Sermons tagged with Trinity

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here with us this morning, especially on a holiday weekend. I always joke around about you being a better Christian if you're here on a holiday weekend, and while I do believe that is true, I also think that it's just really nice and impressive when it is a holiday weekend and you choose to make church a part of that. So that's touching for me and I think good for you on that. And good for you if you're watching online and making it a point to be with us in spirit this Sunday as well. We did it. We made it to the end of the summer. This is the last in our series for this summer called 27. We'll pick it back up next summer when we jump into Paul's letters and finish in Revelation. So this is the last one that we're going to do. We're focused on the book of Jude this morning. And as if you guys needed more evidence that my wife, Jen, is a better Christian than me, when she asked what the sermon was on this week or which one I was going to be writing for this week, I said, Jude. And she goes, what are you going to do it on? And I'm like, I don't know. It's Jude. Like, I don't know the last time I read Jude. And she was like, well, I love this verse. You should do it on this one. And I'm like, of course she knows a random verse from Jude. So that was humbling. And you'd be better off if she were your pastor. But you have to settle for me this morning until she can be convinced otherwise. When I sat down to study Jude, I saw very quickly that it was kind of a microcosm of the entire Bible, of one of the dynamics happening all through Scripture and in the way that we understand scripture. So I'm starting us off here. Jude is a perfect depiction of both the depth and approachability of the Bible. Jude is this kind of microcosm and a picture of both the depth and the approachability of the Bible. Jude in verses 5 through 19, that's 15 verses. I know that's 15 verses because I counted on my fingers to make sure that I would not be wrong when I said 15 verses. In those 15 verses, there are 18 references to other scriptures, to Old Testament scriptures, and even apocryphal writings. Within just those 15 verses in Jude, 18 references to Old Testament scriptures and apocryphal writings. Some of the quotes are from the book of Enoch. For many of you in the room this morning, you didn't even know that was a book. You didn't even know the book of Enoch exists. It's an apocryphal literature. You'll find it, I think, in the Catholic Bible, but you don't find it in the Protestant Bible. But in Jude, there's references to the book of Enoch. There's, again, 18 references and 15 verses. And so if you're looking at Jude and you're trying to understand Jude, which by the way, Jude is probably short for Judah, which was a brother, a half-brother of Jesus. So if you're trying to understand his letter to the churches, how could you possibly understand Jude without understanding those 18 references? And scholars believe that the audience that he wrote this letter to, the churches in Asia Minor, they were people of a Jewish background and had grown up with a Jewish faith. They understood these references. It was like when I would refer to you and I would say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You know that, John 3.16. Most of you can fill in the rest of that. These references to them were that ubiquitous and that identifiable. And so as I'm studying Jude, again, I think to myself, how in the world could we seek to understand this book if we don't have any bearing for the 18 references found in the middle part of it that make it come to life and make it understandable. And this, I feel, is a depiction, too, of the depth of Scripture. I'm 42 years old. I've spent almost my entire life studying Scripture. I grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a deacon. He was important and fancy. I went to church every time the doors were open. And this was back in the day, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I went to the church so often that my pastor felt totally comfortable calling me out in the middle of Sunday night service and telling me to quit talking. And then I would get in big trouble. I got spankings, is what I got. I would get struck with objects when I got home for that offense. Back when we raised kids right, you know. That's right. That's right, Jeffy. Let's let it all hang out here on Labor Day Sunday. Who cares? Beat your kids, Jeff just said. Don't do that. Don't do that. Totally off the rails. Jeff, this is your fault. Shut up, Jeff. But I grew up in church. I did Awanas. I memorized all the verses. I don't know if you guys did that when you were kids, but I memorized verses every week. I memorized them for the test, and then I promptly forgot them because I was eating candy right after that and then playing games. But some of them stick because sometimes I'll start to quote a verse, and it'll be in the King's English, and I'm like, oh, that's from Awana. That's from KJV back in the day, right? I went to Christian private school. I went to Christian high school. I've had a Bible class. I went to Bible college and studied theology. I got a master's degree in more theology. I've studied the Bible my whole life. Now, not as hard as I should have all the time, or maybe ever, I don't know. Not as consistently as I would like to all the time, but far and away, for the balance of 42 years, I've studied God's Word. And I'd be the first to tell you, there are myriad 42-year-olds who know way more about this than I do. But I can also say that I've devoted a life to studying it. And here's what I know. I'm embarrassed by how little I know. I'm humbled by how much more there is in this. I feel like God's word is an ocean and I've waded into it up to my waist and been like, yeah, okay. I think I get the gist. You can spend your whole life plumbing the depths of these pages and you will never get to the bottom. You will never stop learning from it. It will never return null and void. It will never not have more layers. You will never not see more connections, and there's so much of the Bible that's really impossible to fully understand without a grasp of the rest of the Bible. You can never understand the book of Galatians if you don't understand the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. You just can't do it. It's why, it's one of the reasons I say as often as I can, it's one of the reasons that one of the traits of grace is that we are people of devotion. It's why I say that the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. Because the bottom of this is unfindable. The depths of this are unknowable. And some of you have spent your life studying it too. And you know I'm right. Your heads are nodding the most because you've done it. And it always leaves you wanting more. So there is a degree to which approaching the Bible feels a little bit like approaching Jude. You could read Jude on your own with no background and with no study, and you probably wouldn't recognize but a couple of the references, if any, in verses 5 through 19. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know that you're not getting the depths of it. And sometimes I think people get intimidated by the Bible and how deep it is and how much there is to learn because I know good and well. Not all of you grew up being exposed to scripture every day. Some of us, when I say, and you're good believers, you love Jesus, you love the word, but when I say turn to Galatians, you're like, I don't know yet where that is. I want to know, I just don't know yet. And you go to small groups and there's other in the small group, and they're not professional Christians. They don't get paid to be a Christian like I do. That's all being a pastor is, is I just went pro with my Christianity. I'm still doing the same things that you guys should all be doing. I just get paid for it. I don't know if that's right, but I do. And you're sitting there in your Bible study with the other amateur Christians, and somebody knows way more than you. Right? They just know the Bible. We have them in every small group. And maybe you think to yourself, gosh, I don't know how I will ever understand that much. It just, it can feel intimidating. But that's also why I think it's beautiful that Jude depicts the approachability of Scripture as well. Because sure, the Bible is complicated. It's challenging. It's difficult to understand. It's unmasterable. And yet, some of the messages that come from it are so simple as to make it immediately approachable. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's the whole gospel. That's all of Romans compacted into a sentence or two. Right? Jesus says this new commandment I give you, go and love one another as I have loved you. That's it. That's all the law and the prophets compacted into this one commandment. I don't really understand the rest of the Bible, but I believe in Jesus and I can go love people in his name. Okay. Then you get it. And so in Jude, again, we have this depiction of the depth of scripture, but also the approachability. Because even if you don't get the references from verses 5 to 19, there's a simple message in Jude that we can all understand. Sorry, I had to crunch the ice without you guys hearing. And that's what I want to look at now, is this simple message in Jude, and we're going to spend the rest of our time on it. What is this message that Judah, the half-brother of Jesus, wanted to give us, and why did he write this short little note and it get tacked into the end of the Bible as the penultimate book? Well, I think we see the beginning of this purpose in verse 3. This is the simple message of Jude. This is why he wrote the book. And even if we have no context, we can pretty much understand what this means. In verse 3, Jude says this, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. So here's why he wrote the book of Jude. He says that he had been eager to write to them concerning their common salvation. And so a lot of scholars believe that Jude was trying to write a letter that looked more like Romans or Hebrews, something long and formal where it kind of outlined this faith that they would share. And that's what he was eager to do, and that's what he was working on. But another matter began to press, and he thought it was so important that he put that large work on hold so he could write this short note to them. And what he wants them to do is, I wanted to talk to you about our common faith. I wanted to lay out all the things that we believe to give you some clarity. I don't have time for that now, so I'm just writing to you to urge you to contend for the faith. Why? Well, because in verses 5 through 19, what we learn is that there's false teachers. The early church, they didn't have an agreed upon Bible, an agreed upon book, agreed upon doctrines. They didn't have denominations in theology. They just had their faith and understanding in Jesus, which means that the populace in the church was very easily deceived, very easily misdirected in the wrong ways. And so the churches had false teachers that were entering into them, gaining clout, proclaiming that they knew the teachings of Jesus. And yet the morality of those teachers did not line up with the words that they were teaching. They were teaching a kind of hedonism that's clearly out of step with scripture and with God's will for his people. And so Jude was writing the churches to say, hey, you can't listen to those guys. They're trying to steer you in the wrong direction. They're wrong. You need to contend for the faith. And what's really interesting is I was thinking about it, at least this is interesting to me, is when in churches, especially in the South, you use phrases like we need to contend for the faith. That usually means go out and fight a culture war against the waves of culture that are trying to bash down and beat down the truth of Scripture. But that's nowhere in here with Jude. It's contend for the faith. Where? Well, it looks like, based on what he says, within yourself. Contend for your own faith. Fight for your true and sincere faith. Because God doesn't need culture warriors going out there fighting for the faith. Contend for it in your own heart and then guess what? You're abiding in Christ and you'll produce much fruit. Contend for it here and you will be who you need to be as we operate in culture. So I believe that Jude is telling us to contend for our faith. And the simple message of Jude then is to contend for the faith with your whole life. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And we're going to read the verses that make me think this is true here in a second. And really this is kind of a launching pad into what I'm going to preach about next week when we do our big reveal Sunday. Next week, we're going to show the plans for the new building. If it's your first Sunday with us, then you have no idea what we're talking about. But we have four acres over off of Litchford Road, and we're looking to build there. And so we're going to share the plans with the church next week. And I'm very, very excited to do that. And the message that I'm going to preach is basically this. We have to contend for the gospel with our whole life. Contending for the gospel, contending for your faith, takes everything you got, and you can't let up. And that is the simple message of Jude. It's interesting to me. Sometimes, I don't know if you guys get to see this from your perspective, but from my perspective, as I just kind of, we map out series and what we're going to teach and what we're going to cover. There's so often that God has woven things together and woven themes in week in and week out to kind of prepare our hearts for things that are coming and help our hearts respond to things that have happened. And I see him weaving things together as we approach next week as well. But I believe that's the simple message of Jude. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And I believe it because of what he says at the end. So he says, contend for the faith. Here's why. Here are the threats. Verses 5 through 19. And then he says, if you're going to contend for that faith in yourself, here's how you do it. But you, beloved, verse 20, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life and have mercy on those who doubt. So Jude says, contend for the faith. Here's what's threatening your faith. Here's what you need to protect yourself against. And then he ends with, and here's how you do it. And he gives us four things that we can do to contend for our faith. Now, here's the thing. If you're here on a holiday weekend, you didn't accidentally come to church. All right. Labor day Sunday is typically not the Sunday when non-church people decide, you know what I'm going to do on a holiday weekend? I'm going to try church. That's not normally how that goes. If you're here, chances are you are probably a church person. If you're here, if you're listening, chances are your faith matters to you or you're visiting people that drug you to church. Either way. But I'd be willing to bet that your faith matters to you. I'd be willing to bet that you are a people who want to contend for your faith. That when Jude says this, if we are believers, we lean forward and we go, yes, how? So I'm going to give you four ways that we contend for our faith directly out of scripture. But here's what I would say to you. I don't think that any of us, and maybe you will, and if you do, that's wonderful. But I don't think that any of us are going to take all four of these things, keep them in our heads and work on all four of these things this week. So here's what I'm going to ask you and challenge you to do. Pick one, one of the four things that I'm about to mention that we can do to contend for our faith. My hope and my prayer is that one of them will resonate with you, that one of them will move you, that you will lock into one of these as you move into your week. And between now and the 10th, you will turn the dial on this in your life in such a way that you are responding to the simple message in Jude and beginning to contend for the faith with your whole life. So like I said, there's four things that Jude tells us to do to contend for the faith. And the first one that we see right there at the very beginning is to strengthen your faith. When I contend for your faith, you need to strengthen your faith. This is an interesting idea to me. How do we strengthen our faith? I don't think our faith is too much different than like a muscle or a muscle group. I've joked before, and I do think it's true, that I've probably had more first days in the gym than just about anybody in history. I've had a lot of first days. Some of those first days were also my last days, and I just didn't know it yet. But I've had a lot of first days in the gym. And one of the things I like to do when I go to the gym is I like to do squats. Big muscle group. I like to do squats. I think it's important. I don't know anything about anything, but I see people in better shape than me. They do squats and like that seems smart. So I do squats, right? And I don't know how much longer my knees are going to hold out and let me like do this. I don't know how many more of those I have in me because I'm aging more like a light beer than a fine wine, but that's how it goes for me. And one of the things I notice when I go back to the gym on the first day, especially if my last day was the last day after like a lot of days and I was actually kind of like in good shape, when I put the weights on the rack and I go to do what I think is going to be a warm-up set. Okay, for those of you who don't work out a lot like me, a warm-up set is when you do a little bit less weight just to get the muscles going and then you put on the actual weight and then you do the exercise. So there's been a couple of times on my first day where I've put the weight on, you know, just like 375, 400 pounds, and I'm just doing a warm-up set. And I go down and I'm like, yeah, this ain't no warm-up set, man. I only got about four of these in me. This is the real deal. This is the real set that I'm doing right here. Because my muscles have atrophied. Because I haven't done that in a couple of, they go into atrophy and they shrink and they get weaker if we don't continue to use them. I think our faith works the same way. If we're not using our faith, living a life that requires faith, then the faith that we have, I believe, can begin to atrophy so that it's not even as strong as it once was. So Jude tells us to strengthen our faith, acknowledging that this requires a regular use of our faith. And I did not come here this morning with the intent of convicting you or making anyone feel bad, but I do just want to ask the question, when is the last time that your life required faith? When is the last time you took a step of obedience, knowing that