Sermons tagged with Grace

Good morning. Welcome to Grace. My name is Nate. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to do that in the lobby after the service. Happy Christmas Sweater Sunday. I was definitely aware of the theme when I got up and got dressed this morning. That's 100% why I chose the sweater. It's not random. I actually showed up and the band was wearing Christmas sweaters and I said, is today Christmas Sweater Sunday? And they said yes. And I was like, oh, okay. That's nice to know. I also would like to just offer this disclaimer. If this sermon isn't good, it's Keck's fault. Keck. Hey, Jacob. Jacob. Hey, come here, buddy. Come stand right here. This is the single ugliest thing I've ever seen in my life. I hate it so much. I'm a Falcons fan. This is terrible. And you're sitting on the front row. The front row. My gosh. All right, thanks, buddy. I just wanted everybody to see that online so you know what I'm dealing with. You win the day, Keck. Well done. And go Bucs, because that's who you're playing today. This is the first part in our Christmas series. The series this year is called Foretold. We are going to be looking at prophecies from the Old Testament that tell us about the Messiah that is to come. And so this morning we are looking at kind of the apex prophecy, kind of the big overarching prophecy that dictates the rest of them. It's this promise in Jeremiah 31 of a new covenant. And so this morning we're going to be focusing on the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant. To do that, we need to have a working understanding of what covenant is and what it means and how we define it. I'm sure that's a word that you've heard before. Most of us are church people. And for those of you who are here with family, thanks for being here. Thanks for entrusting your morning to us. We're going to try to be good stewards of that. But I'm sure that most of us in the room have heard this word covenant before. And all of us, if I said, what is a covenant? You would probably give me a pretty well-reasoned definition of it. But so that we're on the same page this morning, and if you have notes, it's a great morning to take notes. I've got a lot of them for you. This is a little bit more of a professorial sermon. So for those of you that like the nitty gritty details, this one's for you. So we're on the same page. Let's define covenant this morning. A biblical covenant is a binding agreement between God and man. When I say that we're going to examine the old covenant, the new covenant, a covenant is a binding agreement between God and man. And what's expressed in covenants is God says, if you do blank, I will do blank. If you do this, I will do this. If you offer me this obedience, this sacrifice, whatever it might be, I will offer you this blessing, whatever it might be. And you may not know this, but the Old Testament is actually divided into five different covenants. I'm not sure if you're aware of them or you know what the covenants are. I'm positive that most of you have heard of all of these, and none of this will come as a surprise to you, but just so we're on the same page, and for those of you who are interested in things like this, these are the five covenants of the Old Testament. Let me see if I can do them from memory. The first one is the Noahic covenant, the covenant that God made with Noah, where he said, I will not flood the earth again until the end of days. I will never do this again. And the seal and the sign of that covenant is the rainbow. After the Noahic covenant comes the Abrahamic covenant. In Genesis chapter 12,osaic covenant, where God gives Moses the law. And he says, if you follow these laws and you teach your people to follow these laws, I will bless you in these ways. It's the Old Testament covenant of law, the binding agreement between God and man. After that, in 2 Samuel chapter 17 comes the Davidic covenant, where God reminds the people of Israel of his promise to Abraham. And he says, not only will one of your descendants bless the whole earth, but David, that descendant will come from you and will sit on your throne. And we see that come to fruition in Matthew chapter 1 in the genealogies of Christ where we can track Obed and Jesse and then King David in the genealogies of Christ. That's the Davidic covenant. And then the fifth and final covenant in the Old Testament is Jeremiah 31, the Jeremiac covenant, where God promises in Jeremiah to make a new covenant. We're going to walk through bits and pieces of this covenant together this morning so we can understand it well. But simply in chapter 31, verse 31, he introduces it like this. The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. So that's just a little teaser that just lets us know what's going to happen. There's a discourse here from 31 to 37 in that chapter. And he opens it up by saying, the days are coming when I will make a new covenant. The days are coming when there's going to be something new, something different. And so he's introducing this idea that with Jesus, he's going to usher in a new covenant, a new and final binding agreement between God and man. So what I want to do this morning is spend a bulk of our time comparing and contrasting the old covenant of the Old Testament, all those covenants combined, the Noahic and Abrahamic and Mosaic and Davidic and Jeremiac, all those combined with the new covenant that we have in Christ, the covenant that's promised in Jeremiah 31, and that's fulfilled in the coming Christ in the New Testament that we celebrate at Christmas. So I want to show you five ways in which the new covenant is superior to the old covenant. The first way requires us to maybe learn or be reunited with some vocabulary words that I will explain to you. The old covenant was centripetal. The new covenant is centrifugal. Old covenant, centripetal. New covenant, centrifugal. Shane has never heard these words in his life. I'm going to tell you what these mean, okay? He got a look on his face like his head was about to explode. Here's what I mean. Okay, I was at Thanksgiving. We were hanging out with our family in Dothan. It was a wonderful, wonderful time. I hope and pray that you guys had as rich of a time with your family as we did with ours. I was talking with one of Jen's cousins and they had recently gone to Huntsville with their daughters to, I believe it's the Kennedy Space Center there. If not the Kennedy Space Center, there's a space center there. And growing up in Atlanta, it was a rite of passage. Eventually you're going to go on a field trip to the space center in Huntsville. And when you go, does anybody know when you go to the Space Center and then you go to the gift shop, what do you have to eat? What do you have to try? Does anybody know? Dry ice cream. That's right. Astronaut's dry ice cream. It's the best thing on the whole planet. It's also the best thing in the space station. All right. It's universally the best, the dry ice cream. And I asked my friend, I said, or I asked my cousin, do they still have that ride? There's a ride that demonstrates the power of centrifugal force where you get into this circular room, there's a rail in the middle and the wall kind of tilts and so you lean back against the wall and you hold your hands like this and the room starts to spin. And it starts to spin and the faster, eventually it gets fast enough that the floor drops out of the bottom of it. You've done this Elaine. It drops out of the bottom and you stay pressed against the wall with the centrifugal force. It's to demonstrate to you what that force does. Centrifugal force pushes out. It goes outward. Centripetal force sucks everything in. It brings everything to the center. And so the way to think about the Old Testament and the New Testament is that the evangelism plan of God in the Old Testament, the idea of spreading the good news of who he was, was centrepital. Everyone come to Israel. Everyone look at Israel. Everyone look at my people. They're going to obey me so well and be so holy that they will stand out like a beacon amongst the nations and people will flock to them to pursue their God. That's the idea. Follow the rules well enough, live holy enough, and you will exert this centripetal force in the regions around you and they will be so attracted to your God that they will flock to you. That was the idea. Because we're human, it didn't work. So the new covenant ushers in this idea of evangelism as centrifugal. Now we go outward from the church. Now we go outward from Jerusalem. Jesus institutes this in his ascension when he gives us the great commission. And he says, go therefore into Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, even to the ends of the earth, making disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Go through the whole world and spread my name. With the new covenant with Christ, instead of just staying in our bubble and living holy and expecting people to flock to God because of how we behave, now it is our job. Peter calls us in his letters, the living stones. We are told that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. In the new covenant under Christ, this new binding agreement with God, it is now our job to go out and to spread the news of Jesus amongst the nations. This is why I'm always telling you that the only reason you exist after becoming a Christian, why when you become a Christian, the very second that you believe in Christ, does God not suck you up right to heaven so you can begin to experience eternity now? Why does he not do that? Because he loves you so much. The only reason he does not snap you up into heaven the very second you become a Christian is so that you can bring as many souls with you to heaven on your way there. It's centrifugal force. That's the new covenant. We look outward. We evangelize. We see him articulate this, Jeremiah, in verse 34. No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, know the Lord, because they will all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. So this first difference in the covenant that Jeremiah is speaking of is that we now go out. We now bear responsibility for evangelism. It's centrifugal force. We push out and reach the world. The second difference is this, and I like this one. The old covenant had this picture of God above us. The new covenant, God is with us. Emmanuel. At some point this Christmas season, you'll hear that song, Handel's Messiah. You'll hear, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, his name shall be called Emmanuel. You'll hear that. And when you hear that, Emmanuel means God with us. In the Old Testament, God existed above us. God existed as this sort of, it would be easy to have mistaken God for this divine constable overseeing our lives and making sure we're following the rules well. It would have been easy to see God as a divine judge or a divine parent looking into our lives, making sure that we're doing right and not doing wrong. It would be easy to have this picture of God over us or lording over us or above us judging our behaviors. But in the New Testament, we see Jesus himself condescend from his divine nature to take on human form and be God with us, to walk amongst us, to exist in the squalor and in the day-to-day drama that is humanity, to experience tragedy and loss and sadness. And I do think it's worth noting as we talk about this idea of Jesus being God with us, it's worth noting that where he chose to show up is remarkably bad in the scheme of human history. If you gave me all of human history and you said, hey, you need to make an appearance somewhere in here, when would you like to do it? I'd be like, I mean, I don't know, like suburban Raleigh 2024. That's pretty great. That's pretty cush. That feels nice. Here's what I wouldn't choose. You know where I'd like to go. I'd like to go to a third world country at the height of the Roman empire and be a far flung province that doesn't matter. And that lives in squalor where a vast majority of the people live day to day and don't know where their next meal is going to come from. And I'd like to come from a backwater town in that backwater province in an empire that doesn't care about me. That sounds fun. Jesus had the entire scope of human history and decided that he was going to show up in Nazareth at 0 BC, however that date works out. And exist in this far-flung province of an empire that didn't care about him. And take on human form there. And then, at the end of his life, we focused on this back in the spring when we looked at the upper room discourse. Some of the most profound words in all of Scripture, John 14 to John 17. I love those chapters. Those chapters are dear to us and to me, and they should be. In those chapters, as he's leaving, he tells the disciples, it's better for you that I'm leaving, which seems absurd. If you're living life in the presence of Jesus, and he says it's good for you that I'm leaving, which seems absurd. If you're living life in the presence of Jesus and he says, it's good for you that I'm leaving, that doesn't make any sense. But he says, it's better for you that I'm leaving because since I'm leaving, I'm going to leave behind for you the Holy Spirit who will dwell in you and walk with you every day. And in this new covenant, this didn't happen in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, God was above us. He was distant from us. He was other. He was out. But in the New Testament, in the new covenant, God is with us through the spirit. He walks with us daily. The spirit, the Greek name is paraclete, which means to walk alongside. He is with us, convicting us, directing us, helping us decide, giving us wisdom, giving us insight into scripture, helping you discern what's important about what I'm saying and what's not. The Holy Spirit walks with us every day in the new covenant. We have God with us. And I think we very often fail to realize the power of that, that God is with us. Another way in which the new covenant is superior to the old covenant is that the old covenant was focused on rules. The new covenant is focused on love. Old covenant focused on rules, new covenant focused on love. We see this in verse 32 of the discourse. It will not be like the old covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. And then in verse 33, this is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. So in the old covenant, when God makes that Mosaic covenant with his children, he gives them 630 some odd laws. There's disagreement on exactly how many there are. About 300 and change thou shouts and a few less thou shalt nots. And in the old covenant, there was a one-to-one exchange on your spirituality and your ability to follow the rules. The better you followed the rules, the closer to God you were. The more things you did right and didn't do wrong, the more spiritual you were. And this begat the hypocrisy of Pharisaical spirituality that we see in the New Testament. When we read our Gospels, who is enemy number one of Jesus in the Gospels? It's not Satan. It's the Pharisees. Who's he always arguing with? Who's he always putting down? Who is he always correcting? The religious leaders. The ones that should have known better. And I am firmly convinced that these men that Jesus is putting down throughout his life, that he's quarreling with throughout his life, that he's debating with throughout his life, that he's constantly showing up and showing out because of, I am convinced that those Pharisees did not mean to be sinful. They were not intentionally wrong. They were not intentionally vile. They were not intentionally hypocritical. I believe the Pharisees meant well. I believe the Pharisees, the vast majority of them, actually believed that they were living out the will of God and that they were living holy lives and that this upstart Jesus of Nazareth was actually a bad actor. I think that they actually believed that and they believed that because they had allowed the Old Testament covenant to skew their spirituality in such a way that it was performance based. The better you follow the rules, the more spiritual you are. And so Jesus comes on the scene and he offers this incredible teaching when he's talking with a young ruler, a young lawyer, and he says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. Amen. And love your neighbor as yourself. And the rest of that verse, you guys know, on these hangs the whole law and the prophets. What Jesus teaches in those verses is, if you will simply focus on loving God and loving others, then the rest of the rules will fall into place. You don't have to worry about those. Don't focus on the rules. Focus on love. That's the new covenant. And can I tell you, honestly, who's taught me the most about the beauty of this new covenant? It's you. It's grace. I grew up in a Southern Baptist tradition in suburban Atlanta. This is no critique of that tradition, although it is a little bit. It's no critique of my parents. Let's say that. They did the best they could with the information they had. They chose the best church for us. Everybody makes mistakes. This was not a great environment. It's just the environment that I grew up in. And in, some of you guys know this. I don't know your traditions and where you came