Sermons tagged with Light

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson, and I'm a partner here at Grace. I'm asked to speak a couple of times a year on average, and I typically begin with an icebreaker or some attempt at humor. Not too long ago, I began by singing a children's Bible song about the wise man who built his house upon the rock. Another time, I began with a balloon trick. I do this all in the hope that even if just for a moment, you all might forget that intense feeling of disappointment when you saw me, rather than Nate, walk up on stage. And to add injury to insult, even though Nate paid me a compliment when he was up here, what you didn't see was that as he walked by me, he said, I lied, Doug. Is there any wonder I struggle with confidence and self-esteem issues? Today, however, perhaps because I've matured and become more confident, but more likely because I just see the futility of it all, I'm not doing that. No dog and pony show for you. Not today. We're going to dive right in. And I'll start by reading our passage for this morning. It's 1 Peter 2, verses 4-10 are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says, see, I lay a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you leave church on any given Sunday morning. If you ever took a sermon prep class at the local seminary or bought sermons for dummies at Amazon, I suspect both would implore the aspiring preacher to have an application in mind. Well, with today's passage, I don't have an application, and I'm not going to try to directly influence what you do when you leave here, but rather, perhaps, what you think. How we think about and understand things to a great extent determines what we do and how we behave. This dynamic is affirmed throughout all of Scripture. Yet when Jesus asks, who do you think I am? If an honest answer is that he is the resurrected Son of God and Lord and Savior, then your life is going to look very different from someone who doesn't share that view. Or, from a slightly different angle, if you'd like to be a more humble person, then unless you heed the Apostle Paul's warning not to think more highly of yourself than you ought, good luck, because it's going to be a struggle for you. Simply put, our actions flow from how we think and what we believe. Sometimes it's good not to do anything or take any action steps, but just to marinate in our thoughts. And what Peter wants us to think about in a word is identity. How should we think of ourselves? Who and what do we identify as and with? Who is our tribe? What is our truth? It's a very trendy and timely question in our present culture to ask how we identify. Who are we, really? Although it may be particularly trendy in today's culture, it's not a new question, but an ancient one. How we identify, who are we, and to whom do we ultimately belong, has always been the central question in Scripture ever since God first established his covenant with the Israelites and Moses at Sinai. And for the Christian believer today, there is still no more paramount a question. Now, for a long time, I found today's passage to be one of the many in the Bible that I kind of get, but I kind of don't. The importance, significance doesn't really fully sink in. Yeah, yeah, I'm a living stone. A royal priest? Sure. Part of a holy nation? You bet. Got it. But that's been changing over the last 20 years or so. My grasp of what Peter is asserting about my identity, who I truly am, has evolved and is still evolving, which is a good thing. And I owe this movement primarily to two very different but exceedingly impactful experiences in my life. Before sharing the first of those two key experiences, a few minutes of background are in order. I was the only boy with three sisters growing up outside of Chicago. My older sister Lynn fell in love and married Andrew one year out of high school. She was 18 and he 19. Now it turns out that Andrew's parents had been missionaries in Africa in a Portuguese colony called Angola. And that's where he was raised until the age of 12. As was the case with a number of African colonies at that time. violent insurgencies were spreading, and Angola was no exception. When independence finally came in 1975, Angola plunged for the next 27 years into civil war, the longest in all of Africa. The government became communist, aided by the Soviets and some 50,000 Cuban troops. Our CIA and South African defense forces supported the anti-communist rebels and, as is always the case, it was the people of Angola who suffered. Already a poor and underdeveloped country, Angola effectively went completely dark. No communication, no news, no way of knowing if any of the people Andrew and his family had ever lived with, worked with, played with, worshipped with, or even still alive. Then in the mid-1990s, after two decades of war, little snippets of news began to leak out of the country. During a temporary ceasefire, Andrew and his father were able to return in the hope of possibly reconnecting with old friends. What they found was that while many had somehow managed to survive, no family had escaped the carnage untouched by tragedy. What little infrastructure there had been was no more. Formal education for most of the nation's children had ceased. The mission station where Andrew had grown up was destroyed. Living for the average person, always difficult in Angola, had become a very tenuous affair. The next year, my sister, who had never been out of the United States, joined her husband in returning to Angola to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. Now, I don't know this for a fact, but I suspect there were some really, really, really good hotel deals. Shortly after that visit, violence erupted again, and the country fell back into darkness. Back home safely in the U.S., my sister and brother-in-law watched on CNN what was going on in the Balkans and guessed that the same type of refugee crisis, people and families fleeing the conflict zone to save themselves, just what's like happening now in the Ukraine, must surely be happening along Angola's borders as well. So with little fanfare, they flew to Windhoek, Namibia, to look for some refugees to help. Upon arriving, they were told that their plan was incredibly naive and dangerous. However, they did learn of several large refugee camps established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the remote bush on the border, Angolan border, near both Namibia and Zambia. And this is where they began taking their four kids and small teams of like-minded people for the next several years. In 2002, I joined them for the first time in visiting Nangweshi Refuge Camp in western Zambia. And just as an editorial note, regardless what you think of the United Nations, what they do in the most forlorn and dangerous places on earth, in the most desperate of times for tens and tens and tens of thousands of refugees who, through no fault of their own, are barely clinging to survival. It's magnificent. It's just magnificent. We spent quite a bit of time that trip in the new arrivals area, where, after days, weeks, months, and even years, Angolan refugees would emerge cold, sick, hungry, naked, and afraid. My brother-in-law used to say that if our Messiah walks anywhere in Nangweshi, he most certainly walks among the new arrivals. Later that same year, a lasting peace accord was signed. So instead of going back to the refugee camps, it was decided that a small team would go into Angola, Tukwitu, the provincial capital in the central highlands, and then proceed further up into the countryside to the old mission station where Andrew had been raised. Our hope was to build a schoolhouse. Flying into Kuitu, our pilot, out of habit and an abundance of caution, came in very high doing corkscrew turns to make a more difficult target for enemy fire. When we landed, I modestly and politely dashed off the runway into some tall grass to relieve myself. When I came back, I saw the pilot going to the bathroom right next to the plane. And I asked him, what's up with that? And he said the airport was mined and that one should never leave the runway. Little heads up would have been helpful. Having never been in a war zone, Quito was just like you see on the news. Collapsed buildings, bullet holes everywhere. It was thought at the time to have more landmines than any other city in the world. Some of you older folk and any Anglophiles might even remember Princess Diana doing a famous photo shoot in Kuitu in 1997 to bring attention to her anti-landmine campaign. Our final destination was the old destroyed mission station at Jolanda. And it was here, by far the most remote and primitive place I'd ever been in my life. No running water or plumbing of any kind, no electricity, no phones, that the first experience that so influenced my understanding of 1 Peter 2 took place. Now, Chelonda's not a town or village as we