if God doesn't come through and deliver, this is not going to go well? If we're not taking those steps, if we're not living a life of faith, then our faith is going into atrophy, and it's not being strengthened. It's being weakened. I thought back to 2015, December of 2015, Jen and I were pregnant with Lily and we were, uh, we were not wealthy people. I was an associate pastor at a church. She was a part-time office manager. Uh, we did not have a ton of money, but because Lily was due in January, we had about $5,000 set aside for medical expenses and all that stuff. That's what we figured would work and cover it. And at the beginning of December, her car, her 4Runner, started to make weird noises, and so we took it to our guy who goes to the church, a guy named Kelly. And Kelly called me one day, and after I took the car in, he said, hey, man, how you doing? I said, I'm pretty good. How you doing? I said, hey, Kelly, how are you doing? And his first words were, better than you. And I went, oh, geez, what's going on, man? And he goes, we have to replace the engine. And I said, ugh, this is terrible. How much does that cost? He said, $5,000. Which apparently is super cheap for an engine now, but back then it was not. He says, $5,000. And I'm like, well, you got to do what you have to do, I guess. So make it happen. And there goes our new baby cushion. And we're just looking at each other like, great, what do we do? And that same week, a little bit prior to that revelation, we had committed to giving a certain amount of money to the Christmas offering that year. We had talked about it, prayed about it, and there was an amount that God had laid on our heart to give. And so I went back to Jen and I'm like, I don't think we can afford to give that anymore. We just lost all of our cushions. Certainly God would understand that. But the more we talked about it, and mostly Jen thought this, I was against it. The more we talked about it, the more we thought, no, God put that on both of our hearts. He did it knowing that we would have to pay for an engine. And we should be faithful to that. We should walk in obedience. Okay. So we did. We gave the amount that we had agreed to give. The very Sunday that we gave that amount, some random person walked up to me in the lobby and just said, hey, just want to say thank you. You and your family have been such a blessing to us. And they handed me a Christmas card. And then the Christmas card was a check for the amount of money that we had given to the church that morning. And it was like God was winking at us going, I'm going to take care of you. All right, don't worry about it. Now, do you not think that my faith got stronger after that? When I took this step of faith and obedience, God, I feel like this is a thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do it. And then I watch him come through for us. That strengthened my faith. My faith got stronger. We made a decision that required God to come through in an incredible way. And he did. And so for many of us, I think it's very possible, particularly in our affluence and in our abilities to live lives that do not require faith. And so maybe what you need to take this morning is this little nudge from God to make that decision that requires some faith. To step out in obedience and trust him to come through. That's the first thing Jude tells us to do. Strengthen our faith. The next thing he tells us to do is to pray in the Spirit. I love this. Pray in the Spirit. He doesn't just say to pray. He says to pray in the Spirit. Now, why does he say to pray in the Spirit? And what does it mean to pray in the Spirit? We get an insight into this in Romans chapter 8. It's so funny to me that God laid Romans 8.28 on Aaron's heart for worship. And now just this morning I added in Romans 8.26 for the sermon because there's just so much good truth there. And God often speaks in stereo. But in Romans 8.26 it says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. Meaning the Holy Spirit hears what comes out of our mouths and then communicates to God what we really need because we are spiritual babies and we don't really know how to pray for what we actually need. I don't think it's too dissimilar from when my two and a half year old son, John, says he needs a passy. I need a passy. I want a passy. He wants a passy, but what he really means is, I'm tired. What he really means is, I want to snuggle, which, come on, I got plenty of that. He can do that whenever he wants. What it really means is, I just feel a little bit off kilter and I want to be centered and I need some peace. That's what it means. We're praying to God for passes and the Holy Spirit's like, here's what they really need. And so to me, I think if we learn to pray in the Spirit, it's praying with an awareness that the Spirit is going to translate this to God anyway. So how do I change my prayer? How do I have an awareness within my prayer to pray according to what the Spirit will ask for, to pray according to what the Spirit will translate? How do I pray according to the desires of the Spirit and the very heart of God? To begin to put that filter on our prayers. Before we just blurt out what we need and what we want and what we're hopeful for, to put on the lens of, I'm praying in the Spirit, I'm praying through the Spirit, The Spirit is going to translate this to God. What is it that he's going to translate? I think this is why Jesus teaches us to pray by starting off praying for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We need to put on this mindset when we pray of Holy Spirit, how would you have me pray for this? Which begins, I think, with praying for things that actually concern the Father. This is appropriate at the beginning of football season. I'm not entirely sure God is very interested in the outcome of football games. I could be jaded because I prayed fervently at the beginning of the Falcons Super Bowl a few years back. And he let me down, which means that he does not care about football at all, because certainly he would have come through for my Falcons if he did. It always makes me laugh at the end of a football game when the athletes and the coach want to give glory to Jesus for this victory. Because I just think like, man, you really lucked out playing that whole team of atheists over there so that God could very clearly pick a side. He had to have been against that football team. And if God really did care about football, how does LSU ever win? Like they're Cajun rednecks. It's the worst combination. And yet they're good. So God doesn't care. It's silly, but often we pray about things and God in heaven just has grace and patience for us. I wonder what the translation is when we pray that a certain team would win. I wonder if the translation is, this one's faith is weak, God. I'm working on it. And it's funny there, but there's other ways in which it applies and it matters. One of the things I've learned over the years and the way that I pray for people who are sick and maybe dying is when I have opportunities to go and pray for families over seemingly terminally ill loved ones. If the family asks me to pray for healing, I will because I think that's an honoring thing to do. So sure, I'll pray for healing. But when I pray privately for that family, I almost never pray for healing. I always pray, Father, help this family see and accept your will. Help them to be comforted by it. And help what they're about to walk through to conspire to make their faith in you stronger, not weaker. God, please don't let this path that they're walking shake their faith to a point where they question it. Would you make everything that's about to happen, whether you heal or whether you take, would you let everything conspire to make this faith stronger in this family? I could be wrong, but I think that's a more reflective prayer of what concerns the Holy Spirit. And I think if we can teach ourselves to pray in accordance with the will of the Spirit, we better acquaint ourselves with the heart of the Father. And we see a lot more answered prayer when we do it that way. So pray in the spirit to contend for your faith. The next thing we do is we walk in God's love. We walk in God's love. Now this is what we talked about last week. How do we walk in God's love? And it's actually in the verse, it actually says, keep yourselves in the love of God. So I probably, I should have said, keep yourself in God's love. How do we do that? That was last week's sermon. That's how God's weaving things together. That was first and second and third John. How do we walk in God's love? How do we walk in love for God? We obey him. Because when we obey God, we admit his expertise and that we trust in it. When we obey God, it proves that we trust him. Right? Obedience proves trust. So how do we walk in God's love? We walk in obedience to God. And some of us may have carried in the same sin and the same weight and the same thing that's entangling us. Last week when we preached a sermon on, hey, if you love God, obey him. Where are we being disobedient? Where do we need to walk in obedience? And maybe we brought that exact same disobedience into this sermon this week, into this place this week, and God is still after us. Hey, when are you going to hand that over to me and walk in obedience there? And so maybe this week is just a reminder for you that God really does care. He really does want you to let that go. And he really does want you to walk in obedience. And that's how we need to respond this morning. The last one I love, and I love that it seems to just be tacked on there, but it's such an important concept as we contend for the faith. Have mercy on doubters. There's not too many other places in Scripture where we're given instruction on how to handle doubt and doubters, but it's really interesting to me that Jude, as he's listing these other things that we would all agree with and expect to be there, walk in God's love, strengthen your faith, pray in the Spirit. Sure, we know that. We hear that kind of stuff every week and all the time. But then after that, just as importantly, have mercy on the doubters. And I love that this is in here because can I just tell you a secret about faith? If you are a thinking person, if you are an observant and thinking Christian, then doubts in your faith are unavoidable and absolutely necessary. They are essential and unavoidable parts of faith to run into places where you are experiencing doubt. And if you have never experienced doubt, you either have the strongest faith of anyone I've met, or you, I would gently say, have not really deeply considered your faith and what it means. Doubts, wondering if all this is true anyways, are an unavoidable and completely essential part of our faith. Why do I say that? Because I know personally from experience that the faith you find on the other side of doubt is more rich and more full and more vibrant than the previous version of your faith could have ever imagined being. I walked through a profound season of doubt in my early 20s as I was finishing up Bible college and doing ministries. And then I walked through another profound season of doubt during COVID in the summer of 2020 while I was pastoring. It felt like reassembling a plane in midair. So I know that doubts in our faith are unavoidable and absolutely essential. And I know that when we do the hard work to learn and to actually answer the questions, not let the questions drive us away. I don't understand this, so I'm done with faith, but I don't understand this, so I'm gonna dig in harder. I'm gonna look from new sources. I'm gonna look new places. I'm going to ask more people. And when we find the answers that actually satisfy the doubt, what happens is we emerge with this firm foundation and this vibrant faith that's more rich and more generous than what we could have ever imagined. And what we find on the other side of doubt is that we actually love God more because he gets bigger and more mysterious and we find out we can trust him. Doubts are good, but we shouldn't stop at doubt. We should work through them and talk through them. The problem in churches with doubt is that often doubts are met with condemnation and not mercy. I shared with you guys weeks ago, and we all know that this is happening, that over the last 12 years or 20 years, 40 million people have left the church or something like that. We know the church in America is shrinking. We are now very familiar with this term deconstructing, which refers to someone who grew up evangelical Christian, who grew up with faith and as an adult walked away from it. We're familiar with that. Why is this's going on in our culture it's something that i think about a lot but one of the big reasons it's happening is because doubts in our churches tend to be met with condemnation and not mercy because our pastors and our leaders are not obedient to jude's instruction to have mercy on doubters And when people raise their hand and they go, hey, what about, or how come, or I don't understand, but how could this be true if this is also true? When people express doubts, sometimes they're met with dismissals. Sometimes they're met with condemnation. When I grew up, you felt like this person with a weak faith if you had any doubts. If you didn't understand. That the people who were in charge, the spiritual leaders, the pastors and the deacons and the elders and all those people, they were the people with the fewest doubts. They were the people with no chinks in their armor. They were the people who had all the answers and understood it the best. And so having doubts made you weak. And I think we need to have a church where having and expressing doubts actually shows some strength because you're trying to fight through those rather than bury your head in the sand. And you have a desire to enrich your faith by working through those and finding answers. So if we're going to be obedient to Jude, we need to have mercy on the doubters, understanding it's a necessary process in faith to move through those and find answers. This means, parents, we create that environment in our homes where our children are allowed to doubt, and they are allowed to ask questions, and they are allowed to wonder, and they are allowed to learn other information that causes them to question things about their faith. And they are allowed to move through that in mature ways that are helpful for them, believing that on the other side of that doubt lies a rock-solid faith. So we give them mercy when they have questions. We create environments in our homes where we can have spiritual conversations, and they don't have to agree with mom and dad about everything. And then maybe most of all, for some of us, we have mercy on ourselves. And we allow ourselves to express those doubts. We allow ourselves to express that uncertainty. We give ourselves some grace and start to seek out answers. Not being afraid of the doubt, but knowing that pushing through it and seeking answers in the doubt is going to lead to a faith that we don't have right now, but we desperately want. So we have mercy on the doubters. That's the simple message of Jude. That's how we contend for the faith. The simple message of Jude is to contend for the faith with yourself, with your whole life, with everything you got. How do we do that? We pray in the Spirit. We walk in God's love. We strengthen our faith. And we have grace and mercy on those who doubt. And we walk through this together. I don't know which one of those resonates with you. But if any of them do, I pray that you'll take it from here and you'll leave and you'll work on that this week. And contend for your faith with your whole life in accordance with the message of Jude. Let's pray. Father, you love us. We know that you do. We feel it and we see it. It's all around us all the time. God, if anybody doubts today that you love them, I pray that they would see evidence of that sometime before their head hits the pillow tonight. Lord, we thank you for the simple message of Jude and ask that we would be people who would contend for our faith, that we would contend with our whole lives and our whole heart. Lord, if we have lived lives that don't require faith, would you help us take steps of faith and watch you come through? Lord, if we need to learn to pray more in the spirit and according to your will, would you make us aware that your spirit is with us as we pray? Make us sensitive to praying according to your will. God, if there are areas of our life we know are not in accordance with your word, that we know we are walking in disobedience, would you help us to walk in obedience and therefore walk in your love? Father, if we are experiencing doubts, would you help us be brave in those? To have mercy on ourselves. And to seek out the conversations that we need to seek out. To help us arrive at a stronger, richer, more vibrant faith. Help us contend for the faith that you've given us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I'd love to do that after the service. Or you could just come to Discover Grace right after the service. We've got food for you and we've got space, so hang out with us there. Just for a little bit of clarity, Mikey, I don't know where you're sitting, but I lied to you in front of the whole church. This is not great. This is fine, I would call it. This is what I'm about to tell you is average. This is an average sermon for me. So let's adjust expectations to whatever you think my average is. If you think my average is good, then I got good news for you. You're going to like it. If you think it's not so good, then, you know, good luck in finding another church. And I mean it. I hope they serve you better than I can. This morning we are in the letters of John, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. We've been moving through the books of the New Testament. This summer and next summer we're doing a series called 27 where we go through the 27 books of the New Testament. But sometimes we are grouping them together because the letters of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John really all three have the same message. And 2nd John and 3rd John are one chapter. So it'd be tough to give you an overview of that one chapter. It's better to just group them together because the message that they preach, the message that they proclaim, is very similar all the way throughout. Now, John, the disciple, wrote these letters. He wrote them probably towards the end of his ministry. It's the same John that wrote the Gospel of John, in which he describes himself the disciple whom Jesus loved We've talked many times about John's unique relationship with Jesus. They were uniquely close They sat next to each other at dinner. Jesus told John some things that he didn't share with the other disciples There was a relational closeness there that I'm not sure Jesus or John experienced anywhere else in their life. And then