Sermons tagged with Expectations

The Pretty epic, huh? I mean, looky there. The sermon is half as good as the video. Y'all are going to leave here with your hair on fire. This is great. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I am one of the pastors here. So thanks for being here. I thank you for watching online or catching up during the week if that's what you're doing. This is clearly the start of our series in the book of Revelation. I have been studying and prepping for this as far back as the summer because Joseph was a fun series. I loved doing Joseph. I love narrative series where we're just telling stories and seeing what we can learn from the story. The prep time on a Joseph sermon is about two and a half or three hours. The prep time on the Revelation sermon is 10 times that for each one. So you got to start those early. But because I've been doing so much studying, I'm very happy to tell you guys that I have all the answers for you. I'm going to tell you very clearly what happens in the book of Revelation. You can't ask me a question that I won't be certain about. And this is going to be a very productive time for the church. So I'm very much looking forward to it. Revelation, for some of us, has a lot of baggage. For some of us, it doesn't have very much at all. I grew up in a Southern Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s. And when you grew up in a Baptist church in the 80s and the 90s, Revelation was a big deal. I don't know if you guys realize that or what your church contexts are, but there was a season in church life when having strong opinions about the tribulation and the rapture was just a part of church. I actually talked to a church one time in a former life. I was a teacher at a private high school, and one of the churches was a small country Baptist church. And they said, hey, we're looking for a pastor if you know anybody. And I said, okay, well, you know, I'll keep my eyes out. And they said, but we're only going to hire people if they believe in a pre-trib rapture. That's a non-negotiable for us. And I started laughing. He's like, why are you laughing? I'm like, oh, you mean that? Like, that's really important to you. And they're like, yeah, absolutely. Well, are you not pre-trib rapture? Because if you're not, I don't want you teaching my daughter Bible. I'm like, rapture is not coming up. All right. We're not covering that in 10th grade Bible. Don't worry about it. I wonder how many of you though have had, like, when I say pre-trib, mid-trib, post-trib, 1260 days, the four beasts, the man, the eagle, the lion, the ox, the 144,000 Jewish males from the tribes. How many of you know what I'm talking about? You've heard those things before. Okay. And then I won't ask the rest of us, how many of you are like, I got no clue, man. Like, no idea on this. You don't have to raise your hand. But yeah, so like, how do we approach like that wide of a swath of information and knowledge about this book? Because there's some of us that have been a part of really in-depth Bible studies and there's some of us who we've avoided it all together. So in thinking about how to approach the book of Revelation for these next seven weeks, I really thought it was worth noting the tendencies that we kind of tend towards as we approach the book of Revelation. Because again, some of us are very experienced with it, and some of us have never opened it because it's scary or intimidating or whatever. So as we begin, I kind of wanted to begin the series with this thought as we think about how do we approach the book of Revelation. I would contend that most people either overcomplicate or oversimplify Revelation. Most people in their approach to it have a tendency to either overcomplicate it or vastly oversimplify the book. And what I mean is we can overcomplicate it so that we miss the forest for the trees. We can overcomplicate it so much and drill down on things so much and ask so many questions about it. When is the rapture actually going to happen? Because of this verse, I think it's going to happen in the middle of the tribulation. When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? When is the tribulation? When's that going to happen? Are there Christians going to be on the planet during this part of the tribulation? Are people, can you still get saved during the tribulation? What are the four creatures and the beasts and the angels and which angels have which wings and what do they represent and what's going on with the dragon trying to eat the baby and all these different things? what is the mark of the beast? Is it the vaccine? What is all that stuff, right? And so we can kind of drill down and the answer is no, stinking no, that's not the thing. The vaccine is not the mark of the beast. Anyways, we can get so concerned in drilling down on these details that we kind of miss the message of the book. And the thing about all those details that we'll talk about in a little bit and throughout the series is many of them are really not knowable. So to try to figure out what is the creature that comes out of the abyss that has a tail like a scorpion and stings you and it ails you for five months? Is that an attack helicopter or is that a scorpion? I don't know. And you don't either. And there's no way to know. So let's stop worrying about it, right? So we can overcomplicate it and get so mired in the details of the book that we miss the message. But we can also oversimplify it. I had somebody in my men's Tuesday morning Bible study who he's involved in a study in Revelation right now with another small group. He's cheating on me with another small group and it's hurtful. But he said, we were talking about Revelation and he waved his hand and he goes, Jesus wins. That's all you need to know. And listen, that's true. And this is a man who clearly he cares about Revelation and I don't mean to disparage him, but in that moment of just going, meh, Jesus wins, I would tend more towards that camp in my own interpretative approach of it, but that's not enough either. What happens when we overcomplicate or oversimplify the book of Revelation is that both approaches cheapen the message of the book. Both of those approaches really end up cheapening the message of the book in general. If we get so caught up with the details that it matters to us deeply who the 144,000 are and we search through the Bible to try to piece that one together, and we miss the overarching message of the book because of it, then we cheapen the message of the book. If we just dismiss it and say, listen, Jesus wins, that's all you need to know, then we cheapen the message of the book as well because there's a reason that Revelation exists. There's a reason that God called John up to heaven and gave him a vision of what's going to happen at the end of time. There's a reason he told him to write it down. There's a reason that people have died for the preservation of Scripture over the centuries. There's a reason that this book was canonized, was put in the Bible as part of every Bible that's ever been printed. There's a reason that God ends His revelation to us with this book. There's reasons for that, and so it's worth studying. And I would contend that the book of Revelation matters very much to God. And I would actually base it on the way that he starts the book. This is John writing it. Revelation chapter 1, verses 1 through 3. Listen to this. This verse, particularly the third verse, tells us that revelation is important to God. This book is important to God. And it says, blessed are those who read aloud, because this was a letter. It was written to the churches. And so there wasn't a bunch of copies. Gutenberg hadn't showed up yet. So there was just one letter and one person would read it aloud. So it's basically blessed are those who read it, blessed are those who study it, blessed are those who invest time in it. So God says that we will be blessed by doing this. And, you know, I was talking to Erin Winston, our great children's pastor, I think a year and a half or two years ago when we were talking about series ideas. And she just mentioned to me that she can't remember Grace having ever done a series in Revelation. And I thought, well, goodness, our church needs to know about this. Our church needs to know this book. We need to kind of demystify it and walk through it and see what we can learn from it. And we wanted to do it for a long time, but then the pandemic hit and this didn't feel like what I wanted to do strictly over video, right? I wanted this to be in person because some of the stuff that we have to talk about in the book is hard. That's not this week, but it's coming. And so I thought that it would be worth it to do this series together. And it'd be worth it to not overcomplicate things, to try to train ourselves to focus on the message of portions of it, rather than get mired in the details, but also get into it enough that we feel like we can understand it. So as we approach Revelation, we do need to do some background work to really understand why it was written. It was written by John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. He was in exile on the island of Patmos about 90 AD is what we think, is when we think it was written. So about 60 years after the death of Christ. He's the last living disciple. All the other disciples have died a martyr's death. He is the last stalwart of the disciples and the bastion of the early church. John really lived a remarkable life. And so God calls him up to heaven and shows him a vision and he writes it down and that becomes Revelation. And what we need to understand is that Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. Revelation was written to bring hope to a suffering church. To be a Christian at this point in history is to take your life into your hands. To be a Christian is to put yourself and your family at risk. It's to go into the catacombs, into underground graveyards, to have your Easter worship service because you cannot be seen in public doing this because you will be killed. It's to know friends and loved ones who have been dipped in tar and used as live torches to light the path into Rome. It's to watch your friends and loved ones get taken and thrown into the gladiator arena with animals that rip them apart. It is a tough time to be a Christian. And so John wrote this letter to them from God to give them hope, to encourage them, to help them hang in there, to help them see a path to a better day. And so when reading Revelation, we can never separate our understanding of it from how the original audience would have understood it. We can never make it mean something that it wouldn't have meant to them. But that also means that it's right and good for us to approach it, mining it for hope. That's the best reason to approach Revelation. It's not necessarily to know what's going to happen at the end of times with great detail, but to cling to the hope that the book offers us throughout it. This is why I love Revelation. If you've heard me preach any messages for any time at all, you've heard me say things like there's coming a day when Jesus is gonna make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. You've heard me talk about Revelation 18 and 19 where he comes down with righteous and true tattooed on his thigh. He comes back not as the Lamb of God, but now as the Lion of Judah and he's coming to wreck shop. You've heard me talk about that because I take great solace in that in my personal faith. You've heard me talk about Revelation 21 when God will be with his people and we will be with our God and there'll be no more weeping and crying in pain anymore. You've heard me talk about that because it's in Revelation and it's hopeful and it's what we cling to. So when we read it, our top priority, our first priority ought to be to mine it for hope and to let it encourage us in our faith. That's far more important than some of the other details. And it's important enough to dig in and to see how it might offer us hope the same way it did the early church. As we seek to understand and interpret the book of Revelation, a couple rules of thumb for us as we walk through it together. The first is, it's not completely linear, but sometimes it is. It's not completely linear, but sometimes it's linear. And when I say linear, what I mean is just event after event from start to finish. The gospels are linear. The gospel of Mark starts at the beginning and moves through the story of Jesus to a crucifixion and then ascension. That's linear. It's just, it's all happening on the same timetable, right? Well, Revelation's not like that. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it moves through and it moves, this event happens, and then the very next thing he talks about is the event that follows the one that he just described. But sometimes he jumps. He says, I turn and I saw. And I'll show you in a second what I'm talking about. He says, then I turned and I saw, and it's something else is going on. And the thing that he's talking about over here happened before the thing he just got done talking about. Or it happens years after the thing he just got done talking about. And then in the next chapter over, he's going to talk about the stuff that happens in the middle. And then the next chapter over, he's going to talk about stuff that happened before that. So sometimes it's linear. Sometimes it's not. So you just have to know as you're reading it that he's not presenting us from chapter 1 to chapter 22 all the things in order. Another thing you should know is that it's not completely literal, but sometimes it is. It's not completely literal all the time. Sometimes it's figurative. Sometimes it is literal. Sometimes the words that you're reading are actually going to happen. They're descriptive of a thing that really will take place. Sometimes you're reading it and it's figurative language to describe to you in the best way that John can what it will be like. Or because God is intentionally using powerful imagery, it's a picture of other events that have already happened. So as we're reading it and as we're studying through it, and there's a reading plan that will be, it would be on the, is it on the table this morning, Kyle? Okay. It's there and it'll be online as well beginning tomorrow morning. I hope that you'll read through Revelation with us. I hope that you'll be talking about it in your small groups together. But as you read and study, we need to be asking ourselves as we look at the text, is this literal or figurative? Is this linear? Is this happening in order? Or have I jumped back or to a different place? We'll need to know this as we read. Now, some examples of where it's figurative and nonlinear or literal and linear are easy to find. So I'm going to read a passage from Revelation chapter 12. You don't have to turn there. You can just listen to my words as I read. This is a famous scene in the book of Revelation. Just listen. I don't know what diadems are. I think maybe crowns. Cool. Let's just go on to the next thing, right? What's going on there? Well, what's happening there is that John is neither being literal, nor is he being linear. Most scholars agree, and it's not certain, so I don't say it with certainty, but most scholars agree, believe it or not, that this is a picture of Christmas. What if I preached that this December 25th, right? What if I made that the Christmas message? Boy, that would be something. Most scholars believe it's a picture of Christmas. It's figurative. It's powerful imagery that God is using to drive home a point. And that in this depiction, the woman very likely represents Israel. The baby is Jesus. The red dragon is Satan. And Satan is trying to thwart Jesus, thwart the efforts of God. But God rescues Jesus back up to his throne, which means God's throne and Jesus' throne. And then Israel is nourished in the wilderness, which could be a reference to their exile in Egypt as slaves, or it could be a reference to the flight of Mary to the wilderness once Jesus is born and they have to go to Egypt for a couple years because Herod is trying to find and kill baby Jesus. The tail sweeping a third of the stars out of the heaven down onto earth, that's a reference to the fact that when Lucifer was kicked out of heaven and became Satan, that he took a third of the demons with him. So this isn't linear because it's Christmas. This happened 90 years before John even wrote it. And certainly not in order with the other things going on in the book. And it's not even linear within its own depiction because it's talking about fleeing to the wilderness and it's talking about the demons falling from heaven, which happened thousands of years before any of this stuff and the rest of the story was ever happening. And then the 1260 days at the end of it is a reference to half of the tribulation period that Revelation divides in half often in months or in days. So it's literally, as far as the time frame is concerned, it's covering thousands of years in a paragraph. It's got a ton going on there. And it didn't literally happen. It's figurative imagery. So that's neither literal nor linear. But sometimes Revelation is those things. Listen to Revelation 21. At the end of the book, John is given a vision. He's carried to another place where Jerusalem begins to descend. A new Jerusalem begins to descend out of the sky. God is setting it Its length the same as its width. And measured the city with his rod. 12,000 stadia. Its length and width and height are equal. He also measured its wall. 144 cubits by human measurement. Which is also an angel's measurement. Which is nice to know. If you're measuring in cubits. You're measuring as the angels do. So well done. The wall was built of jasper while the city was pure gold, clear as glass. The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with every kind of jewel. The first was jasper, then sapphire, a gate, emerald, onyx, chameleon, chrysolite, beryl, and