of God to the people. So he's the big dog in Israel. He's the guy. If you're the high priest in Israel, you're the most powerful man in the country. And so that's Eli. Eli is the high priest. Now Eli had two sons named Hophni and Phinehas. And they were jerks. Hophni and Phinehas were spoiled, rich kids that were privileged, that took gross advantage of their privilege, okay? Their dad is the most powerful man in the country. I would assume that there was some wealth that went along with it, though I don't know that. I can't back that up with paperwork, but it seems reasonable to make that guess. And they took advantage of their dad's position in their position. They used it to take advantage of women. They threatened, they would steal food from the temple and when the priest tried to stop them, they would threaten to beat up the older priest. Like that's what they did. They were deplorable jerks, okay? And God had decided that he could not trust the priesthood to these two. Because the idea is when the high priest passes away, the next priest comes up was generally his son and it stayed in the family. It was this legacy that the priest would leave behind generation after generation. But there's also this boy named Samuel. Samuel's mom was a woman named Hannah who had a hard time having kids. She went to the temple and she begged God for a kid and she says, if you give me a son, I'll give him back to you. And so that's what she did. She was blessed with a boy named Samuel. And then she gave Samuel back to the temple just as soon as he was old enough to eat food on his own. And he was raised in the temple as like a disciple of Eli. And one night Samuel's asleep and he hears a voice crying out to him. So he wakes up, he assumes it's Eli. He goes into Eli's room. Hey, Eli, what's up, man? And Eli says, I didn't call out to you. Like, go back to bed, kid. You're crazy. So Samuel goes back to bed. This happens a couple more times until finally Eli says, Samuel, that's the Lord speaking to you. Next time you hear that voice, you need to say, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And so that's what he did. The next time he heard the voice, Samuel said, speak, Lord, for your servant hears. And God told him something. And it was bad news for Eli. So the next morning, Samuel wakes up. And Eli comes and finds him. And he says, tell me what God said to you last night. And Samuel demurs, oh, it was nothing. It was no big deal. It was just about, you know, some cattle and stuff. Don't worry about it. And they kind of keep going back and forth. And finally, Eli says, you tell me what the Lord said or everything that he said that's going to happen is going to happen to you instead. So Samuel, we don't know how old he is, 8, 10, 12 years old. It was terrifying to have to say what he was about to say to Eli, the most powerful man in the country, respected high priest. He didn't want to say it. But under threat, he agrees. And so he tells Eli, the Lord has told me that your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, cannot be trusted with the priesthood, and they're evil in his eyes. So he's going to have them killed. He's going to let them die, and the priesthood is going to be taken from your family. Now, that's the worst news I think any person can receive. It's got to be the worst news. You are going to lose your children. You're going to attend your children's funeral. And the legacy that you want to leave will not be left. I am taking your kids and I am taking your legacy. There is not a more painful thing. I'm convinced after being in the pastorate, after seeing enough life to form this kind of opinion, I've seen these funerals enough times, there is no deeper sadness that I have seen than for a parent to survive a child. I think that's got to be the worst. It breaks my heart. And Eli's just told, you're going to lose both your sons, and you will leave no legacy. I'm going to entrust the priesthood to somebody else. Now, if you were Eli, and you just received that news as the high priest, how would you respond? What would you think? What would you want to say? I know for me, I would want to shake my fist and say, God, that's not fair. That's not right. I serve you, God. I've dedicated my life to serving you. I know that my sons aren't the best, but they're going to come around, God. I pray about them every day. They're going to get there. Just give us a little bit more time, God. This is not fair. This isn't right. I've devoted my life to you, and you're going to let this happen to me. Isn't that what you would say? Isn't that what you would feel? Wouldn't you feel that it was unfair? You have to imagine, and we don't know this to be sure, but don't you think that there's a really good chance that Samuel continued to pray or that Eli continued to pray for his sons? That Eli continued to pray, God, I know that they're not walking with you right now. I know that they're living in sin, but man, they're going to come around. Just please be with them. Please don't forget about them. Don't you think that he hadn't given up hope on them? And then he finds out, I'm going to let them die. And I'm going to take your legacy. Wouldn't you want to shake your fist at God and say, this is not fair. Give me a little more time. And what Eli says is to me one of the most faithful statements in the Bible. If you look, 1 Samuel 3, verse 18, when Eli hears this news, this is his immediate response. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. He's God. He created this. He's the Lord over everything. I trust him. Let him do what seems best to him. Would that be your response? When you take your place, and we've all had them, when you take yourself to your place of deepest grief, is what you were thinking in that moment, the Lord, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. So how was Eli, in the face of this kind of pain and anguish, able to respond like that? I think that he understood some principles that we see more pointedly in the New Testament that can help us understand maybe how Eli was able to have this kind of faith and the choices that he was making even in that moment. In John chapter 11, there's one of my favorite stories in the Bible. Of course, I say that about all the stories that I teach. I really like the Bible. I'm sorry. In John chapter 11, we meet this family, Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And we, the historians believe that these were Jesus, the closest thing that Jesus had to besties, okay? These were his closest friends. These were probably his vacation friends. They wanted to go down to the beaches. This is, they probably went together. He loved Mary and Martha and Lazarus. They lived in a town called Bethany, and that's affectionately known as Jesus's favorite place on earth. That's probably where he felt home and safe. And he's a couple days' journey away, and Lazarus is sick. He's going to die. So Mary and Martha send word to Jesus, hey, our brother's going to die. You should come take care of him, because they know that he has the power to heal. So Jesus says, okay. He gets the message. He waits for two days, and then he travels to Bethany. And while he's traveling there, Lazarus passes away. And Mary and Martha are ticked, rightfully so, because they know that Jesus waited. He should be here by now and he's not. What's he doing? And so as he approaches Bethany, Mary runs out to meet him. And she asks him the question that we would ask. Jesus, why didn't you come sooner? We told you that our brother was going to die and you could have come and done something about it and you didn't. Why didn't you come sooner? And if you're paying attention and you're empathizing and you're thinking about your own life, this is the question that we all ask too. Whenever we experience loss or grief, we lean in with Mary and we say, yeah, Jesus, why? Because here's the thing. Mary knew that Jesus had the power to prevent her brother from dying. She knew that he could have swept in at any moment and healed him. She knew that he could have prayed a prayer from two days away and healed Lazarus and that he didn't need to die and that he didn't need to go through this pain. She knew that he could have stopped it and that he chose not to. So she leans in and she says, why'd you do that? And if you've ever prayed for someone to survive that didn't, then you've asked that question too. If you've ever prayed against a diagnosis, you've asked that question too. If you've walked through a divorce or abuse or an irreconcilable situation, then you lean in with Mary and you've asked that question too. Jesus, you could have stopped this and you didn't. Why? And Jesus' response is not what we would expect. It's the shortest verse in the Bible. It may be the most profound, John 11, 35. As soon as she asked him that question, you could have stopped this and you didn't, Jesus. Why not? He says, or the Bible says, that Jesus wept. Jesus wept. And when I imagine that moment, I don't imagine Jesus as standing coldly back from Mary and looking at her as they just stand and weep together. I imagine Jesus as grabbing her shoulders and bringing her in and embracing the sister that he loved and weeping with her. And when you think about the times in your life when you've hurt the most, that's what you need more than anything. You need people to weep with you. You need people's presence. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat with somebody who was hurting? You sat with them at a loved one's funeral. You sat with them in the hospital while they hoped against hope. Have you ever sat in the middle of someone's pain and racked your brain for the right thing to say? And you can't come up with anything because there's nothing to be said. There's nothing to be said. And if you remember your own pain and the way that people ministered to you, it was never what they said. You don't remember what people told you. You remember that they were there. Because words don't help. I think Abraham Lincoln said it best. I love the letter. It circulates just about every Memorial Day that he wrote to the mom who lost five sons in the Union Army that year. And he said, he said, I feel the weakness of my words and any attempt to beguile you from the pain that you must feel. He's admitting that his words are impotent. In fact, usually the only things that are said there that we remember are the dumb things, right? I've heard people say before when someone's endured loss, like, well, God must have needed another angel in heaven. Don't say dumb crap like that. No, he doesn't. God can make any angel he wants. He doesn't need to take someone from you so that he can have another one in heaven. That's silly. It's not helpful. That's what someone told us when we had a miscarriage. Get away from me. It's not helpful. The only thing that we remember is people's presence. When we walked through that, Jen and I did together, I remember her Uncle Edwin, four separate times, called me as the dust was settling to see how I was doing, to encourage me, to tell me that he loved me and that he was praying for me. He didn't have to do that. He's not even my biological uncle. He's Jen's, but he cared for me and he kept calling. I don't remember what he said. I have no idea. But I remember that he showed up. When we are hurting, what we need most is people's presence. So when we hurt, Jesus doesn't offer us words because words don't help. He weeps with us. He offers us his presence. And the truth of it is that we have a God who weeps with us. We have a God that when we hurt, he embraces us. He holds us and he weeps with us and he feels our pain with us. He doesn't give us words to try to explain what we're doing because let's be honest, when you're in that moment and you're asking Jesus, why'd you let this happen to me? Why'd you let this happen? You