John also wrote the book of Revelation that we're going to get to next summer. And then towards the end of his ministry, he wrote these three letters. And John is also super significant in church history because we believe that he probably kind of replaced Peter as the leader of the church after Peter passed away. Then John was a leader of the church. And then he discipled some guys named Ignatius and Polycarp, and they like took the church after John did. So he's kind of the link between the last of the biblical figures to lead the church. And then guys that we learn about in history books, not in the Bible. So these are significant letters that they fall at the end of his ministry and reveal to us what he thinks is most important to share with the people. And unlike some of the letters like Thessalonians that's written specifically to the church in Thessalonica, these letters are written to all the churches, to take one, to read it to the congregation, and then to get it to the next church down the road so they can read it there the next week. So these are just general advice, advisory letters to the church. And in 1, 2, and 3 John, we see this theme, this instruction, this singular idea come up multiple times. When we decided to do this series going through the books of the New Testament, I knew when we planned the series what I was going to preach when we got to the epistles of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. Because they proclaim one loud message the whole time. I knew what I was going to be preaching. To me, now maybe somebody else has preached an overview on these three, and they pulled a different theme out, and I don't want to be critical of that, but as I read it, when I look at these letters, there's one theme to talk about that if we don't talk about that, we're doing a disservice to these letters from John. And I went through, and I read the theme. I know what it is. And so I read the letters in preparation for the sermon. And I counted 12 times in seven chapters that John says basically the exact same thing. It's the most reiterative book in the Bible that I know of, besides maybe Proverbs. Just the same idea over and over and over again. He keeps bringing your attention back to this one singular principle. And it's captured in a lot of passages, but I'm going to look at 1 John 2, verses 3 through 6. It's kind of the seminal passage that captures this idea that shows up 11 and the other 11 ones that I counted off for myself is simply this idea. If you love God, your actions will prove it. If you love God, your life will bear that out. So clearly, I'm talking to the Christians in the room. If you're here this morning and you're not a a Christian then you get to kind of watch from the outside and see what you might want to get yourself into or what you might be considering but this isn't for you this is for the believers in the room and if you're a believer you've said at some point that you love God and what John says is that's great if that's true then your actions will bear it out we will it. And what's great is all of these letters, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John, are like a commentary or a blow-up of this teaching that Jesus offers to the disciples that's only recorded in the Gospel of John. In John chapter 15, when Jesus says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. He says, to abide in me, you keep my commandments, and my commandments are that you would love. So then at the end of his life, John is reflecting back onto that singular teaching of Jesus. If you abide in me, you'll bear much fruit. How do you abide in me? You obey me. What does it mean to obey me? You obey my commandments. What's my commandment? That you would love one another. So then 12 different times in his swan songs to the church, he reiterates this idea. If you love me, if you love God, your actions will bear that out. And when you think about that, it makes a lot of sense because that's true of every relationship, right? Like I have a wife named Jen. She's wonderful. And if I told her every morning when we woke up, sweetheart, I love you so much. You're the best. Text her in the middle of the day, just thinking about you. I love you. Before we go to bed at night, hey, you're the best. I love you. That's great. But if my actions don't bear that out during the day, if I'm an unholy, impatient jerk to her, if I'm a terrible father to her children, if I give her crud about the house being dirty when I get home, when she's had a way more hectic day than I have, if I refuse to be helpful around the house, if I nitpick her and just make these little demands, if I just take the service that she offers the family for granted and I never express how much I appreciate it, if I don't cut the grass, if I'm lazy around the house, if I just don't do any of the stuff that a halfway decent husband is supposed to do, eventually she's going to stop believing it when I tell her that I love her, isn't she? If Aaron Winston, our wonderful children's pastor, says she loves the kids and she loves their families, but she doesn't bother to learn their names when they show up, eventually y'all are going to stop believing her when she says that she loves them. It's one thing to say it, but John says, put your money where your mouth is. If you say that you love God, then act like it. Then do the things that communicate love to him. If I want Jen to know that I love her, then I need to learn her and do the things that I know communicate love for her. I need to show up randomly in the middle of the day with a Chick-fil-A Coke because she didn't sleep well last night. When I do that, she knows that I love her. Jen needs to laugh at my jokes. That's all I need from her. That's all I require. Touch me sometimes. Just give me a pat on the back. You're great. And then when I make a joke like laugh and I know as long as she laughs at my joke the world is right everything's okay that's all we need but we learn to love in the language that people receive love and God says you know what I want you to do you know the important thing if you say that you love me you know how you show me you obey me you submit to submit to me. You trust me. You keep my commandments. So really the question becomes, why is obedience the thing that God asks of us to prove our love to him? And it's not that we have to prove our love to him, but why is that the proof of our love to him? I think it's for this reason. Obedience admits that God is the expert and we trust that expertise. Obedience admits that God is the expert on life, on humanity, on love, on the human condition, on the universe, and that we trust in that expertise. I'll tell you what got me thinking about that in this way. Sometime last year, some of the kind folks in the church started gently encouraging me that, hey, you know, it'd be great if we could have a cross somewhere on the stage. And so I thought through it, and I thought maybe there's a chance we can inlay one in this center panel. And we've got a lot of talented woodworkers at the church, and none of them were available. But Greg Taylor has tools. So I called Greg, and I asked if he would be interested in this. Some of y'all are picking up on that. I asked if he could help with this. And he said, yeah. He got excited about it, and we started kind of talking about what we could possibly do. He kind of sketched some stuff out and told me what he was thinking. And as he was telling me what he was thinking, I honestly thought, like, I don't think it's going to look good. I don't think, I don't, I don't think that's the way that we should go. It's not really, I don't see it like you see it. So that doesn't sound like a good idea to me. But I also know this, that knowing just a little bit more than most folks about the Bible does not make me a good interior designer. So you know what I did? I shut up. And I was like, all right, Master Woodworker, I don't see your plan. But you do, and you seem excited about it, so go ahead. And then he did that. And I came in here and I saw it. And I thought, I sure am glad I shut up, because that looks phenomenal. looks phenomenal thank you Greg the whole church got better because of that often in my role I have to trust the advice of others who have an expertise that I don't last summer when we were going through the purchase of the land we own four acres off of Litchford Road we'll find out more about what's gonna go there on the 10th of December, two weeks from today. Oh, December, I said? We're going to delay it even more. It's going to be so fun. It's going to keep you guys waiting. Yeah, thanks. Two weeks from now, September the 10th. I'm so focused on that sermon that what I want to say in that sermon kept me up all night last night. I couldn't go to sleep because I was thinking about that. And then I woke up and I was like, I kind of came to this morning. I was like, that's not even what I'm preaching this morning. I have to focus on this. I'm thinking about that a lot. But as we were going to buy the land last year, there was a team of people that were kind of informing us, informing the elders, informing me on the decisions that we should make. And they were spearheaded by one of the great partners of our church, a guy named Scott Hurst. Scott Hurst is a lifelong corporate real estate guy. And so he would call me and he would say, hey, what do you think we should do about this? Do you think we should make this kind of offer? Do you think we should do this or that or whatever? And I would always tell him, Scott, I don't know. Your vote is my vote. Whatever you think we should do is what I think we should do. I have no right to usurp your expertise and insert myself and think I know what to do as we evaluate whether or not to purchase land. I'm just trusting in your wisdom. In the same way, we had a group of people that we put together from the finance committee, from the elders, and one of the bankers that we have at the church. And we put together, I don't know if they're the finest financial minds in the church, but they were the most available at this time. So we put them in a room and we said, how much do we need to raise so that when we build the building, we're borrowing a responsible amount? And they gave me an amount. And as soon as they gave me the amount, I said, that sounds great. That's fine. Zero pushback. No questions. Let's go. Because I trust in the expertise of those people. So I'm happy to submit to what they think. Now, how ridiculously absurd would it be of me to hear the advice of those people and slough it off? To hear Greg say, hey, this is what I think we should do with the cross. And for me to be like, listen, Greg, I know you spent a lifetime in your basement, in your shop, working on projects. And I couldn't do what you've done in a whole lifetime. But I was a trim carpenter for six months when I was 25 years old. And I know a thing or two. And I'm just going to tell you, I don't like your vision, man. You need to rethink that. What if I looked at Scott Hurst when he gave me some advice on something? And I said, you know what? I didn't take a course on corporate real estate and sales deals when I was in seminary, but that was in the class right next door. And I picked up on some stuff. And I think I know a little bit better. What if I push back on the team of people that we asked to advise us on how much we need to raise? What if I push back and I said, that's not, that's a bad idea. That's not doable. I would be dumb. I'm not saying that I'm not. I'm just saying that would be proof. That'd be what you would need. I would be incredibly prideful and incredibly obstinate and incredibly short-sighted and incredibly myopic if I just threw off the advice of the experts in my life and just chose my own way. I was like, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to do this. Because I know how to read the Bible and run my mouth for 30 minutes, I'm the smartest and we're going to do what I say. No, it's dumb. It's silly. It's short-sighted and prideful to throw off that sort of wisdom. And yet, you guys see where I'm going with this? God is the author of the universe. Jesus is the founder and perfecter of your faith. God knew your very soul before he knit you in your mother's womb. He knows the hairs on your head. He knows the number. He knew the good work that he created you to walk in before he ever created you. To say that God knows you better than you know yourself is a vast understatement. He doesn't just know you. He knows the depth of you and all the possibilities of you and all the inclinations of you and all the future pathways of you. He knows all the things that bring you joy. He knows all the things that fill you up. Not only you, but everyone around you. For all of history, he designed all of this. He is the author of life. He is omniscient, meaning he is all-knowing. He is omnipresent, meaning he is everywhere. He can see every possible outcome of every possible scenario, and he can play that out better than any computer we could ever touch. He has all the algorithms. He can figure it out. We can't see past this minute, and he can see every outcome for all eternity, and he's told us some things about how we should live our lives, things that we should do and things that we shouldn't do, things that we should pursue and things that we should cut off, things that are good for us and things that will damage our soul. The author of the universe who sees into the infinite has told you those things and yet we choose to trust in our own wisdom and not his. In different ways and in different seasons and at different times. We throw off the wisdom of the infinite for the blindness of the broken. We have access. Through his word. Through his presence. Through his spirit. Through prayer. Through others. Who call Jesus their savior. We have access to him. To the divine. To the infinitely wise. And he makes it very clear what he wants us to do with our lives. He makes it very clear how we are supposed to love and how we are supposed to serve, how we are supposed to outdo one another with humility. How we are supposed to avoid certain things and embrace certain things. And in the face of that infinite wisdom that only wants what's best for us, we continue to choose the blindness of the broken. The pleasures of today sacrificing the joy of tomorrow. And I don't know where you are in your obedience to God. When I say things like, you know, there's ways in which we're all being disobedient, I don't know what comes to your mind. For some of us, we flash right away. We know the areas where we're allowing sin and the things that so easily entangle to prohibit us from running our race. When I say, what's an area of your life where you're just not being fully obedient to God, you know right away. And that's good. Others of us, because we've been at this a while, have probably settled into this place where we've begun to settle for good enough, where we worked really hard, we've done pretty well, things in life are going pretty good, we've got our spiritual disciplines, we've got our regimens, and we don't do them all the time, but we do them most of the time. And when I compare myself to the other people around me, I seem to be doing pretty well. And I know that there's more work that I could do, but it's hard. So I'm going to stop. And we settle into this kind of middle-of-the-road faith where we're just comfortable. And God, through his word and through his prayer and through worship, beckons us to more. He calls us into deeper obedience. He calls us to walk with him in stride. He calls us to abide in him. He offers this much more full life that's waiting for us on the other side of obedience, and yet we just choose to throw off the wisdom of the infinite that God knows what's best for us in favor of the blindness of the broken. No, I know what's best for myself. Do you understand that when we sin, that's what we do? We throw off God's wisdom and we choose our own wisdom? No, no, no, I know that you are the author of the universe. I know that you kind of wrote this thing and you know all the things there are to know, but for this one, I'm right. Listen, if you think I'm dumb, if I were to ignore the advice of Scott and corporate real estate, what does that make us all when we ignore God's expertise in our own life and we choose our own? It seems really silly to be disobedient when we put it that way, doesn't it? What must it feel like to God when we regularly and habitually refuse His expertise and choose our own? Is there anything, is there anything in life more infuriating than when you're talking with someone and you know you're right about a thing and they will not give it to you? They insist that you are wrong and that they are right and you don't know what universe they're from because you're right and you know you're right. And if you're a parent, you know exactly what I'm talking about. This happened sometime last year and I don't remember the particular word. But Lily, my daughter, she was six at the time. And I think I've shared a little bit of this before. And again, I'm making up this conversation. I remember the gist of it, but I don't remember the word and the actual things that were said. But this is pretty much how the conversation went. She pointed to a word. It was mañana, the Spanish word for tomorrow. I think that's right, right? That means tomorrow. Yeah? You're Spanish adjacent. You should know. His wife speaks Spanish. And I said, she pointed to the word. She said, how do you say this, Daddy? And I said, you say that mañana. And she goes, I don't think that's right. And I'm like, based on what? Based on what expertise do you think I'm wrong? Like, I'm open. Maybe you know something I don't. And she goes, well, that's not, that's not how my, how my teacher at school says to say it. She's taking Spanish at school. She says, that's not how the Spanish teacher says to say it. And I said, how'd the Spanish teacher say that you should say it? And she says, banana. And I'm like, excuse me, banana? That's what you're going to enter the chat with? And I just kind of look at her. I said, I said, baby, that's not right. And she goes, yes, it is, dad. That's what my Spanish teacher said. I said, I do not believe that that's what your Spanish teacher taught you. Because if it is, there's going to be a really strongly worded email. Not that I'm passionate about Spanish education, but that's ridiculous. I'm going to write an email about that. And we're going back and forth. And I'm literally like, I'm even pulling out reason like, Lily, you have taken two months of Spanish. You're largely illiterate in English at this point in your life. I promise you, I know that it's mañana. Do you see that? That's an ñ. That means ñ, mañana. That's what that means. That's why it's there. And it didn't matter to her. Like, Lily, I took Spanish three times in high school. I only