Sermons tagged with Gentiles

Good morning, Grace. It's so good to be back in the saddle again, getting to talk to you. I'm so grateful to have people like Kyle who can step in for me last week. One of the values that I feel we have at Grace is the desire to hear multiple voices, multiple influences, multiple perspectives. So I was excited to have Kyle in here to do a phenomenal job talking about the joy of Paul and Silas last week. This week, before we jump into the sermon, I'm really excited to announce that we are going to resume in-person gatherings on August the 16th. 10 a.m. right here. You're invited to come participate in church live. We're thinking of it as having church in our home or yours. So by August the 16th, we're going to be prepared to do a live streaming simulcast of our service. So you can come and experience in this room in person, or you can experience it in your home where you have been experiencing it all summer long. I understand that a lot of us simply won't be ready to come back by August the 16th, and that's all right. We're going to have a full service, worship, announcements, sermon. Our very first service back, we're going to be focused largely on worship, corporate worship together, because I miss nothing more than worshiping with you guys and being in the lobby and talking with all of you. on August the 16th. If you're not quite there yet, you can stay at home and have the exact same experience. There's going to be details to follow about all the precautions that we're going to take on Sunday mornings. One of the things I know that we're going to do, I was just talking to the elders about this this last week, is we're going to ask that everybody in this place be wearing a mask. So if you're not comfortable with wearing a mask, if you're going to be mad about that, then go ahead and email me and let's start having that discourse right now. But that's going to be part of the deal when we come back. We're all going to wear masks. We're going to distance ourselves. We're not yet going to have child care. Everyone's going to be invited to participate in the service. The mechanics of child care just won't work out yet. But I'm super excited to get to see everybody again. I'm super excited at the idea of preaching to people. I'm super excited to worship with you, to see you, to catch up with you. If you feel comfortable with it, I hope that you'll consider joining us on August the 16th as we resume our in-person gatherings. And I hope if you're going to consume them from home that you'll look forward to that being a live stream with full worship and everything we do as a service. Hopefully it can begin to feel like grace again. Now this morning we are finishing up our series in the book of Acts called Still the Church. We've been looking at this book that chronicles the beginning of church. Jesus goes up to heaven, he leaves behind his disciples, and he tasks the disciples with the job of building his kingdom on earth, to build the church, right? And we've been pulling out from this book the practices, principles, and philosophies that we should apply to our church today, the things that we should still be doing. And so we looked at Jesus going up into heaven. He left the disciples behind. After a few days, they received the Holy Spirit, and they go out. We spent two weeks looking at the seven distinctives of the early church that should still be true of our church today. And then we moved through the book looking at these key events, these substantial events in the life of the early church that really formed and played a big part in who we are and what we should do. And after the conversion of a guy named Saul into Paul that God said was his chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles, the rest of the book of Acts really mostly chronicles his ministry, the most influential ministry of all time. And Acts ends in the 28th chapter. And at the very end of the 28th chapter, we kind of get the synopsis of Paul's ministry. We get our final words from him, and then Luke, the author of the book, kind of shares with us what happens at the end of Paul's life. So if you have a Bible there at home, go ahead and turn it to Acts chapter 28. You can go to the very end of the chapter. We're going to be looking at verses 28 through 31. And in verses 26 and 27, Paul is speaking, and he's speaking to a Hebrew audience. You'll remember from this series and from sermons past that the Hebrew people were God's chosen people, and they believed erroneously that God and his kingdom and his salvation was only for them. The problem was they didn't really receive it or accept it the way that they should. The problem was that when God finally sent the promised Messiah for whom they had been waiting for millennia, that they rejected him. And because of that, God is now, through Paul, opening up the gospel to the rest of the world. The intent was always to reach the world. He gave the Israelites, his chosen people, the news first, but it was their job to spread it. They didn't do it. So now Paul says, I'm going to do it instead of you, and they get to hear it instead of you. And so in 26 and 27, he quotes back to them from a passage in Isaiah that they all know very well, that essentially says that God's people will be ever seeing and never perceiving and ever hearing and never understanding that they're going to listen but that they won't hear. They're going to be exposed to the gospel but they won't receive the gospel. And then in response to that, Paul says this in verse 28. He says, So he's talking to the Hebrew people and he says, you've had a chance to listen and you've chosen not to. You're ever seeing and never perceiving, ever hearing and never understanding. So now I'm going to take this gospel, I'm going to take this truth and I'm going going to preach it to the Gentiles, and they're going to believe it. I'm going to preach it to the whole world. And then Luke finishes up the chapter like this. Speaking of Paul, he lived there. By now Paul is in Rome. He's in house arrest in Rome. So it says, So the book of Acts chronicles the beginning of the early church. I think of it as a baby deer learning to walk, finding its footing, becoming an institution. It grows into 3,000. It spreads in Jerusalem. It spreads in the Diaspora. It spreads in Asia Minor all the way out to Rome. Paul has three or four missionary journeys depending on which scholar you ask if the shipwreck on Malta counts as one. And he plants churches the whole way. And then he finishes his life in Rome. Many scholars, most scholars believe that Paul died in Rome a few years after this was written. And for the last years of his life, he preached the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance. He preached the gospel. And as we look at the book of Acts, we've been asking every week, based on the example in the book of Acts, what should we be doing? And if you're watching this, listen, let's be real for a second. It's in the middle of July and we've been doing online church for four months. If you're watching this, you care about church. If you're watching this, you care about the things of God. If you're watching this, you're asking the question, okay, that's great that Acts 28 ends that way, but how can that relate to me? How should that inspire me? What can I take out of that that should spur on action and passion within my own heart? What is happening in here that can stir my soul? If you're watching in the middle of July, in the fourth month of a pandemic, then what I know is you want to apply this to yourself. You care deeply about the things of God and about mimicking the early church. So what is it in this passage that we can pull out and apply to us? I think it's this simple truth, that like Paul, each of us must spend the rest of our lives preaching the gospel, just like Paul did. It says that he finished his life preaching the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance, just like he had done in all of his previous years. In Paul, we see a life poured out. He even says that he is a drink offering and that he has been poured out for the sake of the gospel. We see a man who says, I have run my race, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In Paul, we see a life that was poured out for the sake of the gospel. And if there's anything that we should take from Paul, it's the truth and the reality that if he spent his last years preaching the gospel, that we should spend our years preaching the gospel. If he invested his life in preaching the gospel, then we should invest our lives in preaching the gospel. And even as I say that, I think it stirs up two questions within us. First, what is the gospel? How do we succinctly and clearly define that? And second, how do I preach it? And I think that those are both legitimate questions. And I don't know how many of you are watching this right now, but I would be willing to bet if I could sit down with each of you and ask you, how would you define the gospel? If someone were to ask you, what is the gospel? What would you say that it was? I bet I would get a bunch of answers that were at the very least really close to right. But I also bet I would get a bunch of different meandering responses trying to really hone in on what the gospel is. And so I think it would be helpful for us to have a clear and concise understanding of the gospel so that when we talk about this idea of preaching the gospel, what do we mean? What are we preaching? How do we define that? And so this week I sat down and honestly I researched a bunch. I read over 50 different definitions of the gospel. Some short, some super long, and some had a ton of details, some didn't have very many details because I had an idea of how I wanted to describe it for the church, but I wanted to make sure I was right and on solid footing. And so I've come up with a definition of the gospel that I believe is true, I believe is accurate, I believe is fair and workable. It's stripped away of detail, but I think all of the details are embedded in it if you pay attention. And so for the sake of this morning, for the sake of our church, as we think about how do I preach the gospel, what is it, I want to define the gospel this way. We know that the gospel is good news. It comes from the word euangelion, which literally means the good news. So what is the good news? The good news of the gospel is that God invites you into a perfect eternal kingdom and Jesus has secured your citizenship. That's the gospel. That God, creator God in heaven, has also created a perfect eternal kingdom that he's invited you into and Jesus, through his death on the cross and covering over of your sins by that death, has secured your citizenship. The gospel says that there is an eternal kingdom in which God sits on the throne, and that in that kingdom, the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf. Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf with groanings that are too deep for words, that when you pray, the Holy Spirit hears those words and takes them to God the Father and says, here's what they really meant. Here's what she really needs. Here's what's really on her heart. And that in this perfect eternal kingdom, we're told again in Romans 8 that Jesus himself sits at the right hand of the Father interceding for you. That Jesus sits next to God the Father and he says, he's okay. He doesn't mean what he's doing. Have patience with him. Be gracious with him. I'm vouching for him. I died for her. The gospel is the reality of an eternal kingdom in which the Holy Spirit intercedes for you, and Jesus himself advocates for you, and Jesus can advocate for you because he has secured your citizenship with his own life. That's the gospel. And listen, because that's the gospel, that changes everything. You understand? Because we know, because as believers we are aware of the reality that there is a perfect, eternal kingdom, It changes everything in this world. Doesn't the reality of the gospel change the way we process pain and loss? Doesn't the reality of the gospel change the way we process hurt and tragedy? Paul says in Corinthians that though we endure struggles for a small time, James says that we should consider struggle a pure joy because we know that it's only temporary. We know that it won't last forever. Don't you understand that the gospel says that years like 2020 are not all we have? That the gospel says that there is a perfect kingdom beyond political division and racial strife and pandemics. That 2020 isn't all that there is. That there's more on the other side of this. That even if the world were to end in 2020, that there is another eternal perfect kingdom waiting for us on the other side. The reality of the gospel should change the way we process pain. It should help us see everything as temporary and not permanent. The pain that we're experiencing in our life, heartbreak and tragedy and abuse and disease, they don't get to put a period on the end of the sentence. God finishes that sentence later in eternity. Because the gospel is true, we can say things at funerals like I did a few weeks ago. We've lost a great partner of our church, a guy named Wes Clark. And I got to do his graveside service for his family a few weeks ago. And at that service in front of his wife who loves him and his six wonderful kids who loved him dearly, who didn't have a negative thing to say about their father and his grandkids who loved him dearly, I got to tell them, because the gospel is true, I got to tell them that this service isn't goodbye. It's goodbye for now. It's just goodbye for now. We're going to see him again. When I was growing up, there was this old gospel quartet, and I'll never forget one of the stanzas of one of their songs. It says, Because that's true. Because there's an eternal kingdom in which Jesus has secured our citizenship, death doesn't have a sting like it did. Sin doesn't have its shackles like it did. Everything changes. I love that quote from Pope John Paul II that says, we are the Easter people. We will not give way to despair for we are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song. We can have this uncommon joy in the face of tragedy. We will not despair. We will always sing praise because we know that there is an eternal perfect kingdom waiting for us and Jesus has secured our citizenship there. If you're watching and you don't know if you're a part of that kingdom, talk to some people around you. Email me because Jesus has died for you too. But the gospel doesn't just change the way we view pain or the way that we view struggle or the temporary nature with which we view this earth that the Bible tells us we are aliens in a foreign land here because we are members of another kingdom. We're citizens of another kingdom. It also imbues us with purpose. Because the gospel is true, each of us have something much larger than ourselves to live for. We have something much larger than our children to live for, much larger than our businesses or our families or our legacies to live for. We have the kingdom of God to live for, which is why it was so easy for Paul when he was struck with the reality of the gospel to spend his entire life preaching it. And because of the reality of the gospel, we should spend our entire lives preaching it. So if that's what the gospel is, if the gospel, if the good news of it is that God invites us into an eternal perfect kingdom, and Jesus has secured our citizenship in that kingdom, and it's our job to preach it. We might ask ourselves, Nate, how do I realistically do that? How do you want me to preach the gospel? Because you might be looking at me on your screen thinking, it's easy for you to connect those dots, pal. Like you're a pastor. You just preached it. Go you. That's a pretty easy equation to figure out. But how do I do that? How do I preach the gospel if I'm not given a platform? And to that, I would simply say this. I'm going to give us four ways to preach the gospel, but I would also remind you that I get to preach the gospel to people who love Jesus in the middle of July and are watching online. That's who I get to preach the gospel to. I don't get to preach the gospel to your coworkers. I don't get to preach the gospel to your neighbors. I don't get to preach the gospel to some of your circles of friends. For some of you, I don't get to preach the gospel to your adult children. You're the one left to do that. So while it may be easy to connect the dots on how a pastor can preach the gospel, we should also acknowledge that my audience is different than yours and that your audience needs the gospel too. They need to know that an eternal perfect kingdom exists and that Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom. So if that's what we're supposed to do, how do we preach it? Because when we think of preaching the gospel, we often think of using words, of telling people about Jesus, of going out and proclaiming. But I would submit that there's a lot of ways to preach the gospel, to show this truth to people. And I'm going to give you four of them. There's more than four. You could probably sit after the sermon if you're really ambitious. You could think of more than these. And I would also tell you that because I'm going to give you four applications, four ways to preach the gospel, my challenge to you is just to pick one. Pick one that resonates with you. If I say one and it doesn't click with you, then just wait. I'll be to the next one in a few minutes. But pick one that resonates with you, that clicks, and try to preach the gospel to the people around you in that way. But here are four ways this morning that we can preach the gospel and be obedient to that calling like Paul was. The first way is that we can preach the gospel with eternally inspired kindness. Eternally inspired kindness. And I say eternally inspired kindness because it's kindness that we treat people with in light of the fact that the gospel is true. extreme lenses we can see them through. One is to see everyone through the best possible lens to give them the benefit of the doubt. My wife, Jen, does this. She's one of the kindest, gentlest people that I know. She's so nice to everyone, and she sees everyone through this lens of benefit of the doubt. She just thinks the best of every person. Whenever I'm criticizing anybody, she says, that person is just doing blank. That person is just having a hard day. That person is just stressed. That person might be rushing home and cut you off because they have three pregnant wives and they're all about to give birth at the same time. You don't know their reality. You should be nice to them. So she's always finding the benefit of the doubt. I, on the other hand, am on the opposite end of the spectrum with my kindness, and I tend to view people through the spectrum of objects that are in my way to get the things done that I want to get done today, right? And we fall on that spectrum somewhere. But eternally inspired kindness, I don't think sees people through that grid. Eternally inspired kindness sees people through a grid of, that is a person for whom Jesus died. And they might not know that there's an eternal kingdom beyond this world that could fill them with a hope that will not put them to shame. And I need to be kind to them in such a way, I need to treat them in such a way that my actions towards them can push them towards a knowledge of this eternal kingdom. We can absolutely preach the gospel with our kindness to one another. We can preach the gospel with our kindness when there's somebody at work who we know good and well talks about us behind our back. To our face, they're kind, they say nice things, but behind our back, they're saying things about us that are not kind. And we know what they really think of us. And our coworkers know that we know. And we can choose to treat them like they've offended us. We can choose to distance ourselves from them, or we can choose to treat them with eternally inspired kindness. Understanding that not only is this person someone who needs to know that there's an eternal kingdom and Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom, but the people who are watching me now and know that I'm a believer, they need to see that there's something different about my kindness and the way that I treat that person. The neighbor that you have that just loves to sink their teeth into a conversation and overshare and wears everybody out, they're an energy sucker from everyone who's around them. And most of your neighbors just try to spend their time avoiding that person and not getting caught up in that conversation because they have other things to do. Eternally inspired kindness just locks in and lets them share and lets them go and listens and empathizes and lets your neighbors around see that you're treating this person different than anyone else does. And we're doing that because we're offering kindness in light of eternity. I think eternally inspired kindness absolutely preaches the gospel. It shows people that there's no way this person could treat others the way they do unless there's something else going on in their life. And I wanna know what that thing is. How are they possibly so nice? Is that real? That's eternally inspired kindness. Another way we can preach the gospel is through eternally inspired joy. Kyle preached about this last week, this joy in the face of trial and hardship and tragedy. He talked about Paul and Silas being locked in the jail in Philippi and an earthquake coming through and loosening the chains. Everyone is scared. Everyone is terrified. Things are crumbling around them. And Paul and Silas are worshiping God in the midst of this. And because of that contagious, eternally inspired joy, he gets saved and his entire household gets saved. What better time? I loved the sermon last week. I love the point of it. And I thought it was incredibly apropos of the moment. What better time is there to display eternally inspired uncommon joy than 2020? Than a pandemic we're all tired of, than political divisiveness that is wearing us all out, than racial issues that are bubbling up and causing different emotions on totally different ends of the spectrum. What better time is there to display this uncommon, eternally inspired joy, this peace that passes all understanding, acknowledging that there is an eternity on the other side of this, that God is going to