Sermons tagged with Christmas

Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service, which would be easy to do because we've got the holiday hoot going on and it's probably going to be pouring down rain. So you may want to stay and wait that out. If you were like me and you looked out the window at like nine o'clock, you're like, oh, look at that, it's raining. And you didn't know it was going to torrentially downpour on us, then you don't get any bonus points. But if you knew the forecast and you came anyways, that's impressive. That's almost like holiday weekend attendance there. So good for you. Also here at the beginning of the service, I just want to give everyone in the room a chance to get your cough drop out and put it in your mouth right now so that we don't hack through the entire service because it's that time of year, right? Mike mentioned earlier in the announcements that we are in the third part of our series called Twas the Night. Well, we're looking at Christmas, the greatest story ever told, and we're looking at it through the lens or perspective of the different people in the story. This week, we arrive at Joseph. We're going to look at his example of humble and consistent obedience in the Christmas story and in the early years of the life of Jesus. And we're going to ask what we can learn from that example. Now you'll remember, some of you, that this series started on December the 3rd and I was supposed to preach about Joseph on December the 3rd, but on December the 2nd, after the kids went down, Jen looked at me, my wife, and she said, Hey, what's the sermon tomorrow? And I ran her through the sermon and she made a face and I went, you don't like this one very much. And she goes, it's not, it's not your best one. And I said, well, what do I do? Like, it's Saturday night, you know? Like, it's been shipped, you know? And she goes, well, that's not really good enough. So you should probably go to your office and write it again. You can nap tomorrow. And I was like, and I knew in my gut she was right. Like, darn it, she's right. Because the sermon was going to be Christmas season. It was the first one. Christmas season is a stressful season. We all have things going on. We all have family obligations. It's just event, event, event, event. It feels so busy. Everything's packed that it's super stressful. Well, Joseph had maybe the most stressful Christmas of all time. And what was at stake if he let the stress of Christmas win is that he would miss the Messiah. Gross. That's a gross. That's dumb. That's like, I just gave you the important parts of that sermon. To make that 28 minutes and make you sit through it would be a disservice to you. So Jen was right. And then I remembered, I've written all the sermons already. I'm just going to bump them up a week. And then that will give me two weeks to come up with something on Joseph. And what I'm going to tell you about Joseph today, I think, is way better than that. Now, you may leave and be like, should have done the last couple of weeks has developed within me a much deeper appreciation for Joseph. I think he's an underappreciated figure in the Bible and portion of the Christmas story. Now, Joseph is the earthly father of Jesus, and we've all probably heard of him before, I would guess. But what I find interesting about Joseph is that even though he was the earthly father of Jesus, he had a very important part to play in the story of Jesus. In scriptures, we have no recorded words of Joseph. We don't see a single thing that he said. We don't know a single thing that he thought. Well, those are lost to history. I'm sure Joseph did have words, but his words are lost to history. And he fades out of the gospel narrative relatively quickly. We see him in Matthew and we see him in Luke. We see him in Matthew and that's where we're going to be today, Matthew chapters 1 and 2. Having and being obedient each time. We see him in Luke as part of the Christmas narrative, but he's got no words that he uses except he just takes his family faithfully to Jerusalem. And then we see him interact with Jesus when they left him at the temple when Jesus was 12 years old and they have to go back and get him. But beyond that and these three interactions that we're going to read today, we don't have anything else about Joseph in the Bible. We just know that by the end of the story, he's faded out of the narrative and we don't know why or what happened, but everyone's best guess is that Joseph simply passed away. Culturally, he was probably older than Mary, and he probably died before his time, which would imply that Jesus grew up grieving the loss of an earthly father, which I think is interesting, but not the point here. But we have fleeting glimpses of Joseph in the gospel narratives. And because we don't have any of his words, we can only know Joseph by his actions. We can only know Joseph by what he did. He doesn't get an eternal press conference to explain himself. We can only know Joseph by his actions and by how he responded. And there's three different times that God comes to him and tells him to do something. And all three times, Joseph responds with obedience. And I want us to look at those times. So if you have a Bible with you, please turn to Matthew chapter one. We're going to be in chapters one and two. If you don't have a Bible with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. But in Matthew chapter one, beginning in verse 19, I'm going to read through 24. Actually, I'm going to read through 25, but that won't be on the screen. Joseph has just found out that Mary is pregnant. And this is problematic because they have not yet biblically known each other. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. When Joseph woke up from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded. He took his wife, in verse 25,. God has spoken to Mary through an angel. He said, you're going to conceive. You're going to have a son. His name is going to be Jesus. He's going to be the Savior of the world. And she's engaged to be married to Joseph. And that wasn't Joseph that did that. So this is problematic. So Joseph, because he was a just man and a righteous man, had resolved to leave her quietly. And that speaks a lot to the character of Joseph because he did not have to do that, especially in that day and age. It's gross how women were treated in that culture, but he could have just publicly walked away from her and shamed her, and he chose not to do that. He was going to do it quietly. And after he had made that decision, the Lord comes to him in a dream and says, hey, the baby that's inside Mary is from me. Stay with Mary. Now, a lot of pastors and a lot of pulpits and a lot of small group leaders have used this opportunity to make some jokey jokes about Joseph and staying with Mary. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. Not because I find it to be disrespectful. But because those jokes have been trodden. And there's no good material there. So we're just going to move right on. With marveling. At the faith of Joseph. That says. Okay. And stays with Mary. He did not have to do that. But he was a just man. And somehow, this is pure speculation, but it's hard for me to believe that this was the first time God had directed Joseph to do something. Because that's a pretty big something. The first time in your life God shows up and says, hey, I want you to do something for me. I've got this act of obedience. I've got this step of obedience I want you to take. That's a pretty big step to raise a son that's not your own, that is supposed to be the savior of the world. That's a pretty big step of obedience. And yet Joseph takes it. Joseph takes this step of obedience, sees it through. We know the story. They go to Jerusalem for the census and they end up in Bethlehem and Jesus is born in a manger and the angels and the shepherds show up to celebrate. And at that point, the narrative is kind of about Mary and what happens after that. But in Matthew chapter 2, we see Joseph pop up again. Verse 13 through 15. Now when they had departed, these are the wise men, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise, take a man with a one and a half to two year old son. And he says, Hey, I want you to take your family and I want you to flee to Egypt. Now this, and here's, here's what he does. He gets up the next day, that very morning. And he goes, this to me is a more remarkable step of obedience than choosing to remain with Mary. Do you understand this made him a refugee fleeing into a foreign nation? We have no reason to believe that Joseph was a man of means. We have no reason to believe that at all. He was from a small city called Nazareth. Tradition has it that he was a carpenter, although I've been taught that the word there can be interchanged with mason in the original language. And there's a lot more stone quarries around Nazareth than there are trees. So more than likely, Joseph was a mason. So if you've ever had that bumper sticker, my boss is a Jewish carpenter. If you were literally a carpenter who worked for a literal Jew, then that was true. Otherwise, I got bad news for you. Jesus was probably a Mason. Anyways. He had to uproot this family, leave his career and professional ties. He had to take a two-year-old across the border as a refugee. Y'all, I have a two-year-old. I won't take that kid to Wilmington. Like, I don't want to drive him to Greensboro and back. It's a hassle, those kids. He uproots him the very next day and takes him to Egypt, where we have no reason to believe he had ties in Egypt. He reestablishes himself, finds a way to provide, finds a way to protect, finds a way to make money, does what he has to do to care for his family. It's a remarkable step of obedience. And then the last one we see is a few verses down, chapter 2, verse 19. But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, saying, Rise, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child's life are dead. And he rose, and he took, loads everything back up, cuts ties in Egypt, migrates back to Nazareth, reestablishes himself again. All three times, Joseph gets what are pretty tall orders. God didn't appear to him in a dream and be like, hey, read the Bible for 30 minutes a day. And then the next day, okay, I'll do it, Lord. He said, move your family to another country. That's hard. And he did it the next day. He didn't talk to the city elders about it. He didn't go counsel with his rabbi. He didn't throw a fleece out and say, God, I'm going to pray about this again, and if you want me to do it, make the fleece wet and the ground dry. He didn't do that. He got up and he went. The example of Joseph's simple, humble, consistent obedience is remarkable. And I do not believe that he gets enough credit in the Christmas story and in the way that we think about the figures in the Bible and in his value to the kingdom of God. To me, Joseph is the personification of this verse in James. You can turn with me James chapter 1 verses 22 through 24. I thought about doing this morning to get to James a sword drill with you guys. Raise your hand if you know what a sword drill is. A.k.a. raise your hand if you grew up Southern Baptist. So in Southern Baptist Sunday School, a sword drill is you would hold the Bible up by the spine. I've got my finger in the mark. But you would hold the Bible up by the spine, and the teacher would call out a verse, and you'd slam your Bible on your lap, and you'd scramble to find it as fast as you could. First person to find the verse stands up and starts to read it, and they're the winner. And they're the most spiritual person in the room and they're destined for greatness, right? That's how that went. So I thought about having a good old fashioned sword drill right here in the middle of church, but I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I didn't do it. But in James 1, 22 through 24 is this famous passage that many of us have probably heard before. And I believe that Joseph embodies and personifies this passage. Verse 22. Joseph was a doer of the word, not just a hearer. He was a man who received instructions from God, and he followed through with them. And so we know that Joseph was righteous because he obeyed. We don't have any words of Joseph, but we know that he was a righteous man because he was a man that obeyed God. And the disciple John wrote a whole book, the letter of 1 John, where the entire point of the book is, if you say you love God and you do not obey him, you're a liar. Joseph loved God. Joseph obeyed him. He was a doer of the word. And now it may sound simple to be a doer of the word and not a hearer. Simply act. Don't just listen to sermons. Don't just listen to small groups. Don't just listen to books, to messages, to different things that we picked up along the years, to the counsel of godly friends. Don't just listen to it, but employ it and do it. When you feel God nudging you to take a step of obedience, take it. That is a doer of the word. And if you're like me, if I could sit down with you individually over some coffee and ask you, what do you feel like God's been nudging you to do? What are the steps, what's the step or steps of obedience that you believe God would like you to take in your life? What have you heard him tell you to do but maybe you haven't done yet? I very seriously doubt that any of you would lack for answers there. And that's okay. We should all have that answer all the time. At Grace, we say that we're step-takers. We're always taking the next step of obedience. In this way, we're making disciples. It's okay to have that list of things that we ought to do. But let me ask you this. And I don't mean to step on toes, but just hear me out. If I could ask you that question six months ago, would your answers be pretty much the same as they would be today? If I could ask you that question a year ago, three years ago, five years ago, how long have your answers been the same to the question of God wants you to take a step of obedience, what is it? How many times has he reminded you of that? And yet we haven't been doers. So I don't say that to unduly convict or to guilt. But I do want us to see that being a doer of God's word is far more easily said than done. And here's why being a doer of God's word is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important. Here's why being an obedient servant is so important. Here's why humble, quiet, consistent, silent obedience is so important because I am convinced that humble, quiet obedience is the brick and mortar with which God builds his church. I am absolutely convinced that that type of humble, quiet, day after day, relationship after relationship, step after step, task after task, season after season, that kind of life lived in obedience to God and fealty to him is the brick and mortar with which God builds his kingdom, the church. I'm absolutely convinced. And that's so important because we've talked about this before. Jesus came to live a perfect life and to die a perfect death, but that's not all he came for. If it was, then why did he waste three years letting the disciples follow him around being annoying, asking stupid questions? Because he was preparing them to lead the church that he was establishing. Because he didn't just come to live a perfect life and die a perfect death. He came to establish the church and equip us to build it. That's what he came to do. And when he left, he meant this so ardently that he spent three years of his life training everyone around him to do it. And then when he left, he looked at them and he gave them what we refer to them as the Great Commission that we find in Matthew 28 and in Acts chapter 1. Go into all the world, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And then another way he says it is, take the gospel to the corner, to Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria, even to the ends of the earth. Go tell my story. What he's telling them in not so many words is, I have equipped you and purposed you to go and build the church. And every generation of saints and believers after them, that is our sole biggest duty is to build God's church, to build his kingdom. At Grace, we have five traits, and I'm going to start talking about those traits more. But one of them, the one that we want to push everyone to, if you are a partner of grace, we want you to be a kingdom builder. Someone who realizes and understands that every gift you have, all of your time, all of your talent, and all of your resources have been given to you by God so that you might be used to build his kingdom. It's our purpose on earth to figure out how we marshal what we have to build God's kingdom, which is to add numbers to it and to strengthen those in it. And I am convinced that the Josephs, the unquoted, maybe misunderstood, maybe non-heroic. Figures in our church's history are the literal brick and mortar with which God builds his church. That obedience is how God builds his kingdom. And when I think about someone who personifies that, first of all, I would just say honestly, I can think of several people in this room that are that to me. But I didn't want to humiliate anyone, so I'm not going to use you as an example. When I think of someone who lived this life and was used in ways far beyond her expectations to build God's church. I think of my mama. And I've mentioned her before, and I think I've even expressed this before. But as I thought about the best example of this, I just couldn't get away from it because I think it's so powerful. My mama was born Linda Sandifer in Red Stick, Louisiana, Baton Rouge. Poor family. She has a brother named Doty. All right? That's his name. That's not his nickname. It's his name, Doty. And when she was 17 years old, she met my papa, Don Green, who grew up in South Georgia. And he said, he grew up on a literal dirt floor, and he told me when I was growing up that they were so poor that his family could only afford to buy one bean, and they would tie a string to it and take turns swallowing it for dinner. While we're here, he used to say, when I was growing up, we were so poor that when the family went to Kentucky Fried Chicken, we had to pay to lick other people's fingers. If you're too young to get that, just ask somebody who's chuckling. They'll explain it to you later. They were married at 18 and 19 years old. And at the end of Mama's life, she had four kids. She stayed with Don. I loved my Mama and Papa. She was