Sermons tagged with Community

Well, good morning, Grace, and happy Father's Day to all the dads. This is a special day for those of us that have great dads to get to honor them, so I hope that you're able to do that today. And dads, I hope that you get to spend the day however it is that you want to spend it. This Sunday, we are in our series called Still the Church, where we're looking at the book of Acts, the story of the fledgling church and how it started and all the things that went into the beginning of this institution getting off the ground. It's the institution that 2,000 years later on another continent we participate in. It's the institution, the thing that is the bride of Christ that Jesus died for, that he came to start, that he left the disciples in charge of. And so we've been moving through the story, unveiling and uncovering the practices and the principles and the philosophies of the early church that we can still apply to our church 2,000 years later here in Raleigh, North Carolina. Today we arrive at the conversion of easily the most influential follower of Christ who's ever lived. A man who grew up by the name of Saul of Tarsus, and God changed his name to Paul. Paul wrote two-thirds of the New Testament. He did a lion's share of the missionary work immediately following the birth of the church. It's Paul that we look to who's responsible for spreading the gospel all over Asia Minor, who gives us a lot of our theology and the things that we understand about Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit and how they relate and how salvation works and what exactly it is we're all doing here. He's a hugely influential figure in the church. I would argue one of the most influential figures in history. And so today we arrive at his conversion. It's an important point in the book of Acts. It's an important story in the book of Acts. After his conversion, the rest of the book really mostly just details his ministry. That's how important and influential he was. So it's right and good that we stop and we go, what was it that converted him? And I think that there's a special insight that we can get in the events of his conversion, in the events of his conversion, that can apply to us right now. I believe that we're invited into the same thing that Paul was invited into, and I want us to see what that is this morning. So as we approach the story, you can find it in the book of Acts chapter 9. I hope you have your Bible with you there at home. I hope you guys are in the habit of watching these sermons with your Bibles open, of interacting with the text. There's nothing that can replace opening up God's Word and interacting with the text on your own, particularly if you have family and children around to go through it with them, because I want you to go through and pull out your own nuances and your own details from the story. More importantly, I never want you to accept what I say about the Bible at face value. I want you to do your own work and do your own thought and read it for yourself and make sure that what I'm saying is true to what God is communicating in here because I'm trying my best to communicate to you clearly what Scripture says, but I'm also human and I'm going to mess up. And I'd love a church full of people who are going to catch me when I do that because we're all reading our Bibles too. I would also love a church full of people who are gracious when they send me the email about catching me. But I hope you're following along in Scripture. In Acts chapter 9, we see Saul of Tarsus, who's a young and upcoming Pharisee, who's been given permission, special instructions from the high priest in Jerusalem to go to Damascus. The church was blowing up in Damascus and it was starting to cause a ruckus. And so Saul gets commissioned by the high priest to go to Damascus and snuff out Christianity. And we'll see later, we're going to look back at a verse in chapter 8, that Paul was ravaging the church. He was arresting people. He was putting people to death. He was pulling them out of their homes and throwing them in prison. He was doing everything he could, Saul was, to stamp out the church. And so he's on his way to Damascus to stamp out the new movement there. And Jesus appears to him in the clouds, knocks him to the ground. And he says, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? And Saul says, who are you? He says, I'm Jesus. I'm the one that you are persecuting. And after seeing Jesus, Saul converts. He believes. He realizes that he's been spending his life trying to stamp out this movement that God himself appeared to him and said, hey, stop doing that. I want to use you to grow the movement that you're trying to stop. And it must have been an incredible scene because he had an entourage with him. And it says that they could hear the voice, but they couldn't see what Saul could see because he could see Jesus. And as a result of that, something like scales went over his eyes. And the text tells us that though his eyes were open, he could no longer see. And he went and rested in a place in Damascus for three days. And scripture tells us that it was three days without eating or drinking. So he is weak, he is feeble, he is blind, he is scared, but he's converted. And after this conversion, we see in Acts chapter 9 that the Lord appears to a man named Ananias. Now, Ananias was a righteous man who lived in Damascus. He was a devout follower of God. And the conversation that they have is incredibly interesting to me. I want you to look at it with me if you have your Bible. I'm going to pick up the story in Acts chapter 9, verse 11. In verse 11, the Son, or the Holy Spirit that appears to him. Scholars are unclear. But the words in my Bible are red, which indicates that at least the editors of the ESV think that it's Jesus who's speaking to Ananias. We hold that loosely, but that's probably a pretty good guess. So Jesus is talking to Ananias. And I just want you to pick up on this. This is one of those details that we're likely to just breeze right by. Ananias is just chilling out, and the Lord appears to him in a vision. And Ananias is apparently so used to discoursing with the Lord face-to-face in a vision like this that he just responds to him. He just talks right back to him. God says, hey, Ananias, there's a guy named Saul of Tarsus. He's in Damascus. I've blinded him. He's expecting you. I want you to go heal him. And Ananias responds. Ananias says, hey, listen, what he said is a very nice way of saying, I know who that is, and I don't want anything to do with him. You can find some other sucker. I don't think so, God. So let's just get together on this. Ananias is so righteous and so devout and so faithful that when the Lord appears to him in a vision, he just responds right back to him as if it's casual conversation. I don't know about you, but if the Lord appeared to me in a vision, I would spend the next 12 to 24 months trying to figure out if I really saw the Lord in a vision and what to make of it and what it meant and if I could trust it, and then I would write a book about it and start a ministry. If the Lord appeared to me in a vision, I would be terrified. And Ananias just talks right back to him. He says, yeah, I don't think so, God. I can't do that. Are you kidding me? I know who that is. He's going to kill me if I go. And God's response is profound. To me, this statement is so packed with truth that it's one of the most profound statements in the whole Bible. Look at what God says to Ananias. When Ananias hesitates and says, I don't think so. I know who that is. He's going to kill me. This is how God responds to him. Verse 15. Whoa. Ananias says, no, I don't think so, God. I don't want to do that. That's dangerous. I know who that is. And God says to pause. I want to pause this sermon right here. I'm going to leave that sermon here, and I'm going to go over here, and I'm going to talk about something else. Okay, so let's pause on this sermon. I try to do the best I can usually to follow one thread and not get sidetracked with other things, but this is such a big deal that I wanted to pause and say it and preach it for a second and then jump back into this sermon. So pause with me right here if you can, and we're going to talk about, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Okay, I'm over here different. This is parenthetical, okay? I'm within some parentheses. I just want to say this. There exists in Christendom, in faith, this insidious doctrine, this harmful and hurtful belief that to be a faithful Christian is somehow an insurance policy against pain and suffering in our life. Somehow or another, and I'm not exactly sure where we developed it. We assume that because God is love, that a loving God would never allow me to hurt in a way that is profound. And by the way, I am the sole arbiter of how much pain is too much pain. And so we walk through our lives with this erroneous and harmful belief that because I'm faithful, because I follow the rules, because I do my part, because I play my role, and I'm faithful to God and I live for him, that because of those things, he is going to insulate me and protect me from pain in my life. That because I'm faithful, God will navigate me through the raindrops of tragedy. And I think it's worth it because it's so dangerous and so damaging because what happens is people believe that and then pain happens in their life, tragedy comes into their life, and it shipwrecks the faith that they built on false assumptions that God never promised. Nowhere in the Bible are we told that when we follow God, our problems go away. Nowhere in Scripture does he promise that when we love him and obey him, that we won't encounter pain and hurt in this life. Paul, one of the most faithful people who ever lived, one of the most passionate people, most purpose-filled people for the gospel who ever lived, easily the most influential Christian who ever lived on the Mount Rushmore of faith, that there is anyone who deserves the blessings of God and the protection of God and to be able to circumvent tragedy in his life, it's Paul. If there's anyone who deserves God's protection, it's Paul because of service rendered to God. Yet Paul himself in one of his letters details his suffering for God. He details the times that he was beaten to within an inch of his life with the same punishment that Jesus received before he was crucified, the 39 lashings of the cat of nine tails. He details the times that he was mocked and that he was persecuted. He details the times that he was stoned and left to die on the ground. He details the times that he was shipwrecked, the times that he was so sick that he was sure he was going to die. Does it sound like based on Paul's life that Christians get to dodge the raindrops of tragedy? We don't. They're a part of life. They're a part of this fallen creation. And the more quickly we can move away from that expectation, the more holistically we can offer our faith to God and the better understanding we can have when tragedy and pain do befall us. Back over here in this sermon. Thank you for allowing me that freedom. The phrase that I really want to key in on in God's response is not, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. The phrase that I want us to let ring in our ears today is that God says about Saul that he is my chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles. And in his sovereignty and in his great sense of irony, God had even prepared Saul for this moment. See, Saul of Tarsus grew up in the religious system. He grew up as the star student. He went to the Ivy League equivalent schools. He was a young, up-and-coming Pharisee. He was going to step in and be in the Senate and lead the nation. He was very likely a future high priest of Israel. He had all kinds of potential, and God had prepped him and groomed him for this moment. He had prepped him and groomed him to lead. Saul grew up exposed to the best possible training. He grew up learning the Old Testament inside and out, and he didn't know it, but he was learning it inside and out so that when Jesus appeared to him, he was able to uniquely connect all the dots from the Old Testament to the New Testament. And we see him do it in remarkably succinct and accurate ways all through his writings. God was preparing him for what was ahead. He exposed him to leaders and leadership. He learned how to peddle and exchange in the respect of men. He learned how to commandeer a room. He learned how to orate. He learned how to do all of these things for what he thought would be the sole purpose of stamping out the very movement that he was going to take those gifts and use them to advance. God and his sovereignty knew this. And if that's not enough to see that even when Saul thought he was preparing himself to do the exact opposite of what he was going to do, God was already using him. This is remarkable to me. This is something that I discovered years ago and I've been wanting to preach about it ever since. I'm so thrilled to get to share this with you this morning. But if you look back at chapter 8, beginning in verse 1, it says, Last week, we look at Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who with boldness and faith stuck his face in the wood chipper and spoke truth to power, knowing that they were going to kill him for it. And while they killed him, there was a young man named Saul of Tarsus who held everyone's coats and approved of what they were doing. And after that, he began to ravage the church. There arose this uprising from within traditional Judaism to stamp out this new movement of believers. It says is in trouble. Stephen has just been martyred. The powers that be, the authorities have decided that they do want to actively stamp out this movement. They're not going to be patient with it any longer. And Saul becomes the epicenter of this persecution. And as a result of this persecution, the church scatters. They leave Jerusalem. In fear, they flee from Jerusalem. And this is the part that I think is fascinating. What is Saul doing? Saul is doing everything he can to stamp out this new movement. And as he seeks to stamp out this new movement with arresting and with cruelty and with beatings and certainly with some violations of some rights, the Christians in Jerusalem grow fearful. And what do they do? They scatter to the surrounding regions. And I read one time, what do they do when they scatter to these surrounding regions? When a family of Christians flees to another city in these surrounding areas, to Damascus or to Ephesus or to wherever else, and they get there, and they're in this new city, and they don't know anybody, and they're trying to figure out life. Who are they going to look for? They're going to look for people that have something in common. Who has something in common? Other Christians who just fled Jerusalem because of persecution. And in these cities that they scattered to, they began to band together in these small groups of believers. And what do these groups of believers do? Well, they're from the original church in Jerusalem. They devoted themselves to the