Sermons tagged with Confidence

All right, well, good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Now's not a good time. I'm busy. Happy Mother's Day for those to whom it applies. As we were singing that last song, I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. I think that's an excellent song for Mother's Day. I think about my wife, who's an incredible mother. I think about the mom that I got to grow up with. I think about the kids that we have and share together and see God's evidence, the evidence of God's goodness all over my life. And hopefully for Mother's Day, that's something that you get to reminisce and think about too. Hopefully you have a great mom. Hopefully you've gotten to experience being a mom if that's something that you want to experience. But I also know that for others, Mother's Day is hard. We had a lot of hard Mother's Days when we wanted the gift of children and we didn't have it yet. And so I always like to just acknowledge that and pray in gratitude for good moms, for good memories, for the blessing of motherhood, but also pray for strengthening for those for whom Mother's Day is difficult for myriad reasons. So if you'll join me in prayer, I'll pray, and then we'll dive into the sermon. Father, we're grateful for good moms, moms that love us,oms that love us enough to get on to us, to keep after us, to not give in. Moms who wake up in the night with us. Moms who are always there, who leave notes in our lunches and who pray with us every morning. We thank you for moms that we've seen read your word and seek you diligently. We thank you for moms who raised us to help see you. And God, we thank you for the gift of motherhood and parenthood. And those of us who have children, God, are so grateful that you've given us that gift. And so we pray that we would be the mom and the dad to them that we need to be. God, also lift up those for whom holidays like this are difficult. Maybe it's difficult because their mom's not here anymore, and that's hard. Maybe it's difficult because they want to be a mom and they're not. And that's hard. Maybe it's difficult, God, because we thought we were going to be a mom and then we weren't. So, Lord, I pray just for special strength, protection, grace, and peace onto those folks. And that, God, those of us who feel blessed by today would see you as the author of that blessing. In Jesus' name, amen. So this is part five of our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at different stories and instances in the Bible where we see these emotional flare-ups, these blow-ups and these blow-outs, and kind of just ask, what can we learn from that? Because this blowing up is a very part, it's a part of the human existence. It's something that we all experience. And so earlier in the series, we talked about, I talked about Peter cutting off the ear of one of the soldiers in the garden, and I kind of compared that to when we lash out at people. We just get angry, and we lash out, we're cutting off ears, and we should try to cut off less ears. And we talked about what can we do when we feel like lashing out. And so I thought it would be good to look at the other end of that and say, what do we do when we're the one whose ear just got cut off? What do we do when someone lashes out at us? So the question for today is, what should you do when someone blows up on you? When you are on the receiving end of unwarranted anger, of unjust frustration, of unfair lashing out, what should you do when someone blows up on you? And I thought that this would be appropriate for Mother's Day because what is being a mom if not getting blown up at eight times a day because you had the audacity to suggest that now might be a good time to brush your hair or not wear Crocs with a church dress or not get out of bed at 630 to make Mother's Day breakfast. Not that any of those things happen in our home, but with your children who are less good than ours, I'm sure that they blow up at you. And I can only imagine, you know, right now we've got a seven-year-old daughter. John is two. He doesn't really know how to blow up at anybody. He just clenches his fist really tight and you can just hear, he screams and you can just see this visceral anger coming from him, which is great. And, but Lily knows how to blow up. She's seven, but they're seven-year-old blowups, you know, like they're not, they don't really sting a little. I bet the 17-year-old blowups are rough. I bet those, I'm not looking forward to those. And then something tells me that the older your children get, the worse those instances become. And I also know that on the other end of the spectrum, I've talked with enough people, with aging parents, that sometimes as parents get older and older, their filter is just used up. It's just used up. They don't have a new one. There's no replacement. You can't get one from Amazon. It's just gunked up and they've tossed it aside. And they can say things that aren't so nice sometimes. And that's tough. It's tough when someone blows up on you. It's tough to be on the receiving end of unfair anger. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was going to pick up my dad at the airport. And I was at the airport and just kind of started to, I was near the terminal, so the traffic kind of starts to funnel in and slow down and whatever. And this cab, like a literal taxi cab, I don't even know, like, what are you guys even doing anymore? Like, who's using cabs? And not, why does it even exist in Raleigh? I don't understand this. It's like, it's like, it's like seeing the yellow pages on your front door or something. Like, didn't we, didn't we cover this? Anyways, cab comes blowing past me, swerves into my lane, like, and, and, and like slams on his brakes. Like he's mad at me. And I'm like, what in the world's going on with this guy? I have no idea. I did not see him anywhere in my rear view. I was not aware. I didn't even think that I had changed lanes recently. He just decided he was mad at me. He gets in front of me and I'm like, whatever. So I, I actually, I didn't even need to be in that lane and he was now going slow to mess with me. So I, I I just went around him like I got to go to the second terminal, buddy. And I look over, and he is aggressively hanging the bird at me. And I don't know how you do that non-aggressively, but this was aggressive. Shaking his fist, yelling things. I literally, like honestly, I'm on the stage, okay? I'm preaching to people. So before God, I have no clue, no clue what I did that upset this guy. And so I just kind of looked at him and went, and kept driving. I don't know. I wasn't mad, but he was really mad at me. So what do we do when someone gets really angry with us and we don't deserve it? We didn't do anything. We don't know what to do. How do we act in those moments? How does God want us to act? And what's really cool is not even how does God want us to act just so that we behave well, but how can we act in those moments that will actually draw people, the people who are angry and the people who can see that anger, that will actually draw them closer to our Father. What can we do in those situations when someone blows up on us? When I was thinking about that, there's one story that comes to mind in the Bible. To me, it's the best blow-up story in the whole Bible. It's one of the biggest ones. I can't think of many others that are like it, if any at all. But it's in 1 Samuel. We see the first part of it in chapter 18, and then I'm going to point us to chapter 19. So Saul is the king of Israel. He's the first king of Israel, but there's this kid named David who's been anointed as the next king of Israel. Normally, Saul's son Jonathan would take the throne from him, but God has used the prophet Samuel to anoint David as the next king of Israel. And then after getting anointed, David does this really annoying thing where he goes down in the valley and he kills a giant that everybody else in the whole country was afraid of, including Saul, and he does it without Saul's armor. And so Saul's a little ticked at him. And then he puts David in his army, and there's this song. This is the English translation of the song. Maybe it sounds better in the original Hebrew. I don't know. It's a pretty dumb song, if you ask me. But it was, Saul has killed his thousands, but David has slayed his tens of thousands. I don't know what the melody is on that. Maybe I should get Roburg to help me out. That seemed to work for you. But I don't, that was the song, right? So there's some jealousy there between Saul and David. And so Saul was a man that was given to what we would probably identify as anxiety or depression, bouts of despair and anger. And one of the only things that could calm him was David coming to the palace and playing the harp for Saul. That would calm him down. And so David's doing that one day, and Saul is just seized with anger and throws his spear at David to try to kill him two times. David dodges both of them and then gets out of there. Then after that, Jonathan, who was David's closest friend in the world, goes to Saul, his dad, and he's like, dude, this is a paraphrase. He says, dude, what are you doing? What's the problem here, man? This guy, he loves you. He serves you. He's a good servant. He's faithful. He's a good leader of men on the battlefield. He's there to play the harp when you need him to. I'm not mad at him. I'm happy that he's going to be my king. You don't need to be mad at him for me. Just like knock it off with David, with hating David. Can you do that for me? And Saul says, yes, I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Which just as an aside, if you ever in your life have to promise to stop trying to kill someone, you just need to take a look in the mirror. That's all. I'm not going to make a bunch of points about that, but that's a sentence that no one should say. I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Then we pick up the story in 1 Samuel 19. Turns out Saul's a liar. He just really liked trying to kill David. So here we go. Then a harmful spirit from the Lord came upon Saul, and he sat in his house with his spear in his hand, and David was playing the lyre. And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul so that he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled and escaped that night. Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David's wife, told him, If you do not escape with spear two times, leaves, gets invited back to the palace, goes back to the palace. He's playing the lyre again to try to soothe Saul. And Saul, for a third time, throws a spear at David. David eludes it and gets out of there. Which, as an aside, I'd just like to point out, this is one of the fundamental differences between David and I. I have a one-spear-throw policy. If you throw your spear at me one time in anyone's house, I'm leaving that house, and I'm not going to trust you around spears again. David has a three-spear policy, much more gracious than I am. So he eludes it for the third time. He leaves. McCall is actually Saul's daughter that was given to David in marriage, and she helps him escape. Later on, we see this poignant scene where David and Jonathan meet in a field, and Jonathan tells David, you're going to have to go until my dad dies. He's never going to stop wanting to kill you, so you got to go. So David, for I think about this 20 year period goes and he just lives in the wilderness with a band of some of his soldiers. And they just elude Saul at various times. Saul chases David through the wilderness, trying to capture him and kill him. And there's actually two really poignant scenes in the wilderness where David has a chance to kill Saul and he doesn't. There's one where they're in the En Gedi, the caves on the edge of the En Gedi plain, which is in the southern part of Israel, close to the Dead Sea. And Saul's army must have been close because David and his men were hiding in a cave. And Saul, now at my house, when someone says they have to go to the bathroom, we say, do you have to go to the bathroom or the bathroom bathroom? Saul had to go to the bathroom bathroom. So he goes into a cave to take care of business. While he's in there, just so happens, that's where David and his guys are. And David's guys are giving David the eyes like, dude, you could totally kill him right now. And David realizes this. But he says, shame on me if I harm the head of the Lord's anointed. So he takes his knife and he cuts off an edge of the robe and Saul leaves. And once he's a little ways off, within shouting distance at least, David feels terrible that he even did what he did. And he goes out and he gets Saul attention, and he shows him the robe. And Saul feels so bad about the grace and forgiveness that David shows him that he decides, I think I'm going to be done killing David for a while. And he goes back to the palace. It wasn't long before he started hunting for David again. This time, David and a guy named Abishai snuck into the tent at night, and Saul's laying on the ground asleep with all of his men around him asleep as well. And Abishai looks at David, and he says, let me strike him with the spear. It will only take once. It will not take twice, which is a really, like, it's one of the cool lines. Like, I only need to do it once, man. I won't need two on this one. I'll get him. And David says, no, shame on me if I touch the Lord's anointed. And then in a battle between some of David's forces and some of Saul's forces, Saul ends up being killed. And the person who takes Saul's life, David actually takes their life for being willing to do that to the Lord's anointed. So what we see from David is that although Saul blew up on him, had completely unjust, unfair, unwarranted anger at David, David always, his whole life took the high road. His whole life honored Saul. Never once did he raise to meet Saul where he was. And so if we're going to ask, what should we do when someone blows up on us, when we are the object of unwarranted anger and frustration, I think we can look to this example of the life of David and see what he did, and we can mimic those things in our own life. And what's really helpful about this is I think that there are three really important New Testament passages, verses or passages, because some of them are two verses. I think there are three really important New Testament passages that honestly, every Christian, if you're here and you call yourself a believer, you should have these memorized. You should be able to say these off the top of your head. These should be things that show up in your life that you think of often enough so regularly that you can quote them. You might not know where they're from. You might not know how to find them. You might have to type them into Google to figure out the reference like I did this week, but you should know them. You should know what to type into Google. And so I want to look at three verses that display three behaviors that David displayed in this story about his interaction with Saul. So let's look at three things that were true of David and try to make those true of us. The first thing we see in this story is that David was slow to anger. He was slow to anger. And I know he was slow to anger because David could have, by all accounts, by all accounts, he was a better warrior than Saul. By every measure, he was superior to Saul. When Saul is in his house and potentially drunk and throwing spears at him, David could have very easily taken that spear out of the wall and gotten his vengeance on Saul right there. Now, you might say, well, he couldn't do that. There's guards. He could have been killed. Yeah, maybe, but what we know is that he didn't raise up in red-hot anger and do what some of us would do if somebody tried to hurt us. He kept his cool. He was slow to anger, which is really not the typical response in the human experience, right? That's why James writes this verse to remind us to do it. In James 1, 19 and 20, he says, does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. This is one that we should know. This is one that we should have memorized. This is one that we should remind ourselves of, particularly when someone is blowing up at us. Because human nature is not to stay calm and stay down here. Human nature is to rise and meet the anger with anger, isn't it? You guys who are married know this. You know this. You've had those fights, those days, where you look at each other and you're just mad at each other. You're just mad. And finally, one of you goes, what are you mad about? What are you even upset for? And the other one says, I don't know. You're mad at me, and I don't know why you're mad, so I'm mad at you. Well, I don't know why you're mad. So I'm mad at you. And then you kind of go back and forth. You're like, what was the first thing that made us mad? And nobody knows. And like, can we just agree to just kind of set the arms down and slowly back away from this one? Are we done here? We're like, yeah, we're done here. But that's typical in human interaction to meet anger with anger. I remember years ago, very early on in our marriage, Jen and I were at each other's throats about something. I don't remember what. But as we were talking about it, she gets really upset. She storms up the stairs, slams our bedroom door. Now, what did I do? Did I, because of my maturity and wisdom, think to myself, she's probably overreacting, but I'm going to let her stay up there and simmer because we don't want to say words in anger. And, you know, I'm sure that she'll kind of calm down. She'll realize maybe that was a little bit too much, and she'll come and apologize and tell me I'm right. That's probably what I need to do. No, I did not do that. I did not do that. Instead, I thought, I'm going to go upstairs. I'm going to tell her that she does not need to be slamming doors in our house. So I go upstairs, and I open that door, and I start getting on to her for the way that she's expressing her anger. And she, again, I don't want to talk to you right now, and leaves the room and goes into the guest room and slams that door. Now listen. Here's what I know. I don't know what we were fighting about. But if I make that sweet woman act like that, it's my fault. I was wrong. I don't know what we were fighting about. I know I was wrong. That's what I know. Now when she went into the second room and shut that door, did I leave her be? No. Because I wanted to poke it. So I walk up to the guest bedroom and I open that door. And I said, you know, I can open this door too. I can open all the doors. I don't know what happened after that. Things just kind of went red, I guess. It was just a blur. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's mad at us. Oh, I'm going to get mad at you. Some cab driver hangs you the bird, you're like, hey man, forget you. You know, like whatever. Your kid snaps at you, you've had a stressful day, you meet them there and you snap at them. Your spouse, your co-worker, your parent. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's angry with us, we raise to meet that anger. Well, James tells us, don't do that. Don't do that. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. It's important to be quick to listen and slow to speak too, because in those moments when we're frustrated, we have things that we want to say. But if we'll calm down and listen, we'll probably learn new information that may change what we want to say, that may help us be slower to anger. So when someone's angry with us, wisdom says, I'm going to be quiet, I'm going to be patient, I'm going to listen, and I will not meet anger with anger. This is what David does. The second thing that David does is David was quick to forgive. He was slow to listen and quick to forgive. He moves to forgiveness very, very quickly. We see no evidence whatsoever in any of the texts that David was ever angry with Saul or that David could not forgive Saul ever through the rest of his life. We see David offer Saul quick forgiveness, which is right in line with what Jesus teaches Peter in Matthew chapter 18. When it says that Peter came up to him and said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me that should I forgive him? As many as seven times? And Jesus says to as many times as you need to. Forgive again, forgive again, forgive again, forgive again. And it feels pretty generous for Peter to ask that. How many times, when my brother commits the same offense against me, how many times should I forgive him? Up to seven, which makes sense. Your friend comes over to your house, he gets too rowdy, he breaks your new TV. You forgive him that one time. How many more times should I forgive him? Seven? That's a lot of breaking TVs. And Jesus says, no, as many times as you need to forgive them, forgive them. The way that I think about it is, as many times as we hope God forgives us, forgive other people that many times. When someone offends us, when someone lashes out at us, when we are the object of someone's unfair anger and unfair frustration, we should as quickly as we can move to forgive that person. Because holding that grudge is only going to hurt us. It's not going to hurt them. Now, I will also say this. Last year at Lent, during the Lent season, I did a sermon on forgiveness. And I basically just preached to you from the perspective of my good friend, whose husband was having an affair on her, and she had to really learn what forgiveness looked like because they had five kids, and that was really, really tough. And one of the things that she said that was super helpful, if you're a person who's struggling with forgiveness or wants a more robust explanation of forgiveness and what it looks like, then I would encourage you to go back and listen to that sermon. But one of the things she said that I found very helpful and others have commented to me too that was very helpful is forgiving someone does not mean that you have to trust them again. And so I would say this to you. If the person who is blowing up at you is making a habit of that, if they do it regularly, if it's not just a one-off that you can ascribe to a set of circumstances that are no longer true, but you have someone in your life who's blowing up at you again and again and again, you should be slow to anger in those situations, and you should be quick to find a path to forgiveness in those situations. But let me tell you what David did not do. He did not go back into Saul's palace again. He did not make himself vulnerable to a spear the fourth time. He did not trust Saul again. Did he forgive him? Yes. Did he honor him? Yes. Did he give him grace? Absolutely. But did he put himself back in that home? No. No. If you have someone in your life who is habitually blowing up at you, it is perfectly good and wise to remove yourself from that situation until something changes and you feel like you can trust that that's not going to keep happening. As we talk about what do we do when someone blows up on us, it's... I'm mostly talking about people who aren't our spouses. If it's our spouse and they do it all the time, if it's our brother or sister or friend or mom or dad and they do it all the time, that's a separate sermon. But what I would say to that separate sermon is, it's okay to not put yourself back in a situation where someone's going to blow up at you all the time, where you feel like you're just around a ticking time bomb. We should seek to forgive, but we don't have to trust and keep putting ourself in a place where that is going to happen over and over and over again until we believe that something is going to be different. The last thing David does