Sermons tagged with Family

All right, everybody. Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for joining us on this June Sunday. It's good to see you guys. It is incredibly hot outside. So thanks for braving that. Before we get into the sermon, just a small announcement. For me, this is my last sermon that I'm going to preach until August. A few years ago, the elders talked and decided that it would be best for the church for me to not preach in the month of July and best for me. And here's the reason why. And so we've been doing this for a few years now. The first and most important reason is this. There are other voices in the church that are very much worth hearing. They are thoughtful and insightful and articulate and wise and godly, and we are better off hearing from them. I don't know if you guys realize this or not. I'm sure you have if you've listened to a number of sermons. I don't really have something to say every week. So it's good for other people whose God has placed on their hearts things they do have to say to share with us. So first and foremost, we want to create an atmosphere of other voices. And that's why periodically in the year, I never go more than six or seven weeks in a row without someone spelling me and getting another voice up here. So that's always been a priority for us. It's always been a priority for me as a senior pastor. The other reason is taking that block of time allows me to focus on other areas of the church that I might not otherwise be able to give as much focus to in the regular rhythm of writing a weekly message. Last September, I stood up here on September the 10th, and I told you guys that I was going to be working hard, kind of in the margins and in the afternoons, behind the scenes, to develop some discipleship pathways for us that I believe is the next big step that we're going to take as a church, and maybe the most important thing I've worked on in the last year. So I've been quietly working on that behind the scenes and with other people in concert with others and putting things together. And I'm very excited in September, we're going to do a series on our five traits. Some of you may be aware that we have some, you might even be able to name one, but we're going to make those more a part of who we are and what we do as a church. And to accompany those, we're going to roll out what we're calling discipleship pathways that are kind of the next step for us to take towards spiritual growth as a church. So I'm finishing those up in July. I'm rolling those out to the small group leaders at the end of the month of July, and then you guys will be hearing about those in September. So that's how that work's been going on in the background since last fall. I'm finally ready to show it to you here as we enter into this fall. Now for this morning, as Mike said earlier, we have our last sermon in our series called Idols that's loosely based on Tim Keller's book called Counterfeit Gods. And in it, he presents this idea of source idols, things that really fuel the idolatry that we have in our life and other areas. Those source idols are power, approval, control, and comfort. And what he means by source idol is maybe our visible idol is greed or materialism, and we just want things. We want to get all we can, can all we get, and sit on our can. We just want more things. That's what we want. And so maybe that comes because we're really motivated by a desire for power. We believe money brings power. Maybe it's control. We believe money brings control. Maybe it's approval. Maybe it's comfort. But it's those source idols that really get sneaky and begin to turn our hearts away from God. And we talked about this idea of idolatry being so important because whatever occupies the space of our top priority in our life, and idolatry is anytime we put something in our life, we prioritize that over our devotion to God himself. Anything that occupies that top spot in our life is by default the recipient of our worship. And what we talked about is that nothing can bear the weight of our worship besides our God. So whenever we get that out of whack and we have something besides our God, besides Jesus Christ as our number one priority, then everything else in our life suffers. This morning, I've been excited to do this sermon because I believe it applies to everyone in the room. I've said along the way, different people have different source idols. We struggle differently with different ones. But comfort is one that even if it's not your number one, it's your number two. It's there. I think we all struggle with it. And the more I thought about this source idol of comfort, the more convinced I became that this is true. When it comes to comfort, we are the frog being boiled in cultural water. When it comes to comfort, we are frogs being boiled in the cultural waters of the United States in 2024. A desire for comfort is all around us. A desire to just be fine, to just be chill, to just feel comfortable, to have things set at the right temperature. Kyle just went back there and messed with a thermostat. You know why? Because we want to be comfortable. Because if we're not comfortable, we're not going to listen to Nate. That's why. So we've got to be comfortable. Here's a few ways I know that comfort is ubiquitously important to us. I have this theory in life that is yet to be disproven, that you can gauge a family's net worth by the number of unnecessary pillows they have in their home. Okay? And if you're thinking to yourself, joke's on you, I don't have any unnecessary pillows in my home, you're the problem. Okay? People have to move things out of the way so they can sit on your couch. And here's what I don't understand while we're here. While we're here, I'm just going to say this for the men, okay? Guys, I'm saying this on your behalf. Ladies, we don't understand why you go to the store and spend $200 on a chore to put on your bed every morning and every night. We don't understand why you go to HomeGoods and TJ Maxx and you dump 200 bucks on pillows to put further out from your sleeping pillows so that at the end of the day, you have to take them off when you're tired. And in the morning, you have to put them back on when you're in a hurry. It makes no sense. And you do it so it looks nice. For who? When's the last time you had a guest over to your house? And when you had them over, you were like, and here's our master bedroom. Nobody does that. Nobody does that. It's weird. Nobody sees your master bedroom. Listen, some of you I have been friends with the whole time I've been here. I am such good friends with you, I can walk right into your house unannounced, and I've done it before. You know what I've never seen? Your master bedroom. Because that's weird. No one sees it. Knock it off with the pillows. All right. There you go. Guys, you can talk about that at lunch. We have these symbols of comfort all over our culture. How many of you in your cars don't have heated seats? You don't just have heated seats. You have cooled seats. Don't raise your hand. Those things are wonderful. Yeah, two hands up back there. Whenever I'm riding with my friends that have cooled seats, I crank those suckers up all the way. I love those things, man. Those things are amazing. How many of you have a carefully negotiated thermostat temperature for your summertime nights and for your wintertime nights? These things have been, sometimes you had to bring in a moderating attorney just to get that settled. How many of you, how many of you, I'm being serious, how many of you have had the chance to fly first class before? and within 15 minutes of takeoff, you thought, I'm never sitting with the peasants again. This is amazing. Or you've been lucky enough to get the pods for international travel, where you extend out and you have a personal screen and there's a door to keep the pores out. That's how it goes. And you tell yourself, here's what you tell yourself. This is so funny. I've heard my friends say this. I need to be refreshed because I got to hit the ground running when I get there. I bet you do, buddy. I bet you do. That's why you chose the drinks that you did on the way over because you got to hit the ground running. I bet you do. That's why you chose the drinks that you did on the way over, because you got to hit the ground running. I bet. Sure. Maybe, maybe you just want to be comfortable. We like our space. We like our accompaniments. We like the things that make us feel good. And here's one of the ways I know that it's not a uniquely American problem, but it's a particularly American problem. I've watched House Hunters International. Have you watched House Hunters International? Without fail, the Americans go over to a foreign country, Costa Rica, Europe, New Zealand, wherever. They're looking at a $650,000 flat in the middle of Copenhagen. And you know what they say? This feels small. And it is. It's like a tiny little dishwasher, a one-burner stove. There's a toilet where you can control the shower nozzle from there. Like, it's all, it's real tight. And as Americans, we look at that and we're like, no way. I need my space. This desire for comfort is a particularly American struggle. In a culture, and this is true, where if you choose, if you have a desk job, and you choose at that desk job to stand, you have one of those high desks, people are like, look at the health nut over here. Look at Captain Fitness not sitting in a chair for eight hours a day. This is how much as a culture we prize comfort. And it's not just physical comfort that we prize, although that is a very good indicator. But mental, spiritual. We don't like to be challenged spiritually. We like to go to church. There's a certain amount of conviction that's okay. But over that, it's like, come on, man, you're being a jerk. And I'm not going to sit in this week after week. We want to be comfortable spiritually. I'm just going to edge right up to this and then I'm going to back off because I'm scared like you are. There are certain things I can't talk about and you know I can't talk about them because if I did, everybody in here would get fidgety and uncomfortable and it would feel like this. So I don't. And I talk about other things where we're comfortable, right? There are conversations that we need to have, but that conflict and that tension makes us uncomfortable, so we avoid them. In myriad ways, in myriad situations, we live in a culture that prizes comfort almost over and above all else. And what I want you to see this morning is we are like frogs being boiled in a cultural water. I came across this fact a couple of weeks ago in one of the books that I was reading, but it noted that if you, that there was an officer in the Spartan army circa 400 BC who got dishonorably discharged from the army because he was charged with taking a warm shower. He was charged with allowing himself the indulgence of a warm shower and he was deemed unfit to be a Spartan. How far we have come and the comforts and the things that we demand. So here's what I would say. And here's what I want us to realize this morning. If we don't idolize comfort, we've got to at least admit we have a tendency towards it. I doubt very much that anyone came in here this morning going, oh, comfort, that's me. I very seriously doubt that at the beginning of the series, when I did the first sermon five weeks ago and introduced this idea of idols and idolatry, that any of you went, oh gosh, if I just kind of survey the landscape of my life, I think comfort's probably my idol. I don't think anybody did that. And yet, I think it is prevalent and persnickety and pernicious and corrosive in all of us. And like I said, not just materially, but parents, how many things do you need to broach with your children that you don't? Because it would just be a hassle. I don't have the energy for that fight. I don't have the energy for that discussion. I know, and maybe it's confrontational. Maybe it's sympathetic. Maybe it's relational. Maybe you can see they're hurting and you just, you want to wait another day because it's going to be a hard conversation and you're tired. How many times do we choose our own comfort over what our kids need? Spouses. How often in our marriages do we tolerate a fragile peace? Because breaking that peace would cause so much discomfort that we don't want to deal with it. It's easier to just exist at this simmering tension. How much of what God asks us to do is blocked by the amount of comfort that we desire? I have a good relationship with my neighbor. I don't want to make it weird by inviting them somewhere or asking them about things. I have a good relationship with my coworker. I don't want to jeopardize that by asking an odd question or bringing up an odd topic. It's not just physically that we allow a desire for comfort to begin to derail us in our thought process. It's emotionally. We build up walls. How many of us, listen, how many of us know, know that God wants us to see a counselor? That we have some issues and some things in our life that we need to deal with that are rippling out and spilling onto the people that we love the most. And that what we need more than anything is to talk to someone that he has blessed and trained up to serve the kingdom in this way. And we need to go talk to them, and we don't. And you know why we don't? Because it will be uncomfortable to begin to deal with the things that could be brought up. So this desire for comfort goes way beyond throw pillows and first-class seats. And it permeates into every area of our life. And here's why this idol of comfort is so dangerous. Because idolizing comfort causes us to build our life around protecting it and we end up wasting it. Idolizing comfort causes us to build up our life around protecting that comfort, and we end up wasting our life in the process. I don't love admitting this, but I will, because I think some of us can relate to this in some way. After the first time I flew first class internationally, I got home, and I'm being dead serious. I started thinking to myself and racking my brain and talking to friends. What sorts of side hustles can I do to begin to generate more income so that when I travel, I can travel like that? What kinds of, how can I market myself in other areas? What kind of extra income can I make so that when I travel, I can get the upgrade? I can be in the excellence club. I can be the gold member. What can I do so that when my family has these experiences, I can turn them up a notch because I liked it so much? And listen, listen, that is so honest. It wasn't for other things. It wasn't, what can I do to monetize myself more, to work a little bit harder so that I can give more to God's kingdom, so that I can provide a more comfortable life for my family, so that my wife and my children can have a little bit nicer things and live life a little bit more easily. No, it was as simple as, God, I really like flying first class. I'd love to do that again. I don't want to have to fly back there with the peasants anymore, so let's see what I can turn up to travel nice. Listen, listen to me. How stupid is that? How stupid is that? But some of you do it for golf memberships. Or the cooling seats. Or the nice whatever. And isn't this so easy to do? Isn't it? Isn't our culture tailor-made to suck us into that trap? I was having lunch with a good friend this week. He's 35. And he's kind of come to a bit of a crossroads in his career where he could go this way or that way. And his entire career, he's been headed this way. He got the job. This is what the people in charge of me do. This is what I'm supposed to do. This is the next thing. This is what I'm going to do. And now he's picking his head up at this crossroads going, is that even what I want to do? And how often does that happen? For how many of us is that our story? How many of us have friends with that story? Who graduated high school or graduated college or got their masters and entered into the workforce? And when you entered into the workforce, all you were trying to do is prove yourself and make enough money to survive at some sort of level that you liked and that you wanted to attain. And then you got it. And then you needed to continue to pay for it. And then you married somebody. And then you looked and you said, okay, we're doing this thing together, either single income or dual income. We have goals. And then you spin it forward and you spin it forward and you spin it forward and you just put your head down and you do the next thing and you get the next promotion and your friend buys a white SUV and now I want that. And your friend flies first class and now I want that. And your friend buys this house and now I want that. And oh shoot, we're doing beach houses now? I guess I'll figure this one out too. I didn't know I needed white marble in my bathroom, but I really, really do. This tile is terrible, right? And we just need the next thing. And we never think about if we're spending our life and investing our years in the right thing. It's just the next thing. And by the time, listen, by the time we pick up our head and we wonder, is this even the direction I'm supposed to go? We have mortgages and we have and we have bills, and we have a standard of living, and we have certain expectations that we've built up. I took the kids to Turks and Caicos last year, so if I don't do it this year, I've somehow failed as a father. And on and on it goes. And we stay on the treadmill, organizing our life around comfort without ever realizing we had done it. This is what makes this the sneakiest, most pernicious idol of them all. Because none of you started your adult life and verbalized, you know what I want to do? I want to be comfortable. And I'm going to organize my whole life around it. But as you sit here, you're wondering if that's what you've done by accident. And if that's how we invest our whole life, we will have wasted it. And for me, there is nothing more sad, there is nothing I am more afraid of than getting to the end of my life and looking back on the decades and knowing in my heart of hearts that I wasted it. That I didn't use my years for things that mattered. And let me tell you what ultimately doesn't matter. Your comfort. It just doesn't. And I bring this up because I do think it's so easy to slip into this pursuit. I do think it's so easy to, without realizing it, almost by mistake, to have organized our entire life around building comfort and then marshalling our resources to protect that comfort without ever risking anything for God's kingdom. I can think of no better example of this in the Bible than in a parable that Jesus told of someone who in this instance marshaled their life around protecting comfort. And we see how the master responds to them. It's a well-known parable found in Matthew chapter 25. I'm just going to read verses 24 and 27. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there, but this is the parable of the tenants. I'm going to read from the NIV. It says bags of gold. That's one of the places where the scholars have let you down. It's talent. It's a talent. It's a denomination of money that may feel like to us a bag of gold. But in this parable that you guys know, but in case you don't, or in case you need a refresher, there's a master of the house. The master of the house represents Jesus. And the master of the house is leaving. He goes to these three servants and he says, hey, I'm going to go out of town for a while. Here's some money. Give me a report on what you did with the money when we come back. To the first servant, he gives five talents. To the second servant, he gives two talents. To the last servant, he gives one talent. And he goes out of town. And then he comes back in town. And when he gets back in town, he goes to the servant with the five talents. And he says, what'd you do with the money? And the servant says, see, I took the money, I invested it, I traded and sold, and now I'm giving you ten talents in return. I've doubled your investment. And the master says, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful with a few things. I will make you lord over many. And then he goes to the two-talent person. And he says, what did you do? And the two-talent person says, see, I have bought and sold and invested, and I have doubled your money. I'm giving you back four talents. And the master says to him, well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things. I will make you Lord over many. And I would pause right here and just say this. I should do a whole sermon on it, but I'll just say this and maybe it'll sit on some of you like it sits on me. That phrase, well done, good and faithful servant, is worth living your life for. Pursuing that phrase, chasing hearing that from your God in your eternity, at the end of your life, marshalling all of your resources and all of your time and all of your talents and all of your interests and all of your effort and all of your discipline so that one day when we stand before the Lord, he will look at us and he will say, well done, good and faithful servant with the life and the time that you had. That phrase is worth your whole life. You will never be disappointed by the things that you pursue to hear that. And what's wonderful about that phrase is the five-talent person got the same response as the two-talent person. God doesn't care how big of an impact you make or how wonderful your work is or how many people know who you are or how many people come to your funeral or any of that stuff. He does not care about the size and the grandeur of your impact. What he cares is about the faithfulness and your small actions. What he cares about is that you are a good and faithful servant, and he will say, well done, whether you have five talents or two or one. I love that. But then he goes to the servant to whom he gave one talent to you. His master replied, you wicked, lazy servant. So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed. Well, then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers so that when I returned, I would have received it back with interest. He goes to the last servant. He says, what did you do? And the last servant says, well, I'm scared of you. I did not want to risk losing your money, so I buried it. Now, I cannot tell you in good faith and a good conscience that I have a depth of insight into a fictional character's soul in a very short parable in the Bible and can tell you that that man struggled with the God of comfort, but here's what I can tell you. In that moment, in that instance, that's what he chose. He chose to not risk anything and to be comfortable. And in that story, Jesus is represented by the master. And what was Jesus' response to that? You wicked and lazy servant. And he takes the talent from the one and he gives it to the one with the five because he knows it's going to be in better hands. This is what's at stake if we choose to marshal our resources around comfort and by default waste our life. Just bury the gifts and the talents and the abilities and the plan that God has given us because we're too afraid to risk anything. Then one day when we stand before him, we will not hear well done, good, and faithful servant. And here's the thing I want us to go home with today and understand. The more I thought about this God of comfort and how it juxtaposes with works of the kingdom, I was sure of this. Stories of kingdom-building faith always require a sacrifice of comfort. Stories of kingdom-building faith always require a sacrifice of comfort. You will never find anyone who's doing things for the kingdom who didn't, in order to do those things, have to give up some of their comforts in life. Later this week, next Sunday, I'll be flying to Ethiopia to visit Addis Jamari over in Addis Ababa. And I think of the women that founded that ministry. I think of Suzanne Ward and Cindy Douglas. And Cindy is over there months on end. She's over there months at a time with two teenage sons. You don't think that she's had to give up some comfort and that her family's had to give up some comfort for the sake of what God is doing over there in Ethiopia? And what God's doing there is amazing and needed and absolutely necessary. It's a wonderful work of the kingdom for which she had to sacrifice comfort. If you think of the godly people you know in your life, the people who love well and who serve well and who are always here during the week setting things up, they're always at their place wherever they serve, wherever they pour into, they're always pouring into it, they're always doing, they're always serving. Those people give up the comfort of doing that. When you think about good and godly parents, you have to give up your comfort for the sake of your children. Good and godly spouses give up their comfort for the sake of their spouses. Good and godly friends give up their comfort for the sake of their friends. You will never, ever find an act of the kingdom and an act of faith that is done without giving up some comfort on the other end. And we see this biblically in story after story. Two that spring to mind right away are of Saul changed to Paul. And I have to go quickly because we still got communion to do. And I think I'm going long, but just bear with me. When I think of Saul, he was on his way to Damascus to persecute the Christians there. Jesus appears to him, blinds him, sends him to a room, names him Paul, and says, I've got big plans for you, pal. And then goes to a guy named Ananias, and he says, Ananias, I need you to go see Saul, turn to Paul, and get the scales off of his eyes, because he needs to start serving me now. And Ananias says, no way, I'm not going to do that. He's a Christian killer. That does not sound very fun. And God says this in one of the most ominous statements in the Bible, Acts chapter 9, verses 15 and 16. But the Lord said to Ananias, go, this man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. But no, no, by all means, God is super concerned with your comfort. He is my chosen instrument to reach the Gentiles. Do you understand that Paul is the most influential post-disciple Christian to ever exist? No one has influenced the church as widely and deeply and profoundly as Paul. And in order to do that, he sacrificed all comfort. And God said, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Shipwreck and beatings and floggings and imprisonment and disease and poverty. He endured it all for the sake of God's kingdom. In the Old Testament, I think of Ruth and Boaz and Naomi. Ruth was a Moabite woman. There was poverty in Israel because of the drought, and some families started moving to Moab, and she happened to marry one of these Jewish boys that had moved over. And then the dad and the two brothers died, and it left the mom, Naomi, with two daughters-in-law. And the other one said, hey, I'm going to stay here. And Naomi looked at Ruth and said, you need to stay here in Moab. You're young and pretty. You can marry, and you'll be fine. But Ruth knew that if she did this, that Naomi would be destitute. And so she said this in this famous line, no, where you go, I go. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God. And she did the right thing, and she stayed with Naomi. She ended up marrying a man named Boaz. And if you fast forward several hundred years, you come to the book of Matthew. And in the first chapter of the book of Matthew, you have the genealogy of Jesus Christ. And when you read those genealogies, what you find is that you can trace a line from Jesus back to King David, the second and greatest king of Israel. And King David came from a man named Jesse. And Jesse came from a man named Obed. And Obed came from a woman named Ruth, married to Boaz. Because of her great act of faith and her sacrifice of comfort, God included her in his family tree. So first of all, we never will do anything for the kingdom that doesn't require a sacrifice of comfort. Second, we have no idea what can come out of that sacrifice and what God might do. The greatest example of this we see is Jesus himself, who gave up all the comforts of heaven to condescend and come here. I don't know what the pillow situation is in heaven, but I bet it's pretty good. I don't know. It can't enumerate all the comforts that Jesus gave up. But when he came here, it says in Matthew chapter 8, verse 20, that foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. For three years, Jesus sofa-surfed so that he could do ministry to us and build up disciples to leave us, to establish the church in which we now sit. Jesus is the greatest example of all time of what it means to give up comfort for the sake of a work for the kingdom. And what I want us to understand about this, because we do, all of us, somewhere have this God of comfort, that our proclivity for comfort stands in direct opposition to our desire to be used. I know most of you. I know a lot of you really well. And I know in your hearts more than anything you want to be used by God in this life for his kingdom. I know that you do. And what I want you to see this morning is that your desire for comfort stands in direct opposition to your desire to be used by God. God wants to use you in mighty ways. You are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that you might walk in them. And I know you want to walk in those good works. But your desire for comfort almost more than anything else is what's keeping some of us from those. So here's where I would end with this simple question for you to consider as we move into a time of communion together. When is the last time you did anything at all that made you uncomfortable for the sake of the kingdom? When is the last time you made an intentional choice to allow yourself to be uncomfortable for the sake of the kingdom of God. This could be in a conversation that we know we need to have. This could be in a neighbor that we know we need to approach. This could be starting a small group that we know we need to start. Starting a ministry that we know we need to start. Volunteering with a place or with an area or in a team here where we know we need to do, we just haven't done it. This could mean broaching a subject with our spouse. This could mean taking the step to go into counseling and begin to let things tweak there so that we can do a little bit better for the people around us. This could mean what we give towards the kingdom of God. When's the last time our giving made us uncomfortable? When's the last time you intentionally chose to sacrifice your comfort for the sake of God's kingdom? And let me tell you this. I have never, ever talked to anyone who got towards the end of their life and said, gosh, you know what I regret? Just doing so much for Jesus. You know what, I think we gave too much. I think I did too much. I think I, here's what I've never heard. I should have made my life more about myself. Wish I would have. We have no idea what can happen when we begin to sacrifice this dearly held comfort for the sake of God's kingdom. And so I would simply ask you to consider as I pray and as we move into a time of communion, what is God pressing on your heart? Where is he asking you to sacrifice your comfort? I believe he's pressing something on each and every one of us. What conversation does he want you to have or action does he want you to take or invitation does he want you to extend or discipline does he want you to adopt or habit does he want you to give up? Where is God calling you to be uncomfortable? Let's pray. Dear God, thank you so much for sending your son who took on all of us and all of this and left behind all of that and all of you for our sake. God, we confess that we are slaves to comfort far more than we intended to be. That not being upset and not being rattled and not being stressed and not feeling uncomfortable in any way imaginable matters to us far more than we would have been willing to admit and perhaps more than we're still willing to admit. But Lord, in your gentle way, where you just navigate into our souls, will your spirit bring about the necessary conviction that you would have for us here? Help us to see with your eyes where we are choosing our comfort over you. And give us the courage, God, to choose you and to find out what happens on the other side of that choice. God, thank you for your patience with us. Thank you for your grace with us. Give us the strength to walk in the good works that you have planned for us and to set aside the comfort that keeps us from that so often. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So good to see everybody. And it sounds like to me that only the singers come during the summertime. You guys were singing great. And that was really always love it when the church sings together like that. If I haven't gotten to meet you yet, I would love to do that in the lobby. After the service, you have dropped in. If this is your first time, you've dropped into the middle of a series called Idols that's loosely based on a book by Tim Keller called Counterfeit Gods. If you haven't picked up a copy of that, we are out, but they are competitively priced on Amazon and will be brought right to your door for ease of purchase. So I would encourage you to grab one of those and kind of read through that as we finish up the series. This is week four. Next week is the last week. Week five, we're going to talk about comfort next week, which I'm very excited to talk about that because I think it's something that every American alive needs to hear. And I think it's going to be an important one next week. This week, we're looking at the source idol of control. And when I say source idol, one of the more interesting ideas that Tim Keller puts forward in his book is the idea that we have surface idols and source idols. Surface idols are the ones that are visible to us and people outside of us, a desire for money, a desire for friends, a desire for a perfect family, for appearances, things like that that are a little bit more visible. Source idols are things that exist in our heart beneath the surface that fuel our desire for those surface idols. And he identifies four. Power, which I preached about two weeks ago. That's the one that I primarily deal with. And then approval, preached about last week that's what he deals with a lot that is not one that that's probably the one I worry about the least and then control this week and comfort next week so as we approach this idea of control in our life I want us to understand what it is and what it means if we struggle with this source idol. And again, an idol is anything that becomes more important to us in our life than Jesus. It's something that we begin to prioritize over Jesus and we pour out our faith and our worship to that thing instead of to our Creator. About four or five years ago, I was in my therapist's office. I was seeing a counselor at the time just doing general maintenance, which I highly recommend to anyone. It's probably time for me to get back in there and let them tinker around a little bit. But one day I got there and whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, what a cliche, but whenever I would go in and sit down on the couch, he would always ask me what's been going on, what's happened since I last saw you. That was always the first question, so I knew that was the question. So in the car, in my