from and what they hold, but if you have my tradition, you'll understand this. Southern Baptist evangelical 80s, I actually heard a comedian, Nate Bargatze, who's fantastic. He said, there's never been anyone more spiritual than evangelical parents in the 80s and 90s. That even Jesus looks at those parents and is like, y'all should have a little fun. Like you should loosen up a little bit. That was my childhood, okay? And my childhood was very much Old Covenant. The better you follow the rules, the more spiritual you are. We were all teetotalers. Nobody had an ounce of alcohol ever. There was no dancing. I went to a private school that had a junior-senior dinner. We did not dance. It was not prom. Not allowed. Junior-senior banquet is what it was called. We did not watch rated R movies. We did not have secular music in our house. My mom hid it in her car and listened to Dirty Dancing and her sunbird, but that was foreboding. Dad did not know about those tapes. We lived under the rule of law. And the better you followed the rules, the more spiritual you were. The problem with this for me was, I saw, and it was mostly men in that time leading the church, I saw men leading the church who were jerks. They were jerks. By any stretch, they were not people you'd want to spend time with. But they were the most spiritual. And to me, this didn't make sense. Then I come to Grace. And when I come to Grace, Grace is a different kind of church than I've been a part of before. And there are people at Grace who do not follow the rules very well. I mean, some of y'all, if y'all went to my church, you would be subject to church discipline very quickly for your language and for your consumption habits. You are not, you do not follow the rules well. But I watched those same people who would really stink at following the rules in the 1980 Southern Baptist Church love on their neighbors because they love their God incredibly well. And I've watched some of the leaders of this church love consistently over the years in unmistakably holy ways. He's grinning at me back there. Doug Funk's one of them. Doug Funk would be a terrible rule follower. You're terrible at the rules, Doug. But watching Doug live out his faith has shown me the efficacy and truth of this new covenant. Hey, you worry about loving the people around you and the important parts of the rules will fall into place. Grace has taught me the truth of that teaching. You're good at that. Keep being good at that. It's part of what makes grace, grace. But that's a feature. That's a benefit of the new covenant. That we don't focus on the rules. We focus on loving one another well. And we focus on loving our God well. And we trust the rest of it to fall into place. These last two are my favorite features of this new covenant in which we live. The old covenant was breakable. This new be broken by their behavior. I will bless you if you follow my rules. I will bless you if you behave the way you're supposed to behave. He made it conditional on their behavior. This new covenant is remarkable in that it is not conditional on our behavior. And if you can't appreciate that about this new covenant, then you're in the wrong spot. Paul articulates this in Romans chapter 8. At the end of the chapter, I think Romans chapter eight is the greatest chapter in theestined. Those who are predestined are justified. Those who are justified are sanctified. Those who are sanctified are glorified. It's already been done. Once you place your faith in Christ, your part of the covenant is over. All that God asks of you is that you believe in Jesus and who he says he is, that we believe that Jesus is who he says he is, did what he said he did, is going to do what he says he's going to do. That's your part of the covenant. Believe in Christ. And once you believe in Christ, God does the rest. There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you understand that your salvation and God holding you in his hand and God ushering you into eternity is not contingent upon your behavior? You cannot behave your way into heaven. Listen to this. You cannot behave your way into a deeper love from God. Your heavenly father will never ever love you more than he does in this moment right now. No matter what you did yesterday, no matter what you carry into this room, he will never love you more than he does now because he's not capable of a greater love than he offers you. And all he asks is that you trust in that love and that you believe in him. We exist in an unbreakable covenant that is protected by the very blood of our Savior. Because of that, this last part is true. The old covenant is dependent on our performance. The new covenant is dependent on his performance. We see this in verses 35 through 37. This is what the Lord says. Let me break that down for you. Declares the Lord, the day hell freezes over will be the day that I break my promise to you. The day there is another God who understands the universe, who is better than me and more capable than me and understands what I can understand, that day when pigs fly is when I will break my promise to you. N.T. Wright is one of the world's foremost theologians. He's absolutely the foremost theologian on Paul. And N.T. Wright defines God's righteousness as his commitment to keeping his promises to us. When we think about the righteousness, the holiness, the unblemished nature of God, N.T. Wright says that very nature is crafted by his commitment to keeping his promises to us. And here in Jeremiah 31, verses 35 through 37, God says, when hell freezes over will be the day that I break my promise to you. But I've got you and I will keep you. This new covenant is not based on your performance. It is not based on your behavior. It is simply based on your belief and God does everything else. It's not based on our performance and what we do and how we behave. It's based on his performance here. Do you understand? That's why this is here. To remind us that this is the performance on which we base our faith. This is the performance by which we claim eternity. This is where we place our hope. This is where we get our faith. Not in ourselves. So some of us need to quit trying so hard to behave and start working harder to love and exist in this new covenant where Jesus says, come to me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I think that we have this habit of reverting back to the old covenant. See, the things that I've told you this morning, for many of you, for most of you, are not news. You may not have walked in here able to divide the Old Testament into five separate covenants. You may not have, if you thought about the difference between the Old Covenant that God had with his people and the New Covenant that we exist in, you may not have articulated the five things I did, but you know them. I don't think I taught, I hope you learned something, but I don't think this information was brand new to everyone. So the question becomes, if this is true, if we exist in this new covenant that's based on his performance, not mine, that's unbreakable, that I just need to focus on love and go out and reach people, why don't we live in this new covenant? Why don't we live in this reality? Why do we struggle so much? I think our problem is an unconscious, habitual regression towards the old. I would even say it's very American of us to prefer the old covenant. We can perform our way into it. It's on us. I'll do it my way. I'll earn it. It's the reason why if you're someone worthy of respecting, it's hard to buy you dinner. Because you want to buy your own dinner. Because you want to pay for it. Because you want to do it. Because you want to earn it. It's the American way. I'm independent. I can handle it. And so in our subconscious, we default to this Old Testament, Old Covenant performance where it's based on my performance, not someone else's. And we revert and we regress. This is why Christmas is such a blessing for us in so many ways. Christmas is our annual reminder of our existence in the new covenant. Christmas, those dumb sweaters you're wearing, especially that one. And all the festivities and all the lights. Yesterday I was in Home Depot and I was looking for command hooks because I was hanging wreaths and I heard a lady tell her son that she was also looking for command hooks. And when the employee told me where the command hooks were, I hollered down the aisle to the lady and I said, ma'am, I hear you're looking for command hooks. I am too. They're in the next aisle over at the end. And so we met at the command hooks, her and her two sons. And she said, thank you so much. And I said, I said, thank you. It's National Wreath Hanging Day. And she laughed and she goes, it is, isn't it? That's what we're all doing. And some of you hung your wreaths yesterday because it's the first Saturday in December. That's what we're doing as we do those things. And we celebrate Christmas and we look forward to family and we buy the gifts and we sing the carols and we play the music in our car and we do all the things. Here's why this sermon is the first one of the month, is the first one of the series, because I want Christmas to be a reminder to you that you exist in this new covenant. I want Christmas to be a reminder to you that your spirituality is not based on your behavior. It's not based on your devotion. It's not based on your personal holiness. Your spirituality was one for you on the cross. You've already entered into the new covenant. It's not based on your performance anymore. Exist in this place where you are loved as much as you ever will be. Quit trying to earn your father's love and exist in the fact that he loves you, that he adores you, and that from his fullness we receive grace upon grace. Let Christmas be a reminder to you of all the ways in which the new covenant in which you live is superior to the old. Walk with freedom and grace and goodness and mercy as you go throughout the season, and love your God and love others well as we celebrate this Christmas. And let Christmas be a reminder to you about the covenant in which you exist. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the promise of Jeremiah 31. We thank you for this new covenant in which we exist. We don't deserve it, God. We can't comprehend it. This deal that you've made with us is unfathomable. God, help the reality of your promise and your commitment to keeping your word. Help that wash over us anew. Help us more deeply appreciate this promise you've made to us. Help us more deeply appreciate your commitment to it in spite of us sometimes. God, as we go through Christmas and we do all the Christmas things, let us not lose sight of who you are and what it represents. Let us not lose sight of what it means for the coming Messiah to have arrived and ushered in these new promises. Father, I pray for our Decembers. I pray that they would be sweet times with friends and family, that we would reflect on the riches that you've offered us. And God, for those of us for whom this season is sad or hard, give us the strength, Father, to turn the sadness into gratitude because at least someone or something existed in our life that we love so much that we miss it. Be with us as we go throughout this December as we celebrate the coming of your Son. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, Grace. I'm Nancy LaCivita, and I'm a partner here and one of your elders. This morning, I'll be reading from Psalm 134, a song of ascent. Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who minister by night in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord. May the Lord, maker of heaven and earth, bless you from Zion. Awesome. Thank you, Nancy. All right. Good morning, everyone. My name is Kyle. I am the student pastor here at Grace, which essentially means I am the pastor for students sixth grade through 12th grade. Our middle and high school students, I get to hang out with them every week. We meet on Sunday nights. We have the best time. We get rid of a lot of these chairs and we do really fun stuff that honestly we don't do enough of on Sunday mornings. I'm trying to bring in more of the game aspect to the Sunday morning experience, but truly it is such a blessing to be able to be the student pastor here at Grace. I've been here for a little over six years. I love our kids. I love our families, young families. If you are looking for advice on parenting, talk to our student parents because they're unbelievable. They're almost as incredible as our students. I love these kids and I love student ministry. Before I came here, I was a student pastor in Georgia. That's actually how Nate and I were connected. He led me as I was a student pastor at a church that he was also at in Georgia. I've basically been doing student ministry full-time since I graduated college in 2015. Go Dawgs. And I don't know how many of you know this. I'm actually from kind of a family of student pastors. I am one. Also, my brother's one. My younger brother is a student pastor in Athens, Georgia. Go Dawgs. Yeah, again. And my dad is currently a student and a college pastor in Dahlonega, but he has been doing student ministry full-time as his job for, I think, over 20 years at this point. Now, I will also say that my mom has been volunteering and teaching in student ministry way before us guys started doing any of it. So we followed in the blueprint, and we took it full-time, and we took it professional. But, Mom, I see you. I know you're probably watching or listening. And so I wanted to give her the shout out. But my dad actually went into student ministry and he went into ministry in general a little bit later in life than a lot of people do. And he actually started out in student ministry when I started out in student ministry. As I was going into middle school, he had accepted the call and accepted a job at his first church, meeting and loving and serving the students. Now, sometimes that doesn't go well. I have ministered to some really incredible kids and some really incredible families that love each other a lot, where the parents would be unbelievable leaders and youth group, and their kids are like, no way, I would never want you to be there. It's a pretty common thing when you're a middle schooler and high schooler. I know that it's going to shock some of you that sometimes they want their freedom as they start to get older. And that is the case a lot of times, but I didn't really have that choice. I will instead, all I have known of student ministry from the time that I was young, from the time I was in sixth grade was simply being ministered to by my dad. And while I know that being a pastor's kid sometimes doesn't always have the best connotation, sometimes people who grow up as pastor's kids kind of fall away from the church, but I'm just so thrilled that my brother and I fell in love with the church instead. And specifically, we fell in love with student ministry as a part of my dad's youth group. I'm sorry, I thought I might cry, and it is not yet, so we've got to lock in. And when I think back on that, I spent some time as I was going through this and thinking through just my journey and my life in this ministry and spending time in my dad's ministry and just wondering what made that ministry so special to me and what made it so special to everyone. And I'll tell you straight up, I think my dad is the best at it. I don't think that there is anyone who exists who does student ministry better than he does. I know that kind of sounds like I'm the five-year-old who's like, my dad can beat your dad up. I can give you a lot of names and I can give you a lot of numbers to reach out to of people who would agree. Over the course of his 20-something years, he has been so impactful on the lives of just unbelievable amounts of students. He has completely taken over and revamped and completely just turned on its head these ministries and turned them into these, from these small insignificant ministries to these thriving ministries that bled into and impacted the community at large. And I thought about what was he doing that made him that good? What was he doing that was bringing so many people in? What was he doing that was so impactful to the people around? I'm thinking it back and I'm like, all right, what what, what did we do at youth group that was that awesome that people were that drawn to or whatever. First, we did do Wednesday nights as our main nights. And I don't know who is from a smaller area than Raleigh and has gotten to experience having Wednesday night dinners at the church. Um, some, I got a few nods. Uh, Wednesday night dinners is basically when you're at a small local church, there are grandmas all over the place that come into the kitchen at whatever time on Wednesdays. They make everyone in the church dinner that shows up. So if you showed up for student ministry, then you got to have a dinner cooked for you by a lady by the name of Mama Jane. And if that name's not enough, you don't miss opportunities to eat food from Mama Jane. So maybe that was it. But dad did work really hard. He spoke well. He raised up leaders well. He planned great trips. We went on awesome camps. But as I continued to come up with all of those different lists of things, I'm like, none of