is David was a conduit of grace. He was a conduit of grace. He was connected to God's grace. He was pouring grace out onto others. Back in the fall, I did a series called The Five Traits of Grace, the five characteristics that make us who we are, The five things that we want every partner to exhibit. And one of those things is to be a conduit of grace. To be attached to the grace of God so that the grace that we receive flows out onto others. This is the verse that I think of when I think of this. This is probably, if you're going to memorize any verse at all, if you don't know any of these, start with this one. Start with this verse. Put it on your mirror where you get dressed. Put it on your dashboard if you get angry in the car. Put it next to where your emails are if those things make you angry. Whatever sets you off, whatever stokes your fire, just put this verse so that you can see it. And it's super easy to memorize and it's super impactful. For from his fullness, John says, we have all received grace upon grace. From God's fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From the fullness of God's grace that pours out on us, we have all received grace upon grace. When we think about a couple of weeks ago on Palm Sunday, I did a sermon about the earned wrath of God on us for placing his son on the cross and that Jesus on the cross exhausts the wrath of God for his children. When we think of the wrath that we don't have to experience because God poured it out on Jesus instead of us, that's grace. And God knew, as I said, God knew that we were going to cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. He knew that we were going to do that. He knew what you were going to do after you prayed the prayer and after you accepted Jesus as your Savior. He knew that you were going to move through that awful season of your life that you'd like to forget. He knew that and he forgave that. He knows what lies ahead and he's forgiven that. When we think about the grace that we feel every week when we come to church and we sit here and we sing the songs and we have this voice in our head that reminds us of who we are and what we've done and where we've been and that if the people here knew what I was capable of, if the people here knew what I know, then I would have to find a different church to go to. And yet God chooses me and God loves me and God blesses me and he's given me grace upon grace. When we realize that, that that God is so good to us, that that God is so patient with us, that that God will watch us go through years where we don't have quiet times, where we're not praying to him, where we're not seeking him, where everything about our Christian life is compulsory and cursory. He will watch that zombie walk through life and still try to breathe spiritual life into us at all times, calling us back to him. He is excited every time we come home. He is excited every time we utter the words, dear God, and we begin to pray. He is thrilled in his heart every time he hears your voice praise your creator. When we receive from his fullness that much grace, it is very easy to pour grace out onto others. And this is what David did. He had grace for Saul. I think he understood Saul's plight. I think he had patience for him and his depressions and his moods, even in understanding his desire for his own son to be on the throne. And one of the best pictures of grace we see, maybe in the Bible, but definitely in the life of David, is once Saul has passed away, David has ascended to the throne. Anybody who's watched the History Channel or read any books about old kings and kingdoms knows that once a king takes over, one of the first acts of orders of business is to kill everyone associated with the bloodline that preceded him so that there's no threats to his throne. And there was no one left that they knew of, but then one day somebody found a relative of Saul's. It was a nephew or a cousin or something, I can't remember which. Named Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth, it says, had a disability. And that's important because that made it more difficult for Mephibosheth to earn money and provide for himself. So he was a person who needed help. And they brought him to David, expecting David to kill him, to put him to death, to be done with the line of Saul and move on. Instead, David, learning who he was, had mercy and grace on him, made a seat at his table for him, and invited Mephibosheth to live in the palace and dine with him and be with him and considered him a family member for the rest of his life. That was how David showed grace and honor to Saul. That's the kind of grace that we're to show to others. The grace that says, I'm not saying I did this in the moment, I'm not trying to give myself credit, but the grace that says, you know what? It would be super stressful to be a cab driver. I don't know how they do it. I went to Chick-fil-A and Home Depot the other day. I was about to lose my mind, and that's like five minutes away. I don't know how they do it to be a cab driver. And you know what? I bet I did something inconsiderate that I wasn't even thinking of. So I'm going to give them them that. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. They're probably in a hurry. They probably need to get where they're going. Or, if this helps, life would be really hard to be that dumb. So I'm glad that God didn't make me that dumb. Whatever you need. We offer others grace. And I'll tell you who's the world's best at offering other people grace. It's Jen, my wife. She will do this all the time. We will be in traffic. Someone will cut me off, cause me to have to slam on the brakes. Our children are crying. We're terrified. And I'll say, my gosh, can you believe that person? And she'll say, now, Nady, because she calls me Nady. If you want to call me Nady, too, you can. It'd just be weird. She says, now, Nady, you don't know. His wife could be in the passenger seat in labor right now. And we just need, tell me I'm lying. And we just, we don't know what's going on in their life. I could be walking down the road, I promise you. I could be walking down the road and some guy could just come up to me and dog cuss me in front of my family. And then I could get out of the situation and walk down there and be like, can you believe that guy? What a jerk. And she'd be like, now, lady, you don't know what's going on in his life. His wife may have just left him and his parents may have just passed away. You don't know. That kind of grace. And when we remind ourselves of God's goodness and grace to us every day, it is easy to pour that out onto others. And I say start with that one, memorize that one, because if we're full of grace and we're offering other people grace, can't we be more quick to forgive when they mess up? Can't we remember that hurt people hurt people and just assume that they're hurting and maybe actually help them get to the bottom of their hurt rather than piling on and making them feel shame for blowing up in a way that they regret? If we're full of grace, won't we be slow to be angry? Won't we stay here longer? Because we're trying to see the best in them and we're trying to give them the benefit of the doubt in the situation. I think if we just abound in grace that it takes care of the rest. And then the amazing thing that happens when we do this, when someone blows up at us unfairly or unjustly, if we do what this says, when someone blows up on you, be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and abound in grace. When we do that, what are the people around you going to notice? What are your children going to pick up on? It's the easiest thing in the world to match anger for anger. It's the easiest thing in the world to lash back out. It's the easiest thing in the world to let someone say something nasty to you, say something mean to you, to have a server who's curt with you, one of those servers who acts like they don't even want to be there that day. It's perfectly human to let them walk away and then you venture frustration to the people around you. But what if you meet them with grace? What if you're slow to anger when other people would meet? What if you're quick to forgive when other people would hold on? What if you're abounding in grace when other people would abound in suspicion and doubt? Then not only have you brought that person who blew up at you a little bit closer to Jesus, not only do you bring yourself closer to Jesus, but you bring the people around you who see that and who marvel at that closer to Jesus too. Simply by being someone who, like David, is slow to anger, quick to forgive, and always abounding in grace. Let's pray. Father, would we in this way be more like David? And so be men and women after your own heart. God, when we are the subject of unfair anger, unfair frustration, when people treat us in ways that we don't deserve to be treated, would you help us to be slow to anger? Would you help us to stop and to listen? Not meet frustration with frustration? Would you help us to be quick to forgive where we can, to give us an earnest desire to find a path to that forgiveness? And God, more than those things, would you help us be people who abound in grace, who walk in this acute awareness of the grace and the love and the mercy that we have from you. Let us be people who walk in an acute awareness that from your fullness we have received grace upon grace, and let us freely and excitedly and happily give that grace to those around us, even when those around us treat us unfairly. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

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

Oh, hey there, pals. Don't you just love this music? It's nostalgic, isn't it? Takes you back to a simpler time, when you were a kid and things were light and fun. I love times like that. I'll tell you what else makes me feel nostalgic. It's those old Bible stories. The ones that we learned in Sunday school or maybe just picked them up somewhere along the way. I love the heroes, David and Goliath, Noah and the ark, Jonah and the whale. The list really does go on and on. And I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kid stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along, and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, Mailman Kyle. Today, pals, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. That has to be the coolest Mr. Rogers. I mean, a little bit creepy, but mostly, mostly, mostly cool, right? Hey guys, if you are new visiting or we just hadn't had the chance to meet yet, my name is Aaron and I am so excited to be sharing with you today. If you weren't here last week, it was a really cool week, especially for me being the newbie at Grace. It was a ministry partner Sunday and we got to hear from some of our ministry partners and just kind of hear exactly what was going on. And then afterwards, we gave you tacos. And I kind of wish the tacos were this week, because if I do a bad job, but we give you tacos after, you're going to leave and say, that was pretty good, right? So no, no, Nate, man, thank you so much just for the opportunity to come up and share what's been on my heart. Really excited about it. So, to kind of get our minds going in the right direction, I just kind of want to gauge the audience, see if anybody is like me. Is it anybody else who is extremely frustrated and gets angry when something doesn't go according to plan, but because of someone else, right? Like somebody else doesn't do their job, right? Have you ever had a bad haircut? I realize some of you guys are looking at me right now and you're like, 15 years ago, and your wife's looking at you and giggling. I didn't mean to bring that up. I'm sorry. But you understand what I'm saying, right? That happened to me not long ago. And now I'm realizing that I