know them. No stores, no services, no nothing. Just some small mud and thatch huts spread over a wide area. There was, however, a tiny wooden chapel where several of the villagers would meet every morning at six to start their day. Several times, I got up and walked the three-quarter of a mile to that chapel, sitting down in the dim early morning light with about a half dozen villagers, both men and women. It was all very informal, a reading or two from scripture, a few hymns, a time of prayer. Everything sung, spoken, or read, either in Portuguese or Mbundu. Now, when our three kids were very young, Debbie and my three kids, we used to play a game in which they would try to pick out what was odd or out of place in a particular picture. They wouldn't have found this scene very challenging. Sitting among those villagers who had all just come through almost four decades of armed conflict and upheaval, I might as well have been from Mars. The contrast so stark. Subsistence farmers who, like all but the most privileged Angolans, had been born into suffering and struggle, had lived their entire lives in suffering and struggle, and would die in suffering and struggle. It was truly a where's Waldo on steroids. My looks, my entire life experience, my language, my priorities, my expectations, my dreams couldn't have been more different even if I literally had been from Mars. Yet, as strange as that may seem, those mornings were an unbelievable blessing to me, spiritually and relationally rich and abundant. How could that possibly be? Hold that question in your minds for just a few moments. The second key experience in my life that has so helped shape my grasp of today's passage is far removed from my time in Angola, but no less impactful. Years ago, I was asked if I could come up with a curriculum which would provide a framework a framework for understanding god's entire story is revealed in the bible all of redemptive history from genesis to revelation despite being uniquely unqualified to do so i said yes from that exercise and from the five times I subsequently facilitated that class, my eyes were open to all sorts of things about God and his word. One of the most enduring lessons I learned was that God chose to reveal his purposes and his plans slowly and incrementally over a long period of time. In other words, he just didn't blurt out what he intended to do and leave it at that. If he had, the Bible would be a lot shorter, perhaps just a pamphlet. But it would also be completely incomprehensible. Instead, in his wisdom, God first unveils his plans in ways both the original audience and subsequent readers might be able to understand and get their arms around a little bit. Then over time, the same themes and ideas are developed further, expanding in scope and complexity until they reach their ultimate fulfillment, which typically is something we never, ever could have envisioned at the outset. Thankfully, almost every aspect of God's redemptive plan is introduced and developed this way in Scripture, including a key element of the plan that Peter highlights, God's house, the place where he dwells with his people. We're first introduced to this concept of God's dwelling place shortly after he rescued his people out of slavery in Egypt. God established a covenant with the Israelites at Mount Sinai in which he promises to be their God and to dwell with them as long as they agree to place their faith and trust in him. The Israelites were to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation set apart simple tent set up outside the Israelite camp where the Lord would meet with Moses. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all of the Israelites would stand and watch. As Moses entered the tent, the presence of God would descend in a pillar of cloud and fill that little tent with his glory. While still camped at Sinai, the Lord commanded his people to build a larger and more elaborate tent, the tabernacle, to serve as a sanctuary. Throughout all their time in the desert, the Lord's presence was over that tabernacle in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Spectacular. Absolutely. It must have been amazing to witness. But nothing in comparison to what God ultimately had in store. Once in the promised land, Israel's greatest king, David, wanted to build a permanent house, a temple for the Lord. But he was told that such a house wasn't his to build. Rather, a son of his would be the one to build such a house. And that promise was literally fulfilled when David's son Solomon completed the first temple and then over the course of 14 days dedicated it to the Lord by sacrificing 22,000 cattle and 120,000 sheep and goats. Quite the ceremony. But even at this relatively early stage in the biblical story, God is already encouraging us to lift up our gaze, our line of sight from the physical and the here and now to a time much farther into the future. This point is hammered home when Israel, because of its inability to keep the covenant, is conquered by the Babylonians, Solomon's great temple is destroyed, and the people exiled to foreign lands. Later efforts to rebuild the temple are never able to recapture its former glory. All during this time, though, a steady drumbeat of Old Testament prophecies tell of another king who is coming, an even greater son of David whose kingdom and throne will endure forever. And it is this king who will build God's true and everlasting house. The prophet Isaiah speaks of God laying a precious cornerstone and that whoever trusts in it, in that cornerstone, will never be ashamed. Although introduced and developed in a way the Israelites and the rest of us could understand, a tent, a tabernacle, a great temple made of stone, the place where God ultimately planned to dwell with his people could never be contained within a building built by man, no matter how extravagant. What God had in mind was always going to be far, far grander in scope and scale and significance. When Jesus came in the flesh to dwell, to tabernacle with us on earth, it became clear that he was God's precious cornerstone. He was the new and better temple of God, a magnificent, vibrant, growing spiritual house built with living stones, those of us who have placed their faith, hope, and trust in Jesus' name. Now that's something. That's a big deal. We as believers are nothing less than living, breathing stones who are together being built into a magnificent house, a holy temple in which God lives by His Spirit. Let's take a moment to look around. I'm serious. Take a moment to look at the people on either side of you. Do it! In front of you and behind you. Please don't frustrate me. You are looking at living stones. God's royal priests. Members of a holy nation. I know, I know, it's a little rough, a little ragged in spots. Depending on who you're sitting near, it might at first blush, be a bit hard to fathom. But Peter has no qualms about asserting our true identities as that is who believers truly are in Christ. And those are more than just a bunch of fancy words and spiritual-sounding titles. For the same resurrection life that Christ experienced animates us now. We are truly living stones. And we are royal priests not simply because we now have direct and privileged access to God, but also because we offer our lives, both in word and deed, as acceptable and pleasing sacrifices to him. And as God's people, it is our high calling to represent his kingdom on earth, to be a people who make known what God has done. Not only does this have great implications for how we view ourselves, but it also has great implications for how we view the church. For if we are living stones being built together into God's great spiritual house, then our significance, activity, and purpose as individual believers cannot be realized apart from other believers. After all, one needs a bunch of living stones to build a spiritual house. In a very real sense, we belong to one another. And not only do we belong to and depend upon believers today, as in this faith community we call grace, for example, but we are also being built together and united with the living stones of all previous generations. And just as future generations of believers will be united and built together with us. Circling back to those early mornings I spent in that dimly lit little chapel in the middle of nowhere in the central highlands of rural Angola, I shared earlier that as strange as it may have seemed, those mornings were a great blessing. But it no longer seems so strange to me. What I now realize is there was a reason why those mornings were so spiritually and relationally rich and abundant. For they were among the few times in my life, maybe the only times, that all the things that I normally associate with who I am, all the things that I typically assume make up my identity, had been removed. Like varnish stripping away all the many layers of paint. All that remained was my true and eternal identity. And I was privileged to be sharing a few sacred moments with people who weren't different than me at all, but who at their core and their fundamental essence were just like me. Living stones, royal priests, people who once were not a people, but now are the people of God, redeemed out of darkness and into his wonderful light. And for a moment, at least, I knew what Peter was talking about. So before I dismiss this this morning, I'd like to close by reading a passage from Psalm 118, verses 22 through 23. The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Let's think about that as we leave this morning. Amen.