these are more or less significant than really any student ministry that I've ever seen or been a part of. The only thing I can think of is this, that I don't think that there is a person that exists on this earth who loves students more deeply, more purely, and more Christ-like than my dad does. And whatever reason you walked in the door that first time, whatever drew you, Mama Jane, I heard you're making whatever. I heard my buddy is singing tonight, so I'm coming to support. Whatever drew you in that first time, it's the same thing that ended up drawing you in that hundredth time. That to be in the presence of my dad was to know what it meant to be loved. And when you experience that, you want more of it. And I wonder, if you have people like that in your life, dads that are student pastors, no. Are there people in your life that have those same qualities? You're connected for whatever reason you're connected. Maybe it's a family member. So you were born, and when you're born, it's like, hey, you have no other choice. You have to hang out with this person. It's your mom. Maybe it's a friend. You have the same hobby. You like pickleball. You like birding. You like playing golf. This person wants to play. He hits you up. She hits you up. Let's go do it. Maybe your kids are friends and you're like, well, we should hang out too. Whatever your reason for your connection for these people, I bet that you have at least one person that comes to mind where you go, man, you know what? What I love most about them and what draws me the most to them is simply who they are. To be in their presence and to be with them is to be loved. To enter into their presence is to enter into joy, is to enter into peace, to feel safe, to feel whole, to be made full. Do you have those people? If you do, I'd love to hear about them, first of all. But you know that there's no blessing greater. There's not a greater blessing on this earth than having people that make you feel whole and right and make you feel holy and completely loved and brings you joy and brings you peace by simply getting to be with them. It doesn't matter what you do with them. It doesn't matter how much time you have with them. It doesn't matter how often you're able to see them because every time you do, you just get to rest in their presence and it's good. The Psalm that Nancy read for us a few minutes ago, Psalm 134, that Psalm is a celebration of this type of love. That Psalm is a celebration of the fact that we have access to this. Celebration of the fact that God offers us the blessing of a perfect version of this love in his presence. Psalm 134 is the last psalm of ascent. For the last couple months, we've been going through this journey, if you will. We've been going through this ascension also, if you will. This series called Ascent. We've been going through these different psalms. And as Mikey said, these pilgrims, these Israelites who are traveling upwards, they're traveling up the mountain to Jerusalem to be in the temple of God and to be able to bless and spend time with God. All of the journey, all of the hardships, all of the everything that is involved in a journey up a mountain for one single solitary purpose. And Psalm 134 is the resolution of what that purpose is. Can we read it together? Praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who minister by night in the top of this mountain. What's their goal? What's their purpose? It's to simply be able to rest and enjoy and rejoice in the presence of God. You can see on your notes, if you're looking at them or if you have them, that the title of this is called Blessing. And it's called Blessing because of something that I learned through research in this psalm. Because in this psalm, there is the word bless. We saw it. It's right there. May the Lord bless you from Zion. But I wouldn't say it's the most significant part of this until I did a little bit more research. This series that we've been going through, we've been reading through this book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, and it is kind of, we've used it as a guide for our series. And I learned through that, Eugene Peterson writes that when the word bless is used here. In Hebrew, it's the word blessing. It's the word bless that it talks about that when God is blessing us, he is blessing us in the way that he is coming down, that he is making himself known to us. He is making himself ours. And he, let's see, you know what? I'm just gonna read this quote. It's so good. The passage describes what God does to us and among us. He enters into covenant with us. He shares the goodness of his spirit and his creation and the joys of his redemption. He empties himself among us and we get what he is and that is blessing. To understand that is to realize and to understand that the blessing that each and every one of those Israelites, what they were pursuing, the goal and the prize for their long and their harrowing journey to Jerusalem was nothing more and was nothing less than God himself. And to connect with him deeply and to connect with him intimately and to rejoice, put your hands up and rejoice in his presence. And that same exact deep and intimate connection is offered to us as well. As Christians, our motivation for living out our faith should be to enter into God's presence. As we've gone through this ascension, as we've talked about this literal physical journey of the Israelites, of these people, these pilgrims that are journeying upwards, we've used it as kind of a connection and as a backboard to also describe that, hey, we, each one of us in this room, is also taking a journey upwards as well. That we are taking a spiritual journey somewhere. Whether we're ascending upwards towards heaven, we are all ascending or going or moving in some way, even if it's just through time. But as Christians, we are called to make this discipleship journey. We're called to step and to move ever closer and ever nearer, just like these people were as they were heading up and moving up to Jerusalem. I love the way that Psalm 1611 puts it. Can we read that together? You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of God, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. All right, there we go. We've got the path. This is perfect. This is such a perfect, because we're talking about a journey. We're talking about making steps. All right, so God gives us a path. He makes the path of life known to us. Okay, so in our life, we have this path. And on this path, if we will move towards him, if we will take steps ever closer towards him, what we are doing is walking into what he calls fullness of joy. I think sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we forget that this thing that we're doing when we worship, when we come to church, when we're listening to the sermon, when we do all this stuff, it's for joy. It is to be able to experience and witness the presence of God, and in the presence of God is fullness of joy. There's this pastor named John Piper, and he calls it Christian hedonism. For those of you who know the word hedonism, you're like, oh, this feels weird. Hedonism, I'm giving you guys a lot of terms today. Hedonism is basically this term that describes doing everything to serve yourself. I am going to seek and pursue pleasures for myself as much as I'm able to do. Not great. But what John Piper says is Christian hedonism is this, that this verse says that the best and most joy-filled version of your life possible can only be found in the presence of God. And so the most self-serving thing you can do, the thing that will bring you the most joy, the thing that will bless you the most is simply by moving and taking steps towards God. And guess what? When you're taking steps towards God, when you're serving yourself by unlocking this joy that you never knew existed, you're bringing everyone along with you. Because when you know joy, so do the people around you. And that's my reminder. I know that, you know, this is a lot of like, all right, sweet. That's a lot of quotes from a lot of pastors. Way to go, Kyle. We should live for God more. It'll give us the most joy. But think about this practically. All right, let's do an exercise together. I want you to think about the people in your life who are the most connected and the most committed to their faith. The people who you would put as a pillar of like, this is the person that I would strive to be in my faith. They love the Lord well, whatever. How would you describe those people? The people in my life that I know, they're the most joy-filled. They're able to offer the most love because they're the people who've experienced the most love. In a world where everyone needs more and needs the next thing and needs to grow, they are the people who are the most content. They're the people that are most at peace in a world of anxiety and fear. Man, think about my dad. You think he just fell into loving like that? No. My dad wasn't a Christian until college. He met my mom. He pursued my mom, and my mom was like, can I offer you Jesus instead? Because I'm not interested otherwise. And he was like, well, you're pretty, so I'll come to church. So I guess my mom used her spiritual gift of being pretty. I don't know. But in my dad's pursuit of my mom, he fell head over heels in love with Jesus. Living a life away from Jesus, a longer life away from Jesus than a lot of us have who've grown up in the church, is to be able to just fully recognize and understand and be rocked by the grace and the goodness and the forgiveness of God. And because of that, I watch him. And if he was standing right here and you watched him worship, he would look just as joy-filled as the first day that he experienced the goodness and the grace of God, because every day since he continues to pursue and is the most joy-filled and love-filled person that I know in my life. The people who pursue God are the people who are characterized in the ways that we wish we could be characterized in. And yet, we still don't do it sometimes, man. I wonder, like, I'm like, okay, I know that there are joys beyond compare that come simply from making steps towards God, making God my priority, discipleship, taking my next step of obedience, whatever language we want to use. So what's the deal, man? Why don't we do it? Why don't I do it? And as I thought through that, I was like, you know what? I can think of a couple of reasons that I don't. And if we walk through those reasons, then maybe you can find yourself in them. Maybe you have also felt or had a hard time experiencing God because of these things that hold you back in the same way they hold me back. And maybe we can talk through those. And as we talk through them, maybe together, we can be people who strive towards Jesus and the presence and the goodness of God. I think that the first thing that, oh, if you want to fill in the blank, I realize that oftentimes our life of faith isn't marked by the joy of God's presence. Ultimately, we know that there are times where as much as we know that we should pursue God, we still don't because life gets in the way. First reason I think this could be is maybe you haven't experienced the joy of salvation through repentance. I know there's probably, there may be people in this room who have not become Christians yet, who have not accepted this love of Christ, this forgiveness of Christ, that Christ came, lived a perfect life, died on your behalf, and was raised on your behalf, and have not come to the saving knowledge that, hey, I want to be a part of this. I want to be part of this God who made a way for me to be able to experience him. If that's you, I want you to hear this verse. And I just want you to ruminate on this one thing. Romans 2.4 says, God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance. When we think about our sins and our shortcomings and the ways that we fall short in our life, it's sometimes hard to separate those from our shame. We know this, you know this. Think about the things that you do wrong to your kids or to your friends or to your husband, your wife. Wrongdoing oftentimes leads to shame, but it is, as Romans says, God's kindness that is intended to lead us to repentance. As you see and recognize your sin, allow you to not ruminate on the shame that comes. Don't let it be the fear of God that brings you to him, but instead seek out his kindness. Seek out his love. Seek out the grace that God offers every single one of us if only we would believe. Now look, we're going to stay on the first one. I know most of, a lot of the people in this room are Christians. But I've got a question for you. We just did a repentance sermon. They just did a repentance sermon. I think sometimes we say yes to Jesus. We repent. We say yes. Praise God. I'm a Christian now. And I to ask, was that the last time you repented? If so, it's time to do it again. How about this? Is yesterday the last time you repented? If so, it's time to do it again. Repentance isn't a one-time thing. It's not a sometimes thing. It's an all-the-time thing. Matthew says to bear fruit in keeping with repentance. Every time we repent, what we are doing is we are putting God in his place and saying, God, you are good and I am not. Thank you for your grace. Allow me to get rid of this sin that is holding me down and allow me to experience your joy to the fullest with nothing, nothing that is holding me back from you. Every time we repent, we have to turn to praise. Every time we repent, we have to turn to thankfulness. And so if you're in this step and you are a Christian there, I still think we can up our repentance game, if you will. If God has new mercies every morning, then guess what? We have access to new mercies every morning. How many of us are taking hold and taking action on making those a part of our daily existence and our daily life? The second thing is unbelievably wordy, and I'm very sorry. Are you currently settling for the supplemental blessings of God and deferring enjoyment of the presence of God until heaven? All right, sweet. Everyone got that? I'm sorry for how wordy that is. Essentially, here's what I'm saying. I think sometimes it's easy for us to go like, sweet, boom, I'm a Christian. That's awesome. I'm a Christian now, and guess what, God? I am going to bless you for all of the things that you've done for me. I'm thankful for my family. I'm thankful for my house. I'm going to say the blessing, and when I say the blessing, I'm going to say thank you for all the things. I can't wait to enjoy all the things that you've given me, and then I also can't wait because when I get to heaven and eternity, God, I'm going to enjoy you forever. There is no blessing greater than enjoying God. And sometimes we forget that the Jesus that died for our eternity died for our right now just as much. The second that we give our hearts and the second that we give our lives to Jesus, we have access to him. We have the Holy Spirit. We have the ability to witness and ruminate and spend time in the joy of his presence every single day. Another quote from the book says that God gets down on his knees among us, gets on our level and shares himself with us. He does not reside far off. He kneels among us. God shares himself with us generously and graciously. The perfect creator of the universe says, I want you to be with me right now. Why would we settle for anything less? If that's you, this series has been about discipleship. If that's you, we just did a series where Nate did a specific Kermans, Kerman, Kerman the frog. Nate did a specific sermon called Step Takers. If you're in the habit of just sitting and chilling and saying, you know what? I'm good, y'all. I'm going to enjoy just the blessings that I've got in my life and I'm going to focus on you later, God, thanks. If that's you, I would encourage you to look around, to spend some time in prayer. Maybe go check out that step-taker sermon and just spend some time looking and seeing, hey, what if I did take a step forward? What if this journey of faith wasn't just me sitting and watching time pass away, but it's me stepping forwards and stepping deeper into the love of Christ? The third way, I think a lot of us get stuck here. I think this is a really difficult one, and I think all of us probably have experienced this at one point or another. Maybe you have been living for God, but your obedience feels devoid of the joy of his presence. Have you ever done what you feel like you're supposed to be doing? And it's like, God, I don't really see where you're at. I'm doing it. Nate said to take my next step of obedience. I'm four steps down and I haven't felt you once. I haven't experienced you once. What's the deal, God? Come on. If you find yourself here, my encouragement for you would be to check your motivation, would be to take an internal pressure and an internal temperature of, why am I doing what I'm doing? Am I doing what I'm doing because God is good and I want to be and experience his presence? Or am I doing it because I want to set a good example for my kids? Am I doing it because I want other people to be like, that guy's got a good head on his shoulders? Am I doing it because, you know what, it's Sunday, so we should probably go? Am I doing it because, you know