head, I'm thinking, how am I going to answer him? I can tell him about this thing and this thing and this thing. I think that'll be enough. Well, I'll start the bidding there, and we'll see where it goes. So I go in, I sit down and he asked me the question, how's it been going for you? What's been happening? And so I told him my three things, five or eight minutes. I don't know. And I get done with it. And he just looks at me and he kind of cocks his head and he goes, why'd you tell me those things? And the smart aleck in me is like, because you're a counselor, because this is the deal? Because that's what I'm supposed to do? What do you want me to do? But I said, well, I knew that you were going to ask me what happened, and that's what happened. So I told you those things. And I don't remember the exact conversation, but he pushed back on me and he goes do you do you ever enter a conversation without knowing what you're going to talk about and what the other person is probably going to talk about and I said not if I can help it I always plan ahead whenever I have a conversation or meeting coming up I always think through all the different ways it could go and how I want to respond because I don't want to be caught off guard in the moment. And he said, how many times are you in a situation that's taken you by surprise and you didn't expect to be there? I said, very rarely. And he goes, yeah, I think maybe you've got an issue with control. Because you have a hard time not being the one driving the bus, don't you? And I was like, you have a hard time not being the one. And I kind of thought about it, and I said, my gosh, is it possible that this need for control is so ingrained into me that the reason I told you those stories is so that I could control where the conversation went and we would talk about things I was willing to open up about and I could steer away from the areas that I wasn't willing to talk about. He said some effect of, and circle gets the square. Good job, buddy. And so this need for control that some of us all have to varying degrees can be so sneaky. Sometimes we don't even recognize it in ourselves until someone points it out in us. So let me point it out in you. Some people deal with this so much that it shows up in every aspect of their life. For me, it's relational, it's conversational. I don't want to look dumb. If someone has something negative to say, I want to be gracious and not be caught off guard, whatever it is. But for some of us, we're so regimented and ordered that we have our life together in every aspect of it. We have our routine. We wake up at a certain time. We go to bed at a certain time. Our kids do certain things on certain days. If you have a laundry day, you're gaining on it. If you make your bed, you're gaining on it. Like there are things that we do. We have a workout routine that we do. We have the way that we eat. We have the places that we go. We have our budget. We have our work schedule. We are very regimented. And a lot of that can come from this innate need to be in control of everything. I think about the all-star mom in the PTA, the one who runs a better house than you, who drives a cleaner car than you, and who makes cupcakes better than you, that mom. And her kids are always dressed better than your kids. This is this need for control. And if you're not yet sure if this is you, if this might be something that you do in your life where everything needs to be ordered, and if it's not ordered, your whole life is in shambles. I heard in the last year of this phrase that I had not heard before. I'm in the last year of the Gen Xers. I think the millennials coined this phrase. You boomers, unless you have millennial children, you probably have not heard this, but maybe you can identify it. It's a term called the Sunday Scaries. Anybody ever heard that term? You don't have to raise your hand and out yourself, but the Sunday Scaries. Okay. Now for me, I have the Saturday Scaries because about three times every Saturday, I kind of jolt myself into consciousness and ask if I know what I'm preaching about in the morning. So that's, that's what I have for me. Sunday scaries are when you take Sunday night to get ready for your week. And on Sunday afternoons and evenings, you begin to feel tremendous anxiety because the meals aren't prepped and the clothes aren't washed and the schedule isn't done and the things aren't laid out and the laundry isn't all the way ready and you start to worry, if I don't, I've got this limited amount of time, if I don't start my week right, everything's going to be off, it's going to be the worst and so you get the Sunday scaries and you experience stress on Sunday night. If that's you, friends, this might be for you. And when we do this, when we make control our idol, when we order our lives so that we manage every detail of it. And listen, I want to say this before I talk about the downside of it. Those of us who do live regimented lives and who are in control of many of the aspects of them, that ability comes from a place of diligence and discipline. That's a good thing. That's a muscle God has blessed you with that he has not blessed others with, but we can take it too far. And we can allow that to become what we serve. And we can allow control over the things in our life to become more important than the other things in our life and to become more important than Jesus himself. And here's what happens when we allow this sneaky idol to take hold in our lives. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful. The idol of control makes us anxious and the people around us resentful of the control we try to exert over them. I'll never forget, it's legendary in my group of buddies. I've got a good group of friends, eight guys, and we go on a trip about every other year. And one year we were in another city and one of my buddies named Dan just decided that he was the group mom on this trip. And I don't really know why he decided that, but he was bothering us the whole time. Don't do that. Don't go here. Where are you guys going? What are you guys talking about? Come over here. Be part of the group. Put your phone down. Let's go. Like just bossing us around the whole time. And we got mad at him. He spent the whole trip anxious. He didn't have as good a time as he could. And we, we spent the trip frustrated with Dan to the point where whenever he starts it now, we just call him mom and tell him to shut up. When we try to control everything in our life, we make ourselves anxious and we make the people around us resentful. We make ourselves anxious because we're trying to control everything. Everything's got to go according to plan. And now that we've structured this life, we have to protect this life with all the decisions that we're making and see all the threats, real and imagined, to this perfect order that we might have. And then the people around us grow to resent us because we're trying to exert unnecessary control over them as well. And it's really not a good path to be on. And the best example I can find in the Bible of someone who may have struggled with this idol of control and made herself anxious and everyone around her resentful is Sarah in the event with Hagar. Now, I'm going to read a portion of this, Genesis 16, 1 through 6, to kind of tell the story of Sarah and Hagar and Abraham. A couple bits of context. First of all, I know that at this point in the story, technically, her name is Sarai and his name is Abram, okay? For me, it feels like saying the nation Columbia with a Spanish accent all of a sudden after I've been talking in southern English for 30 minutes. So I'm not just going to break out into Hebrew. Okay, so they're going to be Sarah and Abraham, and you're going to bear that cross with me. And then what's happening in the story is in Genesis chapter 12, God calls Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldeans. He was in the Sumerian dynasty. He says, I want you to grab your family. I want you to move to this place I'm going to show you that became Canaan, the promised land in modern day Israel. And when he got there in Genesis 12, God made him three promises. He spoke to Abraham and he said, hey, this land is going to be your land and your descendants' land forever. Your descendants will be like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, and one of your descendants will bless the whole earth. He made those three promises to Abraham. Can I tell you, the rest of the Bible hinges on those promises. If we don't understand those promises, we can't understand the rest of Scripture. But all of those promises require a descendant to come true. Sarah and Abraham were getting on up there in age, maybe in their 80s. And Sarah had still not born Abraham a child. She was barren or he was impotent. And she begins to get concerned enough about this that she takes matters into her own hands. She arrests control away from God's sovereign plan. And this is what happens in Genesis chapter 16, verses 1 through 6. We're going to read it together. I don't see any problems so far. Okay, a little recap here. I, for one, am shocked that the story went that way. After she said, hey, here's what you should do. I have an Egyptian slave. You should sleep with her. She'll carry a baby, and then we'll raise that as our own child. I don't know what Abraham's moral compass was at this point in his story, what laws of God he had been equated with and not. I don't know how aware he was of the myriad egregious sins happening in this one instance. But this goes exactly how you'd think it would go. After a wife, likely much older than her slave, says, why don't you sleep with my slave and you all have a child together? And then what happens? She gets anxious. She gets resentful. She sees that Hagar is haughty towards her. And then she begins to resent Abraham, blames it on him. This is your fault. Excuse me. I'm sure it was your idea. And then runs Hagar off. By taking control in this situation, she made herself anxious about everyone around her, and she made everyone around her resentful of who she was. You can see it in Abram's response in verse 6. He says, listen, she's yours. You deal with it. Don't come to me with those problems. He's tired of dealing with it. And as I was thinking about the sin of Sarah, and as I was thinking about what it's like when we take control of our own life, when we kind of take the wheel from God and we say, I've got it from here, you can ride passenger, I'm going to be in control and orchestrate everything. That what we're really doing when we take control is this. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. We just get in the way. When we insist on taking control, we just get in God's way. What did Sarah do? She got in his way. He had a story that he was writing with Isaac. He knew exactly when he would, God knew exactly when he was going to allow Abraham to make Sarah pregnant. He knew exactly how the rest of the story was going to go. Ishmael doesn't need to exist. That root of Ishmael doesn't need to exist. If Sarah would have just been patient and waited on God and his timing, if she had just been patient and waited on God to write the story that he intended, if she waited on his sovereignty and his will, but she got tired of waiting, she thought it should be happening differently than this, so she took control. And as a result of that control, we have this split in the line of Abraham that has echoed down through the centuries that we're still dealing with today, over which we are still warring right now in Abraham's promised land because Sarah took control when she wasn't supposed to. She got in the way of the story that God was wanting to write. And the more I thought about that, what it's like to be getting in God's way when he's trying to direct our life the way he wants it to go, I thought about this. Now, you can raise your hand for this one. Who in here loves themselves a good cooking show? I love a good cooking show. Just me and Jeff and Karen. Perfect. Nobody else likes cooking shows. You're liars. I love a good cooking show. At our house, the things that are on the TV are house hunters, cooking shows, and sports. That's it. By the way, my three-year-old son, John, calls all sports golf. Yesterday I was watching soccer, and he said, Daddy, you watch golf. And in our house, we have a rule. When a kid is making a dumb mistake like that, we do not correct them because it's adorable, and we want them to do it as long as possible. Like the days gone by when, to Lily, anything that had occurred before today was last-her-day. Could have been last year. Could have been last week. Could have been a couple hours ago. It happened last-her-day, and it was great. At some point, she figured it out, and now we don't like her as much. But I love a good cooking show. And my favorite chef, no one will be surprised by this if you know me, is Gordon Ramsay. I really like Gordon Ramsay. I like watching him cook. I like watching him interact. I think he's really great. And so I watch most of what he puts out. And I was thinking about this, getting in God's way. And I think this fits. Let's pretend that at an auction, at a charity auction from Ubuntu, which would be a great prize, I won a night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. First of all, I was given a significant raise. Second of all, I've spent it all on this night of cooking with Gordon Ramsay. And the night comes around. I'm so excited. I would be thrilled to do this. It would really, really be fun. I do like to cook. And so let's say that night finally rolls around and I go to his kitchen and I walk in and all the ingredients are out on the counter. And he hasn't told me what he's going to make, but all the ingredients are there. And what I don't know is he's planning to make a beef Wellington. That's one of his signature dishes. I've only had one beef Wellington in my life. I loved it. I would kill to have one that was cooked by him for me. That would be amazing. But the deal is, I look at the ingredients and he's going to teach me how to do it. So he's going to walk me through it step by step. First, you want to sear the loin. Get that, get the skillet nice and hot, sear it. Then you rub the mustard on it. Now dice up some mushrooms. And I don't know where we're going or what we're doing. I'm just following him step by step doing what I'm supposed to do. And his goal is to show me how to make a beef wellington that we've done together. Great. Except stupid me sees the ingredients, sees the steak, sees some green beans, and I go, you know what, Gordon? Actually, I've got this. It's your night to cook with Nate. What I'd like you to do is just go sit behind the bar on the other side. Let's just chat it up. I'd like to hear some of your stories. I'm going to make you steak and green beans. And I take those ingredients, and I get in his way, and I go make overdone steak with soggy green beans, and I slide it across the table to him. Having no idea what I just missed out on. Because I insisted on taking control and making what I thought I should make with those ingredients. I think that when we insist on turning all the dials in our life ourselves, taking control of every aspect of our life. That what we do is very similar to being in the kitchen with a master chef and telling him we've got this. We see the ingredients available to us and we make the thing we think we're supposed to make. Having no idea that he had so much better plans for those ingredients than what we turned out. And as I was talking about this sermon and this idea with my wife, Jen, who has a different relationship with this source idol than I do, she pointed out to me, she said, you know what they're trying to make? If your idol is peace, you're trying to make in that kitchen or if your idol is control. She said, we're trying to make peace. People with the idol of control, you know what they're trying to do with that control? They're trying to create a peace for themselves. They're trying to create rest for themselves. If this is your surface, if this is your source idol, and you try to control every aspect of your life, chances are that what's really motivating you to do that is a desire for peace in all the areas of your life. It's why your spirit can't feel at rest until your bed is made. And this is true. Why did I think of the things that I wanted to say to the counselor? Because I didn't want to get sidetracked. I didn't want to get surprised. I wanted to walk into that office with peace. Why do we prepare ourselves for the situations that we're going to face? Because we want to be peaceful in the midst of those situations. Why do we prepare for the week and get the Sunday scaries? Because we want to enter the week feeling at peace, feeling ready to go, feeling that we are in a place of rest and not a place of hurry. But here's the problem with the peace that we create with our control. It's fragile. It's threatened. It's uncertain. It's always at risk. We can do everything we can to create peace in our life with the way that we control every aspect of it. But the reality is we are one phone call away. We are one bad night away. We are one accident in the driveway away. One bad business decision. Two bad weeks of just being in a bad spot away from ruining all that peace. There are so many things that happen in life that are outside of our control that any peace that we have created for ourself is only ever infinitesimally small and thin and fragile. And when we live a life, even achieving peace, but when we live that life of a threatened peace so that now we have peace, we've done it, we've orchestrated, we've controlled, we have what we want, everything is ordered as it should be. Things are going well. Then where does our worrying mind go to? All the things that could possibly happen to disturb this peace. All of the threats real and imagined to my peaceful Monday. And then here's what we do. I know that we do it. I've seen it happen. Then we pick a hypothetical event that could possibly happen three months from now to threaten the peace that I've created, and we decide to stress about that today. And it's not even happened yet. But we're already jumping ahead because our anxiety monster needs something to eat. And I am reminded with this idea of a threatened and a fragile peace of the verse we looked at in our series, The Treasury of Isaiah, Isaiah 26.3. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. Isaiah says, and God promises, that he will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. And so what's our part in that peace? It's trusting in Jesus and not ourselves. And it occurs to me, I'm not saying this for sure, because it could just be poor planning, but I kind of believe in the Holy Spirit and the way that he times things out. I've seen over and over and over again how we've had a sermon planned for eight months, and I'll preach that sermon on that day, and someone will say, this is my first time at Grace. I'm so glad I heard that sermon. That's exactly what I needed. It's the Holy Spirit. I know that we just visited this verse. And I know that we just talked a couple weeks ago about a fragile peace. But maybe we're doing it again because some of us just need to hear it twice. Maybe some of us in this room need to hear this again and let the Holy Spirit talk to us again and be honest with God about what we're holding dear to our heart and what we may be idolizing without having realized it. Because what God promises us is a perfect peace. You know what perfect peace is? Perfect peace is an unthreatened peace. Here's what perfect peace is. Jen's family used to have a lake house down in Georgia on Lake Oconee. And my favorite thing to do when I would go down there was to kind of separate from everybody, big surprise, and go and lay in the hammock right next to the lake. Because when I got in that hammock, and I could hear the occasional boat putter by several hundred yards away, and I could hear the waves slowly just kind of lapping against the wood at the edge of that lake, and I could hear the birds and the sound of the lake, that was all I could hear. It drowned out everything else. It never seemed to matter what was happening in life when I laid down in that hammock. Everything was at peace and everything was okay. When we trust in God's sovereignty and in God's peace instead of our own, it's like laying down in that hammock next to the lake. Everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. God is in control. He knew this would happen, and I trust in him. I don't know what story he's writing. I don't know where he's going. This is not what I would have made with these ingredients, but I know that he wants what's best for me, and he wants what's best for the people that I love, so I trust him with the results of this. It's laying in that hammock and trusting in the sovereignty of God. Perfect peace is trusting in God's sovereignty, in God's goodness, in the truth that we know that he always, always, always wants what's best for us. And that he will bring that about in this life or the next. And we can trust in that. So, here's what I would say to you. My brothers and sisters who may struggle with control. I'm not here this morning to make you feel bad for your worry or your anxiety or to make fun of you for your Sunday scaries. I think all of those things are natural and a normal part of human life. It would be weird if you never worried about anything. I think it's a good goal to grow towards. But I'm not here to make you feel badly about that. But here's what I would say. If you're a person who's given to worry and anxiety and seeks to exert control, and when you don't have it, it starts to freak you out a little bit, that doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like perfect peace to me. That doesn't sound like laying in the hammock next to the lake trusting in God's protected peace rather than trusting in your fragile, unprotected, risky peace. You see? And so what I would encourage you to do is to see things this way. Excessive worry is a warning light. Excessive worry on the dashboard of your life is a warning light that should cause you to wonder what's really going on and what you're really worried about. A few weeks ago, I talked about those of us with the issue of power being a source idol and how that begets anger, and I said the same thing. Anger is the flashing warning light for us. When I'm having days when I'm excessively angry or frustrated all the time, I need to stop and pause and go, what is the source of this, and why am I so upset, and why do I have a hair trigger? What's going on with me? And wrestle that to the ground. For my brothers and sisters who who struggle with control maybe more than you realize before you walk in the door excessive worry and I don't know what excessive worry is I can't define that for you that's that's between you and God to decide how much is too much but here's what I do know excessive worry is a warning light and here's. And here's what it's telling you. It's telling you I am not existing in perfect peace. And what's our part of perfect peace? To keep our mind steadfast by trusting in him. So somewhere along the way, we've started trusting in ourself a little bit more to grab those ingredients and make what we want. Somewhere along the way, we've started taking control back from God, trusting in our sovereignty, not his, and beginning to create our own peace that is fragile and stressful. And so the question to ask yourself when that warning light starts to go off is simply this, whose peace am I trusting? I don't know what to tell you to do. Because I'll be honest with you. Like I said, I talked this sermon through with Jen. And she kind of said, yeah, all that's true. Okay, I get it. I agree. All true. What do I do? How do we not do those things? How do we not worry more than we should? What are my action steps? And I said, well, what advice would you give to so-and-so? She goes, I don't know. You're the pastor, so I'm asking you. Here's what I would simply go back to, is this question of whose peace am I trusting? Am I trusting in the peace that I've created? Or are my eyes focused on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith, so that my mind is steadfast in him and I'm trusting in his peace? Whose peace are you trusting? My prayer for you is that you'll experience the rest of trusting in God's peace. And as I enter into prayer for you, there's a prayer that I found in a devotional that I have from the Common Book of Prayer from 1552. It's amazing to me how timeless the truths of faith and spirituality and Christianity are. And how this could be written today and still every bit as accurate. But I'm going to read this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. And then we're going to enter into a time of prayer together and then we'll worship. Oh God, from you all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works proceed. Give to your servants that peace which the world cannot give, that both our heart may be set to obey your commandments, and also that by you we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may pass our time in rest and quietness through the merits of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen. Father, we love you. And we thank you that through your Son, we can have perfect peace. God, we are sorry for not claiming this gift that you offer us more readily. God, we are sorry for grabbing the ingredients and trying to make our own peace and write our own story. God, we are sorry that we sometimes trust in our wisdom and our sovereignty more than yours. Lord, I pray that no matter where we sit with this idol or how we might wrestle with it, that we would leave this place more desirous of you than when we came. And God, for my brothers and sisters that do struggle, that do find it difficult to give up control, that do find themselves battling that demon of worry sometimes, God, would you just speak to them? Would you let them know that you're there, that you love them, That you have a plan for them that they don't see but that they can trust? And would you give us the obedience to just do the next thing that you're asking us to do, not worrying about what the result is going to be, but worrying about just walking in lockstep with you? Father, make us a people of peace so that we might give that peace to others and that they might know you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here and making Grace a part of your Sunday morning. If you're new this morning, I have great news for you. You've picked an excellent Sunday to begin attending Grace. I realized in this last week, we're constantly looking for ways to make ourselves better. And I realized in this last week that we have been using one-ply toilet paper in the bathrooms. I did not know this, but that is completely unacceptable. So I found out who was in charge of these purchases, and I said, we've got to do better, and they said, what should we do? And I said, go to the store and find the most expensive kind and get it. That's what we deserve at Grace. So if you're here for the first time, I got good news for you. This is a luxurious experience in the children's hallway. We did make that improvement. I'm not just making that up. This is the last part of our series in Isaiah called the Treasury of Isaiah, where we're kind of acknowledging it's 66 books. It's a ton of stuff that really would bog us down if we tried to go through the whole thing exhaustively. And so I've done my best. Jacob, don't go to the bathroom right now. It's too tempting, he says. I can't wait for him to come back in. I've already got a joke loaded. All right. That was quick. All right. Let's get it. Let's pray. Let's get it together. Okay. So we can't go through the whole book exhaustively, but we can pull out some of the more impactful scriptures and reflect on them as a body. And this was actually supposed to be a six-week series, but I wanted to extend it by a week so that I could talk about this verse in Isaiah with you. It's a short and simple verse that we'll get to in a minute, but I think it's such a hugely impactful concept, and I know of several folks in our body, in the church, who very much need the truth of this scripture today. But as we approach it, I want us to think of a memory that most of us probably have. Some of you may not have this memory for different reasons. This was something that Jen brought to my attention as I was kind of talking through this concept with her. Jen is my wife, for those that don't know. And so she was talking about when she was a little girl and they were taking a road trip and she's in the back of the car. And they did, you know, they were, she grew up in Birmingham, or Birmingham, that's how you're supposed to say it. And they would go down to Dothan for Thanksgiving. They would travel over to Memphis for Christmas. They did road trips a fair amount as children. They drove down to the Florida Panhandle every year. And so road trips were a thing. And sometimes on those road trips, you'll remember from when you were little and still now, it starts to rain, storms roll in. And sometimes it's what Bubba from Forrest Gump would call big old fat rain. It's coming down in sheets. You can't see anything. And when you're a child and you're in the back and you're peering over and you're looking, you can't see anything. You can barely see the car in front of you. And you don't know how your mom or your dad is still driving. In this case, it was her dad. And you start to get scared because it's coming down heavy and it's hard to see. People even have their hazards on, which just isn't a sign. I want to be as nice about this as I can. If you're driving in heavy rain and you put your hazards on, we're in the same rain you are. We know, okay? We know it's a treacherous condition. Just throwing that out there for you to consider, hazard people. All right. You're in the back. It's scary. And you're worried. It feels tense. It's the rain that's so loud that you can't hear and you can't talk anymore. You're just trying to weather the storm. And Jen remembers looking at her dad and seeing the placid, nonplussed expression on his face, and she was fine. He is at peace, so I am at peace. I'm looking at my dad. He's not worried about the storm. I'm not worried about the storm. And as a dad, those of you who have driven through those storms, you've done it plenty of times, you know. I've driven through storms before. I'm going to drive through storms in the future. This one's going to be fine. Even if it's the worst one, this one's going to be fine. And so his peace gave her peace, right? And what it got me to thinking about is what if we could go through life and the storms of life with the type of peace that your dad had when you were a little kid and the storms came and we're driving down the road. Well, God offers us this peace a few different places in scripture, but he talks about it first specifically in Isaiah. In this short, I think very powerful verse where Isaiah writes this about God. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. I really like that descriptor there, perfect. Not just any peace, but a perfect peace, a kind of unthreatened peace, a kind of restful peace. And when I think about that kind of peace, the way to understand it, I think about, because you guys know, I've told you before, I enjoy history. Last summer, I had the opportunity to listen to a biography on Julius Caesar. I try to always be reading a physical book and then listening to a book. I read the fun ones and I listen to the boring ones. It's the way that I get through them. So I'm listening to a biography on Julius Caesar. And they talk about within that biography this idea of Pax Romana, Roman peace. It was a thing that the Roman Empire offered to the conquered peoples. And it kind of worked like this. One of the places that Julius Caesar, he became famous in the Gallic Wars. So he went up into what we understand as modern day France and Belgium and Switzerland and that area. And there was different Gallic tribes. And the way that we think about nations and states is pretty new in the span of human history. Most everybody, particularly in Europe at that time, existed within tribes and clans. And those tribes and clans would bind together, sometimes under a successful warlord, sometimes just out of mutual desire for protection, and they would create these pacts. If you get attacked by another neighboring tribe or clan, then we will come in and we will protect you, and you offer us your protection as well. It was these agreed upon truces. We're not going to attack you, but if anyone attacks us, we'll attack them on our behalf. But these allegiances and alliances would change on a whim. Every five years, every decade, every year, there's different alliances and allegiances to keep up with. This one's attacking us, that one's attacking us. So even while you're in a peace, it's a fragile peace. It's a threatened peace. If you existed in those tribes in that day, even if it wasn't a spring when you were watching your husband or your brother or your son go off to war to defend the tribes, you were still on the lookout. You still knew that any day someone could bring word that the peace that you had has now been broken. It was a fragile peace. And so what the Roman Empire offered is to come in, and now they've conquered all the tribes. And you are now under their protection. So if someone attacks you, the weight and the force and the might of the Roman army is going to defend you. It's not just these inter-familial clashes anymore. Now they're messing with the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire, once they conquered you, which sounds bad, one of the nice offshoots of that is you now have a protected peace. You now have a peace that there is no force strong enough to compromise. As long as you like pay your taxes and stuff. But Pax Romana was this kind of empire-wide protected, unthreatened peace. And I think that that's a profound idea for us. Because we understand what it is to exist in a fragile peace. If you have young children, you understand what fragile peace is because you send them to the playroom to give you two moments respite. And they're up there and they're fine. And then they start yelling. Someone's upset. And you go and you broker a peace. You stop playing with that. You give that back to them. You start using your head. You quit being a jerk. Everyone's fine. Okay? And then you leave. And you have five more minutes of a fragile peace until it's broken again by someone's scream. If you exist in a marriage, you know what a fragile peace is. I don't mind telling you because I can't say honestly they're infrequent, but I don't mind telling you that a couple Saturdays ago, Jen and I were enjoying a very fragile peace. Just for whatever reason, on that particular day, with other things going on in our lives, there was just something simmering under the surface all day long. Neither of us could do anything right. We were just kind of, we're at each other's throats, then we apologize and start forgetting, man, I don't even know why I'm mad. It doesn't even make any sense. And then five seconds later, someone pauses in a conversation too long after a question, and now let's