Good morning, everybody. If somebody back there could get the lights, that would be great. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. Thanks for being here this Sunday morning. If you're like me, this is a big Sunday. This is Master's Sunday. If you're watching online, I'm not supposed to wear this because the design does something weird to the camera and it makes it difficult to watch. But I'm not sorry because it's Master's Sunday. So this is what we get. This is also the seventh part of our series in Lent, where we've been looking at different character traits or ideas that we kind of pull out of the Lenten season and the story of the gospel. It's going to culminate next week with Easter, when we're going to observe some baptisms, baptizing people on Easter is literally one of the oldest, if not the oldest church tradition in all of church. The very early church would only baptize on Easter because it is in and of itself a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. So next week, we have four baptisms right now that we're planning to do, which I'm thrilled about. If any of you feel like you want to be a part of that service as well, if you want to take the step to be baptized and you've never done that before, and the Lord may be tugging on your heart a little bit, get in touch with me this week. It's not too late. We would love for you to be a part of that celebration next week as we celebrate Easter together. This week, we're focused on the topic of generosity. And whenever, in church circles, many of you know this, whenever you mention generosity or the topic this week is going to be generosity, that's code for this is the money sermon, right? This is the giving sermon. Don't bring your friends. I'm going to ask you guys for money, so bring them next week when we talk about other stuff. Don't bring them this week because I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable. But this week is a sermon about generosity, but it is not about that. It's not about strictly financial generosity. And as a matter of fact, I've been saying all along that it's been really great to be able to read the devotionals of others as we kind of approach these topics each week, except for this week. This week was terrible because last week after I finished my sermon, it's just kind of how it goes. Sisyphus pushes the rock up the hill. I write a sermon every week. So I'm driving home from church going, okay, what's next week's topic? How do I want to approach it? That kind of thing. And I'm thinking about generosity and I get this idea. Yeah, that's how we should approach it. That's how we should talk about it. I'm going to explain it in this way and think about it in this way. And I'm feeling good about myself for being very clever, for thinking about generosity in a new, more expanded way. And then I sit down Monday and I open up the devotionals and Doug Bergeson, who was a jerk, he wrote this. Actually, speaking of generosity, no kidding around, Doug and Debbie are in the, I call it the COVID baby room. There's the youngest baby room where my son is. And then there's, and then you graduate into the COVID baby room. These children were born in the midst of the pandemic and have never seen a human face besides their parents. And when you drop them off in that room, they're terrified. They have no idea what's going on. They just have to be gradually weaned through crying and tears. And Doug and Debbie are locked into a mortal combat right now with four of these kids, right? So just talk about generosity. They don't have to do that. They're just doing it because they love the young families that they serve. They love the church and whatever. So it's very generous. Doug is the opposite of a jerk sometimes. Anyways, I opened up the devotional on Monday, authored by Doug. And lo and behold, it's the exact idea that I think I'm so clever for coming up with, which clearly if Doug can also come up with it, not that clever. And so I opened it up to read it and I'm like, golly, this is exactly kind of the same idea that I wanted to communicate. So if you would like like a three minute version of this sermon with fewer jokes, then just read the devotional on Monday and tune me out right now. You'll be fine. But I wanted to approach it this way, and I was happy with the way that Doug approached it, because I think we're often so overly reductive of generosity, that when we think of generosity, particularly in church terms, particularly when the Bible espouses it or encourages it, I think that we think of it in terms of financial giving, of material generosity. And because we do that, what I want to propose to you today is actually the possibility that generosity is the most underrated character trait in the Bible. I think that I would argue with you that generosity, being a person who's generous, is maybe the most underrated character trait in the Bible. Now, the Bible encourages a lot of character traits. We are to be humble, and we are to be kind, and we are to be loving, and we are to be gentle, and we are to try to be lowly, and we are to be forgiving, and we are to be just. And there's a lot of things that the Bible would have us seek to be or that the Spirit would seek to shape us into, and amongst those is generosity. So I'm not saying that generosity is the most important character trait in the Bible, but I am saying that I think it might be the most underrated character trait in the Bible. And in that way, generosity is very similar to Waffle House. Now here's the thing, and it's something that I've noticed over the years about our North Raleigh crowd, and I've wanted to say something. I wasn't sure when it was appropriate, but I'm going to put it to you today. You guys don't eat at Waffle House enough, right? This church has a Waffle House deficiency, and it's high time that we address it. What are you, too good? Waffle House is delicious. And when we think of Waffle House, we think of waffles, which of course we do. They named their home after that particular dish. We think of the waffles, and the waffles are great. I like to get mine crispy, which means leave it in there a little bit longer. A Cajun waffle, blacken it up a little bit. You can get it with chocolate chips, which are miniature and delicious. And if you go during the right season, you can get them with peanut butter chips. Yeah, they're very good. They're very good. What you cannot do is get them with fresh fruit, all right? They don't do fresh fruit at Waffle House. You go to First Watch for that stuff, all right? Fancy pants? We're not doing it. We might have some apple butter somewhere. That's it in terms of fresh fruit. But it's more than just waffles. You don't want waffles? They got a sausage melt that's amazing. Wheat toast, melted American cheese, sausage patty, grilled onions, unbelievable. My wife likes the BLT there. It's not as good as the one you're going to get at Merritt's over in Chapel Hill, but it's cheaper, and the person who serves it to you is more friendly, and it's great. Unless the person serving it to you is on the back end of an overnight shift, if you get somebody at about 7.35 in the a.m., just don't talk to that person. They've had a harder night than you, all right? Otherwise, the service is amazing. The lunch is good. You can even get dinner there. They have T-bone steaks at Waffle House. I've never had one. I respect steak too much to order one from Waffle House, but you can get one there if you want one. And I think that Waffle House is often overly reduced to just waffles when they have so much more to offer. It's delicious. In the same way, we become so overly reductive of generosity, relegating it to financial giving, that we don't think of all the other ways in which we are called to be generous that I would contend are often more difficult than simple financial generosity. And as we've gone through these different topics in this series, I've said, you know, the Bible has a lot to say about this particular topic. But for generosity, I wanted to kind of give us an overview of what does the Bible have to say about this. So I'm going to go through four different passages that will be up on the screen for you to read