apostles' preaching and to the breaking of bread and to prayers. And they invited one another in one another's homes and they took care of one another as any had need. They began to be the church. Don't you see that when Saul applied pressure in Jerusalem in fear, the Christians scattered to surrounding cities. When they got to those cities, they band together with other Christians that had things in common and began to exercise and express the church as a body there. And in doing so, started all these little churches all over Asia Minor that were there as seeds for Paul to come and water later when he's preaching the gospel willingly. Isn't that cool? Saul was doing everything he could to stamp out the church. And God said, great, I'm going to use your efforts to grow it. The very thing he was trying to avoid is the very thing that he caused. And God in his sovereignty knew that if the Christians are comfortable in Jerusalem, they're just going to keep the word there, and the spread of this gospel is going to be slower. So he allowed Saul to apply a little bit of pressure so that they might scatter and plant churches in the surrounding areas so that when Saul later became Paul and went out to preach willingly, that there was seeds planted and the churches that he was sent to grow were ready for it. What we see in chapters 8 and 9 of Acts and what was before the conversion, and in God's purposing of Paul after the conversion, is that God was going to do what God was going to do, whether or not Saul chose to do it. God was going to do what he was going to do, whether or not Saul chose to do it anyway. It was going to happen. Let me tell you something. If somehow Paul manages to reject the conversion, he sees Jesus, he's healed of the scales, and he still says, no, I don't want any part of that. I'm going to continue to persecute the church. If some reason Paul rejects that invitation by Jesus himself, do you know that the church is still getting built? Do you know that God's word and God's love is still going to prevail? Don't you understand that if Paul turns God down, that there's still a church today in Ephesus and Thessalonica and Galatia and Philippi and Tyre and Sidon and all the other places. Don't you understand that? The church existing wasn't contingent upon Paul. God simply invited him into the purpose of doing it. He didn't need him. If Paul doesn't rise up, then he rises up Barnabas or John Mark or Luke or Peter or James or John or some other unknown hero that gets to play that part. God didn't need Saul. He didn't need his talents. He invited him in to the joy of purpose. He invited him in to a life of meaning. He invited him in to a life of service that would matter for all of eternity. He invited him into this incredible joy. And the same is true of us. God's created us and designed us and purposed us in ways seen and unseen for things in his service and in his kingdom. His desire for all of his children is that we would be used in mighty ways to grow his kingdom. He's designed you and purposed you for that. In the same way that Saul was being prepared to go out and lead the church when he was growing up, not knowing that's what the preparation was for, so has God laid those tracks in your life to uniquely prepare you for what's ahead when you didn't even know what you were being prepared for in the past. I want you to understand that when God offers an opportunity for you to serve, for you to be used, for you to obey him, for you to walk with him, for you to live in submission to him, that he's not asking you to do this out of a sense of duty. He's not guilting you into it or twisting your arm so that we serve out of this sense of ought. I want us to realize that when God invites us into service, that you are invited into the joy of purpose. You're invited into this joy of purpose. God doesn't need you to do these things in his kingdom. He's inviting you in so that you might participate and sit on the front row and see the joy of people coming to know God. Paul himself is a testament to this. Paul suffered mightily in this ministry, yet he was invited into the joy of purpose. And he was able to write one of the most famous verses and misused verses in the New Testament, Philippians 4.13. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Preceding that verse, he says, I've learned how to be joyful when I have nothing. And I've learned how to be joyful when I have plenty. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Paul said, he's the one that said, to live is Christ and to die is gain. To live is purpose and great and wonderful, and to die is to be in the very presence of God. The only reason to be alive is to execute God's purpose for my life. He found great joy there. He found so much joy there, and we're going to actually preach a sermon on this in a couple of weeks. He found so much joy in the purpose of serving God that when he is arrested and in a prison in shackles in the middle of an earthquake in Philippi, he is singing praise songs to his father. That's how joyful Paul was, walking in the purpose of his God. And that's the joy that you're invited into. And listen, I think that the same is true today. God doesn't need us to get things done. He's going to do them regardless. I came to Grace in 2017, April of 2017. And when I got here, it really didn't look like the church was going to be a church for very much longer. But in God's goodness and in His sovereignty, according to His plan, He's flourished, Grace. Even in COVID, even in quarantine, we continue to flourish and just do remarkably well. I can't get over it. It's so amazing. But I firmly believe that God's hand is on this place. And that if I didn't raise my hand and say, yeah, I'll go, that sounds great. I'll do that, God. That if I didn't get to come up here and do this, that somebody else would have gotten to do it. If me and Jen didn't move up from Atlanta to become a part of grace and get to sit on the front lines and see everything that God's doing here, then somebody else would have had that experience because make no mistake about it, God was going to grow grace. God was going to flourish grace. God was going to do with this place exactly what he wanted to do with this place, regardless if I decided to come or not. I just got invited to participate in what's happening here. And it's a tremendous source of joy. For years, Grace has been building homes in Mexico. We send a couple teams down every year and build multiple homes every time we go almost. We've built dozens of homes over the years because God cares for the people in Mexico that they're getting built for. You know what I believe? Those homes get built with or without grace, man. Those homes get built with or without our teams, with or without our money. God's gonna take care of those people. You know what he let us do? He invites us into the joy of purpose. He invites us in to see and to build relationships and to be a part of what he's doing for our sake, not for his sake. He doesn't need us. He doesn't need our money. He doesn't need our teams. He doesn't need us to go down there and build the homes. We don't even know how to lay cinder block anyways. You know what he's doing? He's inviting us into the joy of purpose in Mexico so that we can experience a full life in him. Think of Steve and Lisa. Steve is our former worship pastor and our current technical director. And Lisa's his great wife, and they have a ministry called Side by Side where they partner, they come alongside couples who are struggling in their marriage and they seek to restore them to wholeness. And over the years, they've had the opportunity to walk many couples through that and see them restored to fullness in their marriage. But here's the truth. God loves those couples. And if he can't direct them to Steve and Lisa, he's going to direct them somewhere else. God's going to rescue those couples. He's simply inviting the Goldbergs in to participate in the joy of his purpose and what they're doing. That's what service is. That's what the Christian life is. God's going to do what he's going to do regardless of if we want to do it or participate. The invitation of the Christian life, the invitation of a life of service like Paul lived, is to simply participate in the joy of purpose. It's an invitation that I hope that you'll accept. I hope at Grace that we don't serve out of a sense of ought, that we don't obey out of a sense of duty, that we don't resentfully go along with these things that we don't desire, but that we would see in following God as an invitation to experience the joy of purpose. Let's pray. Father, we love you so much. We thank you for the story of your servant, Paul. We thank you for his humility and his service and what he left us and what we learned from him. Father, I pray that each of us would experience the joy that is found in serving the purpose that you created us for. May we walk in that joy. Let us throw off senses of duty and senses of ought and embrace this desire to experience what you're doing, to see it firsthand. Thank you for inviting us into what it is that you're doing. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, Grace. This has been quite the two weeks. We're supposed to, this morning, be in the middle of a series in the book of Acts called Still the Church. But in light of everything that's happened in our country, the elders and I universally and quickly agreed that we could not just continue on in the book of Acts like nothing was going on outside these walls. And as I've watched the protests and the demonstrations and the rioting and the looting and all the back and forth and been consumed in the news and social media and everything happening and all the voices being heard and all the things being said, I just became deeply convicted that we needed to stop and talk about this as a church. I became deeply convicted that I needed to prayerfully consider and address this as your pastor. And so I've talked a lot this week. Called people, I've sat in people's homes, I've met people, I've watched interviews, I've listened to discussions, I've read books, I've consumed podcasts, I wake up thinking about this issue of racial inequality and tension and injustice in our country. I go to sleep thinking about it. I scour the internet. It has consumed me, like many of you, for these past few weeks. And all of it, I think, has pressed on the church, has pressed us into this one singular question of what do we do now? What do we do? In light of everything we've seen, in light of what we're witnessing, in light of these demonstrations that feel different. We've seen protests before. We've seen rioting and looting even before, but these feel different. And I think it impresses upon the church the necessity to answer this question, what do we do now? What do we do as individuals? What do we do as a church? And for Grace, pointedly, what do we do as a predominantly white church in the face of the reality of the last two weeks? So as I've thought about how to answer that question, I thought it would probably be most helpful to start in this place of agreement. Every reasonable person that I know agrees that George Floyd was murdered by that police officer. I don't know any reasonable person, I haven't even actually talked with anybody, who would argue that what happened to George Floyd was justified and deserved, that what happened to him was anything short of murder. I don't know anybody arguing that. Conversely, I don't know anybody arguing for the morality and the rightness and the justification of protests that devolve into looting and rioting. I've not heard anyone make a good nuanced argument that people of color deserve the right to just charge into stores and white people deserve the right to just charge into stores and loot and take what they want and get violent. I've not heard anybody arguing from the morality of protests that devolve into looting and rioting. No one's supporting those. No one's saying that they're okay, and no one's excusing them away. So I don't think that it's worth our time this morning to further condemn the officer that murdered George Floyd or to decry the morality of looting and rioting. We all agree on those things. I think the more interesting question that we need to be asking, that I want to be asking as a member of the white community, is what is the message coming out of the protests and the demonstration? What is it that the black community would have us hear as a result of these protests? What are they using their voice to say? And if we listen closely, what should we be hearing? I've actually started thinking of the demonstrations and even the looting and the rioting in this light, kind of like this. Many of you are married. And if you're married, you know what it is to have a little spat with your spouse. You know what it is to have a little mundane day-to-day disagreement. And if you're not married, think about your relationship with a parent or with a sibling or with a close friend or with a child. We've all been in these discussions where there's a little disagreement, there's a little spat, there's kind of a flare-up, but then all of the sudden our spouse goes maximum angry. Whatever maximum angry looks like for your spouse, whether that's just like quiet, cutting comments, whether it's just getting silent and retreating, if it's throwing things, if it's yelling, whatever it is, we've been in these situations where all of the sudden at the drop of a hat, for reasons we don't all the way understand, our spouse is maximum angry with us. And we know that their reaction, that what happened that day in that instance does not warrant their reaction. If we are an unwise spouse, if we're bad at this, we will react to that overreaction. We'll point at him or we'll point at her, and we'll say, I don't deserve that. You shouldn't be saying that. What happened doesn't warrant your reaction. This isn't fair. You shouldn't do that. And we'll condemn the overreaction. And we'll heighten the argument. But what wise spouses do, what wise people do, is acknowledge. Yeah, that's an overreaction. But clearly, that's not a reaction just to what's happening in this moment. Clearly, there are things that have been simmering under the surface. There is a series of frustrations and disappointments that have led to this moment, that have caused this person to boil and bubble over in this way. So rather than reacting to the overreaction, let me be interested and listen and see what I can learn about the series of events that have built up in this person's heart to lead them to this place. Wise people want to understand what led to this response in the first place. And I think the best thing that I can do, the best thing that we can do in the face of these protests and demonstrations is to ask the question, wait, wait, wait, what is it that led to this moment? What are all the simmering frustrations and disappointments that you've experienced, that the black community has experienced that have led to this moment of demonstrations for the past two weeks? The most important question we can be asking, I