widowed in her early 60s. And for the last about year and a half, two years of her life, I would have coffee with her every other Monday for Mama Mondays. And I got to know her better than I ever had. And what I learned about her is that she never, ever felt important. She felt important to her family. It wasn't anything bad. She's to the broader community. She didn't think she mattered. She never envisioned herself as having much impact. She grew up thinking her older sister, Ann, was prettier and smarter and more talented than she was. My pop, Aldon, had this big bombastic personality, and she was in the shadow of that, helping in the back. And so she never really thought she mattered. When she would hear sermons where the pastor would say things like, God has a purpose for your life, God has a plan, he's gifted you, and he's purposed you for great things in his kingdom. She would think, yeah, not me. I'm just a mom. I'm just doing my thing. Those sermons never really resonated with her. She never saw herself as important to God's kingdom or the church. When she was 72, she got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And praise the Lord, she refused treatment. She said, no way. I'm going to spend the last months of my life seeing my family flying around not doing chemo. And I said, great. She had two bad days. She died. I got to do her funeral. When I got up on the stage to do my part in the funeral, I looked out, there's 400 people in the room. Now listen, I had done several funerals before that. I've done plenty since. The cold reality of life is the older you get, the fewer people who attend. That's just how it goes. For different reasons, and I will not enumerate because it's unnecessary, 400 people don't tend to show up for a 72-year-old's funeral, especially one who's been quietly widowed for over a decade, especially one who never led anything, who never felt important, and was never on the stage. But as I got up there, I looked out, and I saw the contingent of bank tellers that she worked with at First Union who loved her, who all had wonderful things to say about her, who told me how much they appreciated her and the deep impact that she made on their life with her faith and with her consistency. I saw the contingent of the deaf community. She had a daughter who was deaf, and so in learning sign language, she would always sign at the churches where she was to interpret for them. We had a whole contingent of the deaf community that came to honor Linda. I saw her family, 60 deep, that she spent the last six months of her life loving on and visiting, who showed up to honor Linda. All of her kids there loving her. I saw this contingent of girls from the youth group. They were in their 20s or 30s now, but a few years into being a widow, she's in her 60s, and she's like, God, what do you want me to do? And he felt like he wanted her to volunteer in the youth. So she starts showing up to mentor these teenage girls. And they love her. They love Grandma Linda. And they talk her into going unbelievably. She never did anything like this in her life. They talked her into going on a mission trip to Peru. So she's hiking around the Andes with high school girls. It makes no sense to us. But she's just loving on them, just being consistent in their life. And a decade later, they're there to celebrate her. She lived her life thinking she wasn't that important. And 400 people showed up to tell her that she was. Now, how did that happen? Because like Joseph, she lived a life of simple, humble, quiet, consistent obedience. And I'm convinced that is the brick and mortar that God uses to build his church. And I will say this too. If you can relate to Momo, that's how you feel sometimes. If you feel like if you were in the Bible narrative, you'd be a Joseph. No speaking parts for you. God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls. It needs a lot more quiet, consistent obedience than it needs heroes. Do you understand? God's kingdom needs so many more Josephs than it needs Pauls. More people running their mouth, more mouthpieces, more people in leadership, all that stuff. And I know that this is funny for me to say because I'm the pastor of the church, but I don't think you realize how small potatoes I am in the community of pastors, so I'm not really bragging about anything here. To make this point, that God's kingdom needs a lot more Josephs than it needs Pauls to be built successfully. You can check me later on this. Years ago, I noticed it and found it so interesting. If you turn to Romans chapter 16, the last chapter of that letter, that letter was written to the church in Rome that Paul helped to start. And it's an amazing book. It's an amazing book. Jen asked me the other day, if you could preach anything, what would you preach? I said, I would take a year and go through Romans. I will not do that to you, but I would like to. And at the end of Romans, this incredibly technical, loving, wonderful book, all of chapter 16 is devoted to salutations. Greet so-and-so and so-and-so. Tell so-and-so I said hello. Tell so-and-so I love him. You know how many so-and-sos there are in Romans chapter 16? 26 different people are listed by name by Paul, plus two different families that he says to greet. Paul helped to start that church, but those people he listed are the ones that showed up every week and held babies and faithfully ministered and served as elders and small group leaders and made coffee and did the announcements and played the bass. Those 26 people are the ones on whom that church was built. Paul got to play a part in that church and it was an essential part, but make no mistake about it, all those people who are simply listed by name and then forgotten to history, they had so much more to do with the building of the church in Rome through quiet and consistent obedience than Paul ever did. The here's the thing. We never know the results, what the results of what quiet, humble obedience will be. We can never fathom what the results of our obedience will be. We do not know what chess pieces God is moving around the board. We do not know what he intends to do with the next step that he is asking us to take. But here's what we know from Joseph. If he doesn't obey God in the first place and stay with Mary, then she has to live in shame with her parents, likely for the rest of her life, and Jesus grows up a fatherless child. That's likely what happens if he doesn't obey God there. If he doesn't obey God the second time, what could happen is Herod could kill Jesus and the evil one wins early. If he doesn't obey God the third time and go back, then the prophecy that says God will call his son out of Egypt never takes place and isn't fulfilled and Jesus isn't who he says he is and the scriptures are proof false. There's no way Joseph could possibly know those things hinged on his obedience. He just knew that he was the man who did what God asked him to do, and so he did it. You don't know how God is building the kingdom through your faithful, quiet obedience, and you won't know this side of eternity. But I can promise you this. With every step you take of obedience in him, he's laying one more brick to build his kingdom. And it is pushed forward by the kind of faithful obedience that Joseph lived out and that my mom all lived out and that I see so many of you living out. So let's resolve in light of this to be like Joseph, to continue our humble, quiet, consistent, often unseen and unappreciated obedience, believing that God is using those things to build his very kingdom in ways that we cannot fathom. Let's pray. Father, thank you for Joseph. Thank you for what you tell us about him, for what we see in him and can learn from him. Thank you for his example. Lord, I pray that you would help us be doers of the word, not just hearers. But that when you ask us to take a step of obedience, we would have the courage and the faith and the discipline to wake up the next morning, the very next hour, and do it. And God, would you let us experience what it is to be used by you to build your kingdom as we simply do the next thing that you've placed in front of us. Father, we love you and we pray these things in your son's name. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Just right up front, I've been getting a lot of flack this morning for going halfsies on my Christmas spirit. I understand that. But listen, I tried on everything last night, and I am doing you a public service by not wearing those bottoms. All right? This is for you. It's not for me. I'd be more comfortable in those, but I made a decision for the betterment of the church, and I would appreciate if you could respect that choice. Now, we are in part two of our series called Twas the Night, where we're looking at the story of Christmas, largely based in Luke chapter two, and we're looking at it from different perspectives within that story to see what we can learn from them and their experience within the Christmas story. And so last week, we looked at Simeon's reaction to Jesus and the innkeeper's reaction to Jesus. We juxtaposed those and kind of learned a bit from those two perspectives. Next week, we're going to look at Joseph and his humble, quiet, consistent obedience and what we can learn from that. And then Christmas Eve, we're going to look at Mary. There's this verse tucked away at the end of the Christmas narrative, towards the end of chapter 2, that I really, really love where there's this joy that's almost, words would cheapen it, this joy that Mary experiences. So we're going to look at that verse for Christmas Eve, and I'm very excited for the Christmas Eve service and message that we get to share with you that day. Today, we're going to look at the Christmas story from the perspective of the wise men. Now, I'll give credit where it's due. Aaron Gibson and I went on a little retreat in September to go ahead and plan out the Christmas series and figure out what we were going to do. The idea for this morning and what we're talking about this morning comes from him. So if it's good, tell him so. If it's not, let's just assume that there was an issue with the delivery and he needs to choose a better messenger or just hold his good ideas and preach them himself. But this morning I want to look at the perspective of the wise men. Now we don't read about the wise men in Luke chapter 2. We see them in Matthew chapter 2. And I'm actually not going to turn to either of those today. I'm going to be in John chapter 6. So if you brought your Bible like I've been asking you to do, you can go ahead and turn to John 6. If you don't have one with you, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Please excuse me. I've been, I got a sinus infection that turned into a cough. I've been fighting it off for a week. I'm not contagious, but I am on about four different cough suppressants. So if I say something crazy, that's why. We see the wise men in Matthew chapter 2. And I like to point out, I don't know why I like to point out, I just do, that the wise men were more than likely not actually at the manger scene. The nativity scene that we have that we put in our houses and everything. We went to a live nativity at another church last night. Did a phenomenal job. The wise men were more than likely not there. Okay? Their story is they saw a star and they were told by God to go follow that star. And I think this is worth pointing out and amazing. It's not the point, but it's something that I didn't want to just blow past. That the wise men are even involved in the story of Christmas. Because I'll get into why later, but they're from very far away. They are not from Israel. They are not Hebrew people. They are not descendants of Abraham. It is very, very unlikely that the Jewish tradition had made its way to wherever they called home. And yet, without any religious infrastructure at all, without any holy texts at all, they somehow recognize the voice of God, the God that we worship, the God that Mary and Joseph worship. They heard that voice, identified that voice, and were obedient to that voice. When we read the Bible, the narrative focuses way down on Abraham's family and then on Israel and what happens in Israel, as if God's scope of evangelism and love and care and speaking isn't worldwide all the time. And we get these little glimpses throughout scripture like Melchizedek in the Old Testament that it's actually true that God is speaking outside of Israel to those who will listen. It reminds me of Romans 1 where it says that God reveals himself to all men in nature so that no man is without excuse. Somehow, some way, these wise men with no no religious structure at all, heard the voice of God, identified it, obeyed it. They go to Jerusalem. They're following the star. The star leads them to Jerusalem. They get to Jerusalem, and this is all in Matthew 2. You can check me if you need to. I would always encourage that. But they get to Jerusalem where Jesus is not there. He's either in Bethlehem or he's in Nazareth. He's not in Jerusalem. And they go to Herod, the king, because they don't know where else to go. And they say, hey, we're here to worship. The Savior's been born. We're here to worship him. Do you know where he is? And Herod is threatened by this because he knows somewhere in the annals of his brain that when this Messiah comes, he's going to be the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And Herod erroneously thinks he's going to try to sit on my throne, to which Jesus is like, I'm not interested in your throne. That's very small potatoes. Don't care. But Herod thinks he's going to try to take his stuff. And so Herod responds with an edict to kill all the boys in Israel aged two and younger, which is one of the more horrific evil edicts that we see in the whole Bible. Herod was evil. And I have a two and a half year old son. I can't imagine what it would be to be one of the soldiers that had to carry out those directives. Awful, awful stuff. But he says this, Herod does, to kill all the baby boys, age two or younger, we're told in Matthew 2, because of the timing of the journey of the wise men. What this means is, more than likely, the wise men were following that star for two years. Could be more, could be less. Could be a year, could be nine months. We don't know when the star appeared. And the star could have appeared two years in advance of Jesus' birth. And then they showed up at the time. We don't know that for sure, except for when they appear, when they go in to see Joseph and Mary, it says that they entered into the house. Not the manger, but the house. So they're probably in Nazareth, meaning Jesus is probably a toddler by this point. At which point they give him gold, frankincense, and myrrh. And Johnny, my two-year-old, has just been beating me up for myrrh this Christmas. So they were on point with those gifts. But it took two years to get where they were going. I want you to imagine that. They're from very far east. We do not know where. India is possible. China is possible. Iran, Iraq, one of the stands. Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan. One of the stands could be. And they journeyed for two years. Based on a voice of God that they heard that said, follow this star. Maybe they were nomadic people and so journeying wasn't a huge deal, but they're still rearranging their whole life. A lot of scholars believe they were just wealthy individuals and they brought their caravan with them. We don't know how many wise men there were. We just know that there was more than one. We usually say three because of the three gifts, but that's really not indicative of the total number. And so they load up, presumably on camels, and they travel for maybe as long as two years. And this was the point that Gibson made that I thought was a really interesting insight. What if you could talk to the wise men on that journey? What if you could ask them, hey, guys, where are you going? You know what their answer would be? We don't really know. Where are you going? We're not sure. Well, how do you even know where to go? God, do you see that star? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, God told us to follow that one. Are you getting any closer to it? Not really. No, it just stays right there. We just kind of walk during the day and hope at night, still in front of us. When are you going to get there? Like, how long is this journey? Yeah, I couldn't tell you. I don't know. We're just walking. I think that's amazing. To go to the wise men during that journey and say, where are you going? Not sure. How do you know where to go? God told us to follow that star. When are you going to get there? We don't know. I don't want to be too critical, but I'd be willing to bet that very few people in this room have that kind of faith. And yet, when we look at the journey of the wise men, I believe all of us have that faith because that faith is the Christian faith. I believe that the wise men personify this statement. The Christian journey is following God in the midst of uncertainty. The Christian journey itself is to follow God in the midst of uncertainty. It's to not be able to see the whole path and yet take the steps that are illuminated in front of us. Isn't this what we were taught when we were young? If you grew up in church, you heard the Psalm. I think in either 109 or, you heard the psalm, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. And I was taught at ages, you know, three, four, five, six years old, when you're in the woods and it's dark, you're outside and it's dark, and you have a lantern or a lamp next to you, how many steps can you see? Just a couple. You can't see the whole path. You can't see the whole trail. And so I carry, you carry with you, if you grow up in church, you carry with you this understanding, this intellectual, this mental consent that yes, God is never going to illuminate the whole path for me. It's always going to be just a couple of steps. He's never going to give me all the clarity I want. He's just going to give me the clarity I need to take the next step or two of obedience. And this is what the wise men personify. Could they see the whole path? No. Did they know where they were going? No. Had they heard of the nation of Israel before? No, nobody knows. Maybe, maybe not. They didn't know who they were going to find or what they were going to do. They were just going in obedience, taking the next step. Today, we can see the star, so today we're going to follow it. Are we going to get there tomorrow? Maybe, don't know. The Christian journey is to follow God in the midst of uncertainty. It's to not understand everything and yet choose to follow him anyways. I think maybe the best depiction of this in the whole Bible is in John chapter 6. In this discourse, this dialogue that Jesus has with Peter. I think it's a remarkable dialogue. We're going to pick it up in verse 66. And the verse is preceding. Jesus is teaching the people in the synagogue at Capernaum. And he's telling them. And he tells them in about three or four different ways. But he's telling them, if you want to follow me, you have to eat of my flesh and drink of my blood. If you do not eat of my flesh and drink of my blood, then you have no place with me and you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven. That's what Jesus teaches. It is a weird, cultish, cannibalistic teaching. It's weird. And he gives them no context. See, we know, we know that what Jesus is talking about is communion. We understand that. If you don't know what communion is, it's the tradition where we break bread and we dip it in the grape juice or the wine or you sip it or however your church or your tradition does it. So we know that Jesus is, that's an allusion to communion. But they don't know that because they've never experienced communion. And Jesus says, unless you cannibalize me, you cannot be a part of me or enter into the kingdom. And then people started to leave and go, yo, dude, that's really weird. And we pick the story up. John chapter 6, verse 66. Now I'd pause there because that could be confusing. When we think of disciples, we immediately think of the 12 disciples. But what we know is that there was probably as many as 120 people that were constantly following Jesus everywhere. And we know this in part because in Acts, when they go to replace Judas as a disciple, they ultimately named Matthias to be the 12th disciple, the replacement disciple for Judas. And one of the requirements to be eligible to be that disciple is to have been with them from the beginning. So Jesus has disciples outside of the 12. The 12 is like his inner circle. The three, Peter, James, and John are like his inner, inner circle. But then there's other disciples on the perimeter that are following too. And when he says this, the disciples on the perimeter begin to leave. We'll pick it up in verse 68. Do you want to go as well? Verse 68, Simon Peter answered him. And listen, I love these words. I don't have a tattoo. If I get one, it'll be these words. Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and I have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. I love that answer. I love it so much because it's so very human. It's so very honest. Jesus says this incredibly hard teaching that does not make sense to anyone. And people who have been following him for months and years leave. And he looks at his inner circle. And he says, are you guys going to leave too? And Peter responds, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. Now this is just my interpretation of the subtext here, of what's laying under these statements of Peter. There seems to be an implicit agreement of Peter with the ones who left. You can see the tension in Peter. Listen, Jesus says, are you going to go too? And I paraphrase this response as going, listen, what you just said is weird. It's weird. I do not want to cannibalize you. I don't want to drink your blood. That's weird. That's cultish. It doesn't make any sense. I hope I don't have to do that. Jesus, you make absolutely no sense to me right now. And frankly, it's weird. But here's what I know. I know that you are who you say you are. I know that you're Jesus. I know that you have the words of eternal life. You have claimed to be the Holy One, and I believe you. And because I believe you, and because I trust you are who you are, where else am I going to go? I'm in. Jesus, this doesn't make sense to me. I don't follow it. That's not how I would have done it. I think this is weird, but you're Jesus. I know that you are. I believe you. I trust you. I'm in. I love that sentiment from Peter. Because frankly, if you haven't gotten to that point in your faith where you've had to choose to to follow Jesus even when he doesn't make sense, then I would tell you gently and humbly that I believe your faith still has some maturing to do. Because everyone of faith, everyone of faith comes to that moment where Jesus doesn't make any sense to them. That shouldn't have happened. That man is a good man. Why did that happen to him? My father was a good man. He shouldn't have died, and he did. That child never did anything, and God allowed them to get leukemia and wither away. Why did he do that? If Jesus is who he says he is, then why are these things true in my life? I've been living my life according to the standards of God, and I want the blessings that other people have who don't live like I do. I'm a good person. Why can't I have what I want? Jesus, this doesn't make any sense. Jesus, you could have healed this person that I love. I know you could have. And they love you? It doesn't make any sense. I told you guys a few weeks back, a friend of mine, 40 years old, two kids, died. Jesus, you could have prevented that death. You didn't. And so at some point, we find ourselves in the position of Peter saying, Jesus, you don't make any sense to me. And I don't see the whole path here. But I'm going to choose to trust you because I know who you are. Because I'm a Christian. And being a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God. He did what he said he did. He lived a perfect life, he died a perfect death, and he raised on the third day. And he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day to claim his people and to make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. To be a Christian is to believe that. And so Peter says, you don't make any sense to me right now, but I'm a Christian, so I'm in. I was thinking about this this morning as I was going through things. Can you imagine the light bulb moment that communion was for Peter? Can you imagine him sitting around that table as long as one to two years after this exchange with Jesus? Because this is towards the beginning of his ministry. So as many as two years later, Jesus is sitting around the communion table, or Peter's sitting around the Passover table about to observe the first communion. He doesn't know what communion is. Jesus breaks the bread and tells them to eat it. And he pours the wine and he tells them to drink it. And Peter goes, oh, and he still doesn't know what it is because the next day Jesus actually dies for him. And he's like, well, this stinks. Everything's over. And he wanders back and he goes to fish. And then the resurrected Jesus shows up and makes him breakfast. And he's like, hey, do you love me? Yes. Do you love me? Yes. Do you love me? Yes. Okay, go feed my sheep. You're reinstated. Go do it, Peter. What a light bulb moment for Peter in this moment with no context. Because Jesus doesn't explain it. He does not explain the cannibalism. He just drops it on them. You still going to follow me? You still trust me? Great. And then he goes. And for two years, he doesn't come back to it and address it. And then one day he's at a table and he breaks the bread and Peter goes, oh. God never gives us the clarity we want in the moment. But he always gives us what we need. And if we stick in there, we get light bulb moments too. And both of these stories, the story of the wise men just following the star, okay, that's what I'm going to do. The story of the disenfranchised disciple. You make no sense to me, but I'm in because I know who you are. Highlight what I believe is God's fundamental ask of all humanity. God's fundamental ask is simply that we would trust him. God's fundamental ask of people from the beginning of time is that we would trust him. Just listen to me. Just trust me. Just hear my voice and respond in obedience like the wise men do who don't need a religious apparatus to discern the voice of God and be obedient to it. Just follow me like that. Isn't that what he asked of Adam and Eve? Hey, there's a tree. Don't eat it. Just trust me on this one. And they didn't trust him. Isn't that what he asked of Abraham? The father of his children is in Ur, the land of the Chaldeans, probably the Sumerian dynasty. And God appears to him. God speaks to him. I don't know if he appeared to him, but he speaks to him. And he says, I want you to pack up your stuff and quote, go to the place where I will show you. To this place called Israel that Abraham's never heard of, the land of Canaan at the time that no one's ever heard of. And he meets someone there named Melchizedek, who is the high priest and the king of a city called Salem that would later become Jerusalem, who has heard the voice of God and is obeying him outside of any religious apparatus, outside of the focus of the narrative scripture, of the narrative text of the gospel, just out there obeying God. And Abraham goes to him, not knowing where he's going, arrives, and God's just illuminating one step by one step. Just trust me. Just trust me. Just trust me. Then he gives him a son. He says, I want you to go sacrifice this son. Three days journey away on a random hill. And he gets up the next day and he goes. And he's at the bottom of the hill, and a lot of scholars believe that Abraham did not know how he was going to walk back down that mountain with his living son, but he believed that he would. And so he went. Just trust me. Just trust me. Just trust me. Moses, wandering the desert for 40 years, stumbles upon, as a shepherd, stumbles upon the burning bush. This is in Exodus chapters 2 and 3, two of the greatest chapters in the Bible. And God appears to him in the burning bush, and he says, I want you to go to the most powerful man in the world, and I want you to tell him to let my people go based on zero authority whatsoever. And Moses is like, okay, I've got questions. And he asks him five clarifying questions. What's your name? Why are they going to believe me? I have a stutter that seems like an issue. No one's going to listen to me. Five different questions. Five times, God says, don't worry about that, trust me. Don't worry about that, trust me. What's your name? Don't worry about that, trust me. I have a stutter, don't worry about that, trust me. Just trust me, just trust me. How's it going to work out, God? I'm not going to tell you. Just trust me. Just trust me. Just trust me. All through scripture. David, anointed king. You're going to be the next king. You're the chosen one. Man after God's own heart. As probably an adolescent kid. He waits 20 years before he ascends to the throne. God, when's it going to happen? The current king's trying to kill me. Just trust me. Just trust me. Just trust me. Why did God wait so long to give the Ten Commandments? He could have, he could have, once Adam and Eve broke the rules, he could have said, okay, here's the new rules. He waits generation after generation after generation, a couple thousand years before he says, fine, here's the rules. What I'd really like for you to do is trust me and obey me without the rules, but since you need rules, here are the rules. And then Jesus shows up and he says, we don't need those rules anymore. Love God, trust him. Love God, trust him, be obedient by loving others. Just trust me, just trust me, just trust me. Have you ever thought about the fact that Jesus could have sat down with the disciples and we, especially those of us who are business and strategy minded, would, those of us, like I'm business and strategy minded, those of you, we would think that the best possible thing for Jesus to do would be to recruit the disciples, test them for a few months to make sure they're all the way in, and then bring them into a meeting and sit them down and say, all right, boys, listen, here's the deal. And for Jesus to lay out every step of the strategy, doesn't that make so much sense? Hey, I'm going to be here for about three more years. The whole time, I'm going to show you how to do ministry. I'm going to show you how to love on people. I'm going to teach you this new rule of loving others the way that I've loved you. I'm going to show you what it is to love people. And then you guys think I'm going to be a physical king. I'm not. I'm going to be an eternal king. I don't care about that throne. It's small potatoes. I don't need it. So quit trying to make me be king. This is the kind of king I'm going to be. I'm going to be an eternal king. And at the end of the three years, after I've shown you how to live and love perfectly, I'm going to have given you all the tools to build what I'm going to call the church. What's the church, Jesus? Well, let me explain to you what the church is going to be. He could have explained all this. And he could have said, at the end of three years, I'm going to be arrested and it's going to be an unfair trial and I'm going to die. You should watch me die. And honestly, you should celebrate it because it's ushering in the next part of the plan. That's how I'm paying for you guys to get to heaven. It's an okay thing when I die. And don't worry about it because I'm going to be buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea and I'm going to be raised on the third day. You guys can come hang out with me if you want. And then I'm going to stick around for about 40 days and I'm going to go into heaven because my job's done and I'm going to hand you the keys to the kingdom. So the next three years of your life, pay attention, write down notes, ask me all the questions you need because I'm going to give you this thing. Tell me that doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't he do that? It makes so much sense. It makes sense to us because we're stupid. That was not the way that Jesus did it. He didn't tell them the plan. He didn't explain to them the death. He let them believe he was going to be an earthly king. He illuminated one step at a time. Go into this city and perform these miracles. Go over there and tell them about me. Follow me here and listen to my teaching. Now you can answer, now you can ask me questions. Take this bread and eat it. He never illuminates the whole path. He never explains everything to them. He just beckons them to trust him. And God has the same ask of you. Trust him. Hang in there. Believe him. Be like Peter. And those moments when your faith doesn't make any sense, where something happens in your life that doesn't have a nice, neat, satisfying box to put it in and categorize it and explain it to others and justify it, when that happens, when something outside of your boxes and your theology and your understanding, when that happens and tears it down, and we sit in the midst of confusion and uncertainty, Jesus, why'd you let that happen? Why did it turn out this way? Why am I struggling with this? Why won't you rescue me from that? When we sit in that uncertainty, no, God designed and intended that uncertainty. He's never, ever given anyone the full path. He's never, ever illuminated more than a couple steps for anyone in their life. He simply beckons us to trust him. And I love that word and that concept of trust because it has so many tendrils, doesn't it? Don't just trust me with your faith. Trust me with your family. Do for your family what I think is best for them. Not, not what you think is best for them. See, when we trust somebody, what we do is we choose their judgment over our own. When I trust the finance committee, I trust their expertise over my expertise, which is none in that area. When we trust someone, we choose them over ourselves. So God says in every way, choose my expertise over your own, and I promise you it will work out. Simply trust me. Trust me with your morals and with your values. Trust me with your money. I've asked you to give a bottom line of 10%. Be generous people and give. Trust me with that. It's going to be best for you. Trust me with your children. Trust me with your marriage. Trust me with your career. Trust me with your priorities. Trust me with your calendar. Trust me. Just believe me. Trust me. Take the steps I'm illuminating for you. And I promise, I promise, I promise it will be better for you. The more we can trust God in the midst of uncertainty, the more light bulb moments we get like Peter sitting at communion going, this is why God, okay. And tell me that doesn't strengthen faith when you have those moments. And here's what happens when we choose to trust God in the midst of uncertainty. We make that a pattern in our life. God rewards our trust with a full life and perfect eternity. God rewards that trust with a full life and a perfect eternity. I chose that phrase full life there on purpose because one of my favorite verses I've said to you before, John 10, 10, the thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy, but I have come, Jesus is speaking. I have come that you might have life and have it to the full. Jesus says he came to give us the most full life possible. Not the wealthiest life. Not the healthiest life. Not the most comfortable life. I'm reminded of that quote from, I believe it's Chronicles of Narnia, where they're talking about the Jesus figure, Aslam, I think. And they say, is he safe? And the response is, oh, no, he is not safe. But he is good. Jesus invites us into that goodness. Do you trust me? Do you trust me? Do you trust me? Because if you do, if you choose my judgment over yours, he will give us in this life the most full life possible, the best life we can imagine if we'll simply trust him. The problem is we hold back parts of our life because we think in our judgment, with our values, with our morals, and with what we do, that we can make little pockets of our life better and more comfortable and more enjoyable than what Jesus can do. No, no, no, I'm not going to trust you with that because I like what I'm doing right here. And Jesus says, if you'll just trust me and hand me that too, I promise there will be a more full life around the corner. I promise you there will be a deeper peace, a deeper happiness, a deeper joy if you'll simply hand that to me too. So here's my question for you this morning. Where can you trust God more? Where are you holding back from him? What are you keeping to yourself and not choosing to be like the wise men and humble, faithful, consistent obedience? Where are you going? I don't know. When are you going to get there? I'm not sure. How do you know where to go? I'm just following God. Where can we choose to trust God more and trust his judgment over our own? And I would also encourage you, if you're one who's sitting in the midst of uncertainty, Jesus, this is happening in my life and I don't understand it. You could fix it and you're not. And honestly, Jesus, it kind of makes me frustrated with you. Okay. Be like Peter. Are you going to leave Jesus because of it? No. You're the son of God. You have the words of eternal life and I believe you. Where else am I going to go? And I promise you, you'll have your aha moment if you trust him. And you'll usher in a full life and a perfect eternity. So this morning, let's trust God like the wise men did and just take the step of obedience that's in front of us. Let's pray. Father, we love you this morning. We love you always. We trust you. Help us to trust you more. God, I'm reminded of the simple prayer, I believe, help my unbelief. Lord, if there are those who are sitting in the midst of uncertainty, who feel disillusioned like the disciples that thought cannibalism was a part of the deal, God, would you give them the faith of Peter to hang in there, to trust you, even when they're not certain and don't understand everything they feel like they need to understand. God, for those of us who are holding back parts of our lives, who are choosing our judgment in places over yours, would you give us the strength and the faith to trust you, to believe you? That things are only going to be better when we hand them to you? Would you give us the remarkable faith of the wise men who journeyed to an unknown place for two years simply trusting? And as we do that, as we take those steps and as we trust you, would you help us to see you? Would you show up in those places and reassure us? In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. Thank you for being here. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service is over. I echo the gratitude of Kyle for our decorating squad that made this look like maybe the best looking stage we've ever had. And please take advantage of the photo booth out there if you are one who likes photo booths. Welcome to our December series. I'm very excited about it. We've had this planned for a while. I'm looking forward to what I get to share with you over the course of the next month. And if you guys are going to be singing like that in December, I'm going to shorten the sermons and we're going to add in more songs because that was fantastic. This year, the Christmas series is called Twas the Night. We are looking at the story of Christmas, the classic story of Christmas. We'll spend every week in a different portion of Luke chapter 2. So if you have a Bible this morning, as I've been encouraging you to bring them and go through the sermons with me. Please go ahead and open those up to Luke chapter 2. If you don't have a Bible, it's in the seat back in front of you. But we're going to be spending the next four Sundays in Luke chapter 2 and looking at the Christmas story from the perspective of different people involved in the story. This morning, we're going to look at the Christmas story from the perspective of the innkeeper and from one of my favorite people in the story, Simeon. And you'll see why when we get there. But in the story, Luke chapter two, where the Christmas story is, and just so you know, that's like the traditional, like peanutsanuts Christmas, that's where it comes from, Luke 2. That's the classic Christmas passage. So that's why we're going to be there for these next four weeks. In the passage, the innkeeper is mentioned kind of indirectly. We don't get words from, we presume him could be her. I don't want to be misogynistic in who I think owns inns in ancient, but hunches is probably a guy and Mary and Joseph are traveling to Jerusalem for a religious festival. They have to go. The law says they have to go. It's for a census and Jerusalem. I don't know if you've thought about this. Why the heck would you Jerusalem is three days journey fromareth, averaging about eight to 10 hours a day on foot. We presume that Mary was on a donkey if they could afford such luxuries. She's clearly very pregnant because she pops when she gets there. Okay. So like she is on the verge of pregnant or giving birth. She's very, very pregnant. That's a different thing. And you got to imagine it's stressful. Y'all grow up. And then this might be the first clip of me that blows up on YouTube. Good job. It's nice for everyone to have goals. Anyways, they're going to Jerusalem. It's eight to 10 hours a day on foot. It's got to be very stressful. They don't know where they're going to stay. They probably don't have a lot of means. And so they get there and they're scrambling for a room. They're scrambling for a place to stay. They go to the innkeeper. The innkeeper famously says there's no room in the inn. And then he makes space for them in a manger. And I can't imagine the stress of Joseph as he's trying to arrange all this stuff and get everything squared away. But the inn keeper doesn't make room for them. He says, we have some room for you in the manger, which whenever we think of manger, and this is just for my own personal fun, I do this year and Jen my wife hates it when I do I like to ruin different elements of people's Christmas traditions when we look at the nativity scene and it's the stable with like the Spanish moss coming down that's probably not accurate it could be accurate but it probably isn't it was probably inside of a shallow cave in a cliffside or a hillside there in Bethlehem. Probably wasn't a nice stable. But anyways, I digress. He lets them stay in the manger. And the innkeeper, the Christmas story doesn't have too many villains. The innkeeper is about the closest thing to a villain we have besides, of course, Herod, who comes at the end of the Christmas story. And he's the villain because he doesn't make room for Jesus. But I would say two things, one later, but one thing right here to support him. He did make room for Jesus. It's just that the innkeeper offered Jesus the margins. He offered him the margins. I'm not going to kick anybody out of the room for you. I'm not going to make some space. I'm not going to invite you into my own house. I'm not going to divide up one of the rooms. I'm not going to talk to the other innkeepers and see what we can do. I'll give you a space that's very convenient for me. The innkeeper invites Jesus into the margins. And this is wild because what he should have done this is the Messiah Emmanuel God with us his people have been waiting for him for thousands of years they've been pining for him and praying for him and passed down a desire for Jesus generation after generation each generation has carried the torch of hope waiting for the Messiah to arrive the prophecies go all the way back to Genesis 12 and Abraham, and they know the prophecies. The innkeeper, whether he fully believes them or not, has grown up in an environment and in a culture so saturated with these prophecies that he knows it. And the Messiah is coming, and he has arrived. What he should have done is gone to the VIP suite and flung the door open and said, hey, buddy, go kick rocks. Get out of here. Go hit the bricks. You're out. Messiah's here. Emmanuel has arrived. He gets the suite, and we're going to kick in the continental breakfast with an omelet bar because Jesus is here. But that's not what he does. He doesn't disrupt anything. He doesn't make his life more difficult. He says, here, here's a margin for you to slide into. And in this way, I feel like a lot of us, all of us at points, can relate to the innkeeper. When Jesus shows up, when he offers himself, when he asks to be led into our heart, when he asks to be Lord of our life, when he gives us an opportunity to serve, when he asks us for a bit of devotion. When he asks us to set our alarm early to spend time with him. When he asks us for the next step of obedience and faithfulness with him. When he asks us to just trust him and his standards over ourselves and our standards. I think so often when Jesus shows up in our life, we, like the innkeeper, simply offer him the margins. Jesus, I'm going to fit you into places where I don't have to adjust anything. I'll pray to you, but I'm going to do it before meals when other people are around so I can appear pious and holy. But you and I know that's the only time I've prayed in the last three days. Yeah, I'll give you car rides for worship, Jesus. But only when the podcast I normally listen to or the music I normally like has gone stale. Yeah, Jesus, I'll go to church. But I'll go to church when I'm in town and it's convenient and my things didn't happen in my Saturday that makes it prohibitive for me to get up on Sunday. I'll give you those Sundays, God, but I'm not going to like rush back from the beach to fellowship with my church. I'm going to give you the margins. I'll give occasionally to a compelling thing, but I'm not going to make it uncomfortable for myself and give regularly in a habitual way because of the generosity that you teach me. I'll forgive people when it doesn't hurt me, but if I'm really mad, then I'm sorry, Jesus, you can't have that forgiveness for them. I think in so many ways, so many small aspects, when Jesus shows up in our life and asks to be invited in, we give him the margins where it's easiest, where it's the least inconvenient. When what we should do, what we should do when Jesus shows up and he asks for parts of our life, he asks to be let into our life, he asks for our obedience and our trust and our worship and our devotion and our love and our affection. When he asks for those things, what we should do is thunder into our VIP suite and kick out whatever's currently ruling and be like, go pound sand, buddy. Jesus is here. Emmanuel, God with us. The guy who died on the cross for me and then rose again on the third day and is coming back to get me and make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. That guy's here, so you are out. That's what we should do. And so I think it begs the question, and I know that the phrasing here is ridiculous, but you'll understand the question. What is in your VIP suite? Who or what is in the most important rooms in your life? Who's occupying the space that Jesus deserves, but we're not willing to kick them or it out? What is holding you back from inviting Jesus not into the margins of your life, but in every bit of your life. Who is in your VIP suite? Now, if you're like me, you have a bunch of those. It's difficult to pinpoint one thing, a person, or affection that I have in my life that is the sole thing keeping Jesus from occupying all of my life. But if I had to guess what one of yours was, I bet in the top three for everyone in this room is comfort. Isn't it, North Raleigh? We're pretty comfortable people. We have things like we like them. We've organized our life like we like it. We've organized our faith like we like it. We've organized our politics like we like it. We've organized our priorities like we like it. We've put our money in the places that we like. We are a comfortable people. And when Jesus begins to poke at our comfort, I think we tend to say, sorry, buddy, room's full. I have a manger, if you're interested. The couch in my bonus room is surprisingly sleepable, Jesus. You're going to love it in there. But you're not getting in the master bedroom. I think comfort is one of our predominant idols. Comfort in how we think. When Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the message of the Bible, when God starts to challenge the way that we think, some of the traditional norms that we've clung to to make things make sense, we kind of push back on that and be like, I'm not really open to new information, Jesus thinks. I need you to fit where I've put you. When Jesus' message starts to run up against our politics and our philosophies, sometimes we stop listening to Jesus in favor of what we always thought, and we say, there's no room for you there, Jesus. Sorry, I need you to fit into this box. When he starts asking for our finances, when he starts asking for our priorities, for our schedule, when he starts asking for our forgiveness, when he starts asking for the way that we do business, when he starts asking for transparency and honesty and vulnerability, when he starts asking us to be a good friend to someone who's hurting and it makes us uncomfortable. I think so often we choose comfort over obedience. And so I think that for many of us, comfort is what sits in that space of highest value in our life. And we'll make room for Jesus. We'll just do it like the innkeeper and tuck him away in the bonus room. And this is important because when we juxtapose the innkeeper's reception of Jesus with that of Simeon. We see a totally different story. And I didn't bring you here this morning to beat you up about being the innkeeper because I'm talking to myself. That's me. That's what I do. If you do that too, join me in my conviction. If you don't do that, do that. Pray for the rest of us heathens in the room. But for those of us who do, let's look at, learn from, and be humbled by the response of Simeon in Luke chapter 2. Now, I'm going to tell you a little bit more about Simeon. But most of what we need to know is actually in this passage. So if you have a Bible, look at Luke chapter 2. I'm going to begin in verse 25 and read through verse 32. Luke writes this. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon, and this man was righteous and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the Spirit into the temple. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him according to the custom of the law, he took him up in his arms and blessed God and said, listen to this, Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of the innkeeper. The innkeeper says, oh, Jesus is here. Let me see where I can conveniently fit you. Simeon's response, I would sum up this way. I have seen Jesus. Nothing else matters. I have seen Jesus. Nothing else matters. I can die happy. I don't care about anything else. Simeon doesn't clean out the VIP room. He cleans out the entire hotel, the whole inn, done. Everybody kick rocks. Jesus is coming in. He gets all the omelets. He gets all the things. He's here. He ushers him right in. He says, I've seen Jesus. Literally nothing else matters. The difference between his response and the innkeeper's response is mind-blowing. And we learn why Simeon has this response in the text. All the clues are there. It says he was righteous and devout. He was committed to God. He was committed to prayer. He was committed to the pursuit of Jesus. And I love the phrase that Luke includes in there to describe what Simeon had been praying for. Did you catch it? He had been praying for the consolation of Israel. That's such a good phrase and descriptor of who Jesus was, particularly to the ancient Hebrew mind. He was the consolation of Israel. See, I mentioned earlier that the innkeeper had grown up in a culture that was so steeped in religious understanding that he knew how far back the generational prophecies went about the Messiah that was going to arrive. And Simeon knew that too. And I have a whole sermon that I do just on the zeal of Simeon. I've actually done it twice here at Grace. And we look at how Simeon was the torch keeper. He was the torch bearer for his generation, waiting and looking and watching and wanting for the Messiah. And how that wait goes all the way back to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12, where God promises that one of the descendants of Abraham will come and will bless the whole earth. And then the Old Testament is a story of waiting for that Messiah, of watching for him. And the generations of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they watched. Is he here? Is it going to be one of these grandsons of Abraham? Is the Messiah come? No, he's not come. And then Moses comes around. Is it Moses? And they watch Moses lead God's people and bring them out of slavery and bring down the Ten Commandments and be God's spokesperson to his people. Is it Moses? Is he going to save us? No, it's not Moses. And then they go through the judges. Is it one of the judges? No. Is it one of the kings? Certainly it's David. No. But God renews his promise and renews their hope in 2 Samuel chapter 7. And then they watch the kings and hope maybe it's one of the kings that will rescue us. No, it's not one of the kings. But every generation after finding that no continues to pass forward the torch from grandfather to grandson to carry the torch of hope into the next generation waiting and watching and longing for the Messiah. And then they go into exile in Babylon and Assyria, and they cling to this torch of hope. And then they begin to wander back and reconstruct and rebuild Israel, and they cling to hope. And then they enter this period where God doesn't speak called the 400 years of silence, and they cling to hope. And then somewhere, some Jewish father or grandfather has a grandson named Simeon, and they start to tell them about the hope that they carried through the generations that one day they will see the Messiah. And Simeon commits to prayer. Father, let me see him. Father, let me see him. Father, bring your Christ. Bring your Messiah. Bring the consolation of Israel, the hope of all the generations. Simeon is now the torchbearer. And in that ardent praying and in that searching, God answers his prayers. And he says, I promise you that you will not pass away before you hold the Christ. So when he finally sees Jesus, it says that his parents brought Jesus in and Simeon went and scooped up the baby. I don't know what was said, hopefully words, hopefully he didn't just rip an eight-day-old infant out of Mary's arms, but he just went and he took that baby. And he prayed over that baby. And then he said, I can die now, God, because he's held that baby. And then if you keep reading, he blesses Mary and Joseph and tells them what they have, confirms for them what the angels have said. He was so ready to meet Jesus that when he finally did, he flung everything out and he said, I've met Jesus. Nothing else matters. And so this is where it's probably worthwhile to point out that the innkeeper does get a really bum rap. Because truth be told, the