along with me. But we're kind of just going to rapid fire through these. So in Psalm, Psalm 112, the psalmist writes, good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. In Proverbs, it's written, one person gives freely, yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty. A generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes others will be refreshed. And then in the New Testament, Luke writes, And finally, I would remind you of the verse that finished up what Kelsey read for us at the beginning of the sermon today. The last verse to God. There's a lot there about generosity. And as we started in Psalms, it zeroes in on financial generosity, the kind that we go to first when we think of someone who is a generous person. It says you should lend freely and you will receive freely. But it very quickly begins to expand it beyond that. It says conduct your affairs with justice. So that's not necessarily money. Now we're talking about offer justice generally to those around you. And then we get into Proverbs and it says a generous person will prosper. Whoever refreshes will be refreshed. So now we're starting to expand our understanding of generosity beyond simply the materials that we give one another, but in ways that we can refresh others. God says he will refresh us. And then it's interesting to me in Luke that this verse that's famous, that's often misused, often by other Christians trying to demean other Christians, or even by people outside the church trying to demean people within the church, judge not lest ye be judged, or judge not or you will also be judged. But it's followed with other character traits that don't condemn or you will be condemned, don't forgive or you won't be forgiven. It's other character traits, and it ends with be fair in your measurements, be generous in how you assess other people and other things. And it basically says, for with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. So as generous as you are towards other people in your judgment, God will be generous to you. As generous as you are with your forgiveness, God will be forgiving to you. As generous as you are with your condemnation, God will be generous with his condemnation towards you. And so we're expanding the view of generosity. And then finally, in Corinthians, there's this kind of wonderful, almost formula there. And I hesitate to use that word because I really don't like it when we reduce scripture to this formulaic approach so that if I do these things, God will give me these things. But in this instance, there does seem to be a cause and effect flow through the passage where he writes, Paul writes, that you will be enriched in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion. And through your generosity, through us, your generosity will result in thanksgiving. It's this idea that God says, I have blessed you in every way so that because of that blessing, you will be generous to others in every way. And because you are generous to others in every way, they will turn in thanks to me. They will be grateful to me. It will point them towards me. It's how God's generosity cyclically works to point other people back towards him, which we'll see more clearly in just a second. But what I want to contend with you this morning is we can only live out the truths of these scriptures if we expand our view of generosity. We can only live out the truth of the scriptures of what is said in these four passages and really throughout scripture and in particular in Corinthians where other people will glorify God because of us if we expand our view of what generosity could possibly be. Because there's so many more ways to be generous than simply financially. We can be generous in our judgment of others, in how we assess others. Some of us are very quick to judge. We see somebody driving a particular kind of car or wearing a particular type of clothes, or we learn the way that someone might have voted in the last election, and we are very quick to judge them and make all sorts of assessments about who they are. We can be more generous in our judgment of others. We can be more generous in our forgiveness that we offer towards others. We can be more generous in the grace that we offer towards people. We can be more generous in the way that we determine who we're going to spend our time with. We can be generous with our time. We can be generous with our attention. We can be generous in conversation. There are so many ways beyond financially to be generous people. And the more I thought about it, the more I reflected on the opportunities that we have for generosity and the generosity of some others that I've experienced in my life, the more I thought that, you know, generosity might be the greatest apologetic. Somebody being generous might be the greatest apologetic. Now, if any pastor has ever couched a note that he's made, it's me, because I just put might there in the middle of it. I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm just saying it could possibly be the greatest apologetic. And in this sense, an apologetic is a defense of the faith. It's an argument for the faith. And I tend to think that acts of generosity and all the different forms that they take can serve long-term to be far more winsome than any theological argument, than any scientific argument that we have crafted, that simply being generous to someone over time, letting other people see you be generous to everyone in your orbit and everyone in your sphere, can over time be more winsome towards Christ, can point people towards Jesus more than any argument that you could ever craft, could point people to Jesus more than even inviting them to church, could point people to Jesus more than challenging them. Hey, if you were to die today, do you know how you would spend eternity? And it's not that I don't want us to be having those conversations. Those conversations are good and we need to be sharing Christ with our neighbors. As a matter of fact, one of the goals of grace moving forward is that we would see God bring more people to faith through the people of grace so that we might celebrate that conversion. We want very much for more people to come to faith as a result of the ministries of this church. And the reason I'm saying that is because I think generosity can be such a big part of that. I think generosity can point us to Jesus in ways that almost nothing else can. Think of the instances in your life when someone has been generous to you. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they're on the fringe. Maybe you know what it is to be someone who feels like they are always kind of getting an unfair shake from other people. That with you, people tend to judge a book by its cover. And maybe people have treated you unfairly in your life. Maybe people have made assumptions about you because of where you come from or what you drive or what your story is or what your job is. Or just the way that you like to present yourself that may not be indicative of the whole person. It may just be a thing that you enjoy doing. And if you're one of those people that often gets misjudged by others, then you probably also have in your life someone who has just loved you and accepted you for who you are and has refused to judge you like other people do. Who has just heard you out. Who has given you the space to be yourself. Who has met you where you are and loved you there. And isn't that person's love and acceptance of you a far greater argument for Christ than anything else that could happen in your life? I think that generosity is a remarkable apologetic because we remember acts of generosity. When I was about 14 years old, I was coming out of eighth grade, going into ninth grade. I'm not sure how old you are when that happens. I went to Costa Rica on my very first mission trip. And we were building a, I think we were building a house for a university president of a Christian college down there, which you can imagine how useful eighth grade Nate was on a Costa Rican construction site. I'm certain that the workers were very glad that I was there. I know in Mexico, when we go and build walls, they usually have to, not usually, all the time, have to come back and correct all the mistakes that I've made to the point where I'm like, you know what? I'm just not going to do that anymore. I'm just going to mix stuff. I'm going to hand it to Jeffy. Jeff's going to do the blocks. I'm just going to stand here like a dum-dum because I have nothing to contribute to what's happening here. So I can't imagine the detriment that eighth grade Nate was to actually getting anything done in Costa Rica. But my parents paid the thousand dollars. I went down there like everybody else, and I was on a mission trip, and it was a really formative trip. And on the last night that we were there, we did like a little dinner or banquet or whatever it