fix this one day, what better chance to display that joy than in our current context? When we have eternally inspired joy, we have a joy and a peace and a fulfillment that this world and the circumstances of this world can't touch. And in a year like this, that joy stands out like a city on a hill. And we preach the gospel and point to God with eternally inspired joy. We can preach the gospel with eternally inspired generosity. Not just with our finances, but with our time and our energy and our effort. We can be incredibly generous people. I think increasingly to be a believer is to have this awareness that everything I have is God's and I am to leverage it for the sake of eternity. I'm to use everything I can, every ounce of my resources to push people towards this kingdom that God has created and to make them aware that Jesus has secured their citizenship in that kingdom. And when we think of generosity, often we think of finances, and that's true. We should. That's a wonderful application. I think that Christians should be the most financially generous people on the planet. I think we absolutely should be the most generous people on the planet, but it also means being generous with our time, being generous in the things that we pour ourselves into. I think it means being generous with our forgiveness, offering it when it's not deserved. The older that I get, the more I want generosity to define who I am. And listen, I'm woefully short of that. I'm not sure if anybody listening to this would think to themselves, you know what I think of Nate? I think of generosity. But I know that I want that to be true. To me, a generous spirit in all ways is one of the defining characteristics of someone who knows and loves God and is aware of his kingdom and has this eternal mindset in the way that they handle all the things that were given to them. We can absolutely preach the gospel through eternally inspired generosity. The last way that I would give you this morning is through eternally inspired boldness. It's to actually preach the gospel. It's to use the words and form the sentences and to have the conversation. It's to let it be known. Some of us aren't very public with our faith because we don't want to be offensive. We're afraid that faith will cause a disruption in our friend group, a disruption in our neighborhood, a disruption in our office space. We kind of avoid talking about religion the same way we avoid talking about politics because to bring up politics is to invite strife, it's to invite division, and we feel the same way about our faith. But I would simply say to you that I totally understand this aversion to discomfort. But if we really believe the gospel's true, if we really truly believe that there is an eternal, perfect kingdom that John describes in Revelation. Revelation 21, I talk about this passage a lot. And in this kingdom, there will be no more crying and no more weeping and no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And God will be with his people and his people will be with their God. And it will be perfect. If that kingdom really exists, if we truly believe that there is a perfect eternity waiting for us on the other side of death and that Jesus has secured our citizenship in that eternity and all we have to do is believe in what he did on the cross and we will enjoy that eternity forever. If we believe that is true, isn't it worth a little discomfort with our friends and neighbors to get them to go as well? Isn't it worth our boldness? Isn't it worth being a pariah if we can bring a few with us on the way? If the gospel's true, isn't it worthy of our boldness? If this book is true, there's a creator God in heaven who loves us, who loves us so much that he sent his only son to die for us, to cover over our sins so that we might spend eternity experiencing him forever in perfect joy. If that's true, isn't it worth our whole life? Isn't it worth preaching in every way possible? Isn't it worth bringing as many people as we can with us on our way to this perfect kingdom? That's why Paul spent his last years preaching the gospel. And that's why I think for us, as individuals who care about God and who do believe that this is true, we should spend every day of our life preaching the gospel too. I hope that we'll find ways to do that. And I hope that God will use you in incredible ways and you'll get to sit on the front lines of ministry because we have faithfully preached the good news that there is an eternal perfect kingdom and that Jesus has secured our citizenship in that kingdom. Let's pray. Father, you are better to us than we deserve. God, we bring everything that we are and we lay it at your feet. We know that you see both the good parts and the not as good parts. We know that you see the purity of motives that exist in our hearts and we know that you see the messy stuff too. God, for those struggling with faith, build it up, strengthen it. Let us believe that this is true. God, for those who desperately wanna preach the gospel, show us places where we can do that. For those of us like me who struggle with kindness, God, give us eternal eyes. Let us see people as you do. For those of us like me who struggle with generosity, God, let us hold things with an open hand and let that word define us. For those that struggle with boldness, give them courage. For those who struggle to be joyful, help them find reasons to celebrate in the midst of hardship. Father, make us a church who preaches your gospel every day and let people come to know you because of how you use us here. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. It's good to get to share in another morning with you like this. Before I dive into the sermon, I just wanted to clarify something. This week I saw someone from Grace in person that I haven't seen in a long time. I happened to be wearing a suit. And as they got out of their car, the first thing they said to me is like, oh, you look slimmer. And I said, slimmer than what? And they said, well, you know, the camera, you know, it adds like 15 pounds. And so you just, I've only seen you on camera. And so seeing you in person, it's just a little different. I was kind of taken aback by that comment and just wanted to assure those of you who have been following along during COVID that if you think that makes looking a little chubby, that's the camera. I am the picture of health. If you could see me in person, you would note that I am both slim and trim and fit. So I'm just throwing that out there for the record. Now, as we jump into the sermon, we're in the middle of this series called We Are the church in the first century ought to still guide the church in the 21st century because we are still the church. This week we arrive at a passage that I think is really crucial to the story of the church and the story of Acts and impacts you in profound ways that you're probably unaware of. I've never heard a sermon on this passage before. We're going to be in Acts chapter 15. If you have a Bible, I hope that you'll turn there. I've never heard a sermon on this before. I've never heard it taught before. But as I go through Acts for myself, I see chapter 15 as this crucial turning point moment that has an incredible impact on the rest of Acts, but also the rest of the New Testament. It has an incredible impact on you and I think is super important in the narrative of the book of Acts. So I'm hoping that this morning, the sermon may be informative. It might be educational. This might be a place that we haven't stopped and camped out in before and sought to understand. And then hopefully it can also be inspirational in that it will encourage in us some behaviors and thought processes that we see come out of the story, and we can apply those to our own life. So in Acts chapter 15, the council, the leadership of the early church is getting together. By this time in the story, it's Peter and James and John and the disciples, but it's also a group of Pharisees and some other people who have now been grafted into the leaders of the church. Some other converts with leadership potential are now in this leadership council and they're faced with this question. This is a crucial question. And the tension that we see underlying this 15th chapter of Acts is a tension that we see massaged out in the book of Galatians. It's a tension that we see that exists throughout the book of Romans and in the book of Hebrews and a lot of other Pauline epistles, a lot of other of Paul's letters. This is a tension that runs throughout the New Testament, which is how is this new church going to handle the integration of the law and which portions of the law should we integrate? Here's what's happening. The church sprung up out of a Jewish culture and a Jewish faith. God chose the Hebrew people, the descendants of Abraham, to be his people. And he gave them laws through Moses that we're going to talk about in a minute. And then through those people, God brought the Messiah, Jesus, who died for the whole world. And now Gentiles, non-Jews, are being grafted into this faith. Paul and Barnabas are going out and they're reaching people throughout the region. They're planting churches in Asia Minor. And all of these Gentiles are coming to faith. And the Jews have only ever understood faith through the lens of the law. So they're faced with this question, how do we integrate the Gentiles who don't know our culture and our laws into our faith with our culture and laws? And this is a hugely important question. To understand and appreciate the importance of the question, we have to appreciate the law. The law was given to the Hebrew people by God through Moses. Moses comes down Mount Sinai. He's holding the tablets of the Ten Commandments. That's in the book of Exodus. And then in the book of Leviticus, God adds more laws to their laws until they have about 630 total laws. Over 270 thou shalts and over 330 thou shalt nots. And so when you start to look at all of that, that is the complexity of the Jewish faith and the Jewish law. And for centuries, they had adhered to that law. The law that they received dictated to them their rhythms of life, the ebbs and the flows of life. It dictated to them their days, the rhythm of their days and their weeks and their months and their calendars and their celebrations and even their decades. Even every 50 years there was a certain thing that they had to do according to the law, the year of Jubilee. It dictated to them their social structure. It dictated to them how they interacted. It dictated to them principles about marriage and about faith and about what they needed to do and what they shouldn't do. It was inculcated into them from a very young age. Not only did the law dictate to them the machinations of their society, but it was also the ruler by which your spirituality was measured. The better you were at following the law, the better you were at being what we would think of as a Christian. The better you were at being a believer, the more faithful you were. The sign that you were in, that you were a participant in the law, that you were a claimant of the promises made to the forefather Abraham was circumcision in the males. And so part of the law was to be