he goes on and on. And then he says, and the 12 gates were 12 pearls, each of the end of the book. It happens at the end of the story. It happens at the end of time. We can read that, see where it's happening in the book, and know that that's how it's going to happen in time. And it's literal. That's not figurative speech about the specific jewels that are going to be the foundation of the wall or the way that the city is going to look or the size of the city. That's a literal interpretation. So again, as we read, we need to ask, is what's happening here, is it literal or is it figurative? Is it linear? Is it happening in the order in which it's presented? Or in its proper context, should it go in another place? When I was explaining this to Jen this week, she was asking how I was going to approach it, and I was kind of walking her through portions of the sermon. And Jen, she's my wife, for those of you who don't know her, not just a lady I talk to sermons about, but that would be cool. I have one of those. When I told her what I was going to do and how it sometimes is literal, sometimes linear, and sometimes it's not, she said, yeah, but, and she's asked the question that you guys all should have by now. She goes, yeah, but how do you know? How do you know when it's supposed to be one and not the other? Well, that's the tricky part. And the only possible answer to it is you have to work hard. How do I know when it's literal and when it's figured if you have to study? Listen, some books of the Bible are really easy to understand. Proverbs. You don't need to study Proverbs. Just read Proverbs. And it says that we should consider the ant and work even when we don't have to. There's no mystery going on there. That's pretty simple. When it says whatever you do, get wisdom, that's simple. Revelation, not simple. If you want to understand it, it takes hard work. It takes discussion. You have to read a lot of sources. You have to listen to a lot of people. There's no easy path to understanding Revelation. I can't stand up here in seven weeks and explain it to you in a way that will make sense and get everything right. I just can't do it. And people who claim that they can are dumb. They're just being intellectually dishonest. Which is why I think it's important for me to kind of share this idea with you, not just for this series, but as you encounter Revelation as you move throughout the rest of your life, which is simply when it comes to Revelation, be cynical of certainty. When it comes to the book of Revelation, when it comes to who you're listening to and what you're reading and how you're talking about it and how people are presenting ideas to you in whatever form you would consume them, we are wise when it comes to Revelation to be cynical of certainty. Now there are some things in the book of Revelation that we ought to be certain about. Jesus is there. He's in heaven. God is sitting on his throne. He's surrounded by angels. There's going to be a new heaven and a new earth. Satan's going to be dealt with. People are going to be judged. We're going to be called up there. Like there's things that we can be certain about, but there's other things you simply can't be certain about. And for someone to present you information in a way where they are certain, where they don't even acknowledge that there's other theologians, there's myriad other views of this particular passage or this particular idea, and they don't even acknowledge that those exist, well now, I don't know if I believe you about anything. I was listening to a pastor that I really like a lot. He's been one of my go-to guys for years. And his church did a series in Revelation last year. And I thought, oh, well, shoot, I'm just going to listen to his and then steal it. That'll really cut down on the prep time here. This is going to be great. But as I listened, he got to a portion, I think it's in chapter four, where there's these four creatures, these four beasts that are really mysterious. And one is like a lion, one is like an ox, one is like an eagle, and one is like a man. And there's this incredible description of them. And the same four creatures are described in Ezekiel, in an Old Testament book of prophecy, with stunning accuracy and similarity to the four creatures in Revelation. There's very little doubt that both authors, that both John and Ezekiel saw the same four creatures. Now, what are they? And what do they represent? I don't know. But the pastor that I really liked when I was listening to him, he said, well, the ox represents this, the lion this, the eagle this, the man this. Does it not? And then he moved on. And he said it as if he was certain of it. And he said it as if there was no other possible explanation than the one that he just shared. When the reality is we only see them in Ezekiel. We only see them in Revelation. Very little explanation is offered about them in either place. So to presume that we know who they are, what they are, what they represent, and why they exist is not fair. It's not intellectually honest. The most intellectually honest thing to say about them is, they're pretty cool. That's it. They matter a lot to God. They're going to be neat when we see them. They're probably going to be scary. It's going to be awesome. What do they represent? I don't know and neither do you. And don't act like you do. We can make educated guesses. There's plenty of room for that. But we ought to be cynical of certainty as we move through this. And I'm saying that, hopefully, not for your benefit in this series, because hopefully I don't get up here and start teaching you things with certainty that I don't understand. Hopefully I'll teach them honestly and present the sides that exist and are merited. But I say that to you as you move throughout your lives and as you encounter other Revelation studies. Be cynical of certainty. So that's how we want to approach the book. I told you that we would mine Revelation for hope. And there's an incredible space to do that in the first chapter of Revelation. And that's where I want us to focus as we finish up the sermon today. I will also say this for those who know your Bibles well. Chapters 2 and 3 in Revelation are the seven letters to the seven churches. They are wonderful letters. They're hugely important. They're incredibly informative for us, not just of the ancient church, but what our modern churches ought to look like. They're a hugely impactful portion of the book of Revelation. They are so important and so impactful that we're going to skip them. Because I'm not going to reduce them to a week and preach them to you like that. So we're going to skip them. I'm going to set them aside. At some point in the future, we're going to come back and we're going to do a seven-part series as we move through those letters together. But if you know your Bible well, and next week we just open up and we get to chapter four, and you're thinking, why didn't we do the seven letters to the seven churches? That's why, because they're too important to reduce to a week. And Revelation would get too boring to expand to 14 weeks. All right, so we're going to do those later. But as we look at chapter one and we begin to move through the story, I wanted to bring us to what I believe is maybe one of the most poignant moments in all of Scripture. And we find it towards the end of the first chapter. We're going to start reading in verse 12. This is John writing. He says, And these are the words of Jesus now, which will always show up in red during the series. and I have the keys of death and Hades. I get chills every time I read this. John is swept up into heaven. He's told, you're gonna see some stuff, write it down. And he looks and there's someone who is white like snow, who is shining in brilliance, who has a voice like raging waters. And he sees him and he's so terrified that he falls on his feet. He falls at his feet. He collapses in fear. And we learn from those words in red that it's Jesus. And Jesus places his hand on John's shoulder, presumably. And he says, Behold, I am the first and the last. I have died and yet I live. Other translations say the Alpha and the Omega. And I have the keys to death and Hades. I've conquered them. Which is a remarkable moment. But it's more remarkable when we reflect on who John was and what John did. Do you understand that John calls himself in his own gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved? You should probably be pretty certain of your standing before Christ if you want to go around touting that nickname. This John is the John that was the disciple whom Jesus loved that may have been, some scholars think, as young as 10 years old when he was following Jesus. He was so close with Jesus. They were such intimate friends that at the Last Supper, Jesus was close enough to John that he was able to whisper in John's ear that Judas was going to betray him before anybody else did. He was able to communicate with John that closely at the Last Supper because John was, of course, next to Jesus because he was the disciple whom Jesus loved. When Jesus was hanging on the cross dying, when he's watching his savior and friend die, Jesus looks at John and Jesus only said a few things on the cross because you had to push up on the nails to do it. And he looks at John and he says, will you care for my mother? John, this is your mother, Mary, now. That's quite the commission. Can you imagine Jesus himself putting the care of his aging mother in your hands? And if you yourself knew that the end was near and that someone needed to care for your aging mother, who would you choose? Your most intimate and trusted of friends. And John went on from that moment and he cared for Mary. He went on from that moment and he led the church and the council. He saw them through this conversion of Gentiles, this difficult period in the book of Acts. He preached the gospel. He spread the word about his friend. And this whole time, he was promised by Jesus. You see it in the gospels when he tells the disciples, where I'm about to go, you can't go. And they said, we want to come with you. He goes, you don't understand. Jesus is telling them, I'm going to die and I'm going to ascend into heaven and you can't come with me. but where I'm going to go, I'm going to prepare a place for you and it's going to be great and you'll be with me there one day. Do you understand that John, he clung to that hope. He trusted his friend Jesus. He trusted his Savior and he spent the rest of his life caring for the mother of Christ. He spent the rest of his life proclaiming the message of Christ. He spent the rest of his life building the kingdom of Christ. But John eventually ended up as the head of the church in Ephesus, and there he discipled a man named Polycarp and Erasmus, who were the early church fathers that we begin now the church history that leads down to us. John is the linchpin in this. He watched all 11 of his friends, all 11 of the disciples die a martyr's death. And now he's an old man on the island of Patmos writing the last thing that he's going to write. And he's missed his friend Jesus. And he's looked forward to seeing his Savior again. And he spent every day living for his Savior. Every day building the kingdom for his Savior. Every day pointing people towards his Savior. And when he gets to heaven, he sees a figure that he doesn't recognize and he falls to his knees. And out of that figure comes the voice of his Savior, Jesus. Out of that figure comes the assurance that John has waited for and longed for his entire life. Out of that figure rushes the peace that only Jesus brings. He gets his reunion moment. He gets his welcome home. And it tells us that meeting Jesus is the best promise in the whole book. Meeting Jesus face to face, hearing his voice, seeing his eyes, feeling his embrace, that is the best promise in the whole book, man. There's other stuff that happens. We get to be with God. We get to spend eternity. There's going to be loved ones there. It's going to be perfect. There's no more weeping or crying or pain anymore. We're going to experience all of that. It's going to be an incredibly peaceful, joyful existence. But none of it, none of it is better than seeing Jesus in person. None of it is better than your welcome home moment. When he hugs you and he says, I've prepared a place for you. And he invites you to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I was thinking about it this week. What it would be like to finally meet my Savior. And how I would probably feel compelled to say I was sorry. And how he would probably just say, don't worry about it. I've covered over all those sorries. And how we would be compelled to say, I'm sorry, Jesus, I should have done more. And he would say, that's okay. I did enough. I did it for you. And I've thought about that moment when the burdens of hope and faith don't have to be carried anymore. When we can cast those things aside because our Savior is looking us in the eye. After all the stresses and all the struggles and all the triumph and all the worry and all the anxiety and anything else that we might experience, the loss and the pain and the sufferings and the joy, whatever it is, after all of it, we as weary travelers will end our spiritual pilgrimage in heaven at the face of Christ and he will say, welcome home. And maybe he'll even say, well done, good and faithful servant. But that's the best promise of the book. That if we believe in Jesus too, that one day we will see our Savior face to face and we can rest. And if you love Jesus, and that's not the part of heaven you're most excited about, I don't know what to do for you. I hope this series can change that. But more than anything else, as we move through this book, that's what we cling to. That Jesus is there waiting for us. And we'll get that reunion moment too. Where we get to meet our Savior face to face. Now, before I close, I never do this because if I tell you guys that I won't be here for a particular weekend, then what I've found is you don't come, which is mean. That's just mean to whoever is preaching that's not me. But I'm going to tell you this time that I'm not going to be here next weekend. I've got a bunch of my buddies I've talked about before. A bunch of us turned 40 this week, so there's going to be seven of us in a cabin in North Georgia making questionable decisions. We planned this back in the spring before I knew that this would be week two of Revelation, which is a week I'd rather not miss. So when I was thinking about who should I get to preach it, Kyle's great, Doug Bergeson's great, we've got plenty of folks here who would do a fantastic job with it. But there's one person who I know that knows more about the book of Revelation than anybody else I know. I'm not saying he knows the most about the book of Revelation, just more than anybody else that I know, and that's my dad. So dad's going to come next week and he's going to preach Revelation 4 and 5. And you'll get to see half of the equation of where all of this came from. To give you a literal picture of how deeply he loves this book, I wanted to take you to Israel with us. Dad and I had the opportunity to go to Israel, maybe about 2013. And we did the tour. We're up in Galilee. We were there for a whole week or eight days or something like that. And we get down to Jerusalem and we're in the Garden of Gethsemane. And from the Garden of Gethsemane, which is where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested and then crucified, you can actually see the walls of Jerusalem, and you can see the Temple Mount. And so this is what you see from the Garden of Gethsemane. And you can see in kind of the bottom right-hand corner of the portion of the wall is a gate. That's the eastern gate. And when we were just walking along and we saw that, my dad said, that's the eastern gate. And I said, oh, cool. And then I looked at him and he was crying. And I said, dad, why are you crying, man? It's a gate. And he says, that's the gate that Jesus is going to walk through when he returns. And it moved him. And he doesn't get moved to tears very often. But he was moved by that. Because one day Jesus is going to come back and he's going to walk through that gate. And he knows it. And he believes it. And he knows his Bible. And he knows it so well and he believes it so much that it moved him to tears. So I couldn't think of anyone better to come and teach us a portion of the book of Revelation next week. So I hope you'll come. I hope you'll be kind to him. I hope he tells you some stories about me that make you laugh and like me a little bit less. And just you're thinking, oh, he must be an experienced teacher and have done this before for Nate to be asking him to do this here. No, he's an accountant. He's taught Sunday school a bunch of times, and I think it's going to be really, really great. So I hope that you'll give him a warm welcome when he's here next week and know that I'll be beaming from ear to ear watching him online with my buddies. So with that, let's pray, and then I've got an announcement for you guys, and we'll worship some more. Father, thank you so much for who you are and for how you love us. God, thank you for this book of Revelation. I pray that we would see clear and simple messages coming out of it. God, I pray that you would give us wisdom as we move through it. Give me wisdom as I teach it. Wisdom that I have no business having. Maybe just a special blessing for these next few weeks. God, I pray that we would always find the hope in it. That we would always see the justice in it, that we would always see the good news that we can cling to, God. Be with us as we go through the series. I pray that it will enliven our hearts to you. I pray that it will increase our passion and desire for you. And I pray that it will give hope to folks who might need it really badly right now. We pray all these things in your son's name. Amen.

