Grace Raleigh Sermons

Thank you. Well, good morning, Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that. We have a wonderful apparatus for that to happen after the service today at the Hootenanny, so we hope that everyone will stop by for that. Before I jump into the sermon, I just felt compelled to say this as we sing that last song. I run to the Father, I fall into grace, I'm done with the hiding, and I run again and again and again. I run to the Father. And it was just, it occurred to me that this weekend I had the opportunity to go out and see a good friend of mine. Lives a couple hours away. And I've just, I'm tired, you know. I mean, it's just life. It's nothing in particular. I have two young children and I'm a pastor. And sometimes you just get busy and I was tired and I just needed some time to kind of refresh. And so Jen saw that, and she sent me, and I went. And he's a good friend, and he loves Jesus, and he loves me, and my soul is refreshed for going. And it occurred to me as we sing that song, Run to the Father, that sometimes that means running to his people that he's put in your life so that he can use them to refresh you. So if that helps you in your week, if you feel tired, if you want to run to the Father, if you're done with the hiding, sometimes that's why he puts his children in your life so that you can run to them and he can refresh you through them. So just throwing that out there if that encourages any of you. This week, we're in part two of our series, The Traits of Grace. And I told you guys last week that these five things that we're going through starting last week are the defining characteristics of who we are as grace. So if you've been going to grace for years, these should sound very familiar to you. These should be an articulation of things that you already value, of things that you're already passionate about, of characteristics that you already see displayed in the church and in the partners of the church. And I told you last week that the elders were so animated by this and the staff was so excited by these things that we are going to make these a regular part of the church. We're going to bring these back all the time and make sure that our series are hitting on them and that we have them displayed in the lobby of the new space that we're going to be building and all of those things. So I've been excited to go through this with you guys. That's intense. You're not missing it. Whoever that is is not missing calls. I'll tell you that. You are reachable. You're on top of it. So these are articulations of who we already are. They're not a new direction for us. So if you're a longtime Grace partner, these should feel very familiar and affirming and give you the direction to run in as a partner. If you're newer to Grace, then you've picked the perfect time to start coming to Grace so that you can learn exactly what we're all about and decide if that's what you're about as well. So this week, we arrive at our second characteristic that I'll get to in a few minutes. And this characteristic is really based on something that I sensed in my interview process with the church back in 2017. And it's something that people pick up on all the time about Grace and Grace folks. One of my favorite things to do in my job is I get to go out and grab lunch or a beer or a coffee or whatever with people who are newer to the church. I get to know them. I get to know their story. I get to ask, how'd you end up at Grace? What brought you here? And all of those things. And it's a really, truly fun part of my job. So I would say if you're new to grace and this is your place, you're going here and we haven't gotten a chance to have a face-to-face yet and hang out, I would love to do that if you would reach out to me. Because sometimes I don't know how to reach out to you. So if you want to reach out to me and do that, I would love to do that. But without fail, in those conversations, when I hear their story and I say, so what brought you to grace? Like, how'd you find us? And then why are you staying? What keeps you here? Without fail, one of the answers that I hear literally almost every time is, Grace is just real. Grace is authentic. They're just real people there. Nobody's putting on airs. Nobody's walking around the church like they're holier than everyone else, right? Because you're not. Like, we're just a real authentic place. We're a real authentic group of people. And I think that works out really well for us because that's like the buzzword right now, right? That's what everybody wants to be. Everybody wants to be real. Everybody wants to be authentic. Everybody wants to be trustworthy and transparent and all the things because we live in a society where we've seen everybody debunked and everybody's messed up and everybody's got secrets and everybody's got something to be ashamed of. And so we don't believe any more than anybody's holier than thou. And at Grace, we don't either. We believe that we're all messed up. And people notice that. And they like that. And they say, yeah, it just feels real. It feels honest. It feels authentic. And then what they'll usually say to me, and I know this feels like me patting my own back. I'm really not. What they'll usually say to me is, you know, you're real as a pastor, like you're authentic in who you are, and that's trickled down to the church that you lead. And I'll always correct them and say, no, no, no, like I am real as a pastor. And what that means to me is I will never, ever, ever speak down to you. I will never be the pastor that says, I've figured out spiritual life and how to be holy, and I'm here to help you get on my level. I will never, ever do that. I'll do that for you, but I will never do that for others. I will never speak down to us as a congregation. I will always speak to, I will always share in conviction when it's time for that. I always share an insight when it's time for that. And nobody here will do that either. But I always tell them, it's not me that made grace authentic. It's not me that made grace gracious. When I was in my interview process, I specifically looked for a church where I could be the same person I was Wednesday and Friday night as I am on Sunday morning. I did not want to have to be any different or pretend that I was anything different. I did not want to be at a church where there's pressure put on the pastor to be the moral exemplar, the most spiritual, right-walking person in the room. I didn't want that because I knew I couldn't be that. And Grace hired that intentionally. I went to a church that was already real. I didn't create a culture of authenticity here. I was attracted to the culture of authenticity that already existed. Which, by the way, there's a couple people walking around with some gray Grace Riley shirts on. Those are the OG shirts. All right, that's the first Hootenanny shirt. So those are the people who were authentic to me when I got here, and all I've done is participate in a culture of authenticity and acceptance and grace that already existed. So the real question becomes this morning, because as we were putting up our traits on the whiteboard as a staff, and we were brainstorming, what are the traits of grace. One of the first things that went up there is authentic, real. That's who we are. We don't put on airs. And so I wasn't just going to say that authenticity was a trait of grace because that felt insufficient, right? That feels cheap to just write that down. Yeah, everybody writes that down. I was more interested in what's the secret sauce there? What was it about the people of grace long before I got here and half the people in the room got here that made this place a place that's authentic and humble and real? Really, the question we're asking this morning is, what is the source of grace's grace, right? What is the source of grace's grace? What makes us loving and accepting of all the people who come in? What makes us feel like nobody thinks we're better than anybody else? And as I thought about that, I started writing things down. And I wrote down this little stanza. I don't know what it is. I don't think it's a poem. Maybe it's a benediction. It's something that I think I might bring up over like repeatedly and read to us again. And it's in your notes. If you have notes today, if you're watching online, you can download those at the bottom of our live page and they might still be attached to the Gracevine. I don't know what we do. But you should have access to those. And on your notes is this paragraph or whatever it is, this benediction that I wrote out. But if you were to ask me, what is the source of Grace's grace? I would say it's this. At Grace, we understand. We are guilty, yet forgiven. We are broken, yet restored. We are deeply flawed because of the Spirit, and all of this is grace. All of those things are God's grace and goodness in our life. We understand, each one of us, when we walk in this room, we have an acute awareness that we are guilty of breaking harmony with the Father. We are guilty of making wrong choices. We are guilty of sin. We are broken. We are broken humans. And we are deeply flawed. Every one of us that I know at Grace walks around with an acute awareness that we do not have it all together. There's not a single person in here who I think would claim to have it all together. We know that we don't. We know that we're screw-ups. And here's the thing. If you're new to Grace, I just want to go ahead and relieve you of this tension so you don't feel like you have to put on airs either. We know you're a screw-up too, okay? We know that you got stuff that you don't want anybody in this room to know about. We know that. If it's not now, it's in the past. We know that. We all have that. We're all broken. We've all failed. We're all deeply flawed. That's part of life. That's part of humanity. It's part of who we are. And yet, what we know is that we are deeply flawed and yet deeply loved. That we are guilty and yet forgiven. That we are broken, but we are restored. Because our good Father did that for us. Because he sent his Son to wipe those things away. We are blemished and yet we are righteous and clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And we know that all the goodness in us is because of the Father. Because when I look at grace, I see a lot of good. I see a lot of good people and good faces. I see a lot of people that I have watched be servants over the years. I see a lot of kindness and a lot of grace. I see a lot of love. When people who I know visit on Sunday morning, they say, man, you really have a loving congregation. I said, yeah, we do. We have sweet people. I see a lot of goodness here. But I know that you know that you're only good because the Father has made you so. You're not good because you did it yourself. You're not good because you're somehow better. You don't serve well and love well and offer grace because you're somehow superior to other people. No, you're good because God made you good. You're good because God imparted on you goodness. You're good because you know and you understand as a partner of grace that your righteous deeds are as filthy rags without Christ. That there is nothing good in you until you meet God. And so though there is goodness here, and though there is sweetness here, and though there is mature belief here, none of us are under the impression that that is for any reason than because God the Father loves us and makes us so. You know, grace, that you are righteous because of the Son. You know that when God looks at you, if you believe that, if you're a Christian, which is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, he did what he said he did, and he's going to do what he says he's going to do. You know that if you believe that, that you are now clothed in the righteousness of Christ. And so when God looks at us, he sees his children, that he can't wait to welcome into heaven and sit at his banquet table for the marriage supper of the Lamb. He can't wait for that. And he looks at you and he sees righteousness, but it's not because you've white-knuckled your way into God's favor. It's because Jesus simply loves you, and Jesus died for you. And so we know at grace, yes, we are righteous. It had nothing to do with me. And so when other people come to grace, you can be righteous too, and it doesn't have to have anything to do with you. At grace, I know people who are wise. We have wisdom here. I'm very grateful for it. As we went through the process of buying the land, I was so relieved, and you ought to be too, that I had nothing to do with those decisions. We had professionals in the room who were seeing us through that, who were very kind to me and kept asking along the way, Nate, we think we ought to do this. Are you okay with this? Why are you asking me? All right, your vote is my vote. I don't know. I'm not going to tell you no. I'm going to do what you think we should do. We had wisdom in the room. When we meet as elders, there's wisdom there. When I interact with the staff, they have wisdom there in their ministries. When I interact with you, I see wisdom. But we know that we're not wise on our own accord. We're wise as a result of the Holy Spirit working in our life. We're wise as a result of the Holy Spirit sanctifying us and drawing us near to Him and drawing us near to Christ and imparting that wisdom and giving us those experiences that we need so that we can lead the church well. We know that if there is any wisdom here, it is not us or our own attributes. It is the Spirit working in us and through us that makes us wise. So we know that we are guilty and we know that we are fallen and we know that we are broken and yet restored. And we know that anything good in us is from God the Father and anything righteous in us is from God the Son and anything wise in us is from God the Spirit. And we walk in that humility. And all of that is grace. Grace is simply getting something that you do not deserve. So all of those things, the restoration and the forgiveness and the wisdom and the goodness and the righteousness are things that we do not deserve. But God lavishes on to us because he loves us. I am reminded of John 1 16, one of my favorite verses that says, from his goodness, we have all received grace upon grace. And it's just this picture, from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. It's just this full, this picture of God being full of love and full of grace and full of goodness and full of mercy. And that spills out onto his children and it fills us up. And then as grace, as a church, we are filled up and we pour out that grace and that goodness and that love on the people around us. That's what gives grace its grace is the fullness of God and being gleeful recipients of the grace that he freely offers. And here's the thing, being a gleeful recipient of freely given grace allows us to gleefully give the grace we freely get. Did you follow that? Being a gleeful recipient of freely given grace allows us to gleefully give the grace we freely get. This is what I think of when I think of the personality of grace almost more than anything else. We know who we are. We know we're not big deals. We know we're all just bundles of insecurities trying to make our way through life and find Jesus as we do it. We know that. We know that God pours his grace onto us. We are gleeful recipients of that grace, and as such, we happily and gleefully give it out to whoever we come in contact with. This is why the second trait of grace is that we are conduits of grace. Last week, we said we are kingdom builders. This week, we are conduits of grace. And I really