get them. So it was a fragile peace. We know what fragile pieces are. And what God offers us is this protected peace, this perfect peace, this peace that is unthreatened and unmoved by forces both within and without our control. It's really this profound peace that allows us, as we go through the storms of life, to think, been through storms before we will go through storms again and this one will be fine even if it's the worst one and what's really profound about that piece is that God is the one driving we are in the back seat looking at the face of our Father who is unmoved by this storm too. This is the kind of peace that God offers his children. However, he doesn't offer it to everyone. We're going to look at who has access to this peace. But before we do, I have just a couple of reflections on what it means to have perfect peace. What is perfect peace and what are the implications for us? And if we think about it together, how can we better understand this idea of peacefulness? Well, the first thing that I would bring to your attention, the first thing that sprang to mind for me is that God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. God's peace surpasses knowledge or understanding. It's not going to make any sense. Paul writes about this peace in Philippians, famous passage, Philippians 4, you have the peace. When you watch someone walk with this amount of peace and clarity and tranquility, it defies understanding and logic. I think of this great story in the Old Testament in the early chapters of 1 Samuel with the high priest Eli. He's the high priest of Israel, and he's just taken in Samuel to live in the temple who's going to dedicate his life to service to the Lord. And Eli has two sons. I believe their names are Hophni and Phinehas. And they're jerks. They're absolute jerks. They're using their political power for all of the wrong reasons. They're taking advantage of taxpayers, taking advantage of the poor. They're taking advantage of women. They're doing all the despicable things that we hate when people in those positions do them. And one night, God gives Samuel a dream. And the next morning, Eli insists that Samuel tell him what that dream is. And so Samuel finally tells Eli the worst possible news any father can receive. And he says, in my dream last night, God told me that your two sons are going to die soon and they will not be in the priesthood anymore. One of them is not the next high priest. And so in one comment, in one answer, Eli learns the worst thing that any father can possibly learn. You are going to lose your children and you are going to lose your legacy. There's nothing worse than that. And Eli's response, very next verse, doesn't miss a beat, doesn't go pray about it and come back with a prepared statement. Very next verse, Eli says, it is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him. That's a pretty remarkable piece. To receive the worst news any father can possibly receive and the response out of the gate, it is the Lord. do what seems good to him that is a peace that passes understanding that is a peace that can't be explained that is a peace that we would marvel at and it is a peace that we should be jealous of the other thing i would say about god's perfect peace, and I think that this is really important. God's peace provides rest for the soul. God's peace provides rest for our souls. There are those of you in here who came in tired this morning. You woke up exhausted. You slept eight hours and it wasn't enough. There are those of you who go to bed being kept up by the things you're worrying about. And when you wake up, your mind is racing just as fast. And when that issue gets settled, the worry monster that exists in your head finds another thing to attack and push into the forefronts of your thoughts so that you never get any rest from the anxiety that you feel and from the things about which you are worried. Some of us have carried burdens of relationships. Our marriage is cruddy. Our children are estranged or drifting. We've received a tough diagnosis. We're watching a loved one walk through a hard time and there's nothing that we can do about it. And we are exhausted. We are exhausted with worry. We're exhausted with worry about things that are outside our control. Which is why it's so important to understand that God's perfect peace gives our soul a place to rest, to stop and to shut it down and to be okay and to not worry about the next thing and to be realistic about what is within and without our control. God's perfect peace offers us rest. And for some of you, that's what I want for you this morning, is to move towards a place where you can finally slow down and rest and tell that worry monster to shut up. But God does not offer this peace indiscriminately. It is offered to everyone, but we have a part to play in the reception of this peace. If you look back at the verse, it says, you will keep in perfect peace who? Those whose minds are steadfast because they trust in you. God's peace is only for the steadfast and can only come through trust. God's peace is only for the steadfast, for those who persevere. Persevere in what? Persevere in their trust of the work of Jesus Christ. And we're going to talk more about that trust and exactly what we're placing it in and how that's helpful to us. But we have to understand that though this peace that God offers is offered to everyone equally, it is not offered without discrimination. There's a part that we have to play. And the part that we have to play is to trust God, is to place our faith in him. And when we do, when we truly trust, when we truly see ourselves as the little kids sitting in the back seat watching our heavenly father drive us through life, when that is our posture and we trust him and we can sit in the back and we don't have to worry about it, when that's our posture, he will give us perfect peace. And when that is your posture, the peace that you can have goes beyond understanding and is unfathomable, I believe, to the non-Christian mind. And I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. I was trying to think of the best example of this kind of peace. Someone that we've seen in our lives or in history go through a remarkably difficult time and yet maintain this consistent, faithful peace despite all the circumstances. And I was reminded of the story of a man named Horatio Safford. Horatio Safford lived in the late 1800s in Chicago, and he ended up writing It Is Well, the famous hymn that a lot of us know. And a lot of you may know the story or bits and pieces of the story surrounding the penning of It Is well. It's the most famous story about how a hymn was written. But I bet that you don't know all the parts. And for some of you, you still have no clue what I'm talking about. Horatio Safford was a Christian man who lived in Chicago in the late 1800s. He was a successful lawyer. He had five children, a boy and four girls, and a wife named Ann. And in the Chicago fire of 1871, Horatio lost a vast majority of his net worth. He lost his practice, the building where his practice was. He lost his home, and he had several properties and holdings throughout the city of Chicago. He lost those too. The fire ruined him. In the wake of the fire, his four-year-old son fell to scarlet fever. So now he's lost a child. Believing that his wife and he and his daughters needed a bit of a respite, they said, let's go to England and take a deep breath over there. As they were planning their trip to England, his plans changed. Something in the States was requiring him. And so he sent his wife Anne ahead with his four daughters and said, you guys go. I'll be there in about three weeks. On the way to England, the ship carrying his family sunk. All four daughters were lost. He received a cable upon Anne's arrival in England. I alone survived. Horatio gets that news. He boards a ship, and he goes to be with Anne. On the journey over, the captain of the ship was aware of the tragedy that had befallen Horatio, and he called, he sent for him, and he said, hey, we're at about the same spot that your family was when they sank. Just wanted you to know. And Horatio sat down in the midst of that tragedy, of being a modern-day Job, where in seemingly one fell swoop, he lost his possessions and he lost his family. And he sits down and he writes the hymn. At the time it was a poem. Years later someone put it to music and it became a hymn. He writes the poem. It is well. It's the famous hymn that we know. And with that context, when you know that he's writing this on a boat over where his drowned daughters rest, having lost a son and everything he owns, going to see a wife that is as crestfallen as him, he sits down and he, listen, he writes these words. This is the first verse of it as well. He writes this, when peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot thou has taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. Cindy, leave that up there, please. Look at that. Look at that and put yourself in his shoes and think about your ability to sit down and write, when peace like a river attendeth my way and when sorrows like sea billows roll. Oh, you mean the same sea billows that just claimed your daughters? The same sea that just cost you your family? That your God created? When you feel like you have every right to be so angry, and yet you choose to sit down and say, when peace like a river attends my way, and when sorrows like sea billows like the ones that claim my family's role, whatever my lot, you have taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul. How does someone write that? How is that the response to trials and to tragedy and to the storms that threaten your peace? I can only tell you how by pointing you to the second verse because he explains it to us. Though Satan should buffet. Those trials should come. Let this blessed assurance control. I love this. That Christ has regarded my helpless estate. And has shed his own blood for my soul. How does he maintain perfect peace? Because his mind is steadfast in his trust in God. How does he maintain his perfect peace? Because he knows that Jesus died for him. And what he writes about that death of Christ is so important. And I think so profound. He says, when Satan should buffet, again, a reference to the sea, buffet like the waves on the ship when it sank. When Satan should buffet, when trials should come, the ones that he's been walking through for two years, let this blessed assurance control that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and shed his own blood for my soul. And I love that word that he chooses there. I love that word helpless. Because when we think about our helplessness before God, particularly as it relates to Jesus Christ, I think we tend to put it in the context of this myopic view of the gospel in which Jesus only died to take my soul up to heaven. And so when we think about our helplessness, we think about the helplessness, what it means to be helpless to get our soul to heaven. We think about what it means to be helpless to go from dead in sin to alive in Christ, from in this temporal body to in my eternal soul. We think about our helplessness to make that jump to a perfect eternity with God, and so we need God's help. We need Jesus' help to get us there. But what I want us to think about is that is far from the only way in which we are helpless. We are, every single one of us, every single person in this room can get a call today that changes your life forever. We are one vibration in our pocket away from a profoundly different existence. And let me tell you something. You are helpless against that phone call. There is nothing you can do to prevent it. We may act like a big, tough, civilized society with an important pharmaceutical complex and the most advanced medical equipment in the world. And we can act like we can fight cancer. But we are helpless with who gets it and when they do. Even the most fastidious of us are sometimes helpless against the onslaught of that awful disease and its acquiring. As parents, we are helpless when our kid is driving down the road. Do you understand? Our fortunes could be taken. Our families could be taken. There's so many different ways that life can buffet us. There's so many different trials that could come. And we exist in part because we're Americans and we're the most independent, individualized civilization that's ever existed. We exist as if we're driving down the road, facing the storms of life on our own with the wherewithal to get through them. But listen, you're helpless if a tornado comes along and sweeps you off the road. There is so much in life to which we are rendered helpless. And I don't think we go through life understanding that. We are not grown adults capable of handling the buffets of life. We are newborn babies that are vulnerable to this world and this universe in ways that we don't understand. And so when Christ regards our helpless estate, it's not just our soul's inability to get itself into heaven. It's our inability to protect ourselves from the seasons of life. And it's for that that he shed his blood. It's for that that he died. And that's something that Horatio knew. That it wasn't just the helplessness of his soul, but it was our complete lack of agency to prevent ourself from suffering in the first place. And it's this simple truth, I believe, that won the day for him and wins the day for us. When Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. It's the knowledge in the midst of our trials that when Jesus conquered sin and shame by dying on the cross and raising from the dead, when Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered this too. Whatever this is for you, he conquered this too. There's this great passage that I refer to a lot, Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 4. I won't belabor the passage here, but there's a phrase there, there's a promise that the former things will have passed away. There will be no more weeping, no more crying, no more pain anymore for the former things have passed away. And I love to ruminate on what those former things are. Cancer, divorce, abuse, despair, orphans, loss, tragedy, awful phone calls, relational strife, being born to broken parents who hurt you because they're hurt. All that stuff is the former things that's passed away. And what we know is those former things, those things that will pass away, the things that exist in your life that are wearing you out and making you tired and making life so difficult right now, the things you go to sleep worrying about, the things you wake up worrying about. Whatever's waiting for you on the other end of that call one day. We can have perfect peace in those trials. Because we know that because Jesus conquered sin and shame, he conquered that too. We know that because he offers salvation to those who believe in his shedding of blood for them, that even when we lose them, and even when the trial claims them, that we will see them again in eternity. We know that this life is but a mist and a vapor compared to what awaits us on the other side of passing. We understand that. And so in a few minutes, in a few minutes, we're going to sing it as well together. We're going to stand and we're going to proclaim these words back to God. And so my prayer for you in preparation for this and even this morning as I've been praying about the service is that you'll be able to sing that with authenticity. That you'll be able to sing it as well. And if there is something in your life that is so hard that it's hard for you to muster the singing, that it's hard for you to muster the words, then listen to the people singing around you and let them sing on your behalf. And know, know that we can say that though peace like a river attends, when peace like a river attends our way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever our lot, God has enabled us to say, it is well, it is well with our soul. I want to finish by reading you this fourth verse. This fourth verse is not one that is often sung. But as I was reviewing the lyrics in reference to our my soul. I pray that God will whisper his peace to you this morning. Let's pray. Father, we need your perfect peace. We need your protected peace. Everyone in this room is walking through a storm of one sort or another. Everyone in this room will walk through more. And so God, when we do, I pray that we remember that you are driving and that we are resting. Help us find our rest in your perfect peace. Help us remember that whatever it is we're facing, that Jesus has conquered that too. And God, give us the courage to sing and to proclaim and to believe that even if it isn't well with us now, that it can be, and you will make it so. God, whisper your peace to us this morning. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Some mornings worship is so sweet that I feel like I ruin it by getting up on stage, and I just want to keep doing that. That was one of those mornings. So thank you, best band in the city of Raleigh, apparently. Happy Mother's Day to everyone. It's a good day to celebrate moms. I hope that you are married to a mom worth celebrating. I hope you have a mom worth celebrating. I hope it's a special and happy day for you. And for many of us, it is. But I would be remiss, and I don't let a Mother's Day go by without acknowledging that for some, Mother's Day is very hard. For some, Mother's Day is mixed. It's exciting and it's painful. For some of you, it reminds you of a mom that you had, and she's not here now. For others, a mom that maybe you never had a great relationship with. For others, as it did for Jen and I for so many years, it just reminds you of what you don't have yet and what you hope for and pray for. And so if that's you, and today is hard, we see you. We love you. We care about you. And I'd like to start the sermon by praying for you, and then we'll move on with the sermon. Father, thank you so much for those who, like me, are fortunate enough to have a remarkable mom who loves you and shows us you. Thank you, God, on behalf of the men like me who are married to remarkable mothers that outpace us and cause us to marvel with their patience. But God, I also know that among us are people who are hurting because of loss, because of want, because of hurt. And I just pray, God, that they would feel your presence in a special way today. I pray that you would use your body, use the people, your children, to wrap their arms around them and comfort them and let them know that they're seen and cared for and that you are caring for them. So we pray these things in your son's name. Amen. Now, as we begin and we jump into the sermon, I just want to give this disclaimer. I know that we have an unusual population of people who are here who do not normally go to Grace because you're here to support your families and people getting married. There's also another demographic. You're here because your mom asked you to come to church with her once a year, and so you're going to grit your teeth and do it right now this morning. So I'm aware that to many of you, I exist as a speed bump to babies and brunch. So we're going to try to get you there quick. All right. I'm not long winded today. I just have just a short, simple message to the people of grace and what I consider to be the family of grace. So as I was planning out this sermon and this service or the series, rather, excuse me, as I was planning this out, this whole series was my wife Jen's idea. She's in there momming the fourth and fifth graders right now. This was her idea. She loves the book of Isaiah. And so I kind of sat down and I mapped it out. I looked at the passages that I wanted to cover while we went through Isaiah together. And then I went to her and I said, hey, here's what I have. Am I missing anything? Is there anything that you love that I haven't seen, I haven't thought about? And she pointed me to this verse. She said, I've always loved, especially as a mother, I love this verse in Isaiah. So I want us to look together at Isaiah chapter 40, verse 11. It's a short, simple verse. And it simply says this, he being God, he tends his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart. He gently leads those that have young. I love that verse. That's a verse that I had read before, but I had never noticed before until Jen pointed it out to me that day. And I love the message for the moms on Mother's Day. I particularly love the message for the young moms on Mother's Day. That God is a good shepherd and he leads gently those with young. And I was thinking about why this is special. And if you think about, I mean, I'm clearly not a shepherd, all right? I don't know anything more about shepherding than you do. I didn't even do any research to make this point. I'm just guessing that when a sheep herder is trying to move the herd from one field to the next, the young moms go slower than the rest. They can't keep up with the herd in general because they have babies that they're trying to herd themselves and they're trying to watch after and they're trying to go and they're trying to bring along. So young, young moms in the herd cannot move as efficiently as they would like to, as quickly as they would like to, because the demands of motherhood, and for fathers, the demands of fatherhood, cause them to lag behind and try to keep up as they wrangle their babies that are inefficient and slow and needy and disobedient and mouthy. I don't know if the lambs are that way, but I have personal experience with children. And it occurs to me, and I see it all over our church. I see it in my life. Right now, I don't mean to be myopic in the presentation, but we're in the thick of it. We have a three-year-old and an eight-year-old. And as I reflect on what it is to have young children, one of the things that I realize is when you have young kids, and I really want to talk to the moms, and I specifically want to talk to the mamas that have children in the house right now, especially if they're young and they're needy. Listen, when you have young children in your house, you are not as efficient as you would like to be. You fall behind. Nothing, the house is never as clean as you want. It never looks the way you want it to look. The meals are never as high quality and as nutritious as you want them to be. There's going to be a mom in the PTA that's going to bring better looking cupcakes than you. Your kids, there's somebody else who's making more money and they're going to throw a bigger party and someone's yard is going to look nicer than yours. Dads, that's a tough one for me. This is a season of life when you have young children where you simply can't keep up the way that you used to. And that's okay because you're tending to your kids because you're giving them the care that they need and they will slow you down and they will make you inefficient. And that's all right because God even makes an allowance for it in this verse. Why else would he gently lead, would he isolate and specify that particular demographic that he gently leads those who are parents of the young, because he knows that's a challenging season in life. And so God sees you and he leads you gently. Now, how does he do this? I think he does it in myriad ways. I think he whispers encouragement to you. I think he brings people around you. But one of the ways that I'm certain that he does it, and we talk about this here at Grace sometimes, is that he surrounds you with a spiritual family. One way that God gently leads young mothers is through providing a spiritual family for you. One way that he gently leads young mothers is by providing a spiritual family to come around you. So I want to say this. I'm going to talk about the familial nature of church. I'm going to talk about how we all fit into, I'm going to break us into three categories today, children, parents, grandparents. You're going to assign yourself into a category. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to put an age threshold on it. Although I'm 43, so grandparents probably started like 45. You put yourself wherever it is you fit. But as we talk about this spiritual family that is the church, I want to be very clear. For those of you longing for a biological or a natural, even adoptive family that you call your own, I am not trying to replace your family that you desire with the spiritual family that you have. Those of you who long for children but you don't have children yet, I'm not about to tell you, but listen, great news. My son John is your spiritual son, so you should feel fulfilled there. That's not what I'm telling you today. But rather, as a family of faith, we have familial responsibilities to each other within our family of faith. And I would also say this. I know that many of you are here this morning, and you don't come to Grace regularly. I'm so glad that you're here. Maybe you're a part of a family of faith. What I'm going to say to you this morning, maybe you have your own churches. What I'm going to say to you this morning is applicable in those places too, and you can carry out those roles there as well. And I know some of you may not have a church home. You don't go to church regularly. And if you don't, what I would tell you is I'm very sure you have a good reason for that. But I also believe that God designed you, that we have a creator and he designed you to be inside of, thrive within, flourish within a spiritual family. So if that touches something in you, if you've been thinking about that, I hope you'll accept this morning as a nudge to consider being a part of a spiritual family. With that preamble, how can I be certain about the familial nature of church? It's all throughout scripture, but one of the first places my mind goes is to some instructions that Paul gave Timothy in his letter to him when he sent Timothy to take over the church in Ephesus. And Paul writes this to Timothy in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2. He's giving him instructions about how he should relate to the people in the church. He says this, do not rebuke an older man harshly, but extort him as if he were your father. Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters with absolute purity. So he's sending, Paul is sending Timothy to the church in Ephesus. He says, you're going to take this over. Here's how I want you to relate to the people in and around your church. Treat the older men like fathers with respect. Treat the younger men like brothers, mutual encouragement. Treat the older women like mothers. Love them, be devoted to them, honor them. Treat the younger women like sisters, total purity. Encourage them in their spiritual walks. And so he introduces into the thought process this familial nature of what church should be. And so it makes me conclude this. We come to church not for ourselves, but for something bigger than ourselves. This isn't the only bigger thing we come for, but we come to be a part of a spiritual family. So what I want to do this morning very simply is talk first to the children, then to the parents, and then to the grandchildren, and say within this family, what are your responsibilities? What does God want of you? This is not an exhaustive list. This is one simple idea that we're going to carry through the service. There's more things to say here. We could do a series on this. But very simply this morning, I want us to think about our roles within the family that is the church. So first, the children. I had the idea in this part to bring in the kids, the kids K through 5, because I wanted them to hear what I'm about to say. And I pitched it to Erin Winston, our children's pastor. And she said, it's very nice that you want to do that, but none of them will care. And they'll just be a distraction to the church. And which is funny because I told Jen what I wanted to do, and she said, I don't think that's a good idea because nobody's going to care what you have to say. And I went, no, no, they will. I'm their pastor. They want to hear from me. And then Aaron said the same thing. I was like, okay, loud and clear, God. Nobody cares. Which may be the general ethos right now. I don't know. But I do have middle schoolers and high schoolers in the room. I do have college students in the room. And to you, I would say this when we think about our roles within our spiritual family. Do you know that the Bible that I'm aware of only has one instruction for you? One instruction that's specifically for children. We find it all all over scripture but the first place we find it is in Exodus chapter 20 in the middle of commitment 10 commandments when he says this honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord has given you children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right the only instructions that are given specifically to children in scripture are that we would honor our father and mother. We do all the other things, but while we're kids, we do that. We honor our father and mother in the Lord for this is right. So listen, middle schoolers, high schoolers, college students, your responsibility is to first honor your father and mother. And then horizontally, it's to help your friends live lives that honor their parents as well. That's your responsibility to each other. We've got a great group of middle school guys here. I can see two of them right now. Three of them. They're a good crew. Hang out all the time. They're good boys. Kyle, our youth pastor, spends a lot of time with them. I love that they're a part of our church. Your responsibility to each other is to encourage one another to live in such a way when parents aren't around and no one can see you that you are honoring your parents. We've got a great group of middle school girls. Same thing. Your responsibility is to encourage one another when no one's around and no one can see, to live lives in private that honor your father and mother in public. That's our role as friends and as peers, as children, to help each other live out that commandment. Now, here's the challenging part. Implicit in that commandment, parents, I'm going to shift to the parent demographic here. If you feel like you're there, then you're there. If you don't, then you're not. The people who are of the age to be parents. Implicit in this commandment to the kids, if all God is ever telling the kids is, hey, honor your father and mother in the Lord for this is right. If that's the instruction to your children, then implicit in that instruction, like it or not, is by honoring you, they will de facto honor God. If your children grow up in your home and they honor you, what that means is they are by default honoring God because that's the way in which you are leading them. What a shame it would be, what a tragedy it would be for children to grow up in a home with parents that come to church and are spiritually minded people and value Jesus in the home. Your kid grows up and honors you and yet fall short of honoring God because the example that you set for them was insufficient. So parents, it's our job to live lives worthy of emulation and worthy of honoring. So that as our children grow up honoring us, they by default honor God. We are to show them that path. I skipped a point here. I'm going to go down to the verse. This is the verse that I have for the parents. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Parents, with that in mind, that our kids should grow up in our home and by default honor the God that we serve, then our responsibility, our familial responsibility to our brothers and sisters in our generation is to help one another live lives worthy of honoring to encourage one another to live lives worthy of emulation by our children to make sure that one another for the kids growing up in our homes that I know that a kid growing up in your home is going to grow up to honor God. It is my responsibility to my brothers and sisters in this family to make sure that happens. It's why a couple of months ago in January, I talked about this idea, and I talked about the idea of sacred spaces. We have our small groups, and our small groups are wonderful. We've got two really vibrant small groups for young families. And then we've got another, we got another ladies group as well for moms. It's wonderful to have those groups. Those groups exist, not just to connect us to the church, to the church, not just to make us feel friends, feel like we have friends, but they exist so that we can sharpen one another. But a few months ago, I told you those are insufficient for that task. We can't get into the deep heart work that we need to get into and a big co-ed small group. There's just sins. I'm not going to confess in front of your wife. Sorry, man. So we need sacred spaces. We need two or three people in our life that know us intimately, that are safe places for confession, that are safe places for weakness, where we can encourage one another. I'll tell you transparently, I sat on Thursday, my sacred space met, three of us. And we sat around, and not every time we gather is it like this, but this one was a special one, and it lasted for four hours. God bless our wives. And there was tears and prayers and hugs and a deep, deep level of sharing that is not accomplished in small group. If you are here in the generation of parents, I believe it is your spiritual responsibility to have those spaces in your life so that we can sharpen one another and we can be sure that our children are growing up in homes whereby honoring us, they honor God. Parents, that's our responsibility to one another. That's what we must do to make sure that, I mean, think about it. The kids that are about to be dedicated at the end of my sermon. What can I do to make sure that these kids grow up knowing Jesus in exactly the way that God wants them to grow up? I think about that verse in Ephesians 2.10. We are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we should walk in them. I have a God's son in Chicago, and they asked me, the church reached out and asked, is there anything you'd like to contribute to say, would you like to write a short note to Tucker? And I said, Tucker, we're told in Ephesians, he's five, so he might be able to gather some of this. Tucker, we're told in Ephesians that we are created by God and purposed for good works. So my prayer for you is that you'll find your good works. And my prayer for your parents is that they will help you find those and that you'll walk in them. If we are to look at the kids that are going to be dedicated, if we are going to think about the kids littering that hallway and ask ourselves how we can honor them, how we can partner with them, how we can surround them, what's the best thing we can do? The best thing we can do is to partner with their fathers and mothers to make sure that they're living in houses so that when they grow up honoring their parents, they will by default grow up honoring God. That's our responsibility. Grandparents, your responsibility is even harder because you should have figured this out by now. So Titus chapter two, I'm going to look at verses two through four and then seven and eight. Here's what it says to the older generations. Grandparents, your job is to show us how to be honorable. If you are in the demographic where you would consider yourself a grandparent or of that age, it is your spiritual responsibility