We always talk about the stories of Moses and Abraham and David and Paul. We know all about the boys, but what about the girls? Why don't we talk more about the people in the Bible who are like me? When I read the Bible, I see story after story of women who are amazing. I see the courage and hope of Miriam and the boldness of Mary Magdalene. I see the consistent and quiet obedience of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Ruth and Naomi teach us of love, loyalty, and perseverance. Esther becomes a queen who uses her power to save her people. And Deborah becomes a judge and general who defeats the oppressors of her nation. It turns out the girls of the Bible are pretty awesome. And when we take the time to learn their stories, we will be amazed at what God can do with someone who is consistently, humbly, and lovingly faithful. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the lead pastor here. Thanks for joining us in person here at the First Service. Thank you for joining us online. I've had more people, maybe than ever, who have said to me this morning, oh, you look nice. What's the occasion? And I guess the occasion is that my shirt is tucked in because this shirt just needed to be tucked in, and that's what I wanted to wear today. I had no idea. I'm wearing literally the exact same thing I wear every week for four years, but I tucked it, so I guess that makes a difference. I'll have to remember that in the future. I am very excited about this series because we get to focus on some people in the Bible that we don't often stop on. We're going to focus on the women of the Bible because I think that we have some really profound lessons to learn from their faith. I was very grateful to Erin, our children's pastor, for opening up the series last week by telling the story of Esther. If you missed that, I would highly encourage you to go back and make sure you caught it because she did a great job with that story. This week, we're going to be in the New Testament in three of the four gospels talking about one of the women who may be one of the most underrated figures in the Bible. I think she's even an underrated Mary in the Bible. We all know Mary, the mother of Jesus. We know her. I think she gets her proper adulations. We probably know Mary Magdalene and the things surrounding her, and we've learned about her before. But maybe we haven't thought to focus on Mary of Bethany. Or maybe we just don't know that it's Mary of Bethany that pops up in these ways in Scripture. but I think she is one of the more underrated people in the whole Bible, if not maybe the most underrated person in the whole Bible, and we're going to learn why today. My point today isn't to show you that Mary's underrated and to have you leave and go, yeah, she really was, she's really great. My point today is to help you think through something that I think comes out of one of the stories that Mary is involved in. And this story actually points to what I believe to be one of the most haunting truths in the whole Bible. For me, I grew up a church person. My memory doesn't go back further than my church attendance. And some of us are like that. Some of us have found God more recently than that. But what I typically assume on a Sunday is that most people listening are church people. And for church people, this story from Mary of Bethany is really, to me, is really haunting. And it's something that we want to deal with. It's one of the stories that kind of freaks me out and makes me worry just consistently in my life. So I want to invite you guys into that anxiety with me so that you can be riddled with it for the rest of your life as well. So that's what we're going to do this morning. The story that highlights this, and she shows up three major times in the Gospels, and we're going to eventually highlight all three, but the one I want us to focus on is found in Matthew chapter 26. So if you have a Bible, you can go ahead and turn there. This is six days before the Passover on which Jesus was arrested. So roughly, this is the night before the last week of Jesus' life. And if you've ever read through your Gospels, which I would highly encourage you to do, if you've ever read through your Gospels, you know that the pacing of the Gospels is kind of, it plods along, it moves at a pretty good pace. But then when we get to this last week of Jesus' life, beginning with the triumphal injury, triumphal entry, I guess that's another name for the crucifixion. If you actually start there, it slows down and takes its time. We get a lot of details about the last week of Jesus's life. And so the night before the triumphal entry, when Jesus is riding into Jerusalem through the Eastern Gate on a donkey, a symbol of peace, They're laying down palm branches in front of him, receiving him as a king. He knows that he's going to die. Nobody else with him knows. We're going to talk about this a little bit more in a second. The day before this happens, Jesus is at what some scholars believe to be his favorite place on earth. He's in Bethany. He is at the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. Many scholars believe that these were the closest things that Jesus had to besties. It wasn't the disciples. It was Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. They lived in this little town called Bethany. They all lived together. And just for perspective, it's kind of neat to think about it. I've seen it and it's neat to pull it together. If you were to go to Jerusalem right now and go to where the temple is, where the temple mound is, and understand where it used to face in the time of Christ, and if you were to put yourself in the Holy of Holies and take a step out and walk through the curtain that used to hang between God and his people, if you would walk through that curtain and face out, what you would see is the eastern gate and the walls of Jerusalem. On the other side of that gate is the Mount of Olives with the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed the night that he was arrested. You can see it from the Temple Mount. If you go over that hill, if you go over the Mount of Olives into the next valley, that's where Bethany is. So this is where Jesus is preparing to enter into the gate the next day. And so he's having dinner with everyone. Mary and Martha and Lazarus did what you should do. They were hospitable to him. They were throwing him a dinner, and they know that he's about to enter into Jerusalem. And at this dinner, while they're reclining at the table, Mary goes and she gets a vial of spikenard or oxnard. It's a very, very powerful perfume. We're told that it was worth about a year's wages. And we don't know that Mary and Martha and Lazarus were extravagantly wealthy. We don't know that they were poor. We don't know a whole lot about their socioeconomic status. But what we know is that this perfume was worth a year's wages, whatever that means to us. I thought about trying to summarize it, but I don't know enough about the median income in Wake County. So whatever that is, that's what it was worth, okay? And she empties the whole bottle out. You could just take a dab of it and put it where you want to put it, and that would do the job for the day, but she empties the whole bottle out on the feet of Jesus. And in some accounts, it says that the disciples were indignant. In others, it says that Judas was indignant. And he was, in any case, the ringleader. And he's thinking to himself, how can this woman do this? How can she do this? How can she open up this bottle of perfume and pour it all out on the feet of Jesus? Doesn't she know how many people we could feed with that? Doesn't she know if she would be willing to sell that for Jesus instead of being showy in her offerings here, doesn't she know how many people we could feed, the good that we could do? And Jesus, knowing that this thought existed in the room, addressed it. And he says this in Matthew all, in another gospel, we're told that Judas was a thief already and he was skimming off the top. That's why he was really mad. He could have pocketed some of this perfume money. And that's really why he was mad. But he says, you will always have the poor, which is a really interesting thing to say. We could do a whole sermon on what that means. But you won't always have me. And then he says something really profound that nobody else in the room understood yet. He said, she's preparing me for my burial. See, he had told the disciples, I'm going to go to Jerusalem and they're going to kill me. And then I'm going to be buried. And then I'm going to raise on the third day and I will have conquered sin and death and everything's going to be good. He had told the disciples this. And after he would tell the disciples this, they would kind of lean in and go, what do you think he means by that? He's not really, no one's going to kill him. He's not really going to die, right? But Mary believed him. Mary understood him. As a matter of fact, what's profound about Mary, and we see it in this moment, that she prepares him for burial. This isn't just an offering to a savior. This isn't just, I love you and you're in my house and I want you to have this extravagant gift. This is, Lord, I know that you are about to die for me. I know what's about to happen. These yahoos don't. I understand what's about to happen and I want to do my part to love you and to prepare you for the road that you're about to walk. What I want us to see is that Mary, she knew who he was and what he came to do. And I would contend with you, and I mean this, I've thought this for years. I'm deadly serious about this. I would contend with you that she was one of two people alive who understood both who Jesus was and what he came to do. I think the other person is no longer alive at this point. I think the other person is John the Baptist. I think the only two people in Jesus's life who knew who he was and what he came to do were her and John the Baptist. Some people knew who he was, but they didn't understand what he came to do. And some people didn't even acknowledge that he was who he said he was. And this should cause us to ask questions. Why was it that when Jesus comes down, when he condescends, he takes on flesh, he walks among us? Why was it that so very few people, maybe it was more than two, maybe it was four or five, maybe there's more that are not recorded, or maybe you could look in the text and make an argument that somebody besides those two did, but very few people knew who he was and what he came to do. And if that's true, why is that the case? It's so funny to me because I've heard over my lifetime people say, if God's real, why doesn't he just come down and tell us? He did. And then we wrote a book about it. And then we formed a religion around it. Like he did. And nobody believed him then. Why didn't they believe him? This question should concern us because I want to know that if Jesus were to walk through these doors this morning that I would go, that's the Messiah and I would fall at his feet. I want to know that that's true. But how can I know that's true when everybody missed it? If anybody, if anybody that was a contemporary of Jesus should have known who he was, if there were any group of people that when Jesus came on the scene should have been the ones waving the flags and pointing the fingers and saying, this is the Messiah, everyone look, come worship him. If there's any group of people who should have done that, it's absolutely the Pharisees. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of Jesus's day. They were the pastors. They were the theologians. They were the professors. They were the ones who knew the Bible. To become a Pharisee, I'm not going to get into all the details of it, but to become a Pharisee, you had to effectively memorize the entire Old Testament, the Tanakh, the 39 books that we have today. You had to effectively memorize those if you wanted to be a Pharisee. You had to know it inside and out. If you were a Pharisee, you knew by memory every messianic prophecy in the Old Testament. You knew them by heart. You could rattle them off. You knew exactly what the requirements were to be the Messiah. And yet the Messiah showed up, the one that they had been waiting for for generations. He comes to the door. He says, I'm the son of God. And the Pharisees say, no, you're not. And they should have been the ones to identify him. They should have known. They should have seen. And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but the Pharisees were so certain that Jesus wasn't Jesus that they killed Jesus in the name of the Jesus they thought they should believe in. Do you understand that? They were so certain that he wasn't God that they killed him in the name of the God that they thought they were embracing. They missed him. And that terrifies me. Because the Pharisees are church people. The Pharisees are small group leaders. They're greeters and ushers. They teach Sunday school. They have their quiet times. They know their Bible. The Pharisees are me. They're pastors. The Pharisees didn't have a memory that went back past their church attendance. They're the church people and they missed Jesus. Why did they miss him? The Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation. I think the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation from the Savior. I think that they had some expectations. He's going to come from the line of David, so they're watching a particular line of David. He is certainly, if he's going to be the leader of Israel, he is certainly going to come up through our ranks. We're going to know about him. We're going to see him trending on Twitter when he's eight years old. We're going to know about this kid, right? And we're going to watch him. We're going to watch him go through the educational process. We're going to see him flourish as a Pharisee. We're going to see him rise to the top of our ranks. He's going to come through the system and he's going to tell us that we've been right about him this whole time. He's going to show up and he's going to tell everybody else that even though we're this backwoods country with no future, he's going to tell everyone else that we've been right and that our God is here and that we are important. They were blinded by their need for affirmation, by their certainty that when the Messiah shows up, he's going to point to us and he's going to tell us that we've been right this whole time. He's going to point to us, and he's going to say, well done, good and faithful servant. You have led my nation well. I am so glad I entrusted them to you. And instead, he called them a brood of vipers and whitewashed tombs. And when he did that, they couldn't possibly believe that this was the Son of God, because when the Son of God shows up, he's going to tell us that we've been right and he's going to point to everyone else and say, you should listen to them more. They had a perfectly built theology of who the Messiah was going to be and when Jesus showed up, he didn't fit into their theology so they rejected him. And they didn't see him for who he was. They were blinded by their need for affirmation. The disciples, though, they knew who Jesus was. The disciples knew that Jesus was the Son of God. And if anybody should have known what he came to do, it was the disciples, right? See, everybody thought, everybody in Israel thought that when the Messiah gets here, he's going to ascend to the throne of David. He's going to sit on an earthly throne. He's going to raise Israel out of obscurity into international prominence, throw off Roman rule, and establish us as the international power of the world. That's what Jesus is going to do. He's going to be a king and a political leader and he's going to throw off our oppressors and we're going to show them. But the disciples, the disciples walk with Jesus every day. The disciples were with Jesus when people were clamoring around him, trying to usher him into Jerusalem to throw off King Herod and take over the kingdom, they saw Jesus vanish from the crowd so he couldn't be made king yet. They watched Jesus perform miracles and then say, don't tell anybody that I did that because Jesus wasn't ready for the hassle that was going to come from word getting out about his arrival. He knew that people wanted him to be the king and demurred and pushed away from that because they didn't understand what he came to do. So surely the men who ate and slept and breathed and walked and ministered with him for three years knew what he came to do. But they didn't know. They barely even knew that he was the son of God. In a minute, we're going to get to the story about raising Lazarus from the dead. And it's not the reason that Jesus waited two days and allowed Lazarus to die so that he could go and perform the miracle to raise him from the dead. It's not the reason that he did this, but a big reason that we see in scripture is Jesus allowed Lazarus to die so that he could raise him from the dead so that the disciples would begin to believe more in who he was. We see this scene that's unforgettable to me when the disciples are on the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the night and the sea starts to get incredibly rough and the storm is brewing and a bunch of old school sailors are scared for their life that they're about to drown. So it was pretty serious out there. They're so scared that they go into the hold of the ship and they wake up Jesus and they say, you got to do something. We're going to die. And Jesus walks up to the deck and he says some choice words to the disciples. And he looks out at the storm and he says, peace, be still. And the wind died down and the waves stopped and the rain subsided. And he went back down in the hole and he went back to sleep. And when he left, the disciples looked at each other and they said, who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey him? They did not yet know who he was. They hadn't fully accepted that he was the Messiah, the Son of God. They didn't get it yet. And even the day after this, this story that we're looking at in Matthew, after they have dinner in Bethany, they wake up the next day and Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey as a peaceful conquering king. And they're following behind him. And they're arguing who gets to be the secretary of defense and who gets to be the vice president. Thomas, you definitely have to be the secretary of agriculture. Nobody cares about that. That's what you have to do. They're arguing about who gets to do what. So much so that James and John's mom is following behind Jesus. And I swear to goodness, if I were a disciple and Donna, my mom, was with me, she would have been the one asking this question. I love moms like this. But James and John's mom leans into Jesus and she's like, when you sit on your throne, can my boys sit next to you? Can they have a prominent spot? And he says, woman, you don't know what you're asking for. They still thought he was going to go sit on David's throne. They don't know that he's claiming a heavenly throne. They don't know that he's about to conquer sin and death and Hades. They don't know that he's about to deliver us into eternal life. They don't know. They misunderstood him. They couldn't see him. They don't understand that he's going, this is a coronation for a burial. They don't get it. Just like the Pharisees were blinded by their need for affirmation, I believe that the disciples were blinded by their aspiration. The disciples were so blinded by their aspiration, by their personal goals, by what they thought Jesus was going to do for them, that when he showed up, they couldn't see him. They were so certain that this is Jesus, he's the Messiah, I'm going to follow him. And see, they had already washed out of the educational system. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but just by the fact that he found them plying a trade, that he found them building things, that he found them fishing, that he found them collecting taxes, just by the fact that Jesus found them plying a trade tells us that they washed out of trying to become Pharisees. And so now here comes this teacher, this Messiah, the Savior of the world who believes in me and he's going to elevate us and we're going to show the Pharisees who we are. We're going to be a big deal as he ascends into international prominence. We're going to write his coattails right into importance. They were so focused on their aspirations, on what they thought Jesus was going to do for them. Because I'm following Jesus, because I'm doing it well, because I'm beating all the other disciples, because I'm the first one to answer, he's going to be proud of me. He's going to be impressed with me. He's going to give things to me. He's going to bring me with him as he ascends. They were so blinded by their aspirations that they couldn't possibly accept that this person they think is going to sit on the throne is actually about to die. They couldn't see it. And what I think is haunting is that both the disciples and the Pharisees were blinded by their selfish expectations. The two groups who should have known who Jesus was, who should have seen him for who he was, who should have believed in him, who should have understood why he was there, are the two groups that messed it up the most. And I think it was because of their selfish expectations that blinded them. It kind of works like this. Some of my golf buddies may know what these are. There's these glasses that you can buy that they sell to golfers. They're called golf ball finding goggles, I think. They're very aptly named. You put them on and they're all blue. All you can see, they turn everything blue except for white. White like glows incandescently. If you've ever spent any time at all golfing, then you have also spent time in the woods wandering around like a moron looking for the ball that you hit. Happy to pick any ball and go back out onto the fairway. With these glasses, you can put them on and you can't see anything except for everything's blue and golf balls glow white. So you can see those, you can get them as they're supposed to help you find your ball. I've never used them before. I don't lose golf balls. I'm just straight down the middle of Fairway 260 every time. I don't need them. But other people do, and I think maybe they work. But I think that the expectations that the Pharisees and the disciples had worked similarly to those goggles. That once they put those glasses on of their expectations, that the only way they're going to see Jesus is if he fits into their narrow-minded theology, is if he fits into their narrow expectations. If Jesus acts and behaves exactly as they're expecting, it's the only way that they could possibly see him. And because they insisted that Jesus had to fit into the boxes that they had created for him, they missed him. And this should haunt us. If you spend any time as a church person, this should concern you. And we should begin asking ourselves this question, is it possible that we have our own blinding expectations? Is it possible that we have expectations of who Jesus is and how he would behave and what he's come to do and what it's going to look like when he shows up in our life and what it's going to look like when he sends someone into our life to speak truth to us and what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door or what it's going to look like to do his ministry or what it's going to look like to have his character or what it's going to look like if he were to walk through the door, or what it's going to look like to do his ministry, or what it's going to look like to have his character, or what it's going to look like when he comes back. If we have some expectations that are so rigid and so dogged, is it possible that they're actually blinding us to who he really is? Is it possible that if Jesus showed up in our midst, if the second coming of Christ happened right now, is it possible that we wouldn't recognize him for who he is? The Pharisees didn't recognize Jesus because he came