thought of this illustration this morning, getting ready for church, and now there's a bunch of people looking at my hair to see if I'm telling the truth. And stop it. But no, it's the most frustrating thing that can happen, right? Because it's not just that moment that you walk away angry. It's every morning afterward, you're looking, you're trying to fix your hair, and he's like, are you kidding me, right? You go get a hat, go to work, and it's done and over with. But it's frustrating because I went in with a plan, right? I went in and said, hey, this is what I want to do. I talked to him about showing pictures. I didn't walk out looking like Brad, but I looked like one of the little creatures from the Where the Wild Things Are. It was terrible. And every day, I'm like, bro, you had one job. I did everything that I could possibly do. Is anybody else like that? But let me ask you a question. Have you ever had that experience with God? You do everything that you could possibly do, and at some point you kind of sit back and you say, I mean, God, are you going to do anything about this? Like, God, is there, like, I can't, how long am I going to have to keep going through this same thing day after day? God, are you going to step in at any point in time and change things? That's one of the things that I think is so inspirational about, have you ever seen people that just have this unshakable faith? Have you ever encountered that before? It's like it doesn't matter what they deal with. It doesn't matter what they go through, what happens to them in their life. There's this solid confidence in tomorrow. Well, not necessarily tomorrow, but more in the God who kind of controls tomorrow. It's like nothing can be thrown at people like, no, it'll be okay. And they're not void of emotion, right? It's not like they're walking around saying, oh, no, everything's whatever. No, they grieve, they hurt, they have pain, they do all of this other stuff, but there's still this confidence. If you ever have a chance to speak to somebody who is kind of like that, they just have this solid, unshakable faith, I want to encourage you to just ask a lot of questions. And what I believe you will end up hearing is some variation of this, this confidence that God is not simply an observer of our life. He is actively involved in our life. God is not simply up there watching and hoping you get things figured out, hoping things work out according to plan. He's actively involved in the shaping of who we are and the world around us. It doesn't mean everything is going to be perfect all the time, but it means we're never going to be alone in this. And if you ever encounter someone who just kind of walks with that bold confidence that regardless what happens to them, I know that God is not just watching. And that's one of the things that I loved this last week about studying through and reading through Joshua and the battle of Jericho. You're probably familiar with the story. We are going to be in Joshua chapter 6. Joshua is the sixth book of the Old Testament. You can turn there, thumb to it in YouVersion, or we'll put it in this fancy digital Bible in the sky, right? But to catch you up, make sure we're all on the same page, Joshua, where we pick up in the story is he is a newly installed leader for the Israelites. It has been for hundreds of years, not hundreds of years, but for years and years, Moses was the leader. It starts back in when they were in slavery to the Egyptians, right? Moses stepped in, God used Moses, freed them from slavery to the Egyptians, walked them on this extremely long journey, got to see God do some incredible things while they're in journey to this land that God has promised them. And because the Israelites are super creative, they called it the promised land, right? And so now they get to this place where the promised land is in sight. They can see the land of Canaan and it's like, okay, that's it. That's where we're headed. Like everything they had been hoping for, they see it with their eyes. Moses dies. Joshua is raised to be the new leader. And God says to Joshua, hey, listen, there it is. We're going to walk into that land, that land that I promised you, the thing you've been hoping for. You're going to go there. And you're going to go and you're going to conquer all of your enemies there. It will be your land. The very first thing in their sights is Jericho. And so in Joshua 6, 1, it says this about the city of Jericho. It says, Jericho was strongly fortified because of the Israelites, no one entering or leaving. And the Lord said to story, right? Because it's not just any normal boundary. You can see that they really weren't worried about fighting. That's not what Jericho was depending on. They were depending on being able to keep the Israelites out, and that's what was going to keep them safe. I've done a little bit of reading. Without getting too bogged down into the details, the walls are actually made up of two sets of walls. They have an outer wall that starts with a stone retention wall, keeping the resources in. It goes above ground about 12 to 15 feet. Then on top of that, you have a brick mud wall. And it just goes up. It goes up an embankment for a little bit, and you come to the second brick mud wall, and it's built up. A lot of archaeologists, and I've read some commentaries, and what they would end up saying is if you're standing at the base of this wall and you look up, it would be similar to looking up at a four-story building. And that's what God says. That's the first target. But did you catch what he said in verse 2? He says, look, I have handed you. That's past tense. That's already happened. And so God sends them to this place that says, the wall, you can do nothing about. Like, it is absolutely impassable. You cannot touch this. I'll take care of that, and you're going to take care of everything else. And in verse 3, he says, here is the plan. I'm going to try to read this, but it's small. My large print Bible is still in transport, and I'm from Kentucky, so there's that too. But it says this in verse 3. It says, That's not that funny. I mean, come days. Have seven priests carry seven rams horn trumpets in front of the ark. On the seventh day, march around the city seven times while the priests blow the trumpets. When there is a prolonged blast of the horn and you hear it sound, have all the people give a mighty shout. Then the city wall will collapse and the people will advance each man straight ahead. So to kind of flesh that out just a little bit, it's essentially this. This was the plan. He said, I want you to have your fighting men in the front. Right behind them, I want you to have seven priests with seven trumpets. And then I want you to have a couple of priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant. And behind those, pulling in the rear guard, have the rest of your fighting men. And then he said, walk. Like literally, God's plan was take a hike. Like that was what God told them to do. Now listen, I am not much in way, I don't know much about like military strategic battles, right? The extent of my knowledge with warfare strategy begins and ends with Call of Duty. And I'm really not good at that either. But I do know this, that's a bad plan, right? Like, if I'm Joshua, I've got some questions. It's like, okay, God, that was a great broad stroke about what's going to happen, but there's some details I really kind of need to know about. Like, just feel me. Like, so we've got these guys. We've got our swords. Anything at all you want us doing with that? You want us making a lot of noise while we're circling just to strike some fear? No, no, just walk. As a matter of fact, just be real quiet while you're walking, too. Okay, God? I saw Bob has a shovel. Like, we can dig around, build something, like, to make the walls a little... No. Just walk. You poke it with a stick. I mean, what? Just literally just walk? Yeah, just walk. And so we have a tendency when we're reading stories like this, especially if you're anything like me, we kind of dehumanize, right? Like we will pull all of the emotion out of the text that we're reading. So just to kind of put you in that, let's say Nate comes up next week and he says, hey guys, listen, I have a vision from God. The city of Raleigh is going to be ours. We are going to remove all things evil from this city, right? There will be no more cats in this place. Like everything, everything evil is going to be, we'll get rid of it. Like there's, there's nothing else. The first thing we have to do, we have to conquer the most evil place in all of Raleigh. So we meet at Walmart and he says, so what we're going to do is I want you to just kind of walk around. He was like, okay, okay. We walk around, we get excited. We're ready to go. Yeah. We walked around. What now? He said, well, go home, and then come back tomorrow. Okay, okay, we can do that. What, you want us to bring? No, no, you're really good. Just walk. As a matter of fact, guys, we're going to do this for seven days, and on the last day, we're going to walk around it seven times. Listen, I trust Nate. I'm not doing that, right? Like, I'm sending my text. Hey, man, shoot me a message after y'all scream, and I'll show up, right? Because it just doesn't make any sense. Like, maybe the first couple of days, the Israelites were excited. Again, they just saw the land that they had been hoping for. They just saw the place that they had been traveling. They just saw the place that their grandparents and their grandparents, that everyone has been telling them that we're about to walk into it. So maybe there was some excitement. Maybe there was some enthusiasm on day one, two, and three. But what about day four, when they walk around it again and nothing changes? Day five, they walk around again, They look up, and there's not a brick that's fallen. Six and seven, much the same. I mean, again, let's be real. They're not superheroes. They're people like you and people like me. I mean, have you experienced that before? Were you're doing exactly what God has asked you to do, and the end result just doesn't seem to be happening. Maybe it's in your marriage, right? Like your marriage hasn't been exactly what you would hope it would be. And so you try to be obedient to who God has asked you to be as a spouse. You love sacrificially. You put them first. You're consistently serving, but they're just not reciprocating. And at some point, do you step back and say, is it worth it, God? Are you going to do something here? Because the unchangeable thing, Jericho, I can't change their heart. God, you said you would do something. You gave me your promise. Like, I know you want this. Maybe it's with work, right? Like you try to be a hard worker. You are the first one there, the last one to leave. You're trustworthy. You're always looking out for your coworkers, but time after time, year after year, you get passed over for the promotion. Somebody else gets in like, God, what are you doing? Maybe it's with finances in general, right? Like you start saving, you stop eating out, you try to create some margin, you put a little bit of money into saving, except the thing you can't control, inflation just seems to keep going up. And it's like, God, man, I'm doing everything I can. Are you going to step in at some point? Like, what do you do when the right thing no longer seems like the right thing to do? What do you do when you're doing exactly what God has asked you to, but nothing is changing? That's where these guys were. Like, again, if you're anything at all like me, well, the wall starts to influence my behavior a little bit. That unchangeable thing starts to have a little bit of control in who I become. Think about how crazy that is. That the thing you dislike the most ends up influencing who you become. And I