could have stopped us and you didn't. Listen to me, I'm being honest. I was thinking about this this week. If Jesus sat you down and explained to you exactly why he was letting this thing happen in your life and told you all the reasons in light of history and in light of eternity and with the proper view of time and keeping his promises and how it all works out one day, if he explained everything to you and somehow you were able to understand it, would it make that moment hurt any less? No. When we ask Jesus, why'd you let this happen? What we're really saying is, I need you to make this better. I need you to fix this because this sucks. That's what we're saying. And Jesus knows that words are not going to fix it. So he weeps with us. And he weeps with us, I believe, not just for the pain that we're walking through in the moment, but because he knows that we're going to struggle to understand. He doesn't just weep for our pain, but also because we're going to struggle to understand. He knows that we are not going to understand what's going on around us and that we can't. And that hurts his heart. Several months ago, I think it may have even been last year, we woke up on a Friday. Friday is family day at the rector House. I have that one off because technically I'm working right now. And so on Fridays, we get up and we try to protect that for our family. And we got up and we told Lily this day we're going to go to the new park. To her, Sassafras behind Crabtree is the new park, which is amazing. One of the things we love most about Raleigh is the parks. They're incredible. Back home, they're all dumpy. You need a tetanus shot before you go to the park. So here, it's great. And so we get in the car. We load up. We go to the new park. We get her out of the car. She's excited. Lily excited. Yes. And you put her on the ground. And she runs down the sidewalk to go play at the new park. Comes around the corner. And what she finds is that there's a makeshift chain link fence around the whole park and not a soul there. And we looked online and we realized they're repairing the ground. They're replacing the flooring for the park. Can't play that day. Jen and I are brokenhearted. And we're looking at the disappointment on our little girl's face and it's hurting us. And we had taught her this thing. So I think she was two years old at the time. And when they get fixated on something, it's just all that they can think about. And so we had taught her to be patient. So she would see something and she'd be like, mommy, chips, chips. I want chips, mommy. Give me the chips, chips, chips, chips. And we'd be like, oh my gosh, stop it. So we'd pick her up and I'd look at her and I'd go, Lily, sweetheart, you can have the chips in a little bit, but not right now. I need you to be patient. Can you be patient? And she would repeat back to me, I'd be patient. And for us, that was like our first parenting win. Like the first time she said it, we were like, okay, I think that she will survive. I think we can do this. So we were so happy that she understood what it meant to be patient. And so we get down there, and Lily's up against the fence, and we have to say, oh, sweetheart, we're not going to, we can't play on the playground right now. They're working on it. She doesn't understand what's going on. And I'll never forget, it broke my heart. She's up against that chain link fence. It's like from a dang movie. And she turns around and she looks at me and she says, it's okay, Daddy, I'll be patient. Golly, man. Jen and I started crying on the spot. No, baby, you don't understand. Like, it ain't happening today. And there's nothing we can say to help her understand. She's two. She can't process what's going on. I think that sense of helplessness that we felt in the face of her pain is pretty similar to what God feels sometimes. Not helpless, but just the fact that he knows. I can't explain this to you. Oh, sweetheart. I can't make this better for you right now. It's just not how it's going to work. And I know that answer is going to cause you more pain. And I'm so sorry about that. And it'll get better if you're patient. But you're probably going to have to be patient for longer than you realize. I don't think that God weeps with us just because we're hurting, but because he knows that we're going to have to choose faith. We're going to have to choose him when it doesn't make sense. The story that illustrates this to me is in the book of Matthew, I think around chapter 11. John the Baptist is a prophet that prepared the way for Jesus. And John the Baptist, he was a brave man, he was a man of courage, and he spoke truth to power, and he said the wrong thing to the king, and it got him thrown in jail. And he's been in jail for a little while, and he begins to get this sense that he's going to die there, that they're going to execute him. And so he sends message to Jesus. John the Baptist had disciples. He gathers his disciples around, and he sends the message to Jesus, and he tells him, go ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come, or should I expect someone else? He's saying, are you the Messiah, or have I gotten this wrong? Don't need to keep waiting. And he's referencing a passage in Isaiah that was a prophecy about the Messiah. And he knows that Jesus knows his Bible, and that when he hears this question, he's going to know exactly what John the Baptist is talking about. Because there's a prophecy in Isaiah that says, when the coming one arrives, the one who is to come, when they arrive, the deaf will hear and the blind will see and the lame will walk and the prisoners will be set free. And so what John is asking Jesus is, are you the guy? Because when the guy gets here, the prisoners are supposed to be set free. And I'm still here. And I'm going to die here if you don't do something about it. So are you the guy? Same as Mary. You can do something about this. Are you going to? Same