think, is what is it the black community is trying to say? What are they trying to communicate? And as I think through that question, my belief is that the loudest message coming out of these protests is simply, will you listen to us now? Will you hear us now? Will you give us a voice now? I think what the black community is telling us is that, hey, racial injustice still exists. Racial inequality still exists. Racial oppression is still a very real thing in the United States of America, and we bear the brunt of it every day. It is still a thing that is happening. And I would be the first to tell you, I would be the first to argue that this country has made tremendous strides in racial equality and justice since 1968. We have come an incredibly far way in just a generation. But what these protests tell us is that we still have strides to make. We still have a ways to go. We're still not there yet. The black community is telling us we still experience injustice and oppression. And if you are a child of God, if you would call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, if you would call yourself a Christian, then when there is a group of people in your community that is telling you, hey, we feel like we exist in injustice, we feel like we are being treated unfairly, we feel like we are oppressed, that ought to perk up your ears. When there is a community of people saying, raising their hand and saying, hey, we feel oppressed. We feel like there's systemic injustice in our country. That perks up the ears of God. That breaks the very heart of God. And it ought to break our heart too, particularly as God's children, particularly as God's church. When there's a group of people in our community crying out that they feel oppressed, that life feels unfair, that it is unjust, as God's children, we ought to perk up our ears and listen intently and wonder at why and allow our hearts to be broken at that reality because that reality breaks the heart of God. Justice and correcting oppression are very near to the heart of God. I know this is true because the Bible says it over and over again. I know this is true because of passages like Isaiah chapter 1. Isaiah chapter 1, verses 10 through 18. If you have a Bible, you can turn there. That's one of my favorite passages in the whole Bible. I know I say that about a lot of passages. I really mean it for this one. I love Isaiah chapter one, 10 through 18. Those eight verses, those are the gospel. It's a beautiful passage. But I've never thought of it in the light that I'm about to explain it in until this week. If you look at that passage in verses 10 through 15, God is blasting Israel. Israel, those are his children, those are his people. They would have considered themselves the church or saved back in that time. And God is blasting them for going through the motions of their faith without really living it out. And he's saying things to them like, your solemn assemblies, listen to this, my soul hates. He says, when you pray to me, I will turn my back to this. I'm not there. I'm not listening. When you perform your sacrifices, I don't care about them. I don't want them. All the religious duties that you're doing, I'm not interested in those. And then in verse 16, after he blasts them, after he says, quit going through the motions, I'm not interested. In verse 16, it's almost as if he's saying, you want to know what I'm interested in? You want to know what's important to me? You want to know how I want my people to be defined? If you want to do the right thing, do you know what you need to do? This is what he says, verse 16. After blasting them, he ends 15 with the phrase, your hands are full of blood. 16, he says this, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good. So he says, listen, repent of all the things that I've just accused you of. Admit that you've been going to the motion. Stop doing that. Admit that you're living out this heartless faith and seek to do right. And if you want to do right, here's what you need to do. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Bring justice to the fatherless. Plead the widow's cause. God says, you want to know what's near and dear to my heart? You want to know how I want my people to be known and what I want them to be marked for and what I want to be important to them? You want to please me? You want to make me happy? You want to know what God wants from me? Seek justice. Correct oppression. There's a community of people in our nation crying out that they are experiencing injustice and oppression and God's people should listen to that brokenheartedly and want to help. It's not just in Isaiah. In Micah, chapter 6, verse 8, a famous passage. Micah similarly ends a long diatribe of the ways that God's children have failed, And he says, if you want to do good, here's what we need to do. He says, he has shown you, oh man, what is good and what the Lord requires of you, but to seek justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Three things God wants from his people. Just distill it all down to whatever God would request. And what he leads with is seek justice. In the Psalms, we are told that we need to be a voice for the voiceless. It's the idea that when our voice is the loudest in the room, we ought to use it to help those with the weakest voice. Justice and the correction of oppression is near and dear to the heart of God. That's why I am firmly convinced that what is happening in our country right now is not a political issue. It's not political at all. And honestly, if you think it's political, you don't understand it. It's not political. It's a right and wrong issue. It's a gospel issue. Caring about this isn't about activism. It's about caring deeply about a manifestation of the gospel and the culture in which we live. What's happening breaks God's heart and it ought to break ours. It is our job as his people to diligently and fervently and generously correct oppression and to seek justice. This is a church issue. This is a gospel issue. This is a morality issue. So we have to talk about it. And even as I say that, even as I say that, there are those who I know and love who are good Bible-believing people, good moral folks, who would simply say, Nate, man, I agree with you that we need to care deeply about justice, and we need to care deeply about people not being oppressed. But I got to tell you, I just don't think that there is systemic oppression happening in our country. I just don't think that there is systemic injustice and racial inequality occurring in our country. I've heard statements like that even this week, and they're not statements from people who are racist or who mean ill will. They're just earnest, honest observations and thoughts from folks. But I would tell you if that's something that you might think, that first of all, that's something that I've thought too. But when you repeat that to black people, as I have this week, they went. I sat in someone's home and I said, hey, you know, there's some folks who would say that they just no longer see systemic oppression or injustice in our society. What would you say to them? They winced at me. It hurt them. And it wasn't a wincing of anger. They weren't mad. They didn't want to correct. It was a wincing of surprise and of disappointment and of hurt. That some people right around them don't even see what to them is so very evident. And if we don't believe that oppression is a thing, there's plenty of stories, there's plenty of examples of it continuing to happen in our country even to this day. As I spoke with people and listened and watched, I saw a lot of conversations happening between white people and black people. I was involved in some of those conversations. And in every one of those conversations, whether I'm watching them or involved in them or listening to them, the question would always come up, how have you experienced racism in your life? What are some instances where you've encountered, the white person's asking the black person, what are some instances where you've encountered racism in your life? And all of the black people had answers. They all responded with stories, sometimes multiple stories. Do you realize the power of that reality? Do you realize how condemning that truth is? That every black person you could go up to and find, even on the street, and just grab them and say, hey, I'm curious, how have you experienced racism in your life? When have you encountered racism in your day-to-day life? In the years that you've lived, what are the stories about your encounters of racism? Do you realize that they all have answers? You realize they can answer that question? That not a single one of them went, gosh, you know, I don't know that I have. You know how different that is from the white experience? I've never experienced a racial moment in my life. I've never been the victim of racism. I've never even asked my white friends, hey, when have you experienced racism in your life? Because we don't. Far and away, the vast majority of us don't even experience it. Do you realize the chasm and experiences there when they all have answers for it and we don't have any? One man shared his story, successful black businessman, went to a good college in the South, got involved in corporate America. He shared that in his office place, he often felt discriminated against. He shared some of that was probably imagined and some of it was probably very real. But what he knew is that the last thing in the world he could do is bring it up. The last thing in the world he could do is be honest about it or complain about it because you don't want to play that card and get that label. So he just kept his mouth shut. And after years of keeping his mouth shut, he gets promoted to their office in Manhattan. He moves his family up there. They find a great suburb in Connecticut where they decide to buy a home. They're walking through their neighborhood on the very first day that they're moving in. He's got his wife and his daughter in the stroller, and a car rides by them, and a white guy leans out the window and calls him the N-word and tells him that he's not welcome in his neighborhood and he needs to go home. In progressive Connecticut, a few years ago. It's still happening. I talked to somebody on the phone this week that confirmed an article that my wife, Jen, had read this week. She read an article. It wasn't an article. It was a post on Facebook that kind of went viral by a black man who just said, hey, listen, just so y'all know my experience, he loves to go on walks every day in his neighborhood. Kind of refreshes him like a lot of us like to go on walks. But he said, I'm very aware of the fact that I can't go on a walk without my wife or my daughter with me. I can't just walk through a neighborhood as a lone black man because I've gotten the cops called on me too many times because I'm seen as a threat in his own neighborhood. That story was confirmed this week when I was talking to somebody on the phone who said that they just bought a new house and they're about to move into this neighborhood. And he shared with me that his wife sat him down and said, honey, I know that you like to go on walks, but before you do that, for the first month or two that we live in this neighborhood, me and you and our kids need to go on a walk every day so that the neighbors can get used to seeing your face so that when you are out there by yourself, they don't think you're a threat and they don't call the police on you. I just moved into Falls River in April. I go on walks all the time. Never a single time, not once have I thought, gosh, I hope my neighbors don't see me as a threat. I hope they don't see my whiteness as a threat and call the police on me and I have to explain myself to them. I haven't once even considered that. It blew my mind that they still have to care about that. I was talking to another person who is very successful, who has degrees from colleges that I can't even imagine going to. He has brothers and they're all successful. And I asked him, growing up in a black home, clearly you would point to your parents as the reason for your success and your brother's success. But what was it about the way that they parented you that made you successful? And he told me that his parents always told them that they have to hold themselves to a higher standard than anybody else around them, that they have a smaller margin for error in their life than anybody else around them, that they're going to have to work harder than the other people around them if they want to achieve the same things. And they were incredibly hard on their boys for their sake because they knew that the margin for error for their children was slimmer than the margin of error of a house full of people who look like me. Then I started hearing about the conversations that black parents have to have with their children when they start to drive. They have to tell them that they're black and what their blackness means and how they should be sensitive to carry themselves. They have to walk them through protocols. If you get pulled over, do these things. Do not do these things. And they have to do this for the safety of their children. When I got my keys, my dad just handed me the keys. And he said, don't speed. And if you do speed and you get pulled over, just say yes, sir, to the officer. Be nice to him. That was it. There was no conversations about my whiteness. There was no, I've never thought to have a conversation with Lily, my daughter, about her whiteness. It's different, you guys. It's two different Americas. It's two different experiences. This points to an injustice and an oppression that still exists. This points to the reality that Martin Luther King's dream has not yet been realized. And if we want to see it come to fruition, that even though we've made great strides, we still have more to take. If the stories aren't enough, if those are anecdotal, I could point to evidence. I could point to statistics. I could point to how poverty skews greater in the African-American community. I could point to schools and how they lower in quality in African-American communities. I could point to a loss of the father figure in black homes. I could point to joblessness in the black community that's greater than that in the white community. Statistic after statistic that would lend itself to this understanding that the playing field is not level in our country. And yet even as I say that, even as I share those stories and those statistics that we all know, there are those of us who would say, yeah, but there's other factors, Nate. This is not easy. This is nuanced. There's other things going on there. There are those of us who would look at those statistics or look at those anecdotes and point to systemic issues within the black community and say, they need to get those taken care of too. They have some things that maybe they need to think about a little bit differently that they should correct as well. And I would tell you honestly, that I agree with you. This is not a one-sided issue. No conflict, no disagreement, no misunderstanding, no