innkeeper didn't know that was Jesus. It was just a young couple. They needed space. I don't have any. And so him not making room for them isn't maybe as egregious of a sin as it would seem. But it's a helpful vehicle for us to understand the contrast. And we know who Jesus is. We've heard of him. We've been told of him. And so if we really want to look at the difference between how Jesus was received by the innkeeper and how he was received by Simeon, then I think that we have to conclude that our response to Jesus is proportional to our awareness of him. Our response to Jesus when he shows up, when he arrives in an opportunity of service, when he arrives in someone bringing us a hug when we need it, when he arrives an opportunity to be that hug when someone else needs it, when he arrives in conviction, when he arrives in asking for our affection, when he arrives in asking for our devotion, when Jesus arrives in our life. When he speaks into our life. Our response to that voice of Christ, I believe, is directly proportional to our general awareness of him. What we have in Simeon is someone who had prayerfully sought him out his entire life. He had devoted his life to pursuing Christ. Let me see him. Let me see him. Let me see him. And it's not lost on me. And I think this is so important. Do you understand that besides Mary Magdalene, Mary, his mother, maybe Joseph and John the Baptist, that the only other person in Jesus's life to acknowledge who he was and what he really came to do before he died on the cross was Simeon. Everybody else in Jesus's life, when they met him, they said, you can't be the guy. You're not the Messiah. You didn't come how we expected you to come. You're not saying the things we expect you to say. You're not being who we expect you to be. You're not performing the miracles we expect you to perform. You're not a king like we expected you to be the king. So you're not the Messiah. We reject you. Simeon was a man of such faith, such piety, such devotion, such closeness to God. He didn't need Jesus to say a word or do a thing. He recognized him when he saw him. And he said, I can die happy. That kind of awareness, that kind of recognition of who Jesus is only comes through prayer, only comes through devotion, only comes through an earnest desire to see him and to know him and to be exposed to him. I believe that Simeon saw who Jesus was because God heard his prayers. God saw his devotion. He was pleading with the Lord, let me see him, let me see him, let me see him. And God answered those prayers and gave him a unique vision and a unique reception of Jesus despite no one else in his life knowing who he was. And two of the people who knew who Jesus was had to be told by an angel before he got there. Simeon knew. How did Simeon know? Because he lived a life of devotion and pursuit of Jesus. Because he carried the torch that was passed to him by the previous generations. And he made it his ardent desire to know him, to see him, and to recognize him. And I believe that our ability to respond to Jesus with the zeal of Simeon operates in direct proportion to our desire for that Jesus, to our awareness of him. There's no reason in the world the innkeeper couldn't have been on the same page and been like Simeon, devout and devoted and righteous and prayerful. He simply wasn't. And so when Jesus showed up, he kicked him to a cave. Simeon says, I can die happy, nothing else matters. When I started developing the sermon, I thought the question that we would be driving to and that I would pose to you at the end was, am I the innkeeper or am I Simeon? In my life, the way that I respond to Jesus, am I and have I been more like the innkeeper making space for him in the margins or am I and have I been more like Simeon celebrating him, anticipating him, praying for him, praying to see him and receive him with an open-hearted humility? Am I more like the innkeeper or am I more like Simeon? But as I got into the sermon and it started to kind of, sometimes the sermon will write itself if you just pull the thread the right way. As it started to kind of write itself, I realized that question, that's not the right question. So if you take notes, do that. Cross out the question. That's a stupid question. That's a stupid question because no one in here is going, I'm Simeon. I've done it. No more zeal than me. And the reality of it is, the people in the room who are the most like Simeon are the ones who feel the most like the innkeeper right now because that's how spiritual humility and maturity works. Isn't that right, Jen? No, I'm just messing around. That's a silly question. Because of course we would all answer, yeah, I tend to be more like the innkeeper. Yeah, I tend to just kind of make room for him in the comfortable margins. Instead of taking the steps of obedience that he wants from me. I tend to just kind of passively celebrate him instead of enthusiastically welcoming him. And when we see the zeal of Simeon, and I don't think we can overstate it, his ability to see the Messiah for who he was because of his open-handed humility and his approach to God. That we all know we need to be more like Simeon. So the real question then becomes, and the one that I would leave you with is this, how can I dethrone comfort and pursue Jesus in order to receive him with the zeal of Simeon? That's a better question for you to ask yourself. How can I first, how can I dethrone comfort? What are the things that Jesus is asking me for that I can finally kick out of the VIP suite and put him in there? Is it waking up 30 minutes earlier? Is he asking for your mornings? Here's a hint. Yes. He wants our mornings. Does he want our car rides? Yeah. Does he want our runs and our workouts? Yeah. Does he want our relationships with our coworkers? He does. Does he want us to be a more loving spouse? Yes. Does he want us to be more patient parent? Yeah. Does he want us to remember the grace that he offers us and so offer that to others? Yes. We know what Jesus asks of us. What comfort do we need to dethrone? Not being as accepted by the people in our life that matter to us. Taking steps of obedience and we're not sure where they lead. Allowing ourselves to rethink things even though that makes it scary for us. What comfort is impeding our pursuit of Christ? And then, once we figure out what comfort is there that is prohibiting Jesus from occupying the space he needs to occupy, how can we pursue Jesus? Really pursue him. Really ardently pray for him. So that when we see him, and when he calls for things and asks for things, we receive that and offer that as zealously as Simeon does. We pray for him every day. That's easy. Every morning, Jesus, if you arrive today, help me see you. If you arrive in an opportunity to serve, let me see it. If you arrive in a person who needs you, let me see it. If someone arrives in my life who's you've sent to encourage me, let me see it. We had a situation in our house recently where we were discouraged and we were discouraged about a couple of different things. And we had this talk about it at night. And the very next day, every single thing that we said that was discouraging, God addressed in a gracious way and gave us joy in that area of our life. So at the end of the day, we looked at each other and we said, let's not miss Jesus here because he showed up today and he showed us, I care about this and I care about this and I care about this and I care about you. So ask God, God, help me see you when you show up. Help me obey you when you ask. Help me celebrate you this season. Help me not get so headlong into plans and parties and gifts and decorations that I miss you this season. Jesus, help me see you. Make every day a pursuit of him. And we'll start to become more like Simeon than the innkeeper. And if we do that, if we'll pursue Jesus like Simeon this Christmas, I can promise you, you will have a far more rich Christmas. You will see little things that matter every day. Your spirit will be blessed every day. You will notice people to pray for and be a blessing to them every day. When we see the gifts and the movement of Jesus all through the season, and we see them because we've asked our God to open our eyes to those things. So as we go into December and we usher in all the things, let us have the zeal and the pursuit of Simeon and make space for Jesus in our lives wherever he wants to stay. Let's pray. Jesus, we love you. And God, we sing a song sometimes. It says our affection and our devotion we pour out at the feet of Jesus. Lord, I pray that that would be true. That we would love you and love you well. Father, where we are choosing comfort over obedience, would you show us? Would we see it? Would we care? And would we invite you in? Lord, attune our hearts and our eyes and our minds and our ears to see you, to hear you, to recognize you when you show up in our lives. Not just this Christmas season, God, but moving forward. And would we ultimately be a people who receive you and celebrate you like your servant Simeon. In Jesus' name, amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. This is the last week in our series called The Songs We Sing, where we're looking at some of the songs we sing as a congregation, finding them in Scripture and allowing that Scripture to imbue them with a greater purpose. To finish up the series, because of the timing of it, I wanted to do a Christmas song. And so I'll tell you the Christmas song we're going to do here in a little bit, but I thought it would be appropriate as we launch forward into December and all the things that we have waiting for us post Thanksgiving. Hopefully you got your house decorated yesterday. Our house was decorated in early November, so early that I asked Jen, can we please not put the wreaths out so our neighbors don't think we're crazy? So those are going out today. I've been listening to Christmas music since November the 1st. That's the rule in our house. And if you don't like it, you can shove it because that's what we do and that's what we like. And so I'm very, very ready for Christmas. But as we move into Christmas, there's something that I want to hit on and talk about that I mention every Christmas season, and this morning we're just going to rest there because I feel like it's good and appropriate, and you'll see why probably halfway through the sermon, but I also feel like God was in the direction and the theme of the message this week. Because I write these three weeks in advance, and I wrote this without knowing all that would happen this week. But I remember very vividly the Christmas that changed all Christmases. I remember the Christmas that was a clear delineation of, yeah, Christmas will never be again what it once was. I remember that Christmas. Growing up, Christmas was wonderful. It was magical. I don't know what your traditions are, what you do in your family for us. Now, sometimes we had to go to Florida and see my dad's side of the family and my step-grandpa and grandma and my weird cousins, and that wasn't as fun. You just did it. That's a family thing. That's where I started to learn that sometimes you do things for family, even though you don't want to, and you don't like them, and they don't like you, but we're going to perpetuate this for 30 years. So that's what I learned from that side of the family. But for the other side of the family, man, it was magical. So we would go every Christmas Eve, I think after service, I don't know, to Mama and Papa's house. I'm Southern, and so those are my grandparents' names. We would go to Mama and Papa's house, and we would have Christmas Eve dinner, and then we would open up all the presents from all the families, all the aunts and uncles. My mom has two sisters and a brother, so there's four kids, and then all their kids. I think I had five cousins and then different spouses through the years and things like that. So it was a big, full house, very fun. I've told you before that my Papa, I would be the Grinch, and he would be the sleigh, and we would sneak into the room and steal Mama's presents. It was very, very fun. And then we would go home. Santa would come, wake up the next morning. What does Santa bring us? We were allowed to pick our favorite toy, go back over to Mama and Papa's house. And we would spend the whole day there, leftover lunch. And the adults would play games. The kids would run around. It was super, super fun. And my Papa was the hub of all of this. He was the glue. He was the big, huge personality, so magnanimous and magnetic that everyone was drawn to him. Everybody loved him. And I always felt like I was his favorite because I was, and he told me so. But everybody loved Pawpaw. And then in the fall of 2000, when I was 19 years old, he had a massive heart attack and he passed away. And as Christmas approached, there was the sense in our family, and I guess it was amongst the children, the aunts and uncles, where they just said, you know, I'm just not sure if we're going to be able to make it through a normal Christmas at Mama and Papa's house. So maybe we should figure something else out. Because that Christmas was coming up and we all knew it was going to be hard. And so they decided in their infinite wisdom, you know what let's do? Instead of going to Mama and Papa's house, let's go to breakfast at the Ritz in downtown Atlanta. I think maybe Buckhead. Let's go to the Ritz-Carlton. They have a really good Christmas brunch breakfast. It's going to be great. And so that's what we decided to do. So I wake up Christmas morning and I shower. I've never showered on Christmas in my whole life. What am I doing? I would stumble out of bed, go down the stairs. What does Santa bring me? I'll perpetuate this as long as you need me to. If it gets me presents, what did Santa bring me? And then, you know, you'd go to Mama and Papa's house, but I'm just putting on some combination of sweats that I find probably on the floor of my room. I'm not getting dressed. I'm going with a hat on or bedhead. I'm not like doing my hair. And now all of a sudden I'm showering. And then I'm buttoning buttons. Who buttons buttons on Christmas? What a drag that is. You're supposed to be comfortable on Christmas. And I get all dressed up and we go down to the Ritz. And the Ritz is so nice that it feels like we don't belong there. It feels like someone's going to ask us to leave. Like a couple of weeks ago, I've got a good buddy who is, he works at one of the nicer country clubs in the area. And I played a round of golf with him, and then I had an elder meeting, and I needed to get the golf stink off of me, so he said, hey, I'll sneak you into the men's locker room. You can take a shower over there. So the whole time I'm taking a shower in the men's locker room, I'm just, I'm scared. Like, I'm hoping that nobody is going to ask me my member number, and they're going to ask me to leave because I don't have the net worth to shower with that water. Like I was, I was nervous. And so the whole time it was kind of like that sense the whole time we're at the Ritz, I'm afraid someone's going to come up to us and be like, I'm sorry, you're going to have to go eat with the poors. You guys can't be in here. It was just too nice. It was weird and it was rigid and I hated it. But I knew at that Christmas that Christmas would never be the same again, and it hasn't been. We have our own kids now. They understand the miracle and the majesty and the magic of Christmas, and it's fun again to see it through their eyes, and that joy is returning. But for me, that was the Christmas that marked the last really good Christmas. It was also the Christmas that taught me this. Christmas, and all that we're about to embark on, is a joyful season. It's good. It's magical. It's fun. I love going outside in the morning and making bacon and the steam is coming off the blackstone and I'm holding my mug and there's steam coming out of that and there's steam coming off of my breath. I like the wintertime. I like how Christmas time kind of ushers in that sense of winter. I like the decorations. I love the music. I love the themes that we do here at the church. I look forward to family jammy day every year. We all wear our Christmas jammies. I'm in for all of it. I love the parties, the elder party, the staff party, the other parties. I love them. It's great. Let's do all the Christmas stuff. Christmas is a joyful season. But that Christmas taught me that Christmas is a joyful season, but not for everyone every season. Christmas is a joyful season, but not for everyone every season. That year taught me that for some of us, Christmas is hard. And so as a pastor, I never want to move through a December with the hooray and the praise and the joy and the exuberance and't we all happy, and isn't this the best, and isn't this wonderful? And not acknowledge that for some in our faith family, no, this season is not wonderful. And some of you, I know some circumstances, some are unknown to me, but I know that some of you are facing hard Christmases. Some of you are looking at a Christmas that isn't going to be the same. You're looking at a Christmas and there's going to be an empty seat at the table. It's going to be hard. You're walking into Christmas and it's a reminder. Not of what you have. But of what you don't have. Of dreams crushed. Marriages shattered. Children prayed for but not yet received. I know those Christmases. For some of us, Christmas, this time of year, is a reminder of what we've loved and lost, of what we've yearned for and not been given, of what we've had and has been broken. And so we never want to move through a Christmas season without acknowledging that for some of us, some seasons, Christmas is hard. So if that's you this season, then this morning is for you. And I believe this song is for you. The song we're focused on this morning, if you have a bulletin, the cat's already out of the bag, is O Come Emmanuel. O Come Emmanuel. And I put this here, I was trying to decide between O Holy Night and O Come Emmanuel because I think O Holy Night might just be the best song lyrically that's ever been written. And Aaron gently told me, we're not doing that twice. Okay. We're not, we're not going to do that here. And then again on Christmas Eve. So you got to pick. So I went with O Come Emmanuel. That was it. That was a whole thought process because I do love this song and I do think it's, it's really lyrically rich and important. And I think it's a great Christmas