within the church to show us what it looks like to live honorable lives. We need your example. I don't know how to be more clear about this. I'm a pastor. Traditionally, I'm expected to have it figured out. I do not. And I make no bones about that. Jen was telling me just this last week that I do an exceptional job of living a life that makes it hard to put me on a pedestal. That's my spiritual gift to you. I think about it this way, and I don't mean to put too fine a point on it, but most Sunday mornings, we have a phenomenal covenant group that sits back there. If they have hair, it's gray. And then we have a young small group. Both of our young small groups sit over here. I'm not speaking only to the covenant group. I'm not speaking only to the young small group. But I am speaking to everyone that fits in those places. As clearly as I can say it, I don't know why I'm getting emotional about this, but, you know, stuff happens. You guys, they need you. They need to look at you, and they need to know what it is to weather the storms of marriage loving God well. They need to look at you and know what it is to have an eight-year-old that won't listen or a college student who wanders or adult children that disappoint. They need to know what it is to face the slings and the arrows and the storms of life and to watch you walk through it well. We need you. I have wonderful parents that I can learn so much from. But Jen and I need to be able to look at the people in our church and learn from you and hear from you and ask you and watch you and know what it looks like to be honorable. So grandparents, keep it up, keeping each other honorable. Keep it up, sharpening iron with iron for the sakes of your families and your walks. But please know that those of us who are younger than you are watching you to learn from you and to see what it looks like to live lives that are honorable. So show us that, please. Those are the roles of the families within churches. That's what we are supposed to do. Children, honor your father and mother. Children, hold each other accountable to honor them. Be a good friend. Help your friends honor their parents. Parents, be a good friend. Help your friends lead households that are worthy of emulation so that if children grow up in this church, they grow up and they honor their parents, they by default honor God. Grandparents, continue to encourage and walk with one another and please know that we need you. We need to look at you and see what it looks like to live lives that are worthy of emulation. This is how God leads young mothers gently, by surrounding them with that sort of environment. Young mothers, go get your kids. We're going to dedicate them. It's Graham. Get out of here. I'm going to pray, and when I'm done, we're going to invite those families up. We're going to say some words about what it means to dedicate children. And then we're going to pray. And y'all are going to brunch. Let's pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the good moms that we have. We thank you for days like today that we can stop and pause and reflect on what's really important. God, I thank you for the spiritual family that you've given us, for the way that you've surrounded your people with your children. Lord, I pray that the kids in this church would hold each other accountable, would encourage one another to honor their parents and in turn honor you. Father, I pray the parents in this church would sharpen one another and be actively involved in helping their peers have homes that are worthy of emulation and honor. And God, I lift up our grandparents. I ask that you would move in them, work in them, and that you would use them as examples in the lives of those watching to know what it is to honor you with their lives. God, we thank you for the joy and the privilege of making the dedication that we're about to make. We thank you for the young babies and the families that you've blessed these families with and in turn blessed the church with. And God, we pray that it pleases you to see these moms and dads offering their children back to you. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. First things first, to my Wolfpack friends, no jokes this morning. Well done. That was a fun run. You guys should have enjoyed that. I hope you had fun. I'm sorry it ended with an 8'11 buzzsaw yesterday, but that was a good run, lots of fun. I tried, just so you know, I pulled out, I have one shirt that's Wolfpack colors, a black and red flannel. I pulled it out this morning, and I'm fat, so I had to switch it out to the big boy shirt, but I was with you in spirit, I promise. Also, before I jump into the sermon, I don't normally do this, but there's something coming up I want to tell you about, and I want to tell you about it because of what's been going on, excuse me, kind of behind the scenes in discussions with our missions committee and on our elder board. So you probably heard Aaron say a few minutes ago something that we say regularly, which is 10% of everything that's given goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. It's our conviction to be generous as we ask you to be generous. And so the missions committee, which predates me, that was here before I got here, is the group of people from the church with a heart and experience in missions who determines where that 10% goes. They determine who we partner with. So we have three local partners and three international partners, and they're the ones that make sure that we're partnering with the right people in the right ways. And one of the things that they've been talking about, and one of the things that the elder board has been talking about, and so as two separate bodies, we've been talking about this together, is how can we get the partners of grace, you guys, more involved with our ministry partners beyond just passively giving and seeing 10% of that go to ministries outside the walls of grace. And so we've been actively looking for opportunities for our partners, church partners, to get involved with our ministry partners outside the walls. And so we've got that opportunity coming up next Sunday. Addis Jamari is one of our ministry partners that we support. They're doing wonderful work with families and orphans in Ethiopia. The thing that's near and dear to my heart is poverty is so pressing there that when a young family or a young mother has a child, she's very often faced with the decision of, do we give this baby up for adoption because we can't afford it, or do we lose our home or lose something else? Do we keep this baby because we're not sure that we can feed it? Which, to my knowledge, no one in faced that choice that's an excruciating decision and so by supporting them we're able to provide those mothers the resources they need to to keep their babies at home and not have to give them up for adoption which is a huge huge deal so to that end as we seek to continue to support at a story there's a trip this summer some of the teens are going and beyond the teens we have three adults from our church who are also going and so there's a fundraiser for that trip and it's a trip this summer. Some of the teens are going. And beyond the teens, we have three adults from our church who are also going. And so there's a fundraiser for that trip, and it's a way to get involved. There's a barbecue next Sunday. Wes, where is the barbecue? It's at Falls River Slim Club. That's right. Okay, so Falls River, the Greenway Club over at Falls River. There's a barbecue. You can go there. You can get some food. You can take it home, watch the Masters. You can also contribute food to that, and you can just show up and volunteer. It'll probably be a good place to hang out. There's more information about that in the Grace Vine, and you can talk to Wes after. He's one of our elders, and he happens to be married to the lady running the joint, so he knows more answers than I do. So I just wanted you guys to be aware of that as an opportunity for us to begin to partner with our ministry partners. Now, as Mike alluded to, this morning we are starting a new series called The Treasury of Isaiah. I am particularly excited about this series because I think this series was Jen's idea. Jen's my wife. I think it was her idea back in the fall when I was asking her what we should talk about, and she said you should do some stuff out of Isaiah. And that's tough because Isaiah is 66 books. It's a book of prophecy in the Old Testament. It's got all the themes of prophecy in it, and it's 66 books long. And if I tried to preach through the book of Isaiah, you guys would probably find another church, and I would probably find a new job. So I don't think that's what we can do. But there's so many wonderful, rich texts in this book that what this series gives us an opportunity to do is to dive into those and begin to learn them and see them and appreciate what they are because we don't often spend time in Isaiah on a Sunday morning. So we're going to do that for the next seven weeks. Now next week, I'm going to work to give you an overview of the role of a prophet and prophecy and what it is. And we'll look at a big sweeping view of the messianic prophecies in Isaiah, the prophecies about Jesus. But before I can even do that, I have to jump into this text in Isaiah chapter 1. If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I hope you're bringing your Bibles, I hope you're marking them up. This is a mark-up passage. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. In Isaiah chapter 1, we have these nine verses in Isaiah 10 through 18. And I know that I say that things are my favorite, but this is, and I mean this without equivocation, my favorite passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah. Okay? Maybe in the Bible, but definitely Isaiah. And I'm not even interested in approaching the rest of the book before we talk about this because I love the deep conviction of this passage. This passage kicks you right in the teeth. If you didn't come for that this morning, I'm sorry a little bit. But we see God speaking to his people in this passage about as harshly as you see him speak. And I'm the kind of person that needs you to do that to me or I'm not going to listen. So I love this passage. I love the conviction of it. I love the challenge of it. I love the relief of it. And in this passage, we find the very nature of the gospel. So my hope and prayer is that this passage can become for some of you what it has been for me for so many years. This is a hugely important passage. For just the slightest bit of context before I start to read it, this book is written to God's people, to the Hebrew people, to the Israelites. It is written to them at a time when they are spiraling morally away from God, when they have lost their way. And the role of the prophet Isaiah is to convict God's people. And that will become a very clear goal of his as we read this text. But God's chosen people, they have every reason to be following God. They know are they to me, says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of your blood? Listen. your worthless assemblies, your new moon feasts and your appointed festivals. Listen, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Yo, God is big mad at his people. He's incredibly angry at his people. You can tell it with the way he starts off because he says, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, you people of Gomorrah. Listen, Sodom and Gomorrah to the ancient Hebrew mind were synonymous with evil. Those cities represented what evil was. It would be like calling a conservative Southern Baptist the mayor of Las Vegas. All right. It's it's when they think of that place, they think of sin and evil and debauchery. And they think of themselves as a shining people city on the hill. We are the chosen people of God. And guys go, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen, you sinners. Listen, you evildoers. You've lost your way. And then he goes down and he details for them. Here's what's interesting. He's not mad at them for the traditional sins that we would think of God being angry about. He doesn't say you're debaucherous, you're gluttonous, you're filled with lust, you're sleeping around, you're selfish, you're greedy, you're hoarding, you're oppressing the poor, you're mean and unkind to one another. He doesn't say those things. He actually gets onto them for doing things that he's asked them to do. Did you catch that? Look. He says, God, you asked us to give these sacrifices. The blood of bulls and lambs and goats, they mean nothing to me. God, you asked us to do that, he says, I detest them. They are a burden to me. It wears me out to have to deal with you when you show up on Easter. These are harsh words from God. And the question worth asking, if God is this angry with his people, then why does God hate the very actions he's prescribed? They were told to do those things. There's a whole book, the book of Leviticus, that details in painstaking detail exactly what they're supposed to do. If you've ever tried to read through the Bible in a year, two-thirds of you stopped in Leviticus. And it was because the book of Leviticus is laying out all of these things. When do we offer incense? When do we offer prayers? When do we offer sacrifices? What kind? When? Bulls and lambs and goats. When do we do that? When are the calling of convocation? New moons, new Sabbath, all the festivals? How do we do those? That's all in Leviticus. God has given them in detailed instruction exactly what he wants them to do. And now here in the book of Isaiah, he is raining down fire on them for doing those things. So why is it that God hates the very actions that he's prescribed? Because what God wants is the heart behind those actions, not the letter of the law and the actions themselves. We are told by David that God can despise sacrifices, but a fearful and contrite heart he will not despise. That God requires mercy and brokenheartedness, not sacrifice. God is interested in the heart behind the actions and the motives behind the obedience. He wants to see day in and day out that they actually love him and care for him, not just when they show up at church and go through the motions. I think of it like this, how the people of Israel were acting and what God was frustrated about. When I was in college, I think Jen and I started dating when we were, I was 20. So somewhere around the age of 20, 21. We're dating. And I had not really been in a serious relationship before this. I had been in relationships, but they weren't serious. And I didn't really know how to be in a relationship. I'm still not positive that I do. I think it involves vacuuming. And so we're dating. She knew how to be in a relationship. And she looked at me one day and she said, I can tell something's wrong and I'm kind of probing. And eventually she just says, I just don't feel very special to you. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. You are. So I don't really know how I handled that conversation. But we parted ways. She went back to her dorm, and I went back to my dorm. I lived in an on-campus house named Beulah. She lived in a small women's dorm named Troy Damron, and they were kind of reasonably close to one another. I went back, and I thought, gosh, my girlfriend doesn't feel special to me. I need to figure something out here. So I came up with a plan. I went to Walmart, and I bought a king-size bed sheet. And this is not going where you think it's going. This is a Christian college. So I got a king-size bed sheet, and I lay it out on the living room floor. And my roommates are watching me do this, and I trace out in big block letters, Jen, you are very special to me. Love, Nate. I draw it out, and then I get the Crayola markers, and I'm coloring it in. I went through a whole pack. I was up to like 2 or 2.30 a.m. This is painstaking work here that I do, and then I sneak over to her dorm. We still have the sheet somewhere. I know that we own it. It's somewhere. I went over to her dorm and I tack it to the pillars on her front porch. So it's facing the front door. So everyone who comes out that door, the seven or eight girls that live there, they will see that clearly Jen is special to Nate and she will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what she means to me now. Let me tell you something. That did not get the response I thought it would. It turns out that what Jen wanted was for me, through the little things of day-to-day life, to indicate to her that I cared about her, that she was special to me. What she didn't want was a big, dumb, grand gesture with block letters that would provide sermon illustrations for decades to come. What they were offering God is the block letters. You are special to me, God. Happy? And God says, no, absolutely not. And what they were guilty of doing, and this is why God is coming down on them so hard, is they were going through the motions. They were going through the motions of their faith. They were doing the bare minimum required of them to be seen as in the faith. We're still good. I'm doing my sacrifices, God. I'm coming to the special assemblies. You know, can't make it every week, but Christmas and Easter, I'm your guy. And they were just going through whatever they decided was the bare minimum of what their faith required of them to prove to God and whoever else that they were in. And it's interesting to me that in the corporate world, we now actually have a term for this. It's a new term that we've been blessed with by the Gen Zers called silent quitting, where people who have corporate jobs understand that HR, God bless them, can sometimes make it really difficult