matter how great, is 100% one side's fault and 0% another side's fault. We all have things that we can own within the discussion. But even though I would agree that both the white community and the black community have a ways to go to achieve racial equality. I've begun to think of it like this. You know, when I was growing up, if there was somebody at school mistreating me, somebody in my life doing something that wasn't fair, treating me in a way that I didn't deserve. If I were to complain to my dad, hey, so-and-so's treating me like this, it's not fair, I don't like it, I don't appreciate it, he would say to me, son, when they act that way towards you, I want you to be gracious. I want you to be kind. I want you to forgive them. I do not want you to respond to them on the level that they are acting towards you. And I would get upset and I would say, but dad, that's not fair. They're doing this and they're doing that and they treat me in this way and I want to get back at them and I want to do this. And my dad would say, son, you're a rector and I'm not worried about them. They're not my children. You're my son. And this is how rectors act. I'm not worried about that house. I'm worried about my house. I'm not in control of that house. I'm not a voice in that house. I don't have authority in that house. I have authority in this house. And so I'm gonna worry about my house. And as long as you're a part of my house, then this is how you're going to behave. So in the issue of racial inequality and injustice, I've adopted the posture that I'm not going to think about that house. I'm not going to think about what other people need to do. Frankly, candidly, I'm not gonna think about what the black community needs to do. I'm gonna think about my house. I'm gonna think about my responsibilities. What are the mindsets and mistakes that I've made over my 39 years that I need to repent of and correct? What do I need to do? I'm not going to worry about that house. I'm going to worry about my house. Other voices will speak up in that house. They're responsible for that. That's not my responsibility. I'm worried about me. I'm worried about grace. And grace is a predominantly white church, so I'm worried about our house. What do we do? And it's because of that mindset and just focusing on myself and what I should do that I've come to really think about my role, however small it is, in racial reconciliation to really parallel the story of the Good Samaritan. A month or two ago, we were going through a series called Storyteller, looking at the stories that Jesus told to make a moral point. And one of the stories that we covered, one of the parables was the parable of the Good Samaritan. So we know this story, right? There's a man, he's on the road to Jericho, he's going from Jerusalem to Jericho. He gets injured. A priest and a Levite that we would expect to know how to do the right thing see him injured, see him dying, and they just cross over him and continue on with their day. Then a Samaritan shows up, the one that you wouldn't understand to be the moral exemplar in this story. He shows up. He sees the injured man. He kneels down. He tends to his wounds. He picks him up. He puts him on his donkey. He takes him to a hotel. He swipes his credit card, and he tells the innkeeper, whatever this person needs, you charge it to my account. That's the story of the Good Samaritan. And the point of that story, Jesus tells us, is that we're supposed to love our neighbor like the Good Samaritan, loved the injured man. And I think the current situation relates to that parable in that the black community is depicted by the injured man on the road who is crying out and saying that they are hurting, that they are in pain, that they are experiencing injustice. And every time I've heard one of those stories in my life, the first one I remember was Rodney King in the 90s. And every time it bubbles up again and every time the black community cries out and says, hey, it's still not fair. Hey, Martin Luther King's dream is still not realized. Hey, pay attention to us, please. Listen, every time that happens and every time I see the suffering of the black community, I always take the role of the priest and the Levite. And I look at them and I see them hurting and I continue on with my way. Because I think, I'm so sorry that you're there. I'm so sorry that you're hurting. I hate that this has happened to you. But I didn't do it. It's not my fault you're there. I don't hate you. I'm not racist. I don't hate people who look like you. I would never do this to you. As a matter of fact, I hate the people who did that to you. But I didn't do it. Not my fault. I'm not going to feel bad about that. And I move on. And then sometimes in my moving on to justify walking past this suffering brother, I'll begin to wonder, what could that victim have done to have prevented getting robbed like that on the road to Jericho? How late was he out? Who could he have brought with him? When he started to get robbed, did he mouth off? Did he resist? How is he to blame for what's going on? And usually, if I'm being honest about myself, those questions are asked out of a motivation to quell my own guilt. And I should confess to you that I'm, this is not figurative for me that I've played the role of the priest and the Levite. I'm a very flawed messenger for this sermon. I'm not good at this. I don't have black friends. In fact, all the arguments that some of you may have made to refute the things that I'm saying, I can promise you I've made those to my friends. So please, in my words and in my voice, don't hear condemnation, hear confession. I've been the priest and the Levite, and I'm ashamed of it. And God calls me to be the Samaritan. The Samaritan, even though it wasn't his fault, knelt down and he bound up the wounds of this person who had previously hated him. We presume that the victim was a Jew. There is racial tension between the Samaritans and the Jews. And the Samaritan ears to be perked up with what I think perks up God's ears as he encourages us, admonishes us to seek justice and correct oppression. I want to be one of those agents. And I am acknowledging and admitting, not just to myself, but publicly, hopefully, so that some of us can make the same admission that I have been the priest and the Levite stepping over the black community because I felt like it didn't have anything to do with me. I felt like because I'm not racist, because I didn't do that, it's not my fault. It's not my problem. But now I'm convicted that God himself told me to love others as the Samaritan loves others. To be a neighbor to everyone. To care about everyone's suffering and hurting. And I have been moved in the last two weeks and my heart has been broken that I want to be a part of the striding forward. I want to be a part of the healing of the racial divide. I want to help my hurting brothers and sisters. And hopefully you do too. And some of you, to your everlasting credit, you've been way ahead of me on this. I hope there's room at the party for some more. If you want to help, if we want to do more, if we want to help heal the divide, what can we do? And that's really the million-dollar question. As I've had conversations with people this week, really, people to varying degrees will say, yeah, we agree with that sentiment. We agree with that. We're with you. We want to do something. What do we do? That's the big question. So as I've wrestled with that this week, I've come up with three things that I think we can all proactively do. For those of us who want to be a part of the healing, I think we can proactively do these things. The first one is that I think that we should diversify our life. Diversify our lives. Make some black friends. I was on a call with a pastor, Albert Williams, from Dothan, Alabama, this week. And we were talking about all of these things, and I was telling him all the things I wanted to share with my church, and he said, Brother Nate, let me ask you a question. And I so love his boldness in this question. He said, let me ask you a question. You ever have black folks over to your house for dinner? And I said, well, you know, Albert, we just moved into a new house in April and it's been in quarantine. So I really haven't had much of a chance. And he laughed. He said, come on, Nate, you know what I'm asking you? No, I haven't. I haven't. And he got on to me. He told me the truth. And he didn't use these words, but he basically said, man, you don't have a leg to stand on then. You don't have any right to preach this. You're not even doing it. How are you going to go tell your people what they need to do and you're not even doing it yourself? And he's right. I'm a flawed messenger. But I'm going to diversify my life. I'm reaching out to other black pastors, not to build bridges between churches, but to build friendships between men. And I want people of color to be regular visitors in our home. I want Lily to grow up around that. And honestly, I think that this could bring about maybe a more profound change than anything else to just diversify our lives, normalize it for our children, learn empathy as we hear their stories and what they're walking through. And if I'm just being candid with you, at the risk of offending some people, there are very few people that I know who think that oppression doesn't exist who also have black friends. It just changes your viewpoint. So I think we need to diversify our lives. The second thing I would encourage us to do is to adopt a posture of listening. Adopt a posture of listening. I was talking to another person this week who agreed with me on everything and said, yeah, there needs to be a discussion. We need to talk. There needs to be some back and forth. But both sides of the party, both the white community and the black community, have some baggage to own. And there needs to be some give and take at this table. One side can't just take all the blame. And I said, yeah, you're right, but why don't we just listen for a minute? Why don't we just give? How about instead of yeah, but, instead of arguing with the statistics, instead of finding nuanced ways for that to not all the way be true, how about instead of searching for the one exception or the one article that makes us feel right about ourselves, how about we just listen to the voices and the messages coming out of the black community? We don't say anything. We don't argue. And some of the things, I'll be honest, some of the things I've seen coming out this week have just been completely illogical and nonsensical. But we don't have to respond to those. Just sweep those aside. Let's listen for the deeper messages. Let's be receptive to what our black brothers and sisters are saying. And then the third thing I would encourage us all to do is to develop a muscle for empathy. Develop that empathy muscle that you have in your heart. Learn what it's like to be a black person in the United States. Read some books. I thought about having books to recommend to you, but the truth of that is that we have all had books recommended to us. It's not hard to find them. Read a book that opens your eyes. Listen to a podcast. Seek out interviews. Listen to the voices. Seek to be empathetic and to understand. And even as I say those things, what can we do? We can do those three things. Even as I say those, there may be some of you that hear that and think, come on, Nate, like those are wispy, kind of mamby-pamby, like what real things can we do? Those feel insufficient to me. I would say to you that, respectfully, if you're doing all three of those things, if your life is diverse, if you're listening to the voices coming out of the black community, if you're developing that muscle of empathy intentionally in your life, and you still find those three steps to be inadequate, then please please let's talk and find some more adequate steps. But honestly, if you're not doing all three of those or none of those at all right now, how about we just do those and then talk about if they're empty? How about we just take those steps and then assess if they're insufficient and inadequate? Let's do the work first and then find out if what we're doing is working. I would finish by saying this. There are those of you, I believe, who will hear this sermon this morning and get fired up. You'll be excited, feel refreshed. You'll wanna be a part of the solution. You'll be happy we talked about this. Let that fire burn in a sustainable way. In a few weeks, the energy of the protest will be done. COVID will be back in the news cycle and our culture will have moved on to something else. And if we allow our fervor and our conviction to pursue racial equality and justice to fade along with the cultures, then we're gonna be right back here again. So let's let the fire burn in a sustainable way. Let's stick with it and let's mean it and let's make meaningful, lasting changes in our lives. There are others of you who may be offended by different things that I've said or disappointed in the way that I've handled this. And I understand that, I really do. This is a difficult issue. It's a nuanced topic. It stirs up emotions that we don't even understand how they got there. And it's not right of me to experience a conviction and then expect everyone else to be okay with that conviction being impressed upon them. So I would simply ask you, if I've offended you or upset you, to have some grace and some patience with me. And I would invite any one of you in response to this message or what's been happening to email me and let's start a dialogue. My email is at the bottom of the screen. It's nate at graceralee.org. Reach out to me and let me know and let's continue this discussion. I think it can only be helpful. But I know that for me, I want to be the good Samaritan. For grace, I want us to be a part of the healing. I want us to take seriously what grieves the heart of God. Would you pray with me as we pray for our city and our community and our country and our role and what God would have us do to bring about a very necessary healing? Father, you continue to be good. We know that you love us. We know that you love minorities and majorities with equanimity. We know that your heart is that we would love one another. God, give us the strength and the desire and the vision and the grace to overcome these differences in our race that are beautiful differences. Give us the strength to embrace one another. Bring people who don't look like us into our lives that we might befriend and understand them. Help each of us do what we believe is our part to heal this divide. God, I pray that you would work on our hearts. I pray that you'd speak to us even now. I pray that we would be moved by what moves you. And God, I pray for an America that's the same for everyone. Somewhere there's a four and a half year old girl running around that is in a black family. She's the same age as my daughter. God, can they be adults in the same country? Can they raise their children in a place that is void of oppression and injustice? Would you help us be a part of that reality? In Jesus' name we ask these things. Amen.