from some backwoods city and he had a bunch of rednecks that were following him around. It didn't come from an educated background. It wasn't anybody that general society respected. And if Jesus showed up in the woods of Appalachia and came over here to us with his redneck followers, would we point at them and say, that can't possibly be Jesus because look at who's following him. They're not educated. They don't know anything. They're not as smart as us. They're easily duped. They're easily fooled. That's not Jesus. I feel sorry for those people. Tell me Wake County wouldn't think that. Tell me we wouldn't be that arrogant. And so it haunts me. If the second coming happened right now and Jesus showed up, would I see him? Or do I have on glasses that only allow me to see him in my way? Are we so rigid in our faith and in our expectation of Jesus that we really think that we've cornered the market on understanding him? Do we really think that the Catholics don't know anything, that they're totally wrong about everything? Do we really think that the charismatic people, the ones who actually raise their hands and participate in worship, do we actually think that they're so far off base that their Jesus isn't our Jesus? Do we actually think that when we come into grace every week, we are just nailing it? Nate is exactly right about all his theology, and everything he says is true. Man, listen, 40-year-old Nate is so embarrassed by some of the stuff that 30-year-old Nate taught. I'm just trying to say stuff now that 50-year-old Nate doesn't make fun of. I think differently about so many things now than I used to. I would even tell you I understand less now than I used to claim to understand. I'm worried that some of our theological rigidity and certainty would actually cause us to miss Jesus if he showed up and defied some of our expectations. I'm worried that some of our expectations and aspirations would actually cause us to miss Jesus. If Jesus showed up in my life, surely he would heal us. Surely we would be safe. Surely my children wouldn't run into issues that are difficult. Surely this couldn't happen to my family. Surely I would get the promotion. Surely he would shield us from this pain. And so I carry around that truth that the people who were supposed to see him didn't. And it makes me wonder, and it should make you wonder, how then did Mary do it? How did Mary see what the others didn't? Why wasn't she blinded with expectations that blinded the others? What was so different about Mary? And I think the only way to answer that question is to look at the stories where we see her. Besides this story where she anoints the feet of Jesus, we see her two other times. The most prominent one is in John chapter 11 when her brother Lazarus is sick and they send word to Jesus, your friend Lazarus, you love him, he's sick, come heal him. And Jesus waits two days and allows Lazarus to die and then comes to Bethany. And when he comes to Bethany, Martha sees Jesus and tells Mary, Jesus is here, the teacher is here. And Mary runs out and says to Jesus what you think we would all say to Jesus. She says this, John chapter 11 verse 32, Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yeah, that's a pretty fair statement, Mary. And I wish we could get into this story. I really do. We just, we don't have time. Jesus wept with her. That's an amazing thing to have a savior who weeps with us. And then he raises Lazarus from the dead, not to just depict raising someone from the dead because he loves Lazarus, but to show us in yet another way what he came to do, to deliver him into eternity, to conquer death and sin itself. That was a picture of the resurrection that was to come. And it is a picture of what happens to our souls when we know Christ. It's a picture of salvation is the resurrection of Lazarus. And he knew that Mary didn't understand that. But what I want to point out is when she runs to Jesus and she's ready to confront him, does she stand face to face with him and say, you did not meet my expectations? She fell at his feet. She fell before him. And it's an interesting posture because the other place we see her is that famous story with her and Martha, right? Jesus is coming over to the house. Martha's scrambling around, getting everything ready. Mary's sitting at his feet, listening to him. Look, it says this in Luke 10, verses 38 and 39. Now, as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And she had a sister called Mary who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. She encounters Jesus. Martha's rushing around trying to impress him with all that she's doing for him. She simply sits at his feet and takes him in, listens to everything that he teaches. And then we see her in the story that we're highlighting today. Interestingly enough, in this story, where is Mary? At the feet of Jesus. There's something to that posture. All three times we see Mary, she's at the feet of Jesus. In sadness because she's going to lose him, in uncertainty because she doesn't know how this resurrection thing is going to work out, she's at the feet of Jesus. In adoration when he shows up to teach because she wants more of him, because she wants to understand him, she's at the feet of Jesus. And even in frustration and disillusionment, when he has disappointed her and she doesn't know what to do with it, what does she do? She falls at the feet of Jesus. It's a humble posture. It's a posture of adoration. It's a posture of subservience and submission. And what I believe, based on the life of Mary, is that her vision was enhanced by her selfless affection. She saw Jesus for who he was and understood and accepted what he came to do because of her selfless affection for him. All she wanted was more Jesus. She didn't want to bustle around and try to impress him. She just wanted to soak him in. She didn't want to accuse him and point a finger at him and confront him. She just wanted to understand, so she fell at his feet. She knew that it would look crazy for her to pour out that whole bottle of perfume, but she understood what he had really come to do, and so she was preparing him for burial. And what's interesting to me is, in at least two of these stories, Jesus did not meet her expectations. Do you understand the significance of, he let her brother die. And she shows up to do what we would do, is point the finger and say, how'd you let that happen? And even though Jesus is, even though her experience with Jesus didn't meet up to her expectations of Jesus, she allowed her affection to shape her expectations and just fell at his feet. She, even though Jesus did not meet her expectations, she fell at his feet undeterred in affection. It's interesting to me that the only other person I think alive who knew who Jesus was and what he came to do was John the Baptist. And John the Baptist walked through that same disillusionment where he thought that when Jesus shows up, you're going to get everybody out of prison. So he sent a messenger to Jesus and he said, are you going to get me out of prison? That's kind of the deal when the Messiah shows up and Jesus quotes the passage back to him and he says, but you're not getting out of jail. Blessed are those who do not fall away on my accord. Their affection for their Savior was so great that it had room within it to adapt their expectations to who he actually was. Mary's affection for Jesus was so deep and so profound and so abiding that it gave Jesus the space to be who he actually was. Everyone else was trying to limit him with their expectations. Mary's affection for Jesus was so generous that she was willing to adjust her expectations to who she actually encountered. And I'm so fearful for us that when Jesus doesn't meet our expectations, that we are too rigid in them and we refuse to wrap our expectations around the person of Jesus and who he actually is. And instead we walk away from him because that can't possibly be my Jesus because he does not fit into my box and I cannot see him through these glasses. My hope and prayer for us is that our affection for our Savior will be so great that it will make room for him to show up however in the world he wants to show up. That it will make room for him to show up in our life in whatever person he decides to show up in, to show up in whatever ministry and in whatever truth and in whatever sermon and in whatever prayer and in whatever song that he wants to show up in. And if you've been a Christian who's paying attention for any amount of time, you know good and well that Jesus shows up in your life in the most unexpected of ways. And if we have expectations that are so rigid that we refuse to accept the ways that He shows up, then we'll be like the Pharisees and the disciples and we'll miss Him. Or we can be like Mary and have an affection for Jesus that is so great that it wraps itself around anything that he does and adjusts our expectations to who our Savior actually is and allows him to show up in deep and profound ways in our lives. I hope that's what we will do. Let me pray for us. Father, we do love you. I pray that we would love you more. God, I want to know that if you were to show up right now, if the second coming happened and this Messiah figure walked into our life, God, give us the discernment to know if it's him. When you show up in our life, give us the affection for you to allow you to show up in whatever form you want to take. May we not be so rigid in our expectations of you and what you're going to do for us and how you're going to build us up and how you're going to affirm what we've always thought. May we not be so rigid in our expectation that we don't make any room in our heart for who you actually are. Give us eyes to see you, Jesus. Give us ears to hear you, Jesus. Give us an ever-increasing affection so that the only place we want to be like Mary is at your feet. Help us see you in all the ways that you make yourself known to us. It's in your name we pray. Amen.

I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see promises in fulfillment. All over my life. All over my life. Help me remember when I'm weak. Fear may come, but fear will lead. You lead my heart to victory. You are my strength, and you always will be. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. All over my life. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life, all over my life. See the cross, the empty grave, the evidence of your goodness. Jesus. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life, yeah. I see your promises and fulfillment all over my life. Yeah, you're all around us. So why should I fear? The evidence is here. Why should I fear? Oh, the evidence is here. I searched the world, but it couldn't fill me. Melted deep rays, treasures of fame were never enough. Then you came along and put me back together. And every desire is now satisfied here in your love. Oh, there's nothing better than you. There's nothing better than you. Oh, there's nothing, nothing is better than you. Come on, tell them. To show you my weakness My failures and flaws Lord, you've seen them all And you still call me friend Cause the God of the mountains Is the God of the valleys There's not a place Your mercy and grace won't find me again. Oh Come on. Tell them now. Come on, choir. Oh, there's nothing better than you. Nothing. You turn bones into armies. You turn seas into highways. You're the only one who can. Somebody give a praise in this house. I don't think we're finished yet. Come on. Come on, one more can. You're the only one who can. You're the only one who can. Jesus, you're the only one. Come on, give Him one more shout of praise. When all I see is the battle, you see my victory. When all I see is the mountain, you see a mountain moon. And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me. There's nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees, with my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs for you. Thank you, God. God, you see the end to tell. So when I fight, I'll fight on my knees. With my head lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I'll sing through the night. Oh God, the power of our God. You shine in the shadow. You win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. In all mighty fortunes, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God We wanted to let you know that our mission here at Grace is to connect people to Jesus and to connect people to people. One of the best ways to communicate with us here at Grace is through our connection cards. If you would like to speak to a pastor at Grace, if you have any prayer requests for our prayer team and our elders, or if you're not receiving our Grace Vine weekly emails, this would be a great way to fill it out and let us know. If you're watching with us online, you can click the link below and submit the connection card there. Or if you're here with us at Grace, the connection card is in the seat back pocket in front of you. Just be sure to drop it on your way out in the box next to the doors. Thanks so much for joining us this morning and we hope that this service is a blessing to you. Well, good morning, everyone. It's great to have you here at Grace Raleigh. I'd like to ask you to stand. My name is Steve Goldberg. I'm the worship pastor here at Grace, and it's great having people here in the room. It's great having people at home joining in with us. I thought that this morning we could start off with the scripture of John 3.16, that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Come all you sinners Come find his mercy Come to the table He will satisfy Taste of his goodness Find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us. Whoever believes in Him will live forever. bring all your failures bring your addictions come lay them down at the foot of the cross Jesus is waiting there with hope in our hearts For God so loved the world praise god praise god from whom all blessings Praise Him, praise Him For the wonders of His love For God so loved the world that He gave us His one and only Son to save The power of hell forever defeated Now it is well, I'm walking in freedom Oh God so loved, God so loved the world Bring all your failures, bring your addictions. Come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God so loved the world. Amen. God sent his son. They called him Jesus. He came to love, heal, and forgive. He lived and died. To buy my pardon. An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. he lives all fear is gone because i know he holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives And then one day I'll cross that river I'll fight my spine No war with me And then as death Gives way to victory I'll see the lights of glory and I'll know He lives. Because He lives, I can face tomorrow Because He lives All fear is gone Because I know He holds the future And life is worth the living Just because He lives. And life is worth the living just because He lives. Amen. Amen. All right, y'all can have a seat for a moment. Good morning, Grace Raleigh. It is fabulous to see your smiling faces in here. And welcome to those of you that have joined us online. It is a beautiful and sunny Sunday morning, Welcome to the world for this beautiful sunny weather because in two weeks, the mission committee will be here to gather all of the goodies that you choose to bring. So if you go to Grace Raleigh's events page, you will find a list of things that the mission committee is looking for for the Interfaith Food Shuttle. You will buy those. And then on either that Friday or either that, I'm sorry, that Saturday or that Sunday, you can drive through. The hours are listed on the screen. You can drive through. They will come out to your car. They will pick it up. They will bring it inside, and they will take care of it. So all you have to do is go to the grocery. And I guess these days you could even have it delivered to your house. So that is fabulous. And speaking of driving by and dropping off, if you are the parent of a 6th grader through 12th grader, today is the day you get to drive by and push them out of the car. Woo-hoo! We are so excited to announce that Grace Students is back up and running live and in person. Kyle will be here tonight in all of his fun. And we have the cool thing happening too that he's live streaming the service. So if for some reason your 6th through 12th grader can't be in the building tonight, no problem. Email Kyle, kyle at graceralee.org. And he has all the information and the links that you need to be able to be attached to the live stream and join in that way. They're now going to start into a routine of being in person one week, meeting online together the next week in person, and you get the idea. But email Kyle for any information that you guys might need. So thank you again for coming, for being a part of Grace Raleigh thisbbling together another meal just to check that off the list. Have you ever wondered if you have the balance right? Have we worked hard enough? Have we played enough? What will our children remember about us? Have you ever wondered if you've done it right? Is it possible to even really know that? Did we give our passions and energies to the right causes? Have we given ourselves to the things that matter the most? Or in the end, is it all just favor? Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody here. This is as full as the church has been since last February. That's crazy. Man, you guys, apparently, we've been going through Ecclesiastes. Y'all love depression and hopelessness. So thanks for showing up to that. You're like, I got to get out of the house now. Maybe that's what I needed to do the whole time, which is make you really, really sad. So you had to come see people. This is great. If you're still joining us at home, we're so grateful for that. This is the third part in our series called Vapor, where we're moving through the book of Ecclesiastes. We've said the whole time that we've saved the dreariest book of the Bible for the dreariest month of the year. And what's really fun is that this is the joyful sermon. This is the one, this is the good news. This is the one where we celebrate. We only did two songs up front because we want to end praising God together, and he gave us sunshine to do this. So it seems that the weather is matching the rhythm of the series, and I think that that's fantastic. In the first week, we started out and we talked about this idea of a hevel or vapor or smoke, and we concluded that Solomon would argue that a vast majority of Americans are wasting their life, right? Which means a vast majority of us are probably investing our life pursuing things that ultimately we can't grab onto or vapor or smoke. They're here one day and they're gone the next. And so that really left us with this question at the end of that week, is there a worthwhile investment of our lives? And if you have notes, you see that at the top of your notes. I think that's been a question that's been lingering in the series. Is there really a worthwhile investment of my life or is it all just a waste of time? Is everyone here just, we're all just chasing vapor? And I think that there's a good answer to that question, but last week we answered it a little bit, but we stumbled into another harsh reality. The harsh reality that even if we pursue wisdom with our life, even if we're obedient, the godliest of the godly, that does not insulate us from pain. Our godliness doesn't protect us from grief, right? And so what we learned by looking at that beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes chapter 3, there's a time for mourning and there's a time for joy. There's a time for grieving and there's a time for healing and there's a time to be hurt. There's a time to live and there's a time to die. Like we saw that passage. And what we learned is that pain is not punitive. God's not tightening the screws on us to punish us. Pain is the result of a fallen world, right? And that the harsh reality that Solomon gives us in Ecclesiastes is that no matter what we do, we're going to hurt. No matter how godly we are, there will be seasons of mourning in our life. And so that leaves us, I think, with another really difficult question. Can I ever hope for true happiness? Can I ever, on this side of eternity, grasp onto something that isn't Hevel or vapor or smoke? Can I grasp onto a joy that is immutable and unchangeable, that is resistant to circumstances in life, that even as the storms come, I can still find myself in seasons of joyfulness and contentment? Is it even possible to do those things? And I think those are the two big questions that we bring into this week. Is it possible to pursue anything that really matters? And is it possible to grab onto anything that looks like actual true contentment and joy? And the answer to those questions, I think, is yes. And Solomon answers those questions multiple times in Ecclesiastes. I think in four separate passages, he addresses those with the exact same answer. Four different times, he gives this answer, and I love this answer. I think there's so much bound up in his choice to answer the questions in this way. But like I said, he says it in four separate times. I'm going to read you two of them so that you can get a sense. They're in your notes. If you have them, they'll be on the screen if you're following along at home. But here's what he writes in Ecclesiastes, Solomon repeats this idea. That at the end of the day, what's left for us to do is enjoy our toil, enjoy our food and drink, and honor our God. The end of the book, he ends. The end of the matter is this, all has been heard, fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of man. We talked about that last week. And it's important that as we look through what I think is kind of this formula for contentment, that we understand that when he's talking about eating and drinking, when we see eating and drinking in the Bible, that is almost always a reference to a communal activity. Eating and drinking is inherently communal. The Bible rarely talks about eating for sustenance, right? It rarely talks about food as this way to be healthy. It always talks about food and bread and gathering around a table as a form of community. And so when he says that there's nothing for man to do except to find joy in what he does and to eat and to drink. What he means is when we look around the table, when we have our meals, if we love the people who are around us, that's good. That's a gift from God. We go out to eat, we're eating with our friends, and we look around and we have genuine affection, we enjoy these people. That's a gift from God. When you look around your table and you have family there and you love that family. Now listen, we're all parts of families. We know that love isn't just sing song and fairy tales all the time. Sometimes it's hard, but at the end of the day, if you know that I love you and you love me, then that's a gift from God. And so when he's talking about food and drink, he's really referencing community. And then when he talks about toil, enjoying your toil, I have a men's group that meets on Tuesday mornings at 6.30. Anybody can join us if you want to. Just email me. Well, the more the merrier there. And we were talking about this word toil. And to a room full of men, it means career, right? It means work. It means what's your job? But Solomon uses that word a lot more broadly than that in Ecclesiastes. And the word toil really doesn't refer to your job or your career as much as it refers to the activities that you have set aside for that day, the productivity of that day, whatever it is you're going to do. Because we have some men in the group who are retired. If it's only about work, career, then they have no shot at happiness, right? They better get back to it. But really, it's broader than that. It really means, Toyo, what do you have set for yourself today? What productivity are you going to engage in today? And then in this verse, he says that we should do good. And he defines doing good as honoring God with our life, fearing God and keeping his