circumcised and then everything flowed out of that. So to be a Jewish person was to know the law inside and out. It was to be raised to follow it well. It was to measure your spirituality by the law, and it was even to believe that your path to reconciliation with God, if you were to ask them, how can you be saved? What do you have to do? They would say, obey the law, follow the law well. And so Peter and the council are faced with this really difficult question. All of these Gentile people who have no knowledge of the law are coming to faith and want to be a part of the church. And we want them to be a part of the church as our new brothers and sisters, but how much of the law should we ask them to adhere to? What of these rules and standards and practices that we've been following should we now apply to them? This is an incredibly important question because whatever they answer in Acts chapter 15, whatever they say are laws that still apply to you and I. Whatever they say here applies to Gentile, non-Jewish people applies to us in our faith. And that's the question facing them. How much of the law do the new believers who aren't Jewish have to follow? And so they get together in their council and they begin to discuss this. And there's a group of more conservative, they used to be Pharisees and now they're integrated into this new church, and they think that they should at the very least be circumcised. We should apply that part of the law to them. And what's helpful to understand is we know, hindsight is 20-20, we know now in light of history that the whole purpose of the law was to hold up a mirror in front of you and show you your need for a Savior. Because the law kind of comes out of this question of, God, what do we have to do to be right with you? How can I live to satisfy you? What can I do to reconcile myself to you and earn my way into heaven? And God says, okay, if that's what you want to do, here's the law. Here's all the rules. Follow these perfectly and you can earn your way into heaven. And so generation after generation of Jewish person did their best to follow these rules, fell short, and now we realize that the whole reason for the law in the first place was to hold a mirror up in front of you so that you would see your need for Jesus. This is why Jesus says, I did not come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it. Romans 8 tells us that Jesus fulfills the law on our behalf because we are unable to. He came, he fulfilled the law perfectly, he died a perfect death for us, and now we live in an era of grace and faith rather than obedience to the law, and that's what reconciles us to God. The disciples are still working this out. They're still understanding how this new era of grace and faith integrates with this old era of the law. That's what makes this such a crucial moment in the history of the church. So there are some that are saying that the new Gentiles should at least be circumcised. There's other laws that they should follow. Which ones do we think are the most important? Which ones do we want to keep in this new church? And Peter has this remarkable moment of compassion in the midst of this discussion. I want you to hear what Peter says in Acts chapter 15. I'm going to pick it up in the middle of verse 7. This is how Peter addresses the leadership. He says, Now here's what he's saying. He's saying the early days. He's referring back to Pentecost, which we discussed in God has intended this whole time for Gentiles to be a part of this family of faith. He's made them His children too. He makes no distinction. He looks at the heart. In light of that, He says this in verse 10. I love this. Now therefore, why let's just stop for a second. As we stop and think which parts of the law should we apply to these new believers, which parts of the law should they have to follow, what parts should they have to obey, let's just stop and be realistic about something. We're not good at this. Neither us nor our fathers successfully followed the law. We've never been good at this. And you can read into that that there is no generation of people in the history of histories who should be better at following the law than Peter's generation. Peter's generation has centuries of family history poured into understanding this law, into following it well. They followed parts of the law instinctually by this point. It was ingrained into them. They had millennia of the law preceding them. They had teachings. They had methods of imparting it on children. They had known it their whole life. There's no generation that has ever lived that should better follow the law than Peter's generation, yet he looks around at the room and he says, guys, we stink at this. None of us follow the law well. He calls it a yoke or a burden, meaning he's acknowledging that everybody in that room had felt the disappointment of trying to follow the law perfectly only to fail and have to get up and dust yourself back off and double down on your efforts at discipline this time. Everybody in that room had experienced the disappointment and the sense of failure that comes when you can't successfully follow the law. Everyone in that room knew what it was in their heart of hearts to be woefully short of the standard of God, yet project this public image like they were exactly what God was looking for. He knew the hypocrisy in that room and the struggle in that place. And praise God for leadership like Peter's when he knows that so well and so intimately that he identifies it as a burden in his own life. And he says, with all compassion, why would we place that on our new brothers and sisters? Why would we ask them to do that when we can't even do it? They're Gentiles. They have every disadvantage in the world. They have no idea of all the laws. The learning curve on that would be so steep. It would be so discouraging to them and their faith. We have no learning curve, and yet we still stink at it. Why would we place that on them? It's incredibly compassionate. It's this woke moment of Peter to just be honest and authentic and admit where they all fall short. And he calls out the room. And they all agree with him. They all in their own way say, yeah, that's a good point. Let's not burden them with that. So then they begin the process of distilling down all of the 630 laws to the bare essentials. As we look at all of these laws, what are the ones that we think are so important that they still need to be acknowledged? And we've done stuff like this before. We've had done this exercise. This is how we plan series at church a lot of times. The last time we did this, where we whittled things down to some bare essentials, was when we as a staff planned the parables series. And what we do when we plan a series is we put everything up on the whiteboard. I asked the staff, let's look up all the parables, and we wrote them down as 40, I think 40-something parables, and they're all up on the whiteboard. I asked the staff, let's look up all the parables and we wrote them down as 40, I think 40 something parables and they're all up on the whiteboard. And then I kind of look through them and I go, these are non-negotiables. These are ones that I love. I have to preach about it or it's going to just burn a hole in my chest. We've got to be able to do this. And then we look at some other ones and we go, what are the commonalities? What are the points of the parables? And we kind of look at ones that make similar points and then we pick the one that we feel like might be most impactful. And then from that group, we kind of say, all right, which ones are right for grace in this season and in this moment? Which ones do we need to hear and learn and be encouraged by the most? And so we whittle it down to the six or the eight, like bare essentials. These are the parables that we want to cover now. And you've done an exercise like that in your workplace and in your life too, and that's what the disciples are doing here. Of all the laws, which ones do we follow? Which ones do we tell the Gentiles, hey, these have been taken care of, but these are the ones that we think you should be mindful of? We get that answer later in the chapter, beginning in verse 28. This is the distillation of all the laws. I have in my Bible a note that you can't see, but it just says, that's it, in all capital letters with some exclamation marks and question marks, because this is what they've distilled it down to. They write a letter to the churches declaring their decision. And the letter says this in verse 28, That's it. That's it. 630 laws distilled down to those four things, and the first three are essentially the same thing. The first three is don't eat food that's been sacrificed to idols, which was a pagan practice. These churches existed in pagan cultures, and so there's a lot of things happening in their culture that didn't sync up with Scripture and the heart of God. And one of those things was don't eat of that meat. That's a pagan practice. Don't associate yourself with those people. That's highly offensive to Jews. Please don't do that. Then it says, This comes from Leviticus chapter 17. If you have notes there, make a note or make a note in your Bible. I have one in my Bible and just write Leviticus chapter 17. And in your free time, you can go back and read. But there's this whole explanation from God of why you don't eat the blood of an animal. And God explains that the very life essence of a creature is in its blood and that it's not ours to eat. That is sacred to God. So he tells us not to do that. That's near and dear to God. And to eat blood or to eat things that are strangled, to kill an animal by strangulation was a way to maintain the blood in the animal so that you could eat it later, which sounds repulsive to us, but that was a practice then. And all of those practices, eating food that was sacrificed to idols, eating food with blood or food that was strangled, were things that were deeply offensive to Jewish people. And so those three things can really be summed up in this idea of just don't do things that are, like, please just don't do things that are super offensive to Jewish people. There's going to be Jewish people in your midst. That's incredibly difficult for them to get over. Please don't offend them in that way. And please don't portray that image in society that you participate in those things. That's not what's best for those around you. And then there's a provision in there to avoid sexual immorality, which is probably just a good provision to put any time we're advising Christians or a group of people on anything throughout all of history. It's probably a good addendum to just say, hey, be careful with this. But it's particularly relevant in this culture because in those pagan cultures, they had far different rules and standards about sexual morality than Scripture does. In one of the cities, in Ephesus, there's a temple of Diana, and there was temple prostitutes that were priestesses that you could go and partake in any time you felt the need to. I read that in some of these cultures, intermarrying and family and cousins was a regular practice. And actually, if you go back to Leviticus 17 and then 18 following that same passage, it