made it through. I took Spanish two twice. But I did take it three times, technically. I've been to Spanish-speaking countries. I've been exposed to that. If you drop me in the middle of Costa Rica, I could get home. There would be hand motions and things, but I could get back. Like, I know that's manana. And it was so infuriating because it didn't matter what I said. She was right, and I was wrong, and I literally had to finish the discussion about manana manana with agree to disagree. We have two different opinions about this. I was so mad. How infuriating is it? When you know the right thing to do, you know the right answer. And the person you're talking to is like, man, that's not right. And yet, as I was talking to our student pastor, Kyle, about this this week, he pointed it out and I thought it was a great point. Our God experiences so very little of that frustration. In those moments, when we're obstinate and we are insisting to him that it's pronounced manana, I do not believe that our God experiences frustration like we experience frustration. I do not believe he is angered by that like we are angered by that. In those moments of our profound obstinance, I believe that God is more hurt by our disobedience than he is frustrated. I believe he is more hurt by our disobedience than he is frustrated. I think of it like this. Some of you have walked this path. My children are not old enough to have walked this path, but I've watched other people walk it. And you know the pain of being a parent with adult children and watching those children choose a path that leads to pain. You've watched those children make choices and you can see the end of that road. You know how that's going to end. You know their life is going to be shattered because of it. You know their heart is going to break because of it. You know that they are going to shipwreck themselves with the choices they are making and you are impotent to stop them. And all you can do is sit back and hope that the crash isn't so bad. And hope that when they're ready to pick up the pieces, they ask you to help. Some of my older parents in the room know the pain of watching an adult child collide towards catastrophe knowing there is nothing that you can do. And I think that this is what our Father in Heaven experiences every day. Watching us just careen out of control, spiraling towards a collision or a blow-up or a shipwreck, knowing that what's there is going to end and hurt for us, hoping that when we get there, we allow him to help us pick up the pieces. I do not think our God experiences anger and frustration with us when we're disobedient the way that we understand those emotions. I think he experiences hurt because he knows he has something better for us. Do you ever think about why God asks us to do things? He tells us, he makes it very clear in scripture that we're not to lust, that we're to avoid sexual immorality. Are we to do that just because God wants us to live puritanical lives that aren't as exciting and interesting as those who don't put themselves under the standards of the Bible? Is that what God wants is just his children to be more puritanical and less indulgent than other people, and so let's just keep a lid on that. No. God knows that if you are married, that every time you look at someone who's not your spouse and you desire them in a way that you don't desire your spouse, that you cheapen your spouse and you make the relationship worse. Every time you look at someone outside your marriage and you compare them to who you are married to and you want things that they seem to have that your spouse doesn't seem to have, then you cheapen your spouse and you weaken your marriage. Every time. And God knows this. So he doesn't tell us not to lust because he wants us to be Puritans. That's a happy accident of avoiding lust. But the point is, it's only when we never do that, it only deepens our devotion to our spouse. It only deepens our attraction to our spouse. It only heightens our desire for them. And then in living within this happy, fulfilling marriage where you two are mutually desired, guess what you experience? Maximum happiness and joy in a happy marriage, which is what we all want. God says, he tells us in Psalms, David writes this. In his presence there is fullness of joy, his right hand is our pleasures forevermore. It's the idea that if we pursue him, if we obey him, then the best things are waiting for us there. Why does he tell you not to be greedy? Because he doesn't want you to have nice things? Because he wants you to live the life of a pauper? No, because he knows that if you're greedy, that those things that you want are going to own you. That you're going to live a life serving stuff and image. And it'll throw off your priorities and you won't be the spouse that you're supposed to be and you won't be the parent that you're supposed to be and you won't be the member of God's church and kingdom that you're supposed to be. Because you spend your life pursuing and hanging on to stuff. And there's no joy to be found there. If you think about anything in the Bible that God tells you to do, anything in the Bible that requires your obedience, and you ask yourself, and listen, I'll give you a hint. I always preach this. Whenever there is an instruction from God in the Bible, and I have to present it to you, hey, guys, we need to not be prideful. Hey, guys, we need to not lust. Hey, the Bible tells us that we need to pursue humility. Like, whatever it is, I'm always thinking in the back of my head, why? Why is it important for God that we would do those things? Why would he instruct his children in those things? And the conclusion, it looks a lot of different ways and a lot of different sermons, but this is the basic formula. He tells us to do something, A, because when we do it, we love other people and him better. Bottom line. When we don't lust, we're loving God and others better. When we're not prideful, we love God and others better. When we're not greedy, we love God and others better. When we show humility, we love God and others better. When we offer hospitality, we love God and others better. That's always the first answer. And then ancillary to that, the benefit of that, that should push our selfish souls directly to it, is that also it's what's best for us. Also, there is the greatest joy found in obedience. There is the greatest joy in the fullest life found in following the good shepherd. God asks us to be obedient. He puts things in front of us, not for his weird pleasure, not because he wants us to feel bad, not to browbeat us and make us puritanical, but because by walking in obedience to God, we love him and others better, and we find the greatest joy possible. So he urges his children to obey him. That's why I love this verse in John 10.10. It hangs over my desk. I think in this verse is the fundamental question for all of Christendom. Jesus in John 10 is referring to himself as the good shepherd, and he says he lays at the gate of the pen to protect us, and then he says this, the thief comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it abundantly. Other translations say, have it to the full. And I love that verse. I love that thought, that point. Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. And so it's no mistake. It's no exaggeration to say that Jesus wants the best life possible for you. That's not health and wealth, praying that. I'm not telling you if you follow him, you're going to be rich and no one in your family is ever going to get sick. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is in Jesus the promise is, if you follow your good shepherd and go where he leads you, and don't wander into your own fields trying to find your own sustenance, but if you trust him and you follow him and his wisdom, he will lead you to the best pastures, and in those pastures, you will find fullness of life, life to the full, life abundant. Meaning, there is no greater life waiting for you outside of God's commands. Which brings us to the fundamental question of Christianity. Jesus says, he's the good shepherd. Do you believe him? Jesus says, he will take you to the best pastures. Do you believe him? Jesus says, if you just put your head down and follow him, if you just abide in him, that you will find a fullness of joy there that you can find nowhere else. Do you believe him? He beckons with that teaching the simple question, hey, hey, hey, do you trust me? Do you trust me? Do you trust Jesus? And John, at the end of his life, as he distills all the teaching of a lifetime to this singular point, hey, do you trust Jesus? Do you say that you love him? Do you say that you know him? Well then, obey him, because obedience proves trust. I don't know what areas of your life you would look at and say that they're out of sync with God. I don't know where you would find your disobedience. But whenever there's an area of our life that's not submitted to God and his wisdom, what we are saying with our actions is, I'm the expert here. I don't need you. I do not trust you to be the good shepherd. I will be my own shepherd and I will find my own pastures. Thanks very much. So that's the question that I would leave you with. When Jesus says that he's the good shepherd, when God says that he cares for us, when we're told that he's going to lead us into green pastures, when we're told that in his presence there is fullness of joy, in his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Do you believe that? If you do, then obey him. And if you need to pray while I'm praying, if you need to pray while we're singing, and offer some areas of your life over to God where you've been walking in disobedience, declare that now before you walk out those doors that you will offer those over to him and you will walk in obedience and trust him to be the good shepherd. Prove to God with your obedience to his commands that you love him and you trust him. And what you'll find there is the best life possible. Let's pray. Father, I always say that we love you. And we do. I know that we do. And God, we believe. But sometimes we need you to help our unbelief. God, I know that this room is full of people who love you, who want to love you more, who want to know you better. But we have so many things clinging on to our souls, entangling us, keeping us from running our races. So we simply pray this morning, God, that you would help us see them. What are the things holding us back? What are the pockets of disobedience that we've clung to and allowed and fostered and nurtured over the years that we need to expose and let go? God, if there are things pressing on our hearts and our souls right now, would you not let us leave this place until we agree to submit those things to you? To walk in obedience in those areas once and for all. Lord, we love you. We pray that our actions this week would bear that out. That we would love you and others well. In Jesus' name, amen.

This is the fourth part in our series called 27, where this summer and next summer we're going to do an overview of all 27 books in the New Testament. We've been spending June in the Gospels, and this week we arrive at John. John is my favorite Gospel, and in the mode of the other Gospels, if you've listened to all four sermons, you kind of know that each Gospel is written to a certain audience and depicts Jesus in a certain way. By way of review, Matthew was written to the Jews, and Jesus is depicted as the king. Mark was written to the Romans, and Jesus is depicted as a servant. Luke was written to the Greeks, and Jesus is depicted as a man. And the book of John was written to everyone, and Jesus is depicted as God. The book of John is different than the other books. It's written to all people for all time, not a specific audience, and it begins right off the bat talking about Jesus as God. John's gospel is different. In fact, it starts off different. It starts off with a resounding claim that feels far different than the other gospels. I love the way that John starts his gospel. It's one of the reasons it's my favorite gospel. Look with me in John chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. And I'm going to keep reading verses 4 and 5 because I read them again this morning and I'm like those are cool verses too. They need to hear them. So here, John chapter 1, this is how his gospel begins. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him not anything made that was made. Listen, in Him was life by John. Who at the very beginning, from the very beginning, places Jesus in the Godhead at creation. He says, in the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. Through Him all things were made. Without Him nothing was made. If you think back, this is why it's a big deal to call Him the Word of God, because if you think back to Genesis 1, and you think back to the creation account, how did God create things? He spoke them into being. God said, let there be light. And there was light. He said, let there be fish and birds and animals. And there was fish and birds and animals. He spoke them into being. It was God's very word that was the agent of creation. And here at the beginning of John, right off the bat, just boom, right in your face, John says Jesus is the word, the logos of God. He is the agent of creation. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made. He places Jesus in the moment of creation along with creator God the Father and God the Spirit that Genesis says is hovering over the surface of the deep. So right there we get the idea of the Trinity. B.B. Warfield, a theologian from either Yale or Princeton, I should have double checked, from the early 1900s, wrote a lot of things about the Gospels and a lot of different things about Jesus. But one of the things that he said is that the synoptics were written from below upward, and John was written from above downward. The synoptic Gospels are the first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They follow the same chronology. They have a lot of the same stories. They have a lot of the same parables. Those are called the synoptic gospels. And they present Jesus from the bottom upward. Matthew and Luke begin with genealogies. Here is Jesus' genealogical tree. Here are the men and women from whom he descends, right? It starts at the bottom. And then they introduce him as a baby, helpless, lying in a manger. And if you know nothing else outside of these gospels, this is your first encounter with Christ. And you see him gradually. We learn that he is God and that he is divine and that he is the son of God and that he is the Messiah. We build Jesus from the bottom upward. But in John's gospel, in John's gospel, we see Jesus from the top downward. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and then we see him show up at baptism. Then we see him human. Then we see him as fully God and fully man. But John's gospel is unique and differentiates itself from the rest of the gospels. If I were going to stay in the mode of the series that we've done so far, every week I kind of look at how Jesus is depicted and why he's depicted that way, and then we kind of pick it apart and see why that's important to us. Why is it important to us that Jesus needed to be displayed as king, or that Jesus is a servant, or that Jesus is man, and we kind of look at that. And so if I were going to follow that mode, I would take this week and I would say, why is it important that we understand that Jesus is God? How do we pull that theme out and how does that apply to us? But to me, and it doesn't mean I don't respect the other gospels, but to me, I love the gospel of John so much and there's's so much good stuff in there, that I found that to be overly reductive and dismissive of the message of John. So I didn't want to do that. And I thought about all the things about John that I love that make it unique, and eventually what we'll do is we'll land on this single unifying principle that comes out of the gospel of John that I think is one of the most profound, powerful, freeing principles in all the Bible. We might spend our entire spring on this one principle. But as we get there, I wanted to share with you what I love about the book of John, what I think makes it unique, because I'll tell you right now, the whole goal of this sermon, the only thing I want you to do is leave here and read the book of John. That's my goal. It's for you to walk out those doors or those doors thinking tomorrow or this afternoon, I'm going to crack open the book of John and I'm going to read it. And I'll tell you, I started reading it again too. And I read chapter one this morning. And if you can read chapter one and not want to read the rest of it, then I can't help you. Chapter one is a great chapter of the Bible when you're locked in and you're paying attention to what's going on. So my whole goal is to have you leave wanting to know Jesus through the book of John and wanting to read the book of John. What I think is unique about John, and it's not just me, I mean, you can find lists online. But the things that matter to me are, first of all, John is written from the perspective of a loving friend. Now Matthew and Luke, they knew Jesus. John Mark knew Jesus through Peter and Paul, but John knew Jesus. John was a loving friend. He was a close friend. And in your life, if someone was going to write the story of your life, who better to write it than a close and intimate lifelong friend, than someone who's known you and walk with you for years? Someone who's seen you, who's seen your vices and your values, who's watched you lose it, who knows what frustrates you, who knows what brings you joy, who knows how to complete your sentences, who knows what makes you happy, who's been with you in the down times and laughed with you and cried with you and mourned with you and wept with you? What about, who else can have a perspective on you like that of a good friend? And we say that John was Jesus' good friend because it kind of drips off the pages. First of all, in John's gospel, he refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved. Now that, that is a bold claim. To write your gospel knowing the other gospel writers like they're around, they're going to see this and he still puts it out there that he is the disciple whom Jesus loved. So it would almost be like writing a letter, writing a book about your parents and calling yourself the child whom my parents loved. Like it's a bold claim. And in my case, everybody would just be like, yeah, that's true. It's legit. But he calls himself the disciple whom Jesus loved. And you can see that their relationship was unique amongst him and the disciples. At the last supper, they're reclining together and the way that they would eat dinner, you would lean on your side and you would reach to the table that way and so they were kind of front to back and John's head was in Jesus' chest at one point because