song. If you're not familiar with it, you will be by the end of the service today, I promise you. But most of us probably know that. What I did not know about O Come Emmanuel is how sad it is, how much the song languishes, how much it expresses this yearning, not, oh, Jesus, come because we want to celebrate you, but Jesus, come because we need you, because this place is broken and life is hard. I live in a world where bad things happen to good people and it doesn't make sense, so Jesus, please come. What I did not know is that it is steeped in scripture and it is absolutely the anthem for those of us for whom Christmas is hard this year or in future years. So I want to show you what I mean. I'm going to read you the lyrics where if you Google O Come Emmanuel, you'll find a bunch of verses and stanzas, a bunch of lyrics. And so it's kind of like, which ones are we going to sing? So I had to ask Aaron, our worship pastor, which one are we doing? He told me which one. And we're singing three verses in there. And so from just those three verses, I want you to see how much scripture is packed into the words that we're going to sing here at the close of the service. So the first verse of O Come, Emmanuel goes like this. I'm not going to sing it to you. O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appears. So I want you to see first and foremost that the whole name of the song, and this isn't going to be on the screen, is O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. And that comes directly from Isaiah chapter 7, verse 14. And if you have the notes, if you have the bulletin, you want to write that down, you can check my references. But that comes from Isaiah 7, verse 14, where it's the end of a long messianic prophecy. I'm probably going to say messianic prophecy a couple of times in the sermon. That simply means an Old Testament prophecy that is about Jesus, the Messiah. So it's a messianic prophecy. And the conclusion of that, it tells us all these things about Jesus and who he's going to be. And then at the end, he says, and his name will be called Emmanuel, which means God with us. It might be the most remarkable name of Jesus because it captures within it the truth that he came down from heaven. He condescended and took on flesh and became like man, became man to be with us. Emmanuel captures who Jesus was and is. So first we see from the very first line that it's pulled right out of Isaiah chapter 7. And then with the rest of it about ransom captive Israel, that comes from Isaiah 35 10. And it's there at the bottom of the screen. Those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return. They will enter Jerusalem singing, crowned with everlasting joy. Sorrow and mourning will disappear and they will be filled with joy and gladness. So the author of this song, the writer of this song pulls this right out of this prophecy in Isaiah 35 where he refers to Jesus as the ransomed of the Lord. He comes to pay the ransom, or he refers to us as the ransomed, and he is the payment for that ransom. And there's an allusion here in the verse that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appears. In this verse of the song, we see this languishing and this anguish of the nation of Israel crying out to God, God, we don't belong here. There's something not right here. Will you please come and get us? Will you please come and pay our ransom? We are enslaved and we are in another nation in which we don't belong. And when we see the nation of Israel referred to in Scripture, it does and often is referring to the actual physical nation of Israel and the citizens of that nation, but it is also almost always referring to the children of God and those who believe in God. So the church, you and me, if we have placed our faith in Christ, and so this resonates with us. We resonate with the words in Isaiah 35 that God is coming to ransom us, that we feel like they feel, that we don't belong here. We are in lonely exile. There has to be something more than this place. There has to be something more than this world that you have to offer. Would you take me from here and bring me to heaven? It's a cry for us to be relieved of this. And then we move into the next verse that we're going to sing. It goes like this, O come thou day spring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night and death's dark shadows put to flight. This is taken from the end of Luke chapter 1, verses 78 and 79. What a long chapter. Because of God's tender mercy, the morning light from heaven is about to break upon us to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death and to guide us to the path of peace. So we see again, the author of the song pulls directly out of Luke, and he puts to song the expression of these verses at the end of the prophecy in Luke chapter 1. Oh, come thou dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here. They are saying, we are sad, We are depressed. Life is hard. This is a bad Christmas for us. We feel broken. It's right there in the words. Come cheer our spirits. We need you. By thine advent here. Clouds cover my vision and blot out my hope. I feel in the depths of despair, Emmanuel, come. Please come, O day spring, and cheer us and disperse these clouds. The last verse. O come, desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of, straight out of Scripture, straight out of Haggai, the desire of the nations. Other translations have it as the treasure of the nations, but I like this one better. This is King James. I like the desire of the nations. Whether you know it or not, whether you realize it or not, if this is your first Sunday in church, your soul has longed for Jesus your whole life. He is the desire of you, the desire of me, the desire of all the nations. And I love the titling here in that verse. And then the prayer is that he would bid thou our sad division cease and be thyself our king of peace, taken right out of the classic Christmas story in Luke chapter 2 beginning in verse 13 and suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and goodwill towards men. This is the gift of Jesus that he brings peace and so so the prayer in the song of come Emmanuel is, would you please bring peace and would our sad divisions cease? It's the understanding that when Jesus shows up, he's going to heal things and bring peace with us. It's the understanding that when Jesus shows up, I don't know if you've thought about this, but when Jesus shows up, he will demolish and abolish. What's the word I'm looking for? Different denominations. He will demolish and abolish denominations. There will be no more Presbyterians. Praise Jesus. We will all, we will all of us, do you know this? We will all be Pentecostal. We will be. We'll be filled with the Spirit. We'll be cheering. We'll be going nuts. The Pentecostals in the end, they're going to win. I'm telling you. There will be no more Baptists. That's not going to happen. No more Catholics. They can drop it with the robes. None of that stuff. He's going to demolish denominations because we don't need those. Those divide us. He's going to heal our family wounds. Some of y'all, your Christmas is going to be tough. And it's not going to be tough because you've lost someone. It's going to be tough because that someone's still sitting there. And they're hard to get along with. And someone that I love very much has taught me that hurt people hurt people. And me and him know that because we hurt each other often. But we always reconcile very quickly. Some of us, there's division, there's hardship in our families. And it's not because the people in your families are bad. It's because hurt people hurt people. And they don't know how to heal themselves. More than likely the ship has sailed on that healing. So they just need grace. And when Jesus comes, he's going to heal them so that they can love you perfectly as Jesus loves them. This prayer, this song is a prayer that Jesus would come and he would heal our divisions. That what's happening in the Gaza Strip would not happen anymore. That warring cultures would find peace and love with one another. That hurting families would be healed and be able to love one another well. That his own body, the church, would knock it off with the divisions and the denominations and would come together, finally answering Jesus' prayer of unity in John 17. That's what this song is for. And so if you sit down with the words of O Come, Emmanuel, what you see is that it's a song of pain. It's a song of languishing. It's a song of hardship. And what we learn from this song is that a right and good response to despair is to long for the return and redemption of Jesus. That's what this song teaches us. That a right and good response to despair is to long for the return and the redemption of Jesus. That when something happens that we can't explain, it's right and good and biblical to say, come Lord Jesus, we need you. That's why I went through the pains of showing you all the verses that are expressed in this song that says over and over again, oh, come, Emmanuel, oh, come, Emmanuel, oh, come, thou dayspring, oh, come, desire of nations, all different names of Jesus. Jesus, come, we need you. When something happens that's hard, that we don't understand, that wrecks us, it's a right, good, biblical, righteous response to say, Lord Jesus, come. This Monday morning, this last week, like a lot of you here, I woke up to a text from Julie Sauls. Julie is on staff with us and does a little bit of everything. Howard is her faithful husband and a good friend to a lot of us. And I woke up to a text that he had had a stroke at about 4 a.m. He had been rushed to the ER and then rushed to another ER. That he was in surgery. There was 100% blockage in his carotid artery. And that they did not know. They didn't know. They didn't know if he was going to make it. They didn't know if he was going to be okay if he did make it. They didn't know what recovery might look like. They didn't even know what was happening in the surgery room. They just knew that he was there and it was serious. And if you don't know Howard, and I hesitate to say this because it's going to get back to, and I'll have to own up to it. This is for him. That's the only reason I'm wearing this stupid-looking tar heel on myself. He's a big fan. Jules, if you and Howard are watching the hospital, here you go, pal. And don't tell him this next part. If you don't know Howard, it's to your detriment. He's one of the good ones. Genuinely good. What I always say about Howard is whenever there's something happening at the church, some function, and things need to be done, if you try to figure out the crappiest job, Howard's already doing it. That's Howard. He's a good man. He's far too young to be having strokes. And as Jen and I were talking on Monday, Lily, our daughter, who's nearly eight, could just sense that something was up. So she started asking questions. And in the best way we could, we tried to explain to her what a stroke was and what that meant, what the potential road ahead for Mr. Howard was going to be. And Jen asked Lily, do you remember what Mr. Howard says to you every week when you come to church? And she responded, every week, as Lily and the family are walking down the sidewalk, most of the time Howard's outside, and when he sees her, he always says, Lily. And she acts embarrassed, but she loves it. And Jen said, do you remember what Mr. Howard says to you? And she said it. And when she said it, I just kind of got up and I hid my face from Lily. And I put my face on Jen's shoulder and I cried. And I told her, I really hate my job sometimes. Because I don't want to be the person that has to bring comfort here. Because I don't know how to do that. Because that morning, we didn't know if Howard was okay. I didn't know if I'd ever hear my friend's voice again. I didn't know if his kids would get to hear him say their name again. If Julie would ever hug him again. I didn't know. And I didn't want to have to be the pastor to come back here and be like, well, there's a reason for everything. So I cried. And we're thankful to know that there was just been a slow trickle of good news since then. Howard's doing well. He's moving both sides of his body, starting to speak. We're praying for a full recovery. He's gaining on it bit by bit. And there are others here who have walked that same path. And we know it's hard. And so I'm glad that he's doing better and I'll tell you what else I'm glad about. Jen went to see Julie and Mackenzie, his daughter, yesterday at the hospital. And Julie was choking up, bragging about you guys, about how this church has shown up for them, about how we have loved on them. And it just makes me so proud to be a pastor of a church that does that. I tell everybody I can, we've got the best church ladies in the business. But in the middle, I'm trying to compose myself so that Lily didn't see me crying. I remembered that I was preaching this on Sunday. I remembered that God put it here. And I remembered that it was okay to not feel like I had to be the agent of comfort. That it was okay instead to be able to respond with my church, oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. Jesus, please come. Please come and end this stuff. Please come and make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. Please come so that I don't have to answer questions. I got a question this morning. It's the question to ask. I saw somebody, very first thing out of their mouth, why do bad things happen to good people? Brother, I don't know. And we're not going to know. We can ask that question all we want. I'll just tell you as a pastor, there's no answer to that. We're not going to know this side of eternity. I know that if I were God, I would mess it up, but bad things wouldn't happen to good people. But when we get to eternity, we're going to know why they do. On this side of eternity, I don't know. What I do know is that it is right and good and biblical and righteous when we hurt to say, Jesus, come. Just stop this pain. Stop these wars. Stop cancer. Knock it off with the empty chairs at the dinner table. Heal the people who hurt us. Jesus, come. This place isn't right. This world doesn't fit. I know that this isn't what you want, God. Send your son to redeem us, to get us again. Jesus, come. It's right and good in pain and in disappointment and in loss and in loneliness and in despair and in depression, to not have an answer for it, to not see a silver lining, to simply throw your hands up and put your head down and say, Jesus, please come and rescue this. It's a mess. Please come. That's what this song is. God, it's a mess. Please come. Send your son. Rescue us. Fix this. Let us exist in your perfect peace. Jesus, come. It's a right and good response to despair. And here's why this song is a Christmas song. Because Christmas reminds us that Jesus has come and instills hope that he will do it again. That's what Christmas is. Christmas reminds us every year Jesus has come. And because of that it instills hope that he will come again. Every year we acknowledge Jesus did come. He did come as a baby, meek and humble and lowly. He did come in a manger to a Virgin Mary and to a father, Joseph. He did arrive in Bethlehem that day. He was taken back to Nazareth. He did live a perfect life and die a perfect death. He did come. God did keep his promise that he made to Abraham 4,000 years prior that the nation of Israel clung to generation after generation as they are subjected to judges and terrible kings and slavery and being drug away from their nation. And they see the temple being built and they see it being torn down and they see it rebuilt again and they weep because it's a shadow of what it was. Through all of that, God was with them and God kept his promise. And we see God keeping his promise in the beginning of the gospels and the Christmas stories. And that's what we celebrate, that God kept his promise and he sent his son. So Christmas reminds us that Jesus has already been here. He came. God did what he said he would do. And because he did, because we saw that promise fulfilled after 4,000 years of waiting, we know that he will keep it again one day too. And we can cling to that promise. That's what being a Christian is. It's believing that it was Jesus who did come in a manger that day, that he did die on the cross, that he did go to prepare a place for us, and one day, we don't know when it will be, but one day he will come crashing back through the clouds and he will claim us and he will make the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. We know that to be true. To be a Christian is to cling to that hope. And so sometimes that hope gets covered over by the clouds of night. Sometimes circumstances make our tether to that hope fragile and thin. Sometimes things happen that we don't understand that we'll never be able to explain. And when they do, we cling to that hope that Jesus will come again and we say, do it soon, Lord. Do it soon. That's what we sing when we sing, O come, Emmanuel. That's what we celebrate when we celebrate Christmas. Jesus did come, and because I believe he did, I know that he will again. That's what Christmas reminds us of. So even if this Christmas is a hard one for you, we have this song, this anthem to declare. And the good news about this song is, it's not just the bad stuff. Oh, come, Jesus, it's hard here. The chorus is rejoice. Rejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel. Rejoice, oh, rejoice, because he's coming again. He came for you and he will come again. Rejoice, rejoice. We have reason to rejoice. And so here's the invitation. In a few minutes, we're going to sing this song together. If this Christmas is hard for you, I want you to declare this. To throw up your hands and to put down your head and to say, Jesus, come. This is hard. Come. And choose to rejoice in that truth. Here's the other thing. If you're in a good season, and this Christmas is a good one, you're blessed, and you're happy, and you're joyful. And you have all the things and all the people around you that you want to have around you, and you're looking forward to a truly joyful Christmas season. Wonderful. Here's what I want to ask you to do. I want you to sing. I want you to sing as loud as you can, because I want you to be the voice for people who can't muster that voice this morning. If they don't have the strength to sing, let them hear you singing. For those of us