Grace, this week there's a man named George Floyd who was killed by a police officer. George was a black man, and you can't help but think that his race was a white woman who, in a racially fueled fear, weaponized the black man's race against him in a threat. And those instances are the most recent that have come into the national conscience. But there are just more instances in a long string of events that have happened that have pointed to the fact that we live in a culture with simmering racial tension. We live in a place where racial inequality is real. And I didn't think it would be right to get up here and just start preaching about Acts as if those things hadn't happened this week. I didn't think it would be right to meet together as together as we can be on a Sunday morning now and not acknowledge those things and pray for the racial divide and the wounds in our country to heal. And I didn't think it would be right to start this Sunday as a church and not earnestly ask our God together, what can we do, what can grace do to be a part of healing this divide? What portions of it as a greatly and majorly lily-white congregation can we own? And how can we contribute to closing the divide that exists in our culture? So I wanted to take a minute as we begin and pray for George Floyd and his family and pray for the racial divide in our country and pray for wisdom, for grace, as we seek to find how the Lord would have us be an active part of the healing of these wounds. So would you please pray with me? Father, our hearts are broken that we live in a place where things like this happen. Our hearts are broken that these incidents are not isolated. They're just the ones that we see. We know that you see all the incidents. We know that you have seen all the injustice. And we know that your heart breaks over injustice far more than ours ever could. So Father, first we pray for your heart in the face of these things. Break ours with yours. Father, we pray for the family of George Floyd. We ask that you would bring a healing that only you could bring. We pray for the attitudes that underlie the fear of Amy Cooper. And ask that you would solve those and bring those to the fore so that we might confront them and deal with them with equanimity and with justice and with grace. And Father, we ask that you would guide the partners and the leadership of grace and show us how we are to contribute to closing this divide and healing these wounds. Show us the path forward as we grieve, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen. All right. This morning is part two of a sermon that I'm calling Early Church Distinctives. Last week was part one. Hopefully you have your notes and you've got them numbered one through three. This week is going to be four, five, six, and seven. And last week I opened up with a short fictional story, really a parable, about a boy that was firing arrows at a barn and the arrows would land in the midst of a sea of red and then he would walk up and paint a target around the arrow and go, look, I hit the bullseye. And we talked about how, you know, this happens and this is applicable in a lot of organizations and institutions. It's a good parable about the dangers of mission drift. And often we start things without even knowing what we're going for, without even knowing what the goal is, without even knowing what the target is. And so we are asking last week as a church, how do we know that we're hitting the target? Another way to think about it is if Jesus and Paul were to come into the church on a Sunday morning when that's allowed, would they look around grace and everything that we're doing and say, yeah, you guys are nailing it. This is exactly what you're supposed to be doing. This is the target that we painted for you. So last week we asked the question, how do we know that we're hitting that target? How do we know that what we're doing as Grace is right? That Sunday mornings and small groups and children's ministry and student ministry and the philanthropic ministries that we do, how do we know that all that is right and good? Well, in Acts chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, we have a seminal passage that defines the early church. It paints the target for us. It shows us these are the things that the early church was characterized by. What's going on in the passage is Jesus has gone into heaven. He's left the disciples with the keys to the kingdom. They've received the Holy Spirit. They went out and they preached to thousands of people this gospel of repentance. Repent of who you thought Jesus was when you killed him and accept and walk in faith in the fact that Jesus and when he challenged them to repentance, it says about 3,000 were added to their number. And then those 3,000 formed the church. And right after that, we get Acts 2, 42 through 47, and it tells us the very things that defined the church. So last week, we looked at the first three distinctives that we see as defining the early church. This week, I want to look at the next four, four, five, six, and seven. And we said last week, there's different ways to group these together. You could pull out four distinctives or nine, but we're doing seven. And so last week we talked about the fact that they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, meaning they were eager learners. They were devoted to fellowship, meaning they were devoted to Christ-centered time together, and they were devoted to prayers, meaning that they were committed to the spiritual disciplines that they expressed in that day. So this week, as we continue to ask, how do we know if we're doing it right? What does God expect of his church? I want to continue to look at these distinctives that define the early church. By way of review, I wanted to take a minute and read the breaking of bread at the prayers. This week I want to start out by looking at that phrase that they sold all that they had in common and gave to any who had need. And we want to sum that up by saying that the fourth distinctive, if you're keeping your list there, is that they were known for generosity. They were known for their generosity. And it's interesting what's happening in this passage because what's literally happening is as the church is formed, everybody is selling whatever they have and giving it to the church leadership and saying, here, this is for the greater good. You guys use it for whatever you need to use it for. Obviously, my family's going to have some needs, but we trust you to provide for those. Here's everything that we own. Please use it to provide for everyone here, which is a super high bar. That's really daunting. Can you imagine if when we had our new members class at Grace, when we did Discover Grace and we talked all about Grace and who we are, and then we got to the end of it and it was like, okay, if you want to be a partner, here are the requirements. You know, you need to commit to Sunday morning attendance. You should be a believer. We'd like to see you in a small group. Also, small thing, if you could just kind of sell everything that you have and write a check to the elders, we'll take it from here. That would be a pretty tough sell. That's a pretty tall order. But to understand what's happening here, we need to feel the freedom to apply the principle and not necessarily the practice, because the principle is far more important. First, we need to understand what's happening in ancient Israel, in Israel at the time of Christ. Israel is what we would think of as a third world country. There's lots of joblessness. There's lots of poverty. There's lots of hunger. There's lots of suffering. There's no medical system really to speak of. And so suffering and need and want in Jerusalem was great. And while it was great, there was no infrastructure to provide for those who had fallen through the cracks of society. And what we understand is that God has intentionally designed the institution of the church to undergird society as a safety net to catch those who have fallen through the cracks of familial care. God first assigns to care for others. He first assigns family to care for family. This is why over and over again in Scripture, God makes a point of saying that if you love me, if you want to express true religion, then you'll care for the widows and the orphans. We see this in James in the New Testament, that true religion is to care for the widows and the orphans. We see it in Isaiah in the Old Testament, where God says, if you really want to please me, then plead the cause of the fatherless and take up the case of the widow. And what he's saying there is, and even in Deuteronomy when he says, look out for the sojourners, for the aliens, for the ones that don't have a family and can't support themselves, what he's saying in all that is, the church needs to serve in society as a safety net to care for those who fall through the cracks of familial care. We're supposed to be there and be helping them. And when there is a need, we are supposed to meet it. God has designed the church as an institutional safety net for society. And so in that time, there was no government. There was no Medicare. There was no welfare. There was no food stamps. There was no health care. There was none of that. And so the church was the only hope for the person who didn't have a family and was in need and couldn't support themselves. But now in our culture, thankfully, we have another safety net, which is the government. We do have a societal infrastructure to watch out for people who fall through the cracks of familial care. But still, the church undergirds all of that, and people who cannot be cared for by their family and cannot be cared for by the government, God looks at us, the church, and says, now you, you care for them. So we're still there, and it's still our responsibility, which is why the point from this part of the passage is that we need to be generous. We need to be conduits of God's generosity. We need to have a grieving heart for those who hurt and reach out to help those who can't help themselves. We need to be glad providers for those that are not provided for by their family or provided for by the government. We need to rally around them and be generous in spirits and be conduits of God's generosity. Another way to think of it perhaps is like this. When I became a senior pastor, I learned eventually about a thing called a designated giving fund. I'd really never heard of that before. It might shock you guys to know that I'm not a financial titan. I don't really know all the ins and outs of all that stuff. It's all news to me. I just try to spend less than what I make. That's pretty much it. But I found out that there's these things called designated giving funds. And how this works is you have money and you give a portion of that money to this fund that a company or an individual manages. And a lot of people will give money to this individual and they manage all the money in a fund. And that money is earmarked for charitable donations, charitable causes. And whoever you give your money to, they just sit on it and they hold it for however long you want to. And then when something pricks your heart, when something touches you, when you see a need that you'd like to meet, you pick up the phone or you type the email and you let the person managing your money know, hey, I would like you to send this much money to this person because they need it. This matters to me. I'd like you to allocate my resources to that person or that institution for those people. That's how a designated giving fund works fundamentally. And what it's made me realize is that we're all God's designated giving funds. That's what stewardship is. We've heard about this idea of stewardship before, that everything we have is God's and not our own. We've heard about that. But the more I thought about it this week, I've realized we're all God's designated giving funds. He allocates a portion of money to us. He entrusts it to us. And every now and again, he picks up the phone or he writes the email and he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this thing matters to me. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to them. I'd like you to allocate some of those resources to these people. That's the principle of what's happening here in Acts chapter 2, is they're expressing the Lord's generosity. And I think increasingly, and I know that that's a tall order, and I know that you may be very far away from viewing everything you have as really belonging to God. And that's, I think, a progressive revelation as we understand God. But I think one of the marks of spiritual maturity in a church and in an individual is when the church and when the person understands that we're really just designated giving funds for God. He's allocated a portion of his resources to us as individuals and to us as a church. And every now and again, he taps us on the shoulder and he says, hey, this matters to me. I'd like you to shift some of those resources over there to them. And that's how we're to serve. It's the mark of the church to be generous. The fifth distinctive that I see in this text is that they were committed to gathering. It says they gathered day by day in the temple courts. It's this old school way of church. You know, when I grew up, we were there every time the doors were open. We went Sunday morning, we went Sunday night, we went Wednesday night, every week. That was the deal. The doors were open, we were there. That's kind of old school church. Now, increasingly, if someone is a regular church attender, it means they come to church maybe twice a month. But the early church was committed to the gathering. It mattered to them. It mattered to them to come together when they were able to be in the temple learning and praising and fellowshipping together. The early church intuitively and instinctively understood the power and efficacy of being around one another, the power and the efficacy of the gathering. This is why in Hebrews we're told to not forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Because there's something special about being in the same place. And if nothing else, that's what this time of pandemic and isolation has taught us. Across the board, across the country, almost universally, church engagement and virtual attendance is declining. And as we've talked about that as a staff, and I've talked about that with the elders, I've just made the point that, you know, online church, this ability to participate in church in our sweatpants and the comfort of our own home, that's been a thing for at least 15 years, maybe longer. And there's a reason why