get it. I'm not up here talking at you. I'm probably doing more counseling to myself than I am anything. Because it's hard when you're doing exactly what God has asked you to do. You're stepping in the exact path that he's asked you to step, but nothing is changing. You take another trip and the brick doesn't fall. You take another trip. There's no rain to make the ground soft. There's no winds. There's nothing. It's like, God, all right, what's going on, God? But that doesn't seem to be what happens to the Israelites. I'm not saying that's not what they felt. Because I believe with all confidence they had to have those wonderings. But what we see Joshua say in verse 16 tells us that they consistently had a hope. That God was not simply an observer, that he was involved, that God's promise wasn't forgotten. And here's what he said in verse 16. After the seventh time, this is on the seventh day. Remember the seventh day they were supposed to walk around at seven times. This is after the seventh time. The priest blew the ram's horn, and Joshua said to the troops, shout, for the Lord has given you the city. Did you catch the tense that he used? He said, the Lord has given you the city. Joshua, the wall's still standing, bro. How is the city mine? But he had this confidence. And what he did was echoed God's promise. From the very beginning, God said, hey, listen, the city's yours. Don't worry. I'll take care of the walls. And there's something about Joshua. There's something in Joshua's world that allowed him to consistently do the same thing, consistently be the person God is asking him to be, consistently follow in the steps, consistently let his faith influence his steps versus the opposition. And he said, hey, we did it. We're there. We won. It's good. And it was simply the promise. There was something that he did that kept him gripped to the promise versus the not tumbling wall. It's that confidence that we were talking about. Joshua had a hope God would fulfill his promise by remembering the promises he fulfilled. That's what he did. So maybe that needs to happen kind of in your world, right? Hey, God, I'm having a hard time here. But Joshua encouraged his men. That's why I said, shout. Victory is won. And as I'm reading this, I'm like, okay, Joshua, that's not the problem. The problem isn't believing God can, or the problem isn't believing that God is able, but what is it when you're in that moment that makes it so hard to cling to the promise of God? And as I'm reading through, I come to this portion of the instruction that is right in the middle of everyone, the Ark of the Covenant. Now see, to everyone, to the citizens of Jericho and everyone watching, the Ark of the Covenant really represented who the Israelites were, who they were fighting for, exactly whose people they were. But to the Israelites, it was a little something different. To the Israelites, when they looked at the Ark, it actually contained three different things in it. The first thing was Aaron's staff, which was crucial in a big part of being freed from the Egyptian slavery. The second thing was the stone tablets, which Moses chiseled the Ten Commandments on. And the third thing was manna. Manna was something that as they were walking through the wilderness, they didn't have any food, they were starving, and it's where God provided food for them. All three of those things were sitting in the ark. And everywhere that the ark went, not only did it represent the presence of God, but it represented the promise of God. And I think it's by no accident, no accident at all, that when God said, hey, listen, I want you to have some guys up front. I want you to have some guys in the back. And right in the middle of everything, in the middle of everything you're doing, I need you to put the ark. I need you to be able to see the ark. When the wall's not falling quite as quickly as it needs to, I want you to be able to see the ark and remember how I've provided for you in the past. As the walls and you're walking around and something's not necessarily happening, I need you to be able to see the ark and remember, oh man, I remember whenever we were in captivity, God stepped in and freed us for no reason other than the fact that he loved us. I need you to be able to see the ark, and I want you to remember that when we didn't have a direction, he gave us a direction. I need you to see the ark, and I want you to remember as soon as you start thinking, I'm not going to come through for you, I want you to remember how the bread came from nowhere, and you had plenty of food. I need you to see those things. And it was right in the middle of everything that they were doing, in the middle of their frustration, in the middle of the waiting, in the middle of the, God, are you going to do something? Suddenly they caught a glimpse of something that was a reminder of God's presence and God's promise. And they held onto this hope because they remembered God's promise. Joshua said, shout. And is the thing in your world that cannot be taken away from you? What is your experience with God, your encounter with God, that when things aren't happening the way that you would like them to happen, when you're moving toward what you hope for the most and you aren't quite seeing it yet, what is the thing that catches your eye, that you can go back to, that you can remember? And hope. Hope comes in. Like there's hope in a tall obstacle. So, just to be very transparent, very honest, a couple of years ago, serving at a church in southeast Georgia as one of their pastors, and it was a dark, dark time. I grew up in a church where it was really very behavior and rules oriented. I'm not saying anything except for what I ended up taking away from that is that I had to be good enough in everything that I did. I'm grateful, in part, because it made me so awesome today. But no, there's another part of it that I kind of shifted that same type of approach to God. I felt like I had to be good enough for God. And from time to time, that would creep up in my world. And serving at this church, leading people, and I'm not saying that to elevate myself. I'm saying that to say, hey, listen, I, none of your pastors are any different. I was at a place that I felt like God didn't want me anymore, that I felt like God didn't care for me, that God kind of took his hand off of me, that God wasn't going to use me anymore, and he was just kind of done. Go. I gave you too many chances. I'm done. I'm over with. And I'm telling you, I was at a dark, dark place. And I remember, I'm an artist. I'm going to get emotional. Just deal with it. It'll be fun. I remember I went into the church one day, and I was so desperately, I needed to see a brick fall. And I'm saying, on my knees, I'm praying, God, listen, I need to know you haven't given up on me. I need to know that you're still here. I need to know that you still hear me. I need to know that you still care. I was so desperate for some type of a sign. After I would pray, I would look up at the lights and kind of hope for them to flicker. I needed something. I stayed there for 10, 15 minutes, glancing, looking at my phone. Maybe he would say, I love you or something. Just anything. Silence. Day seven. No brick. No lean. And I remember I stood up. I walked right down the middle of the aisle, headed out. And in my mind, I said, I guess I still got to be that good Christian kid, huh? I was angry. I went home. And I was about to sit down and just work on my call-to-duty skills, right? And before I did that, it hit me. I was like, I guess I got to, again, do my devotional thing. And I sat down. I don't need to read it. I sat down. Opened my devotional. And it was actually, it was Louis Giglio, an incredible speaker. He was probably good. I don't remember what he said, though. But I read the text with it. It was Isaiah 43. And it said, this is the Lord your God, and I love you. I chose you. I'll be with you. And I'm telling you, I got broke. Just like, there's my arc. I don't care what happens tomorrow. I can always look at that. I can always remember. He heard. He remembered me. He didn't give up on me. And I'm telling you, I suck really bad at remembering that. So much so I had to get it tattooed on my arm, right? And every day at two o'clock there's a notification that pops up on my phone that says, hey, remember how God is for you. Believe that he'll do it again. Every day, 2 o'clock. What's your arc? What is that encounter? What is that moment? What is that experience with God? Is it a car accident that should have killed you? Is it your spouse still loving you? Is it a home, being able to close on a home in 2022? Good Lord. What is your arc? How different, how different would those moments of walking around the wall be if you started and stopped your day with a journal? Like at the end of every day, sit down and write down, man, this was my God moment. This is what I saw God do in my world today. And then next week, recount back to the week prior. Read that, oh man, that was incredible. And you're sandwiching your day with your God moments, with your ark. How different would your world look if every night at dinner you sat down and you just asked your kids, asked your spouse, hey, what happened in your world today? What did you see God do? What was that cool thing? Not for any type of you have to to be good enough, but I'm telling you, you've experienced it. I've experienced it. The Israelites experienced it. This hurt and this heartache and this wall that kept me from having the hope that Jesus said he came to offer. What's your arc? In just a minute, I'm going to pray for us, And there's a new song. Maybe you're familiar with it, but I believe it's a newer song for here. And it comes right out of this text. And so what I want you to do, I don't want you to necessarily sing along at first. You're more than welcome to. You can read the words if you don't know it, whatever. But what I want you to do is take just a moment and find your ark. Like think back to those God moments, those God encounters that cannot be taken away from you because I promise you this, we need those in our journey because one of the things we were never promised is easy. Find your ark. And then we get to this bridge. The bridge of this song says, I've seen you move. You move the mountains. And I believe you'll do it again. You made a way when there was no way. And I believe you'll do it again. What I'm going to ask you to do at that moment, you've got your ark. I want you to stand up and do exactly what the Israelites did. Shout it. We declare praise to a God who is worthy of our praise. And I believe with all of my heart, right, he is involved in the world that you're living in. I can't tell you tomorrow is going to be easy, but I can tell you if it's not, you've got an ark that can still bring hope into your journey. Let's pray. God, thank you. Thank you for being a God who is good, a God who is kind, a God who is faithful, a God who has blessed us with encounters with you that we can take along with us for the rest of our life. And it's in those moments, I believe that's what helped your disciples ask and pray for boldness, to pray for moments of new experiences with you. Because it just strengthened their faith and it built them to a place of unshakable faith in you. So God, I know sometimes it's hard to remember, and again, you have this promise that your Holy Spirit will speak to us and guide us and lead us. What I ask you to do, Lord, is we sit in just a couple of moments and we reflect on our encounters with you. We invite your spirit to just come and flood our minds, God. Just pour these encounters with you, maybe even moments that we didn't give you credit for. Just flood our hearts, flood our minds with an ark that we can carry with us for the rest of our life. In Jesus' name.