talks about that practice and advises and clearly gives laws against it. So in some ways, this is just a distillation of just those two chapters of the book of Leviticus. But what's going on in these pagan cities is that the north star of sexual morality was their culture. And Paul is saying shift that north star of sexual morality to Scripture, which just as an aside is still good advice for us today. It's very easy to shift our north star of sexual morality to what the culture defines as sexually moral, and it is our job to constantly maintain the north star of sexual morality to what the culture defines as sexually moral. And it is our job to constantly maintain the North Star of sexual morality as dictated to us by Scripture, by God's Word. But to me, there's a common theme in these provisions. As we ask the question, why these four things? Why is that what they landed on? I think that there's a common theme and a common concern in these that tells us the type of faith that we're supposed to have. As I read this and I see these provisions and this direction to the new church, what I hear coming from Peter and the council is this simple admonition to have a faith that considers others. What kind of rules and things should we follow? What should we concern ourselves with? We should concern ourselves with things that impact others. We should have a faith that considers others. And this, to me, makes a ton of sense. Those rules about what to eat, That's all about how it looks to other people. How does it look to the Jewish people? How does it look to the pagan people? Have a faith that considers them and not wanting to give the wrong impression or not wanting to give offense. Just be unselfish in that way. Be selfless in that way. And don't let yourself eat or partake in those things because of how it might be perceived. Have a faith that considers others over yourself. And isn't that the root of sexual sin? Isn't all sexual immorality fundamentally selfish? Isn't all sexual activity outside the bonds of a loving marriage fundamentally selfish? Because we take things from that person that aren't ours, and we give things to that person that aren't ours to give because they belong to our spouse. And in the end, sexual sin is a fundamentally selfish and self-seeking sin. And when we avoid that sin, we consider others. And so I hear Peter saying here, have a faith that considers others, that is others focused. And as I think about practically how to do that out of this story, out of this instance occurrence in the book of Acts, what are the things that we can pull out of this that we can apply to our faith today so that we can live out a faith that considers others? I think the first thing that we can do is that we can consider others by passing on a compassionate faith. We consider others by passing on a compassionate faith. I love the example of Peter in this passage where he says, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, wait, wait. This part of our faith isn't working for us. Why would we pass that on to the next generation of believers? Guys, we're not good at this. This is a burden. This element of our faith discourages us and actually causes distance from God, not a clinging to God. So why would we perpetuate that in the next generation of believers? And as I think about my own life and the faith that I've inherited, I can see both sides of that happening in my life. I was led spiritually by people who grew up largely in the Southern Baptist Church in the 60s and the 70s. And when I say I was led by people, I mean my parents, I mean my pastor, I mean those that poured into me as I grew up. And in the 60s and 70s, the Southern Baptist Church was incredibly legalistic. Incredibly legalistic. You couldn't dance ever. You couldn't have dancing at your wedding. There's no talk of alcohol ever. Everyone's a teetotaler. If you did that, you're definitely a sinner and not a Christian. You could not go to the movie theaters. You could not play cards. Skirts had to be certain lengths. There was all these provisions and rules around the faith. And my spiritual leaders and my parents and their goodness and then their compassion looked at those elements of their faith and they said, these don't work for us. These aren't a true reflection of the heart of God. These discourage us and pull us away from God rather than encourage us to cling to him. So we're not going to pass on that legalism to the next generation. I grew up with a generation of leaders who passed on a compassionate faith and said, this part didn't work for us. This isn't from the heart of God, so we're not going to saddle you and burden you with that. But in the same way, as I think about what was passed on to me that I don't want to pass on to Lily and to those that I pass my faith on to, I think about how certain that generation was. I think about the certainty that people around me grew up with. My pastor was so certain about some things. People who poured into me were so certain about some things. They had very strong opinions about exactly when Jesus was going to return in the tribulation. I grew up with people who were so certain that Calvinism was right, that God chooses who he's going to save, and that we don't choose God. And I grew up around some people who said, no, you choose if you're going to choose God. He doesn't choose you. I grew up around some people who were certain that you couldn't lose your salvation and some people who were certain that you could. When I was growing up, it was so black and white. There was no gray. And as I've grown up in faith and become an adult leading my own family and now leading a church, and the rubber of theology meets the practical road of life. I've become far less certain about things. And I don't understand how things could be so black and white in a world that has so much gray, and scriptures that have so much nuance, and scriptures that lay things down next to each other like predestination and like self-determinism and go, yeah, both are true. And don't seem to want to resolve that for us. And so for me, I want to pass on compassionately the gift of uncertainty. I want the people that I lead, I want Lily to know, I want my church to know that it's okay not to be sure. Everything doesn't have to be black and white for us all the time. It's okay to wonder at God and not fully understand him. It's okay to not have all the answers. It's okay to go, is it possible that God chooses me to be saved? Yeah. Is it possible that I choose him? Yeah. Are both true? Yeah. It's okay to say, where does the intersection of my effort and then my prayer and asking God for his effort, where does that meet? What's the exact right amount of things to pray about and how long to pray for? And when do I just sit back and wait and ask God to come in and when do I meet him with my effort? I don't know. And that's all right. It's okay to not be certain about things as long as that uncertainty drives us into a deeper faith in God and his work through Jesus. So we ought to pass on a compassionate faith that's aware of the burdensome things that we might have added onto our faith We should maintain a simple faith. Jesus is constantly trying to get us to do this. This is what the disciples do. They distill all those 630 laws down to these four simple things that can be summed up and consider others. And Jesus is doing this too. Jesus says that the whole law and the prophets, all of those laws can be summed up in these two things. Love God with all your heart and your soul and your mind and love your neighbor as yourself. And then later he says, this new commandment I give you, love others as I have loved you. Jesus is constantly simplifying a faith. And we generationally are constantly complicating it. Adding all of these rules and regulations and standards by which we judge ourselves and others that Jesus didn't ask us to adopt. I think we're constantly complicating our faith. And if we want to have a faith like Peter did, like the early church did, then one of the things that we need to do is be constantly simplifying our faith. And judging our standards by, is this loving of God? Is this appreciative of Jesus, and is this loving for others? Am I living out a simple faith that considers others? So I hope that that's what we'll do. I hope that we'll take this lesson from the early church, that each of us will have a faith that considers others more important than ourselves and that we'll consider others in our faith by passing on to our children and to those around us a compassionate faith and that we personally will maintain a simple, pure faith that prizes Christ and a love for him above all else and lets everything else flow out of that. And in doing that, I think we can capture the essence of the direction that was given to the church in Acts chapter 15. Let's pray. Father, we sometimes make being a Christian so complicated. We ask questions like, is it a sin to do this? Is it wrong to do this? Is this something that God wants me to do? God, I pray that you would help us clarify and simplify those things. I pray that we would be men and women who are after your heart, who cling to you, who strip away the things from our religion that only serve to discourage us and pull us away from you, that we would lean into you more, that we would know your son well. Father, give us a compassionate, self-aware faith that we can pass on to others. Give us a simple faith that is unencumbered of any expectations that you didn't place on us yourself. Father, I pray that you would bless us in this difficult time. I pray that you would bind grace together in the midst of COVID and not being able to see one another. I just pray and ask that you would continue to keep your hand on this place. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. I hope that you're having a great Memorial Day weekend. If you're one who has the opportunity to be watching from the beach or a mountain cabin or a lake house or something like that, good for you. I hope that you've had a good, restful weekend. For the others of us, I hope that you enjoy this unique Memorial Day weekend. And thanks, as always, for watching this morning or this week. This morning, we continue in our series called Still the Church, where we're walking through the book of Acts and looking at some of the practices, philosophies, and principles from the early church that still apply to us today. And hopefully we're getting a sense of the shoulders that we stand on and the roots that we share in common as the book of Acts details the beginnings of this fledgling church trying to find its way and figure out who it is and what it is going to do. And that was 2,000 years ago, and here we are 2,000 years later, and the church has looked very different over the years, has it not? Over the years, the church has changed in dramatic ways. And historically, there have been churches where people, the pastors would dress in robes and wear fancy hats. And then in other churches, you wear suits and dresses. And then in other churches, you wear jeans. And now in isolation, we wear sweatpants. As we watch this together, there is about a 98% chance I will be in my sweatpants as the pastor. And so church has changed a lot. There's churches that are high church and are in cathedrals and ornate buildings shaped like crosses and everything has a meaning. And there's different conclaves and there's different areas and there's different prayer centers and then other churches are in places that are next to aquarium stores and in warehouses with a pole in the middle of them. Some churches are highly liturgical, meaning they observe this order of service that was passed down generation after generation and do the same chants and the same verses and the same songs and they stand together and they kneel together and they pray together and they cry out together. And other churches don't have any liturgy whatsoever. We just do whatever we want to each week. Some churches observe the Lord's Supper every day or every week and others a couple times a year. In some churches, there's no microphones at all. And in others, there's a light show and laser show and smoke machines and everything else. And it just kind of makes you wonder over the years as we've adapted and adjusted and evolved and changed from this early church in the book of Acts and all the different iterations and expressions of church over the years, it makes you wonder how we even know we're doing it right, right? I mean, I don't know about you, but I've wondered a lot if Jesus or Paul were to walk into the doors of grace on a Sunday morning, would they look around and go, you guys are nailing it. This is exactly what we intended to start. Would Jesus go, yes, this is exactly what my bride should look like? Would Paul say, yes, this is what I gave my life to begin was what's happening here at grace. I kind of do wonder if we're doing it right. It reminds me of a story as we think about how do we know if we're doing church correctly. I've told this story before. It's a short fictional story. It's a parable that's made up, but I think it helps us make a good point this morning. The story goes that there is a man walking along a country road, and in the distance he sees a barn, a red barn. And on the side of this barn, there's a bunch of different targets. And in the middle of every target is an arrow just in the dead center of the bullseye. And then he sees a young boy with a bow and a quiver of arrows who's been apparently hitting these bullseyes with remarkable accuracy and consistency. And so the man goes to the boy and he says, listen, you're incredible at this. Can I watch you fire these arrows? Can I just see how you do this? I want to watch you do what you do. You're so good at it. And the boy says, yeah, sure, if you want to. And so the boy takes an arrow out of the quiver and loads it up into the bow and just kind of haphazardly aims towards the barn and fires away. And the arrow just lands in the middle of a sea of red. No target in sight. And the man feels badly. He says, my gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to mess you up or mess up your system. And here you've missed the target. And I feel bad. I feel like that's my fault. And the little boy says, oh, no, no, no, no. It's no problem. And he walks over to the barn and he grabs a can of paint and he starts to paint a target around the arrow that he just fired. And I think so often in life, we start things or we do things or we try to execute things without a clear target painted for us. We just charge forward. We just charge ahead. We just do what it is we think we're supposed to do. And then when we get to the end of the road, we paint a target around wherever it was that we landed and we go, success. And sometimes I wonder if we're doing that with church. Sometimes I wonder if we just all get together and we preach the word and we sing together and we pray and we do what we think we're supposed to do. And then when we get to the end of a year, the end of a decade or the end of an era, we go, did we do a good job? And we go, well, yeah. And then we just paint a target around whatever it was that we did and say that was the goal. And so as we think about that, are we doing this right? Would Jesus and Paul show up and look at our church and say, yeah, that's the target that we painted. You're nailing it. How do we know if we are? How do we know if we're aiming for the right target? How do we know if we have the right bullseye in mind as we do church together as grace and as we pursue God as individuals? I think it's an important question to ask because we arrive at a passage in Acts chapter 2 that effectively paints the targets for all churches for all time. I think it's an incredibly useful and helpful passage. I'm going to be in Acts chapter 2 verses 42 through 47. It is the description, the quintessential description of the early church. If you want to know what should the church look like, what should characterize and define the church, what did God design the church to do, we find it in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47. If you want to ask a question like this, what target was painted for us as a church by Jesus and by Paul? It's this. We find it here. And in this passage are some distinctives that we want to pull out. I'm actually going to pull out seven distinctives. We're going to look at three this week and four next week. I've expanded the Acts series by a week so that we can just sit in this passage, in this text, and walk through and look at the different things that define the early church and should therefore define us as a church. So this is early church distinctives. Look at what we find here in Acts chapter 2 verses 42 through 47. By way of reminder, what's going on as we enter into this passage is in Acts chapter 1, Jesus has been alive for 40 days after resurrecting from the dead. He goes up into heaven, and as he goes up into heaven, he tells the disciples to build the church, to go into all the world, spread the gospel, baptize them, make disciples, build the church. And then he says, wait for the Spirit. Wait for the gift of my Spirit and then go out and build the church. And so they sit around in the upper room waiting for the gift of the Holy Spirit. In Acts chapter 2, they receive the gift of the Spirit. They walk out on the porch and they preach. And the results of that message that they preach about who Jesus was and about, hey, you, the crowds, killed the Messiah, the Son of the living God, their response is that they were cut to the heart. They said, what do we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized. And last week we talked about that repentance as repentance of who we thought Jesus was. That's the foundational repentance of the church. And about 3,000 people, the Bible says, repented that day and joined the church, became Christians. And so now we have this church of about 3,000 people in Jerusalem. And what do they do now that they're a church? Now that there's this infant organization, what do they do? We find exactly what they do in these verses, 42 through 47. And in these verses are the distinctives or the target that was painted for us that we're supposed to be hitting now 2,000 years later. So let's look at the things that defined the early church. It says in verse 42, That's the beginning of the church. That's where you and I come from, is that incredible cataclysmic time of the church's infancy where it's learning to find its footing and learning to walk and figuring out what they're going to be about as an organization. And in this passage, in those seminal verses, are some distinctives of the early church that we should seek to emulate today. And you know, different authors and scholars pull out the distinctives in different ways. I saw one person sum up everything in four basic categories of characteristics, and others might have nine or even more than that. For us, we're going to look at seven distinctives, three this week and four next week, things that define the early church and should define us. So for those of you who like listy sermons, this is good for you. We're going to have seven things. You can number your paper. You can write the thing that I say and then take notes underneath it. If you're a note taker, you're really going to love this. So the first one that we're getting to right out of the gates is exactly what they said. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. So the first distinctive of the church that we are to emulate is that they were eager learners. They were eager learners. They wanted, they wanted, anytime an apostle was speaking, they were listening. They were, they were eating it up. They were vociferous in their desire to learn more about God and his church. And this seems like something that might be obvious, that they were devoted to teaching, but it's important that we understand why they were so hungry for this teaching. We don't think about this a lot, but this was a really uncertain time in church history. We're so used to church. For those of you who are church people, even if you're not a church person, you just have a cursory understanding of church and what we believe. We're so used to having an authority. We're so used to having a Bible, to having a place where we turn to, where we go, is what you said true or false? And we can go here and we can determine if it was. We have a grid to determine truth and we have a rich history of teaching tradition. We have a rich history of theology that we walk into so that we kind of know some of the basic tenets of our faith. We know that most Bible-believing churches are going to affirm that Jesus was the Son of God, is the Son of God, that he was 100% God and 100% man. Most churches are going to affirm that God is a triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that the Bible is God's word and that it is inerrant and that we can trust it and that it is the authority in our lives. Most churches are going to affirm that God is the creator God and that Jesus are the very words of God. There's some basic tenets of our faith that we can agree with that aren't murky at all. But in the time of Paul, in the very early church, those things were incredibly murky. They didn't know what to think of Jesus. They didn't know for sure if he was a son of God or if he was an incredible prophet. They weren't quite sure what to believe. Can you imagine the different beliefs that existed in different groups of friends in the different communities? Can you imagine the old stubborn man who was just certain that he knew what it was that he thought he knew and told everybody that you should do this and you shouldn't do that based on nothing at all but his own presumptions. Can you imagine the difficulty of being a Jew with all the laws of Judaism and then trying to transition into this New Testament, into this new way of believing, into this new era of faith, not sure which things to leave behind and which things to bring forward with you. Can you imagine the difficulty of grafting in the Gentiles? Before this Jewish faith was just for the Jews. They grew up generationally understanding it. And now all of a sudden this faith is for everyone regardless of culture or ethnicity. Can you imagine the difficulty and the tension in grafting that in? A lot of the tension in Acts is that very tension of how