what, I ought to do it? The shame and the guilt's going to get me if I don't, so I might as well do it. It's very easy and a very real thing to do things, quote unquote, without God involved. I'm gonna be honest with you guys about something. I tried to write this sermon without the help of prayer. I am doing the literal like, hey, like the pinnacle of what I could do today to take my step of obedience, to live out my faith, is to be able to make a sermon for you guys and share with you guys the joy of God if we'll simply allow him in. And I forgot to allow him in. And so a few days ago, I'm going to be really honest with you. I mean, Ashlyn knows this. None of you do. I had a rough day because I couldn't figure out. I couldn't crack it. I couldn't understand. I felt overwhelmed. I felt frustrated. I was like, God, why am I even here? I'm trying to do this thing for you and you're like, and you're not coming through at all. I don't have an ending to this. I don't know what to do. And I was like, you know what? Guess how many times I prayed about it? Zero. It is very easy to do what we believe is the will of God without God actually being at the center of it or even involved at all. Man, once I realized that, it changed how I approached it. I put the sermon down. I'm like, God, I need you. And wouldn't you know that writing the rest of the sermon, man, there was just a lot more joy and a lot more peace that came from it. Turns out the presence of God is pretty sweet. Turns out the presence of God is the only thing that can sustain us if we're trying to take our next step of obedience. If that's you, I would refer you back to the top. Recognize where your motivation maybe falls short. Repent of that. And make your next step of obedience one where you're stepping towards Christ. If God offers fullness of joy, if God offers new mercies every single morning, I promise you he wants you to have them. He wants you to experience them. So all you gotta do is ask, man. Wake up. God, what would you have for me today? Not only that, but God, whatever you have for me today, will you just show me where you're in it? And will you be at the center? Because I don't wanna settle for anything less than your presence. I'm thankful for everything else around me. I'm thankful for everything in my life, but God, more than anything, I simply want you. And maybe we establish a different motivation. And maybe your motivation is this, that every step of obedience is a step deeper into God's loving presence to which nothing compares. When we step towards God, when we take a step of obedience, the goal, the prize, the win of every single step is that we get to be closer and deeper into the loving presence of God. And I promise you, there is no sweeter thing. Let's pray. God, we love you and we're thankful for you. God, thank you for the fact that you are enough. Would you work in our hearts, in our minds, and in our actions to where we could fully and brightly see and understand that. Lord, we are so thankful for you. Thank you for being a God who not only sent his son to die for us, but did so so that we could know you right now all the way to eternity. We love you and we're thankful for you. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Wes. I'm one of the elders here, and I'm going to start us off with a reading from Psalms 131. And yes, I've joined the club now, too. My heart is not proud. Lord, my eyes are not haughty. I do not concern myself with great matters of things too wonderful for me, but I have calmed and quieted myself. I am like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child, I am content. Israel, put your hope in the Lord, both now and forevermore. Thank you, Wes. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's good to see you. We are in the fifth part of our series called Ascent. It's inspired by the book by Eugene Peterson called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. It's a hugely impactful book for me and for some of the folks on staff, and I've encouraged you guys to pick it up and read it. And hopefully you've started to do that and it's impacting you in similar ways. The book Long Obedience in the Same Direction is based off of, and you should know this by now because we're in week five and we've been saying this every week. It's based off of the Psalms of Ascent that are found in Psalms chapters 120 through 134 that were meant to be read and sung and worshiped through on a family's pilgrimage to Jerusalem on their way to go worship. So it's worship to get their hearts and their minds right on the way to go worship. And so the whole idea of the series has been to go on a journey of spiritual pursuit of God as I challenged you guys in September to let's all take our spiritual lives, our spiritual health more seriously and begin to take intentional steps in that direction. The series has been designed to help us with that. And so this morning we arrive at Psalm 131, which is a Psalm that places its focus squarely on this idea of humility. And humility is an idea that I think that we probably think incorrectly about. I think we probably default to an unhelpful definition and application of humility. I remember a few years ago, and I think I've mentioned this story in church before. I can't remember if I have or not. So if you've heard it before, if it sounds familiar, I'm not going to belabor it, but I think it helps me make my point today. A few years ago, I was with some family and family friends, and we were at this get-together, and the guy whose house it was at said, hey, come help me get some food for everybody. I said, great. So we go outside. We get in this car. It was a brand-new Mercedes S-Class, super nice car, over $100,000 vehicle. And I get in there, and I go, oh, is this new? And he goes, yeah, yeah, I just got it last month. I said, do you like it? He goes, I love it. It's great. I said, it looks great, man. These seats are nice. They got the cooling things. You got the screen across here. This seems like a really great car. And he goes, yeah, it's just a car. Just gets me from A to B. And I just went, okay. And we started talking about something else. But in my head, I thought, oh, crud. Just a car. A 2015 Prius with 150,000 miles is just a car, okay? $115,000 S-Class is not just a car. That's a choice. And if that's a choice you want to make, that's fine. I'm not here to critique it, okay? I have no criticism for what he chooses to do with his resources. And any of you that have nice vehicles, I'm not trying to criticize those. But here's what I will criticize is when someone, when you spend $115,000 on a car and someone goes, this is nice, don't try to act like you're driving a Civic, okay? I just found it to be disingenuous, and I think it was his attempt to be humble and modest, but I found it annoying. Kind of like those people that you have in your lives that you can't give a compliment to. Compliments won't stick to them, right? You go tell Aaron he did a great job leading worship last week, and he just goes, oh, glory to God. Like, he won't accept it. I I've seen women do this to each other you show up at a wedding or at an event or the the I joke that the Addis Jamari uh night of new beginnings every year is like uh Grace Raleigh prom everybody gets dressed up for it when you go and a group of women standing around you're like oh you look so good I love your dress and they're just like oh this I just got it at Dillard's it's deal. You know, like they won't just say thank you. I feel pretty too. They won't say that ever. You go over to someone's house and it's wonderful. This meal is fantastic. Oh, thanks. My husband did all the hard work. And we know good and well your husband didn't do anything. But there's this idea in our culture, and I think particularly in Christian culture, maybe Southern culture, which how do you unparse those things, where humility is really false modesty. And I think that's just an insufficient way to think about humility because I think if we can actually understand what biblical godly humility is, that there's an efficacy to that that we really probably haven't considered when it comes to humility. So this morning I want to posit to you that maybe this can be a working definition of humility that we understand together. Maybe humility is the result of how we estimate our sin and ourselves. Maybe humility, true biblical humility, is how we estimate our sin. And when I say our sin, what I mean is the current situation of our sin, the current sins with which we wrestle, the things that entangle us and cause us to not run our race that we need to cast aside, the current sins that we deal with, and the capacity that we have for sin in the future. If we want to be truly humble, we need to adequately and accurately estimate our current sin situation and our capacity to sin in the future. I'm not going to spend a lot of time here this morning because I think what we'll find is that we're all on the same page and it would be a little bit of a redundant sermon. I think how to accurately estimate ourselves is where we can make some more interesting headway. But I can't talk about biblical humility without addressing the fact that it's immediately intertwined with how we understand our sin condition because of verses like this. I'm going to read from James 4, 6 through 10. It's on your bulletins, but it's not in the notes. James 4 says this, will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn, and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James, when he says humble yourself, when he says that really ought to be scary term for us, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. I'm not exactly sure what God's opposition looks and feels like, but I don't want to know. But he gives grace or favor to the humble. James immediately ties humility into an awareness of and disgust with our sin. You see that? He immediately says, be humble. And to be humble, he says we have to weep and wretch before the Lord, that our joy has to turn into mourning, that our laughter has to turn into sorrow, that we need to be brought to a place where we are rock bottom with our sin, where we despise our sin and what it does to us and those around us. Now, I'm not going to belabor this because any point that I would make here would be very similar to the points that I preached in part two of this series on repentance. The first Psalm, Psalm 120, is a Psalm on repentance. It's how the Psalms of Ascent start off. And I said, no journey towards God can begin without the first step being repentance. And for repentance, we have to come to a place of disgust with our sin and who we are and what it's doing to the people around us. And that's what James is echoing. And that's what leads to true humility, which is why we're talking about it today. Now, as it relates to being realistic about our current sin condition and our capacity to sin in the future, I think that Christians, in my experience, kind of fall into three categories. And I've been in church world, I have no memories outside of church. I've been in church world my whole life. These are the blocks of Christians that I've experienced. So the main block of Christians that I've experienced are the ones who, when you say, how are you doing with sin? How's sin in your life? And what do you think of your capacity to sin? You think terrible, wretched, I'm miserable. I'm so glad everyone in the room does not know what the sins that I'm dealing with, the things I'm thinking of right now. When I say, what sin do you deal with in your life? For many of us in the room, instantly, we know which one it is for us or five, right? And for you, you walk around constantly aware of your sin. On Tuesday, I was sitting in a recliner, not moving, watching TV, and I got a crick in my neck. I don't know. I'm getting old. I guess this is what it feels like. And it's gotten a little bit better every day since. All right, I can do this now. But on Monday, on Wednesday morning, if Lily, my daughter, needed something, I had to go, yeah. And every, on Wednesday, everything I did, every reflex that turned my head, every way that I sat, every way that I laid, every time I tried to take pressure off of it, it didn't matter. Sometimes it felt a little bit bad. Sometimes it felt a lot a bit bad. But I was all day acutely aware of it. And if you've ever had a crick in your neck for days afterwards, it is part of your consciousness. That pain is there all the time. And for a lot of us, we carry sin in the same way. There's a sin that we're aware of that we need to fix, that we need to eradicate, that we need to start doing or stop doing. And we don't do it. And so anytime we're in church, anytime we're in small group, anytime we're exposed to spiritual things, any movement, any slight movement of our head, we feel it, we're reminded of it, we feel bad about it, we want to get rid of it. That's fine. That's actually a good, humble place to be. It's not a good place to stay, which is why we should go through repentance and not exist there. But we should all have a sense of our capacity for wretchedness. The second category of Christians that I've seen and how we think about our sin is kind of the group of people that goes, you know what? I'm doing okay, right? I'm not an alcoholic. I don't have things in the shadows that I'd be ashamed for other people to see. When they talked about me being embarrassed if everybody knew my sins, I mean, maybe a little bit, but not really. We think we're kind of doing okay. That's great. But what I would ask you is, is your doing okay really just you playing the comparison game between you and people who are not? And going, I'm doing fine? Is your okay complacency? Is it laziness? Is it fear or cowardice? Is it a lack of engagement? I would argue almost always that it's just simply a lack of awareness of ourselves. If you think you're doing okay, ask your spouse, your kids, your coworkers, your close friends. In the last three to five years of my life, do you see me increasingly growing in the fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, do you see in my wake a greater production of those things? Do you see me growing closer to God and increasing in zeal and increasing in discipline and increasing in patience and wisdom and joy? Do you see these things manifesting in my life? Because if for the last three to five years those things are not increasing in greater measure year over year, then what I would tell you is, buddy, you're not doing okay. You're stagnant. And if you're stagnant, you're going back. But I do think there's a third group that genuinely is doing okay. And you say, no, I am increasing in those ways. I don't want to make space for that. Because I'm not trying to make everybody feel bad. But if you are doing okay, if this is a season in your life where you feel closer to God than you've ever felt, you have more earnest desire for him than you've ever had, I think the humble thing to do there, the thing to help us accurately see our sin is to understand I'm in a good spot now, but nothing that has happened has changed my capacity for sin in the future. There but for the grace of God go I. I don't care how good you're doing. You're two bad weeks away from some of the worst decisions you've ever made in your life. And so if you are in a good place, look at that as grace from God. That every day and week and month that's gotten you there is a gift of grace that he gave you where he gave you the clarity to allow him in your life to shape your character, to sanctify you, and to make you more like Christ. But it's God's working in you that puts you there. So the first thing we do to seek humility is we have an adequate perception of our sin. We hold that well. We understand our current sin situation and our capacity to sin in the future. But I didn't want to belabor that or spend a lot of time there this morning because I think having an accurate estimate of ourselves is something that, because I think as Christians we've probably all thought about the things I just said in some capacity. But I'd be willing to bet that not all of us have thought about humility in this light and accurately estimating ourselves in this way. The first verse of Psalm 131 speaks to this. I want to bring our attention back to it. My heart is not proud, Lord. My eyes are not haughty. I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. In long obedience in the same direction at the beginning of every chapter, you're given the psalm. But it's the psalm from the message that was translated by Eugene Peterson to be very easily approachable. And the way that he phrases it there is, God, I'm not too big for my britches. I don't think that I'm a bigger deal than I really am. And I think that's a great concept. But the problem is that I think we've tended to apply that principle. My eyes are not haughty. My spirit is not proud. I'm not too big for my britches. I don't think I'm too big of a deal. I think we've applied that the way that my family friend applied it to his new car. It shows up as a false modesty. It shows up as disingenuous. It shows up as, oh, you know, I didn't have anything to do with that. Oh, no, that's not me. It shows up as that friend that won't let