that don't have the voice to rejoice yet, let's let our church family carry us with their voice to God's throne as we declare this. So we're going to do that in a few minutes together. But before we do that, we're going to have communion together. Because we thought it would be right and good and appropriate to finish up this series and usher in the Christmas series by doing communion together as a church. Communion is one of the traditions that Jesus himself started. At the Last Supper, the night he was arrested, yeah, the elders can come forward and start to set things up. At the Last Supper, the night he was arrested, Jesus took bread and he broke it. And he handed it to the disciples and he says, this is my body that's broken for you. And then he took the wine and he poured it. And he says, this is my blood that spilled out for you. Every time you do these things, I want you to do them in remembrance of me. And so churches through the millennia have observed communion. The body, the bread is God's body that was broken for us. After he lived a perfect life, he died a perfect death. The blood, the juice is the blood that was spilled out for us in that perfect death. And in celebrating communion, we acknowledge that to live sometimes is to suffer. But Jesus took on the greatest suffering on the cross. He became suffering for us so that one day we would have to suffer no more. He is the Prince of Peace and He did keep the promises and He will fulfill them again, and we see the depiction of that on the cross as He suffers for us so that we don't have to. He didn't come to just be a baby and live a life. He came to die that death. And so it's good for us to acknowledge that here too. So here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I'm going to invite you to stand and then we're going to pray together and then we'll take communion and then we're going to close the service out with O Come Emmanuel and then we'll go into our weeks. Father, thank you for communion. Thank you for sending your son who became Emmanuel, God with us. Thank you for the perfect life that he lived. Thank you for the death that he died for us. Lord, as we prepare our hearts to take communion, I just pray that we would allow you to do work within us, to rid us of what doesn't need to be there, to infuse us with what does. God, I lift up those for whom this Christmas is going to be challenging. I pray that they would take this song and this desire for you to return as their anthem that would encourage them through this season. God, we lift up Howard as he recovers. Be with him in that recovery. We lift up the other people in our church who are hurting now. We hurt with them and you hurt with them and we pray that you would heal them too. God, we pray all of these things in the name of your son, Emmanuel. Amen.

My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. This is the second part of our series called The Songs We Sing. Last week, we opened up and we did Graves in the Gardens. I gave you kind of a background of worship, and I started to, it's kind of trickled into me some good feedback that you guys are excited about this series, looking forward to it, looking forward to seeing what we've been singing in the Bible, what we will be singing in the Bible. And so I am thrilled to be going through this series with you because like I said, it's one that I've been wanting to do for a while. And last week when I got done preaching and we sang together, I was so encouraged at the voices being lifted up. And this morning we'll have the same opportunity. I'm going to preach about the song that we just sang because it's pulled straight out of Psalm chapter 8. And then we'll sing it again, knowing it better, having a better understanding of what it means in a full-throated, open-hearted way. And then we'll sing some other songs that are really special to us. And then we'll go into our week. So I'm feeling really good about this Sunday. And I just feel like it's worth saying sometimes that I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for my church. I'm so grateful for the love and the community that we experience here, for the handshakes and hugs and laughter and the lobby for the stories of the team coming back from Mexico I'm just grateful for y'all I'm grateful to be here and I'm excited to teach to you out of the book of Psalms this morning now to do a series focused on worship and to not have at least one morning out of the book of Psalms would be sacrilegious. It would be absolutely awful because Psalms is the hymn book of the Old Testament. It is the hymn book of the Hebrew people. It is intended to be sung. A vast majority of the Psalms are intended to be sung. And sometimes there's even instructions about it at the beginning of eight. You don't have to look there yet, but the very first thing it says is to the choir master, according to the Giddeth, nobody knows what that is, a Psalm of David, but they think it's a certain tune to which it's supposed to be sung. So David is even giving this to the choir master. I wrote this to praise our God. Let's sing it to this tune. Let's sing it together. A vast majority of the Psalms were written with the intention of God's body of believers singing them his words back to him, which I think is remarkable. And Psalms is a remarkable book. It sits in the dead center of our Bible. It's the longest book in the Bible with 150 chapters. It's divided into five separate books within the book of Psalms. It has the longest chapter in the Bible in Psalm 119, which comes in at, I believe, 176 verses. It's a super long chapter of the Bible because it's a beautiful Hebrew poem. There's 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and Psalm 119 has 22 stanzas, and each stanza, every line begins with that letter of the alphabet as the psalmist moves through. It's the one thing in the Bible that really makes me want to learn original Hebrew so I could hear that psalm read and sung in the original language in which it was intended because I've got a feeling that it is beautiful. I'll just wait until I get to heaven. I'm not actually going to do the work to learn Hebrew. That seems super hard. The seminary I chose, I chose it so I didn't have to learn original languages, so I'm not about to reverse course now, you know? But it's the longest book with the longest chapter, and it's filled with songs. And they're not all praise songs. They're divided up in different ways depending on who you ask and who's doing the dividing. You can find some people that divide them into five different types of Psalms, some as many as 20 and everything in between. But just a few examples of the types of Psalms that you can find in your Bible as you read through Psalms. And shame on me, I realize I haven't done a series in Psalms in the six and a half years I've been here. Shame on me for that. So I am promising you that coming up, we will do a series in Psalms at some point. But if you want to know some of the divisions of the book of Psalms, the different types that we have, there's Psalms of praise. Obviously, there's royal Psalms, Psalms of lament. And we're actually going to talk about those next week. I'm so grateful that our Bible has Psalms of lament, expressions of sadness and grief. There's what's called imprecatory psalms or psalms that are prayed and sung to seek vengeance over our enemies. David had a lot of reason to sing those. You probably don't. You probably don't have many enemies that you should sing imprecatory songs over, but they're in there. Psalms of enthronement and then psalms of pilgrimage. And I think these psalms of pilgrimage are really interesting. And I want to actually point you towards a book for my people who are readers. There's this book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson. Eugene Peterson is the pastor that faithfully translated the message to make scriptures a little bit more approachable for people who have never encountered them before. I read his biography last year, and I think it was an autobiography, a memoir, and it was one of the more moving books I've read in a long time. I was really, really touched by the heart of Eugene Peterson. And probably his most famous book is a book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And A Long Obedience in the Same Direction actually moves through what's called the Psalms of Ascent, this group of pilgrimage psalms And I've wanted to, that may be the Psalm series that we do. I'm either going to do it as a series as we walk through the book together, or I'm going to do it as like a Wednesday night course where those that want to come and we move through it together. But if you're a reader, I would highly encourage you to go grab or write down or put in your Goodreads, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, wonderful book. But in the book of Psalms, we have all these different categories. We have all these different verses. And one of the things we see that I think is remarkable is that a majority of them are written by David. They're not all written by David. There's some authors that are just referred to as the sons of Asaph. And Asaph was, I believe, the choir master, the worship leader. And then these are his sons that he has passed this responsibility down to. And they've written their own Psalms in there. But one of the remarkable things about the book of Psalms is to see the heart of David just kind of filleted open on the table for you. And I love that God in his goodness includes the Psalms to offset the other stories of David. Because if you read the story of David in 1 and 2 Samuel, you can also see the stories in 1st Kings but more of details of the story are in 1st and 2nd Samuel and if you read the story of David you see this traditionally masculine macho guy who's fighting and killing and he kills Goliath and he fights lions and bears with his bare hands which you know who hasn't and then there's a song about him him. David has killed his tens of thousands. Saul has killed his thousands. It's just like, yeah, spear-throwing, meat-eating dude. And then you open Psalms, and here's a guy that's brokenhearted. Here's a guy that's highly emotional, highly vulnerable, who displays his tears and his lament and his repentance and his hopes and his fears and his deepest prayers for all of time to see. And the juxtaposition of Psalms and 1 and 2 Samuel kind of brings together this vision of what we can be as people and how multifaceted we can be. So I'm grateful that Psalms reads almost like a prayer journal of David at times. But to me, the most remarkable thing about the book of Psalms is that when we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. When we sing the Psalms, we join in the ancient chorus of all the saints. And you can sing the Psalms. Write this down if you want to, if you want something else to listen to. There's this, I don't know, I guess they're just a duet, a duo, I don't know the rules, a band, Shane and Shane. And they have an album called Psalms, where they have set the Psalms to music, and it's one of my favorites. I love it. I've loved it for years and years. You can go find it. It's on Spotify. It's on all the things. And you can sing the Psalms. I would highly recommend it. When we sing the Psalms, understand this, we are joining in to an ancient chorus of all the saints. I spoke last week about how when we worship, when we praise, when we sing out, that we join our brothers and sisters in Christ in unity. It unifies us according to the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. When we sing together, it unifies us in this remarkable way. When we walk in Republican and Democrat, we walk in 80 and 20. We walk in stressed and not stressed, successful and not successful in a season of plenty and a season of need. And we lay all of those things down and we praise our God together and it unifies us. And I've just, I just got to tell you, I shared this with the band and the tech team before the service. But this is just a, just such a good picture of how it unifies us. if I don't say it I might die a little on the inside. So I'm just gonna have to Yesterday I was at the funeral for a friend of mine's wife 40 years old perfectly healthy Went on a girl's trip Heart heart attack, died in the bathroom. No other explanation. Incredibly sad thing. Two kids, sixth grader, third grader. So I drive down, I go to the funeral, and the husband's name, my buddy's name is Jeff. There's about 750 people in the room. And in between speakers, they put up a slideshow of Jodi and her family. And they started playing under that slideshow a song called Gratitude. We've sang it here a couple of times. It's going to be the last song that we sing this morning. They started playing Gratitude. And when that song started, Jeff, the husband who lost his wife a week ago, stood up and raised his hands in worship. And so, if you're at a funeral and the husband of the deceased woman stands up and raises his hands, you stand up and you raise your hands. So 750 people stand up and raise their hands to this song too. And then they spontaneously started singing it. And I'm six hours away from my church family, with my old church family, singing a song with myriad other church families, with our hands raised, choosing to praise in a moment of grief, and it just unifies you in a way that nothing else can. It was a remarkable moment. And when we sing it this morning, we join them and their praises to a God in spite of grief. We join Jeff in our prayers for him. We join the other congregations that sing that too. So when we sing the Psalms, we join into the ancient chorus of all the saints. Do you understand? When we sing in a few minutes, Psalm 8, back to God, we are singing it with David. We are singing it with the generations of David and Solomon and the faithful generations of Jeroboam and Rehoboam. We're singing it with Hezekiah and King Asa. We are singing it with the faithful generations, with the remnant that gets taken to Babylon. We are singing these psalms with Daniel and Shadrach and Meshach and Abednego. We are singing these psalms with the Maccabees who lit the menorah in Roman oppression. We are singing these psalms with the generations that cried out in the 400 years of silence between Malachi and Matthew We are singing these songs with Jesus himself and with the disciples And with the early churches that met in the basements in Rome when we sing the Psalms We are joining with the underground churches in China and in Lebanon and in Istanbul, singing God's songs back to him. One of my favorite quotes about the Psalms is by Charles Spurgeon, and I'll tell you why he deserves to be the one who writes this in a second. Also, I'm just going to compose myself. We've got a long way to go here. This is premature. I can't afford this. I only have one tissue. Jen's laughing at me the hardest, she knows. It's been an emotional weekend. Back off. All right. Spurgeon writes this, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. I love that. The book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. That when we sing Psalms, we are mounted on wings of eagles and we soar in the presence of God. Now let me tell you why Spurgeon has a right to write that sentence and should rightly be pointed out in any sermon on Psalms. If you don't know who Charles Haddon Spurgeon is, he was a preacher. He was loud. He had combed back hair and a beard and a belly, and he suffered from gout, and he liked to drink whiskey. So, just saying, he was called. He was and is called the Prince of Preachers. He holds the world record for preaching to the most people in one space at one time without a microphone and being heard. One time he was preaching in an auditorium. This is in the late 1800s in London. He was preaching in an auditorium, going through what he wanted to say, and some janitor in a hallway that he couldn't see bowed on his knees right there and accepted Jesus listening to Charles go through his sermon. It's an amazing story. The volume of work of Charles Spurgeon is unbelievable. The amount of books that he wrote. You can look up any of his sermons online, and they're long, wordy, lengthy sermons. And it was said of him that people would come from all over the world to hear him preach, and what they would say is, yeah, the sermon's great, but you need to listen to the man pray. He was known all over the world. He wrote tons of books. He ran a seminary out of his church. He wrote books for the seminarians that I have, that I refer to regularly, that still help me and my approach to pastoring and preaching and all the things. But his whole life, he worked on one book that became a three-volume set called The Treasury of David. It's a commentary on the book of Psalms. And he carried it with him wherever he went. He worked on it for decades. He would work on it for a bit. He'd put it back down, he'd pick it back up. You better believe that I've got the treasury of David in my office. And that every time I preach out of a psalm, that's the first place I go. If you're someone who appreciates materials like that, go get it. It's not like super expensive. Find it on Amazon with a cheesy cover. And he writes in the intro to his magnum opus, the book of Psalms instructs us in the use of wings as well as words. It sets us both mounting and singing. The book of Psalms is worthy of our study and it's worthy of our singing. And we ought to acknowledge when we're singing it back to God because when we do, we join into that ancient chorus of all the saints through all the decades. Now this morning, we're going to be in Psalm chapter 8. So if you have a Bible with you, I would encourage you to turn there. And I'm going to say this this morning. I don't try to get you to do a lot of stuff because I want it to matter when I ask you to do something. So I intentionally don't try to put pressure on you to do things. I just want you to be a good Christian adult and do what you want to do and do as the Spirit moves you. But I'm going to encourage us as a church to begin to bring our Bibles to church for Sunday mornings. Some of you like to read through apps. That's fine. Read your app. Bring it. Have your phone out. I'm giving you permission to have your phone out in church. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you are not scrolling something that you shouldn't be scrolling during a church service. And if you are someone who likes to read the Bible on your phone, that's fine to have it out. Just make sure that the screen is visible to the people next to you, okay? So that they can smack you if you're cheating and you're checking a score or something. But let's be people who bring our Bible to church. Because here's what I want for you. I want you to sit, and I want you to have your Bible open. And when something strikes you, I want you to be able to write a note. When you see a verse that you like, that you want to remember, I want you to be able to highlight it. I want your Bibles to serve you as kind of these spiritual journals where when you flip through them, you see where you've been. You know that God's spoken to you there before. When you go to different places, you have notes on the sides and you have dates and you have prayers so that as you flip through your Bible years from now, you see times when God was faithful. I can't tell you how many passages I have written beside them. What does this mean? God help me understand. And then I'll hear sermon on it, or I'll hear somebody teach about it. I'll read a book on it, and I'll turn to that passage, and I'll go, oh, I think I understand this now. Thank you, God, for your faithfulness. I want to encourage you to bring your Bible to church. Open it up. Make notes about what I'm saying or what God is saying to you. And then let me just tell you this. If things get boring, as they often do, you can start flipping through your Bible like you're source checking me or you're just interested in something. And then you look double spiritual. The people in your row are going to be like, yo, they're cross-referencing Nate. That's, look at, look at them. That's super spiritual. So just bring it, man. We'll probably make you an elder if you start doing that stuff. And you're just doing it because you're bored. It's so many benefits. Let's start bringing our Bibles if we don't already. But right now, what I want you to do is grab the Bible. If you don't have one, grab the one in front of you and let's read Psalm 8 together. It's only nine verses and I thought it would be well worth it to spend some time reading it together this morning. Find Psalm 8. It says this. When I look at your heavens, the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. Verse 9, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. What a wonderful, declarative psalm of praise. This is the psalm that we sing from. This is the psalm that when I'm done talking, we will sing from again. And as we look through it and we go through it together and see what it has to offer, I think there's such depth of wisdom and goodness here. I love the way that the psalm starts. Verse 1, if you look at it in your Bibles, O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name and all the earth. What I love about this, and this is a point that Spurgeon made, not me. What I love about this is the inadequacy of that declaration. This is a psalm that is clearly meant to glorify the majesty of God, that is clearly meant to frame him up among the stars, that is clearly meant to swoop us up and to carry us away into a reverent awe of the majesty of God. This is a big deal psalm. This needs to resound through the generations. And so we would expect some honorifics to go along with the Lord's name, wouldn't we? We would expect some more adjectives to be there. How majestic and all of your grandeur and the worthiness of your ways and whatever else. We would expect it to be this grand entrance as we open this declaration about God. And yet it's not that. It's this humble, oh Lord, our Lord. That's the best David could muster. Oh Lord, our Lord. It feels so inadequate for the moment, but that's why it's so good. Because to start a majestic psalm that way, so humbly, is to confess without even having to say it out loud, my words are inadequate for your greatness, oh God. What else could David say but oh Lord, our Lord? What else is fitting? What honorifics should he put there that would adequately capture who our creator God is? There's nothing worthy enough of writing. So he just humbly puts, oh Lord, our Lord. And so when we sing those words in a few minutes, when we say, oh Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name, we are admitting in that song and in that declaration and with our voices and in our hearts that we are inadequate to adequately title God's glory and goodness. We are inadequate to adequately express and explain and capture who he is. And so we surrender to the simple, humble, oh Lord, our Lord. How majestic is your name. It's such a good beginning of the psalm to start it with humility and with simplicity as we confess through our words and our spirits, our inadequacy to capture who our creator God is. Verse two, we're actually going to look at in a second. That becomes important when we start to think about how Jesus employed this psalm. But verse 3, I love, when I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. Psalm 8 proclaims that God has told the story of himself through his creation. The song that we are singing based out of Psalm 8 is called Tell the Story. And it talks about how creation tells the story of God and how we participate in that. When we look at creation, when we look at a sunset or a sunrise, when we're on a plane and we can look out and get that unique view of God's creation and his earth, when we hike and we see beautiful things, when we look into the heavens and we marvel at God, when we get away from the city and we can actually see the stars, when we do those things, the heavens are declaring the glory of God. They're preaching to us about the presence of God. The purpose of creation is to tell the story of the creator. And since you are his creation and you are the only one imbued with a voice and entrusted with a voice, then it is our responsibility to cry out to God in ways that the rest of creation cannot do. It is our responsibility to make sure that the rocks don't have to cry out to our God because we're going to do that because we are the part of his creation that was made to praise him. And so we do it loudly. We do it vigorously. We do it openheartedly. And I'm reminded in verse three, as it points to God's creation, kind of declaring who he is of Romans one, Paul writes about this. Paul in Romans 1 says that the Lord has revealed himself in creation so that no man is without excuse. Through the millennia, men and women and children have looked at God's creation and marveled at the creator. The sun, the moon, and the stars tell the story of our God and who he is. And then we move into verses four and following what could be a little bit of a confusing portion. Because as I read it earlier, you may have picked up on the difference. If you were following along in an NIV, if you're using one of our Bibles this morning, then you're reading an N NIV maybe you pulled up an NIV on your app or that's what you carried in this morning but what you saw is in verse 4 when it says what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him your version says them so the ESV and some other versions say him and your version and some other versions say them. And so the question becomes, why is there a difference there? Why does that matter? Why is that important? Well, the Hebrew word there can be translated either way. And so some translations choose to say them because clearly some of these verses are referring to us, to humankind. I mean, when we read it, especially verse 4, what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him? That's not talking about Jesus. Who is Jesus that you would care about him, that you are mindful of him? Obviously, it's not talking about Jesus. It's us. Who are we that you would care about us? And to this point, just to bring this home, I do like that verse. I'm going to pause here. We're going to get back to him and them. But I like this thought, who am I that you would care for me? Why do I matter to you? I don't know if you've ever experienced someone singling you out in a way that made you feel special. You're like, why are you paying attention to me? Years ago, a few months before I moved to Raleigh, my pastor growing up died. He had had an aortic aneurysm, survived for a few years, developed an infection, and he passed away. He was very old, though. He was about 62, I think. He was too young. And his church had grown pretty significantly, and they had started other churches. So the people who were there were in the thousands. There was so many people who wanted to pay their respects for Pastor Buddy that they had to have a visitation the night before at the church. And the line was over an hour long to talk to the family. And when I got there, I hadn't been going to that church in years. I worked at another church. I grew up with, I grew up at that church and Buddy has three kids, Gabe, Joy, and Spring. Joy's my age. Gabe's a few years older than me. But Gabe and I, we were buddies growing up. We played Goldeneye together. He was my Goldeneye buddy. I don't know if that resonates with any of you. Like four of you, they're like, yes, Goldeneye buddies. But we weren't like super tight. And I really didn't expect to talk to anybody. I was just showing up because I have a lot of respect for Buddy and I love that family. And before I could get in line, I heard Gabe call my name. And I'm like, cool, I get to skip the line, which I love doing. And I go up to Gabe, and he hugs me, and he says, it's such a funny question. He goes, dude, what are you doing? Like, you got anything going on? I'm like, I'm at your dad's visitation, man. This is what I'm doing. You know, like, I didn't say that, but I said, no, I'm not busy. And he goes, come on. And so he leaves the line, and he takes me back to a hospitality room where there's Zaxby's. I'd love to say it was Chick-fil-A. It wasn't. There's Zaxby's. And he sits down, and he just wants to talk with me. And I just remember thinking, why are you talking with me of all these people why do i why am i the one that gets your time why are you treating me like this and in that case i really do think it was because i knew him when we remember growing up we we were at the church running around together we were the ones running around in in the service after it was over before there was thousands of people going there. And I guess nobody else kind of knew the family like I did. But the whole time I'm sitting there, I just felt such privilege of why in the world do you care about talking to me right now? And I feel like that's what the author of Psalms, David, is describing. God, why do you even notice us? Why are you calling me out in a crowd? Why do we matter to you? That should not be something that's lost on us, that God sees us, that he calls our name, and he says, hey, come here, let's talk. That's a remarkable thing. And so back to the he, him, and them. There are some verses that are very clearly talking about humankind, us. But there are some verses that are very clearly talking about Jesus. Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You gave him dominion over the works of your hand. You have put all things under his feet. Clearly that's talking about Jesus. And so the question becomes in Psalm chapter 8, in verse 5, is the psalmist talking about us or Jesus? Yes. He's talking about both things. He's talking about both us and Christ. Again, because clearly there are some verses here that could not apply to Christ. Who is Christ that you should consider him? That doesn't really work out. He's part of the Trinity. So that has to be for us. But he has not put everything under our feet. He's put everything under Jesus' feet. So clearly that's for Jesus. And I'll tell you how I know that's for Jesus, because Jesus, Paul, and the author of Hebrews also thought that it was for Jesus. If you turn to Hebrews, you'll see, I forget the chapter. I think maybe I wrote it down somewhere. Yeah, chapter 2. The author of Hebrews is comparing Jesus to the angels, saying that he's superior to the angels. To do that, he quotes Psalm 8 and uses it to point back to Jesus. In 1 Corinthians 15, verses 25 through 27, this is one of the times that you could flip and check me if you're bored and you'd look super spiritual. Paul is talking about Jesus and he's telling the people this is who Jesus is. He's the one that Psalm 8 was referring to. He's the Messiah that we are waiting on. The whole earth is in subjection to him. That is who we serve. And then Jesus himself uses this psalm to prove to a group of Pharisees that he's actually Jesus. He uses it to tick them off, which, you know, I'm a fan of. But this is what he says. Matthew 21 verses 15 and 16. I cheated. I had it marked. So I got there extra fast. Jesus says this, well, this isn't Jesus yet, but he'll talk soon. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant. Now they're indignant because for, for someone to declare Hosanna to the Son of David is to declare them the Messiah. It is to declare them God incarnate. And they were not willing to accept that about Jesus. So the children acknowledged who Jesus was before the adults were willing to acknowledge it. They were indignant. Verse 16. And they said to him, Do you hear what these are saying? Like, you need to tell them to be quiet if you have any sense. And Jesus said to them, Yes. Have you never read? Which is hilarious. Have you never read? That's like asking a Tennessee fan if they don't know that they got their tails kicked yesterday. Yes, of course they know that. Of course they do. Have you never read? It's ridiculous. Have you never read? Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise. It is a direct reference to Psalm chapter 8, where Jesus says, yeah, have you not read that Psalm? It's about me. So how can I be sure that Psalm 8 is about us and Jesus? Because Jesus told me. He uses it as a proof text to say, yeah, I am Hosanna, the son of David. And so what this means, what all this means, and I don't want you guys to miss this. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. When we sing Psalm 8, we declare the majesty of our God, our wonder at his love for us, and the glory of our risen Savior. That's what's packed into these nine verses. We declare the majesty of God. Oh, Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth. We declare God is grand. God is big. God is huge. We declare it along with the churches down through the centuries. We declare glory unto God. We marvel at his wonder for us. Who are we that you should pick us out of a crowd, that you should call us, that you should talk to us, that you should care about us, that you should know us, that you would want my praise. Who am I that I matter to you, God? Why in the world did you send your son for me? So we marvel at God's love as we sing. And then, and then we declared glory for the risen Savior. We shine him in glory, understanding that Psalm 8 is also a messianic psalm that talks about Jesus and declares his glory and puts him in dominion and says the world is under his feet and we are in that world so we are subservient to him. So in this psalm, as we sing it and as we move through it, we declare the glory of God. We wonder at his love for us and we declare the glory of our risen Savior all in those nine verses. And if this all doesn't stir your soul to sing, I can't help but think I must be a terrible pastor. Because as I studied this, as I prepared this morning, as I thought through this, I couldn't wait to sing with you guys. If I were you, I would want me to shut up so I could start singing. That's what I would want right now. And so I'm going to do that right before I do. I just want to show you the words we're about to sing. And I want to show you the verses that they come from. So when we sing this song together, when we, in a few minutes, join the ancient chorus of believers who have been singing this song through the centuries. When we join the churches all over the world who have been singing this song and who might even sing this song or sing from the songs this morning. I want us to know what we're singing. So let's look. The first verse, the first words, O Lord, our Lord, how wonderful your name. That comes directly out of verse 1. Directly out of verse 1. We're singing that right back to God. And then the words right after that in the song are your glory on display. The works of your hands show us who you are. That's verses 2 and 3. Do you see? That's verses two and three when it says the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have set in place. We're singing those words back to God. That's where they're pulled from. On down we see verse three highlighted again where it says, O Lord, our Lord, you light up our world, the sun, moon, and stars. Declare who you are. Declare who you are. And then finally, we see verse 4, and O who am I, unworthy one, that you would give your only son? Who are you to care for me? Amazing love, how can it be? That's where directly out of verse 4, we wonder and marvel at the love that God has for us, that he would notice us and care about us. And then the whole psalm declares the glory of Jesus. Anytime we sing about Jesus, who am I that you would send your only son? That's Jesus. That's who we're singing about. And then we say and we declare, tell the story. As we sing, God use me to tell your story of creation. I would remind you, all of creation was made to tell the story of God and declare praise for him. We're the only part of that creation that was given a voice to praise him. So let's use it together as we close out in these songs together. I'm going to pray and then Aaron and the band's going to come and we're going to sing together. Father, you are worthy of our praise. You are worthy of our adoration. Our words and our praise and our declarations are insufficient for you. They are inadequate for you and who you are. We admit that, God, as we look to sing to you. Lord, would you fill our lungs with praise for you? Would you fill our hearts with your grace and your goodness and your love that we might pour it back out to you? Would what we experience as we sing now not simply be something that makes our Sunday morning better, but will it carry us on a wave of praise into our weeks and maybe wash back up on these shores next week ready to praise again. God, fill our hearts with praise. Fill our hearts with joy. And let us do now, God, what you created us to do, to sing your praises back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.