it hasn't taken off. There's a reason why it hasn't overtaken in-person church. Because even now in the 21st century, we understand that there's a power and an efficacy that's difficult to capture in simply being together, in experiencing the teaching together, in laughing together, in and worshiping together and sharing together in the lobby, we understand that that is important. It's why at Grace, if you do come to a Discover Grace class, that one of the things we do ask our partners to commit to is to prioritize Sunday morning service. Because we believe that the gathering matters. And I can't wait until we are able to gather again. It's a distinctive of the early church and it ought to define our church. The sixth distinctive is the one that, of all of them, probably fires me up the most. I get so excited about this, and I think that it defines the early church. They were defined by communion and community. They were defined by communion and community. We see in verse 42 that they were devoted to the breaking of bread. And then again in 46 that they gathered in one another's homes and they broke bread together. It happens two times. And then all throughout this passage, we see they, they, they, collective, collective, collective. It's always about others. And the church is a fundamentally communal institution. It is fundamentally involved with others. I've said often it is impossible to live out the Christian life on an island. It is impossible to grow closer to Jesus void of the influence of others in your life. We absolutely, our souls need to be surrounded by godly Christian community. That's why at Grace, our mission statement is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people because we believe that we cannot deepen our connection with Jesus void of connections with others. And I believe this so fervently that I would say to you, if you're listening this morning and you're not sure that you have Christian community in your life, ignore everything else that I'm saying. Put it all on the back burner. Just take it and set it aside for a later date and get Christian community in your life. Stop right now. Quit listening to me and pray that God would provide for you a community of faith who supports you, who love you, who have permission to tell you the truth about yourself and to tell you what Jesus says about you. We desperately need Christian community in our life. And the early church was a communal thing, and that persists to this day. But it wasn't just about community. It was about communion. We see that phrase, the breaking of bread, and we automatically think that this is an expression of community and hospitality, and it is. And for all of history, for all of history, that has been how we've expressed hospitality. Food has been the fundamental way that we've expressed community. Once you get to know somebody a little bit, maybe you have a common activity or something, but eventually you're going to say, hey, let's grab lunch. Let's get the wives together and let's go to dinner. Let's get the families together and y'all come over. And increasingly that means we go somewhere and we experience a food together, but the most intimate time, the most special times are when people are invited over to the home. When you invite people into your home, there's a special care taken. You clean up the house. You let them know that you care about them, that they matter to you. You try to think of the special thing that they like, of the appetizer that they went nuts over the last time, of the dessert that you can remember in conversation that they said they like. If you're making steaks and there's somebody who doesn't like steak, you make sure and you have chicken to make them feel thought for and cared for. You make sure that there's something for their kids so that they know that their kid is important to you as well. There's this special power of hospitality, of welcoming people into our homes and expressing community in that way. And when the tradition of communion started, that's where it started. It started in someone's home as Jesus and the disciples sat around and broke bread together. They sat around and they were having a meal together. They were expressing community. It was the Passover supper. And you know, we observe communion in our churches. Most churches observe it like grace does. At grace, we do it once a month in the service. The elders stand on either side at the end of the sermon. I'll go through the story of communion and when it started and we'll have a particular thought that we go with. Then we spend some time in prayer and then we line up and we get we get the bread, and we dip it, and we go back to our seats, and it's an austere, respectful time, and that's right and good. But communion didn't start that way. Communion started in community. Communion started around a table. When Jesus took the bread, and he looked at the disciples, and and he broke it and he began to hand it out. And this was not an unusual practice. Every home didn't have a knife. The way that you serve bread was to take the loaf and tear off a portion of it and give it to your guests. So what Jesus did was not a new thing. This wasn't unusual to the disciples or anyone else who could have seen it. It was a ubiquitous, common part of the meal. And in this moment, Jesus takes the thing that we do every time we express community and he imbues it with purpose. And he says, every time you do this, do what? Line up in church and get in the line and tear off the bread and dip it in the wine and spend some time praying? No, not that. Every time you do this, every time you gather in community with me as your focus and you break bread, you serve the bread to the people who are in your house. This common activity that was mundane until this moment. Jesus says, every time you do this from now on, I want you to remember me. I want you to remember that I'm the bread, that I'm the bread of life, that my body was broken for you. Similarly, he takes the wine and he pours it. It's a totally common mundane activity. It happens in every dinner party ever where the host takes the glasses and pours the drink. And Jesus says, whenever you do this, whenever you do what? Gather in church and dip the bread in the wine? No, whenever you experience community together and when you serve the drinks, I want you to stop and remember me and feel that and see that as my blood that is poured out for you. Remember my crucifixion and that I am the tie that binds here and that I am what brings you in common with one another and that I am what reconciles you with the heavenly Father. Remember that. Communion didn't start in church buildings. It started at dinner tables. It started in community. And Jesus took these mundane expressions that are a part of every communal gathering around the table, and he said, from now on, when you do these things, don't just let them be a passive thing where you just serve the bread and you serve the drinks and you move on. I want you to stop and I want you to remember me. That's communion. Communion is always an expression of community. Communion always draws us into community and community should always focus on communion. So I think the challenge for us at Grace, who love community very much, we're real good at community. That's one of my favorite things about this church. We love having people over. We love getting together. But the challenge for us is when we do, when that bread is served and when it's broken, when the drinks are poured, it is right and good and obedient to pause and to pray and to say, Jesus, thank you that you are this bread. Thank you that you are this drink. Thank you that you make tonight possible and that you make our relationship with you possible. We're having fun here tonight, Jesus, but we want to pause and we want to say thank you for making this possible and we want to remember you because that's the instruction of communion. Not once a month when you're in church, come to the front and take the bread and dip it in the wine. That is a shadow. That is a mimicry of the actual communion. And it is right and good to do it in church. But it is forgetful and wrong if we don't do it together in community. So let the challenge be to grace as we commune, as we gather, as we express hospitality and we all begin to fling our doors back open and have people over. Can we please take a moment in those times and do things in remembrance of Christ and make communion more a part of our community. Finally, the seventh distinctive is that this church had a contagious joy. I want to read for you the last portion of scripture so that you kind of know what I'm talking about. It says, They gathered together every day. They invited people into their homes. It's not a stretch to think that they would just invite their neighbors in too because there's a meal and you should come have fun with us. They gathered in the temple courts. They pooled their resources and gave to anyone who had need. No doubt that brought people in who had need, who experienced this genuine community and love for the first time in their life. And then in all of that, as they met with glad and happy hearts, they praised their God and it said that they won favor with all the people. Not just the people of the church, but the people around them, which means that the people of Jerusalem at large began to take notice of this infectious community of joy that was the early church. And because they began to take notice of that, because they won favor with the people surrounding them simply by being an expression of the church and exuding that contagious joy, because people saw that, this passage ends with, and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. Their contagious and infectious joy led to the salvation of souls. It's really interesting to me that two weeks ago I talked in Acts 2 about the fundamental and foundational repentance of the church. It's a confession that I've been wrong about who I thought Jesus was and I'm going to walk in the belief that he is who he says he is. And out of that confession and repentance, 3,000 people were added to that number. And now in Acts 2, 42 through 47, we see more people being added to their numbers. And the confession and repentance is what drew people in at the beginning, but now at this point in the church, what's now drawing people in? Now what's drawing people in is the favor that their infectious joy is winning with all people. Now what we're seeing is the church cranking on all cylinders. We're seeing the results of what happens when people are devoted to the apostles' teaching and are eager learners, when they're devoted to fellowship in Christ and their time together, when they're defined by community and communion, when they're known for their generosity, when they're experiencing joy, and all of that is working together to cause the people of Jerusalem to look at the church and go, what's going on over there? That's different. I want to be a part of that. That's why when we have Grace's big night out, whenever we can do that again, I cannot wait. I always tell Compass Rose where we have them. They say, do you want to just rent it out? Should we shut it down and just invite Grace people? I always say, no way. I want the other folks of Raleigh to see our community because I believe our community is infectious. This is how the church ought to work. This is how we draw people in. And I believe, Grace, I absolutely do, that even though we are in a time of trial right now because we can't meet together, that as soon as we can fling the doors open and as we move forward, I think grace is going to be stronger than it ever has. And I think if we will commit ourselves to these seven distinctives, that if we will be eager learners, that if we will devote ourselves to Christ-centered time together, that if we will be known for our generosity, committed to spiritual disciplines, if we will be committed to the gathering, if we will see the importance of community and communion, I think if we will do all those things, it will produce in us an infectious and contagious joy that the people of Raleigh will notice and come to. And I hope that's what we will be. I hope that we will be a church in the 21st century that embodies all the distinctives of the church of the first century. And I'm so excited to see where we get to go from here when this season of quarantine is over. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so good to us. We can't fathom how you love us. We can't fathom how you look out for us. We are collectively thrilled that we get to be participants in your church, in your kingdom, in your bride that you came to rescue. Thank you for Jesus, who is the tie that binds us together and reconciles us to you. God, I pray that we would be every bit as unflinchingly the church in the 21st century as they were in the first century. Give us boldness to go where you would have us go. Give us zeal and energy to get there. Give us a devotion to you to sustain us. Give us an infectious joy to draw others in. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

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