commandments. And it's with these understandings that I kind of arrive at this conclusion of kind of Solomon's equation for contented joy and apex happiness. And I really do think it's this. People you love plus tasks you enjoy plus honoring God equals apex happiness. Listen to me. If when you eat, if as you move through your day, you look around and the people in your life bring you joy, and when you wake up, you're looking forward to the things that you're going to do in that day. Maybe not everything, but the point of the day brings you joy. And you're honoring God with your life. If those things are true of you, then I want you to know this morning, you are apex happy. It doesn't get better than that. Sometimes our problem is just that we can't see it. But I'm telling you, man, if you wake up every day and you get to have breakfast with your family or you go out to lunch with some people at work that you enjoy or you look forward to seeing some friends at small group or something like that, if you look around at your community and you're surrounded by people you love and you look at your days and God has given you something to put your hand to that you enjoy, that gives you a sense of purpose, that helps you become who he's created you to be and use your gifts and abilities to point people to Jesus as you move throughout your days, if that's what you get to do and you're honoring God as you do those things, then listen to me, you are experiencing apex happiness in your life. And I think that we get it so messed up sometimes. We do all the things that Solomon talked about in the first two chapters, and we chase all the things. We run out there and we chase all the success and all the relationships and all the money and all the fulfillment and all the pleasure and all the stuff that's out there. When really what's true is God has already given us everything we need for joy. God has already provided in our lives everything we need for joy. And listen, if you don't have those things, if you look around, you're like, I don't like any of the people in my life right now. If you don't have a fulfillment in your job, if you're not honoring God with your life, then guess what? Those things are attainable. Those things aren't out there and forever away. Those things are attainable. They're right around you. God gives us everything we need for joy within our reach. That's why I brought this chair today. This chair here is my chair from my house. This is my chair in my living room. This chair sits in the corner of our living room, and opposite me is we have a little sectional couch. There's other people who sit in this chair sometimes, but for the most part, it's me. When I sit in this chair, I get to watch dance recitals. I get to watch Lily come in with her friends, and they sing Elsa to me. And I pretend to care about Elsa. I get to watch dumb little magic tricks. We went to some restaurant and they gave her some pot with a magnet on the bottom and there's a plant that comes out of the wand and she comes in and she does the abracadabra, the whatever, and then she pulls it out and for the 37th time, I'm amazed by this magic trick, right? I sit in this chair and Jen sits on the couch and we talk about our days. We talk about what's hard and we talk about what's fun. From this chair, when someone rings the doorbell, if I angle my head just right, I can see down the hallway to the front door and I can see the little face that's there to come play with Lily. If they're all over, I can look this way out the window and I can look at them all, all the neighborhood kids jumping on the trampoline that we got to get for her. In the mornings when I'm doing life right and I'm downstairs reading like I'm supposed to, at about 6.45, 7 o'clock, I can look up the stairs and see Lily up there and motion her down to come sit in my lap and tell me what she's going to do that day. When we have friends over, which I love to do, eventually we end up in our living room and we sit around and we talk and we giggle and we laugh. In the pandemic, I worked from this chair. I set up a little table right here and I do my Zoom calls and I argue with the elders and that's pure joy except for Chris Lata. I love working from that table. I can see all the things that bring me the most joy from this chair. And if I go out there chasing joy, if I go out there trying to track everything down, what am I going to do? Buy a new house for this chair These are from old David. If this church grows to 2,000 people and I get to feel what that feels like, do my conversations with my family and friends get any better from sitting in this chair? No, man. This is it. And sometimes it's not the chair, right? Sometimes it's the kitchen. Sometimes it's when I get to cook dinner and Jen sits on the stool and we talk about our days. Sometimes it's the mornings when Ruby and Lily are on the bed and I'm in the chair in the corner of that room and we're all talking, just enjoying our times. But here's what I know. I can go out there chasing whatever I want to chase. But my times of most profound joy come when I'm right there. They come when I'm around the people that I love the most. They come when I'm soaking in the blessings that God has given me. And this is what we need to pay attention to. Solomon tells us these are God's gifts to us. If people in your life that you love, who love you, they're God's gift to you. Drink them in. Hug them more. Tell them more that you care about them. Tell them more that you're grateful for them. Tell them more that they are a gift from God in your life. You have a thing to do every day that you like to put your hand to, whether it's raising kids or volunteering somewhere or spending time in your neighborhood or going to work or looking forward to seeing your friends or whatever it is. You have things that God has given you that make you productive, that let you feel like you are living out His intended will for you? That's His gift for you. That work, that toil, that's His gift. It's designed for you. And then if we honor God, His invitation to honor Him is His gift to us because He knows that when we live a life honoring Him, we live a life of fewer regrets. We live a life of deeper gratitude. We live a life with a deeper desire for Jesus if we'll just revel in his gifts. This helps me make sense of the Honduran children I saw at one time. For years of my life, I would go down to Honduras with some regularity to take teams down to visit a pastor named Israel Gonzalez. Israel is one of my heroes. The things that he's done for the kingdom are unbelievable. And he is based in a city in central Honduras called, called, uh, Swatopeke. He and his wife have set up a free clinic there. He has a church there. And then from that church, what they do is they organize these goodwill parties and they bring teams down and you get together hot dogs and little tchotchke gifts and you go up into the hillsides. There's mountains surrounding Ciguatapeque and you go up into the mountainside and you go to these villages and he throws these goodwill parties and he hopes that by doing this, these villages that are deeply Catholic, but Catholic in such a way that shuts them off to faith rather than turns them on to faith. And so they're lost communities. And he goes and he throws these parties, and by throwing these goodwill parties, they invite him into the community to plant a church. He's planted 14 churches that way, last I checked. And I would go on these parties. And you go up into these mountains surrounding Suwatopec into a village. And that's not derogatory. It's literally a village. Homes are built of mud and wood, makeshift roofs, one or two rooms, literally dirt poor. I've had the opportunity in my life to be in a fair amount of other countries and to see poverty on multiple continents. Honduras is just about the worst. But yet when we would go there, we would get out and there would always be these children there. And these children would have the biggest, goofiest grins on their face ever. They were so joyful, and they would laugh, and they would play, and they were happy to see you, and it never got wiped off of their face. And I always wondered, kid, how can you be so happy? Don't you know you don't have a Barbie house? Don't you know you don't have a PlayStation? Don't you know your soccer ball stinks? Those kids had it figured out, man. They had people around them who loved them. They had things to do each day that they looked forward to. And they hadn't lived enough life to carry the weight of what it is to not honor God with our choices. They were walking in apex happiness. And I carry all my American wealth down there and privilege, and I look at them and I'm jealous. Because they figured out something that we haven't. And I just think that there is this profound truth that everything that we need is right there within our grasp. We don't have to run around out there chasing vapor and Hevel. God has given us these gifts already. And in that truth, in that truth that everything we need for joy is within our grasp? We answer those two questions we started with. Is there a pursuit that's actually worth investing my life in? Yes. The people you love, the tasks that give you purpose, and honoring God. You want to live a life that matters? You want to get to the end of it and wonder if it's all vapor? Or not have to wonder that? Then invest your life in the people that you love and the tasks that God has ordained for you. Ephesians 2 says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus, that we should do good works, that we should walk in them. Walk in those good works that God intended you for and honor God with the choices that you make. Those are worthwhile pursuits. You will get to the end of your life if you pursue those things and know that it was a life well lived. And he actually doubles down on this idea of pursuing relationships with other people. I don't have a lot of time to spend here on it, but again, this is a passage that I can't just skip over as we go through the book of Ecclesiastes. He doubles down on this idea of having more folks in our life when he writes this has not another to lift him up. Again, if two lie together, they keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him. A threefold cord is not quickly broken. Solomon doesn't take a lot of time to tell you to invest in a lot of things in Ecclesiastes. If you've been reading along with us, he doesn't tell you to do a lot of stuff there. He just kind of tells you, hey, this stuff's a waste of time. You should honor God. And then he tells you how we got to that conclusion. But here he stops and makes sure you understand the value of having people in your life who love you, who you love in return. And he sets up life as this struggle, this fight, because it is a struggle and a fight to choose to honor God with our lives. It is a struggle and a fight to keep our marriages healthy. It is a struggle and a fight to direct our kids in the right way, to love our families well, to share our faith, to be evangelists in our community, and to make disciples of the people who are around us. That's hard. And Solomon says, if you try to do this alone, woe to you when you fall and you have no one to pick you up. Woe to you when addiction creeps in and there's no one you can tell. Woe to you when doubts creep into your faith and there's no one you can talk to. How hard it must be for you when your marriage gets rocky and there's no one to fight for it. If there's two, he says, you've got a fighting chance. If there's three, that's not quickly broken. We need people in our lives to fight for us. We need to fight for the people in our lives. It seems to be a big value to us. That will help us ensure that we always have people to eat and drink with that we love and enjoy. So I thought it was worth pointing out Solomon's emphasis on this. The other question that remained from the previous weeks is, can I ever hope for true happiness? Yes. Yes, because here's the thing. If the bad things in Ecclesiastes 3 are true, then so are the good ones. Last week, I read the passage and I said, listen, pain is coming for all of us. It's going to hurt. We're going to mourn. We're going to grieve. No one gets to dodge that based on our godliness. It's going to happen to all of us. We will walk through hard times, but here's the reality. If that's true, then the flip side is true. If the bad things are true, then God says we will walk through seasons where we experience the good things. Look at the good things. There is a time to be born, to plant, to heal, to build up, to laugh, to dance, to gather things together, to embrace, to keep, to sow, to speak. A time for love and a time for peace. If we're going to have to walk through hard times, there's going to be good ones too. And I just think that the blessing from Ecclesiastes is this. It hits us with some hard realities. It's stark. It's unflinching. Hey, most of us are wasting our lives. And no matter what you do to invest it well, you're going to hurt. Those are hard truths. But I've said the whole time that if we can accept them on the other side is this joy that is waiting for us. And this is the joy. The joy is, yes, there's big things going on that we can't control. But in the midst of all that stuff that we can't control, God gives us these gifts, these moments of joy, these pockets to lean into where we celebrate him, where we're grateful for him, and we acknowledge those things as gifts. And I just think that if we accept the difficult realities from this book, then we can start to look for these little pockets of joy in our life, and they will bring us such more fulfillment than if we just move through them waiting to get to the next thing. At our house, we do a thing called Breakfast Sammy Saturday, all right? I like a good breakfast sandwich. I know it's hard to tell by looking at me, but I like a good, I put butter down, I toast the bread, I do the eggs, I do some bacon, do some cheese on there, and then I put it all together on the blackstone, cut it in half, and the good egg bleeds out onto it. It's all the goodness, and then you dip your sandwich in there. It's the best. I love breakfast Sammy Saturdays. You guys are not enthusiastic enough about this. You need breakfast Sammy Saturdays in your life. Well, I'll just let you guys sign up. Come over to the house. I'll make them for you. We love it. But it's just kind of a thing that I do. I like it. I make one for Jen and Lily, and they kind of eat half of theirs. I'm more excited about it than anybody else. But then one day, Lily brought this home from preschool, and it made me cry right on the spot. That's breakfast Sammy Saturday. She drew my griddle. She put food on it. Apparently, I make pizza there. And she brought it home to me. Now, the thing about this is, it was an assignment at preschool. She was told, just make whatever you want. It's an art project. And she made breakfast Sammy Saturday. And she brought it home to me. And she said, look, Daddy. And she told me what it was. I started crying right there on the spot. I got these big old alligator tears in my eyes looking at Jen. What a cool thing. And sure, life's going to be hard. She's going to be a teenager. She's five now, so she's kind of maxed out on cuteness, and now it's just hyper sometimes. But even though I know that there's hard times ahead, even though I know she won't always appreciate things like Breakfast Sammy Saturday, I know she does now. And I know that that's a gift from my God. And I know that what Ecclesiastes says is the best thing I can possibly do is to drink deeply of that. The best thing we can possibly do is find joy in these moments that God allows. We don't know how long we'll have them. I was talking with a friend last night who's got a new infant. And he said every time he gets up with the infant in the middle of the night and holds her, that it's a privilege. Because he doesn't know when that last time's going to be. And that's the truth of it. I think that we have so many pockets of joy in our life every day. If we have people that we love, if we have something to do that we appreciate, if we're choosing to honor God with our life. And I think that because we're so busy chasing vapor, sometimes we miss these sweet little moments that can all be had right here if we're just paying enough attention. That's why I think on the other side of these realities awaits for us this profound joy. And I think that when we realize that, that when we realize that God has designed these things to bring us happiness in our life, that what's really important is if we don't believe in a God, if we're atheistic in our worldview, then that's it. The joy terminates in those moments. That's all we have. But if we are a spiritual people who believe that God designed these things and these blessings in our life to make himself evident in our life, then our joy doesn't terminate in the moment. It turns into exuberant praise. It reminds us that we have a God that designed this for us. And the other part is, and this is incredible, that the joy that we're experiencing in that moment is only a glimpse of the eternity that he's designed for us and won for us with Jesus, which is what we're going to come back and talk about next week, is how these things are glimpses to the eternity that Jesus has already won for us. So in a few minutes, the band is going to come, and we've saved two fun, exuberant songs to praise God together. And while we do that, I want to encourage you to keep those two thoughts in your head. What are the things that I can see from my chair? What are the joys that God has given me that are within my reach from places that I already have in my life? What are the things that maybe I'm missing because I'm chasing stuff that I don't need? And then let's reflect on the reality that there is coming an eternity where that's all we experience. It's no more just pockets. It's reality. And that is something for us all to celebrate. Let me pray for us. Father, you are so very good to us. You've given us so much. Lord, I pray that we would be grateful for those blessings. I pray that you would steep us in profound gratitude for the things that we have, that you would show us what we need and what we don't. God, if there is somebody here or who can hear my voice, who doesn't have people in their life that they love, God, would you bring that to them? Would you provide that community for them even here at Grace? Would you give them the courage to slip up their hand in some way, to fill out some sheet, or to send some email, or make some phone call, or some text, and help them engage with relationships that matter to them. God, if there are people who don't have something they enjoy in their days, would you give them the courage to find that? Show them how you designed them and what you created them for. God, if we are not honoring you with our lives, I pray that you would give us the courage to do that. Let us praise you exuberantly, God, for the joys that you have given us in our lives. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen. Amen, amen. Thank you, Nate. Let's all stand up. guitar solo Our God, firm foundation Our rock, the only solid ground Let's lift his name. you are the only king forever you are victorious Unmatched in all your wisdom In love and justice you will reign and every knee will bow we bring our expectations our hope is anchored in your name the name of jesus Jesus you are the only king forever forevermore you are victorious We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. We lift our banner high. We lift the name of Jesus. From age to age you reign. Your kingdom has no end. You are the only king forever. Mighty God, we lift you higher. You are the only king forever. Forevermore, you are the only king forever Forevermore, you are victorious. He is doing great things See what our Savior has done See how His love overcomes he has done great things. We dance in your freedom, awake and alive. Oh Jesus, our Savior, your name lifted high be faithful forever more you have done great things and I know you will do it again for your promise is yes and amen you will do great things God you do great things Oh Oh you have done great things you've done great things every captive and break every chain oh god You have done great things. You have done great things. Oh God, you guys here today. God bless. Have a great week. Thank you. Come all you weary, come all you thirsty, come to the well that never runs dry. Drink of the water, come and thirst no more. Well, come all you sinners, come find His mercy. Come to the table, He will satisfy. Taste of His goodness, find what you're looking for. For God so loved the world that He gave us, His one and only Son to save us. If you never believed in Him, you'll live forever. Here we go. We'll live forever. God so loved the world. Praise God. Praise God. From whom all blessings flow. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. Praise God. Praise God. Praise God. Praise Him. Praise Him. For the wonders of His love. His amazing love. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save. For God so loved the world that He gave us. His one and only Son to save us Whoever believes in Him Will live forever Oh, the power of hell Forever defeated Now it is well I'm walking in freedom For God so loved the world. Amen. You are here, moving in our midst. I worship you. I worship you. You are here, working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are here. Working in this place. I worship you. I worship you. You are way maker. Miracle worker. Promise keeper. Light in the darkness. darkness my god that is who you are Jesus. Jesus I worship you. I worship you. You're mending every heart. You are here and you are mending every heart. I worship you. I worship you. You are here and you are way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light're the way maker. Yeah, sing it again. Oh, that is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. That is who you are. My Jesus. Yes, even when. Come on. You never stop. You're the way maker. Oh, that is who you are. Oh, it's who you are, my Jesus. Miracle worker. That is who you are. is above depression. His name is above loneliness. Oh, His name is above disease. His name is above cancer. His name is above every other name. That is who you are. Jesus. oh i know that is who you are When darkness tries to roll over my bones When sorrow comes to pain is all I know, oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. I am not captive to the light. I'm not afraid to leave my past behind. Oh, I won't be shaken. No, I won't be shaken. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. My fear doesn't stand a chance when I stand in your love. Oh, I'm standing. There's power in your name. Power in your name. There's power that can break off every chain. There's power that can empty out a grave. There's resurrection power that can save. is Thank you. I'm standing in your love. I count on one thing. The same God that never fails will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. The same God who's never late is working you're working Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy. My heart is heavy God that never fails. Will not fail me now. You won't fail me now in the waiting. This ain't God who's never late. He's working all things out. You're working all things out. Oh, yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will. For all my days. Oh, yes, I will. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all names that nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise, to glorify, glorify the name of all Thank you. The name of all names. That nothing can stand against. And I choose to praise. To glorify, glorify the name of our names. That nothing can stand against. Oh yes, I will lift you high in the lowest valley. Yes, I will bless your name. Oh, yes, I will sing for joy when my heart is heavy. All my days. Oh, yes, I will. Thank you. Come let us bow at his feet. He has done great things..