do we graft Gentiles into this ancient faith? It was really murky and uncertain. It was a lot like it is now trying to figure out any truth whatsoever about COVID. As I thought about the situation that they were facing, trying to get certainty around the teachings of this new church without any written documents and void of authority outside of the apostles, I thought of us trying to figure out what's true about the coronavirus. I don't know how deeply you've delved into trying to learn the truth about even the numbers and the reporting around coronaviruses, why our cases are spiked or why they're not spiked, or if they really are spiked, or if they really are going down, or if there's going to be a surge or a second wave, or any truth at all around what's going on with the pandemic. I had a friend just this week I was talking to who read an article in one minute. At one time, he sat down, he read an article, and this article said that the hospitalized cases of COVID in the state of Georgia are down around 1,000 right now. And that state has a population of about 8 million, so that's a really small percentage. That's really good, right? Well, then he flipped the page or scrolled down and he read another article about a woman who's created a model online to track COVID cases who was approached by a particular state that asked her to flub the numbers a little bit to under-report the cases so that things look better so that they could open back up. Two totally different stories, and you don't know which one to believe. Who has authority? And listen, I know that that could get political about who says what about COVID, but the truth of it is we can all understand that it's difficult to know what's true. This is the era of the early church. For them, it was difficult to know what was true. It was difficult to know who to trust except for the apostles. The apostles were the authority. The apostles, the disciples of Christ, had spent time with Jesus. They had face-to-face interaction. They were the carriers of the keys to the kingdom. They had the authority. If there's somebody over there in Bible study or small group or after church who is teaching something about this new way of faith and it contradicts what the apostles said, then that person's wrong and the apostles are right. The apostles had the authority. They were the truth tellers of the early church. So people clamored around them every time they opened their mouth to hear what it was they had to say and had to teach because they were the authorities that brought clarity around this new faith. And over time, these apostles wrote down what they were teaching in the form of letters to other churches. And then they wrote down what they were teaching in the form of the Gospels, the account of Jesus' life and his ministry and what he came to do and accomplish and everything that he taught and what was meant. And over time, these writings were compiled together and they became known as our New Testament. And so now, as a modern church, if we want to be committed and devoted to the apostles' teaching, if we want to be eager learners, if we want to hit that target that's painted for us, what that means is we are eager learners of the New Testament. That the New Testament, the books from Matthew to Revelation and our Bible are the ones that we would pour ourselves into, that we would pour over, that we would learn from and pull out from. And it might sound to you like I'm downgrading the Bible or I'm downgrading the Old Testament, and I'm not doing that at all. I love the Old Testament. And as a matter of fact, it's impossible to understand the New Testament without understanding the Old Testament. You can forget understanding Acts, Galatians, Romans, Hebrews without an understanding of the Old Testament. You can forget understanding the Gospels if you don't know the Old Testament. You can forget understanding Revelation if you don't understand Daniel and Ezekiel. But if we want to be committed to the apostles' teaching like the early church was, that means we're committed students of the New Testament, that we are eager learners about God's Word, that we are never satisfied with it. That's why, that we're never satisfied with what we know about it. That's why on Sundays, as long as grace exists as a church, that preaching and teaching will be a centerpiece of what we do together. Not because the pastor is someone special, but because we are collectively devoted to the apostles' teaching. Because we are collectively eager learners. That's why I believe it's my responsibility not just to provide biblical knowledge and insight for people who might be new believers or non-believers or not as biblically literate or experienced as others. Hopefully, if that's you, then you get something every week from what we're teaching. But I also firmly believe that my job as your pastor is to give you things from God's word, is to teach you from God's word a different perspective or a different insight or a different teaching that you may not have heard before. My hope and my prayer is that even if you've been walking with the Lord for years and years and years and have a very good depth of knowledge of the Bible, that at least more often than not, you're walking away from the sermons of grace and you're going, I didn't know that, or I hadn't thought about that, or I hadn't considered that before. I hope that we all continue to learn together. So as a church, we hit that target by being committed to teaching God's Word. But as individuals, we can continue to hit this target in our own life and be the right version of the church now by continuing to be eager learners, by pursuing other avenues of learning about Scripture. And as I thought about this, I realized that we live in an unprecedented time of availability of the apostles' teachings. There has never in history been a time where we had more information at our fingertips. You can listen to podcasts where people talk about God's Word, where people talk about scriptural things. You can go get a book for very cheap. You can listen to a book. You can play the Bible on your earphones or over your car stereo as you drive down the road. You can listen to the Bible on a greenway as you take a walk or ride your bike. There's so many churches and so many good pastors and so many effective teachers. You can find any of that material online. There is an online conference on church stuff just about every week of the calendar year that you could participate in if you wanted to. We have so many options to dive deeply into the apostles' teaching and to learn more and more and more about God's Word. So my challenge to you in this distinctive is to continue to be an eager learner. Don't be satisfied with what you know about God's Word. Don't be satisfied with what you know about the New Testament, but dive more deeply and with more curiosity and urgency into the depth of God's Word. And let's continue to be eager learners together as they were in the early church. Another thing that I wanted to pull out this morning, the second distinctive that I want us to look at is that they were devoted to spiritual disciplines. They were devoted to spiritual disciplines. We see in this at the beginning of the passage that they were devoted to prayers, it says, plural. Not prayer, but they were devoted to prayers. And as I read and researched this, a lot of people like to go off on what it meant to be devoted to prayer. And that's an important investment of time. However, I suspected that there was more to it than that because it's plural, prayers. And it turns out that it was, that this Jewish audience was in a habit of observing three times of daily prayer. To be a devout Jew at the time was to pray three times a day on schedule, in the morning and in the afternoon at the ninth hour, which is 3 p.m. And let me just, as an aside, if you want to go down a fun Google rabbit hole, Google all the things in the Bible that happened at 3 p.m. It's amazing. I think that there is something significant about that time that we don't even understand yet somehow, because so many things happened at that time in Scripture. They prayed in the morning, they prayed in the afternoon, and they prayed in the evening, three times a day. And different rabbis and different synagogues would have different programs of prayer, different things that you're supposed to focus on during that time of prayer. But what they did is they were a Jewish people who were devoted to prayers, this rhythm of prayers. And then when they converted to Christianity, they continued with that same discipline. They continued with that same rhythm. And I'm calling this a spiritual discipline because they didn't have scripture to read. They had it memorized. They could recite it while they prayed. They could pray it back to God, but they didn't have a Bible to open. And so their version of spiritual discipline was to be praying three times a day. This devotion to spiritual disciplines is why you will always hear me say that there is no greater habit that any person can develop in their life than that of getting up every day and spending time in God's Word and time in prayer. A distinctive of the early church was a church that was devoted to these spiritual disciplines, that was devoted to studying God's Word, that was devoted to prayer. They were disciplined to do that in that way. So if you want to be spiritually disciplined, if you want to be like the early church and be hitting that target in your life, then you need to be committed to prayer. You need to be committed to reading God's Word. Maybe pick a time of the day where you say, this is when I'm gonna read the Bible. I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna have coffee, I'm gonna read the Bible. I'm gonna get up, I'm gonna go to work, and on my way to work, back when you used to do that, on my way to work, I'm not gonna listen to anything else. I'm gonna listen to the Bible app and let them read the Bible to me as I go into work. On my lunch break, I'm not gonna talk to anybody. I'm pull out my app. I'm going to read the Bible. Pick a time to make that a part of your daily discipline. And I would encourage the same thing for prayer. And maybe the best way to think about it is like this. A couple months ago in our Grace is Going Home series, we talked about discipleship at Grace and how we're going to define discipleship moving forward as simply taking our next step of obedience. So in regards to spiritual disciplines and prayer, I would just ask you, what's your next step of obedience? What's your next step of obedience in reading the Bible? Is it to be more consistent? Is it to start at all? What's your next step of obedience in being more obedient in prayer, in being consistent in prayer? And listen, you may not pray at all. And that's all right. I mean, you're there by yourself or maybe you just have family around you. You don't have anybody to impress. You don't need to lie and pretend like you dive deeply into the ocean of prayer every day. Like, it's okay if you're just sitting there right now and you're going, honestly, I don't really pray very much. That makes your next step pretty easy. Pick a time at all to pray. If