Good morning, Grace, and happy Mother's Day to the moms and the grandmas, especially those of you for whom it's your first Mother's Day. I know that's super special. As we always try to acknowledge at Grace, you know, Mother's Day can be a complicated holiday. For many of us, it's a joyful occasion. We are blessed to have wonderful moms, and to celebrate them is really, really easy, and I hope that you're doing that. And I hope that you will be a source of joy for your mom today if she's a great one. Speaking of great ones, happy Mother's Day, Donna. You're the best. Thanks for being a great mom. You're so much better of a parent than dad. For some of us, we have moms that we get to celebrate. For others of us, it's tough. It's tenuous. Maybe that relationship is strained, and Mother's Day is a difficult reminder for you, and our hearts are with you. For others of us, Mother's Day is hard because it reminds us of loss. It reminds us of someone that we don't get to have in our lives anymore. And if that's your Mother's Day today, particularly in isolation, it's even more difficult. Our hearts and our prayers are with you as well. So our prayers are that if you have a great mom, that you'll get some joy today. Our prayers are if you have a strained relationship with your mom, that we'll pray for restoration with you today. And if you are grieving because of loss, then we are grieving and praying with you today. So whatever it takes to make today a happy Mother's Day for you, we wish you a happy Mother's Day. I'm thrilled to be in a new series with you guys. I'm thrilled for the series that we're about to walk into as we move through the book of Acts in our series called Still the Church. When I got here three years ago, Grace had just spent a lot of time in the book of Acts. And so I've been kind of just steadily waiting and patiently waiting for the right time to jump into the book of Acts as your pastor. And so we've been plowing ground in other areas of scripture, but I think that now is the time to finally land in this incredible book in the New Testament. Acts is the fifth book in the New Testament. If you have a Bible there at home with you, I hope that you'll open it up and be looking through the text as we look at it this morning. I think it's the right time to get into the book of Acts because this moment in church history is so very unique. I'm not sure that church has had to exist in isolation like this before. It's been persecuted. It's been underground. It's been small and subversive, but it's not had to be isolated. And it's a challenging thing to know how to do church like this because church is a fundamentally communal expression. It's a fundamentally communal institution. It's meant to bring people together and to be done with others. The Christian life is best lived in the circle of other people who love you and who love Jesus. It's impossible to live it otherwise. And so it's fair to think, man, how do we express the church in this time of isolation? How do we obey God when we can't be together? How do we exercise this communal institution when we can't be a community like we're used to being? And then we ask questions, what is church going to look like moving forward? Because I don't think it's an overstatement to say that the church may never be the same again. You know, if you go back to the beginning of this year, the only way to experience grace on a Sunday morning was by coming here and experiencing it in person. You fast forward to the middle of March of this year, and now the only way to experience grace is virtually online like you are right now. And I've become increasingly aware that whenever it is that we can return and people can fill these seats again, we're going to have to be a dual church. You're going to have to be able to experience grace both online and in person. It's going to be a different way of doing church. And so as we sit in this time in history where church is going to look different than it's ever looked in the past, it makes me wonder, man, how do we do church? And I think to answer those questions, we can go back to our roots in the book of Acts. And we can pull out some of the founding principles and practices and philosophies that helped to establish the church in the book of Acts. And by examining what God valued as he launched his church, as he launched his eternal kingdom here on earth, and when I say church, what I mean is the collection of believers throughout all of history. If you are someone who claims God as your father and Jesus as your savior, then you are a member of the universal big C church. And so when I talk about church in this series, and really ever, I'm talking about big church. I'm talking about everyone who's ever loved and known God and been loved by God. And the origin, the roots of this church are found in the book of Acts. The book of Acts tells us about a group of believers trying to get a fledgling infant church off the ground, finding its legs like a baby deer. And if we can learn what was important to God at this point in the church, then we know what's important to God now. And I think what we can do is pull out from Acts lessons that we can apply to church and our Christian lives today. Now, as we sit here at the beginning of the series, I would share with you that Acts is 28 chapters long, and this is an eight-week series. So we're not going to cover everything. We're not going to cover all the stories in Acts. I just can't. So I'm trying to pull out the instances and the stories that reveal to us some of these founding principles that we can apply today. But we do have a reading plan. Our reading plan is online at graceralee.org slash live, and you can find that there, and it's a six-week plan to read through the book of Acts together. So hopefully you're reading through that, and you will consume all of Acts as we hit the highlights here on Sunday mornings. Before we just jump into Acts, I want to give us some context. I want us to understand, do a little bit of background work on this great book of Acts. And even before we do that, I wanted to share with you that one of my big motivations in this series as I've studied for it and steeped in it and prepared for it is that you would get a sense of the grandeur and the majesty of church and what it is. So this monolithic institution that is God's eternal signature on our temporal world that is how he's chosen to express himself is through the hearts and the lives of men as the Holy Spirit interacts and reaches out and draws other people in and then builds them up as disciples, that this thing that we participate in, when we walk through these doors any Sunday morning or now when we open our laptop or we click the link and we participate in communal church together, we're not participating in grace. We're not participating in a thing that started back in 2000. We're not participating in a thing that was launched out of another church just that. We go back 2000 years through history. We step into a rich legacy that people have fought for and bled for and died for and spilled their lives out for. There is nothing on this planet more special to God than his church. He calls it his bride. He fights for it. Jesus died for it. Jesus established it, and he is coming back to rescue it. So as we look at this fledgling church begin to walk, and we sit in the established church now, let's have a sense of the shoulders that we stand on as we participate in God's kingdom. And Acts is the story of the beginning of that church. Acts was written by a guy named Luke. Luke was a physician who was a traveling companion of Paul. Paul was responsible for writing most of the New Testament. Most of Acts recounts the missionary journeys of Paul, and we're not going to look at those very closely. We're going to look at other instances. And Acts is really the second part of one work. It's the second half of the gospel of Luke. They were written together. Luke says that he wrote them to a guy named Theophilus. And now we don't know much about Theophilus. We would guess based on his name that he wasn't Jewish. He had a different heritage. But other than that, it's just a guess. We don't know a lot about Theophilus. But he was a guy that Luke appreciated and he wanted him to understand. So he wrote him the gospel of Luke and he wrote him the book of Acts so that he could have an understanding of the life of Christ and what was going on at the beginning of the church. Acts is called Acts because it's called both the Acts of the Holy Spirit and the Acts of the Apostles. It's a retelling of those early years of the church that was empowered by the Holy Spirit and was executed by the apostles. And it just depends on your translation which one you're going to see in your Bible. But both are really entirely appropriate names for this book of the Bible. Acts also represents a large part of the narrative arc of the New Testament. If you think about the story or the timeline of the New Testament, it really goes from the birth of Christ, 0 AD, to his death. The Gospels cover 33 years of history. And then after that, early church history goes until about 65 or 66 AD. So there's about 30 years, a swath of 30 years that takes place in the book of Acts as we follow it there. So the narrative arc of the New Testament goes from the Gospels all the way into the book of Acts. And the Gospels are kind of self-contained. And I think what's interesting about the book of Acts as it interacts with the other books in the New Testament is you can kind of look at the other books in the New Testament, the letters to the churches, as kind of zooming in or double-clicking on different portions within the book of Acts. So in Acts, there's an account where Paul interacts with a Philippian jailer, and that jailer actually comes to faith. And if you wanted to double-click on that section of Acts and zoom in and really get a sense of what was going on in the city of Philippi, you could read the book of Philippians. And it would tell you more about that. Acts refers to being in Ephesus and wanting to go to Ephesus. And if you wanted to double-click on that portion of Acts, you can open up the book of Ephesians, and it will tell you more about what's going on there. So Acts kind of serves as the narrative arc of the New Testament. And in the rest of the Bible, you can kind of drop back into Acts at different places and get a bigger sense of what's going on there. But really what's happening in the book of Acts is the beginning of this church, this thing that we participate in now. And as we arrive at chapter one, we need to understand what the disciples have just gone through. Now, I happen to believe, I hold this loosely, if I get to heaven and I find out I'm wrong, or if somebody on this side of heaven shows me convincing evidence, I'll let go of this opinion. So I hold this one loosely, but I'm of the opinion that the disciples were largely late college, early career age guys, probably in their late teens, early 20s. And Jesus invested his life in them. He spent three years with them. I am convinced that Jesus spent three years here on earth preceding his death in public ministry for the main purpose of training these disciples, of equipping them and calling them and empowering them because he knew that he was going to hand off the keys to his earthly kingdom, his eternal kingdom, to the disciples when he went to heaven. And so these disciples, these young men, have walked with Jesus for three years. They watched their Savior hang up on the cross. They sat in the confusion of the Friday and Saturday before Easter. They discovered the empty tomb. They walked with Jesus for 40 more days as a resurrected Messiah. And then Jesus goes up into heaven. And before he goes up into heaven, at the end of the book of Matthew and here at the beginning of the book of Acts, he tells them virtually the same thing. In Acts, it's called the Great Commission, in Acts 1.8, and he says, you will receive power to be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and even to the ends of the earth. And the disciples received their marching orders. They're very similar to the marching orders that Matthew recounts in his gospel at the end, where they're told, go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. It's the same marching orders. It's a summary of the same instructions as Jesus ascends back into heaven where he says, now you go and you build the church. You go reach people and then you build them up. That's the instructions that they receive. And that's where we're at at the beginning of Acts. I can't imagine what it would be like to be the disciples and to be sitting around and trying to figure out, how do we make this thing go? To realize that the Savior of the world had left you the keys to the kingdom and said, now go and build my church. And normally, when we're in chapter one of Acts, when a church goes through Acts, they look at chapter one, Acts 1-8, the Great Commission, what I just talked about is where we focus. But as I thought about it for grace, honestly, we just went through that a couple months ago, back in February during our Grace is Going Home campaign series, which feels like a lifetime ago. Can you believe that was this year, like in 2020? It was a simpler time then, when you could hug and handshake and actually be around people. But for two weeks in that series, we actually went through the Great Commission. We said, how is grace going to fulfill our part of that? How are we going to evangelize and make disciples? So if you don't remember that, or if you weren't a part of grace before then, or for whatever reason you missed it, you can go back, and I've done pretty much two sermons on this great commission. So this morning I wanted to focus on something else in chapter 1 that often gets passed over, and this is just a tiny little instance. It feels almost insignificant as you read through the book of Acts, but I think it's hugely significant. The disciples are there. Christ has ascended back into heaven. They are tasked with building the church, and God says, just wait. You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Just chill out until then. So they're sitting around looking at each other going, what do we do? And they know that it's their job to build the church. And they now understand that God has chosen to use human hands to build his church, to use people to build his church. And I think the interesting question becomes, if that's the case, if they're supposed to build the church, then what kind of people does God choose to use to build his church? I think that's the most interesting question we could ask this morning. As God assigns to his disciples the task of building the church, and it becomes evident to them that people are the building blocks of this church, what kind of people does he choose to use to build it? And I think that this is actually shown to us in this first chapter of Acts. See, right before Jesus died, he was betrayed by one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot. And what was 12 disciples now at this point in the story is only 11. And the very first thing the disciples do when they're tasked with building the church is go, okay, we lost a disciple. We need to replace them. We need to build. We need to have a firm foundation for this church to build it on. We need to get our leadership squared away before we do anything else. So let's replace Judas. And as an aside, I think that's a really interesting thing. Leadership gurus would go nuts with this, but it is very interesting to me that before they did anything, they shored up the foundational leadership of the church. And as they're doing this, as they say, okay, we need to replace Judas, we need another disciple, there's actually a discussion where they talk about the qualifications for this office. What kind of person do they want? Where they ask the question that we're asking, what kind of person is God going to choose to use to build his church? And if you think about us having that conversation, gosh, what would it take to be a disciple? Who would we put as a foundational