compliments stick. And you just want to grab him by the shoulders and say, can I just please bless you? Will you accept this? Will you just admit that you've done something good in someone's life for once? And we apply this incorrectly. I think we often mistake humility as the disingenuous reduction of ourselves. I think we often seek to be humble. God opposes the proud, gives grace to the humble, So I'm not going to be, to run from pride, I'm going to be extra reductive of myself and who I am. I have no talents. I have nothing to offer. I've never done anything good. Even like, I used to do this. I've tried to move away from it. But if somebody said, hey, you know, that was a great sermon. I would say either, yeah, hey, glory to God, thank you so much. Like, nothing to do with me. Or I would say, yeah, well, you know, blind squirrel and things. Like, not accepting any of it. And I think when we're the person trying to compliment, when we're the person who sees other people, when we're the person who sees what other people have to offer, and we can't get that person to agree with us, not in a braggadocious way, not in a haughty way, just in an honest way, it becomes frustrating and disingenuous. So I actually think that true humility is realizing our abilities, our gifts, the things at which we excel, are actually gifts from God. He created us with those gifts, and he gave them so that we might use them to build God's kingdom, which is a wonderful invitation from God that fills our life with purpose beyond ourselves. It's incredible how it all works together. So let's say that you're smart. God made you smart. And here's the thing. We have a lot of smart people in this room. I think about, Grace, that we have an unusual concentration of capable and intelligent leadership. Some of us bring the average way down. Others of us are really gifted in this area. So let's say you're smart. So, what'd you do to be smart? You were born smart, right? Let's say you're fast. You can run really fast. So, you were born fast. What'd you do at three to get fast? Nothing. Let's say you're funny. Great. You're going to brag about it? Did you make yourself funny? No. Somebody making fun of you when you were a little kid and giving you trauma made you funny. No, I'm just kidding around. God gave you the capacity for humor. Let's say you're a leader. You're a good leader. People seem to follow you. They seem to rally around you. When you use your voice, people tend to listen and you don't really understand, but people just always kind of get behind you and kind of go where you're going. So, did you make yourself that way? You're hospitable, or you're kind, or you're gracious. Whatever your gifts may be, my attitude about those gifts with you and with me is who cares? Who cares? The Bible says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works that we might walk in them. He created all of us with gifts and abilities and a path to good works that we should walk in. We're told in Corinthians that we are the body of Christ and that within the body, the nose, the toes, the eyes, the ears, the mouth, the arms, they all have a job. We were all gifted to be a part of that body. What do I care about what your gift is and what my gift is? The flip side of this is being haughty about it, is being proud of it. Let's say you're smart and you're proud of the fact that you're smart. And you kind of think everybody else can be a bunch of dummies sometimes. And if they don't think about it like you think about it, maybe you find yourself gracious by thinking, well, I don't think they're that smart. So it's probably hard going through life that stupid. I'll give them some grace. I've never personally thought that. It's not my struggle. If you're successful, it's to be haughty about that success. I've done it. I've earned it. I put together the amalgamation of ambition and perception and leadership and intelligence that produced in me what has been successful in the business place. I am proud of that, and we walk around with our chest puffed out because I'm a big deal. You know what you're like when you do that? You're like the teenage kid whose parents decide to buy them a $100,000 Range Rover. If that's what you want to do for your kid, I'd like to be adopted. But, not criticizing you. But you're like the kid whose parents buy you the $100,000 Range Rover, and you drive to school, and you park next to the kid in the 2015 Civic, and you make fun of them for it. You look down on them for it. Look at your stupid car. My car's so great, your car's so dumb. Yeah. Jerk. You didn't do a thing to earn that Range Rover except breathe for 16 years. All right? That's your daddy's money or your mommy's money. That is not your money or your granddaddy's money. I don't know where you got it, but you didn't get it. That's what I know. And that kid probably earned his car. Which one of you is better off for that? When we walk around proud of our gifts and abilities, yeah, I'm smart. Yeah, I'm talented. Yeah, I'm kind. I'm nicer than everybody else. And we take pride in that. I take care of other people better than everybody else, and we take pride in that. When we walk around proud, one pastor put it this way, we were born on third base, and we act like we hit a triple. We should not do that. Once you've identified where your gifts and abilities lie, the absolute wrong thing is to start to give yourself credit for putting those things in there because you didn't make yourself that way. God did. And this is what gives Christians a unique path to humility because we're able to go, yeah, God made me smart. So I have a capable and curious mind. God, how can I use that to further your kingdom? God gave me a good voice. So, God, how can I use this voice to bring glory to you and grow your kingdom? God made me a good leader. God made me good at making money. God made me good at building things and companies. God made me good at hosting people and making them feel welcome. I have this unnatural ability where when I sit down with someone I don't know, they just start telling me all of their problems. Okay, great. That's a gift that God has given you. Who cares about bragging about it? The important question is, once we acknowledge it, is to go, great, I've been made this way. You've been made that way. Nobody cares. What's the best way to use and deploy this gift to build God's kingdom? And in that way, we exist in this posture of gratitude. God, I'm so grateful that you made me the way you did. And then it gives me the opportunities that it does. Please help me to always hold them in the proper light and to use them to bring glory and honor to you and to build your kingdom. When we have this posture of humility, where we're willing to be honest with ourselves, it's not bragging to admit and to acknowledge that God has gifted us in certain ways. It's actually in concurrence with all of Scripture because we know that He does. It's simply estimating ourselves accurately and holding them properly to know that those gifts were not given to make our lives better. They were given so that we might participate in the building of God's kingdom. I think Jeremiah the prophet probably said it best when he says this in chapter 9 verses 23 and 24. or the strong boast of their strength, or the rich boast of their riches. But let the one who boasts boast about this, that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord who exercises kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth. For in these I delight, declares the Lord. God says, if you want to boast, don't boast because you're wise. Don't boast because you're smart. Don't boast because you're capable or successful or kind or generous or hospitable. Don't boast about any of that stuff. If you want to boast, boast in me and boast in this. Boast that you know me. Boast that you have the humility to know me, to recognize and have faith in me. Boast in who your heavenly father is. I was walking by before church started to get my last minute water. And as I walked by, my son John is three. As I walked by his room, he saw me and he goes, that's my dad. For everyone to know. If you're going to boast, boast like John, that when we see God, we go, that's my dad. That's my heavenly father. I know him. I'm his child. I'm proud to know him. Everything else is just a gift that your dad gave you so you can point other people towards him. That's all it is. To hold it in any different regard than that is foolish. Now, there's a flip side to this coin because not everybody in the room has the same comfort level with admitting their various gifts and abilities. There are some of you in the room. There are some people, when I say, hey, whatever your gifts and abilities are, they go, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep, I got them. There are other people that when I go, whatever your gifts and abilities are, that you think to yourself, I'd love to know, because I don't have any. And I don't really have anything to offer anyone. I'm just kind of there. I'm nice. I do my part. I don't have anything in particular to offer God or his kingdom. The second verse in the psalm is for you. This verse says, but I have calmed and quieted myself. I am like a weaned child with its mother. Like a weaned child, I am content. In the chapter that Peterson writes on this psalm, he points out these opposing sides of the humility coin. One is pride and haughtiness. And the other is infantilism. To infantilize ourselves unnecessarily. And he thinks that's the figurative language with I'm a weaned child because a child that isn't weaned, that still relies on its mama for sustenance day to day, can't yet be a productive member of society. And so the picture that he paints is once we are weaned, once we are separated, once we don't need somebody else for our daily sustenance, we can actually take our step into being a productive member of society and God's kingdom. And so it's actually harmful to refuse to acknowledge our gifts. And when we do that, when we think we have nothing to offer, when we've taken humility so far in the other direction, so far away from pride that we don't allow ourselves to even identify how God has gifted us and how we might be used. This psalm says we're like a child who's still a suckling. We're not yet ready to be productive. And I think that refusing to acknowledge our gifts actually makes us less productive as believers. Refusing to acknowledge that you have a good voice, that you have musical talent, that you're organized, that you lead well, that you build well, that you ask good questions without, by refusing to acknowledge how God made us we actually make ourselves less productive towards God's kingdom now I will admit to you and I don't think this is going to come as a shocker to anyone if you we all lean towards one side of that coin this is not the side to which lean. So I don't want to try to paint a picture like I don't struggle with pride somehow. I do. But there has been one very, to me, profound area in my life where this struggle has shown up. I went into vocational ministry when I was 19 years old. In the year 2000, I began to get paid to be a Christian. I just took my faith professional. That's all I did. Because I think that what I do is just be a professional Christian. I think everybody's got their part to play. Everybody has their gifts to apply, and we should just do it. Anyways. I've been in vocational ministry close to 25 years. And again, started in 2000 as a student staffer for a local Young Life Club. It took me until 2021, the summer of 2021, after I read Eugene Peterson's autobiography called Pastor. It took me 21 years of vocational ministry to say out loud, I believe God has called and purposed and designed me to be a pastor. Not simply a teacher of God's word, which is how I would have phrased it prior to, but a pastor, a shepherd, someone who has been called and purposed to look out for people, to draw people in to one another, to provide leadership for the corner of the kingdom to which he's assigned me, Grace Raleigh. It took me 21 years to acknowledge out loud that I believe God has designed me and purposed me to be a pastor and that he's gifted me in some capacity to be a leader so that I might serve his kingdom in that way. It took me 21 years to admit that because I thought it felt so arrogant for me to admit that before 2021, even though functionally I had served as a pastor for 20 years. It struck me as so arrogant and I had so much imposter syndrome about it that I could never say it out loud. I always considered myself less than that, apart from that, not quite made to be that. It took me so long to be able to admit that and simply say it out loud. And when I said it and when I admitted it, there wasn't an ounce of pride in it, I promise you. It was just coming to the place where I could admit what other people told me and what God has shown me that this is the way that he's gifted me and what he wants me to do and I think that there is a lot of you who are limiting yourself and your estimation of yourself by over-correcting pride towards a useless humility that's actually causing you to be less productive in God's kingdom than you could be. Since that revelation in 2021, I'm not looking for any of you to say like, yeah, I've noticed you've been a markedly better pastor since then. But here's what I know. Since then, I've accepted the mantle of the church far more readily than I did before. Since then, I understand my role with more acuity than I did before. Since then, I understand what I'm supposed to do and how I'm supposed to use my voice so much more accurately and clearly than before and unapologetically. And again, not because it's somehow gone to my head and now I think this is what I can do, but because I feel the weight of responsibility of where God has placed me and it does me no good to not acknowledge that weight. And it does you no good either. You have people around you waiting to be impacted towards God's kingdom. You have people in your lives who need you to walk with God. You have friends and neighbors and family members who will listen to your voice far more than you think they will if you'll simply acknowledge how God has made you to reach them. But refusing to accept it isn't humility. It's fear and overcorrection and dishonesty. And it's not godly humility. When we accurately estimate our sin and ourselves, we are perfectly positioned to build God's kingdom. When we have that first piece of the puzzle in place, I have an accurate estimate of my capacity to sin in the future and my current sin situation now. When we see that clearly as God sees it, and when we see ourselves as God sees us, you are for me, not against me. I am who you say I am. We just all sang it together. When we really believe that and we see ourselves as God does, and we see our sin as God does, and our potential to sin as God does, and we don't hold our gifts as something we're proud of. We offer them up to God, and we have the courage to admit how he's gifted us. When we can do that and accurately see those things, we are perfectly positioned to build God's kingdom. Don't you see? Because we go, okay, sure, you may be good at this thing. Who cares? It's neither good nor bad. It just is. God, how should I use it? And I just wonder what could happen in your families if you decided to pursue true godly humility and saw your sin in yourself accurately the way that God does. Parents, most of the parents in the room that's still raising kids are over here parents what if what if the kids that grew up in your home had the clairvoyance to think when they were 16 years old, sure, I'm smart. So what? It's my job to figure out in the next decade how God wants me to use that in his kingdom. What if that's who you release into the wild? What if that's what we produce at Grace? What if your kids at 25 and 30 have careers and lives and are involved in things that are a result of true humility that you showed them and modeled for them. How much better would they be at this than you are? If we can do that now. When we pursue godly humility, we perfectly position ourselves to build God's kingdom. And it's a powerful thing. So let's no longer think of humility as simply a disingenuous modesty. Let's think of it as accurately holding a vision of who we are that agrees with God's vision for ourselves and pursues the future that he's designed for us. Let's pray. Father we thank you for. Who you are. We thank you for how you love us. We thank you for the gifts that you've given us. God, for those of us who have a tendency to let pride and haughtiness sneak in, to begin when we go unmonitored to think that we're somebody and we've done something special. Would you help us remember who we are and who you are and how you made us? And God, would we see what you see and hold our abilities as gifts that were given to us so that we might build your kingdom? Father, for those of us that struggle and might think that we don't have anything to offer, I pray that you would help us see through the people in our lives who love us, the way that you've gifted us so that we might be productive in your kingdom, so that the people around us who need us would see us and be pointed to you by us. God, I pray that we would be a church full of humble people, but not humble in the way that the world describes it. Humble in the way that you lay out so that we might be servants to you as we go. We thank you for all these things. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, guys. We want to invite you to stand as we just worship together this morning. Let's sing this together. There's a God. There's a God who is real and strong. He's alive and fights for his own. Let me hear you sing it out. Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Our eternity stepped into time The water turned into wine Come on, let's sing it. Come on. Ruler over earth and sky Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Sing again when you are done Endless praise to the Holy One Sing a song as loud as He is worthy Let's sing this out together. Clap your hands. Sing it out. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing again when you are done. Endless praise to the Holy One. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Sing a song as loud as he is worthy. Church, can we put our hands together this morning? Let's just celebrate. Come on. You guys can go ahead and have a seat. All right. Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If you've been going to Grace for a long time, this may be the first time in your life you've ever seen my face. I shaved down to a mustache so I could be Mario for Halloween. And now I'm actively trying to grow the beard back so that I don't scare you next week when I preach. So let's just get that out of the way because I'm getting a lot of weird looks in the lobby. All right, with that out of the way, I want to read to you this morning the first four verses from Psalm 122 as we continue in our series called Ascent, where we're looking at the different psalms of Ascent in Psalm 120 to 134. So here's the first four verses of Psalm 122. Listen to this. Every year in the fall, now for the past several years, we pause and we do a morning of worship where the whole service is an opportunity for us as a body to worship God together. We set aside the sermon for that morning, and we let ourselves be ministered to through song as we approach God's throne together. And it made a lot of sense to put this service here in the middle of the series ascent because of this psalm. Because in the middle of these psalms of ascent, in the middle of praising, they stop to acknowledge, they stop before they enter Jerusalem. We're standing at the gates of Jerusalem. So they're not going in yet. They're going in to worship. But before they go to worship, what do they do? They pause and they worship. And last year we did a series called The Songs We Sing. And we focused intentionally on worship for a large portion of the fall. And one of the things that I said over and over and over again is that corporate worship, raising our voices together, singing to God together, proclaiming his praises together is probably the most important thing we can do as a body of believers on a Sunday morning. I tell people all the time, you can download all the best sermons on Wednesday. The best speakers in the world, the most dynamic sermons, you can download those on a Tuesday while you drive to work. You can listen to those anytime you want to. What you can't download is community and corporate worship. What you can't fabricate on your own and experience during the week is what we're going to experience this morning. Coming together, unified as one voice, praising our God together. And as we were coming to church this morning, my wife Jen pointed out to me, this is really an important time this morning because we are in such a consumeristic culture and even time in that culture. We're inundated with news, especially now in this season. We're sitting and we're listening and we're taking in information and the TV is on and a podcast is going or the phone is on or noise is being made and we're just being bombarded with information all the time as we go throughout our days. So it's right and good to pause and not be told things, not have to sit and listen for much longer, but to participate and to praise and allow it to just be your thoughts and your God as we worship together. And I believe that if we do that, that God will speak to each of us in uniquely encouraging ways today as we lift our voices. So let's sing loud, let's give ourselves over to it, and let's allow God to move as we pause to praise him. Please stand and we'll continue to worship. We worship the God who was. We worship the God who is. We worship the God who evermore will be. He opened the prison doors. He parted the raging sea. My God, He holds the victory. Yeah. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out right back. We sing to the God who always makes a way. Because he hung up on that cross. Then he rose up from that grave. My God still rolling stones all way. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. Our God is surely in this place. We won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. We were the beggars, now we're royalty. We were the prisoners, now we're running free. We are forgiven, accepted, deemed by His grace. Let the house of the lord sing praise we were the beggars now we're royalty we were the prisoners now we're running free we are forgiven accepted redeemed by his grace let the house of the lord sing praise All right, Grace, come on, sing it out. Here we go. We shout out your praise. There's joy in the house of the Lord. There's joy in the house of the Lord today. And we won't be quiet. We shout out your praise. There's joy your praise. We shout out your praise. We shout out your praise. Church, can we put our hands together and let's just celebrate this morning. God is great. Thank you. I've seen a glimpse of your heart a billion years. Still I'll be singing. How can I praise you enough? How can I praise you enough? You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in glory. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Creation calls all to the Savior. We are alive for your praise. In earth and sky, no one is higher. Our God of wonders, you reign. Our God of wonders, you reign. You are the Lord all mine. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. You are the Lord Almighty. Outshining all the stars in gold. Your love is like the wildest ocean. Oh, nothing else compares. Not to us, but to your name, we lift up all praise. Not to us, but to your name name we lift up all praise not to us but to your name we lift up all you are the lord almighty outshining all the stars in glory Great. Lift your voice. Yes. I'm sorry. My Jesus, my Savior, Lord, there is none like you. All of my days I want to praise the tower of refuge and strength. Let every breath, all that I am, never cease to worship you Shout to the Lord All the earth let us sing Power and majesty Praise to the King Mountains bow down I see joy I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand. Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Psalm 98, 1 through 9 says, His right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations. He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout to the Lord, all the earth. Burst into jubilant song with music. Make music to the Lord with the harp and the sound of singing. With trumpets and the blast of the ram's horn, shout for joy before the Lord, the King. Let the sea resound and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. Let the rivers, to lift our voice, to sing. It doesn't matter if you play an instrument or not. It doesn't matter if you can sing well or not. We are commanded and called to shout to the Lord, to give him glory and to worship his name. So we're going to continue singing this song and we're going to worship the God of all creation. Sing my Jesus. I give all of my days. I want to praise the wonders of your mighty love. My comfort, my shelter, tower of refuge and strength. Let's sing it. Shout. I sing for joy at the work of your hands. Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise, all the earth, let us sing. Power and majesty, praise to the King. Mountains bow down and the seas will roar at the sound of your name I sing for joy at the work of your hands Forever I'll love you, forever I'll stand Nothing compares to the promise I have in you. Sing this with me. Silence the boast of sin and shame Heavens are rolling The praise of your glory For you are raised to life again You had no rival You had no equal Come on, sing it out. Come on. what a powerful name it is, the name of Jesus. How great thou art. How great thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Let's sing it again. Yes. How great Thou art. We serve a great God. A God whose love is unconditional. A God whose love is never failing and never ending. And whatever, whatever moment you may be wrestling with and whatever moment life may have you in, can we just, can we just declare that truth? Can we just lift up our voices, sing this out, then sings my soul. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee. How great Thou art. How great Thou art. Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee. How great thou art. How great thou art. Lord, we just ask you to hear our heart. Hear our cry this morning, Lord, that we believe that you are great. Your greatness isn't dependent upon our season. Your greatness isn't dependent upon what's happening to us. We're around us, Lord. You are great and you are worthy of our praise. And so this morning we offer it. We just put you in your proper place, which is above all. We just seek to give glory and honor to your name, Father. Church, can I just ask you this morning, what reason might you have to be grateful? What reason might you have to just give God praise and thanks? With that in mind, can we just do that? We get to this portion of the chorus that says, so I throw up my hands and I praise you again and again and I sing hallelujah. Hallelujah simply means this, I give praise to Jehovah. I give praise to the King of kings in this symbolic gesture of lifting my hands. Father, I surrender all to you. I give you all and I trust all. It's just offering our thanks and our gratitudes. All my words for sure I've got nothing new How could I express All my gratitude I could sing these, as I often do. Every song was dear to you and me. Come on, let's sing. So I throw up my head and praise you again and again. All that I have is a hallelujah. Hallelujah. I know it's not much. I'm nothing else fit for a king. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I've got just Come on. so i throw up my hands and praise you hold back. Let's just offer a praise inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. Come on, church. Lift it up. Come on, my soul. Don't you get shy of me. Lift up your soul. You've got a lion inside of those lungs. Get up and praise the Lord. All right, give it all you've got. Let's shout it out. All right, one more time, shout it Lord. Shout it. So open my hands. Praise you, Jesus. Because all that I have is a hallelujah Come on, shout it out. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. All that I have is a hallelujah. We sing hallelujah. And I know it's not much. I have nothing. Except for a heart singing hallelujah. I sing it again so I throw up my hands. So I throw up my hands. And I praise you again and much, but nothing else fit for a king except for a heart singing. We sing hallelujah. We say hallelujah. Hallelujah. are called to worship you. We are called to shout out your name, God. We are grateful, Lord. I pray for everyone in this room. I pray that you are stirring in our hearts, God. We feel you moving in this place, Lord. Thank you. Amen. You can have a seat. We hope you guys are having a good morning so far. I wanted to share with you something that really stood out to me as we read through Psalm 122. As Nate said a little earlier, we're in this sermon series called Ascent. And really what we're doing is we're looking at this collection or a portion of the collection of Psalms called the Psalms of Ascent. And it's just songs that the Israelites would sing while they were in route to Jerusalem, while they were on their journey. They would just sing these songs. And then you get to Psalm 122, and I thought it was really interesting that on their way to worship, they begin to sing the song about worship, right? And if you read it, Psalm 122 really reads more like a prayer than it does anything else. And so you may have heard me say this before, that when we come together, when we sing in this moment right now, like we're coming in, we're lifting our voice. Our song is simply a prayer to a melody. That's all it is. In these moments where you sing corporately, while you sing songs of worship in your car, all of these times, you're offering a prayer in the form of a melody. So when you come and you're singing these songs about hope, we have these fear, we have these moments that we aren't sure what's going to happen, and we just start singing about this. I place my trust in you. What you are saying in this moment, God, I need you for my hope. God, I need you for what's coming. I don't know how to deal with what I'm doing right now. When you sit in these moments and we say, God, you are worthy, you are above it all, we trust you, we praise you, and you offer this glory and thanks. What you are doing is from your mouth to God's ears, you are offering this prayer, expressing gratitude, showing thanks, declaring his glory. And that's one of the things that makes corporate worship so beautiful. There's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me because I say wise stuff all the time. But it's not necessary. But no, there's a quote. I don't know who said it. Maybe me, because I say wise stuff all the time. It's not necessary. But no, there's a quote that says, the beautiful thing about corporate worship is not the songs that we sing, but the fact that we sing them together. And so when we come together with that idea that our songs are a prayer to a melody, how beautiful is it that you come together as one body, lifting one voice, serving one God, offering one prayer in unison. It's a gorgeous thing. How awesome and how incredible is that? Does it have to be to God's ears? That's what Nate was saying a little earlier. The thing that you can't have watching online, sorry if you are, but it's true. The thing that you can't have is this unison of prayer, this unison of voice. And so at the end of Psalm 122, it shifts, the prayer shifts just a little bit. What the Israelites begin to do is pray for their family and for their friends. I want to read it for you. Maybe this is going to be more complicated than I thought. Okay, here we go. Psalm 122, verse 6 says this. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. May those who love you be secure. May there be peace within your walls and security within your citadels. Listen to this. For the sake of my family and friends, I will say, peace be within you. For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your prosperity. En route. En route to the temple to worship. They are worshiping. They are singing a song about worship. They are offering a prayer about the beauty of worshiping together. And then in this prayer, towards the end, they begin praying for their family and versions. It says, for the sake of the house of the Lord, I will seek your good. In this prayer, where they are praying for their family and friends, they also include a line that says, help me to pursue your good. God, for the sake of my community, it is good that I pursue what you say is good. For the sake of my community, for the sake of the people around me, it is good that I pursue the life you have created me to live. It is good for them, for me to be who you've created me to be. It is good for them. It reminds me of this, Nate said we're not going to talk. He lied. I don't know if he knew I was going to talk like this. I love Mark 7 because that's what this really kind of points to for me. There's this portion in Mark. Jesus is maybe at the height of popularity in his ministry right now. Like everyone has heard about this guy. They've heard of the miracles that he's done. They've heard of his teachings or they have seen the miracles that he's done. And they've heard his teachings himself or they've seen just all of these different things. And so you have this one little section in Mark 7. I think it's in verse 30. But it says that there was a guy who was deaf and could hardly talk. And there was some people in his life, some people in his community that brought him to Jesus. And then it says they begged Jesus to touch him. They brought this guy to Jesus and they begged Jesus to do Jesus things in this guy's life. And it's not isolated to this. There's multiple areas throughout the Bible. You can read just a little bit later in eight. Those are the first two that I'm aware of. But time and time again, you see people bringing to Jesus and then begging Jesus. And I love this. I think it's what we see in Psalm 122, this combination of action and prayer. This combination of doing everything that I can to point people to Christ, to take people to Christ, to move people to Christ, to live a life that reflects the love of Christ and saturating that action with a plea for Jesus to do Jesus things. That's what happened in Mark 7. Hey, I've seen, I've heard you can do this, Jesus. I saw you do this before. I need you to do this for my family. And it's not just a passing prayer. It's a plea. It's a beg, begging Jesus. I think that that's what James would call a works that shows your faith you move towards Christ and you beg to do Jesus things and when I first saw this when I first recognized it I wrote in my Bible I have friends like that right and I underlined it. And then we all kind of want that, right? I have a group of guys that I meet with. One of the guys, he calls it an intimacy group, and I don't like that. So we're not going to call it that because it just feels weird. Put your hand down, Jacob. We're not talking about that right now. But this group of guys, and what I love about it is that we can be open, we can be honest, we can just tell the struggles, and I know. Then we walk away from there. I have a group of people who are pleading with Jesus to do Jesus things in my world. We all want that. That's right and good. I wrote it down in my Bible while I was sitting there. I was like, oh, that's good, right? I felt kind of like this little poke, right? It said, hey, buddy. It felt like Jesus was saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, you could. You could find friends like that. You have. You could also be. Be that friend. You could also be that husband. You can be the husband that lives a life that reflects the life of Jesus. Be the husband that lives a life that reflects the love that you've experienced. Be the husband who reflects a life and lives a life that believes and trusts in the life of Christ while at the same time interceding with prayer. Not just a passing prayer, but a plea, a beg, like such a hurt and such a longing for the people in the world around me, such a hurt and a longing for the people in my community that I'm not just gonna say, hey, Jesus, just help them with that. But it's like, no, you do Jesus things. Jesus, do Jesus things in their life. Like I love them too much to just let this go. And I beg and I beg and I plead. Like be that type of husband. Be that type of pastor. Be that type of leader. Be that type of friend. And then after it hit me, I was so convicted, I just sat back and I wept. It's like, man, how much more faith can you express than living the life that Jesus has called you to live? All at the same time saturating everything that you can do. Believing, living this life, everything within your power, saturating that action, that life with a prayer. It struck me hard. And what I want us to do this morning as we wrap up is I want to give you an opportunity to do that same thing. My prayer is that while I'm talking through that and I say just, hey, begging Jesus for people, interceding in prayer, just lifting, having such a hurt for them. Maybe you have a child who's entering into a new season of life, some new things coming up. Why don't we take some time and just begin to beg Jesus to prepare the path that's ahead of them, to begin to beg Jesus to just move and stir in their life that they experience Him in a way that they never have before. Maybe you have a child or a friend who's dealing with depression and anxiety and they just can't seem to shake it. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in their life, just to begin to put them in the right places, to begin to put the people around them that needs to be there and just help relieve some of the torment that they're feeling. Maybe it's a spouse. Why don't we take some time to begin to beg Jesus, to do Jesus things in the area. Maybe it's in your relationship. Maybe there's a fractured relationship. Maybe it's your relationship at home. But I just want to give us a little bit of time to model what we see in Mark 7 and model what we see in Psalm 122. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to shut up, right? Then I'm going to give you some time to just pray. And to close out our morning, we're going to do exactly what we read in Psalm 122. We pray blessings upon the people that we love. We pray for the sake of our family and friends. We will stand together and we will sing and offer a blessing, but also include in that prayer, it says, Jesus, help me to live the life you've created and called me to live. Help me to live a life that is a reflection of you. Help me to live and build my life on your love. So I'm going to give you a couple of minutes and then we're going to start singing the song. If you know it, you're more than welcome to stand and sing as well or just stay and remain praying in your own words. But towards the end of that song, I'll invite us to stand and we'll close that off seriously. So take a few minutes and just begin praying for the people that God has laid on your heart. Amen. Amen. Let's pray. Amen. Thank you. I just want to speak the name of Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every and all of anxiety. To every storm held captive by depression, I speak Jesus. Oh, I just want to speak the name of Jesus over fear and all anxiety To every soul held captive by depression I speak Jesus Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows. Burn like a fire. Church, would you stand and sing it out. Jesus for my family Come on. I speak the holy name, Jesus. Your name is power. Your name is healing. Your name is life. Break every stronghold. Shine through the shadows Burn like a fire Your name is power Your name is healing Your name is life I just want to speak the name of Jesus over every heart and every mind. Because I know there is peace within your presence. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Oh, I speak Jesus. I speak Jesus. Church, we're just going to make this our prayer. I will build my life on your love, Lord. Let's just sing this out together. Father, we give you our heart, we give you our life, and we give you our hope. Our faith is expressed in the life that we live and the prayers that we offer for our family and friends. Come on, church, time. Sing it out. Let's pray this blessing. generations He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. Come on, sing it out. Amen. Amen. Amen. May His favor be upon you and a thousand generations and your family and your children and your children and your children. and behind is is Just our voice, let's sing it out. One more time. We sing. Amen. Amen. Amen. God, we thank you so much and we praise you, Lord. Grace, we're so glad that you decided to join us today. We hope that it was a good morning for you. Make sure you come back next week. Don't forget Thursday night, the fall fling at Ignite Up. You guys have a great week. We'll see you.

Morning, everyone. My name is Tom Sartorius. I'm one of the elders and partners here at Grace, and this morning's reading is from Psalm 120. I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me. Save me, O Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues. What will he do to you, Tom. You may have noticed Tom using a church Bible for that. We do not require elders to own their own Bibles, but we're hopeful that Tom will be able to acquire one in the coming months. Thank you, Tom. Yeah, this morning is the second part of our series called Ascent. Last week, Erin Winston, our children's pastor and pastor extraordinaire, opened the series up for us. And she kind of explained a little bit what it was, why we're doing it, where it's from. But as she was doing that, there was a little bit of sound issues. It was really nobody's fault, but no one was paying attention. No one heard what she said. So just to reorient us in this series, it is, this is one that's been a long time coming. I've kind of shared with you guys before. Sometimes we'll have series that we know we want to do. We know they'll be good for the church. We know we want to expose you guys to that thought process or information, but it just, it sometimes takes two, three, four years to work it into the calendar just right. And so we're all excited to finally be able to do this series. It is based on the Psalms of Ascent, which are Psalms 120 to 134. And what I didn't even know, I knew offhand that these existed, but I didn't really learn about them entirely until I read a book by a pastor named Eugene Peterson called Along Obedience in the Same Direction. It's a phenomenal book. If you get nothing else from this series, I hope you'll write down the name of that book and that you'll read it. It's a movement through all 15 of the Psalms of Ascent with some commentary before and after, and it will serve you. I just tell you, it will serve you better in your spiritual journey to read that than to listen to me preach about it for the next several weeks. I hope that I can do it justice, and I hope that it can focus our attention on the right things, but Eugene Peterson, to me, he's one of my favorite Christians that's ever lived. I think back in 2021, maybe, I read his autobiography just called Pastor about his story as a life in his life being a pastor, and it's one of the most personally impactful books I've ever read. So I'm really excited to expose you guys to what is probably his greatest work, a long obedience in the same direction. And these Psalms of Ascent are called the Psalms of Ascent because typically when you're going to Jerusalem, you're ascending, you're going up a mountain. No matter where you're coming from, Jerusalem's highly elevated compared to the rest of the country of Israel, give or take. And so usually when you're ascending, you're ascending to Jerusalem. So these are psalms that families were supposed to go through as they approached the city on pilgrimage. There's also a specific place in Jerusalem, the Temple stairs, I believe, where you were to pause when you arrived. You were to pause on the first step and sing this first psalm and pray over it as a family. Take the second step, do the second psalm. There's 15 psalms and 15 steps that aligned in this way. And overarching this entire series is this idea of pilgrimage, of a long obedience in the same direction, of the perseverance required by the Christian life, an acknowledgement that the Christian life is not simply a decision one day to accept Christ as our Savior and allow God to be the Lord of our life, but it is a daily decision that we renew. The Christian life is a long, steady obedience in the same direction. And so that idea serves as an umbrella over everything we talk about, that this implication that the Christian life is long and it is difficult, and we are pilgrims on a journey. This morning, we take the first step of that journey. The first psalm is Psalm 120, and that is a psalm of repentance. And when I think about repentance, I kind of think about it like this. Have you ever been in a space, your office, kids' room, kids' playroom, your kitchen, wherever it is, and you just look around and there's so much junk everywhere, you go, I can't live like this. This is disgusting. I have to clean this before I can do another thing. Have you ever had that impulse? If you have never had that impulse, you should clean your home this afternoon. Some of us would freak out. Some of you have that impulse so much that you will secretly clean your sister's house or your mom's house. You'll secretly go behind people and just clean at their place because you just want it to be nice for them. It's funny. I wrote this sermon a couple of weeks ago, but Jen took the kids. Lily's on fall break. Lily's my eight-year-old daughter. So she took Lily and John down to Jen's sister's house so the kids could play together and go to zoos and all the things that little kids do. And so I've been home alone since Thursday. And when I got up this morning, took a shower, went downstairs, got my Bible, got my notes, and went to go through the sermon. I go through the sermon on Sunday mornings just to make sure I'm familiar with it. And I went to go through the sermon. I'm standing in the kitchen, and I was like, I can't live like this. I can't do this. It just had four days of bachelor junk sitting around, you know? And I was like, I got to whirlwind clean this thing. So after I was able to clean the living room and the kitchen, I was able to get to work. But I don't know if you can relate to that, but I think most of us can. This idea where you just look around and you go, this is a mess. This is disgusting. I can't live like this. I have to do something about it right away before I can take another step. This, to me, is the heart of the beginning of repentance. Now, repentance gives a bad rap. We don't like to think about repentance. That one's hard. That's when we have to be hard on ourselves. We have to make better choices. We have to change things. Repentance is tough, and it might be uncomfortable to bring it up, but it's absolutely essential, and I hope that after this morning, that many of us can think about it perhaps in a different way and even seek to make it a habit. But along the lines of repentance being the first part of it, just kind of being disgusted with what's going on as we look around our life, Eugene Peterson says it like this, a person has to be thoroughly disgusted with the way things are to find the motivation to set out on the Christian way. So a person before knowing Jesus has to look around at their life and be so disgusted with the way things are going, with the current state of affairs, with what's happening on their inside life and in their outside life. And be so disgusted with it that they go how we do in a mess. This is disgusting. I can't live like this. I have to do something about it. That moment has to come, has to precipitate genuine repentance. So he says, and I think as a Christian, because most of us in the room are Christians, as a Christian, we can think about it this way. We have to be so disgusted with the areas of our life that we have not yet relinquished to God. Because we've given our lives to God, right? But we've all got these little pockets where we know God probably doesn't want this habit in our life. He probably doesn't want this attitude. He probably doesn't want this pattern. He probably doesn't want this in my life. But I'm a Christian, and I'm good, and I'm pretty squared away. So I'm just going to keep this. This is under the lordship of God. Yes, this is my Christian life. This is my personal life. It's under the lordship of me. I'm going to continue to run things here. And Eugene says, until we get disgusted with how this feels, we will never convert it over to the Lordship of God in our life and take a step towards the Christian path. So one of the objects this morning is to help us think about our sin and look at the things that we have in our life in certain ways that make us miserable and make us disgusted and cause us to wake up in the morning going, who am I? Or cause us to finish an argument with our spouse and think, what was that all about? Or after we lose our mind on our kids, we go, what in the world, where did that come from? Or after we just go through a day thinking everyone's annoying or everyone's a moron or everyone's an idiot, and then we get home and we're like, is this really, do I want to be this angry? In those moments, we should reflect and become upset at the mess around us that our sin is making. David did it like this in the Psalm. Tom just read it for us. It starts off doing exactly this. I call on the Lord in And I think that's great. It's a great way to start off repentance. Last week, Aaron preached about, when I struggle, where does my help come from? Does it come from the mountains? Does it come from the altars on the mountains that serve me in different ways, that allow escapes and outs in different ways? And the psalmist says, no, lift your eyes up to God. Your help comes from God, creator of heaven and earth. So this repentance starts out in the exact right way. He looks to God in his distress. It's the song we just sang, God, I need you. We look to God in our distress. Run to the Father, fall into grace. So in his distress, he looks to God, which is the right way to start in repentance. Very first thing, I can't do this. I'm not going to white knuckle my way out of this sin or out of this attitude or out of this way of life. I need your help, God. And then he laments his sin. He laments his lying lips and his hypocrisy. He laments who he is and who he has become because of where he is and who he's surrounded himself with. He reaches a place of disgust with his sin, and so he cries out to God in his distress. And as I wrote this sermon, it occurred to me that for this to make sense, we can't just exist in the hypothetical and talk about vague sins that we deal with, you deal with, David dealt with, I dealt with, you know, whatever. We would need a specific example, and that example could only come from me. So I'm going to share with you more about my personal life than I want to. Don't get nervous. It's not any bad. Because I think we need to actually walk through a sin together to help us get this idea. Somebody did this for me, and it's what helped me understand the idea. So a couple, two, three months ago, Jen and I were finishing up the day, and Jen's my wife, and we got in