the only time you pray is at meals, pick one of those meals and pray about something besides the food. Intentionally pray about friends or family or loved ones. Intentionally thank God for things that he's placed in your life. If you already have a habit of prayer in your life, think about what it would take to go deeper in that prayer. Can you come up with a prayer plan where on certain days of the week you pray for certain things or certain people? Or could you develop multiple times of prayer during the day? I know there's a season in my life when I set an alarm on my phone, and every day it would go off at three o'clock, and I would stop whatever I was doing every day and set things aside and pray. And sometimes I would dive deeply into prayer. Other times it was a quick cursory prayer, and other times I just skipped it and then felt like garbage the rest of the day for skipping it. But it was a good season. I did it for about a year, and as I've been preparing this sermon and thinking through things in my own life, I've been convicted to start that practice again. So for some of you, I would invite you, set an alarm on your phone, and at three o'clock, let's pray every day. Let's just stop what we're doing and refocus ourself on God, and let's pray. And like the early church, let's be devoted to these spiritual disciplines. As I think about prayer for grace, one of the things that we're going to do moving forward and I'm excited to share with you is beginning this Wednesday, the 27th, from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., we're going to fling the doors open of the church and invite you to come and pray here. Whoever wants to come can come and pray. We'll pray together. We'll pray separately. We'll pray socially distant. If you need prayers, you want people to pray over you, come here and I, along with others, will pray over you. If you just want to pray together with others, come here and we will pray together. And as long as we can sustain it, we will continue to do it. We're going to do the first one this week. on the 27th. I'll open the doors at 7 o'clock. We'll see who shows up and we'll pray together. And we'll be a church that is devoted to prayer and spiritual disciplines. The last distinctive that I wanted to focus on today, the last thing that I see in this church that we need to be emulators of is that they were committed to Christ-centered time together. They were committed to Christ-centered time together. It says that they were devoted to fellowship. And you know, over the years, that word fellowship has taken on a lot of different meanings and been applied in a lot of different ways. And it's become distorted to just mean anytime Christians are together, they're fellowshipping, right? But fellowship really isn't just people getting together who also know Christ. But the idea of fellowship is to get together to celebrate the thing that you have in common, to allow something that we hold in common to bring us together and then to spend time focused on that thing. When I think of fellowship, I think of a time that I spent with Steve Goldberg, our worship pastor, and a guy named Keith Cathcart, one of our great church partners. If you've never had the experience of going to a team bar for a game, I would highly recommend it. I am of the conviction that going to a team bar is the best way to consume a sport. It's super, super fun. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, all over the country in different cities everywhere, there will be fans that are fans of a particular team. And when that team is playing, they will gather in one place and watch it together. And this happens here with Steelers fans because Steelers fans are prevalent. They are everywhere. The Steelers are like a religion to them. To some of them, it is a problem that deserves some good and right conviction. And in a state like North Carolina, where there's really no other decent team to speak of, it is ripe for Steelers fans to blossom here. And so the Hibernian over on Falls is actually a Steelers bar. All the Steelers fans come out of the woodwork and they go there decked out in their gear and they watch the games together. And so one Sunday, I decided that I wanted to go with Keith because I love going to team bars and watching sports with other people who are celebrating that. And we even invited Steve. Steve's not a sports guy, but he's a friends guy. And so he came and he enjoyed it with us. And I love the experience because I go to this team bar and I don't know anybody there. I don't have anything in common with them. I don't know what their names are. I don't know what their week was like. I don't know what they did that morning. That morning I was preaching. They probably weren't. I don't have a lot in common with the folks there that I know of. But man, when those Steelers score, I get to run around and give high fives to strangers. I start hugging guys I've never even met in my life. When there's a fumble, we erupt. When the ref makes a terrible call, we boo him and deride him and have the best possible time. And you get to get fully into it. And I don't even really care about the Steelers or the game. I'm just having fun celebrating them with other people. That's fellowship. This thing that they have in common, their affection for the Steelers, brings them together. And then the time that they spent together is spent focused on the very thing that they share in common. That's what fellowship looks like. Fellowship isn't when Steelers fans just get together and talk about business or talk about the stock market or whatever else. It's when they get together and they celebrate the very thing that gives them something in common. So for us, for believers, Christian biblical fellowship is when we come together acknowledging that Christ is what we share in common and the time that we spend together is focused on him. Fellowship looks a lot like Sunday morning church. Fellowship looks a lot like coming here on Sunday mornings like we used to in the old days, saying hey in the lobby, celebrating triumphs and comforting one another with tragedy in the lobby, coming in, sitting in these seats, singing together, proclaiming to God together, listening, learning about God together, being convicted or motivated or inspired together, and then leaving with a sense of camaraderie as we spent time here in the service celebrating the very thing that brings us all together, which is Christ. This is why we will always meet on Sunday mornings. This is why we will get back together just as soon as we possibly can. This is why community is so important to us at Grace because we want to come together and be focused on and celebrate the very thing that we have in common, which is Jesus. And so I want to challenge you in your small groups. Make sure your small group time is fellowshipping. Make sure that's Christ-centered time. In your circle of friends, it's not fellowship just because we get together and we all believe in Jesus. It becomes fellowship once we're focused on him for a portion of that time. So let's begin to think of intentional ways that we can fellowship with one another when we're spending time together. To help us begin to dip our toes back in the water of community and fellowship, we're actually going to begin to support watch parties. We've moved into this weekend, phase two of the governor's plan officially. So we can do this now. We can have watch parties on Sunday morning. I think it would be great if we would invite people over to the house and say, hey, I'm going to be watching my church's service this morning. Why don't you come with me? Or hey, I know that you guys watch it. Why don't you come over here? Let's watch it together. This is a great opportunity to reach out to your neighbors. I know a lot of us in this time of isolation have grown closer to our neighbors, have met them and interacted with them and spent more time with them than we ever have. What a great vehicle. What a great way to say, hey, this Sunday I'm going to be watching our service. I'd love for you to come over and join us. Let's have a watch party together. I've reached out to the small group leaders and asked them to help facilitate some of these, those of them who are willing. And that's certainly a way to begin to frame up who we would watch these with, but I would just encourage you to watch these sermons with other grace people or other people that you want to invite into your home. And I know that not everyone's going to feel comfortable with this yet. I know some of us are hesitant about that, and that's all right. I don't want you to feel pressure like you have to, but for those of you who are ready to dip your toes back in the water of community, for those of you who are ready to pursue and experience fellowship again, I think the way that we can begin to do that for the next several weeks is to invite people into our homes or to go into the homes of others and watch these services together and begin to experience this community again. And if you want to go early and have breakfast, great. If you want to stay late and do lunch together, great. And if there's kids involved, maybe one parent can take the kids out back and run around with them while the rest of the parents focus on the message. However it is, you figure it out, and however it breaks down, however you're able to accomplish it. I would love to hear more about these watch parties springing up all over the Raleigh area as we experience church together again and begin to dip our toes back into this idea of fellowship. Those are the three distinctives I wanted to look at this morning, to be eager learners, to be devoted to spiritual discipline, and to be devoted to fellowship, to Christ-centered time together. Next week, we'll look at the last four distinctives that I'm excited to go through with you, and hopefully you'll watch this and then watch next week's together, and it can be one concise lesson on who we are as a church, on what we're supposed to pursue, and really answer the question, hey, how do we know if we're doing this right, if we're doing this well? All right, I'm going to pray and let you guys continue on with your Sunday mornings. Father, you're so, so good to us. Thank you for who you are and how you love us. I pray that we would be eager learners. That for those of us who may have set that torch down a while back, maybe you can inspire us again. Maybe you can impassion us again to want to understand more of you and your word. Give us paths and avenues to explore that. God, help us be disciplined in our prayers. Give us the willpower, give us the strength, give us the desire and the earnesty to maintain and to foster these spiritual disciplines. And God, I pray that we would fellowship well, that we would come together and celebrate you, that we would be more intentional about making you the center of our time. And as we consider watch parties, Lord, I just pray that you would watch over us, that you would protect us, that you would bring wisdom there as we begin slowly to experience your community again. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.

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