do think that's the perfect word, conduit. It turns out in our little logos here, it's difficult to illustrate. So that's the cross. We just kind of, we punted collectively on that one, but the rest of them are great. We are conduits of grace. A conduit is something that is attached to a source and transfers what's in that source to another source. If you look it up, it can be a person or an organization that serves as a pathway for the attributes of another entity to another entity. And that's what we are. We stay plugged into the source. We are gleeful recipients of God's grace and goodness. And we pour that out on the people around us and the people who walk through these doors and the communities in which we exist and the circles that we walk in. We pour out God's grace and goodness onto others. That's what we do. That's our job. That's why we are conduits of grace. It doesn't stop with us. It flows into others. That's why it's poured into us to begin with. Jesus actually talks about this. In the verses that Caroline read so well earlier in the service, John 15, beginning unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 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. With grace, we abide in Christ. We stay connected to Jesus. Think of the branch, of a branch on an apple tree. As long as that branch is connected to the trunk, every season, whenever apple season is, I don't know, every season that it's apple season, that branch is going to produce fruit. Every season that it's not connected to the trunk, it's not going to produce fruit. That's just how it goes. When it's connected to the tree, it cannot help but produce fruit. Likewise, Christians, when we are connected to Jesus, when we are abiding in him, when we are walking with him, when we are connected to Jesus, we cannot help but bear fruit. So there's a couple ideas that we should talk about there. First, what does it mean to bear fruit? I had somebody ask me this week, is that the fruit of the Spirit that we find in Galatians? And I think that's just two separate passages using fruit, but it's not necessarily the same fruit. In Galatians, it's talking about the personal fruit of our character that we bear and the people that we become when we walk with Jesus. But in John 15, I think what he's saying is it's ministerial fruit. It's growth. It's pouring into others. It's seeing other people grow closer to Jesus as a result of our influence in their life. The language that we would put around it at Grace is, abide in me and I in you, and you will build much of my kingdom. That's what it means. It means producing that fruit. And I love how these traits do tie in together. And so when we abide in Christ, we walk with Christ, we pour that love, that grace, that goodness, that philanthropy out on other people and other organizations, and they flourish too. And that is the fruit that we bear. And so you also ask, what does it mean to abide in Christ? How do I do that? We're going to talk about that next week when I talk about being people of devotion. And if you heard me say that, and in your church Christian brain, you went, oh, devotion, yeah, got it. I know that sermon. Then I would just say to you, you're exactly who I'm preaching to next week. So come, and I might light your face on fire. That's what next week's going to be. I'm just telling you right now, I'm going to get after you next week, okay? So come on. And I don't do that a lot, but as I was preparing it this week, I thought, yeah, I think this is time. So I'm just giving you the heads up. Maybe next week is the time for waffles and pancakes. I don't know. At the house watching online. Anyways. Yeah, he's getting worked up. I'm going to turn this down. But when we abide in Christ, we remain attached to the trunk. We remain connected to him. We pour his grace and love out onto others. We cannot help but do it. An easy way to think about that, I got the perfect illustration this week as I was hanging out with the family. We were in our bonus room upstairs that we use as a playroom, and Jen had recently vacuumed the playroom, and because of that, the cord was laying on the ground in the middle of the room. Because Jen does this thing where she vacuums. I don't think she's wound a cord in her entire life. That's my job. Her job, vacuum. My job, put up the cord. So I had not done, in your defense, I had not done my job yet. I hadn't done what I was responsible for, and that's on me. So we're sitting there playing, and Lily's kind of like on the floor, and she reaches and she touches the cord of the vacuum and kind of jerks back. And I go, what's wrong, baby? And she goes, well, I didn't want to get electrified instead of electrocuted, which is great. We have a thing. I don't know if this is probably terrible parenting. When our kids say words incorrectly, we don't tell them. We just love it. We just, for years, anything that happened before today, whether it was three years ago or yesterday was last day in our house. And we, I know, I know, I know we miss those days. So we're not going to correct it. She didn't want to get electrified. And I said, oh baby, you don't, you don't have to worry about that. See that cord's not plugged in. It doesn't have any power. There's no juice in that. That cord is limp and useless and dead. And as I was explaining to her why she didn't have anything to fear, I was like, oh, this is great. This is perfect for Sunday because that's what it looks like to abide in Christ and not. That's what it looks like to be connected to Christ and not. That cord can sit there as a conduit of the electricity that's going to run the appliance. But until it's plugged into the source, it's not doing anything. Nothing's happening there. It's got to be plugged into the source for it to be effective in what it needs to do. Similarly, if we just get an extension cord and plug it into the source and it's not connected to anything on the other end, nothing happens. It's a glad recipient of the power coming from the source. It's a glad recipient of grace, but it is not yet a conduit because it hasn't transferred the contents anywhere else. It just sits there. And I think a lot of us sometimes, if I'm being honest, can fall into the habit of simply being extension cords. We're plugged in. We're doing our church thing, but we're not pouring out to anybody. We're not connected to any people on the other side of that producing fruit there. And so I think as a believer, and more pointedly as a partner of grace, we think of ourselves as conduits plugged into the source and plugged into the people so that we can be a glad conduit of grace that is freely given that we transfer to others, of love that is freely given that is transferred to others, of goodness and of mercy that is freely given to us that we can transfer on to others. Which is why we say this all the time around here. It's why we do everything we do. It's our mission statement. The five traits are basically an unpacking of this. What we say every week at Grace is that we exist to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. We are conduits. We stay plugged into Christ and we pour, we let his grace and goodness and love and mercy flow through us and we pour it into the lives of the people that we are connected to. And when you come to grace, we want to connect you to others so that they can be a part of that and you can be a part of that. This is really the beautiful simplicity of the Christian life, this idea of abiding in Christ, of being conduits and remaining plugged in. Because when you really pay attention to the Christian faith, which can seem intimidating if you're new. I have somebody in my men's Bible study who grew up Catholic. And I would never presume that this is true of all people who grew up Catholic, but he said for him and his experience with Catholicism, he'd had no encounter, very little encounters with the Bible. And so this is all new to him, and he feels like he's playing catch-up in his 60s. It can be very intimidating to try to learn Christianity mid-flight. And God knows this, and he makes it simple for us. He says, hey, listen, you want to know what I want you to do? Just abide in me. You know what my job is as a pastor? It's not necessarily to tell you all the details of all the things. It's to push you there. It's to push you to the cross. Every week to push you to Jesus. That is our singular, I don't know if you know this, that's our singular goal for a Sunday morning service. You know how we determine if it was good or not? Were they pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when they left than they were when they got here? Do we push them a little bit closer to God? Did we encourage them towards the Father? Was worship sweet and ushered them into the presence of the Father in such a way that made them feel a closeness with Him that maybe they hadn't felt in their week just yet? Was the sermon something that was good or convicting or encouraging or enlightening in some way that pushes us closer to Jesus? All we're trying to do is move the needle a little bit every week that you would get closer to Jesus, that you would abide in him more, that you would be plugged into him more, that you would sense his grace and his mercy and his goodness and your love and your life just a little bit more. So that in that growing and in that closeness, you would offer those things to others. And as I thought about the fact that we are a church that is authentic, we are real people here. It occurred to me that this really is a spiritual thing. Because if you were to, in your mind right now, think of the person in your life who you picture as the most spiritual person you know, one or two people, whoever that is, the person in your life that's closer to God than anybody else you know, I would bet you my paycheck that that person is one of the most gracious people you know. I would bet you my paycheck that whoever you're thinking of is one of the kindest, the gentlest, most gracious, accepting, loving people that you know. Because I think the more we receive Jesus' goodness and forgiveness and affection in our life, the easier it is to pour that out onto other people. So grace, we are conduits of grace. And to finish up, I would remind you of why, and then we'll pray. We are conduits of God's grace because we understand. We are guilty, yet forgiven. We are broken, yet restored. We are deeply flawed, yet deeply loved. We are only good because of the Father. We are only righteous because of the Son. We are only wise because of the Spirit. And all of this is grace. Let's pray. Father, you are good to us. And we acknowledge that anything good here is you. We acknowledge that anything righteous here is you. Anything wise here is you. Father, may you create in each of us an increasing desire to be plugged into your son, to abide in him, to walk with him, that we might bear fruit, that we might be conduits of the goodness and grace that we receive from him and pour it out onto others. Would you create in us and in this church an attractive, appealing Christianity? One that I dare say is different than the one portrayed in culture. A Christianity that is not condemned but one that welcomes. Would you create in us a faith and a devotion to you that others want when they see it? That when others come into and out of our lives, they see our good works and so then glorify our Father who is in heaven. Make us your conduits as we go throughout our lives and our days and our weeks. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Thank you. Well, good morning. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Before I launch into the sermon, just point of clarity, when Mikey was doing the announcements earlier, there was some pictures of Grace Serves, and there was one picture that one of our elders, the esteemed Doug Bergeson, was in. And in that picture, he appeared to be just leaning up against his rake and resting. And I would love to tell you that that was not typical for the morning, but it was. After that, he was sitting, and that was it for the whole morning. So anyways, we're launching into this new series called Traits of Grace. And this is a series that has been a year in the making, and it's one that I've been very excited to share with you. So I thought that it would be helpful for you to understand how we came about this series and how we arrived at a need for the series and a need for the traits of grace and what they even are so that as we go through them each week for the next five weeks, you'll have an appreciation of where this comes from. So a year ago in our staff meetings, we have staff meetings on Tuesday afternoons, and this is when we talk about things like this. A year ago in our staff meetings, I kind of brought to the staff that I wanted to start doing some more liturgical elements in the church service, which if that's a church word that you're not familiar with, that's kind of from high church, from old school church that's fancy and proper and has an order of service that they go through. There's reading. Sometimes you stand and read. Sometimes there's prepared benedictions. But some of those elements can be really good and really helpful and really encouraging. And some of you come from backgrounds with those liturgical elements. And so we wanted to try to serve everyone in the church and bring those into our service. But as we were talking about what elements to add and what to do, I think it was Kyle made the point that, you know, we really can't just start adding things to Sunday morning services willy-nilly. We really need to know, like, what is the goal of a Sunday morning service? How do we determine if it's good? Is it when people sing loud and the sermon ends on time and people seem to get five or more compliments in the lobby? Is that what a good service means? I heard a snicker over here. I get compliments sometimes. Like, what denotes a good service? And so we started talking about that. What's important to us? What do we want to do? What is the goal of a Sunday morning service? And as we started having discussions about what the goal of a Sunday morning service was, we realized we really can't adequately talk about that until we understand who we are as a church. So what defines us as a church? What are we trying to do as a body of believers? What makes grace, grace? And then let's work backwards to that. And then let's work back into what we should include in our services. And so as I enjoy doing, I pulled out the whiteboard in multiple colors and so that it can all be color coordinated and clear for me up there. I pulled out the whiteboard and I said, that it can all be color-coordinated and clear for me up there. I pulled out the whiteboard, and I said, okay, and this is over the course of several weeks. I said, okay, what makes Grace Grace? Who are we? Like, just throw out things, our traits, our characteristics. And I started to throw them up on the whiteboard, and we got them up there, and there was some that were true but maybe not as true or maybe not us or whatever it is. And there was some that's like, well, those three kind of seem similar. I think we could combine those into one. And after talking about it for a couple of weeks, we arrived at these five traits. And we said, these things we feel as a staff are the things that make grace, grace. It's what we feel we are as a church. So as I put these in front of you, as we put these in front of you, this is not a new direction for grace to go in. These are not new directives for us to walk in. These are putting words around things and around values and around passions that