he was asking, who is it, Jesus, that's going to betray you? And Jesus whispers into John's ear, it's the one who's going to dip the bread next. He whispers into John's ear who it was going to be, that it was going to be Judas. It's this intimate moment that only John records. And John records a lot of intimate moments like this. As a matter of fact, at the cross, we see that John may have been the only disciple that even bothered to show up. And Jesus musters up the energy and the oxygen to push himself up on the nails and tell John, when I die, please take care of my mother. He entrusted Mary to John. That was how close and intimate they were. So John's gospel is written from the perspective of a loving friend three decades later as he reminisces on the sweetest years of his life when he walked with his Savior. And so John just writes down different things than the other gospel writers did. John almost writes down a personal memoir of Christ where we get insights into these amazing conversations. We get insights into miracles that we don't see in other places like the miracle of the wedding at Cana. We get the longest recorded prayer of Jesus. We get long teachings of Jesus that we don't see in the other books. Matthew and Luke have the Sermon on the Mount or the Sermon by the Lake, whichever setting you want to take. But John has teachings and conversations that we see nowhere else. I actually have some there in your notes for you so you can use this as reference later when you're going through John. But in John chapter 3, we see him have this amazing conversation with Nicodemus that the other gospel writers don't record. Nicodemus was a Pharisee. And the Pharisees rejected Jesus and who he was. But I've always respected Nicodemus because Nicodemus had a way to see past the fake news and the tide and the current and the way that everything else was running in culture and say, wait, but what do I think and who is this man? And so he seems to have requested a conversation with Jesus. And they meet under cover of night and Jesus lays out everything for Nicodemus, who he is, what he came to do, and how we can be, in our words, saved. And in this discourse with Nicodemus, we see the most famous verse in the world, John 3.16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's the salvation message, it's the gospel, it's the whole point of the Bible wrapped into this one succinct verse. It's in the conversation with Nicodemus that that verse appears. One chapter over in John chapter 4, Jesus has this incredible conversation with the woman at the well, this Samaritan woman where he breaks cultural norms, he goes past hated divides, and he talks with a woman who comes to the well in the middle of the day because she's so ashamed of her life that she doesn't want to be seen by the other women. And Jesus calls her out, says, you've had five husbands. The guy you're living with now is not your husband. That's not good for you. I don't want you to keep doing that, but I love you. I'm the living water. Drink of me and you will never perish. And she goes back to her village or her town and she tells everybody, there's a dude at the well that just told me everything I ever did and you guys need to come check him out. And the whole town goes out there, they meet Jesus and they have faith in him. We don't see that story in the other gospels. And then I referenced it earlier in John chapter 17 we have the lengthiest prayer recorded of Jesus. Now the most famous prayer of Jesus is the Lord's prayer. When he teaches the disciples how to pray, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. That prayer. And then we have accounts of the prayer in Gethsemane, right before he's arrested to be crucified, where he says, Father, please take this cup from me. Please don't make me do this. But in John chapter 17, we have Jesus's most lengthy recorded prayer. It's an insight into his heart and his desires into his conversations with his father. And scholars refer to it as the high priestly prayer. And in that prayer, it's so remarkable because he starts off by praying for the disciples. And then after he prays for the disciples, he prays for all of those who would follow the disciples. He prays for the church down through the generations. Do you realize that in John chapter 17, if you're a Christian, if you're a part of God's church, if you call God your father and Jesus your savior, and to be a Christian means that you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. You believe that he did what he said he did. And you believe he's going to do what he says he's going to do. If you are a Christian, then in John chapter 17, Jesus prays for you. It's right there in the red letters. And I can't get over the fact that tucked away in this corner of the Bible, in the 17th chapter of John, that my Savior prayed for me and he prayed for you. And it's recorded and we get to read it. We don't see that in the other gospels. That kind of intimacy is not there. We see it in the gospel of John. And just as an aside, do you know what Jesus prays for? For his disciples and for the generations of the church to come? What would you pray for in that moment? Faithfulness? Power and efficacy of mission? The growth of the church? The fidelity of the saints. Jesus, in that moment, the most important thing on his mind was to pray for unity. Unity within the church. Unity within his children. Unity within the descendants of God. So when I read that passage, I feel equal parts inspired and encouraged that my Jesus prayed for me. But there's also a tinge of sadness there for me. Because I think we can admit and confess we're doing a pretty bad job of making our Savior proud of our unity. We, the church, we've let our Jesus down with all of our denominations and all of our differing beliefs. And it's not that we can't have variant beliefs, it's just that we insist on ours to the exclusion of others. And you fire up Twitter and it's just Christians calling other Christians bad Christians and you fire up Facebook and now it's Christians who know each other calling Christians bad Christians. And it's all just gross. And it's not the point of the sermon, but grace, let us not be a part of that evil. Let us not be a part of God's children that further the divide amongst His church and amongst His children. Let us honor the prayer of Christ and seek unity with one another, understanding we're not going to agree on everything and that never really seems to be a priority of Jesus'. But we see those lengthy discourses in the Gospel of John. Another thing that makes John unique amongst the Gospels, as I mentioned earlier, Matthew, Mark, and Luke include the teachings of, and Jesus always very intentionally taught through parables. We know these parables, the parable of the prodigal son, of the lost coin, the shrewd manager, the persistent widow. We could go on and on. We know the parables of Jesus. Even if you're not very familiar with the Bible, even if this is your first Sunday in a church in over a decade, you could probably name and loosely describe a parable because they're just kind of ubiquitous in our Christian culture. In the book of John, you won't find any parables. I don't know why, but for some reason, John didn't feel like he needed to record those. Maybe he had access to the gospels written prior to his and was like, they got those squared away. I don't have anything to add to the parables. Or maybe he thought it was more captivating to describe Jesus in the terms and to follow the teachings of Jesus in the way that Jesus described himself. Because in the book of John, Jesus teaches using I am statements rather than parables. If you read through the book of John, you'll find seven huge I am statements where Jesus tells us who he is. He's not reliant on the descriptions of gospel writers. He's not reliant on the descriptions of historians or other people or word of mouth. He tells us straight up who he is and what he is and how we ought to think of him. And the seven I am's are there in your notes if you have them. They're not going to be on the screen, but Jesus says, I'm the bread of life, I'm the light of the world, I'm the gate for the sheep, I'm the good shepherd, I'm the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth, and the life, and I am the true vine. And if you look at those for a second and you study them, what you'll see is that all of those things are referring to salvation and they're referring to life in him. I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father but through me. I am the light of the world. I am the bread of life. Come to me. Believe in me. I am the Savior. I am the Messiah. And then once you get to me, I am the shepherd at the gate. I am the good shepherd. I am the true vine. I am the bread. I will sustain you. Jesus beckons you. Come to me, believe in me, know me, and then be sustained by me. All through the gospel of John, these are the I am statements where Jesus invites us to come and to know who he is and then to find life in him. And then in the book of John, we get these verses that I love so much. I tell you guys every week, this is my new favorite verse, and whatever, but I love these verses in John. I love the way that John opens, that we read at the beginning. In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made. That is profound. Elevates Jesus to exactly who he is. Later on in that same chapter we get John 1 16 which is one of the verses I like to repeat around here that humbles me every time, fills me with joy every time. It's a simple verse. From his fullness we have all received grace grace. At grace, we say that we are conduits of grace because we are connected to God. And from his fullness, we have received grace upon grace. We can give grace upon grace to other people. From his fullness, from God's goodness, we, all of us, have received grace upon grace. I pointed out John 3, 16, the most famous verse in the Bible. I also think of John 10, 10, one of my favorite verses for a long time. The thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Where Jesus says, I'm going to give you the best, most exciting, richest, fullest life possible. Well, he promises you, I know, I know the world tempts you with things that you think you want to run after. With wealth or power or success or men or women or attraction or friendship or whatever it is. I know that the world tempts you with things that you want to run after. But I promise that I will give you life to the full. When we pursue Jesus, when we trust our life to him, when we spend our life pursuing him, his promise on that pursuit is not that we will have given up some sort of richness of life to pursue him in this life and experience eternity later. No. It's that if you pursue him now, he will give you that richness now. You cannot imagine a better life for yourself than Jesus would give you if you would only follow him. That's his promise. I come to give you life to the full. I could do a sermon on every one of the things I've said so far. Because there's so many good, so much good stuff in the gospel of John. But my favorite one, the verse that I love so much, the verse that I want to land on that feels to me like a unifying principle for all of Christendom, is found in John chapter 15. After he said that he is the true vine, he tells them this. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. I am the vine, you are the branches. If you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Now here's why I love that verse. And here's why I think it is so profound. Because Jesus says, you don't need to worry about anything but abiding in me. You can sweep all the other concerns of life aside and focus on me. Pursue me. Follow me. Make me the apple of your eye. Stay attached to me and you will bear much fruit. And here's what I really love about that promise. One of my biggest fears in life, I think we all carry this fear to different degrees. One of my biggest fears in life is to get to the end of my life and to learn that I've wasted it. Is to have to settle into the harsh reality that my years didn't matter very much. That I could have done more or I could have done better. I first heard this quote from D.L. Moody. I've researched it out. I don't know to whom to attribute it because it wasn't his, but I heard it from him. He said that one of the most tragic things in life is to watch a man spend his entire life climbing the ladder of success only to get to the top and realized it was propped against the wrong building. It is profoundly sad for people to spend their life in pursuit of things that don't matter. And I carry a fear of that with me. And this verse, this principle safeguards you from that fruit. Over in first, I think it's first Peter or 1 Peter, it says that if we can learn to love one another, that it will keep us from being ineffective and unproductive in our knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. There are these promises through Scripture that if we'll pursue God and do what he has for us to do, that we will not waste our life, that we will bear much fruit. The question becomes, I think naturally, what that fruit is and what it looks like. What does it mean to bear fruit? And I think we probably think about that in ministerial terms. We think about that at Grace. We say that we want to be kingdom builders. We actually say we want to be kingdom builders so much that my goal for you, if this is your first Sunday here and you're here for 10 years, I hope that moves you through this process in life where you realize that everything that you have been given, every talent, all your time, all your treasure has been given so that you can leverage it for the growth of the kingdom of God. That's what we want for you, to leverage everything in your life to bear fruit and grow God's kingdom. So what does it mean to bear fruit? Well, I think we think about that ministerially, making disciples and converting people to Christianity, evangelism, discipleship and evangelism. We think about those things. We call it strengthening or adding to God's kingdom. And I think that's absolutely true. That is the way that we bear much fruit. And if we abide in Christ, we can't help but bear that fruit. That's another part that I love. If a branch is attached to an apple tree, then when it's time, that branch is going to grow apples. All it has to do is stay attached to the tree. It doesn't have to worry about what kind of fruit to bear or when to bear it or what to do or how to get the nutrients. All it has to do, stay attached to the tree and you're going to bear fruit. All we have to do if we stay attached to Jesus is we're going to bear fruit. That's it. That's all we have to worry about. But I got to thinking about what kind of fruit we bear. And if you just look at the natural world, there's all different kinds of fruit. Apples, oranges, pears, tangerines, lemons. That's about all I know. I don't eat a lot of fruit. I can tell you a lot of fast food menus. But throughout the natural world, trees grow fruit. They grow all different kinds of fruit. An apple tree doesn't decide, you know what we're feeling this year, boys? Oranges. Let's do it. That doesn't happen. Apple trees grow apples. That's it. For the rest of their days, apples. I don't think that God's kingdom and that this natural world is that much different. I tell you all the time, Ephesians 2.10, you are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. I think that's the same ethos that we find in Proverbs when it says that we should train up a child in the way that they must go and they will not depart from it. We're going to train up that child to be quiet in church. That's great. We love you, Faith and Phil. But in that, in that is this tip of the cap to the idea that we're all different. In Corinthians, we see that there are a myriad spiritual gifts, and not everybody has all of them. We all have our different parts to play. We all have our different giftedness. God knew before you were that age when you were going to live, what you were going to do, and what gifts he was going to imbue you with so that you might be used in his kingdom. He already knew that. And I've told you before that because you're a God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them, that your job is to figure out what your good works are and then walk in them. All of that ties in with abide in Christ and you will bear much fruit. I don't think the ministerial fruit looks the same for everybody. I think it is as wild and variant as the natural world and that what abiding in Christ and bearing fruit means is you will bear the fruit that God designed you and intended you to bear. If it comes out of your creativity, your hospitality, your gift of care, your gift of discernment, your gift of boldness, your gift of timidity, your gift of confidence, your gift of charisma, whatever it is, God has gifted you in different ways and he has gifted you to bear your fruit in his kingdom, in his way, in his ministry. So it doesn't look the same for everybody. And so what Jesus is promising is if you abide in me, listen, if you abide in me, then you will become the exact person I created you to be. You will experience the exact full life I want you to experience, and you will produce the exact fruit I designed and created you in your mother's womb to produce. You will be the absolute best version of yourself on this side of eternity, and all you have to do is abide in Christ. All you have to do is pursue him, is walk with him, yearn for him, know him, love him. And we could talk a long time about what it means to abide in Christ. Right now I'm leaning towards making the spring series that leads into Easter. Just call it Abide. And every week talk about what it means to abide in Christ. If you're a note taker, I should have brought it up here with me, but write this down. There's a book called Abide in Christ by a guy named Andrew Murray. I would highly recommend it. I tell a story about the facilities manager at the summer camp I worked at, a guy named Harry Stevenson. And now he's one of the godliest men I've ever met in my life. He has those eyes that when you look at him, you know immediately he loves Jesus and he loves me. Just an incredibly godly man. Harry, when I asked him, I said, what book do I need to read, Harry? And he told me, Abide in Christ, Andrew Murray. And I've read it and reread it. If you're a reader, go read it. If you're not a reader, grow up and go get it. The book of John beckons us to know Jesus that we might find life in him. The whole book of John through the I am statements, through the claims of Christ, through the conversations, through the prayer, through the examples beckons us to come to know Jesus. Look again at the I Am statements. Jesus himself beckons us, come to know me, come to trust me that you might find life in me, that you might find the best life possible in me. The book of John beckons us to know Christ, that we would find life in him. It beckons us to abide in Christ. And I would just close by saying this as I push you back into reading the book of John on your own. We can only abide in Christ if we can know Him. And we can best know Him through John. And that's said with a caveat. There's other ways to know Christ. We experience Him. We pray with Him. We walk with Him. We see Him in the Gospels for sure. But I think if you want what is the best written account to know the person of Jesus, to see His heart and to see Him exposed and to understand Him, then the Gospel of John is absolutely essential reading for knowing our Christ and abiding in Him and bearing much fruit in your life and in your ministry. So I'm going to pray. We're going to sing a song. And I hope you'll walk out those doors and open up the book of John soon and begin a fresh pursuit of Christ. Let's pray. God, we love you so much. We thank you for your son. We thank you for John's account of him. That we can know him intimately through John's gospel. We thank you for all the powerful teachings that we find in there, for the way that your son loves, for the simple admonition to abide in him and let you handle the rest. God, we want to be who you created us to be. We want to do what you intended us to do. Would you give us the clarity of sight, the strength of faith, and the boldness of courage to walk with you? Would you let us shake off the demons and walk past our past and leave the shadows behind and pursue you with vigor and fullness of heart and openness of mind and eyes that we might know you and experience what it is to walk with you. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Man, that was good. I tell you what, I tell you what, I love you guys. I love this place. I love this church. It is so special. God's doing something here, y'all. He's doing something in me. He's doing something in y'all. And I fully, fully believe that the brightest days of grace are ahead, that he has a lot for us to do in us and through us. And I'm excited about those. This morning, we are starting a new series. And I got to say this too. I expected for this morning to be terrible. Can I just tell you that? I expected it to be dead in here, for there to be sporadic attendance, and for it to just be a lame Sunday. I'm coming back from South Africa. I don't know what day it is. I feel like eating lunch right now. I have no clue what's going on around me or where I am. We have a team coming back from Mexico that represents a lot of our core folks. Did you guys just clap for yourself? Is that what just happened? Good job, everyone. Yes, we are the best. We got students coming back from Metta. They're all ready to fall asleep. Yeah, this is great. And then it's the middle of October, and if you don't know anything about Grace in October, it's like July 2.0. Everybody goes to the mountains to see leaves, I guess. I don't know. They don't come here to see me, and so it's just kind of sparse here. And I thought this Sunday is going to be dead. And then I'm sitting here worshiping and I'm like, holy cow, God, this is amazing. That was some of the best, most energetic, enthusiastic, sincere worship I've heard come from us. And I'm just fired up, especially about what I get to share with you this morning as we start our new series called Great Prayers. So what we're going to do for six weeks is just open the Bible and look at some of the more impactful prayers that we see in Scripture. And hopefully by looking at these great prayers, we can become greater prayers, but we're not going to talk about how to pray. We're not going to talk about having devotions and that prayer time needs to be a part of our life. And here's why. We're simply going to look at some of the most impactful prayers and meaningful prayers in scripture and kind of ask the question, what can we learn about them for our prayers? And so the one that we're kicking off with is very near and dear to my heart. It's very special to me. This is my prayer over grace. It's what Rachel Gentile just read. As she got up here to read, I leaned over to Jen, and I said, she's just the best. And Jen has tears in her eyes because she loves Rachel. And she's like, I know. Maybe I'm just jet lagged. I don't know. And I don't love Rachel that much. Maybe I'm just fatigued. You're not a big deal, Rachel. It's whatever. We're glad you're here. But this prayer, it's the one that I pray over grace. My office at home, I've got it sitting in the corner now. I need to get it framed and then hang it up. But I've got this prayer written out on a big piece of paper in calligraphy that we had a friend of ours do for us. When I come and pray over children who are born at grace, this is what I pray over them. When I pray for grace, it's what I pray for grace. When I pray for my children, it's what I pray for them. When I pray for you, it's what I pray for you. And so for me, it's perfect that this prayer sermon is coming right on the heels of traits of grace, where we're saying this is what makes grace, grace, and this is who we are. And so now right on the heels of that, we say this is to me the prayer of grace. And I think it's safe to call it the prayer of grace because the greatest church planner of all time, one of the most influential Christians who ever lived, Paul, the apostle, is the author of this prayer. And what I think is cool about it is that it's really mirrored throughout the rest of the Pauline epistles, the other letters that Paul wrote to the churches. So for those of you who may not know exactly what Paul did, you just know he's kind of a name of one of the saints that we talk about in church sometimes. Paul wrote a third of the New, or two-thirds of the New Testament, as far as the books that are attributed to him. Paul planted seven to ten churches right after Jesus died. He's responsible really for the early church movement throughout Asia Minor. And once he was converted on the road to Tarsus, Paul spent the rest of his life traveling around these cities on the Mediterranean coast, planning churches and encouraging the church leaders and the people within those churches, and then writing letters back to those churches as he was going on his four different missionary journeys. If you count the journey on the slave ship that shipwrecks at Malta and then eventually makes it to Rome, then there's four journeys. And so all through those journeys, he's visiting the churches and then he's writing letters back to the churches that he's already visited or that he longs to visit. And in most of those letters, he has a prayer. There'll be a preface and it'll say something like, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. And that's what we see in Philippians. And sometimes it says, whenever I think of you, I pray for you and here's what I pray. But if you'll read Paul's letters carefully, what you'll see in these prayers when he prays for those churches is that they're remarkably similar and that he essentially prays for the same thing for all the churches. And so it's interesting to me to look, what does Paul pray for the churches? What's the singular thing that he wants? What does he always pray for no matter what else is going on? But before we look at and examine what he prays for, I thought I would ask you what you think you would pray for. Put yourself in the shoes of Paul. You spent your life planting these churches, investing in these people. You want to see them grow. You want to see them flourish. You want to see the communities evangelized and reached. You're hopeful for these churches. Not only that, a lot of these churches exist in cities and in empires that are under persecution and oppression, where it might even be illegal to be a Christian and to be in these churches and definitely to be leading these churches. So if you were to write a letter to these churches and you were to include in that letter a prayer, here's what I hope for you. Think with me sincerely, what would you pray? What would you hope for them? What would you want for them? Would you pray for safety? I would. Would you pray for relief from persecution? Would you pray in a day and age when a life expectancy isn't long? Would you pray for health? Certainly you would know some people there who were ailing. Would you pray for the success of the church? May you reach the community. May your love abound so that others come to know Jesus. Would you pray for the health of the church, for the wisdom of the leaders? If you were Paul, what would you pray for? And then think about it in terms of the people that you do pray for. Hopefully, hopefully you pray for the people in your life. If you have kids, hopefully you pray for them regularly, if not daily. If you don't, that's okay. Maybe you have an eight-year-old and you're thinking, gosh, I have not really prayed for that kid very often the first eight years of their life. Okay. Well, they don't have to go any more years without you praying for them daily. So start doing that now. Hopefully you pray for your spouse. Hopefully you pray for them daily. If you don't, that's okay. They've gone however long they've gone without you praying for them daily. But start now and don't make them live that life anymore. Pray for them daily. Hopefully you pray for the people that you love. Hopefully you lift them up to God and you ask for what's best for them. And when you do, what kinds of things do you pray for them? If we pray daily, maybe there's daily prayers, but I think a lot of us probably relegate prayers for others to when there's something urgent going on in their life, right? When there's a tricky relationship, when they've reached a difficult season, when they're awaiting news for a diagnosis or they've received it and now they're undergoing treatment, when there's a difficult situation at work, when there's a difficult situation with their family, with their kids, or with their marriage, then we lift them up. And so when we do, it's often a petition, right? God, save their marriage. God, help them here. God, help me here. Help them do that. God, I just pray for protection for my children. We've got one girl in the youth group who recently turned 16. I'm very certain that her parents are praying prayers of safety on the road and for the other drivers who are around this particular young lady. Those are the kinds of things we pray for, like circumstantial help in this situation. And listen, those are good prayers. They're good prayers. And we see those throughout the Bible. We see David say that God is his fortress and his strength and he prays for protection. We see Paul at different places pray for healing. We see Paul pray urgently and petition God that communities would be reached and that the gospel would be expounded. So we see all of those prayers in scripture. But when we look at Paul's prayer, to me, as we read it, and I'll read it again here in a second, to me it speaks just as loudly what he doesn't pray for as what he does. And I think that we have a lot to learn from that. So let's look again at the prayer that Paul prays, and let's ask together, what is it that he's asking on behalf of the church. Verse 14 in Ephesians chapter 3. So here's what Paul prays. the triune God, that you would be strengthened by the Spirit, that you would be indwelled by the Christ, and that you would be filled with the fullness of the Father, resulting in knowing God along with the saints. So when we say knowing God this morning, we mean the triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So Paul's prayer is that we would know God. That's the prayer, that you would know God. Not for safety, not that everything would be okay, not that the people would be healed, not even for success and growth of the church, not for anything circumstantial, but a singular prayer for them is that they would know God, that they would know him deeply and so commune with the other saints that know him. And it is my prayer for you that everything in life would push us to this place where we know God more deeply. It was the apex value for Paul. Again, do we see in other places him praying for those things? For safety and for protection and for growth and for the expounding of the gospel? Yes, absolutely, he prays for those things. But it's not the first thing he prays. It's not the apex value. It's not what's most important to him. To help us think about this idea of like this apex value, this thing that's so valuable to me, I'm going to pursue it above and beyond anything else. I'm going to tell you a snippet of the story of me getting home from South Africa, which is a heck of a story. But our flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg kept getting delayed. And we had to catch a flight in Johannesburg from Johannesburg to Atlanta. And that margin of time between when we were going to land and when we needed to be at our gate kept shrinking. And I'm looking at my buddy that I'm traveling with, and it kind of dawns on both of us, because he's a more experienced international traveler than I am, and he didn't do me the favor of advising that I not check a bag. So this is really his fault, and he owes me money. But I didn't know not to check a bag, so I had a small bag, and I checked it, figuring it's an international flight. We're going to be there for six days. It seems like the time you check something. Anyways, I checked it. So we're looking at each other going, and he's like, dude, you ain't going to get that bag. You do not have time to go to baggage claim, go to check-in, go through security, and get to the gate. You've got to choose. Do you want what's in that bag, or do you want to get on that flight? Do you want that stuff, which, in that bag, or my Crocs, guys? I know. I know. Oh, man. That's great. If you're watching online and you don't know what just happened, I'm not going to explain it to you. You just got to be here. You just got to be here. So sad. But I know I want to get home. I want to see my family. I want to see my church. I don't want to spend more money on another ticket that's going to cost more than the content of my bag. So even though I really want that stuff and I like some of that stuff, it's just my apex value in this situation, my biggest value, my biggest priority is to go home. So even though it hurts a little bit, I'm going to make a choice to pursue the thing that I need the most. It was the apex value. My value is to go home, see my family, to be in my house. Paul's value for us is that our souls would go home, is that our souls would find rest. And if on occasion we have to leave a bag behind to get closer to the Father, so be it. If on occasion the sickness is what's acting in our life to actually conspire to bring us closer to God and drive us to a deeper knowledge of Him that we would be filled with his fullness, then so be it. Paul prays that our souls would go home, that our souls would find rest in God, that they would go there first and foremost, and that that's what we would want to sacrifice anything else for the sake of knowing God. Maybe this is why Paul writes in Philippians 3.8 that he considers everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ. So if we want our prayers to mirror the ethic of Paul, then when we pray for ourselves and we pray for others, we pray that our souls would go home. We pray that our souls would find their rest in God, no matter what else we have to go through. So if we have a child who's wondering and they don't know about their faith and we see them making decisions that we might not make, the prayer to pray for that child is, God, would everything in their life that they're experiencing somehow conspire to push them closer to you so that they might go home? When someone is sick, sure, we pray for them to heal, but we layer that prayer at the end with kind of a tip of the cap to Jesus' prayer, to the Lord's prayer where it says, not my will, but your will be done. Yes, Father, I pray that they'd be healed. Yes, Father, I pray that they would be okay. Yes, Father, I pray that you would bring relief in this situation. But more than anything, I trust you and I trust your sovereignty. And I'm praying that you would use everything in that situation, use all the circumstances in their life. I pray that they would conspire so that they might simply know you more so that their souls could go home and find rest in you. That's what we pray. And when you ask me to pray for you, when someone's sick or someone's's marriage is struggling, or someone's child is wandering, or things are hard, I always pray the thing that you ask me to pray. But I always follow it with, but God, whatever you choose to do here, would the circumstances conspire to push them closer to you, that they might be filled with your fullness, that they would be indwelled by your Spirit, that they would be strengthened by your Spirit, indwelled by your Son, that they may be filled with the fullness of the wisdom of the Father, that they might know you. So I want to encourage you too, parents, as you pray for your children, pray this prayer over them. We can't possibly see all of the winding roads that may eventually lead them to a greater depth of faith. I can tell you in my own life, there's been two times in my life when I thought, I'm going to have to walk away from this. I can't believe this anymore. This is untenable to me. And one is way more recently than you think it was. But that when I walked through it, and when I got honest about the God that I was pursuing, and when I started pursuing answers to the questions that I had, God opened my eyes to a greater faith and a greater depth of desire for Him. And I feel like as I walk through those points of inflection in my life that God used them to bring me closer to Him so that I might desire Him more. We never know how God is weaving lives to bring us closer to Himself. So sometimes we don't pray away the circumstances that He has brought about to work in. Sometimes we simply trust Him. All the time we simply trust Him. And we say, God, not my will, but Your will be done. We say, Father, I just want to echo Ephesians 3 and pray that everything that happens in the life of this person would conspire to push them closer to you, that they might know you more, that they might know what it is to walk in your peace. That's our prayer for others. That's our prayer for Grace, that God, whatever you do here, if we languish in the small room with the pole in it for the next six years, who cares? God, with all the events that Grace conspire, that we might know you more and do greater things in your name so that other people might come to know you more through us. Who cares where we meet? If we move into a big fancy new building and we do it in a year and a half because God just decided that's what we need to do and hundreds more people come, who cares? God, with the events of these people