was, and there was one guy. He was, to me, an older man at the time. He was probably mid-40s, so like really close to my current age. And I don't know if you've ever experienced this on a mission trip, but when you go and there's a language barrier, which for me, I knew no Spanish at all at that time. So there was a huge language barrier between me and him. And you can't really communicate, but if you've been on a mission trip and you're kind of wired like me, then you understand that there is the universal language of joking around. There's a universal language of throwing stuff at each other, of stealing each other's tools and messing with each other all week long. And he was right there with us. He was jumping in and he and I had kind of bonded over that. And we seemed to have a similar spirit and enjoy one another. And so on the last night that we were there, he commented on my t-shirt. It was a United States soccer t-shirt. And he commented on it that he liked it. It was new. It was made by Nike in eighth grade. This is a big deal. But he said that he liked it and I wanted to be generous. So I went back to the room. I changed into another t-shirt and I walked out and I handed him this t-shirt. And I just wanted him to take it as a gift. And that man took off his shirt in the middle of the party, put on my T-shirt, folded up his shirt and gave it to me. Now his shirt was this knit pink long-sleeved polo shirt. It had some country club emblem right here that was not Costa Rican. Somehow or another, he had acquired this shirt. But if you've traveled overseas to third world countries, you know a lot of the folks that you interact with, they don't have a lot. By our standards, they have almost nothing. He was wearing one of what I am sure was one of the very few collared shirts that he had to that party that night because everybody was dressed nice. And some snot-nosed kid that was useless on the job site all week gave him a shirt. And so he wanted to return that generosity with his generosity and he gave me a shirt that mattered to him a lot more than some dumb U.S. soccer shirt could have ever mattered to me. And 30 years later, I remember that. And I remember seeing the love of Jesus in his eyes as he did it. Which is why I'm certain that generosity makes an impression. And it's why I think that it might be the single greatest apologetic, and it might make the single biggest difference in times when we're not sure how else to reach people. I said that we could also be generous with our time. This last week, I got an email from one of our families. I'm going to brag on our student pastor, Kyle, a little bit. I got an email from one of the families and the whole email was to tell us, was to tell me that the subject of it was, Kyle's a good dude. Yeah. Yeah. You got no disagreements with me there. They said that he came to our middle school daughter's softball double header. That's a boring sentence to say. I'm not trying to crud on middle school girls or boys, but middle school sports stink, all right? So if you are there and you're not a parent or a grandparent, holy smokes, you're a special human. And listen, they said he stayed for both of them, the whole first game and the second game. And he stayed afterwards for cake. Are you kidding me? I was a student pastor for years. You know what I'd do? I'd get there at the end of the first game. Hey, good job. I saw that bat you had. I was really sorry you didn't get a hit. But, oh, man, you were close. And then as soon as the next game started, I'd be like, okay, well, you know, it's... I put in my time. Kyle stayed for the whole doubleheader and then he stayed for cake. And it made such an impression on the family that they emailed me to say, hey, we got a heck of a guy here. And we do. And she's going to remember that. That she has a student pastor that cares about her that much, that he's going to stay for all those things. And you can remember acts of generosity in your life too. Maybe we know somebody that has access to something that's kind of fun that not everybody has access to, a beach house or a lake house or a box at some sort of sporting event or venue. And you watch them give that out to people who might not otherwise be able to afford it or use it or have access to that over the years. And you're awed by that. I remember watching my father-in-law use his lake house like that weekend after weekend after weekend for the college kids that lived in the area and would come in and want to be pulled by the boat. We've seen people be generous in those ways. And it makes an impression on us, whether it's generosity in conversation or in time or in assessment of one another or in actual material wealth or in opportunity, they make an impression on us. And that impression is important because God's generosity points us to others and then in turn points them back to God. God's generosity points us to others. Christians are generous because God has been generous to us. One of my favorite passages is in the book of John. It says, We know that while we were still sinners that Christ died for us, and that's what love is. We know that while we were very far from God that he pursued us. We know that we have never done anything that will make him love us any less. We know that we are his beloved sons and daughters. And because he lavishes that generous love on us, the more we focus on it, the more aware of it we are, the more we reflect on how generous our father has been with us, the more we are inspired to go and be generous to other people. And if I'm really being honest with you, the most generous people I know, some of whom are in this room, are always people who love God a lot. The most generous people that I know are almost always people who have this very deep walk with God and seem to understand things about God that I don't fully understand. And I'll tell you this too, growing up in an environment, in a church environment in the 80s and 90s where I was told the godliest people are the ones who know the most theology, the godliest people are the ones who can quote the most verses to you, the godliest people are the ones who can win every argument? No. The godliest people are the most generous people. I know jerks who can win lots of arguments. I don't know anybody who's generous with everything they have who doesn't have a faith that I want to seek to emulate. And so when someone is generous to us and we say, why are you doing that? Why are you giving me that? Why are you spending that on me? Why are you investing that in me? Their answer inevitably is because God gave it to me. And then that points us back to God, which is how we bring about the reality of that Corinthians passage. God says, I've blessed you. I've enriched you in every way that you might enrich others in every way so that they might give thanksgiving to me for who I am. Do you see how that works? Someone is generous to you individually. You say, why are you doing this? This is too much. And they go, because I love God and God loves you and I want to do this for you. And then they turn and they praise God for placing you in their life and seek to desire to be generous like they have just been the recipient of. This works corporately as well. When we give to church or we sacrifice for an institution, we do something together and the outside world goes, wow, how'd you guys do that? Why'd you do that? Well, because God loves us, so we do this. And they go, well, that's pretty great. I want to find out more about your God too. I just, I don't want us to reduce generosity to simple financial giving anymore. And as a matter of fact, I would say that financial generosity might just be the easiest kind, especially for those of us with resources. I want to be gentle and careful here, but I also know my audience and I know the neighborhoods that we live in. Sometimes financial generosity is the easiest kind. And I know this because I've bought someone's groceries before because I didn't want to wait for them to go to their car and get their debit card. They said their debit card was in their car. They were fumbling around. And I said, I'm happy to get it. They said, oh, thank you so much. And I wanted to tell them, like, it's just because you're slow. It's not. I'm impatient. It's $20. I'll pay $20 to be in my car right now. I'm tired of watching you fumble with your wallet. Sometimes it's very easy when we have plenty to appear generous and cut a check. Now sometimes that's a real challenge, and that is genuine generosity. But sometimes that's the gateway to actual generosity. These people that we have on the corners, many of us are going to pass them on the way home. It's easy to hang a 20 out the window. It's incredibly generous to stop our plans in our day and get out of our car and talk to them and go have a meal with them. That's generosity. It's easy to donate to a cause. It's harder to