I hope you all share. And this just gives us common language for them. So this is a process by which we are defining the church and who we are. And before I could just come out with it and say, these are the new five traits of grace, I had to take these to the elders because the staff doesn't decide who grace is. I don't decide who grace is. Our elders do. So I typed these out and I presented them to the elders and I told them the process that we went through. And I said, what do you guys think? Do you want to add to or take away? Do we want to tweak some descriptions? What do we, what do you think of this? And the elders were actually excited about it. I was a little bit surprised. I thought they'd be like, all right, great. You know, run with your traits, buddy. But they were, they were actually a little bit animated by it, so animated that they put it in my yearly goals. At the end of my work year, I'm going to get assessed, and when I do, part of the assessment is how well did we begin to integrate these traits into the culture of the church. So my goal is that all the partners of grace would know these five traits, at least like two or three of them, okay? Just like we all know that our mission as a church is to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people, we want us to start understanding these traits and to start understanding this common language. So much so that when we build a new building, which I'm going to talk about at the end of the service today, when we do that, because that looks like that's what we're going to be doing, we're going to put these in the lobby in some decorative way so that we can see them and be reminded of them and who we are and what makes us us. And I kind of think about it like this. I think it's important for us to have these traits and for us to know what they are because I think it helps us stay focused as a church on what we do. And I think that this is important because I'm not going to belabor the story. This story is not the point of the sermon, but there's this great story in the Old Testament, the book of Nehemiah. A man named Nehemiah, he's a captive of a Persian king and he is higher up in his kingdom and he hears that his home city of Jerusalem has been laid to waste and that the walls are no longer standing. And he begs the king for the opportunity to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls. And the king gives him that permission. So he goes back to Jerusalem. He gets a lay of the land for a little while. And then to rebuild the walls, he looks at the families that live in Jerusalem. And he says, okay, you guys, you build the wall from here to here. And then you guys, y'all build it from there to there. And then you build it from the gate to that post. And he assigned portions of the wall to all the families of Jerusalem. And every family had their portion that they built. And I think it's a great picture of what the church is. That in church, we all have our portions of the wall that we're supposed to build. Your family's assigned to these things. Your family's assigned to these ministries and those tasks. But I also think that that's a really good picture of how God builds his kingdom in the cities, how God builds his kingdom in communities. I personally believe that there's plenty of great churches that you could be at this morning. There's plenty of churches that you could be at with good worship, with likely better preaching, with better looking people. I mean, the whole gamut. You could go out and you could find other churches and they would be good churches. I would never argue to you that Grace Raleigh is the one church nailing it in the city. We're just doing great. And everybody else is apostate and they need to get on our level. Like that's ridiculous. There's Catholic mass happening right now where Jesus is being honored. There's other Baptist churches, Presbyterian churches, Methodist churches all over where Jesus is being honored and that's good. And so I think that God designed and gives a DNA to churches and assigns them portions of the wall to build in his communities. And I think that there's a portion of the wall in Raleigh that's been assigned to Grace Raleigh. And there's a portion that's been assigned to Summit. And there's a portion that's been assigned to Providence. And go on down the list, we all have the portion of the wall that we're supposed to build. And so as a church, as we think about it, these traits are how we build our part of the wall. This is what we do. This is what we focus on. This is not a statement of faith. This is not a statement of what we believe. That's on our website. That's a different thing. This is believing that Jesus is the son of God and that he came to save us and that we love him with all of our heart. What should we do in light of that belief? These things. So the first trait that I would talk with you about, it's what all the songs are about. You ought to be able to guess it by now, is partners of grace are kingdom builders. Partners of grace are kingdom builders. Now, these traits define us as a church holistically, but they also should define what a partner at grace does. I've actually shifted in our Discover Grace class that we do for people who are coming here and are newer to the church. We spend more time on the five traits than on the old boring stuff we used to focus on. So if you came in previous years and it was boring, come again, maybe it's better. But partners of grace are kingdom builders. This is based on a principle that I've shared with you before. And I would say, if parts of this sermon sound familiar to you, they should. I preached a very similar message to this back in January when I talked about what it meant to be all in at grace in our Consumed series. It was the one that I had to come in and film early, so I was actually wearing a hat for the sermon for the first time in my life. And then a couple of years ago in the spring, we went through the book of John, and when we got to the story of John the Baptist, I talked about this, about building kingdoms. So if this sounds familiar to you, it should, if you're a partner of grace. If you're not yet a partner of grace, this is a great series for you to go, for you to know good and well what you're getting yourself into. But when I say that partners of grace are kingdom builders, the idea behind this is every one of us, every one of us to one degree or another is building a kingdom. Every one of you is building a kingdom. It could be your kingdom. It could be God's kingdom. You could be a real sucker and it's someone else's kingdom. You don't even get any of that. But every one of us is, we spend our lives building kingdoms. We go through adolescence. We grow up. We're told somewhere around college age that we've got to make a way for ourselves. We get a degree or we learn a trade and we jump right into it and we just start building our kingdom, right? I had an old pastor that would use the phrase, the American dream is to get all you can, can all you get, and sit on your can. That's what we do, man. We're just building our kingdom. Look at all my stuff I got. Look at my, I'm the king of my quarter acre lot, right? And now some of us have big dreams and build huge kingdoms. Bezos has got himself a big old kingdom. But compared to God's, it's a little baby kingdom. We build our kingdoms too, and sometimes we have big dreams, and we want to build big kingdoms, and we got big goals, and they include multiple vacation houses all over the world. And sometimes we have smaller goals, and our kingdom is our family, and that's what we pour our lives into. But I want to turn, I want to open our eyes to the idea that every single one of us invests our life building a kingdom. And so the question becomes, whose kingdom are you building? And to answer that question, we define kingdom builders like this. A kingdom builder is one who realizes that all the talents, gifts, abilities, and resources they have were given to them by God for the purposes of building his kingdom, not their own. I know it's a longer note than we normally put up there, but I wanted to be very clear. A kingdom builder, someone who's not building their kingdom, someone who's building God's kingdom, is one who realizes that all of the talents, gifts, abilities, charisma, resources, finances, everything that I've been given or the tools that I use to acquire the things that I have are not mine. I am a steward of those things. And God gave them to me to build his kingdom, not my own kingdom. Many, many, many, if not a vast majority of us in church and outside of church go through life believing that all the talents that we have and all the abilities that we have and all the ways that we can find to build relationships, power, money, whatever it is that we're after, that we just came by those by hard work or luck or some combination of the two and that we're supposed to employ those for our benefit. But to be a Christian, to be a believer, to be a child of God is to understand, no, no, he didn't give you those things to build your kingdom. He gave you those things to be a part of building his, which is a much more thrilling invitation than building our paltry kingdom that will all fade. They all will. I remember when this clicked for me for the first time. I was about 28 years old, and I was taking kids to summer camp. And I had always been marginally athletic growing up, all right? And that's not false humility. I really was. I was good enough. I was marginally athletic, although I don't think I really need to claim that. No one's looking at me going, I don't believe you, man. You were apex predator out there on that soccer field. Yeah, all right. So we're all on the same page here. And I don't, I mean, I don't know if you know this, but you are looking at a member of the 1998 Georgia Association of Christian Schools All-State Soccer Team. So, yeah, I know. I know. I don't want to intimidate people, so I don't bring it up a lot. There was like four schools in that association. I really thrive in low-bar situations. It's been a theme of my life. But I was marginally athletic. I was athletic enough that I could get in just about any game, any sport, and jump in and participate and not embarrass myself and sometimes do well and usually not get picked last. And so that served me well in high school and college and particularly growing up in my culture in the, where you, as a dude, your worth was your ability to play sports. And so I had that ability, and I could jump in. Clearly, I'm no longer in a position where that attribute is relevant. So that is atrophied greatly. I'm not a marginal athlete anymore, but I used to be. And I remember I was going to summer camp, taking these kids, and I had just been hired by this church. It was a larger church with a youth group of about 200, 225. And I was hired as the middle school pastor. And when we went, we had a high school pastor who was a friend of mine. But I knew that when we got back, they were going to fire him, which was an uncomfortable week. But I also knew that these high school kids are really close with him, and they're going to be bummed when we get back from intense relationship building camp. And then they have to say goodbye to their buddy, and they're not going to understand why. So I knew that I needed to create relationships, bridges with these high school guys as quickly as I could, because I was going to need to be there for some conversations when we got back home, but they didn't know that. So I'm racking my brain, how do I even get these guys to talk to me? They don't care about me. I'm the middle school pastor. They don't care about the new guy. They have their relationships. But every day during free time, they'd go down to the ball courts. And so I would too. And we'd roll the basketball out on the court, and I'd get to playing with them, and I'd spend two hours every day playing basketball with these guys. Building rapport, making jokes, and whatever, whatever. And it built a bridge for me so that when we got back and everything hit the fan, I was able to lean on some relationships that I had begun building. And that's when it dawned on me, oh my goodness, God did not give me marginal athletic talent so that I could get people to like me in high school. He gave it to me because he knew that I would spend 15 years of my life in youth ministry and that it is an essential and crucial part of building necessary relationships with the people around you. And I thought, oh, getting to be on the All-State soccer team in 1998 was a happy byproduct to what God really cared about, which was putting me on the courts with those guys in 2010 so that I could build some rapport with them as their pastor. That's the first time it really clicked with me that everything I've been given has been given to me to build his kingdom, not my own kingdom. And that it is so easy to get caught in the pattern of putting our head down and building our own kingdom without remembering regularly that we are to be stewards of the gifts and abilities and the resources that we have. And Jesus actually preached this in the Sermon on the Mount. He addressed this. He talked about it like this. that we can build here on earth. And how eventually, no matter how big we build them, they will fade. The moth and rust will destroy. They will be corroded away. And what we build will not matter. Rather than investing your life in something that ultimately doesn't matter at all, invest your only finite resource in eternal things, in God's kingdom, and things that will matter for eternity. That's the invitation that God gives the Christian. I think it's one of the greatest apologetics for the Christian faith. Where else in this world, where else in our lives can we be imbued with purpose that great as to wake up every day and have the opportunity to build something that will last forever? And yet that's the invitation that God gives us, to be kingdom builders. So how do we build kingdoms? What does that look like? I hope by now you're asking that question. Yeah, Nate, I get it. We're supposed to leverage our gifts and abilities to build God's kingdom. But what does it mean to build God's kingdom? I think this is how we build God's kingdom. We build God's kingdom by adding and strengthening souls. Supposed to be a souls there. Sorry. I must've been moving fast when I put in the slides. We build God's kingdom by adding and strengthening souls. And here's how I know that's true. Because this is what Jesus told us to do. The very last instruction he gave the disciples. He's trained them for three years. He's died. He's resurrected. He's heading back up to heaven to be our high priest and to leave the Holy Spirit with us to guide us as we go. And he gives them final instructions. What does he tell them? Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He says, go, build my kingdom. I'm giving you the keys. You're the only pastors the world has. Now go and tell everybody what you saw for the last three years. Go and make disciples. And because Jesus says go and make disciples and not simply go and make converts, that I know that Jesus wants us to build the kingdom not only by adding souls to the kingdom, by sharing our faith and seeing people come to faith and seeing people trust in Jesus. And again, just so I can be clear, what it means to be a Christian, as I understand it, is to believe that Jesus was who he says he was. He's the Savior and Son of God. He did what he said he did. He died. He conquered death. He rose on the third day. And he's going to do what he says he's going to do, which is to come back and make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You believe those things about Jesus Christ, you're a believer. But it's not enough to just bring someone to the point where they believe those things and we so add them to the kingdom and make the kingdom grow in number. We are commissioned to strengthen those souls that are converted. That's why Jesus says, go and make disciples. So not only do we build the kingdom by sharing our faith and adding people, adding numbers to the kingdom, but we build the kingdom by walking with one another, by helping one another deepen our faith and grow in our spiritual life and become more vulnerable with one another as we share this journey together. We add to the kingdom. We strengthen the kingdom by discipling one another. And that's one of our traits. That's step-takers. We're going to talk about that one. But if you're asking, how do I build the kingdom? You build it by adding and strengthening souls. And so our job is to set about with our lives doing that the best way we can. And I think when I think of people who are building God's kingdom, I can think of so many people at Grace who are kingdom builders, inside and outside of Grace. I think of a man that I deeply respect who's a business owner. And within his business, he has the opportunity to develop leaders. And he sends those leaders out and they start their own businesses. But they grow up within his culture. And his culture is founded on Christian principles and Christian values. And the people that he leads are almost always believers and creating work environments where people are treated rightly and justly and fairly and they're loved. And all the people under the umbrella of his business are people who are loved well and led well. And then he develops people within that and sends them out so that they love and they develop well. Adding and strengthening souls to the kingdom by simply doing. Everybody from the outside would look at him and say, well, he's doing his job. But what he knows is his job is boring. What's fun is developing leaders and sending them out and watching them replicate these cultures. That's what my life is for. I think about Lynn Lemons, who's been given a gift of organization and been given a heart for missions. And she uses that as the chair of our missions committee, who, I don't know if you know this, decides what happens with 10% of our budget and how we partner with ministry partners outside of the walls of grace, using gifts and abilities that she's been given to add to and to strengthen God's kingdom. I think of Phil Leverett. Y'all probably don't know that Phil is our head usher, which is, I hate to say it publicly because it always goes to his head, but he is. He's our head usher. And he shows up early almost every Sunday. And he makes sure everything's in line. If stuff needs to be on the seats, he'll double check that. He'll make sure everyone's scheduled. He's just faithfully devoted to doing that, to building God's kingdom, strengthening souls, adding to the kingdom by making everything in the church work. I think of Debbie Bergeson, who sits in the COVID baby room and just holds a screaming child once or twice a month, just completely nonplussed, shuts the door, just sits there, the kid screams, and mom and dad just hold on for dear life, hoping they can get an hour to themselves and enjoy church and enjoy one another. Just silently, thanklessly doing that week in and week out. I think of some of the moms we have in the church who are devoted to homeschooling. And they get together and they teach their children. And they build them up and they make disciples and they form them and that is their ministry and that is how they build the kingdom. I think of somebody who had an opportunity to become an elder, and he said, not right now. It's not my season to lead the church in that way. We're so busy with all of our schedules. I need to focus on my children and be the husband and the father that I need to be. And he's going and building God's kingdom that way. But I happen to believe that all of us are given gifts and abilities and talents that God intends for us to use to build his kingdom. And I believe that not only because I've seen it, but because it's in the Bible. It's in the verse that Tamara read to us during the worship this morning. Ephesians 2.10, I don't know when or how I stumbled upon that verse, but it was in the early years of me at Grace, 2017, 2018. I was just reading my Bible, and the all-star verses in Ephesians chapter 2 are the two that precede it and talk about salvation. It is by grace that we are saved through faith, that not of ourselves, that it is a gift of God, so that no man may boast. And you always read those, and you're like, yeah, and you highlight those, and those are the important ones. But this one right after it, for the Christian, who understands the doctrine of salvation, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, that God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. You know what that verse tells us? Whether you believe it or not, God created each one of you with a design for good works that you would walk in, that he's laid out for you with the sincere hope and with the will and with the desire that as you move through your life and as you move through your faith, your eyes would be opened to what those good works are and that you would walk in them. I believe that this is true of every human that's ever lived, that God has created them and imbued them with certain gifts for a purpose so that they might deploy those to build his kingdom. I think of my uncle, Uncle Deg. Those are his initials, but everybody knows him as Deg. If you knew him in the 80s, you knew him as Flash, so that's the kind of dude he was. There was Camaros and motorcycles involved. Deg is a militant atheist. It breaks my heart. But when he was growing up in the 70s, he went to a hyper conservative independent Baptist church that just ruined his faith. And I don't really blame him for walking away from that God, because I would have too. And I'm grateful that my mom didn't introduce me to that God that she met when she was growing up. But Deg, Deg can tell a story, man. That guy can own a room. He can take over a dinner party. And people follow Deg. People listen to him. And he's smart. And I just know he would have been a great pastor. I just know it. I'd love to go to his church. I think when God formed him in my grandmother's womb, that that's what he purposed him for. But Degg's just lived a life and he hasn't been able to have his eyes open to see his good works. And so he doesn't walk in them. But if you're at grace, let's have our eyes open to that. Each one of us, no matter how talentless, talentless, or insignificant, or unimportant we might feel, your God doesn't think that of you. We don't think that of you. We think that Ephesians 2.10 is true. And that when God formed you in your mother's womb, that he laid out for you good works that you should walk in until the day that he takes you back up to heaven to be with him. Because we believe that, and because we believe, and this is so important, and I'm so glad, Aaron, that you referred to this in your prayer earlier today. When you are walking in God's purpose for your life, when you are walking in obedience, when you are walking in the good works that God has prepared for you, there is no greater happiness or peace. To walk outside of those, to build our own kingdom, to refuse to walk in the good works that God laid out for us, that's where life feels disjointed. That's where we feel out of whack. That's where we beat our heads against the wall trying to find a sense of purpose. But when we walk in the good works that Jesus laid out for us before time, there's no greater peace or joy than being exactly who God created you to be. Parents, while we're here, do you know what you're raising? Kingdom builders. You're raising humans that God formed, knowing the good works that they should walk in. And it is your primary job as a parent to help them love Jesus and be able to identify the good works in which they are called to walk. That's what a successful parent is. Parents of adults, you get to help coach them through it. But because that's what we believe, because at Grace we are kingdom builders and we believe that everybody has a portion of that kingdom to build, I want to leave you with these two questions. I want you, honestly, I want you to think about these, talk about these with your spouse or with your small group people or with some friends at the church. And I would really love it, small group leaders, if we could spend a portion of our small group time this week in our groups talking about these two questions. Not all the time, but just give folks who heard the sermon a chance to respond to these a little bit. Five, ten minutes. Here's the two questions I want you to go thinking about this week. Whose kingdom are you building? And what is my good work? Whose kingdom am I building? Am I building my kingdom or am I building God's? Have I rallied all the resources in my life to make my name great or am I doing it to make God's name great? And then what are my good works? What can I walk in right now? If you don't know, ask somebody who loves you and knows you. But everybody has them. And we all should walk in them. I hope you'll go and you'll think about those things. Whose kingdom am I building? With the time I have here, whose kingdom do I want to build? And what is the good work that God has prepared me to walk in. Let me pray. Father, we thank you for who you are and for how much you love us. God, I just pray particularly right now for folks in the room who just really might not know. Maybe their heart position is, God, I want to serve you. I want to do what you want me to do. I want to build your kingdom, but I don't know what. Lord, would you please show them? Would you have someone who loves them speak into their lives and in their hearts this week? Would you show them the good works that they could walk in, that they might experience your joy as they do it? Father, if there are those of us here this morning who have had our heads down building our own kingdoms, would you convict us of that? Would you show us that in ourselves? Would you help all of us be people who are zealous to build your eternal kingdom? And God, as we do this, I pray for courage and I pray for strength and I pray for the peace and joy that comes with taking the steps of obedience and faith as we begin to live out the purpose that you've given us. In Jesus' name, amen.

Oh, hey there, pals. Don't you just love this music? It's nostalgic, isn't it? Takes you back to a simpler time, when you were a kid and things were light and fun. I love times like that. I'll tell you what else makes me feel nostalgic. It's those old Bible stories. The ones that we learned in Sunday school or maybe just picked them up somewhere along the way. I love the heroes, David and Goliath, Noah and the Ark, Jonah and the whale. The list really does go on and on. And I wonder, pals, how long has it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Oh, today, Moses and the Ten Commandments. That's enough of that. We are, we are. That was 10, 10 long weeks, friends. Once more time with feeling on that. If this is your first Sunday with us, this is the 10th part of our series, Kids Stories for Grownups. We've been showing that video or a portion of it every week, and I want to throw up in my mouth a little bit every time I see it. So I'm glad, I'm glad that that has run its its course and we've got more videos for you in the future. As we wrap up the series, we're going to wrap it up looking at the story of Moses receiving the Ten Commandments. And though it is one of the shorter stories that we will tell in this series, I would argue that it is perhaps the most impactful one that we've covered in these 10 weeks as far as how what happens here in Exodus chapter 20 through 32, what happens there resonates and reverberates throughout all of Scripture. And that when we share this story, we have to ask about the story. What were the Ten Commandments for? Why did God give them? And so we're going to dive into that. But in answering that, I really want two things to happen. First, I want God to stir our affection for Jesus this morning. I'm going to tell you right up front that the whole point of the service and the message this morning is that you leave here with more affection for Jesus than what you entered in with. That's my prayer for everybody, that simple prayer. The other thing about talking about the Ten Commandments and the law is properly understanding the law and the commandments helps us understand our Bible better. So I say often, as often as I can, A, I can't be the only source of Bible that you're getting in your life. 30 minutes a week of whatever Nate chooses to share is not enough. It's not sufficient to learn God's word for ourselves. And you'll learn it with my terrible slant and biases, and you'll be as off kilter as I am. So don't do that. The other thing that I say as often as I can is the best habit that anyone in the world can develop is to wake up every time, wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. To do that and to understand our Bibles better, we have got to understand the law because it shows up over and over and over again in the New Testament. Half the tension in the New Testament is these new believers trying to figure out what to do with the old law. So we might be tempted to kind of throw it away and be like, well, you know, a sermon about the Ten Commandments doesn't apply to me too much because those laws really don't apply to me too much anymore. I don't have to worry about those. That's for Old Testament people. But as a New Testament Christian, we're going to see today how the law turns and puts our affection on Jesus. And we're going to, I hope, have a deeper understanding of God's word as we read it with a proper understanding of the law and the intent behind it. So the story of the Ten Commandments takes place in Exodus chapter 20. And many of you probably think that you know the story. Moses goes up on the mountain. You might even know that it's Mount Sinai. Two points for you. You can get your free coffee on the way out the door today. But in Exodus chapter 20, Moses goes up on the mountain. God gives him the Ten Commandments on two tablets. He carries him back down the mountain. He's like, here's the rules now. This is what we have to do. Except a careful reading will tell you that that's not really what happened. What happened is in Exodus chapter 20, the presence of God rests on Mount Sinai and all the people of Israel, all the descendants of Abraham, the Hebrew people who have been wandering the desert and following this God, backed away from the mountain and said, we're terrified. Moses, you go. You do it. You go see what he wants. We're scared. And so Moses goes to the mountain, and from the mountain, the voice of God tells him the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20, but he doesn't stop. He actually continues to give Moses laws for his people all the way through Exodus chapter 32. So for 12 chapters there, God is doling out laws. If you carefully study the Old Testament, you'll find that there's about 632 laws, and most of these show up in this discourse from Mount Sinai. And then when he gets to the end of it, at the end of chapter 32, he writes, God writes everything down. He said he gives them the meeting notes. He said, here's what we talked about. Here's the laws for the people. Carry these down to them. And so Moses