Oh, hey there, pals. Don't you just love this music? It's nostalgic, isn't it? Takes you back to a simpler time, when you were a kid, and things were light and fun. I love times like that. I'll tell you what else makes me feel nostalgic is those old Bible stories. The ones that we learned in Sunday school or maybe just picked them up somewhere along the way. I love the heroes David and Goliath, Noah and the Ark,, Jonah and the whale. The list really does go on and on. And I wonder, pals, how long has it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Oh, this week is David and Goliath. Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for laughing along. Don't worry, we're not going to show you the full minute and 40 second version of that for the next 10 weeks. We can shorten it, but we'll let you watch it a couple more times. Thanks for being here this morning. Those of you who were able to make it in person, thank you. Watching online, wherever you are. I am excited about this series because I love these old stories from the Old Testament that many of us, as I said in the video, picked up when we were kids. Many of the stories that we're going to be telling over the next 10 weeks or so are stories that most, if not all of you could tell. I'm sure everyone in this room can tell some version of David and Goliath that wouldn't be wildly inaccurate. But the thing is about these stories that I'm willing to bet has probably been a long time since we've heard them, since we've read them for ourselves, since we've mined them for fresh details with a different perspective. And when you do read these stories and you look at the details of them and you look at the humanity of them, I think what you see is that the Bible really is unflinching in the details. That we teach these stories to kids. Here's a little secret in ministry. We teach these stories to kids because 1 Samuel 17 with the narrative story of David and Goliath goes over a lot better in the elementary school classroom than does a detailed theology mind out of Romans 8. Okay? So usually we teach kids stories because we put volunteers in there for the history of the church, and a volunteer just needs a story to tell because that's way easier to do than teaching theology to four-year-olds. So we tell stories, but make no mistake, these are not kids' stories. These are stories for everybody. And when you get into the details of it, you learn real quick, these are stories for grown-ups. So this morning, I get to tell you my favorite story to tell. It doesn't mean I'm good at it. It just means I really like this story of David and Goliath. So to set the scene, we're in 1 Samuel chapter 17. 1 Samuel is the ninth book of the Bible. It's sandwiched between Ruth and, you guessed it, 2 Samuel. So if you want to pull out the Bible in front of you and just kind of read along as I read, you're more than welcome to do that or grab your Bible at home and do the same thing. But the author of Samuel sets the scene at the beginning of chapter 17 and he says the Israelites and the Philistines are at war with one another. They're out for battle. The Philistines lived on what is now the coast of modern day Israel. So there was always tension and infighting and this battle between Israel and Philistia is pretty regular and pretty common. Eventually Israel wins because you've never heard of Philistia before and we all know where Israel is. But in this time they were big rivals. And so they assembled at a valley and drew up a battle line and the Philistines are on one mountain and the Israelites are on another mountain. And they're basically waiting for the other to get tired of waiting and come into the valley and give up the advantage. Neither army is going to go down into the valley and then try to fight uphill to a fortified enemy. So they're both just trying to wait the other party out. And in the midst of this steps a warrior named Goliath of Gath. And I'm going to read what scripture says about Goliath. This will not be on the screen, but I'm going to read what it says about Goliath and then try to sum it up for you because there's words like cubics and shekels and things like that, and we don't know what those are. So this is the description that we are given of Goliath. I'm in verse 4. Okay. So let me just paint a picture of what this actually describes. If you do the research and you look up the conversions and you try to figure it all out, I'm going to give you numbers that are in the middle, more conservative. Okay. Goliath was very likely between nine and nine and a half feet tall. Okay. That's really tall. That's almost a basketball goal tall, or it's about a foot and a half taller than a goal that I can dunk on. So however you want to think about that. I also instantly regret claiming that I can dunk on an eight-foot goal. I haven't done that in 15 years, and neglect and old age might have something to say about dunking on an eight-foot goal. So nobody put me to that. I'm crying uncle on that bet right now. But he was about nine, nine and a half feet tall. We'll call him nine feet tall. And if you're nine feet tall, just go with me on this, because I don't know. There's no guesses. But if you think about Shaq or a defensive lineman or these big behemoth dudes that we know of, and they weigh about 400 pounds or 350 pounds, and they're six feet tall, Shaq's seven foot tall. I don't know how much Goliath weighed, but 450? Five? 550? I don't think he was a skinny guy, nine feet tall and stocky. He was a heavy dude. And his armor, it says, if you add up all the shekels for his helmet, for his, for his breastplate that was made of chain mail and his bronze greaves, clocked in somewhere between 225 and 250. So that's like going to battle. I give my son John a ride on my shoulders and then you give us a piggyback ride. All right. That's what that's like. He goes into battle with an extra 250 on him. And not only that, he can walk down that hill apparently with ease. So he's walking down the hill. He's nine feet tall. He's somewhere around 500 pounds with an additional 250 pounds of armor, which makes me think that maybe Goliath was closer to 600, 650 pounds because of the ratios. Anyways, he is a walking giant tank. He's a bad dude. And it says that he's the champion. And when this tank gets down into the valley, this is what he says in verse 10. And the Philistine said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. When Saul and all Israel heard the words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Now here's the challenge that he gives. And we see it in the verses above 10. I just can't read the whole chapter to you. But in the verses above 10, Goliath says, send me a man to fight. And it'll be winner takes all. You send me your champion. I'm the champion of the Philistines. Me and him will fight to the death. And if he wins, then all my brethren and all the people I'm fighting with and their wives and their children, we will be your slaves and servants. But if I win, if I defeat your champion, then all you guys up there on that hill and all your wives and all your children are our slaves and servants. So let's go. Who wants some? And this is what tells you that Goliath is a bad, this is how you know he was a bad dude. First of all, he comes down there and he says that to them. He says that to the Israelites. There's a whole army arrayed. They've been in a lot of battles. These are not new soldiers. They've all put their sword in something before. And he says, any one of y'all, come fight me. And if you win, then you win. The whole thing. Let's go. And all of them avoid eye contact like a kid in geometry class that's just been asked a question by the teacher. just straight down to the ground. They were afraid and greatly dismayed. When an entire army of men encountered another warrior, all of them and all their machismo and all their might and all their hoorah and all their battle cries and all that toughness, when push came to shove, they looked at Goliath and went, I think I'll just stay on the mountain. They were afraid and greatly dismayed. But what we don't think about that I actually think is pretty interesting is the response of the Philistines. Because if you're in the Philistine army and some dude walks out from amongst your ranks and goes down into the valley and yells up at the enemy, hey, if you got anybody who can take me, then you can have all them and their wives and their children as slaves. If you're in the Philistine army and you hear a dude do that and you think you can take him, are you going to let him say that for you? I'm not. If I'm in that army and somebody walks down and they say, hey, if anybody up there can defeat me, you can have Jen and Lily and John as your servants. If I can take him, no way. Not a chance I'm letting him say that for me. And let's just be real clear as I stand up here and be tough guy. Nate, I could take no one in either army. Probably in thumb wrestling, no way. But for the sake of argument, the Philistines just let him do it, which means they were just as scared of Goliath as the Israelites were. You got two full armies who don't want to mess with this guy. And the Bible says that he comes out every day and he offers that taunt every day for 40 days. It's interesting to me that the number 40 pops up in this story too. You've heard me say before, and my Bible scholars know, that the number 40 is pretty significant in Scripture. I don't know why. I'm not going to make any guesses. I just know it's significant, and here it is again in the story of David and Goliath. So while Goliath is coming out every day and challenging the Israelites to a one-on-one fight, there's this kid back home with his dad, Jesse, named David. And Jesse has some sons who are in the army, notably, and we'll see him in a minute, the oldest brother, Eliab. And so Jesse loads David up with cheese and grain and bread. And he says, I want you to take this to your brothers and to their commanders, which is interesting that the ancient world was into charcuterie. We thought that we invented it, but it was cheese and grains and bread. It was clearly arrayed on a nice wooden tray, and they all took pictures of it before they ate it, and it was great. So he takes that to his brothers, and while he's delivering it, he hears Goliath again. Goliath comes down. He does his daily taunt. And all the men of Israel are terrified. Except for David. David's response is different than the rest of their responses. Look at verses 24 and then 26. All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid. Then there's 25 and then in 26 it says, Okay, look at David's response. Every man there, again, hardened warriors, sees Goliath every day for 40 days and walks away dismayed and in terror. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? David, a shepherd boy, who we don't know how old he was, maybe between 14 and 16, so we'll call him 15. He could have been 12. I really don't know, but we'll call him a 15-year-old kid. Comes to the battle lines with his charcuterie, and he hears Goliath, and he sees him for the first time. And everyone else's response to Goliath is, please don't hurt me, Mr. Goliath. And David's response to Goliath is, who's that guy? Who does he think he is? You guys hear what he's saying? He's defying God. He's in trouble. I love that David's response to seeing Goliath for the first time in a sea of warriors is, who's that punk? Who does he think he is? God's going to be ticked. I would not want to be that guy. And then what follows, and I love this, is his oldest brother's response. Listen to what Eliab says to him. It's what every older brother in the history of mankind would say. It's also what all of us would say to David if we were in those battle lines and heard a punk 15-year-old saying this. Now Eliab, his oldest brother, heard when he spoke to the men, and Eliab's anger was kindled, yeah, no kidding, against David. And he said, why have you come down and with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil in your heart, for you have come down to see the battle. I love it, I love it. I love it. And you got to kind of read stuff into the Bible sometimes to pull out the details and make it come alive. This is his oldest brother of eight sons, his youngest brother, who is the shepherd. He has the lowest job, the easiest job, the least respected job in the family. comes to the battle line with meat and cheese and then says, who's this punk? And his brother's like, shut up. Who are you? How are you here? Who's watching those three sheep that you tend in the wilderness, that big important job you're doing? Who's doing it now? Get out of here. You're just here to see a fight that's gross and disgusting. These men's lives are at stake. Go home. It's a totally reasonable response. But I think David's response here, the first time he encounters Goliath is the most interesting. And I think it kind of tips our hand to the question that underlies this entire story. This whole story begets this question. What made David different from all of Israel? What was it about David that upon encountering Goliath for the first time, he responded completely differently from his entire nation? What is it about David as we move through the story and we see him make different statements? What is it about David that makes him act and talk like that? What is it about David that gives him this sense of calm and confidence that God's going to take care of things. What makes David different? A lot of people, and it's how I was taught when I was growing up, would say it was his faith. David had bigger faith than everybody. He had more faith than everyone in Israel. He had more faith than all of his countrymen. I don't think that's true. Samuel was still alive during this battle. You want to tell me that 15-year-old David had more faith than Samuel? Maybe, but I don't think so. How about the praying widows in Israel who had been seeking the presence of God on behalf of the army for days and hours on end. He had more faith than them. He was a better Christian in our vernacular than everybody in the whole country. He had more faith than everyone at 15. Maybe, but doubtful to me. So let's hang on to that question. What makes David different? As we move into kind of the next scene of the story. So he's on the front lines and he says, who does that guy think he is? What's going to happen for the person who kills him? They're like, you know, King Saul, who by the way, is head and shoulders above everyone else, the Bible says, and therefore is the most likely candidate to go and take on Goliath. And lest you think that this was an army full of guys who just weren't skilled fighters, that they didn't really have a champion, they had Joab and they had Abner in their armies. And we see later their exploits, that they are great warriors and great fighters. David's mighty men, the people who have become David's mighty men are no doubt in this army at the time. So let's not pretend that there aren't capable fighters in the army. There's just a bunch of scared fighters in the army and David is not. So David goes to the guy who should be picking the fight and taking the challenge. And he says, and he goes to Saul and he's like, hey, I'll take care of your Goliath issue. I noticed you got this giant, seems really annoying. I'm gonna handle it for you. Just cool. And this is the conversation that they have. Saul asks him, why should I let you do it? And David's response to me is remarkable. I'm going to pick it up in verse 34, and then verse 37 is going to be on the screen when we finish. And Saul said to David, go. And may the Lord be with you. Good luck, kid. Now here's what we miss in this passage that we just breeze right through. Because the point of the passage is, David said, God's been with me before. He'll be with me now. Except you missed the fun part. Look at this. Read it again. Saul says, why should I let you, why do you think you can defeat this giant? And David casually says, well, I don't know if you know this, I'm a shepherd. And so when I've been out in the wilderness and a lion or a bear would come and take one of the sheep, I would take my shepherd's staff, my stick, and I would chase down that lion or the bear, and then I would hit it with my stick. And it would drop the sheep, and I would take it home. And then if he arose against me, if the lion bowed up and wanted a piece, then I would grab him by the mane and beat him with my stick until he died. And I've done that multiple times because the Lord has delivered them into my hands. And I don't see any reason why this giant would be any different. And listen to me, if you don't think that's a big deal, go to the zoo. It's like an hour and a half. It's a wonderful drive. It's really worth it for your kids. Go to the zoo. Go to the lion's exhibit and choose a stick, any stick you want. Do research about it beforehand and buy one on Amazon for maximum density and flexibility so it doesn't snap the first time you hit the lion. Do whatever you want to do. Jump in the habitat and hit it, and then you see what happens. Hit a girl one, see what happens. And then David says, the Lord has delivered those into my hand and this giant will be no different. And I love the humility there of David. Takes no credit at all for it. If I did that, if I killed a lion with a stick, I would take a picture of the lion and me with the stick. And I would put it on 14 different colored t-shirts. And it would say, I killed this lion with this stick. And I would wear it every day. And I'd be Nate, the lion killer. But I'm not. I'm just Nate. I've killed zero lions. He's so humble about it. He gives the credit right to God. And Saul says, okay, all right, go ahead. And then there's that famous scene where he tries to put his armor on David. And David, if we had to guess based on archeological data, because I wanted to know the height comparison, so I did the research one time, 5'4", 5'6". Saul was probably closer to six foot. Saul's armor is not going to fit David. Saul has grown man strength. That strength you have when your wife has your first baby, your strength grows by 10. It just happens. It's old man strength. It's just a thing. David didn't have that yet. He's just a 15-year-old kid who later we hear is ruddy in complexion. He was a good- kid and ruddy, we think, some Hebrew scholars indicates ginger, redheaded. So for my redheaded friends, you and David, y'all are pals. So he tries on the armor, it doesn't fit. He's like, no, I'm good. And he goes to battle in the equivalent of a t-shirt and jeans. On his way, he goes down to the brook and he grabs five smooth stones. And there's a lot of ideas about why he grabbed five smooth stones. Goliath had five brothers, so it was one stone for each brother. Maybe, I don't know, it's fine. He was being prepared. I've heard pastors make this a lesson on preparedness. Even though you have faith, do all the work. I don't think that's true, which is nice because I don't like to do all the work. So he just, he got five stones and I don't know why, but he got them and he goes. And by the way, the sling that he's using is a leather strap with a pouch in the middle of it. You put the rock in there and you sling it around and then you let go of one end of it and the rock comes flying out at 90, 95, sometimes a hundred miles an hour or more. And this weapon, the sling was a common weapon and is the precursor to the bow and arrow in ancient battle. So it was not uncommon to have slingers as units in your army. So David had a sling and that's what he was going to use. So he goes into battle with Goliath. And this is where the good stuff happens. He goes down into the valley and approaches Goliath as Goliath is there issuing his daily taunt. And when Goliath turns and sees him, he responds in A, the most predictable way possible, and B, the stinking scariest way possible. Look at what Goliath says in verse 42 when he sees David. And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. And the Philistine said to David, am I a dog that you come at me with sticks? Which is a fair question. And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. That's ancient smack talk. I don't know if you know that or not, but that's ancient trash talk. The large tank of a man, Goliath of Gath, turns and he sees a 15-year-old snot-nosed punk walking at him. And he says, this, this, this is what you're sending me for your country? This, this kid? What am I, a dog? Are you going to hit me with your stick? And David's like, it's worked before. You're going to hit me with your stick? And then he says, I am going to kill you. And then I'm going to watch the birds of the air and the beasts of the field pull apart your carcass. And we're going to have a party. It's going to be great, David. Let's go. To which 100% of us, if we were in David's shoes and Goliath said that to us, would immediately lose control of our bodily functions and scamper back up the mountain just as quickly as we could. I'm sorry, Mr. Goliath, there's been a big misunderstanding. I've got to tell you, from up there, you really look a lot smaller, and this is a huge mistake. I don't know what I was thinking. My bad. Listen, the one advantage David has over Goliath is that he's very likely quicker. So just go back up the mountain. That's not what he does. David's response is epic. And I get chills every time I read it. Verse 45 and 46, then David said to the Philistine right away, he responded, you come to me with sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day, the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down and cut off your big fat head and I will give the dead beast, I will give the bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. You done boogered up, Goliath. You've been defying the wrong God for too many days. And it's time to pay the piper. Goliath says, what am I, a dog? Are you going to hit me with your stick? And David, unflinching, unflinching, he says, you come at me with weapons that man made for you? I come at you in the name of the Lord God Almighty, and he's not happy. And I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to cut your head off, and then this army is going to run down the hill and kill everyone in this army. And then we're going to have a party while we watch the birds pull their carcasses apart. How do you like them apples, big fella? Goliath, it turns out, liked those apples as much as you would expect and enraged, charges at David to kill him. David, in this moment, as the story goes, puts the rock in his pouch, whips the sling around, and sinks it right in between the eyes of Goliath as he charges. And I know that he charges because the Bible tells us that after he got hit in the front of the head, that he landed on his face. He fell face first in a big dusty thud, I imagine. And how else could he fall face first unless enraged at David's response? He just grabbed his spear and started to yell and charge directly at David, who couldn't have been further away from me than the back of the room. And David calmly, confidently, puts that rock right between his eyes. And then David did what he said he was going to do. He walks up to the shield bearer, and he says, give me Goliath's sword. Give me the sword. He takes the sword. He cuts off the head. I bet that took a few swings. And then the armies of Israel rush down, killing the armies of the Philistines all the way back to their village. And when David gets done with that, he carries the big, fat, ugly head of Goliath into Saul, and he says, here you go. I told you what God would do. That's the story of David and Goliath. But the question remains, what made David different? What was it about David that at every turn allowed him to respond differently than everyone else around him? And really the question is, is there anything that David did there that we could possibly emulate in our life? And I said that I doubt that the answer is that he was the most faithful. I really think, and this is my opinion, you chew on it, you do with this what you like, but my opinion is that what made David different was his perspective. David's perspective made him unique amongst his peers. It was David's perspective that made him unique amongst his peers. And here's what I mean by perspective. The armies of Israel, they would gather every day and every day Goliath would come down and he would challenge them. And they would look at Goliath, and they would look at themselves, and they would go, that problem is too big for me. That is, my skill cannot handle that, my ability cannot handle that, my just natural genes cannot handle that. I cannot take that guy. I cannot overcome this. I cannot climb that mountain. I cannot get past that obstacle. I cannot solve that problem. I cannot fix that situation. I can't do it. I'm not big enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not bright enough. I'm not young enough. I'm not old enough. I'm not enough. I can't handle that. It's bigger than me. So I'm scared and I'm dismayed and I'm going to avoid it. That was their perspective. David's perspective was, you are nothing compared to Almighty God. See, everyone else, when they looked at Goliath, they saw a problem and compared it to themselves and knew that they weren't enough for it. But when David saw Goliath, he compared the problem to God himself and thought, oh my gosh, God is overwhelmingly going to destroy you. He is so much bigger and mightier and smarter and capable than any one of us are. God is sovereign. He is all knowing. He is all powerful. And what he wants to happen will happen. So Goliath, you're in trouble. Everyone else, when they saw Goliath, compared Goliath to themselves and got scared. And David saw Goliath and compared him to God and had faith. His faith didn't come from just doubling down and being more determined that he was going to love God and trust God more. His faith came from his perspective. When he encountered lions and bears in the wilderness, he didn't think, I'm going to take down this animal. I've got what it takes. He thought, I think God wants me to have that sheep. He's on my side. I'm going to go get it. When he saw Goliath, he didn't think, I think I could put one between his eyes. I think I'm a pretty good shot. I've done this a couple of times. He thought, God has helped me before and he will help me again. God is not happy with that. He's bigger than Goliath. He's going to handle it. And if you think about it and you go back to the story, what else could it be besides perspective? The very first time he sees Goliath, who's this guy? He goes to Saul, how are you going to kill him? Well, you know, God's done this stuff before. He'll do it again. And then he's down on the battlefield in the heat of it, and he says, you're going to come at me with man-made weapons? I'm here as God's representative. It doesn't matter what weapon I use. At no point did David compare Goliath to David. It was always a comparison to God. And God wins every comparison. He made sure of that when he sent Jesus to conquer death and sin. And if that's not the biggest victory in the history of the universe, I don't know what is. He's already proven to us that he overcomes everything. And if this sermon sounds familiar to you, it's because I did it five years ago with most of the same jokes. I didn't have charcuterie in there, but the rest of them. And it was about my fourth or fifth Sunday at Grace. And we put rocks underneath all the seats. And then we had markers up front, which apparently in five years, my preparation has slacked. I'm sorry, you have no rocks under your seats today. Just this one. And the encouragement was to get that rock and whatever you have going on in your life that feels too big for you, as cheesy as it is to say, whatever your Goliaths are. If it's raising your children, if I had these rocks today, I would write Lily and John's name on them. It's too big for me. I don't know how to raise kids that love Jesus and want to hang out with me who I respect. I don't know how to do that. Maybe it's your career. Maybe it's an illness that you or your family is facing. Maybe it's a tough decision or a broken relationship or just a big task that you've got in front of you and it just feels too big. Or maybe you're in a period of grief and you don't know how you're going to pull out of it and how life is going to feel the same and the sun is ever going to shine bright enough again. Maybe you just don't know, but everybody's got something in their life that when we look at it and we compare it to ourselves, we know that we know that we know that we are inadequate for it and that we cannot overcome it. And whatever that is, I would encourage you to take something that can remind you of that. I did five years ago. I took and I wrote grace on this rock. It was five weeks into being a senior pastor. I knew and still know it's far too big for me. I don't know how to lead a church. I don't know what we're supposed to do all the time. And every day I see this rock. It sits on the shelf right above my computer screen. And every time I see it, I'm reminded, yeah, this place is too big for you, man. So just worry about following God and God's going to handle the church. Just worry about pursuing him and loving people well and treating people right and having a heart for God and letting him inflame it more and more. Most of the time when I pray before my sermons, I'm really not praying about my sermons. I'm just praying that God would fill me up with a desire for him. It's just a weekly reminder that God, I want to want you more. That if we do that, if we just pursue him, God's going to take care of everything else. So the big problems in our life that feel insurmountable, that keep us up at night, that stress us out, that give us anxiety, maybe part of the problem is we're just comparing those things to ourself and admitting our inadequacy, when what we need to do is compare those things to God and admit His supremacy. And what we don't need to do in these moments when we feel overwhelmed is just double down on being better Christians. I've got to have more faith and then everything's going to work out. No, that's not fair. You need to change your perspective. And when you change your perspective and you have the perspective of David and we compare these things in our life not to ourselves, but to our Father, that brings us a peace and a confidence that in turn builds our faith. A few minutes ago, Aaron made the great point that David declared that he would always worship God. Even in the valleys, he would worship God. We said your praise will ever be on our lips. The only way we can possibly mean that is if even in the most dire of circumstances, we compare those circumstances to God, we have the perspective of David and we know, somehow we know that God is going to make a way. And so even though we don't feel the emotion of crying out in praise, we will go through the act of crying out in praise in faith because we have the perspective that God can handle whatever comes up in our life and we hand it over to him and we exist in that peace. And because we exist in that peace, our faith grows and we want to worship God more. So I hope that moving forward, when you remember the story of David and Goliath, that you won't think of a young man that had more faith than the rest of the country, but you will think of a young man who had a different perspective from everyone around him, who had the wisdom to compare his problem to God's ability, and that you'll be reminded to have the perspective of David. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the stories that you've chosen to share with us down through the centuries. Thank you for the bravery and courage of David. But God, I pray that we would always be well aware of where that bravery and courage and faith came from. That it came from comparing his obstacles to you instead of himself. I pray that you would give us the strength to do that. That we would see through your eyes our sin that we don't think is possible to overcome. Maybe be convinced for the first time that it is possible to overcome that. That we would see our grief, our desires, the decisions that we have to make, our careers, our children, our marriages through your eyes and know that you are more than capable of piloting us through any circumstance. And God, thank you for overcoming death and sin for us and winning the greatest victory that could be won. It's in the name of the winner of that victory, Jesus, that we pray these things and we praise you. Amen.