Good morning. My name's Doug Bergeson. I'm a partner here at Grace, and I'm going to start off this morning by giving you all a very, very special treat. I'm going to sing a song from my childhood that some of you will be familiar with. Although I can't remember what I did yesterday, for some reason, this song that I learned in Sunday school when I was only four or five years old remains etched in my memory crystal clear. So here goes. You might want to say a quick prayer for me, but here goes. Oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Sing along if you know this next chorus. Oh, the foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. The foolish man built his house upon the sand. And the rains came a-tumbling down. Oh, the rains came down and the floods came up. The rains came down and the floods came up. Splat! Now, if you can overlook the singing, you might be thinking, aw, that's a cute little Sunday school ditty. But of course, it's much more than that, as its lyrics are lifted directly from Scripture. And even more than that, they come straight from the mouth of Jesus. It's a reading from Matthew chapter 7. The streams rose and the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and theining the way you relate to God, and we're reading this book together, to answer that most central of questions. What does it mean to build one's house on the rock? And while the book doesn't use that exact language, that's precisely what the author in this sermon series are doing as we explore the many ways in which we relate to God. How we try to build our house, our lives, on the rock. If you've heard either of the last two weeks' sermons or are reading along in the book, you know that the author sets the table for where he's trying to take us as readers by describing the primary postures that many of us adopt in our relationship with God. The four postures are life under God, life over God, life from God, and life for God. In his introduction, the author Sky Jathani describes a scene at a 1,500-year-old Roman tomb in Italy where tourists are ushered in to the dark, unable to see the reason they came in the first place. A vaulted ceiling covered in an exquisite mosaic that depicts Jesus as the good shepherd, surrounded by sheep in a starry paradise. However, if one is patient, a light will eventually come on, illuminating the mosaic for just a few seconds before returning to darkness. Each time that light comes on, the visitors are given another glimpse of the world behind the shadows. And just like when the lights come on in the tomb, each of these four postures give us one perspective, one angle of what life with God is like, but it's not the full picture. Standing alone, each of these postures will give a distorted view. This matters a lot because the postures we adopt, that lens through which we view our relationship with God, is critical. And it is that view, that lens, which drives what we expect out of our relationship. And this is where the book is dead on. As what we expect has an enormous and defining impact on how each of us experiences life as a Christian. And it's especially tricky because not only do all four postures contain elements of truth, some more than others, but all four also find some basis and support in Scripture. So unless you don't mind being surprised, disappointed, and disillusioned with the Christian experience, we need to make sure that our expectations match up with what the full testimony of Scripture teaches us to expect, allowing it to properly inform, set boundaries and limits, and provide context for when each of these postures is appropriate in some measure and when they're not. When Jesus came to earth, his message was incredibly radical and countercultural, a message which challenged everyone and flipped the status quo completely on its head. But as the author of our book points out, in the ensuing 2,000 years, we've learned to cope with that message quite well by slowly but surely co-opting Jesus and his message, making him more like us, reflecting our priorities and desires, and less like him. I'm reminded of the chorus from the old Linkin Park song, Numb. All I want to do is be more like me and be less like you. That's not a very good impression of Linkin Park, but whatever. For many, it's morphed into a spiritual Rorschach test. In determining what our relationship with God should be like, we see whatever we want to see. And inevitably, we tend to assume that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives. And this assumption that what we want for our lives is what God must want for our lives is especially true of the third posture that we're looking at this morning, life from God. Now let me first say that for those of us who believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior, life, of course, does come from God. But what does that mean exactly? Our author defines the essence of the life from God posture as a relationship in which we are more interested in what God can do for us and how he might bless us than we're interested in actually knowing him. A relationship whose primary value is to help us solve our problems and navigate through life's challenges to achieve what we want. This posture is most often and most easily criticized when it's taken to an extreme, commonly referred to as the health and wealth or prosperity gospel. Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s and early 70s, I would sometimes listen on Sunday night to Reverend Ike's radio broadcast. His unrelenting and super upbeat message was that God wanted to bless each and every one of us right now in this life. His sayings included, God doesn't want you to have your pie in the sky by and by when you die. He wants you to have it now with the cherry on top. Or, he added this, you don't have to wait for the pearly gate. Reverend Ike also claimed good health is my divine right. And I remember him saying that God wanted me to have a Cadillac and that he had nine or so, enthusiastically adding, my garages runneth over. Although easy to do, it's not my intent to mock and refute such extremes because I don't think most of us fall into that camp. Furthermore, my complaint with the life from God posture isn't that it's wrong to want God's blessings. It's not. The Bible constantly encourages us to desire God's blessings. Rather, this morning, I'm going to take a different tact than our author in critiquing this posture. As I stated earlier, life is from God, but that's often misunderstood in the life from God posture in two primary ways. The first thing to realize is that God has already blessed us. An implicit premise of the life from God posture is that we have to do certain things and behave certain ways to somehow curry God's favor and procure his blessings in our lives. Whereas in fact, the Bible is abundantly clear that God's plan was to always bless us. Before the foundation of the universe was laid, God's intent was to bless us through his son, Jesus Christ. Before any of us lifted a finger or did anything good or bad, God was blessing us. As the Apostle Paul stated in Romans, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. It's like a gift from Amazon that's already been delivered. We don't have to convince someone to send it. We don't have to help order it. The gift has already been given. It's already been sent. It's already been delivered. In fact, it's already sitting on our front porch. All we have to do is open our front door and bring it inside. The life from God posture assumes blessing is transactional. But it was all God. No transaction. As the disciple John wrote, we love him because he first loved us. So the first major misunderstanding of the life from God posture is the notion that we need to get God on our side, working on our behalf. Truth is, he's always been on our side. Before time began, he was on our side. Our job isn't to get God to bless us, but to trust that he already has and will continue to do so. The second big misunderstanding of the life from God posture and what I'll spend the remainder of our time on this morning is the very concept of what constitutes a blessing from God. What does being blessed by God actually look like in our lives? And it's here that the life from God posture in a community of faith like ours operates much more subtly than extremes like Reverend Ike. Yet, it can still wreak havoc by creating expectations which aren't validated in Scripture. Life from God is seductive and appealing because it posits that Christianity is worthwhile because of the way it blesses me. Life just goes better as a believer. But again, what does that even mean? That's the $64,000 question. What does being blessed by God look like in the here and now? Particularly in more affluent societies, the tendency is to think that God wants the exact same things for us that we want for us. And my guess is that's how life from God posture subtly impacts us here at Grace. Although I doubt many of us genuinely believe that being blessed by God involves a bunch of Cadillacs or perfect health or a problem-free life, I would bet that for many of us, God's help and blessing correspond pretty closely to what we think is important. A good family, good health, happiness, comfort, professional success. I could go on and on. So in the next few minutes, I'm going to challenge our conventional understanding of blessing. And if what I have to say rubs you the wrong way, then I'm probably on to something. Although we can learn about God by observing the world he created, God's most intentional and fullest revelation is to be found in Jesus Christ. Jesus was God's best self-revelation, representing in his person and ministry the true nature of God. And as the original book about Jesus Christ, the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments together, is referred to as God's special revelation. So God chose to reveal himself through the written word. And more specifically than that, he chose to do it through a story. A great, sweeping, complex, long, and remarkable story unfolding down through the ages. And as a story, the Bible is really the opposite of a textbook or a theological dictionary. You can't go to chapter 7 and read all that is said about faith. There is no concise, complete treatment of all that is meant by salvation. We might prefer Wikipedia, where we can learn all we need to know in a few short paragraphs, and that can be helpful at times, but that's not the Bible. A story has plot and characters and a variety of storylines that emerge and develop over time. A story can capture the full range of the human experience, providing a richness and depth that simply can't be matched by a more systematic description of principles and concepts. Nuance, mystery, contradiction, paradox, tension, all are part of great storytelling and all are indelible elements of real life. Although I'd been a Christian most of my life, it was only about 20 years ago that I began viewing the Bible first and foremost as one magnificent and seamless story of God and his love for his creation. And I haven't looked back. I'd go even further and say that I believe it is imperative for all of us to approach and understand the Bible in this light. But not because that's my preference or because I say so, but because that's how God chose to do it. And in the Bible, God reveals his purposes and plans slowly and deliberately over time. A progression takes place. Concepts are first introduced in ways that the original audiences and later day readers, such as ourselves, might be better able to get their arms around and understand. But over the course of the story, a certain development, an expansion of the concept takes place until it reaches its fulfillment and climax in the New Testament. As an example, I've often thought that if you were new to Christianity and were just airdropped in on a Sunday morning and heard the story of Jesus in isolation, how weird and bizarre must it seem that Jesus had to die for us. But as you start reading at the beginning in Genesis, one is introduced early on to the idea that God saves by substitution. Something else dies for us instead of us on our behalf. It begins modestly with the story of Abraham and Isaac and is developed and expanded further in God's dealings with his chosen people, the Israelites. But it reaches its fulfillment and stunning climax in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God. Vaughn Roberts, in his book, God's Big Picture, illustrates the value of progressive revelation in this way. A century ago, a father promises his son that he will give him a horse on his 21st birthday. Cars are subsequently invented, and so when the birthday finally comes, the boy is given a car instead of a horse. The promise has still been fulfilled, but not literally. The father could not have promised his son a car because neither could have understood the concept. In a similar way, God made his promises to Israel in ways they could understand. He used categories they were familiar with, such as the nation, the temple, and material prosperity in the land. But the fulfillment breaks the boundaries of those categories. To expect a literal fulfillment is to miss the point. Here are just three quick examples. God uses evil for good, snatching victory from the jaws of defeat to ultimately accomplish his purposes. In Genesis, Joseph's brothers can't stand him and sell him into slavery. But years later, Joseph has risen to a position of such power in Egypt that he is able to save his entire family from famine and keep alive the promises God had made to his ancestors. A fortuitous turn of events to be sure, but that's just a horse. When God's only son, Jesus, comes to earth in human form and is crucified by evil men, but through his unjust and wrongful death redeems the world for all eternity, that's an automobile. God's people wanted a king, and God gave them kings. But even the best, like David, failed and disappointed. That's a horse. But a king who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, and who will reign with perfect justice and righteousness forever and ever, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Now that's an automobile. When God redeems his people out of slavery in Egypt and then promises to dwell with them, first in the tabernacle in the desert and then behind the curtain in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem. That's something spectacular, but it's still just a horse. But when God redeems us from slavery to sin and death, offering us life through his son Jesus Christ, and God's Holy Spirit takes up residence in the individual human heart, and we, like living stones, are built into a spiritual house where God now dwells, that's an automobile. I explain all this because it's so relevant for our purpose this morning in looking at the life from God posture. For another big concept that undergoes radical development and evolution over the course of the Bible is the idea of how God blesses us. In fact, it evolves so much that by the time Jesus comes and the fullness of God and his redemptive plan is revealed, it's hard to even recognize what God now considers to be a blessing as it's been turned completely upside down. No longer is blessing what might make us happy or healthy or comfortable or successful or respected or understood or liked or safe. Rather, a blessing is anything that moves our hearts and minds to a place more receptive to God's grace. Anything can be a blessing if it helps to convince us of our desperate need for a Savior. Virtually anything can be a blessing if it helps better prepare and position us for eternity. Now, there is no verse that explicitly says that in so many words. But as you move along the biblical narrative, as God's magnificent story of love and redemption continues to unfold, it becomes abundantly clear that this is the case. Certainly, there were times earlier in the story when God did bless his people and reward their obedience and trust in ways that they and we would clearly understand and to which we can all relate. The Israelite sandals didn't wear out in the desert. God gave them food and clothing and so many descendants that they would rival the stars in the sky. A promised land flowing with milk and honey. Military victory, prosperity, long life, and peace. And this makes perfect sense, as God had to convince a primitive people some 3,500 years ago, who had little else to go on, that this particular God was the one you wanted to hitch your wagon to. Blessing them in immediate, temporal, and tangible ways was essential in order to build trust. But as the story goes on, and as God always knew, the power of sin would prove to be too strong. God's material blessings did not draw Israel closer to him, did not make them more inclined to trust, and in fact often had the opposite effect. More needed to be done. And before too long, the entire biblical narrative starts changing from a temporal vantage point, if I obey and if I trust, I will enjoy peace and prosperity, victory and long life, to an eternal perspective and a future hope. As you read on, it's as if your eyes are forced to look up into the distance, start to realize that what happens in this life is not the goal. It's not the be all and end all. What happens is as important, but only as it impacts eternity. God's endgame lies in the future. Children, land, prosperity, and peace in the present, that's a horse. Eternity with God, that's a big old fancy automobile. And by the time we get to the New Testament, the entire tone and tenor of Scripture is remarkably unimpressed with the kind of things we typically consider blessings and focuses entirely on how this life is getting us ready and how we might help others get ready for eternity. Although we should be thankful for great relationships, loving family, friends, health, material comfort, peace and safety, it's in the absence of one or more of these things that we are most acutely aware of our brokenness, of our lack of control, of our need to build our house on the firm foundation of the one and only one who actually is in control. And because of that, God simply is far less concerned about our momentary comfort, happiness, and success than are we. We do our faith no favors when we think of blessing predominantly in terms of what our culture and our world say it is. If you think this is how God blesses you, you are setting yourself up for disappointment. Yes, we should be pleased and thankful to God when things go well. But to be honest, good things seem to happen as much to people who don't follow Christ as those who do. Success, comfort, wealth, health, happy marriages, well-adjusted kids, best as I can tell, don't fall disproportionately on believers. Anything that helps prepare us for eternity, anything that helps us move to a posture receptive to God's love and grace, any circumstance that conveys to us our desperate need for a Savior, in God's eyes, can serve as a blessing. On the flip side, anything we normally would consider a blessing turns out not really to be a blessing, not if it works against God's purposes. And of course, the rub is that a great many of the things we associate with being blessed do not prepare our hearts and minds for eternity. Even such universally desirable things as good health, a good job, a good marriage, a good family cease to be blessings if they undermine our sense of need for God, if they lead to arrogance and pride, to a sense of independence and self-sufficiency. If our success and good fortune draw us away from God and not towards Him, then these otherwise good things have become, to use a good Old Testament word, snares. I'm going to read just a few verses from Deuteronomy 8. these decrees that I'm giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You may say to yourself, my power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me. And that's exactly what did happen. Sound familiar? It does to me. In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul conveyed the same message, reading from 1 Corinthians 4. that we feel a greater sense of our need for God when things are difficult than when they're easy. Struggles and sorrow, tragedy and injustice are uniquely effective at disabusing us of any thought that we are in control, uniquely effective at reminding us of our insufficiency, brokenness, and desperate need. Yet so many times we question and agonize and wring our hands as to why a so-called loving God would allow a fallen world with so much sadness and evil injustice and injustice. Is it any wonder? Is it really that big of a mystery? Why are we surprised? It's my conviction that a fallen world was always part of God's plan, in part, precisely so that we would struggle. Again, it's that pattern of God using evil for good, how he uses our fallen world to accomplish his purposes, drawing a lost humanity back to himself. The pivotal question for each of us this morning is, when crummy things happen in our lives that do not look or feel anything like blessings, how do we respond? Do they move us to a place of trust or a place of despair? We have a decisive role to play if there's to be any redemptive value in our crummy circumstances. If we do not take advantage of them as opportunities to trust, we run the risk of rendering them meaningless, leaving them just crummy. So when we talk about the posture, life from God, and when we expect to enjoy God's promised blessings, we better understand in what form these blessings might come and over what time horizon they might pay dividends and how best we might respond in faith and trust so that God can actually use those things for good in our lives and the lives of others. I'm going to close this morning with the tiny book of Habakkuk in the Old Testament. Just for curiosity's sake, during these last six months of the pandemic, how many of you have read the book? Let me see a show of hands. I'm just kidding. I already know the answer. Zero. Approximately zero of you have read Habakkuk. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect example. I'm just kidding. I wouldn't have read it if I hadn't been asked to preach, so I'm not casting any dispersions. Yet Habakkuk is a perfect exclamation point for my message this morning of how God blesses and how he operates and what building one's house on the rock really looks like. It's a far cry from the life from God posture as commonly understood by most of us. The book of Habakkuk consists entirely of a short dialogue between Habakkuk the prophet and God. It begins with the prophet complaining to God of how it seems that all the violence and justice and strife that's running rampant in his country of Judah goes unpunished. Why is God tolerating it? God responds by saying, No worries, Habakkuk. I'm raising up the Babylonians, those fiercest and most dreaded of peoples, guilty men whose strength is their own God to swoop in and devour Judah. Upon hearing that, the prophet is flabbergasted and even more of a tizzy, complaining even further to God. What? You've got to be kidding me. How can you allow such a wicked and godless nation to swallow up those more righteous than themselves? You're blowing my mind. Then the Lord answered the prophet a second time. Let me worry about the Babylonians. They will get theirs in due time. However, you, Habakkuk, need to be patient and wait for my appointed time. Though it may linger, it will certainly come. But as for you right now, the righteous will live by faith. It made no sense to him. Nothing he heard was assuring. Nothing seemed fair. But in that moment, Habakkuk leaned in and chose to trust. Listen to his closing words. I heard and my heart pounded. My lips quivered at the sound. Decay crept into my bones and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud, Verse 1. and no cattle in the stalls. Yet I rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights. Although he was not happy with what he had heard and thought it violent, unjust, and unloving, Habakkuk moved towards God rather than away, convinced that his God was both able and willing to do the right thing regardless of whether he himself could understand, an abiding trust that God was not only in control, but was also the ultimate victor. And in that moment, Habakkuk was being blessed, all circumstances to the contrary, prepared for an eternity with the God who loves him. That is where the rubber truly meets the road. Even when you can't necessarily see God's goodness or understand his purposes in the middle of the mess, when everything is shrouded in mystery and confusion, do you choose to trust? Do you believe that no matter what seems to be happening at any given moment in this life, that God has already won the victory and always has our best interests at heart? Building one's house on the rock is resting in that knowledge. I began this morning by singing a song about the wise man who built his house upon the rock. It's important to note that it doesn't go, oh, the wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. The wise man built his house upon the rock. And before I pray, I'd like to invite Steve and Lisa back up here as we continue to worship. But please bow your heads. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. I pray that you'll convict each one of us and help each one of us understand just how desperately you love us and the extravagant lengths you went to to make it possible for us to be yours. Help us to know that despite the fact that we live in a world where sorrow and unhappiness and disappointment are part and parcel to our daily experience. I pray that we'll be grounded in the fact that you love us and always have our best interest at heart. And we thank you for making it possible for us to have an eternity with you. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

This morning, we are still in the middle of our series called Storyteller, where we are acknowledging that Jesus is the greatest storyteller to ever live. And he actually employed stories called parables in his teaching throughout his ministry. And we'll remember that a parable is a short fictional story used to make a moral point. And it's important this morning that we remember that these are fictional because this one that we're going to focus on this morning is maybe the most mysterious, most layered. It conjures up more questions probably than any other parable. In this parable is a reference to paradise and a reference to Hades and what life is going to look like in eternity. And a lot of people try to read into this parable what eternity must look like and what Jesus was saying about eternity. But what I would say to that before we even jump into the parable found in Luke chapter 16 is that that's not the point that Jesus is trying to make. Jesus isn't trying to paint a picture of eternity in this parable. He's trying to make a larger point that I want us to get to today. And I'm actually talking about this up front because Scripture does have a place where it talks about eternity, where it does fill in some of the blanks on what that's going to look like in heaven and in hell, being with God and being separated from God and what it's going to look like at the end of time. And we find that in the book of Revelation. I've been going back and forth in my own head and in my own heart about whether that was something I wanted to dive into as a church. So I want to invite you this week in your small groups, on your Zoom calls, in your check-ins, discuss this with your small group leader. And I'm going to be getting with the small group leaders and asking for feedback from them. And if Revelation is something that we want to go through as a church sometime in the not-too-distant future, then I would love to do that with you. But I just want to kind of gauge the interest level before we dive into that together because it's quite the undertaking. With that as an aside, we're going to set eternity and what this parable implicates about eternity aside today so that we can see the main focus of the parable. We can find it, like I said, in Luke chapter 16. If you have a Bible there at home, I hope that you'll open it up and go through the text with me. I'm going to read some verses, some of them, like always, I'll summarize. And I love it when you have your Bible open and you're making sure that I'm following along with the story correctly and you're not giving me the benefit of infallibility. I would also encourage, if you're watching this as a family, if you have kids with you, what a cool time to open up mom or dad's Bible and have them gather around and go through and consume and look at the text together. What a great time as a family to be able to gather around one Bible, God's Word, and consume that together. So grab a Bible if you have it and open up to Luke chapter 16. We're going to be in verses 19 through 31. It's in those verses that you'll find the parable of Abraham's bosom. And this is how was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man's table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. So that's how Jesus sets the stage. There's a rich man who had all he wanted every day. He feasted sumptuously, which sounds a little bit like me in quarantine, but this is what he did every day. That's how he lived. And at his gate, there was a poor man named Lazarus who begged, who ate the scraps off of his table. And the implication is that the rich man really didn't pay much attention to him. And Lazarus was so hard up that the dogs would come and lick his sores. I can't imagine the poverty or the sickness that would render you, that would put you in a place where you just said, you know what? Go to town, dogs. That's fine. It breaks my heart to think about someone living like that. And so these are the two characters. These are the two men, the rich man and then the poor man, Lazarus. And they both died at the same time. And in eternity, it says that Lazarus, the poor man, was in Abraham's bosom. Abraham was the forefather of the Hebrew people. That was being with him in eternity is acknowledged as being in paradise. And then there was a chasm, and on the other side of the chasm was Hades. And Hades is always associated with fire and separation from God and suffering. And the rich man was in Hades. And the rich man looks across the chasm and he sees Abraham and he cries out and he requests, Father Abraham, can Lazarus come across this chasm, across this divide, dip his finger in water and just give me a drop of water? I'm burning and I'm thirsty. And what's interesting there, if you look at the text, is Jesus chose very intentionally to have the rich man say, Father Abraham. What he's indicating there in that language is that the rich man was a Jew. The rich man looked to Abraham as his forefather. The Jewish culture at that time very much saw their eternity wrapped up in their lineage. He thought that because he was from the line of Abraham, because God made some promises to Abraham, that those promises applied to him, and simply by birthright, simply because of who he was and how he had lived his life, that he was going to spend eternity in paradise with Abraham and with God. And so what Jesus is saying there, it's one of the layers of this very layered parable, is that this man was a Jew and he thought that his lineage and his heritage was going to get him into heaven for eternity. And it didn't. And now he's having to face that reality. And it's a stark parallel because often to me in the New Testament, I find that there's a parallel between the expectant Jewish community and the expectant church community in the United States in the 21st century. We have plenty of people who are cultural Christians who grow up in church, who because their grandparents were believers, because their parents were believers, because they've always grown up in church, they just think they're automatically going to go to heaven. Even though maybe we've never articulated a faith, there's no evidence of the fruit of the Spirit in our life or that that faith and that love has taken hold of us. We haven't allowed God to come in and radically reprioritize our lives. Christianity remains just kind of a sliver of our life instead of our whole life. And it's entirely possible, we see in this parable, to go through our life expectant because of who we are and where we come from that one day we'll be in eternity because it just works out for us. And this rich man found out, no, that's not how it goes. And we would be wise to acknowledge that if we've been church people our whole life, that's not what gets us into heaven. That's not what allows us to spend eternity with God. What allows us to spend eternity with God is falling on our face and saying, I fall short and Jesus closes the gap and I need him more than anything else. He is the only way to the Father and so I need Jesus in my life and I submit to his lordship in my life. It's to acknowledge that we are sinners in need of a Savior. But the rich man cries out, Father Abraham, can Lazarus please just come across and give me a drop of water? And Abraham explains to the rich man, I'm sorry, man, that's not how this works. This chasm is too deep. It's too wide. It was intentionally placed here so that nobody could go from paradise to Hades and come back. And no one can come from Hades to paradise. It cannot be crossed, so Lazarus can't bring you any water. And the rich man, in response to this, asks what I believe is a heart-wrenching question. He says, okay, fine. Can Lazarus, can you send him back to my father's house? I have five brothers and they need to know about this. They need to know that this is true. They need to know that eternity is not some old wives' tale, that this is actually taking place. They need to know that there is suffering waiting on them, that they are on a path to where I am, and I don't want to be here. Can you please send Lazarus back so that my family doesn't have to suffer like I'm suffering? It's a heart-wrenching question. It's a very human request. It's this realization by the rich man, oh my goodness, all those teachings I heard over the course of my life, they're true. And my brothers are like me. They don't believe them either. Can we please send Lazarus back to prevent them from experiencing what I'm experiencing? I want to know that they're going to be in paradise. I don't want them to put up with this to endure this. But Abraham's response is tough. Look what another reason why I say it's a layered parable because the end of it, he says, if they didn't believe Moses and the prophets, they're not going to believe Lazarus. They're not even going to believe it if someone were to rise from the dead. Jesus is saying to this Jewish crowd that's listening to him, without them even realizing it, in a few weeks, I'm going to die and I'm going to conquer death and raise myself from the dead. And even then, some of you won't believe. He's foreshadowing his own death at the end of this parable. And Abraham's response is tough. The rich man says, please, can Lazarus go and share this message with my brothers to prevent them from coming here. And Abraham says, they have Moses and the prophets. They have what we understand to be the Old Testament. They have the scriptures. They have the Bible. God has spoken to them. And he says, no, no, no, just send Lazarus back. They'll listen to Lazarus. And Abraham says, even if someone is resurrected from the dead, they still will not. If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they won't listen to them. And it's this stark message. Your brothers are stubborn. Your other rich brothers are stubborn. They've been exposed to the message. God has been speaking to them. We've told you over and over and over again. Since you were a young boy, you all, your family, had the messages of Moses and of the prophets and of the Old Testament, and God's Word breathed into your life, and you have all chosen not to believe it and not to repent and not to submit to God and there's no other voices that are going to help. The message from this parable that we don't want to miss is that if we think God isn't speaking to us, we probably just aren't listening. If we think God's not speaking to us, if we're having a hard time hearing the voice of God and we're going, God, why don't you say something? Why don't you make your will more clear? Why don't you make yourself more clear? It's probably not that he's not speaking to us. It's far more likely that we're just not listening. It's not that the rich man and his brothers weren't getting spoken to by God. They had the Bible. They had Moses. They grew up in a culture that was designed fundamentally to point them to the Father. But they missed it. And they didn't miss it because God wasn't speaking to them. They missed it because they weren't listening. And haven't we seen this happen in our lives? Haven't we seen this happen in the lives of the people around us? I can't tell you how many conversations I've had over the years with people who are skeptical of the faith. And they'll say something like, you know, if God is real, why doesn't he just make himself more evident? Why does he make it so hard to find him? If God is real, why doesn't he just like show himself front and center? And listen, I don't want to demean or sweep away those questions because they come from a sincere place. They really do. And questions like that make sense to me. But whenever I hear a question like that, I'm just convinced that we're not listening. Because when someone says, if God's real, why doesn't he just come and put himself right in front of us? I think to myself, do you mean Jesus of Nazareth that lived for 33 years and then historically died and was resurrected? Do you mean like that? Or when somebody says, if God's real, why doesn't he make himself evident? I think, do you mean like in nature? Do you mean that God should make himself more evident in his creation? That that's the way that he's chosen to reveal himself to us? Romans 1 says that God has revealed himself to us in nature so that no man is without excuse. When people say, I wonder why God doesn't make himself more evident, I wonder to myself, have you ever looked at the grandeur of a mountain range? Have you ever sat on the peaceful beach and just behold the beauty of a sunset or a sunrise? Have you ever looked at a painting in the sky and not thought, man, God, you nailed that one? Have you ever not sat in the peace and the grandeur of the plains? Have you gone out west and looked at how big and open and wide everything is? Have you been to the Caribbean and seen how crystal blue the waters are? Have you been in the hills and the east coast of the United States and looked at the lush greenery? How do you look at those things and not think, wow, there must be an author to this? Scripture tells us that even if man refuses to praise God, that the rocks cry out, that the heavens declare the glory of God. How can we say that God doesn't make himself more evident when all we have to do is literally step outside and look at his evidence all around us? How can we say that God hasn't made himself evident when we've had the gift of holding a child that we created? One of the things that I marvel at when people say, why doesn't God make himself more evident? I think of this idea of just the size and the scope of the universe. Do you understand that we still haven't found the smallest thing? We still can't find the smallest thing that God created. Years ago, 100 years ago, we thought it was a cell. We thought that a single cell was probably the smallest possible building block of life. And then we developed microscopes and we did some research and we went, oh man, we were way off. There's things that are a lot smaller than