goes back down the mountain with the stone tablets that do contain the Ten Commandments, but more than likely, because the Bible says things were written on the fronts and backs of them, more than likely is all of the discourse from those 12 chapters. And Moses carries those down the mountain. So if you don't learn anything for the rest of the sermon, maybe you've at least learned something about how the story of the Ten Commandments actually goes. Just to tie a bow on the story, Moses gets to the bottom of the mountain and sees that the people have made a golden calf out of earrings and jewelry, and he's ticked because they need this sign for their God, and he's so mad at them that he throws these freshly inscribed tablets on the ground and breaks them, which I don't know if he was supposed to do that or not, but Moses has a very clear anger issue throughout his life, and this is more evidence of that. God calls him back up on the mountain, and he says, okay, listen, I'm going to tell you all that stuff again, but this time you're writing it down. Okay, Moses has to write it down. God says, I'm not your secretary. All right, I did it before you once. Now you've got to copy it down. So Moses writes it down, brings those tablets back down the mountain, and those are the ones that existed in the Ark of the Covenant for the rest of the Old Testament. That's the story of the Ten Commandments. Now, whenever we cover the story of the Ten Commandments, the right question to ask is, what are they for? What are they for? Why did God give them? To what end? Especially now in New Testament, post-Christ era, or during Christ era, he's eternal, but after Christ was on earth and he's changed everything, and after the crucifixion and the resurrection, now how do we handle the law? Now what is it for? So this morning, we want to look at that story of the Ten Commandments, but then really ask, why did God give us those things? Because understanding this, again, will point us towards Christ and will help us understand our Bibles far better. The presumed purpose of the law, when it was given and when we encounter it, I believe, is to provide a path to spiritual sufficiency and in our sufficiency, earn God's approval. When the law is given, there's a very clear path forward. Okay, good. Now I've got a plan. Now I know how to move forward. These are the rules that God wants me to follow. These are the ways that I can relate to him. For his children, there's a very clear path forward. I can follow these 632 laws. I can learn to follow them really, really well. And as I learn to follow them well, I can be spiritually sufficient and I can earn my God's approval. God says, we say, God, how do I make you happy? He goes, here, here's all the rules. Follow these rules super well and you'll make me happy. And I will give you my approval. And we can, in a sense, behave our way into eternity. We can behave our way into harmony with our Creator if we will simply learn to follow these rules well. And this, to us, and to the Hebrew people at the time, had to feel like good news, great, clarity. Finally, we know what to do. Think about it this way. Think about if you could sit down and read the Bible on your own without any knowledge whatsoever of what's contained in those pages. You don't know who Jesus is. You don't know anything about the Bible. You don't know how the story ends. You're reading it from Genesis on, and you're just paying attention to the narrative, trying to figure out how it's going to go. And so in Genesis 1, you see this instruction, hey, don't eat the fruit of this tree. Why not? Don't worry about it. Just don't do that. And then they mess up and they sin. And sin curses the earth. And curses the earth so bad that as you read along, you realize that in Genesis chapter 6, God decides I need to hit the reset button. I regret the way that this is going. And so he sends the flood. And all that's left behind is Noah and his family. And all God does to Noah, his only instruction to him, he doesn't give him the rules. What does God say to Noah? Hey, man, I want you to build a boat. What's a boat? Well, it floats in water. Well, what for? Just trust me, man. Just build a boat. But he doesn't give Noah the rules. And so you're reading along, you're like, man, this God is mysterious. How does he, how is he speaking to Noah and not the other people? And then you get to Abraham. He's called out of Ur of the Chaldeans in the Sumerian dynasty. And God comes to him and he says, hey, man, I want you to give up the future that you thought you were going to have in your dad's estate and I'd like you to move. Okay? Where? Don't worry about it. I'll show you. Man, this guy's mysterious. And how do I know that he's talking to other people besides Abraham? Is he only talking to Abraham? Where is this God? What are his rules? And when does he need us to follow them? Where is the clarity? And yet, Abraham gets to where he he's supposed to go and he meets a king there named Melchizedek who knows the will of God just as well as Abraham does. And we see that God is speaking to people all through this time, but we don't know where and how. And then he doesn't really give any more clarity to his son Isaac or to Jacob or to Joseph. And then 400 years go by and this Moses guy shows up. And what does he tell Moses? I want you to free my people, okay? Where do you want me to take them? I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna be a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Just follow me. And you're reading along going, man, this God is tough to follow. And then out of nowhere, Exodus 20. Hey, hey, hey, here's the rules, guys. This is what I want you to do. And I think our knee jerk as people would be to go, good, finally, thank you. Now I've got a plan. Now you're not just this weird cloud that I follow around and try to hear or just trust that Moses is hearing your voice. I mean, how weird would that be? If I got up here and I said, listen guys, I'm the only one who can really hear God very well, so you just need to listen to what I have to say. But that was the situation. And so with the law, good clarity, I have a plan. I can move forward. And don't we love that as Americans? Don't we love a good plan? I know in my life that when things start to go bad, when I'm not happy about what I'm doing at church, or I don't feel like I'm doing my job over here, or I don't feel like this part of my life is going very well and it's caused some pain and I try to figure out the best thing to do, what do I do? I sit down and I come up with a plan and then I work the plan. And there's great comfort in a plan that you think is going to succeed. And then you can work the plan. And so here, God finally gives some clarity. You want to make me happy? Here, follow the rules. And I think our human brains go, great, finally, a plan. I can do this. But I've always wondered, why did it take God so long to give him this plan? Why did God wait so long into the history of his people, a couple thousand years, to give him the rules? I think it's because God wants a relationship with us. And if we go back and we follow those first rules, those first instructions that he gave the early saints, we see that that's all he was really looking for. Adam and Eve, just trust me, don't eat of that. Why? Don't worry about it, just trust me. Noah, build a boat. Why? Just build it. Trust me. Listen to me. Do what I ask you to do. You're safe with me. Abraham, I want you to move. Where? Don't worry about it. Just go. Trust me. Follow me. Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your only son. But why? How? Abraham, don't worry about it. Just go. Obey me. Moses, lead my people. Where? Just follow me. At every instance, the beckoning of God is to follow him. Trust me. Work into a relationship with me. Get to know me. Pursue my heart as I pursue yours. And I think the real reason, when we consider it, that God waited so long to give the rules is because he knew that we would make them into a code, that we would begin to codify our relationship with him. Instead of pursuing him, we would just codify it, make a code of laws out of it, and go, here, this is all I need to do. I don't need the relationship anymore. What God knew is that relationships become contracts when we reduce them to codes. Relationships become contractual arrangements when we reduce them to a code of laws. Imagine if we did this in our marriages. I did a wedding yesterday, and I got to the portion where I did the vows. And at the vows, you vow affection to one another. You make promises to one another to have and to hold, richer for poor, in shape and not. However, we promise we will always love one another. What if instead of exchanging vows, we exchange our contractual agreements that we had negotiated prior to our marriage? And then on our anniversary, we revisited our contracts to see if we wanted to update them at all as ways to maintain the approval and affection of one another. Can't you just hear the contract negotiations? I think I would open with, for weekends in the fall when football starts, from noon on Saturday until when I go to bed on Sunday night, I would like to be able to treat my children like a railroad tycoon from the early 1900s. I would like to sit in my parlor, unbothered by them. Occasionally, they come in, and I laugh at them, tousle their hair, tell them they're cute, and then send them back to the nanny and I watch my football. This would be where I would start. And my wife would inevitably say, okay, but on Fridays and for at least one hour a night, you will engage with imaginative play with your children. You will even do Barbies. Also, once a week, I need some mom time. I need to go to Target, and I need to have lunch with people, and I need to go waste money on Starbucks. I'm going to need to do this, and I would say, okay. Once a week, I would like fresh flowers on the table. What kinds of flowers? You've got to help me out here. Can you imagine if we just negotiated our relationships and went back and forth? You give me this and I'll give you that. It robs it of its heart. It robs it of the love and affection that we experience in those things. The joy of marriage, the depth of marriage is getting to know one another over the years, is knowing when I do this, she's going to feel loved. When I do this, she's going to feel aggravated. When she sees me do this, this is what stirs her affections for me. So that by the time we've been married 30, 40, 50 years, we know each other better than any other soul on the planet. And that connection there was not achieved by making rules and negotiating contracts with each in attempting to follow those rules, we would rob the relationship that we have with him of its heart. And we don't need to look very hard in Scripture to see that he was right and that this is true. There was 1,400 years between Moses receiving the law and the gospels beginning, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, where Jesus comes on the scene. And when we get to the gospels, we see Jesus address the Pharisees. The Pharisees are the rule keepers, man. It is their job to read the rules, to interpret the rules, and to tell everybody what the rules mean, and to tell everybody how you're going to follow them. Like, it says don't work on the Sabbath, okay? Well, some Pharisees interpreted that as don't go out and plow the field with your donkey on the Sabbath. That's not allowed. Others were so strict with it that they said, if your sandal has a nail in it, that's heavier than it needs to be because it's metal and you cannot wear those sandals on Sabbath because that's work. So they had to figure out what do the rules mean and how do we apply them and how do we tell people whether or not they're following them. They were the keepers of the rules, the watchers of the rule book, and they should have known as well as anybody how to follow them. And if you follow them well, the way that God intended, their hearts should be rendered to God. They should be some of the greatest, most trustworthy people on the planet, except you guys know, what does Jesus call the Pharisees? Whitewashed tombs. He calls them a brood of vipers. He says, You're a brood of vipers. You're a bunch of hypocrites who had taken the religious authority that they were given and leveraged it for personal gain and personal power and then set up a system around themselves to protect their personal gain and their personal power. And they were complete hypocrites and their heart was very far from the Lord. They have figured out how to heartlessly follow God's rules and maintain a facade of righteousness. And I just wonder if that sounds like any segments of the church that we have today, where men, and it's almost always men, are in charge and they've set up systems so that they stay in charge and they can personally profit from the spiritual authority that they have. And it's gross. And it happened then and it happens now. Whenever we set up a system around who follows the rules the best, what inevitably happens is people claim that they follow the rules best and that you should follow them, and then they cast judgment on you and they exact taxes from you. And it's disgusting. Which is why I hope that if Jesus saw me, he would at least say, well, you're a messy tomb. You're dirty. And I would be like, that's great, because you're going to wash me off. But that was the condition of the Pharisees. They were a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs, because they had so perverted the law over the years as to make it this thing of if you can follow it well enough, you can behave your way into God's affection and approval. And we need to watch it because we do that too. I remember when I was in high school, there was certain rules you had to follow. Every church, every group of Christians has them. Some rules that if you follow these rules, now you're righteous, now God loves you, now you're a good Christian. When I was in high school, if you didn't drink or do drugs, if you didn't cuss, if you didn't do anything with your boyfriend or girlfriend that you're not supposed to do. And you're a good Christian. Congratulations. Are you a jerk to everyone in your life? Yes, but you follow those rules, so you're fine. Meanwhile, we take the person over here who has a genuinely good heart and is gentle with people, but doesn't check one of those boxes, and we tell them that they are apostate and they need to go to youth group and probably some camp where they pledge purity or something like that. Every community of faith has its rules that it wants to default to. And we have our rules too. And we have our things where I just need a plan. If I can do this and this and this, then I'll be a good Christian. And without realizing it, we begin to try to behave our way into God's affection and approval. The end of that road is the Pharisees. The end of that road of trying to behave our way into God's affection is frustration and hypocrisy and a heartless obedience to God. And what's more frustrating is, in this following of the rules, it is possible to do it completely heartlessly, to follow the rules and not even love the rule giver. I went to a Christian college. There was lots of rules at that Christian college. I thought they were all stupid. But I followed them. Well, a better example is Jen went to a Christian college. And they had a lot of rules. And she didn't agree with all of them. But she followed them. Not because we had this deep and abiding affection for Toccoa Falls College and just a sense of loyalty to it. Not because we loved the rules and thought they were great. But because that was what was asked of us. And so we did. We can do that with God too. We all know how to go through the motions and follow the rules so it looks like everything's together. Meanwhile, our hearts are empty. And then Jesus comes along and he makes this heartless obedience harder. Jesus makes the heartless obedience harder when he shows up because he starts to redefine the law, to correctly define the law, to fix people's understanding of it, to help them see it's really impossible to follow it without heart. You can't follow the essence of the law without following the heart of the law. And he comes along with what is the single most convicting two verses for any man who's ever lived. He says this in Matthew chapter 5, verses 27 and 28. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. What that means is, I can only speak for the dudes, every one of us is an adulterer based on what Jesus taught. Now, we should not back away from that and consider it figurative. He meant what he said, and it's true. But until Jesus said this, plenty of us are going through life going, if I just don't commit adultery, the physical act of it, with someone else's spouse, then I'm squared away. I'm righteous, I'm good. And Jesus says, no, no. If you even look at them with intent, you're guilty. And then we all go, well, then I'm guilty. He even says that you've heard it said that we shouldn't murder anybody. Thou shalt not kill. And all of us, I would hope, can check that box. Yeah, you know, 40, I'm going 41 years. I'm in my 42nd year so far, no murders. Really nailing that one. But if you've hated someone in your heart, then you're guilty of that as well. And you go, oh, well, then I guess I'm a murderer. And the more you examine the law, the more frustrated you should become. Those of you in your life who have tried to white knuckle your way to holiness, who have just tried through sheer determination, I'm going to be a good Christian. I'm going to follow the rules. I'm going to do what God asked me to do and behave our way into God's affection. What always happens? You fall on your face. And when you fall on your face, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and you go, I wasn't holding on tight enough that time. Now, this is the time when I'm going to white knuckle my way to God's affection. And Jesus, in this gentle way, whispers in your ear, no, you're not. No, you're not. And so when we examine the law and we hold it up to ourselves, what we realize is this is impossible. It brings us to this inflection point of frustration where sooner or later, sooner or later when you've fallen off the horse enough times, when you've tried to follow the rules well enough, when you've tried to behave your way into God's affection and approval, and when you've disappointed him again and you've let him down, and you've got to pick yourself up again, sooner or later you're going to say, I don't want to do this anymore. And it's at that point that a lot of people walk away from the faith because they believe that faith is following rules well, and it's not. But the law has to get us to this point where we surrender. We say, I can't do this anymore. There's no possible way I can follow the law. And when we're there, when we understand that we cannot behave our way into heaven, and I know, I know, listen, I know that I say that, and all the Christians in the room go, yeah, no, it's God's grace. I cannot behave my way into heaven and into God's affection. And yet, you live out your faith like that's what you can do. You know intellectually that you can't behave your way into God's approval for you. And yet, boy, you try, don't you? I'm just talking to myself here. So lest we sweep aside, no, I don't do that. Yes, you do. We all do. But it's at that point when we realize that we can't, that we're ready to hear the message from Romans 8, 1 through 4, where Paul writes about this exact thing. And I'm going to read it to you, and it's going to be a little bit murky, but there's a couple phrases we can key in on to really help us understand what he's talking about. He writes this. He washed off our tombs. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. Paul says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For those of us who trust in Jesus and his sufficiency, our tombs are clean. We are alive in Christ. He's taking care of us. Because God has done, by sending him to die on the cross, to live a perfect life and to die a perfect death and to have a perfect resurrection, God has done what the law, listen, weakened by the flesh. But he sent his son who condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. He sent Jesus to live a perfect life and to perfectly follow the law, the only person in history who's ever done it, to die a perfect death, to have a perfect resurrection, to ascend back into heaven, and then begin, according to Romans and Hebrews, to advocate to the Father on our behalf. And in that action, he covers over our weakness, and we are restored into the life of the Spirit and into harmony with our Creator and into affection from our Father God. That's what Paul is saying in Romans. He's telling us the purpose of the law is to show us our need for Jesus. And so in light of that, I told you at the beginning, we presume the purpose of the law is to provide a path to spiritual sufficiency. And in our sufficiency, so earn God's approval. But what we see through a careful examination of ourselves, standing up against the law, what we see in the teachings of Jesus is that was never the purpose of the law. The purpose of the law is to provide a path to spiritual surrender and in Christ's sufficiency, receive God's affection. You see the difference? When we act like it's to achieve our own spiritual sufficiency, we butt our heads up against the wall until we reach a place of surrender. And we say, Jesus, I can't follow the law. You followed it perfectly. I'm totally reliant on you. I'm done trying. I'm done trying to behave my way into heaven. I'm done trying to behave my way into God's affection and into my Father's approval. And I surrender to you. I confess, you died, you lived a perfect life, you died a perfect death, and then you resurrected for me. And you are my path to harmony with my creator. And I am insufficient entirely to do that at all. I am completely and totally reliant upon the sufficiency of Christ and his death on the cross. That is my only path to affection with my father. And then in Christ's sufficiency, we receive, not earn, God's affection, which is far better than approval. We don't want our dads to simply nod in a condescending approval to us. Yeah, you're good. Yeah, you're okay. Yeah, you're allowed. We don't want a distant, heartless approval from our God. We want that affection. We want Him to love us. We want Him to take joy in our joy. We want Him to mourn when we mourn. We want Him to hurt when we hurt. We want Him to love when we love. We want to know that our Father God is right there. We want his affection. And to get that, all we have to do is surrender. Quit trying so dang hard. And what it looks like is this. How about, how about instead of deciding all the things you're going to do to live the life that you think God wants you to live and to be the person that you think God wants you to be and all the plans and all the rules and all the white knuckling that we're going to do, how about we scrap that? And how about we make our only plan is to wake up every day and remind ourselves of the love that Jesus has for us. I heard one pastor call this preach the gospel to yourself. Remind ourselves that we fall at the feet of Jesus, that we rely on his sufficiency, that we trust in his perfect life and in his perfect death, and that God, the Bible says that this is love, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Before we earned it, before we deserved it, before we had any claim to it whatsoever, God sent Jesus to live a perfect life and die a perfect death so that we could experience eternity in heaven with him, so that we could walk in the affection and the love of our Father, so that we could be at harmony with our Creator. Remind yourself of that every morning. Remind yourself every morning, Jesus loves me. My Father loves me. Not for who I'm going to be, not for how I'm going to behave, but He loves me because He sent His Son for me. And if anyone were to ask me, why does God love you? I would point to the cross and I would say, because of what Jesus did, not because of anything that I've done. And remind yourself of that overflowing love every day. I love that verse in the book of John that says, from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. Remind yourself of that grace every day. And what you'll see happening is when we surrender to Christ and we remind ourselves of his love, that our affections for the people around us are stirred as well. We'll be more gracious with our husbands and our wives and our children and our friends and our co-workers and the bad drivers. When we daily remind ourselves to surrender to Christ's sufficiency, when we choose surrender over sufficiency, God stirs our affections for Jesus. When we simply remind ourselves, I am insufficient, I have nothing to offer, Jesus has everything to offer, and I rely on that. When we remind ourselves of that, God stirs our affection for Jesus. And in stirring our affection for Jesus, he stirs our affection for one another, which by the way, isn't that the whole point of the law anyways? Didn't Jesus say that loving God with all your heart, soul, and your mind, amen, and loving your neighbor as yourself sums up the whole law and the prophets? This is how it does it. Instead of trying to be a people who are worried about the rules and all the right behaviors for Christians, which, by the way, will stop us from looking at other Christians and saying on social media, well, it's pretty unchristian. I thought you said you were a Christian and now you're da-da-da-da-da. If we would move away from a rule-following Christianity and towards a daily surrender to that Christ, we will find waiting for us an affection for Jesus and an affection for others that will help us walk in harmony with the law anyways. So the whole point of the law and the whole point of this morning is to grab our faces and point them to Christ and help us remember that he alone is worthy of our affection, that he alone is worthy of our devotion. And if we would quit trying to follow the rules so darn well and fail and get up and try hard again, if we would just surrender instead of trying so hard, surrender to the sufficiency of Jesus, that he would fill our hearts with affection for him, that that affection would overflow to others, and then we would finally be people who keep the law and walk in devotion and affection to Jesus. So I said my prayer for you at the beginning was that you would leave here with your heart stirred more for affection to Jesus than when you came in. That you would leave here desiring Jesus more than you did when you entered in. And my further prayer is that that would be a sustained thing, that some of you, gosh, maybe a few of you, would finally quit trying so hard and just wake up tomorrow morning and say, Jesus, thank you for loving me, and see where that leads. In a minute, the band's going to come up, and we're going to sing a song called Jesus, We Love You. There's a chorus in there, our affection, our devotion poured out on the feet of Jesus. Let's stand and sing this song as one church with one voice and one agreement and one surrender to pour everything out at the feet of Jesus and let him stir our affections for him. Let's pray. Father God, we are grateful for you. Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us the law so that we can see how much we need you. God, I pray that we would want more of you, that we would simply want more of Jesus, that we would want to know you better, and that in that pursuit we would feel a freedom from the things that trip us up, from the things that seek to hold us back, that so easily entangle. But that maybe, God, by focusing on you, by focusing on your son, we can run the race that's set before us as we were finally, finally intended to run. Focus our eyes on you, Jesus. And let us trust you to take care of everything else. In Jesus' name, amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along. And that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Today, Jesus calms the storm. We'll be right back. here, and I would love to get to meet you after the service. I'm so glad that you guys chose to make Grace a part of your Sunday, whether you're watching online or here in person, braving the elements. We are very, very grateful for that. We've got two more parts of this series, Kids Stories for Grownups. Today is Jesus Calms the Storm, and next week is Moses and the Ten Commandments, and I'm really excited to share that sermon with you that God's laid on my heart for next week. But this week, we look at what is one of my daughter Lily's most favorite stories in the Bible. I've told you guys before, sometimes at night, she'll ask me to tell her Bible stories. And I love to do that. And this one, Jesus Calming the Storm, is one of her favorites. And, you know, I'm not really sure why that is. I think that this story, if you know it, is one that captures your imagination from the very beginning, from a very young age, the idea of this Jesus, this man who was 100% man and 100% God at the same time was able to calm the wind and the waves. The sky and the sea obey him. And that just captures our imagination, I think. And so it's fun to revisit that story and reflect. And as we do and as we go through that story and we reflect on what we can learn from it and what Jesus has for us in this story and maybe hopefully what he would have us glean from that story. I just wanted to impress upon you that I kind of feel bad every week when I get up, when the worship stops and then you have to start listening to me because I just want to keep worshiping. And one of my favorite things to do is to lay out and listen to my church worship. And as I hear all of you cry out, it's your breath in our lungs. So we pour out our praise. We pour out our praise. And you say, great are you, Lord. I'm reminded that you are God's children and he is in pursuit of your hearts. And so let's let this message and where we go and where we lean into, let's make space for the Holy Spirit to speak to us no matter why we're here this morning and give him the opportunity to draw us closer to the Father, closer to the Spirit, closer to Jesus. So Jesus calming the storm takes place in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and they are beginning Jesus's ministry. So it's important to put this story in the context of the timeline. For those that don't know, Jesus spent about 33 years on this earth. We think he started his public ministry around the age of 30, and that he spent about three years going around Israel and ministering in the various villages and cities, and then eventually in Jerusalem. And we get that timing from Passovers and things like that in the New Testament, or in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. So at about 30, Jesus begins to call the disciples. So if you open up to any of those books that I just mentioned, you'll see at the very beginning, Jesus starts to call the disciples to them, follow me and I will make you fishers of men, that kind of thing. And a lot of us know those stories. Well, that marks the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. And then obviously