leader of the universal church at its very infancy? We would probably want someone who is degreed up, right? I mean, at least a doctorate. They'd have to have a doctorate or maybe a master's from a really fancy seminary. They would really have to know their stuff. We would want to have seen them come up through the system. We would want to see their successful ministries. We would want to read about them in some magazines. We would want to read some of their articles that they published. We would want to know who this person was. They would probably need to be a successful author, right? We would be looking at their qualifications, at their training, at their degrees, at their excellency. But this is not what the disciples did. When the disciples were tasked with replacing a disciple, there was really only one criteria that mattered to them. Look at what it is. We see it in verse 21. We have a Bible, look with me there, verse 21 and 22. This is the qualification to be a disciple, to be added to this foundational leadership team for the church. This is the kind of person resume or any of that. They simply say, this person has to have been with us from the beginning until now. From the baptism of John the Baptist until the resurrection, until right now, which represents three years of time. And we don't often think about this. We might not even realize it. We think about Jesus traveling around doing his ministry, and he's got the 12 disciples with him. But in reality, there was really about 120 brothers, Peter says, who were with Jesus the whole time. And maybe some of them were added a year in or two years in. Maybe some of them had only been there for a few months. But by this time in history, there's about 120 people who are a traveling group of disciples, who are a traveling group of the church. And what's interesting to me is that they made all the same sacrifices that the disciples did. Especially if you think about somebody who had been there since the beginning. They put forward the names of Joseph and of Matthias. Those are the two nominees to be one of the disciples, to be the replacement disciple. And even the fact that they got nominated tells me that the disciples had watched these men. They had watched them interact. They had seen them day to day. They had watched them lose their temper. They had watched them apologize for losing their temper. They had watched them have zero patience and have one other person tug on their shirt and ask for something. They had listened to the way that these men had interacted with Jesus and interacted with others. They had watched them in quiet moments when they didn't know they were being watched. And from all the people that were there, the disciples put forward these two men. I think it speaks volumes about their character that they were even put forth. But then on top of that, I've always been blown away by the fact that these men made all the same sacrifices the disciples did. If Matthias had been with them for three years, he left his family like they did. He slept outside on the dirt like they did. He wondered where his next meal was going to come from like they did. He got sent out two by two to minister and to proclaim Jesus' name like they did. He failed at ministry and stubbed his toe over and over again and was gotten onto and chided by Jesus just like they did. I marvel at Matthias because Matthias made all of the sacrifices with none of the glory. He made all the same sacrifices the disciples did, but he received none of the praise. Can you imagine what it would be like to be walking around doing everything those guys are doing? Being just as qualified as them, but yet not allowed to be in the inner circle, not be in the meetings, not have things explained to you, not get the glory that they get. It's all the sacrifice with none of the glory, yet because Matthias believed so fervently in Jesus, because he loved Jesus, because he believed he was who he said he was, because he had faith and because he had a pure heart, he served. I think it's remarkable to learn that Matthias served in obscurity for three years, not ever expecting to get any glory, to have any access to the trappings of being a disciple, to have any of the prominence that came with that label, just simply because he loved Jesus and he believed in what Jesus was doing and he wanted to be a part of building this church even before he understood really what the church was. I've always marveled at Matthias. I've marveled at his willingness to serve in obscurity for that amount of time. And it makes me wonder, why is this the kind of person that God would choose? Why does obscurity seem to be a big deal to God? Because he's constantly calling people out of obscurity. And before he calls them, sometimes he pushes them into obscurity and forces them to stay there until they learn what he needs them to learn. And then he pulls them out of it when they're ready. Before Moses was ready to be used, he's pushed into the wilderness, into obscurity to serve God as a shepherd for 40 years. David is told he's going to be the next king of Israel, but he's pushed into obscurity as a shepherd and then fleeing from the king of Israel with no recognition, with no glory, with no trappings as his faith is tested and as his heart is prepared to become the king of Israel. Story after story after story, even Saul in this book who becomes Paul gets converted and then goes off for seven years before he begins to minister. He goes into obscurity where God can work on him. Over and over again, these people who toil in obscurity are the kind of people that God plucks out and puts into positions of prominence. They're the kind of people that he chooses to use to build his church. And if we wonder, well, why does God seem to care so much about toiling and obscurity? I think this is the reason, that obscurity is the refining fire for our motives. Obscurity is the refining fire for our motives. It tests our motives. When we're forced to toil in obscurity, when we're forced to do something to work and we get no recognition and we get no praise and we're not raised to prominence, it's just the work and the satisfaction of accomplishing it. It really shows us if our hearts and our motives are pure. It tests our mettle. Whatever's actually there is going to rise to the surface in obscurity. I know that's true because I've experienced it in my own life. When Jen and I were engaged back in my mid-20s, we were looking for a church to be a part of, and we went to this large church in metro Atlanta called Crosspoint Church. It was a great church, and the pastor there is a great, great man of God who still pours into me today, and I'm so grateful for him. And we only went to the church for a little while, but while we were there, I went to the student pastor, a guy named Matt Pylan, and I said, hey, man, I want to help you in your youth group. Anything you want me to do, I want to help you. And when I met with him, I kind of gave him my resume, which at the time was okay for a guy in his mid-20s. I had a degree in pastoral ministries. I had worked full-time with Young Life for a couple of years. I had experience as a student pastor at a church by then. I had volunteered. I had worked at church camps a long time. So my resume for youth ministry was half decent at the age of 24. And so I go to Matt and I sit down with him and I kind of give him my resume. Here's how important I am. Aren't you lucky that I'm here to serve in your youth group? I'll do anything you want me to do. Where would you have me? And he says, man, this is so great. We have a sixth grade boy small group that needs a small group leader. Will you help with that? You want me to lead the sixth grade boy small group? He says, no, no, no, no, no. I don't need you to lead it. I've got a guy doing that. But, you know, if you want to help him. You want me to help a guy lead a small group? Or you just want me to sit around, talk to the kids? Like, did you not hear my resume? But I swallowed the pill, I took the medicine, I'm like, all right, fine, and I go and I help out. And on Sunday mornings, I would get there an hour early, and during one of the services, I would go out and meet with the boys. The other guy would facilitate the conversation, and I would just try to make them laugh and win them over. And I think that lasted probably three or four weeks max. And I flamed out and I never talked to Matt again. Now, what does that show us about my motives? I didn't go to him because I wanted to help his youth group. I didn't go to him because I had a heart for sixth grade boys and I just really wanted them to engage in the gospel. I went to him because I wanted a platform, because I wanted him to go, oh man, that's amazing that you have this experience. Let's get you teaching. Let's strap a microphone to your face and get you up in front of everybody in a position of prominence. Let's fuss over you and make a big deal out of you. And because he didn't, and because the fire of obscurity brought my motives to the surface, I flamed out in four weeks. Because it wasn't about the kids, it was about me. Conversely, when I think about obscurity revealing pure motives, I think about a man in our church named Ron Torrance. To know Ron Torrance is to love this man. He's an older gentleman. I'm not gonna guess at his decade. He's older than me. He is retired. And I'll never forget the first time I met Ron. I got hired as the senior pastor here in March of 2017, and I came up to look for a house for Jen and Lily and I to stay in. And while I was here, I came to the church. It happened to be on a Tuesday, just to walk around, familiarize myself with the place and to pray over it. And Ron was here, as he always is on Tuesdays, with another faithful servant we have in our church named Ralph, who they come every Tuesday and arrange the chairs and get us ready for Sunday morning worship. And I introduced myself to Ron, and I told him that I was going to be the next senior pastor at Grace, and his head sank, and he came up with a huge smile, and he said, Praise God. I've been praying for you. Welcome. So grateful to have you here. And he immediately made me feel right at home. And Ron, if you're watching this, I want you to know, I'll never forget that moment. And Ron, a lot of us don't know this. Ron comes every Tuesday. He's an older guy. He's retired. He has no reason to do this, but he comes every Tuesday and he cleans the offices for us. He vacuums our offices. He takes out our trash. He serves a bunch of people who are young enough to be his children and ought to be serving him. Without ever being asked, he shows up and he faithfully does that every Tuesday. And what's more is he gets here early. He gets here at like 7 or 7.30 so that he can do all the vacuuming and take out all the trash without interrupting the work day and being an inconvenience to the staff. Are you kidding? I marvel at his grace and at his humility. And he serves in obscurity every Tuesday because he loves the church, because he loves to serve, because he loves to help, because he wants to be a conduit of God's generosity and love. And I want to be more like Ron. And God builds his church with people like Ron. And aren't we attracted to those people? Aren't we put off by folks who push themselves to the forefront, who raise their hand and go, I want to do it. Give me the role. Give me the responsibility. Aren't we put off by jerks like me who in their early 20s go to youth pastor and are like, I'll do anything you want me to do, but really I want you to let me teach. That's not what we want. We don't want that kind of arrogance because that's all about you. That's all about building your kingdom. That's all about making your name great. That's all about the trappings with none of the sacrifice. So God is looking for people like Ron and like Matthias who make all of the sacrifices with none of the glory because their motives and their hearts have been purified in the refining fire of obscurity and they have been tested to be true. Those are the kinds of people that God uses to build his church. Those are the kind of people that we want to use to build the church here at Grace. I'm excited for this series because I think over and over again you will see that the building blocks of God's church are humble servants with pure hearts. The people that God taps on the shoulders, the people that God puts in positions of prominence are not the ones raising their hands going, let me do that, I want to do that. They're not the ones trying to forward their own agenda. They're not the ones trying to bask in the limelight. They're the ones who are content to quietly serve and make all of the sacrifices with none of the glory because they're not after the glory anyways. All they're about is building God's kingdom and serving him and loving him and expressing the love that they feel from God to others. That's all they care about. And if they never get plucked out of obscurity and put into prominence, they could care less because it's not about that. It's about serving the Father. Those are the kinds of people that God uses to build his church. Those are the kinds of people that we want to pursue at Grace. And those are the kinds of people that I hope we will all try to be. Quiet, humble servants who are perfectly happy to serve God and to serve His church and to serve His kingdom without ever being noticed because that's not what we're doing it for anyways. I hope I can become more like that. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We're grateful for you. We're so grateful for your church and what it does and how it draws us together and how you imbue us with purpose that we get to serve the creator, God. I pray, God, that we would work and toil for an audience of one. God, make us all more like Matthias. Make us all perfectly content to toil in obscurity because we love you and we love your church. And let us trust you that when the time is right, you'll put us in the place where you need us to be. God, I pray that even in this time of isolation and uncertainty, that you would build grace. That you would piece together the blocks of people that you are using and plucking out of obscurity, the humble servants that you've gathered here, and that you would build this church and we would build your kingdom here. God, I thank you for our moms. I thank you for the good ones that we get to enjoy. God, I pray for the ones with whom we are strained that you'd bring restoration there. God, I pray for those of us experiencing loss, that you would bring comfort there. And we pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.