coming, conspire so that they might know you more and be pushed closer to you. It's our only prayer. And if you were to ask me, Nate, why is this Paul's apex value? Why is this the thing that he feels is most important? Well, the first answer and the most important answer is this is exactly what we were created for. This is why God made us, so that he could share Himself with us so that we would know Him. That's what heaven is. I think we mess up. I think we make a mistake when we make heaven about our personal salvation. Am I in or am I out? Am I going to burn or am I going to be in there for forever? That's kind of silly. The purpose of heaven is that we would be reunited with our creator God and experience eternity in harmony with him forever. The purpose of heaven is that we fulfill our ultimate purpose of just knowing him. And so every inch we move closer to knowing God, every bit of depth that we gain in our knowledge of him, every bit of closeness that we experience in our relationship with him is a way to bring heaven down here on earth. And so not only we experience heaven, but those around us get a little glimpse of what heaven's going to be like with every inch that we move closer to the Father, with every embrace that he uses to pull us in as this small reflection of what heaven will be one day. That's why Paul prays that we would know him. But as I was thinking about it this week, writing this sermon on various flights at who knows what time of day it was, depending on the time zone, this thought occurred to me that, you know, we are at our most gracious and most peaceful when we are experiencing the most closeness to God. Another way to say it is, the closer we get to God, the more grace and peace that we walk in. The closer I get to God, the more I pursue Him, the more I know Him, the more I love Him, the more I experience Him, and I feel his goodness in my life, the more gracious I am with myself and others, the less annoyed I get in traffic, the less annoyed I get with my kids, the less obnoxious I think someone is, and the more I realize they're just a hurt person who's hurting other people, and they need God's goodness just like I do. Isn't it true? In the times in your life, when you look back and you would say, or maybe it's right now, and you would say, I'm as close to God as I've ever been, or in that season I was as close to God as I've ever been, weren't you also your most gracious with yourselves and with others? And isn't it a good indicator that we're not walking with God when we begin to lack grace for ourselves and we begin to get really hard on others and we become harsher versions of ourselves? And isn't it true that the closer we get to God, the more peace we experience? And the more we know him, the more certain we are that he'll take care of us. I did not know. I did not know if I was going to be home today. Catching that flight was, I don't think you can cut it closer. I really didn't know if I was going to be here. But I also really didn't pray about it that much. My only prayer while I was sitting there wondering if I was going to make it was, God, if you want me home, I'll be home. If you want me to preach, I'll preach. If you don't, I won't. And I'll get to keep my crocs. So Lord, your will be done. There was an upside to both, you know? But my only prayer was, Father, do what you want. I trust you. Whatever, if you want me to get home, we'll get home. It's kind of like, it's one of the things that raising the money for the building taught me. We did the campaign really, really dumb and it was just kind of like, well, you know, God, if you want us to have the money to buy the land, then we'll have it. If you don't, then we won't. Now we need to raise more money to get into the building. And you know what? If God wants us to have the money, you're gonna give it. And if he doesn't, you won't. Okay. The closer you get to God, the more peace you experience in life. And so I think it's, and honestly, the times in our life when we're drifting from God are sometimes the times when we get most honest and we try to seize the most things and we worry about the most things that we can't control. And then the closer we drift to God, the more of his peace that we feel. And so I think it's very true that the more we know God, the more gracious and peaceful we are. And as I was thinking about that, I was also reminded of the fact that Paul signs off almost all of his letters, grace and peace. He almost always says grace and peace to you, to the saints and wherever. And I've always paid attention to that. And I've always wondered why that is, especially if you juxtapose it or you compare it with the passage in Corinthians, where it says these three things remain, faith, hope, and love. The greatest of these is love. Like why doesn't he ask for faith, hope, and love to you and all the saints? He doesn't do that. He asks for grace. He wishes them grace and peace. I've always wondered why. And maybe, just maybe, it's because Paul knows that grace and peace are byproducts of knowing God. Paul knows that if God answers his prayer in Ephesians 3, 14 through 19, and then Colossians 1 and in other places, that the people in the churches will know him. And if they know him, they will be people who are filled and who will walk in grace and peace. And so by blessing them and wishing upon them grace and peace, what Paul is really doing in his Pauline way is saying, I hope you know God. I hope you grow closer to him. And so I'm praying grace and peace unto you this morning as well. If you are a praying person, I hope that this great prayer can influence the way that you pray for others. Sure. Pray for the circumstances. Pray for protection and pray for health and pray for success and pray for reconciliation and pray for forgiveness and pray for all the things. But layer over them this apex value from Paul, that the person you're praying for, that the body that you're praying for, the family or the church or the people that you are praying for, would simply know God. That even in the circumstances that you're praying for, that all of them would conspire in some miraculous and unknown way to draw people closer to the Father, that He would use those circumstances to pull people near to Him, that they might experience the grace and peace of their soul going home with God. If you're not someone who prays for the people in your life regularly. Okay. You don't have to be that. If your children have not had the benefit of a praying parent, they can now just start. If your spouse hasn't had the benefit of a praying spouse, if your friend hasn't had the benefit of praying friends, if your co-workers haven't had the benefit of a praying co-worker, okay, they can. Anytime you want. So I hope you'll be people who pray for people. And when you do, I hope that you'll pray according to the ethics of Paul as he prays. That whatever happens, whatever they experience, whatever highs and lows they walk through, that if there's success in their life, celebrate that success, but pray fervently and ardently that it would bring them to a deeper knowledge of God. If there's struggle in their life, pray for a relief of that struggle, but pray first and foremost that that struggle would bring them to a deeper knowledge of their God that they might walk in grace and peace. As I encourage you to pray that for others, let me pray that over you as we wrap up. Father, we love you. We thank you for what you're doing in this place. I thank you for what you're doing in me. There's so many things to pray for. In this room, God, there are struggles that no one knows about. There are hurts and hangups that have not been articulated or that have. Our mind goes to places of stress and of urgency. And so, God, I pray that your hand would be in all those. In this room, God, there's also seasons of celebration, of goodness, of sweetness, of joy and blessing. Whether it's in the highs or in the lows, God, may we not forget that you are the author of those things. And may everything happening within them conspire to push us closer to you. God, I pray for grace. I pray that you would work in the lives of the people who are here and who are at home. And that all the circumstances that are working in their life right now would conspire to bring them closer to you. That they would be strengthened by your spirit. That they would be indwelled by your son. That they would be filled with the fullness of the father. Help our souls to find their rest in you, to go home to you, and so walk in the grace and peace that you offer us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this cold February morning on Super Bowl Sunday. I hope everybody's got fun plans, or if you don't care about the Super Bowl at all, I hope you have a nice dinner planned for yourself. This is the third part in our series going through the book of Colossians. And this week, as we approach it, I wanted to approach the text with this kind of idea in mind. We're going to be in Colossians chapter 2 and then on through chapter 3 in some different portions of it. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. And then if you're at home, please turn there. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. I would also call your attention to the bulletin. The bulletin looks a little bit different this week. There's no place for you to take notes. So note takers, you're going to have to get creative. Instead, I've put a prayer on the bulletin that we're going to pray at the end of the service together. You'll pray silently as I pray it aloud. And by the time we get there, hopefully the prayer makes a lot more sense and is meaningful and is something that you will carry home with you. But we'll talk more about that at the end of the service. If you're watching online, this bulletin is attached to the grace find that you should have received this week. So you can download that if you want to, or you can just email someone on staff and we'll be happy to send it over to you if you find it helpful and want to pray it throughout your week. But as we approach the text this week, I wanted to start here. I'm not sure if any of you have ever tried to eat healthy, okay? By the looks of most of us, this has been an effort at least at some portion of our life, but there have been a lot of times in my life when I have decided that I'm going to begin to eat with some wisdom. I'm going to start to eat well. I'm a person who's had a lot of day one workouts, and I've had a lot of day one diets. Okay, there's more in my future. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows? Not today. It's Super Bowl Sunday. This is not the day to start a diet, but tomorrow is fresh and hope springs eternal. But whenever I decide that I'm going to eat well, right? I'm going to eat responsibly, which is like a rabbit. Whenever I decide I'm going to do that, I feel like I am a person who is at war with myself. I feel like I am two separate people. I am one person who wants to eat well, and I am another person who just loves food so much that he's angered by me who wants to eat well. Because I love food. I don't know about your relationship with food. Mine is probably not healthy. If I know that I'm going to have a certain dinner that night or that we're going somewhere like a restaurant or something like that, I already know what I'm getting and I wake up thinking about it. Like I look forward to it throughout the day. That's how much I love food. For the Super Bowl tonight, we're going to have pigs in a blanket. I'm going to dip them in spicy mustard. I'm going to eat more than I should. I'm already excited about it, okay? That's just how I am about food. So when I decide that I want to eat well, it's really difficult for me. And I don't know about you, but I have certain stumbling blocks. It's pretty easy for me to eat well around the house. I kind of do a good job not snacking when I'm not supposed to. I don't drink the soda and stuff when I'm not supposed to. I drink black coffee and water, and that's pretty much it during the day. That's not very challenging. But what is challenging is when I'm trying to eat well, and my sweet wife on a Friday or Saturday will say, you want to go Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do, okay? I always want to go to Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit. That answer is never no, okay? You ask me, Nate, do you want a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. But you just had three. I don't care. You're offering me one. I want another biscuit. I like biscuits in the morning. So that's tough, all right? The other time it's tough is when I go out to eat. Because I'll go out to eat. I'll go to places that I like, and they have food there that I like. And one of the places I think of is Piper's. I go to Piper's because I meet people there for lunch with a lot of regularity. That's kind of my default spot. And they have salads, like I see them on the menu, right? They got grilled chicken and some fruit or some whatever, some balsamic whatever, less delicious thing that they have there. And I know that I need to order it. And I have girded my loins. I'm ready for this choice. And I go in there and I don't even look at the meat. I look at just the salads. I don't look at the other things. But see, here's the thing. This Piper's has one of the best Reuben's in the city. They really do. It's delicious. And that's what I want, right? I want the Reuben. And I've been thinking all day about how I shouldn't have the Reuben. And I've made the decision, I'm going to get the salad. I'm going to eat the thing that I don't want. But then it's like Satan's working against me or God's just giving me a special grace and telling me it's okay. I'm not sure which sign. And the table next to me will receive a piping hot, crispy toasted Reuben. As I'm sitting there trying to muster up the discipline to order my salad. And I look at that Reuben and I look at those fries and I look at that ketchup and the waitress says, what do you have? That! I want that Reuben. I did not want a salad. And I cave, right? So for me to be on a diet is for me to live at war with myself. I bring that up because I think that you'll know that this is true. Those of you who have been a Christian for any amount of time, to be a Christian is to be at war with yourself. To be a Christian, to be a believer, is to know the good you ought to do and yet still struggle to do it. I even think, and this is a sad reality, it should not be the case, and hopefully God can deliver us from this, and hopefully this sermon moves the needle on this a little bit, but I even think that to be a believer is to be constantly disappointed with how spiritually mature you are and how spiritually mature you think you should be by now. Because we know the good things we're supposed to do. We know the kindness we're supposed to show. We know the greed we're not supposed to have and the pride that we're supposed to iron out. And we know all the different things and our hidden sins and the stuff that we look at and whatever it is, the stuff that we consume. We know what we're not supposed to do and we know what we are supposed to do. And we try like heck to be that person, but we are a person who feels at war with ourself because there is the person within us who wants to eat right and there is the person within us who really loves a good Reuben, whatever that might be for you. And they exist at war with each other. I am convinced that to be a believer means to live in a state of tension within yourself of who you know you should be, of who you know God created you to be, of who you know God designed you to be, and yet not being able to walk in that. There's a verse that's super challenging for me where Paul tells us that we should live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And I don't know about you, but I don't get to the end of too many days, much less weeks, where I look back on that week and I go, yeah, this week I was obedient to that verse. And if we're honest as Christians, it gets tiring to know that that's true. It gets exhausting to constantly fall short. Paul actually describes this tension in one of my favorite passages. It's one of the most human things to me that's written in the Bible, particularly by Paul in Romans chapter 7. In Romans chapter 7, Paul writes specifically about this tension in the Christian life when, in my inner being, but I see in my members another regenerated person as God has rescued my heart and claimed it and one day will whisk me up to heaven. He's given me eternal life and I'm living as a new creature that we're going to talk about more in a minute. I feel in this inner being a desire to live the righteous life that God has called me to live. And yet, also in my body, is a desire to revert back to my old self. It is a desire to revert to who I am without Jesus. It is a desire to indulge the flesh. It is a desire for the things that I used to consume that I know I don't need to consume anymore. That exists within us. And then he exclaims at the end of it, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will finally give me victory? How will I finally live the life that I'm supposed to live? And so that's where we arrive this morning. In Colossians, is this age-old question that all Christians face, that Francis Schaeffer, an author in the 20th century, framed up in a book entitled, How Should We Then Live? Meaning, in light of the gospel, in light of what we talked about in week one, the picture of Jesus that Paul paints for the Colossians, remember, they're facing pressure from within and without to go back to rules and aestheticism and to be legalistic and add on more rules than what is necessary so that they can live a righteous life, and then pressure from the more liberal part of their community to say none of the rules matter, how we live doesn't matter at all. You have total grace to do whatever it is you want to do. And so Paul, to that pressure, paints a picture of Christ as the apex of history and the apex of hope, as the connection point and nexus between the spiritual realm and the physical realm, how he is the creator God over everything, this majestic picture of Christ. And so the question becomes, how do we live in light of that picture? How do we live in light of the gospel? I am saved. I am a new creature. God has breathed new life into me. I am no longer a slave to sin, as Paul describes in Romans, but now I have this option to move forward with the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit in me and to live a life worthy of the calling that I have received. Now, how do I do it? How do I do it? That's the question that we come to in Colossians. And it should be a question that matters to each and every Christian. Father, how do I live a life worthy of the calling that I've received? How do I grow into spiritual maturity? What do I do practically? How do