go sit with the people to whom that cause ministers. It's easier to give out of plenty and hold back the stuff that we don't have as much of, but I would argue with you, and listen, this is not a sermon trying to denigrate giving. We ought to do that. But sometimes that's the simplest form of it. And what I want to encourage us to be is a people who are generous in spirit, who are generous across the board, who give of all of the resources that we have, who don't relegate it to the easiest ones. Whatever the easiest thing is for us to give, let's not just start there and be done, but let's be generous people. Because I bet, as I've been talking about generosity and the different forms that it takes, that you've thought of people in your life who have been generous to you. People who have been kind to you in their assessment of you or in their time or of their resources. And you're grateful that they are in your life. If you, like me, if you think of people in your life who you consider generous, you are grateful that they are in your life. You're grateful to God that he has placed them in your life. And because of that, you're pointed back to God. So here's the encouragement to us, Grace. Let's go be the kind of person that other people are grateful for. And when we do that, you'll be the kind of person that points people to Jesus. Go from here and be generous in spirit. Go be the kind of person that people are grateful to have in their life. And if you do that over time, you will leave a wake of people who have been pointed to Jesus because you entered into their life. I've mentioned many times that challenging teaching from Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount when he said, let your light shine before others so that they might see your good works and glorify the Father who is in heaven. It's this idea that as we move into and out of the lives of other people, that they will be focused more on the Father, more on Jesus because of our simple presence in their life. And as I've reflected this week, that's always seemed like such a challenge to me. But maybe the key to obedience there is being someone who is generous in spirit. So that as we sow those seeds of generosity in the lives of others, we will become the kind of person that they are grateful that God has placed in their life. And in turn, they will be pointed to Jesus. So go from here and be the kind of people that other people are grateful for. And what you'll find is you've just become the kind of person who constantly points people towards the Father. Let's pray. God, we love you. We thank you for being generous to us, for giving us your son whom we did not deserve, for continuing to offer your forgiveness that often, God, we trample on. Lord, I pray that you would remind us, even this morning, of all the ways that you were generous to us, that you would remind us even today of all the people you have placed in our life to model that generosity for us. And God, I pray that we would be people who are acutely aware of the blessings that we have so that we might in turn offer those to others. Lord, make us conduits of your generosity so that we are the kind of people that point people back towards you. It's in Jesus' name that we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here as just a little point of order. If you received a bulletin when you came in and you're someone who fills out the notes, I would direct you to the back of the bulletin. In the middle of the notes is a point that starts out. I think the local church is the blank thing to which we are all called. You can cross that out. Okay, I'm not going to get to that. The word there was bigger, so if you really just want to fill it in, there you go. But we're not going to include that. So I don't want to get to that point of the notes and you guys think, oh, no, he forgot it. No, I didn't. I'm leaving it out on purpose. Also, some of you have asked, Nate, why are you wearing your Crocs? Do you have a gout flare-up? No, jerks. I know that you would love that, but I did not. I did not. I also, before I'm telling you why I'm wearing them, have promised my sweet wife that I would communicate to you that she loathes them. They are the least favorite thing of hers that I own, and it is to her great dismay that I continue to wear them every day. I'm wearing these because these are my friend's shoes. These are the shoes that you only see when I am your friend. If you come to my house, and I knew you were coming, if you come to my house and I didn't know you were coming, come on, man, what are you doing? But if I do know you're coming and I'm still by choice wearing these, it's because I'm totally comfortable with you and we're friends. If you invite me over and I'm wearing sweats and Crocs, it's because we're pals, all right? Only my close friends see these because they are shameful. And when I come to church early, I get here early on Sunday mornings, and usually I just throw these on just to be comfortable until I need to put on my church shoes, my preaching shoes. And as I was pacing, thinking through what I was saying this morning, I just realized that what I'm going to say to you this morning is hard. It's hard for me to say. It's going to be hard for some of y'all to hear. And as I say it, I want these to remind me and you that I'm coming to you as a friend. I'm saying these things to you because I love you. Because I feel like Grace is collectively my pal. And so I want you to know up front that I have been praying this week and this morning for courage and gentleness. And so these Crocs are a little bit more gentle than my preaching boots. So I'm wearing these today. Years ago, there was a show called 24. I don't know if you guys have ever seen it. If you have, your life is better for it. But 24 was released, I don't know if you remember this, right on the cusp of like DVD series and then live series. For those of you, I don't know how young you have to be to appreciate series that are on DVDs, but we used to buy whole volumes of series that now you get on Netflix. But 24 is right on the cusp of that. And so when I heard about it, my friends were watching it and they were like a couple seasons in, I think they were on season four. And they had this tradition of every Monday night, they would go over to my one friend's house and they would all watch it with rapt attention and then talk about it during the commercials. And then when it started again, total silence and they were very committed to it. And then they would kind of talk about the episode afterwards. And I really wanted to go to this. I was having serious FOMO, which for old people, that's fear of missing out. I was having some serious FOMO of my friends are having this fun and I can't have this fun because I'm not caught up on the series. So I tracked down the DVDs and got caught up on the series. And I don't know if any of you have had this experience. Raise your hand if you watch 24 on DVD. Okay, you are my friends and you know what I'm talking about. The end of the episode always, without fail, ends on a cliffhanger. And then there's that countdown, the beep, boop, beep, boop. And you're like, no, I got to know what happens to Jack. So then if you're watching the DVD series, it's like play next episode. Yes, of course. And you play the next episode and you just binge that thing. This is when binging started. And it was so satisfying to be able to watch. And this was, let's see, I was probably 19 or 20. So I could watch an ungodly amount of uninterrupted TV at a time. And I mean the word ungodly because it was not spiritual to do what I was doing, but I could watch a ton at one time. And so you power through these seasons, man. And I got through them and I got to go watch with my friend. Now this is the big night. I get to go to my friend's house. There's like 15, 20 of us there. This is great. I'm going to consume this content this way. And as I was doing it, I was like, this stinks because it ended. First of all, I had to watch commercials. That's a bummer. I don't want to watch commercials. I'm into the story. I don't want to hear about Claritin again. And then it ends. There's the beeps. And it's like, let's watch the next episode, guys. And you can't. You've got to wait a whole week. And by the time the next week rolled around, I really wasn't very much into it. And I realized within a couple of weeks, you know what? I don't really like consuming this this way. I like it better on the DVDs. So I waited and just watched it all at once on the DVDs. And I bring that up because this is when content really began to make it very clear that it was a product and we are the consumers. We can watch whatever we want to watch. We have all kinds of streaming services. We have everything available at the tip of our fingers. We can choose the content that we want to watch whenever we want to watch