a little spat, just a little normal marriage tiff, you know, not a huge deal. And we don't really do a lot of those. We're not fighters. Fighting with Jen's like kicking a puppy. So you can't really do anything there. You just feel terrible and shut up. You're right. I'm sorry. So we don't do a lot of anger and frustration in the house. We really don't. But we were frustrated with each other this night. And I honestly don't remember what it was about or what brought it on. I think it was probably just our typical disagreement, which is she's annoyed at me with something and I'm annoyed at her for having the audacity to be annoyed with me. And so then we butt heads. And towards the end of the conversation, I hit her with this one. This is a classic marriage argument. I don't know if you've used it before. I would not recommend if you don't mean it. But I hit it with, you know, lately I haven't even felt like you've liked me very much, which is kind of the emotional jujitsu of, do you see how all this is your fault? Because you haven't been being kind to me. You haven't been being the wife that I deserve. How do you expect me to do the things you want me to do when you don't even like me? It didn't land and we went to bed. And that whole night I was tossing and turning because I realized that the whole disagreement, I was reflecting on the last couple weeks, months of my life. And I realized that the whole disagreement was my fault because of some bad patterns in my life. And I knew that I needed to confess. I knew that I needed to apologize. And so I couldn't sleep. I'm just waiting for her to wake up so I can pounce on her with apologies and love, right? I just, I need this to be right, and I need her to know that I know it's my fault. And so I get up, I make us coffee. That's the peace offering, coffee on the nightstand. And when she wakes up, I said, hey, listen, I'm super sorry. She said, okay, tell me more. I said, the argument that we had last night was 100% my fault. She goes, what makes you think that? And I said, I just realized that all I've wanted from anyone in my life for the past couple of months is just to leave me alone. I've just been living selfishly. I just feel pulled in every direction. And all I want from anyone all the time is just leave me alone. And I said, that's a really cruddy way to be a father. It's a really cruddy way to be a husband. And by the way, I'm really sorry. It takes some special kind of chutzpah to accuse you of not liking me when I've been acting wholly unlikable for the last two months. My bad. And she laughed, and she said, I'm glad you know. And then we were good. We were good. But that tossing and turning all night, being concerned with the disagreement, wanting to get to the bottom of what was going on and motivating there. That was the process that the Holy Spirit used to bring me to a point of disgust with myself. Because what a terrible thing it is to go through life, especially as a father, a husband, and a pastor, and all you want is for people to leave you alone? Dude, you've made some bad choices. You have misaligned your life with what you need to do if that's really what you want is to be left alone. And so that's not an option. So I had to come to a place of disgust where it shook me so much that I could actually stop and let the Holy Spirit help me see where I had been selfish and confess that to my wife. So first I had to confess it to God at four in the morning and then I had to confess it to at seven in the morning. Because I got to this place of disgust where I looked at my life and I said, I can't live like this anymore. I have to clean it up. Right? But if we're going to truly repent of a sin, after we confess, we have to consider. Once we confess our sin, yes, this is in me. Yes, this is wrong. Yes, I have this habit, this pattern, this attitude. Yes, I've been making exceptions for myself in this way. I confess my sin. After that, we must consider the consequences of our sin. David says it this way, Psalm 123-4. I don't know what burning coals of a broom brush are, but I don't want them. I'd like to not find out experientially. He says, he stops and he considers. What will happen if I continue in this pattern? What will happen if I continue to be surrounded by lying tongues and deceitful lips and I continue to have lying tongues and deceitful lips? Well, what will happen in this instance is that God is going to allow warriors to come in and punish us on his behalf. The consequences of this sin are grave. And so it's good for me to sit and face those consequences and look at the reality that my sin could bring about. For me, in different times and ages and places throughout the church, the threat of divine punishment has served the church well to get us to make better decisions in our life. But for me, that's never worked super great. For me, I have to think about the actual literal results of my sin if it goes unchecked. And so to consider your sin is to think through the impact that it's having on the people around you. So in that season of selfishness in my life, which was just a season. I've only been selfish about two or three months out of my life. Everywhere else is super giving. So how about in that heightened activity of selfishness in my life in that particular season? I did the exercise the next day in the office. I sat down, I had my quiet time, and I made myself go through the exercise of how can this sin hurt the people around me? And the first thing that was brought to mind was Lily, my eight-year-old daughter. And I immediately just felt terrible because I've noticed this with other people's kids before I had kids. And now that I have kids, I see that it's absolutely true. When there's a little kid, three is like the height of cute. Three is super cute. One, two, three, it's all great. Four is pretty great. Five, all right, most of the time. But eventually, somewhere around five, six years old, it's like, all right, you're just an annoying little kid now. You've transitioned. You've got a goofy-looking smile. You do dumb stuff. You're always saying, look at me, when you do some regular thing that every kid in the world can do. Like, look at me, dad. Yeah, I mean, you jumped. That's really great. You know, like, every kid gets to this annoying phase until they're cool again. Like, they're, I don't know, 23. And part of what was requiring energy from me was to engage with Lily, to laugh at her jokes, to watch her dance, to give her the attention that she wants from her dad. But my selfishness, and this is hard to say, my selfishness was penalizing her for being eight. Not bad, not unreasonable, not demanding, not selfish. My own junk, as her dad, was penalizing my daughter for simply being eight. What does it communicate to her if I'm annoyed with her at every turn? It teaches her that she's fundamentally annoying. What an awful thing for a father to do to a daughter. It taught John similar lessons. When I didn't want to do trucks or have the dinosaurs fight again, or listen, I'm so bad at engaging in imaginative play. You be the dad. Oh, jeez, I am the dad, and he doesn't want to play. But by not doing those things, what I teach him is I don't want to be with him. I don't want to indulge him. I don't want to. I just want, I'm going to be selfish, and I'm going to do my thing. You do your thing, John. I distance myself from him. And then worse than that, the way that it hurts Jen is because she sees me annoyed with the load and the burden of the family, because she's sweet and because she's selfless, she takes on more of it. She tries to protect me by protecting me from the kids, and she takes on a bigger burden in the home. And that engenders in her resentment for always having to pick up my slack because I'm always in a grumpy mood because I always want to be left alone. It's completely unacceptable. And then you think about how it makes the staff feel at church when my door is constantly closed and I never want to talk to anybody and I go quick into meetings and out of meetings and I'm not available because I just want to be left alone. The ripples of this are terrible for a husband and a father and a pastor. But it's an important step in the process of repentance to think through the consequences of your sin if it goes unchecked. The question, after we realize our sin, after we've come to a place of disgust and we've said, I've got to clean this up, as we begin to clean, the question we should all learn to ask about our sin, we need to do the mental exercise to help with the disgust. The question we should learn to ask is, who am I hurting with my sin and how am I hurting them? Who am I hurting with my sin and how am I hurting them? I don't know what your sin is. I genuinely hope by now that you've been thinking along with me. That when I talked about the idea of confessing sins, that maybe you started to go through your mind and what the wake of your last few weeks have looked like or months. And I hope that you started to kind of go, I wonder what I need to confess. I wonder where my messes are. I wonder where the pockets of my life are that I haven't surrendered to the Lordship of God and I'm still ruling the roost there. And maybe those are the things that are actually making me miserable or anxious or whatever sometimes. I hope that you've begun to do that exercise. And I hope that as I was walking through the consequences of my sin with the people that I love the most, that you were starting to spin forward and think about the consequences of your sin with the people you love the most. Maybe it's selfishness like me. Maybe there's a secret habit or addiction that you're fostering. Maybe there's an attitude that you're maintaining. I'll tell you this, if you can't think of one, if you're sitting there going, gosh, I don't know what I need to confess or repent of, this is tricky. Well, then yours is pride. So that's easy to figure out. And if you still don't know what it is, ask your wife. She knows. She'll tell you. Ask your sister. Ask your best friend. Hey, I need to think about confession and repentance, but I don't really know what I'm doing wrong. I promise you they do. They'll help you out. But I hope that you've been doing that math and thinking along with me. But even as we confess and consider our sin, that's still not repentance. Repentance requires this last step. After we confess and consider, we must commence. After we confess our sin, we consider its consequences. We must commence. We must step. We must move. David are going to be if the sin goes unchecked. And he chooses to commence and take a step and go, I can't be here anymore. I have to move. I have to move away from what the world offers and towards what God offers. This whole Psalm follows the prescription that Eugene Peterson laid out at the beginning when he said that we have to be thoroughly disgusted with things the way they are before we can take a step towards God. It is not lost on me that in this sacred portion of the solemn book of Psalms, in these songs of ascent that were written by David for every generation of worshiper that would ever follow him to go through them every year in their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. That a Jewish person would know these Psalms as well as a lifelong Christian knows the Christmas story out of Luke 2. And the angels appeared over the shepherds giving watch of the flock by night. It's all very familiar stuff for us. To the Jewish person, these Psalms of Ascent were just as familiar. You heard them every year. You heard your granddad give them, and then you heard your dad give them, and then you gave them. They were part of their life. An absolutely crucial spiritual linchpin in the life of a Hebrew in ancient Israel. And it is not lost on me that something of that great of import was started intentionally with repentance. He could have picked any topic. He could have started anywhere he wanted. He could have talked about the greatness of God. He could have talked about our need for God. He could have talked about the glory of God. He could have talked about loving our family. He could have talked about joy. He could have talked about all these things, but he starts with repentance. And I think it's so important because the first step of every journey towards God is always repentance. The first step of every journey towards God is always, always, always genuine repentance. To confess, to consider, and then to commence, to move. The most clear example of repentance in the Bible that I see is found in the book of Acts in chapter 2. Jesus has died. He rose again on Easter. He spent 40 days ministering to the people in and around Jerusalem, specifically the disciples. He ascended up into heaven. And then he told the disciples to wait for the Holy Spirit to come. And they waited for 40 more days. And then at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came. And when the Holy Spirit came, Peter goes out on the balcony and he preaches to thousands of people in and around the Jerusalem area. And these are the same people who were a part of the mobs 80 days ago who crucified Christ. And he goes out there and he tells them who that Jesus was that they crucified. And they said, we believe. What do we do? And Peter says, repent and be baptized. The very first step he asks them to take in their Christian journey is to repent. And it's to repent. This is a fundamental repentance of all Christianity, I believe. What are they to repent of? I believe that specifically what they needed to repent of in this instance is repent of who you thought Jesus was before I told you the truth about him. That's the fundamental repentance of Christianity. And if you're here today and you're not a Christian because you came with a spouse or you're just checking it out or you're considering or whatever. If you are going to become a believer, the Bible urges you to make this fundamental repentance of Christianity, which is whoever I thought Jesus was before I came in here today, I now agree with who he says he is. To be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God who came to take away the sins of the world. He did what he said he did. He died on the cross to make a path for us to heaven and reclaim creation. And he's coming back again to get us. Revelation 19, crashing down through the clouds with righteous and true written on his thigh to rescue creation back to its maker. That's what it is to be a Christian. And so the fundamental repentance of Christianity is to repent, move away from, confess, consider, and commence away from who we thought Jesus was and move towards who he is. And in this way, all repentance is saying some version of no to the lies of the world and what it offers and to our little kingdoms and fiefdoms in our own lives. And moving towards, as we confess that sin, we consider the consequences and then we commence our movement towards God in this pilgrimage of a long obedience in the same direction. Confession is fundamentally, or repentance is fundamentally a rejection of the world and an acceptance of God. And you know, in September, September 10th, I opened up a series called The Traits of Grace. And I said, this sermon is going to be, I think, the most important sermon I've delivered in several years at Grace. And I rolled out for you discipleship pathways. And I encouraged us to be step takers, people who take our next step of obedience, kind of like being on a pilgrimage. I said that everybody has in front of them a step of obedience that they need to take. And I want to encourage you to take yours. And I challenged us on September 10th. Listen, the most important thing we can do over the next few years is not build a building, is not grow the church, is to allow God to grow us in our depth spiritually. I challenged you to begin to take your spiritual growth personally, to begin to prioritize it, to begin to prioritize personal holiness. And now here we are at the onset of another series. And God has brought this theme back around of repentance and confession and a beginning of a move towards him. So I'm inviting you as we move through this series together, as we reflect on the one that we just had and what it asks of us, on this journey towards God with grace. And if you want to do that, if you want to take your spiritual health seriously, then that journey begins with the step of repentance. So what I'm going to do, instead of closing us out in prayer, is I'm going to let Aaron continue to pray. And I'm going to invite you to respond to what you've just heard in a time of your own prayer. If you're not sure what to confess, if you're not sure where to start, ask that God would open your eyes and let you see. Where are the attitudes and actions and habits in my life that don't need to be there that are actually causing me misery that I might not recognize? Ask God to make you disgusted with the pockets of sin in your life. And then in prayer, consider how that sin could hurt the people that you love the most if it goes unchecked. And then in prayer, if you feel so led, begin to take steps towards God in that area. And let's have a time of repentance together this morning as we take our first step on this journey towards God in the Psalms of Ascent.