I live the Christian life? And it's an important question because it dictates how we pursue God. And to this question, I think we often answer it in the same way that we're trained to answer any other question in our life about how we get better at a particular thing. If you want to get better at exercising, what do you need? You need more discipline. You need to wake up. You need to do it. You need to be more disciplined in the way you pursue exercise. If you want to eat better, what do you need to do? You need to be more disciplined. You want to do better at time management. You need more discipline in time management. You want to be more focused. You want to be more productive. You want whatever it is, however it is, you want to grow and be better. What is the fundamental requirement of that pursuit of better? It's discipline. We need to do better. We need to come up with structures and systems that we follow, and I'm going to white knuckle my way to success here. And the most disciplined people within our field, they achieve the most success. The most disciplined people at the gym look the best in a t-shirt. The most disciplined people, when they go out to eat, they have the healthiest hearts. Like discipline is the root to how we accomplish success. And so, because that's true, and so very many areas of our life, even though we could philosophically talk about whether or not that's true, because we think that's true in so many areas of our life, we also just by default apply that to our spiritual life. If I want to be more godly, then I need to be more disciplined. I'm going to set up more rules, more regulations. I'm going to get up at this time. I'm going to do these things. I'm going to be the type of person that is defined by these things. We focus on our behavior and our self-discipline. And I think when we are faced with the question of how do I then live? How do I become the Christian that God has created and designed me to be? I think that in our culture, our default answer is to attempt to white-knuckle discipline our way to godliness. And here's what Paul says about that knee-jerk reaction that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. Listen, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom and promoting self- we be the people that God asks us to be? And their response, it seems, at least initially, was white-knuckle discipline, aestheticism, following the rules. The better you follow the rules, the more God loves you. It's a very simple exchange. That's what legalism says. And so they're just going to be try-hards. They're just going to be do-betters. That's just what they're going to do. And to help them try really hard, they set up all these rules and parameters around their life. And they say, whoever can follow these rules the best is the greatest Christian. But Paul says, that's fine. Set up your rules. Have all your standards. Set the boundaries really far away from the actual boundary. He says, but all those rules and all that, the way that it looks, the way that you're living, just dotting all the T's and crossing all the I's and really, really, really having these policies in life that keep you on the straight and narrow. Paul says, yeah, those have the appearance of wisdom. And I would add in our vernacular, godliness, but they do nothing. They do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh that is the reason for the sinning that we need the rules for. For instance, let's say that what you struggle with is pride. Okay, I'm having to make some assumptions here because I don't have the struggle, but if you do, let's say that something that you struggle with is pride and you go, you know what, God, I gotta get rid of this. I gotta be better. I'm gonna be better at being more humble. I'm gonna try to push out my pride. And so we take intentional steps. Maybe we're people who will maybe kind of fish for compliments sometime, or maybe we'll ask people what they thought about something. And really all we want them to do is tell them that we did a good job or that we're good at this or that we're good at that. And there's ways, if you're a prideful person, there are ways to go through your life and get the people in your life to affirm you. And if you are this person, you're exhausting, okay? I've exhausted others. I say that as a friend. That's not a good road to walk. But let's say that you're a prideful person, and so you need other people to affirm you all the time and the things that you're good at, but you realize in light of the gospel and in light of God's word that pride is not good, and so we need to iron this out of our life. So we go, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to ask other people for compliments. I'm not going to ask other people to affirm me. I'm not going to seek my value in other places. And then once you get really good at that and you haven't done that in a couple of weeks and you still feel good about yourself, then what do you do? Boy, I am proud of myself for not needing other people to tell me I'm good. Now we're taking pride in a new thing. What Paul says is there is this part of our flesh that is going to manifest negative things in our life, pride, greed, selfishness, lust, whatever it is. And we can put parameters around those things, but they're going to leak out somewhere. You can follow whatever rules you want to follow. You can white knuckle yourself into some good discipline. I've seen some people who can keep themselves on the straight and narrow for years, but those negative traits that exist within you, those things are going to leak out somewhere else. And I know this because I've met a lot of people who can follow the rules really well, and they're jerks. It's just their flesh leaking out in other ways. So what Paul says is we cannot white knuckle our way to godliness. Discipline, self-control, more rules, more standards. Those do not get us to spiritual maturity. Those do not put us in a place where we can live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. That's not the answer. In chapter 3, thankfully, I believe that he gives us the answer. And I think it's a refreshing one. Because when we try to get to godliness by white-knuckle discipline, just I'm going to be a try-hard, I'm going to be a do-better, what happens is not good. Because if you have ever in your life decided, yeah, I'm going to be a better Christian, and I'm going to do it by taking these steps. I'm going to do it by instilling these standards in my life. I'm going to do it by my own effort and me trying hard. And maybe we pray a prayer, God, I am never going to do this again. God, I am always going to do this moving forward. God, I swear that that will never be a part of my life again. And we make these big promises and we make these big claims. And listen, we mean them. But here's what I know about you. If you've ever promised God that you will never or that you will always, then you have failed. That's what I know about you. If we ever have promised God, I will never do blank. I will always do blank, we have failed in those promises because we can't keep those commitments, because we're broken. Because of Romans 7, the things that I do not want to do, I do, because it's part of our nature to fail in that way. And because that's true, after we make up our mind enough times that God, I'm never going to, or God, I'm always going to, and then we fail, we get to a place where either we just feel like this broken, wretched Christian, and we're thinking, God, I'll never be good enough for you. I don't think I'll ever be good enough for you. Just please let me be saved. Just please let me just hang on until I get to the end of my life. Please usher me into heaven. I know I'll never be who I'm supposed to be. I know that I can't pursue those things, but please just accept me as I am. And we kind of just live this broken down, hopeless Christian life where we feel like we're limping our way to heaven. Or worse than that, we try so hard and we fail so many times that we get so tired of trying that we can't find it within ourselves to do it anymore. And then we conclude, God, your word says that I'm a new creature. Your word says that you will help me. Your word says that you will empower me. And yet I fail over and over and over again. So I can only conclude that you don't keep your word. And then we just wander away from the faith and we give up on God because righteousness is too hard because we've only ever tried it by ourself and we've never invited God in in the way that he needs to be invited in, and our white-knuckle disciplining to try to be better and more godly to pursue the faith that we want so earnestly ends up costing us our faith. So that's not the way. We find the way in Colossians 3. And I would sum it up like this. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving, by focusing on who we are rather than how we behave. And here's what I mean. In this chapter, we're going to see this idea introduced here by Paul, but introduced in plenty of other places by Paul in the New Testament, of the old and the new. The old you and the new you. The old you is who you were without Jesus. The new you is who you are with Jesus. The old you, the Bible says, was a slave to sin. I had no choice but to do things that displeased God. I had no chance at all. But the new you infused with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit does have the chance every day when you wake up to walk that day according to the life that God has called you to. We have a chance when we wake up to live today in honoring God and actually finish the day living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day. We've got a chance. There's a new us. And the new us desperately wants to please God. And so this is what Paul says about old self and new self in Colossians chapter three. This is what he says about being versus behaving. Look at Colossians chapter three, verses five through eight first. Put to death, Paul says, therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idol rules. But here's what we need to do. We need to put to death these things, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, covetousness, anger, slander, all these things. And at first, it sounds like that's a little bit in tension with what he just said. He said, if you want to be godly, if you want to be who God created you to be, it's not about following the rules. It has an appearance of wisdom, but that's not really helping any indulgence of the flesh. And then the very next chapter over, he's saying, put to death these things, which feels like rules and standards that he's giving us, except he's not giving us behaviors. He's telling us to put things to death. Remember how I said that if you follow rules, if you're trying to break yourself of pridefulness and you put rules around your pridefulness and then it just leaks out and into another area of your life. Jesus is, Paul is acknowledging that. See, it's not about trying to follow the rules because those unhealthy things just leak into other portions of your life. It's about actually putting the pride to death. It's about actually putting greed and lust to death in your heart so that in your heart there is no place for them to dwell. And if there is no place for them to dwell, then they will not produce the behaviors that you're trying so desperately to control. So the first thing is to acknowledge that we don't need to put parameters around our old self. We need to put our old self to death. And we do this by focusing on being. How do we put those things to death? This is what Paul says in Colossians 3. I'm going to read verses 12 through 17. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, we live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? In the phrasing of Hebrews 12, verse 1, What the world do I live the life that you want me to live? I think what Jesus would say is, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Jesus, what rules should I follow in this new life that you've called me to? How do I run the race that you've set before me? Jesus says, just look at me. Just keep your eyes on Christ. This is actually in complete harmony with Romans 12 that tells us that we should run the race and that we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles us by, in verse 2, focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. So how do we live the life that God calls us to live? We daily make ourselves aware of Christ's love for us. We daily make ourselves aware of what God has done for us. If we will daily reflect on the fact that Jesus in heavenly form condescended and took on flesh and lived amongst us for 33 years and put up with everything that we have to offer and continues to walk with us and continues to love us and continues to sit at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you as an individual, leans into God's ears and says, she's good. She's with me. She loves you, Father. I died for her. If we will let that reality wash over us daily, how could we not put to death the pride that exists in us by walking in humility at the love of God that we receive? If we are struggling with anger towards other people and frustration and impatience, how is it possible to spend a portion of your day every day focusing on the reality of God's patience with you? Focusing on the reality that as many times as you've said, God, I will never, or God, I will always, and then you failed, that God has been right there to help you clean up the mess every time. How can we not grow in forgiveness of others when we constantly remind ourselves of how forgiven we are? How can we not grow in patience to others when we constantly are focused on the patience that God has to us? If we will focus on God's overwhelming grace, that he died for us while we were still sinners, that he pursues us while we run away from him, that even though we fail him over and over again, he continues to love us with a reckless love, that God loves us while we were unlovely, that God sees us fully and knows us completely and still loves us unconditionally. If we let those things wash over us every day, how could we not look at other people and be more loving and patient towards them in light of how loving and patient God is towards us? Do you understand that these things that we clothe ourself with in Colossians 12 through 17 necessarily put to death our old self that Paul tells us to rid ourself of. So if we want to get rid of malice, what do we do? We focus on Christ. If we want to get rid of pride, do we put parameters around our pride? No, we focus on Jesus and who he is and realize that we have no right to our pride. If we want to be more gracious people, what do we do? We focus on Jesus' grace to us. Say, Jesus, how in the world do I live the life that you call me to live? Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And Jesus says, focus on me. Focus on me. So I would tell you, if you are a Christian who lives at war with yourself, you do not have a discipline issue, you have a focus issue. If you are someone who struggles with greed, you don't have a greed issue. You have a focus issue. If we try to be more godly and more pleasing to him by focusing on the behaviors that we need to do better, we will fail over and over and over again. But if we can put our focus on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith and let his grace and goodness and mercy and love wash over us daily, then those things will necessarily put to death the very root of the behaviors that we do not like. So again, if we are struggling in our walk with God, we do not have a discipline issue. We do not have a sin issue. We have a focus issue. We need to focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We need to pursue him more with more urgency. We need to let the truths of how he loves us wash over us more. And those will necessarily put to death the elements of our character that we do not like, that produce the behaviors that we do not want to do. You can think of it this way. Our old self cannot survive where our new self thrives. Our problem is we have a new self and we have an old self and we feed them both the same amount of food. We give in to them both equally. And so they both just exist in this tension and if we ever want to put to death our old self, then our new self has to thrive. And our new self thrives by clothing ourselves in the characteristics of Christ and we clothe ourselves in those characteristics by focusing him and daily letting his goodness wash over us. So it's very simple. How should we then live? How do we get to the end of a single day? Living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day? By focusing our eyes on Jesus on that day. By looking at him that day. And letting everything else fade away and take care of itself. Because it's that simple, and because that's what we need to do, I wrote a prayer for us as a church. In a few minutes, I'm going to read it and pray it over us as a church and invite you to read it along with me. If you find it helpful, I would love to invite you to put this prayer somewhere where you can see it, where this is a thing that you will pray daily. Put it on your desk, or in your car, or on your mirror. If this is helpful to you, I would encourage you to pray this every day until it's not helpful to you, until the principles of this prayer are so ingrained in you that it is part of your daily prayer. But if we want to live a life as Christians that we are called to live, then I am convinced that this needs to be a fundamental prayer that we focus on very regularly. Not necessarily the words that I've chosen here, but the ethos and the attitude and the posture that's presented in this prayer and the acknowledgments of the truths that are in this prayer that are from Colossians chapter three and other portions of scripture as we seek to live the life that God calls us to live. So I'm gonna pray this over us and invite you to pray it along with me. Father, I know I am your child and that in you I am a new creation. Though I know this, I struggle to believe it. Because I struggle to believe, I struggle to walk as you would have me walk. So Father, help me learn to walk in this new self. As I put on the new self, I ask that you would help me see others through your eyes and so clothe me in your compassion. Help me regard others as your beloved children as you clothe me in your kindness. Remind me of the way you love me when I am unlovely in order that I might humbly love others in the way I am loved. Remind me today, Father, of who I am in you. As you clothe me in these things, let them put to death in me the remnants of my old self. Let your humility drive out my impatience, my anger, and my pride. Let your compassion and kindness suffocate my jealous and selfish heart. Let the way you see me overshadow and obscure the way I see myself. Help's name, Father. Amen.