it. This is 24 to me illustrates when it became very clear in our culture that there's all kinds of content out there that we can consume when we want it, where we want it, and when we actually have a desire for it. When we think it's what's going to be best for us, when we feel like it's what we want in the moment, it's right there and we can consume it. I'm bringing that up because I feel like I've seen church become that for many of us too. I feel like in Christian culture, in church people, and then most pointedly at grace, I have watched a slide over the years that the pandemic has accelerated where we are now in ways consumers of church. Church, to some of us, in our mindset and in our families, has become a product that we consume. Sunday morning is something that if I have time, I'll go. If we don't have other plans, I'll attend. If there's not just one more inconsequential thing, and when I say inconsequential, I mean something that we allow to take Sunday morning away from us that isn't gonna matter one little bit in 20 years, then we'll just do that thing and I'll catch up with church during the week. I'll watch it on Tuesday. I'll binge it. I'll listen to the whole series. And it's not easy or fun to say this because normally when I come to you as the church and I say convicting things, I'm right there with you. I always put myself first and say, this is my conviction, join me in it if it applies. Well, this one's different because I get paid to do this. I don't have the perspective that church partners have. But I do have the perspective of a pastor. And I can tell you what I see from my perspective. And what I see from my perspective, as someone who leads a church, as someone who I think is pretty tapped into Christian culture, as someone who talks to other pastors regularly, I see a slide in our culture towards consumerism as it relates to churches. That for many of us, church has become a commodity or a product that I will include in my life when and where I want to, when and how I want to. And I know that none of us would cop to that out loud. None of us would say, yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm a consumer, church is the product, that's how it is. But in our practices and in our patterns, that's what we make it. I'll get to it when I can. I'll include it when I want to. I'll catch up with it on my jog. Revelation really is not very interesting of a series for me. I'll catch it at Christmas. Or, Revelation is super interesting to me. I'm going to totally pay attention to this one. Last one, I wasn't really there for it. I've seen us become consumers in the way that we volunteer, which is less and less, which is a good indicator that in my mind, church exists for me to make my life better. It's a product that's there for me to grab and to consume when I want it. And this is something that I have seen and noticed for several months. And something that I've wanted to put in front of you for several months. But I didn't know the best way to do it. I didn't know how. And I wanted to be really sure when I did it. Because I know that I'm stepping on toes right now. And here's how I've been complicit in it. Is I've allowed that mindset to reduce my role to a producer of content. There are many a week in the last two years when I viewed my role as literally nothing more than just giving you something worth consuming on a Sunday morning and forgetting about the pastoring and the leading that has to happen during the week. I have been complicit in reducing my own role as the pastor of a church to simply producing content that's good for you that you'll choose to consume again. And I'm just, I'm telling you guys, we're wrong about that. It is a dangerous thing when church gets reduced to a commodity to consume. And I'm convinced that that's true and that it's right and good for me to take a Sunday morning and talk about it and that it's worth stepping on some toes because Jesus's attitude towards the church is so vastly different than the attitude of someone who consumes the church. Jesus didn't for one second think that the church was a commodity to be consumed. Jesus for one second was not interested in putting out a product that people would want to come back to. He wasn't interested at all in commodifying and making us comfortable in the way we choose to consume his body. The New Testament does not talk about the church as something to be consumed. It does not talk about the church as if it's something that's optional for us, that we can include in our life when we feel like it, that we can include in our life when we feel like we have time or effort or energy or space. And so for me as a pastor to watch this slide in my church and say nothing about it is a dereliction of duty. It is irresponsible. So we've got to talk about it. Again, we've got to talk about it because as I thought about communicating this idea this week and what passage to use, I was thinking through the New Testament and how the church is talked about and it dawned on me, there's not like a single passage to use because the whole New Testament is about the local church. The whole New Testament assumes that you are a part of the local church. The New Testament teaches us that the moment you get saved, that when you accept Christ as your Savior, that you are now a member of the big C universal church. And it is incumbent upon you to express that membership within the body of the local church. The one book, the biggest portion of the New Testament that's written to an individual is written to a guy named Theophilus by Luke, probably on behalf of Peter. And he writes to Theophilus so that he can understand who Jesus was and what he came to do, which is to begin the local church. The one big major book that's written to an individual to explain things in the New Testament is written so that that individual could understand the local church and how it came about. Then Paul writes letters to churches. And every directive in the Bible that's given is given to us communally. There is nothing, nothing about individual spirituality in here. It all, the whole thing, cover to cover, assumes that you know and understand that you are functioning within a body. That you are functioning within the local church. And so it's difficult to pinpoint one place where this is clarified because it's assumed all throughout the New Testament. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, but do you realize, and I believe this with all my heart, that the local church, this expression of grace that we sit in this morning, is the reason that Jesus stayed some extra years to do ministry? I don't know if you've ever wondered this, but Jesus was 33 when he was crucified. If all he came to do, if all of his marching orders were to become flesh, live a perfect life, die for the sins of the world, why didn't he just get crucified at 30? Or 25? Or 17? What was he doing? Hanging around, putting up with us? He was building the church. He was training the leaders. He was preparing the world for his kingdom. Jesus stayed those extra years and put up with us so that he could call the disciples to him and train them and show them. He taught them how to teach. He taught them how to perform miracles. He taught them how to cast out demons. He taught them how to lead. He taught them how to love. He showed them how to do ministry to one another. And then he died. And then he came back and he left. And when he left, he said, now go do all the things that I've been showing you to the ends of the earth. Go make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He said, go and do what I told you to do. And how did they respond to that? They huddled up in Jerusalem. And they said, what do we do? And then they got the gift of the Holy Spirit and they started a church, man. And its numbers grew day by day. Acts 2, 42 through 47, you can find it there. And then the rest of the book of Acts is about the disciples' effort to go and to plant more local churches. All of Paul's life was dedicated to planting local churches. When Jesus left and said, you, I've given you the keys to the kingdom. I've spent these years and I've trained you and now I'm going to leave and you've got the Holy Spirit. Go do my ministry. What did lost and broken world, and there is no plan B. That's not my idea. I stole that from another pastor. I don't remember who. But the local church, this expression, this Grace Raleigh is God's plan to reach this community. And there's no plan B. We have got to do our part. We are a part of God's divine strategy, of God's divine plan. This is not something to be flippantly participated in. That's not the point. There's something bigger going on here. The New Testament teaches us that we are the body of Christ. 