his crucifixion and resurrection marks the end of his public ministry. And so in that first year, early on, this story takes place. So the disciples have just started following Jesus. We'll see from the story that they don't fully know him yet. They really don't know who this man is that they're following. They haven't fully realized who this Jesus guy is just yet. And we'll see that come out in the story, but it's important to place it at the beginning of Jesus's ministry. If for no other reason than we can empathize with the disciples and their ignorance in this particular story. On a night after they had gotten done ministering and preaching, Jesus tells the disciples, hey, let's load up in the boat and go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll spend the night in a town over there on the opposite coast. Because when you pay attention to the life of Jesus, what you notice is that it's this always fluctuating balance of being with the people, surrounded by people, people pressing onto him, asking for miracles, listening for teachings, trying to trip him up and stump him and trick him and all those things. And then Jesus retreating for respite and rest so that he can gather his wits like we all need to do before he goes and faces the angry throngs the next day who want more things from him. Kind of like being a mom. So Jesus says, let's go across the Sea of Galilee and we'll rest there. And so that's what they do. Bless you. That's what they do. And they get in the boat and they begin to go across the Sea of Galilee. And as they go across the Sea of Galilee, it begins to get pretty turbulent. The wind picks up and the waves start to pick up and it begins to get pretty hectic in the Sea of Galilee. And I've had the opportunity myself to be on the Sea of Galilee because I'm a pastor. And if you're a pastor, you have to do that. So I went to Israel and I was on a boat in the Sea of Galilee. And I remember being surprised by how wavy and choppy it was and how much the boat was bouncing during totally clear blue skies with very little wind. And some of the waves did crash up over the side of the boat, not in a dangerous way, but just in that way that gets your rear end wet enough to make you uncomfortable for the rest of the day that you're trekking around Israel. And so it became believable to me that a storm could stir up and really make a trip across the Sea of Galilee feel pretty unsafe. And that's what happened that night. And so the Bible tells us in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and we're going to look at the depiction in Mark, that the waves started to pick up. The wind really started to blow. And the waves were crashing over the boat, not in the way that just makes you inconveniently wet, but in the way that makes you scared for your life. And the disciples became very fearful. And it would take something for the disciples to be fearful because many of you know that the disciples were fishermen. Peter, James, and John. James and John were called the sons of thunder. That was their nickname, okay? They were not sissies like Matthew. Matthew was a tax collector. He was an accountant. All right, my dad's an accountant. They are sissies, man. They cannot be trusted on open waters. I'm just kidding. Dad's great. I get seasick. He does not. I'm a pastor. I'm even worse. Anyway, talking about requisite toughness. But you've got James and John and Peter, and they're starting to freak out. They're getting legitimately scared. And so we pick up the story in Mark chapter 4, verse 38, and I'm going to read 38 through 41. This is what they do. It says, And I love that story. It's a simple one. It's a short one, but it's a powerful one. And one of the things that's so neat to me is that the disciples sense that they were in danger. And the hull of the ship is a guy that's older than them. They were not yet in their 30s. They were younger than him, presumably early 20s or maybe even younger than that. It could have been, some scholars think, upper high school boys that Jesus was giving the keys of the kingdom to. And they get scared and they know they're scared. They know they can't do anything about the weather. And so they go to Jesus. And it's clear from the text, they don't know what Jesus was going to do about it because when Jesus does what he does, they're shocked. So they weren't expecting him to calm the wind and to calm the rain and to calm the waves. They weren't thinking that was coming next. They just knew they were in trouble and they needed to go to Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to do. They didn't know how he was going to solve it. They just knew my soul's in fear. I'm going to run to Jesus. And I think that's such a great lesson for us. If nothing else, even when we don't know what he's going to do, run to Jesus when we're scared, run to Jesus when we don't feel safe, run to Jesus when we feel we need shelter. So they run to Jesus and Jesus wakes up. He's annoyed. He's clearly from the text. He was, he was, he was having a good snooze down there. He was out of the rain. He was nice and dry. Maybe it was working as like a little bit of like rock-a-bye baby white noise for Jesus. I don't know. Dude may have been hardcore. But he was sleeping. And I know, I happen to know from personal experience that even the sweetest people in the world, when they are awoken at 3.30 in the morning in the middle of the night and they don't want to be, they're not kind about that. And so Jesus clearly is annoyed with the disciples. He goes up on the deck and he looks at the wind and the waves and he says, peace, be still. And they do. And I've often thought, man, that would be a really cool moment in history to be in. If you could go back to one spot that's got to be in the running. Can you imagine, those of you who know me, how smug I would be on the deck of that ship with my popcorn? If you could time travel also popcorn with you, smart food, white cheddar, please. I would sit there and look at the disciples and be the least scared person laughing at them, be like, you're gonna be fine, just watch. Can you imagine how smug I would be knowing what was going to happen, just waiting for Jesus to come up on the hull of the ship, on the deck of the ship and say, peace, be still. And then it happens and you're like, see, I told you guys. It would be so easy to be peaceful in that moment because we know how the story ends, but they didn't. And so they were scared. And he comes out and he says, peace, be still. And peace, be still. When I hear people cover this story, talk about the story, preach on this story, peace, be still usually gets the focus. That's usually the phrase we stop on is the power of Jesus. And that's a good place to focus. But that's never really caught my attention as something else in the story. The next thing that catches my attention a little bit more is the disciples marveling at who this Jesus was. He goes back down into the stern of the ship, presumably to go back to sleep, this time peacefully, without his white noise. And the disciples look at each other and they were fearful and they said, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. See, when they went down into the ship to get him, they called him teacher, rabbi, pastor. They didn't know yet what Jesus was or who he was. They didn't call him Lord. They didn't call him Savior. They called him teacher. They were ignorant as to the nature of Christ just yet. And so they knew that guy could do some stuff. They knew that he could perform some miracles and cast out demons. They had seen a little bit of things. They knew that he possessed a wisdom that was unique in their generation. But they didn't know he could do this. So they marveled at who he was. And sometimes we focus on that. But for me, as far back as my memory goes from hearing this story, the thing that's always captured my attention is Jesus's incredulity with the disciples. He's incredulous with them. He's frustrated. And to me, because look at the text. He says, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? Oh, you of little faith. Like, what's the matter, guys? Why are you being so scared? Like, just chill out. It's going to be all right. And it's never made sense to me that this would be Jesus' response because we're taught about Jesus that he's meek and mild. We see him being abundant in patience and grace and love. And from a very young age, it's always seemed out of step with the character of Christ that this would be his chosen response to his disciples at their very reasonable fear. Again, Peter and James and John, the fishermen in the group, they're scared too. When the flight attendant on the plane starts to freak out, it's time for you to get scared as well. So I don't really care what Matthew's doing, but I'm looking at Peter. This is the guy that walks on water a little bit later in his life. And he's scared. So there's not anybody listening to my voice who wouldn't have been scared on that boat too. And to that very legitimate fear, Jesus goes, what's the matter with you? What's the matter with you? Why are you scared? What, you have no faith? Come on. He's frustrated with them. And it's always puzzled me. Why was Jesus frustrated with the disciples? And I want to propose to you two reasons. The first reason that I'm about to share is not the reason. It's a reason, and I think it's worth talking about. But really, the first reason provides a bridge to the second reason that I'm going to get to at the end of the sermon that I think really is why Jesus was internally frustrated with the disciples. But we can't get there without going through the first reason first. So the first reason I would like to submit to you that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples is the disciples underestimated Jesus' power, plan, and love for them. I think very simply the disciples underestimated Jesus. They underestimated Jesus' power. They ran to him because they knew he could do something, but they didn't know that he could do that. And apparently Jesus felt like he had revealed enough to them and instructed them enough that they ought to have known. They ought to have known that he had this special connection with God the Father and that everything was going to be okay. But they underestimated his power and his efficacy and his ability to be able to bring about the change or the provision that they needed. So they underestimated the power of Jesus. They underestimated the plan of Jesus. See, the disciples got called by a rabbi, and in those days, if you understand how that worked, that was kind of going to seminary back in the day. That was preparatory school for being released as a pastor or a rabbi into the wild. And so their expectation is most likely we're going to follow this man for a little while, however many years it takes, four, five, eight, 10 years. And then eventually we're going to be released out into the wild to do, to lead our own ministry. A lot like a young pastor going to seminary, expecting to graduate with a degree that says, I know all the things about theology I'll ever need to know. There's no questions that will ever stump me. And I have good categories for everything that's ever going to happen in my life. And then going to church and starting real ministry and finding out those categories are going to be pretty challenging, pal. You're going to have to learn to adjust those. But that's what a seminarian does. They go to school, they get a degree, and then they're released to church. And so that's what the disciples presumably thought they were going to be doing. Training with this man, learning how to be a rabbi, eventually they'd be released to be rabbis on their own. What they had no idea about was the scope of Jesus's plan for their lives. Jesus wasn't going to release them into the various cities and towns within Israel to do their own personal ministries. No, these were the foundational rocks upon which the church of God was being built. They were the kingdom of God on earth. They were being entrusted with the keys to the kingdom. Two and a half years after this moment, Jesus was going to die on a cross. He was going to raise himself from the dead, conquering death and sin. Then he was going to spend 40 days with them and then go into heaven and say, wait for the Holy Spirit to come. He's going to tell you what you need. And then they were going to launch the movement of God on earth, the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in the temporal God's church, his kingdom here. He had big plans for the disciples. And listen, it's 2,000 years later. We're on a different continent talking about their Jesus. They did a pretty good job. It was a pretty good plan. They did not realize, the disciples, that they were plans A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z of God starting his kingdom here on earth, of transferring it from the nation of Israel to the kingdom, God's church, the bride of Christ, of which we are a part. See, they underestimated Jesus's plan for them. Pay attention to this. Because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They underestimated Jesus' plan for them because they reduced it to what they could envision for themselves. They didn't make space for what Jesus could possibly be envisioning for them. And then they underestimated the love of Christ. That Jesus actually loved them enough to execute that plan. Because the plan involves Jesus dying the most painful death that that era of humanity could cook up. Suffering through the torment of hell and being resurrected on the third day, conquering death and sin. The plan involved Jesus being separated from his God. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me is one of the things he mutters on the cross. It was the first time in all of time that Jesus and God had been separated even for a little bit. And Jesus endured that. He endured the sufferings on the cross for us, for you and for me, because he loves us. Because the Bible says that love is in that while we were yet sinners, Christ dies for us. That's what love is. And what the disciples did not know and did not understand is that two and a half years from now, he's going to be hanging on a cross and we're going to feel like we've failed and he's failed, but that's the necessary thing that has to happen because he is winning for us a seat at the banquet table for all of eternity. That through living his perfect life, through leaving the keys of the kingdom with us, through dying on the cross, through raising from the dead and leaving that tomb empty, that Jesus was conquering death and hell for all of eternity and there was going to come a day, spoiler alert, when he would calm all storms for all time. But that was going to require an excruciating death. That was going to require limitless forgiveness over and over and over again as he watches us, you and me, trample on that death with our willful actions and our willful rebellion and our decision to not honor the death of Jesus on the cross and our decision on a weekly and daily basis to put ourself as Lord of our life and not Jesus as Lord of our life. And he knew that he was going to die on the cross, that he was going to offer you his love, that we were going to trample on that, and yet still he was going to offer us grace and invite us to a seat at the banquet table in heaven one day where we will be in harmony with our God for all of eternity. The disciples did not know that Jesus loved them that much. They did not know his plan was that big and that his power was that great, and so they underestimated him. And it makes me wonder, do we underestimate Jesus too? Do we forget how powerful he is? Do we sit in a circumstance and render it hopeless as though prayer can't possibly help because Jesus can move mountains, but not that one. Jesus can fix other relationships, but not this one. Jesus can empower other people facing temptation, but not me and not mine. Do we underestimate his power? Do we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by reducing it to what we can envision for ourselves? Can I just tell you, you have no idea what Jesus wants to do with you. You have no clue what Jesus wants to do with a single faithful heart who will be consistent. I see over and over again people who are convinced that they have no gifting, there's nothing special about them or outstanding about them. And so when they hear pastors like me talk about plans that Jesus has for them, they think, certainly that's not me. That's for other people. And it just reminds me of my mama. I've told you guys this story plenty of times. She died of ovarian cancer at 74 or 75 years old, and she was a woman who would sit in sermons like this, and she would think, I have nothing to offer the kingdom of God. I have no talents. I have no skills. Everyone around me is more important and better liked than I am. And yet, because she loved God, she just faithfully loved others her entire life. And when she passed away at 75, there was over 400 people at that funeral. All a testament to how Linda had loved them so well throughout the course of her life. And I gotta tell you, I've done plenty of funerals for people around that age and older. It's not often there's 400 people there. And she's one that throughout her life would have sat in a sermon like this and thought, God doesn't really have a plan for me. Yes, he does. Yes, he does. You have no idea who you're raising. You think Billy Graham's parents and Mother Teresa's parents knew who they were raising? You have no idea who you're friends with and who you're loving on. You have no idea how much an email or a prayer or a phone call or a late night conversation can mean to somebody. You have no idea. Just walk faithfully in Jesus' plan and you let him do what he's going to do. So often we underestimate Jesus' plan for us by writing off ourselves and limiting that plan to what we can envision. And he has such a bigger picture for us. Do we underestimate his love for us? Do we think that we've trampled on his grace one too many times and he's probably fed up with me now? No, he's not. Do we forget that he's promised us in Hebrews that he's at the right hand of the Father interceding for us? Do we, like the disciples, underestimate our Jesus? I think one of the reasons that we do that is because we fail to remember, as the disciples are a good example for in this story, that Jesus has depth just like anyone else. And knowing him takes time. I don't know if you've ever thought about it this way, but very clearly in the story, the disciples simply didn't know Jesus enough yet. Jesus felt like he had revealed enough of himself that they should have faith in him by now, that they should know by now, but they simply didn't know who he was. They simply didn't know by then. And so they doubted him and they were scared and they were anxious and they worried and they were fearful. And so they underestimated him, I believe, because they didn't fully know him yet. And we've got to acknowledge that getting to know Jesus is just like getting to know anyone else. There's depth there. There's layers. I think of one of my favorite people that I've ever met in my entire life, Harris Winston. No, I'm just kidding around. It's not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with. It's really not Harris. It's this guy that I used to teach with named Coach McCready, Robert W. McCready. When I started teaching school, thanks Harris for being the punchline for that joke. Anybody could have done it. When I started teaching school, I was in a previous life, my late 20s. I taught high school Bible and was a school chaplain at a small private school outside of Atlanta. In my first year there, I got hired at the same time as this new science teacher and the football coach, Coach McCready. And when I met him, I learned about him that he was a tailback at Auburn in the 60s. And so tough, Southern, good old boy from Alabama. He didn't, actually he did chew tobacco all the time. Now I think about it, he always had to dip in, that guy, teaching at a private Christian high school. Everybody just looks the other way, right? That was Coach McCready, just tough as nails. And he calls me out. The first week, he starts calling me Coach Rector. I'm not the coach of anything, but he just brings me to practice, and he makes me the special teams coach because I know how to kick a ball because I have a soccer background, and he did not because he has a football background. And so I was the special teams coordinator. And he called everybody baby, and he called buses cheese wagons, and he was just a character, man. I could tell you some very colorful stories with colorful language about Coach McCready and some of the things I heard that man say. But then I find out that he was also a Vietnam veteran and that he led 100 Marines during his first tour in Vietnam to the jungles of Vietnam. That'll do something to you. He did such a good job with it that the Marine Corps honored him with a nice, easy assignment doing recruiting in Alabama so he wouldn't have to risk his neck anymore and could wait out the war that way. And Coach McCready hated that idea. So he bugged his CO over and over and over again until he could find a path to get back to Vietnam. And the only way to do it was to go to training to become a recon Marine. So he went back to Vietnam as a recon Marine crawling through the tunnels of the Viet Cong shirtless with a Bowie knife and a pistol. I'm not making that up. That's Rambo stuff, man. That's a tough son of a gun. And he was all of that. He dripped that toughness. He could look at you in a way and no one's ever made me that scared in my whole life. But you get to know him. And I had the opportunity to do that. Seventh period, I was free. He taught seniors a class that he didn't care about who were on the football team, and he just let them sit in the back and do whatever they wanted. It was a really great school. And me and Coach would sit in the front, and we would just have a conversation for an hour. And we'd talk about everything, and we'd talk about life, and he didn't know it at the time, but he was discipling me, and mentoring me, and counseling me, and helping me in my marriage, and helping me learn to be a man, and helping me learn to follow God well, and showing me different ways that faith could look, and I learned about his heart, and I saw him tear up with something special that happened for the boys. The last year I was at that school, he and his wife, by his request, got a little toy poodle, black one, named Pepper. And Coach McCready's policy was if Pepper's not invited, then neither am I. And it never went anywhere that Pepper was not invited. Took him to stores before emotional support dogs were a thing and just dared people to tell him to get out of there because you wouldn't. And I bet over those three years, I got to know Coach McCready better than anybody else at that school. And if I saw him this afternoon, we could stop and we could have a four-hour conversation and it would not be enough. We were thick as thieves, man. But that knowledge of him and who he was and his heart, that came over time. It came over investment. It came over going to see him every day when I didn't have to and us wanting to spend that time together. You have those friendships too. Why would your relationship with Jesus be any different? How can we come to church once a week, sing about Jesus, hear about Jesus, go home and don't think about Jesus for a week, and then show up the next week and think, why am I not closer to Jesus? It's a pursuit. It's a getting to know him. It's exploring him. It's mining the depths of who he is in his word. Learning more about our God. Reading the gospels over and over and over again and printinging on ourselves the character and the heart of Jesus, pursuing him in prayer, spending time with him that we don't have to passionately following after Jesus so that we get to know him, so that we get to trust him, so that we get to love him. And then what happens when we do this, when we pursue Jesus and we know his heart, we get to watch him come through over and over and over again. And we get to watch him calm the storms over and over and over again. We get to see how he's going to do that. I've had that experience to do that as the pastor of grace. When I got here, we were in a heck of a storm. And I'm not going to recount all of that for everyone present, but it was not good times. But I saw Jesus come through. I could tell you a story about a Memorial Day offering that was supernatural that first month that I was here, where God said, hey, I care about this place. How God has had the right people show up at the right times to just affirm for us, I care about this place. This place matters to me. And frankly, I've weathered enough storms with grace, and some of you have too, that we're now just the people on the boat eating the smart pop popcorn with the white cheddar going, this is going to be fun. Look at what God's going to do. The more you know Jesus, the more you trust him, and the less you doubt he will come through. And I asked the question earlier, have you underestimated Jesus? And I would tell you that a pretty good indicator for that is how much we worry, how much we give into anxiety and fear and stress. Now listen, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety that's treated by medications. I'm not talking about an actual chemical imbalance that causes that. I'm talking about your regular, everyday, run-of-the-mill worry. Is my kid gonna get the right teacher? Maybe if I stay up a couple more hours tonight worrying about it, then that will help the situation. And they will definitely get the teacher they're supposed to. Will the deal close? Is my kid going to make good decisions at college? No, but they'll learn from them. Will my son or my daughter meet the right person that they're supposed to marry? Am I going to like them? I don't know. But listen, God is over all of those things. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the less worrisome those things are because we know he's got it. And so a good indicator of whether or not we're underestimating Jesus in our own lives is how much fear and anxiety and worry and stress we carry about the things that only he can control. And this, I think, is the real reason that Jesus was frustrated with the disciples that night. Because the disciples were focused on the outer storm while Jesus was focused on the inner storm. The disciples were focused on the storm out there, things beyond their control. And Jesus is sitting there sleeping in the stern going, guys, if you'll just trust me, you could be asleep now too. If you'll just trust me, you don't have to be scared right now. You don't have to be fearful right now. You don't have to be anxious right now. See, Jesus comes to us and we often miss this and he offers to calm the storms in here. And so often we're like the disciples and we're like, no, no, no, no, no. I'm fine in here. Can you calm the storms out there? Can you make that go away and that go away and that go away and that go away? Can you heal here, here, and here? Can you handle all of those things so that I don't feel any stress? And Jesus is like, I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you don't have to stress at all. I'm offering you my perfect peace so that you can be calm in here and not have to worry about all the things going on out there. Because let me tell you something. To live this life is to experience storms. When Jesus calmed that storm in the Sea of Galilee, how long was it until the next one? Did they just stop altogether? When Jesus fixes that bad news, you've lived life long enough, there's more coming. We've weathered storms at grace. We're in a fun season right now. You think there's not more coming? Maybe you're in the midst of a storm right now, and we want desperately for Jesus to calm it. Maybe we're in a peaceful time right now. Either way, we know that there's more coming, but here's what Jesus offers to us, that he will give us such an internal peace and calm this internal storm in such a way that none of those will ever have an impact on us again. He gives us the option to trust him and walk in perfect peace. Maybe this is what Paul was talking about in Philippians. When he says, be anxious for nothing but in everything through prayer, petition, and with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the God of peace who transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. He's offering to calm the inner storm. Because on this side of eternity, in this broken world where sin pervades, there will always be storms. And there's coming a day in Revelation 19 and in Revelation 21 where Jesus calms all the storms forever and there's no more storms. And until then, and between now and then, there's gonna be storms out there, but he's offering you peace in here if you'll get to know him and trust him and love him and walk with him. And so that's the invitation to us. That's the invitation that we see as a result of this story. This story is an invitation to know Jesus more. This story is an invitation to go deeper with him, into his word, to pursue him in prayer, to swallows me up, even if that storm is the storm that swallows up someone I love so much, that Jesus has gone to where that storm is and he's conquered that too. And one day I'll exist on the other side of eternity and I'll be with that person again. That's the storm that Jesus has calmed for us. He's won that for us. So let's not look at the story of Jesus calming the storm as a simple story that displays the power of Jesus and the ignorance of the disciples, but let's look at it as a story that beckons our hearts to go deeper with him, to know him more, to trust him more, to walk with more peace and more humility and more grace as we see him come through again and again and again. Let's allow Jesus to calm the storm in here and we won't be so concerned with the storms out there. Let's pray. Father, God, we thank you for calming our storms. Lord, for the folks in here who are walking through them. There are waves crashing over their boat, man. They don't know how they're going to make it out of this one. God, I do pray that you would calm those. But more than that, I pray that you would calm them. Calm their anxious hearts. God, for those of us here who don't know you, who don't know your son, with the depth that we would like to, would you beckon us towards you? Would you call us into your presence? God, give us a daily desire to meet with you, to hear from you, to talk to you, to listen, to praise. God, would you be a part of our conversation? Would you be a part of our friendships? Would you be a part of the way we work and the way we operate and the way we think, be a part of our car rides and our walks and our workouts. Jesus, we invite you into our lives that we might know you more, that we might trust you more, that we might trust your heart more, that you might calm the storms that rage in us from time to time. And we thank you for being the one who calms the storms once and for all. It's in your name that we pray these things. Amen.

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