as us. God, it feels like you could prevent this. Are you going to? And Jesus responds to John the Baptist. He tells the disciples, you go tell John that I am the one who is to come and that the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk and the prisoners are set free, but John the Baptist will not be. And then he says, blessed are those who do not lose faith on account of me. Blessed are those who are not offended by me. Because he knew. This is going to be painful news for John the Baptist, and I am not meeting the expectations that he has for me, and I am not going to do the thing that he is asking me to do, that it is within my power to do, and he's not going to understand why I'm not going to do it and he's just going to have to choose faith. And blessed are those who in the face of pain choose faith. Because it's hard. Because we don't understand it. Because Romans 11 tells us that God's ways are higher than our ways. And that there's going to be some things that almighty God, all-knowing God, all-wise God does that we can't possibly understand. And sometimes the choices that he makes are going to be choices that don't make sense to us, that don't seem fair to us, that make us angry because it seems like he could have prevented it and he chose not to and we don't understand. And in those moments, it is up to us whether or not we want to respond like Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And that's a tough thing to say. But here's the deal. When Eli says that, understanding the principles we look at in the New Testament, understanding that we have a God that weeps with us, that offers us his presence because words really aren't what we need. They're not going to fix it at the end of the day. Eli understands that. He understands that sometimes God allows things to happen that seem like he shouldn't let them happen, that we're praying against and he allows them to occur and it frustrates us and we lean in with Mary and say, why'd you do that? And God weeps with us because we hurt and we're not going to understand this pain on this side of eternity. And Eli looks at all of that and he says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. And I really believe that choosing faith in the face of this pain really comes down to two questions. Do we choose to believe that God is good? Do you believe that God is good? Do you believe that the God of the universe who knows you, created you, do you believe that he is good? And then do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do you believe that God is good and do you believe that he will keep his promises? Do we trust Romans 8, 28 that says, we know that all things work together for the good of those who love him are called according to his purpose. Do we trust that to work out in eternity? Do we trust that one day when we can understand everything, when we can see as God sees, when we get into heaven, when we're on the other side of this life and we look back on everything, do we trust that if we could understand it like God does, that we will go, okay, I get it now. You are good and I love you and thank you. Do we trust that that's true? Do we trust the most hopeful promise in the Bible in Revelation 21 that one day God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there will be no more weeping and no more crying and no more pain anymore? Do we trust that promise? If we choose to believe that God is good and we choose to believe that he will keep his promises, then we can respond like Eli and have faith in the face of pain. And listen, when we miscarried, and I learned about that after trying to get pregnant for a long time, I went home and I got on my knees and I prayed through tears. And I said, Lord, you're good. Let you do what seems good to you. And can I tell you this? I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. I said it because I was supposed to, because I'm a pastor and I wanted to be a good soldier and I wanted to say the right thing, but I didn't believe that for a second. I was mad, man. I didn't believe a good God would do that. But I said it. And over time, I believed it. And I still do. And I was listening to a song this morning that says, what is true in the light is still true in the dark. And even if we don't feel like we believe it, we can still choose to trust it. We can still choose to respond to pain with faith like Eli. And so I hope that for those of us facing pain, we'll choose to respond with faith. I hope in a kind and gentle and empathetic way, as we see people around us hurting, we can encourage them towards faith, even when it doesn't make sense. I hope that we won't try to help people make sense of their pain, because even Jesus didn't try to do that. He just offered his presence. And I hope that as we move through life and face pain again that we'll remember the message of Eli. It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. Let's pray. Father, you are good. You are good even when it doesn't seem like you are. You are good even when we don't understand how. You're good when you don't do the thing we want you to do. You're good when it doesn't go the way we want it to go. You're good when we are disappointed. You're good and patient as we shake our fists at you. God, you are good. I pray that you would give us the faith to believe that when it's hard. I pray that you would continue to be patient with us as we learn what it means to be faithful. We thank you for being a God that weeps with us, that is close to the brokenhearted, that comforts those who are crushed in spirit. And I pray particularly for those this morning who are struggling through some pain, that you would be close to them, that they would be comforted by your word. And that somehow, God, if they know you, you would give them the faith of Eli. And that one day they would be able to really believe what they say. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.