this. And then we discovered the atom. We were like, okay, that's got to be the smallest thing. And then we went, oh, that's not the smallest thing. There's like electrons. Those are tiny. And then we went to electrons and we're like, oh my gosh, there's a whole universe of things inside electrons. And no matter how much research we do, we still can't find the smallest, most fundamental thing that all of nature is based on. The universe that God created is infinitesimally small, yet it's unfathomably large. If we zoom out from the smallest thing and look at the largest thing, we still can't comprehend the universe. We still don't understand how it all dances together and hangs there. Science still can't explain the origin of it. Even if we can trace it back through history, through all the different experiments and reading and research that we have, we still don't know how it came into creation besides a creator God. Even Einstein, as he searched for a theory of relativity to stitch together the universe and understand all the things at play here God exists. And we don't just do this with our belief in God, but sometimes we do it circumstantially. Sometimes we're in different circumstances and we'll think to ourselves, why won't God tell me what I should do here? Why can't I hear his voice? I think of an example from several years ago when I was at my previous church. There was a guy who was a good guy, great character, one of my small group leaders. I was a small group pastor, and he and I worked together a fair amount. He came to me and he said, hey, I feel like God has laid on my heart that I need to plant a church. What do you think I should do? And I had to tell him. I'm not one to pull many punches in situations like this. So I had to tell him, listen, man, I don't think you're ready. I don't think it's a good idea. I don't think your family's where it needs to be. I don't think where you need to be. I think you should, that's a good goal. But the timing's probably off. It's probably not the right time. And he said, okay, I hear you, but I think I'm gonna talk to the pastor about this. I said, all right. So he goes and he sits down with our lead pastor and he says, hey, I think the Lord wants me to plant a church. And our lead pastor said the same thing I did. Gosh, it's a good goal. It just doesn't feel like the right time. I really don't think I would support that. And the guy said, okay, I'm going to talk to the elders then. So he goes and he sits in front of the elders and he says, hey, I think God wants me to plant a church and I'd really love you guys to support this. And they unanimously and quickly said, we don't think that's a good idea. And after hearing all of that advice, he went home and he told his wife he was no longer going to plant a church and he was a faithful small group leader for years. No, that's never how that story goes. He went, okay, I hear you guys, but God's leading me in another way. And he went and he left us and he went and he planted a church. And sure enough, within a year and a half, two years, that church didn't exist and he had to figure out life again. And he may be tempted at the end of that road to say, God, where were you? Why weren't you speaking to me? And the truth of it was, God was speaking to him the whole time in a cacophony of voices that he invited into his life as spiritual authorities that he just refused to listen to. It wasn't that God wasn't speaking to him, it's that he wasn't listening. And I believe we all do this. I believe we all search for the voice of God. God, what would you have me do here? God, why don't you show up in this situation? God, why don't you make yourself more evident? When God the whole time has been speaking to us. When God the whole time has put voices in our life, has put his word in our life, has put a church in our life, has put family members in our life to guide us, to serve as his voices, and yet we say we can't hear him. So to me, that's the main point. That if we can't hear God, it's not because he's not speaking, it's because we're not listening. But the interesting question that comes out of that message is, what is it that's preventing us from hearing the voice of God? Why sometimes do we struggle so mightily to hear something that's being spoken so clearly? And I think to find the answer to this, we should examine the contemporaries of Jesus. I think if we look at the religious establishment, at the Pharisees and the religious leaders and the majority of the Jewish people at the time of the life of Christ, who did not believe that Jesus was who he said he was, who were not listening to the message of God. I think if we look to them and try to figure out why was it that they couldn't hear the voice of God, that we may be able to figure out why we can't hear the voice of God. And so as I thought about that question this week, why was it that the religious leaders at the time of Christ couldn't understand what he was saying? What was prohibiting them from hearing Jesus, from hearing the message of God? I came to the conclusion that they couldn't hear God because of their own deafening expectations. They had these expectations playing in their ears that were so deafening that they were drowning out the message that God was trying to communicate to them. I kind of think of it like this. For Christmas, I got maybe the greatest gift that's ever been given, AirPods, for Christmas this year. And AirPods have this great technology in them. It's noise canceling technology so that when you put them in your ears, they begin to actively work to cancel out all the noise in your area. So you can literally turn down the volume of an entire room simply by having these in your ears. It's magical. If you have a four-year-old or a Kyle, I highly recommend these. And then when you partner their noise canceling ability with a song that you may be choosing to play from your phone, you can't hear anything. It's magical. Jen, my wife, hates these things because when they're in, I can't hear anything going on around me. I'm in my own little universe. And the truth of it is that when these are in my ear, I can only hear what I want to hear. I can only hear things that are coming through my phone, things that I have intentionally chosen and told my phone, had these expectations playing in their ear that made them completely unable to hear anything else that God was trying to say to them. Those expectations were deafening. Their expectations of Jesus were that he came to be a physical king. They expected him to be a king, to literally come and sit on the throne of David in Jerusalem, to overthrow Herod, to overthrow Roman rule, to rise Israel to national prominence, to literally take over the whole world and sit in a righteous and glorious divine reign over the planet with the Messiah Jesus on the throne. They expected a physical kingdom. They expected that Jesus was going to come from Jerusalem, not Nazareth, not the country, not be a poor carpenter or probably a stonemason if you really get into the technicalities of the words. They didn't expect that Jesus would be a poor stonemason from Nazareth, from the north of the country. They expected that he would come from Jerusalem, that he would be a member of the religious elite, that he would come up through their institutions, through their religious structure and hierarchy. They envisioned that he would be the high priest, that he would cater to them. They did not think he would carouse with sinners. They did not think he would be friends with prostitutes. They did not think that he would associate himself with people who were not amongst the elite. And what they didn't realize is Jesus came to save sinners. He came to seek the lost. He came to interact with the broken. He came to build a church. He didn't come to establish a physical kingdom and sit on a physical throne. That is too small of a kingdom for our Messiah. He came to earth to establish an eternal spiritual kingdom whose throne is in heaven that he will sit next to his Father and reign on for all of eternity. And we as the church and everyone who becomes a believer is a part of the spiritual kingdom that Jesus came to establish. And all of the Old Testament points to that reality, but because they had their own deafening expectations in their ear, they couldn't hear that message from God, and so they rejected it. Their own deafening expectations caused them to reject the Messiah when he showed up in front of them because they could no longer hear his message. And if that's true of them, it makes me wonder about our expectations. I wonder what expectations we have that are prohibiting us from hearing the message of God. A very easy one is the message of prosperity. There are some men and women who are peddlers of the false gospel of prosperity who teach people that to be a believer means that you will be prosperous, that if you have enough faith, God will give you material blessing. There was actually a televangelist at the beginning of this COVID nonsense who told people in his TV audience that even if you lose your job, if you give your last paycheck to this ministry, God is gonna flourish you. The Bible's very clear that guy's gonna get his, just so we all know. But that's a false gospel. It builds an expectation that to become a believer means I will be prosperous. It means I'm gonna close close the business deal. It means I'm going to get the car. It means I'm going to have the wealth. And it's an incredibly damaging belief because people who are in poverty and subject to that kind of false optimism sign up for faith with the expectation that God is going to make them prosperous. And then when he doesn't, it leaves them shipwrecked on the side of the road with no faith and no hope in a God that they should have never believed in in the first place. It's a false gospel. And that expectation built up that because I'm a believer, God is going to prosper me is a false expectation, and when it doesn't come to fruition, it shipwrecks their faith. And I don't know where we're getting that in the Bible because Jesus himself was poor. He says, He said, He said, He didn't have a lot of extra money to throw together. A lot of times their meals came down to just the amount of bread that they had. Nowhere in the Bible does it state that if we are believers that we will be prosperous, yet that expectation exists and persists and wrecks people's faith along the way. One that we are probably more susceptible to in our crowd and in our culture, and I've seen this over and over again in the lives of people, is the expectation that to be a believer means that God is going to prevent pain. That if I'm a believer, if I'm walking with God, if I'm walking faithfully, if I'm doing what I'm supposed to do, then he is going to allow me to dodge the raindrops of tragedy in my life. That if we'll just dot our I's and cross our T's and mind our business and do what God asks us to do, then we're not going to get the tough diagnosis and neither is anyone that we love. We're not going to experience that loss and neither will anyone in our immediate circle. That to be a believer is an insurance policy that God is going to protect me against pain. A lot of us have that expectation. We might not say it that way, but it exists. And we know it exists because I've seen so many people who have a solid faith who experience loss or tragedy for the first time, and that faith is shaken to its core. Do you know why it's shaken to its core? Because part of the foundation of that faith was an expectation that my God will prevent me from pain and tragedy when God does not claim that in Scripture anywhere. Sometimes it's built on poor teaching on verses like Romans 8.28 that teach, for we know that for those who love him, that all things work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And some people want to apply that to this life right now, saying that no matter what happens, it's going to work out for our good. When really what that verse means is God is orchestrating everything to bring us nearer to him in eternity, that everything will work out for those who love him, for their ultimate good, for eternity in paradise. It might not work out in this life, but it will always work out in the next life. But when we have this expectation that to be a believer is to prevent us from pain, we will inevitably experience pain that runs contrary to that expectation. And I don't know how we got this idea because all through the Bible are people who suffer for God. When God speaks to a prophet named Ananias, he tells him that Saul is his chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles. And get this, he will show him how much he must suffer for his name. That same Saul becomes Paul and details at the end of his life, all the ways he suffered for God through the years. Even Jesus himself, we don't talk about this a lot, but by the end of Jesus' life, Joseph, his earthly father, is not on the scene anymore. So it's entirely possible that somewhere in Jesus' adolescence, his mother became a single mom. It's entirely possible that Jesus experienced part of adolescence. The Son of God experienced life, potentially, as someone who lost his earthly father in a single-parent home. Does that sound like God protects people from suffering all the time? James tells us whenever we endure trials to consider it pure joy. Not if we endure them, but when we do. If we want to have a healthy, accurate, vibrant understanding of God, we have to move away from the expectation that to be walking with him means that we get to dodge the raindrops of pain. That's not a scriptural teaching. And that expectation leaves our faith shipwrecked. Another one, another expectation that I see is the expectation that God's going to make sense. The expectation that we'll be able to understand the almighty, infinite creator God. That if I just read enough books, if I can just systematize it enough, if I can just ask the right questions, if I can just seek out the right answers, then one day everything will tie up in this nice, neat little bow when theologically and experientially and philosophically I'll be able to understand God in a way that is satisfactory to me. When Romans 11 says His ways are higher than our ways. When Psalms says that His ways are unsearchable and unknowable and inscrutable. How can we expect to know an infinite creator God who knows good and well what the smallest thing is because He created it and He knows how big the universe is and how it hangs in place because he created it. How can we think that that massive God can be tucked into a little, tight, neat box so that my human understanding can grasp it and explain it to others all the time? It's unreasonable. And then sometimes when we can't make sense of some of the things that God says or does because we can't fit it into our human box of understanding, we walk away from him because of this false expectation that we should be able to understand him all the time. When the Bible doesn't advocate that, it doesn't tell us that we can. We can understand bits and pieces. We can know him, but we won't fully know him until we are in eternity. The last expectation that I would point out to you this morning is the false expectation that the morality of God would mirror the morality of our culture. I've been alive for 39 years. And in those 39 years, I've watched the needle on certain topics move. I've watched our culture say that in one decade, this behavior is unacceptable. And in another decade, say no longer is it not unacceptable, but it is embraceable. And if you don't, then you're wrong. I've watched that needle move where this behavior was wrong and now it is right, where this was something that we don't even really speak about because it's uncouth and now we embrace it and we support it. And sometimes those shifts are good. Sometimes they're good and necessary evolutionary shifts in how we understand Scripture and how we understand our culture. But sometimes the morality needle moves in our culture, and we take the Bible and we rush to squeeze it in and say, oh, this certainly is what God would encourage as well. This certainly is what God is teaching as well. We have to have misunderstood the scriptures in the past. They have to mean this now because this is what our culture thinks and dictates, and certainly that makes the most sense. And instead of taking the morality of our culture and viewing it through the lens of eternal and inerrant Scripture. We take Scripture and we view it through the lens of malleable, constantly changing, argumentative cultural morality, and we try to make God's eternal Word fit into that. And when we can't do it, we throw out the Bible and we say, I guess it can't be trusted because it didn't meet our expectation that God's morality would mirror the morality of our culture. Over and over again, you can probably think of more. We have these expectations of God that he never claimed, that he never gave us, that he never affirmed. And yet because God isn't meeting those expectations, we can't hear him. We have our AirPods in and we can't hear anything except for what we want to hear. And the whole time, God has been speaking to us. God has been calling out to us. God has been making himself evident to us. God has been offering us gentle, unobtrusive guidance through his scriptures and to the people in our life who love him and love us. But we have a hard time hearing him because our deafening expectations are drowning his voice out. And so it makes me want to leave you with this question to think about as you go throughout your week, hopefully to talk about in our small groups if we've developed enough trust to be this vulnerable with one another. Certainly you can see ways that your expectations have potentially damaged your ability to hear God. I know that I have mine. I would even venture to say what I've found in my own life is when God doesn't make sense or when I'm having a hard time with faith or when I don't feel like I'm in sync with him, normally it's a time when I need to sit down and say, God, what am I expecting you to do that isn't a fair expectation of you? And I'll realize it's my own bad thinking and poor beliefs about God that are keeping me from walking in faith with him. It's not his voice. It's not his teaching. It's not what he's doing. So as we wrap up, I would ask you to consider this. What expectations do we need to remove from our ears so that we can hear what God has been saying to us all along? What things have we been clinging to? What beliefs do we have that, like the religious community and the life of Christ, are playing in our ears so loudly that we can't see Jesus when he's standing right in front of us? What expectations do we need to remove so that we can finally hear the voice of God with crystal clarity? I hope you'll do that this week. I hope we'll walk with a more clear understanding of who God is and what he wants for us. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you. We know you are good. We know you love us. We know you are consistent and you are immutable and you are unchangeable and you are steadfast. We know that you are faithful when we are faithless. God, help us grope our way to faith. Help us see the things in our life, the expectations that we've placed on you that you didn't place on yourself. Help us to humbly admit those and remove them from the equation so that we might finally hear you with clarity. Help me hear you with clarity as you root out the expectations and the untrue beliefs that I have of you in my own life and in my own heart, Father. Be with us in our families and in our friends and in our peer groups even this week. Help us see with clarity who you are and what you never claim to be. And help us walk with a more crystal clear faith, Father. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.