to fire your butt when you deserve it. And they realize that they have some job security, not going anywhere, so they make a conscious decision to put in the minimal amount of effort possible that will still allow them to keep their job and collect a paycheck, while fairly clearly communicating to everyone around them, I couldn't care less about this job. Just in it for the check. Doesn't mean anything to me. Now, I know that's a harsh way of depicting that, and I do actually see some positives to it, but I'm not making a joke. I think work-life balance got ridiculous, and the next generation is course-correcting for us a little bit. It's just going to be wonky. Anyway, sorry, that's social commentary. What God is telling the Israelites is, you're silent quitting on me. You're putting in the least amount of effort possible to still appear as if you're a people of faith. But you don't really care about me and what I've asked you to do and where your heart should be. And if you are at all like me, in my old Bible, I had a note next to these verses that said, Dear God, please don't ever get this angry with me. I never want to give God a reason to be this frustrated with me. That he says to me that when you bow your head to pray for me, to pray to me, I will not listen to you. When you come to church, you are trampling my courts. When you get up on Sunday and you put on your church finest and you show up at church, it is a burden to me. I am weary of your hypocrisy when you show up and pretend like you love me. And I want to write, God, please never be this angry with grace. And if you're like me, you're wondering, when and how do I go through the motions? When and how in my faith have I simply been giving God lip service? When and how have I silently quit on my faith? When the things I'm doing are just to be seen, are just to be considered in. I thought about enumerating the ways we can go through the motions. But I really think the more interesting thing to bring up when we consider how we might do this is to think about two things. I know for me, if I want to be honest about examining my life, about when I'm going through the motions of my faith, when I'm giving God the actions but not my heart, is to think through what motivates me when I do spiritual things. When I get up in the morning early to read my Bible? Am I getting up to read it so that I can check a box and say I've been spiritual today? Or am I getting up to read it because I just want to know the heart of God more? Because I'm curious about the scripture and I want to dive in in a fresh way. Do I get up to read it so that my Bible can be on my desk and my daughter can come down the stairs and see it there and I get the good dad award for today? Or am I doing it because I want to pursue the very heart of God? When I listen to worship music in the morning with Lily in the car, am I doing it so that she thinks daddy listens to worship music in the morning? Or am I doing it because that's what sets my heart right for my day? When we go to Bible study, we attend small group. Am I doing that because I want the people around me to think that I'm spiritual and I'm the kind of person who reads my Bible and attends small group? Or am I doing it because I want to be spiritually nourished by my community of faith? When you come to church, are you doing it because you're supposed to and there's somebody that you want to see and you want to keep up appearances? Or are you doing it, are you getting out of the car with the thought, God, speak to my heart and move me closer to you today? When you perform spiritual actions, prayer for a service, prayer before a meal, leading a small group, attending a small group, showing up and partnering and serving with something in the community, what is motivating that service? Is it the way that service will make you appear? Is it how it positions you in the eyes of others? Or is it because you can't help but serve your God? Let me tell you. When we do spiritual things for the way it makes us look to other people, we are going through the motions, and our hypocrisy is burdensome and wearying to God. The other thing that we think about to assess if we're going through the motions. Can I say with authenticity that I'm the same person on Friday night that I am on Sunday morning? Is there one version of me that everyone in my life sees? And you see it on Sunday morning. You see it on Monday afternoon. You see it when my kids are driving me nuts. You see it on Friday night and I've got some freedom and I can cut loose. You see it on Saturday at the tailgate. Am I the same person everywhere I go? Or do I put on different faces for different people to appear in different ways at different times? Because if we are not the same person in all of the pockets and circles of our life, then somewhere we're going through the motions. Either we're faking being like the world, and we don't really mean it, or we're faking being godly, and we don't really mean that. And normally, people who are walking with Jesus and zealous about him don't bother faking it for the world. What motivates your spiritual actions? How consistent is your character with the people that you see? Are there different versions of you? Because if there are, you might be going through the motions too. And this temptation to go through the motions of our faith without meaning it with sincerity, without being properly motivated, is a trap into which the historical church has fallen in over and over again. There is not a single person here who's been a Christian for more than three days who has not at some point gone through the motions. You may be sitting right now in deep conviction, thinking, Father, I've been going through the motions for years. And if you are feeling that, good. I'm not going to disavow you of that. Sit in it. It's helpful. And we should be asking, if all of those things are simply going through the motions, then what things does God want from me? What does he want me to do? What actions does he require of us that can begin to shift our heart towards him and prove to him that we're in this for him? What does God actually want from us? I'm glad you asked because Isaiah answers that question. In verses 16 and 17, he says this, wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. What does God actually want me to do? If he doesn't want me to go to church and pretend, if he doesn't want me to just do sacrifices and tithe and go to small group, what does he actually want me to do? I'll tell you what he wants you to do. He wants you to stop doing evil. Learn to do right. Defend the cause of the oppressed. Seek justice. Defend the widow and the orphan. Care for those who can't care for themselves. That's what he wants his Christians to do. That's what he wants his children to do. He wants you to go do the things you can't fake. Go do the stuff you have to really mean. And listen, this verse 16 and 17, this resolution, stop going through the motions. Stop faking your faith. Stop being insincere and burdening me with your hypocrisy. Go and do what I actually want you to do. And what is it that he actually wants us to do? It's to defend the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow. It's to pursue justice and correct oppression. And I don't know of sitting with a group of men Friday morning talking about this topic and I became so frustrated with how I was taught my faith because I don't know where we decoupled justice and defending the cause of the fatherless and the widow and caring for those who can't care for themselves. I don't know where we decoupled that from the message of the gospel, but somewhere along the way in our churches, we made it optional and it's not. James tells us at the end of the Bible, true religion that is pure and undefiled before the Lord is to do this, is to take care of the widows and the orphans. Why is it widows and orphans? Because in the ancient world, those two were down and out. If you're an orphan, they did not have orphanages that you could go to that would feed you and care for you until you were 18 and send you to college. You begged in the street until you died. If you were a widow, your husband had died, and you did not have children to care for you and bring you into their home, you begged until you died. There's no social safety net. So when God says care for the orphan and the widow, does he mean specifically them? Yes, and he still does. But what he really means is those who can't care for themselves. That's why in the laws in the Old Testament over and over again, we see this principle of gleaning. When you're plowing your fields, leave the corners of them unharvested so that the sojourner, the alien, the homeless, the oppressed, the marginalized, the widow and the orphan can eat off of your field. That's theirs and it actually belongs to them. And if you harvest all of your field, then you're actually stealing from the oppressed and participating in the oppression. I'm not going to belabor this point too much because we may have a whole series about this coming up. But whenever we see the heart of God revealed, it is always for those who have less than us. When you see the idea of giving in the New Testament, it is almost always associated with giving to the poor. When you see Jesus handle the poor, he says, whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me. When Jesus begins his ministry, he goes to the poor, blessed the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. You see him caring for the oppressed. So if we want to do the things that God really wants us to do, then we have to, in a non-nebulous, very specific way, get involved with caring for those who can't care for themselves. Go to the Ades Jumari thing next week. Dip your toe in it. See what it's like. Start to talk to people in your community and find out how you can be a part of that. This is not a theoretical, metaphoric instruction. This is a literal instruction. That if we are guilty of going through the motions and the thing that God wants us to do is to care for those who can't care for themselves. So let's get active about that. Now here's the thing that I love about this passage. Because you might be thinking to yourself, why is this one your favorite? This is a little rough. Here's why. Because it doesn't end in verse 17. In verses 10 through 15 we have this tremendous conviction. You're going through the motions and your hypocrisy is burdensome to me. I'm weary of you. And then in 16 and 17, we have this very high challenge. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Stop being dumb. Learn to be good. Go and do it. What do I want you to do? I want you to care for the poor. Go care for the poor. Go. But then we get verse 18. And verse 18 is the best. And verse 18 kind of, to me, feels like this. Sometimes in my home, my daughter Lily and I can clash. We're very similar. And that means that sometimes our words get sharp. And sometimes there's a little battle of will about whose words are going to be louder. And I win those. But sometimes I wish I hadn't. And whenever we clash, whenever she's gotten in trouble and she feels bad, I always go find her or she'll come to me and I'll pull her alongside of me and I'll hug her and I'll kiss her little head and I'll say, I love you. I'm proud of you. It's going to be okay. You're going to do better. I'm going to do better. Because I don't want it to end with the conviction and the challenge. I want to call her alongside and I want to comfort her. And when I read verse 18, to me it has the tone of God coming alongside us, putting his arm around us, and telling us it's going to be okay. Here's what he says in verse 18. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. I love that verse because we experience the conviction of 10 15. And the challenge of 16 to 17 to go make it right. But then in 18, God sidles up next to us, puts his arm around us, comforts us and says, but hey, this isn't all on you. You've messed up, sure. But though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. How does he do that? Through shedding the blood of his own son that's prophesied about later in this book. So that when God looks at you, he doesn't see all the times you've walked through the motions. He doesn't see all the times you've failed to help the poor. He doesn't see all of your shortcomings and misgivings. And he is not burdened by you or weary of you. He sees you clothed in the righteousness of Christ and he is happy to pull you up alongside him and put his arm around you. So really, this is the reason why I love this passage. Because Isaiah 1, 10 through 18 is the gospel. It is the gospel. Do you see this? See, I think a big problem with the American church is that we start the gospel message at verse 18. We start the gospel message at verse 18. We begin it right there. Hey, guess what? Jesus died on the cross for you, so you're not accountable for your sins. Hooray. Just accept him and walk with him. And I think that's the reason why we have people going through the motions in their faith. Because all they need to know is, what's the minimum amount I have to do to stay right with God for that salvation to count for me? What are all the things I can do over here that I'll be forgiven for eventually? What's the minimum amount of the things that I need to believe so that I'm in and God loves me and that salvation accounts for me? And what do I have to do? What's the get in the door price for this salvation? Because we started the gospel at verse 18. But when we do that, we cheapen the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel operates in direct proportion of our realization of our need for it. The power of the gospel resonates more deeply with you the more deeply your own sin resonates with you. The more deeply your own shortcomings resonate with you. And that's why we experience the relief of verse 18 because we have the conviction of 10 through 15. Oh my goodness, God is so angry. And then we have the challenge of 16 and 17. Go and start doing right, but God, that's so hard. And then we have the relief of verse 18. And so what I want us to do now is I'm going to read all nine verses in the tone and inflection in which I think they're intended. And we're going to collectively feel the relief of verse 18 when we get there. And you in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who asks this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing me meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. New moon Sabbaths and convocations, I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your new moon feast and your appointed festivals, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. Though they are like crimson, I will make them like wool. That's the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel is to feel deeply the conviction in 10 through 15. And if you're here this morning, I've prayed that you would feel the necessary conviction. If you have been going through the motions, in part or in whole, it's not news to God. Confess it to him. If you're challenged by 16 and 17, and you think honestly about your life, and you go, gosh, I don't know what I'm doing for the poor and the oppressed. I don't know what I'm doing to correct injustice. Then let that conviction determine you to find ways to get involved in that. And then, and then, once we've sat in the conviction and we've sat in the challenge, then sit in the comfort of verse 18 and the gift of the gospel and allow that gratitude from his fullness. We have all received grace upon grace. Allow that grace that has been poured out from you from his fullness that it's not all on you to go do all the right things, but that God is already working in and through you and you are forgiven for the times when you've fallen short. Let the gratitude of that motivate the right behaviors and let the things that look like going through the motions be an outpouring of the faith that you've expressed through helping the poor and seeking justice for the oppressed. But we will never do those things if we do not allow God to bring us to a place of tremendous gratitude and comfort of the words of the gospel and the promise that we can reason together and though our sins are like scarlet, he will make them as white as snow. So I'm going to pray. And as I pray, if you need to pray to God on your own, do that. If you need to confess to God that you've been going through the motions of your faith, confess it. If you need to confess to God, I'm not doing anything for justice or oppression, confess it and ask that he would show you what to do. And if you are not overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the gospel and him covering over your shortcomings, ask God to fill you with gratitude. And if you are filled with gratitude, express that to him. As I pray, you pray, and then we'll have a chance to sing together. Father, thank you for your servant Isaiah. Thank you for the power of your words through him. God, we know that at different times and in different ways, our hypocr forget the conviction, but that we will allow the power of your word to rest on us. Father, I pray for myself and openly confess I go through the motions all the time. But Lord, I pray that you would imbue my actions with a sincerity filled with gratitude. I pray that for the people here as well. God, give us the courage to be convicted and to confess. Show us ways to get involved with what matters most to you. And Lord, would we leave here with just a deep gratitude for your sending your son to cover over our sins. And though they are like scarlet, you will make them white as snow. In Jesus' name, amen.