1 Corinthians chapter 12. We're the body of Christ. We are his different members. We're going to talk more about this next week. But the New Testament also preaches this. And this was one of the more convicting things to think about this week as I think about our attitude with how we approach church. It is admittedly an odd passage to land on for the sermon this morning, but it's Ephesians chapter 5, verses 25 through 32. This is a marriage roles passage. This is usually talked about in weddings. And when we read it, that's where our mind goes. And one day, hopefully sooner than later, I would love to walk through this passage with you as a church body and walk you through kind of how my understanding of this passage has changed over the years. But this is not what I want us to highlight this morning. As I read it to you and you read along with me, I want you guys to pay attention to the relationship between Jesus and the local church. I want you to notice the dynamic that's going on there, and then we're going to talk about it just a little bit. Ephesians chapter 5, beginning in verse 25. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 1. and cherishes it just as Jesus does the church because we are members of his body. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. The church, Christians, we are the bride of Christ. That is our divine identity. We are the body that he came and died for. We are the body that he's going to come back and rescue. We are the body that he intentionally started. We are the body that was prophesied about in the Old Testament. We are the love of Jesus's life. We are the bride of Christ. And what I'm saying to you this morning is being Christ's bride should be wholly consuming, not flippantly consumed. Being the very bride of Christ should be an identity that is wholly consuming to us, not flippantly consumed. Nothing about that passage and nothing about that role says to us that there's any space whatsoever to simply be consumers of the product that church puts out. No, we are called to be a part of what the church is doing. This is where the whole idea of this series came from when I was thinking about it last fall, is this idea of doing what I can to transition us from sliding towards consumerism and push us back towards being consumed. The church was not created for us to consume it. It was created so that it could consume you. It was created for your whole devotion. It was created for you to be all in. It was created to give you a new life completely separate from your old life and give you something bigger to be a part of that we all long for. Being the bride of Christ deserves our full attention. It deserves our fanaticism. It deserves to consume us. To drive this home just a little bit, I want you to think about something with me. What would your marriage look like if you decide that you were simply going to be a consumer of it? What would my marriage with Jen look like if I decided, you know what, I know she wants to talk about her day-to-day, but I'm not really feeling it. I don't really want to do that. I want to watch football. And also, I've never done this. What would it look like if all the time my interactions with her, I only thought about, well, how does this benefit me? Is this something that I really want to do right now? Why don't I just schedule something over what's happening? What would it look like if in our marriages we simply became consumers and when we were asked to volunteer our time to make the house better, we said, what's in it for me? What are you gonna do if I clean clean the garage? You make meatloaf? All right, I'll clean it. How dead would our marriages be if we became consumers within them? And we saw our marriage as something that just produced a product that was there for me to consume if I wanted it or not. If that analogy holds true, and Ephesians tells me that it does, is it any wonder why some of us just don't feel like our spiritual life is clicking like it should be? Is it any wonder why we just don't feel like we're in sync with God? Is it possible that maybe we don't feel a spiritual vibrancy in our life because we've reduced the things of God to things to be consumed to improve our life when we feel like we need them? You know, it's funny, and it's worth mentioning. Over my years as a pastor, and Grayson at previous church, I've sat down with parents of teenagers, and they've said, we just can't get our kid to come to youth group, and we don't know what to do. And I can't say it, but I think it. Well, if you want to do anything right now, you need to get in the time machine and go back 10 years and quit treating the church like it's something to be consumed for you. You have modeled this method of consumption to your children for 10 years and now is it any wonder that when they get to make their own choices, they're consumers too? Is it any wonder that maybe we don't feel as close to God as we could when we don't treat the things of God as they deserve to be treated. I thought of this as well. Paul is at the end of his ministry and he's writing a letter to Timothy. It's one of the few things written to an individual in the New Testament. And guess what? It's about how to lead the local church. Anyways. In already being poured out as a drink offering. And the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. What a remarkable statement to make. Now I'm about to ask you a question. It's an unfair question. It's a gotcha question. And I'm admitting that up front. So this isn't to make anyone feel bad. This is just to help you think along with me, okay? Did any of us on December 31st, a few days ago, kneel and pray and say, God, thank you for 2021. I was poured out for you like a drink offering. Now, listen, you may have gotten to the end of 2021 and felt like you were poured out like a drink offering. We may have gotten to the end of that year and said, I got nothing left. But were you poured out for the right things? Were you poured out for the things of God? Were you poured out because you were consumed with your identity as the bride of Christ? So, either you're just mad at me and you want the sermon to be over. I get that. Or you're with me and you're okay. I want to be all in. I want to be consumed by the church. What do I do? Well, the very simple answer is this. You give of your time, talents, and treasures. A very simple answer to think about how can I be consumed by the local church is to give of your time, talents, and treasures. And as I was prepping this sermon, I lamented that when I got to this point in the sermon, I've been preaching for too long to really adequately do justice to what that means to give of our time, talents, and treasures. And then it occurred to me, dude, you're in charge of the series. You can do whatever you want. So next week, we're going to talk about that in detail. We're going to come back. Those of you who remain with us are going to come back and we'll go, here's how we can be all in together. Here's what it means and looks like to give of our time, talents, and treasures. But for this morning and for 2022, this is the message and the challenge that I wanted to issue to us as a church. If you're at Grace, be all in. If you're here, mean it with everything you got. You'll notice through this whole sermon, I've not talked about grace as far as what God calls us to. I've talked about the local church. And so I say this with all humility and candor. If you can't be all in at grace because you're not all about what's happening here, that's fine. There are a lot of churches. And with only kindness and love in my heart, I'm admonishing you that if grace isn't it for you, find a church you can be fanatical about. Find a church that you love what's going on there. Find a church that you can be all in, and that you can be consumed by, and you want to pour yourself out for. I hope that's grace, and I hope that what we're doing here is something that matters deeply to you. But if it's not, as just your friend, as a pastor, as a Christian, I'm telling you, we need to be consumed by the local church. So find one to consume you. And this is why I think it's so important to preach this message. And why I wanted to do it at the beginning of this year. Because I know that the cloud of the pandemic still looms over our culture. But I've got to believe that the sun's going to break sometime soon. And I don't want to tread water in 2022. I don't want to just cling on and try to exist this year as a church. I am praying and hoping that Jesus will eagerly and earnestly move in this place. I want to see Jesus show up this year. I want to see children fill that baptistry. I want to just dunk them and I want their friends to be in here celebrating it with them. I want to baptize you guys. I want to see your friends and your family and your coworkers begin to come to church with you and for you to experience the joy of watching them move into a faith because God used you in their life. I want to see you guys take steps of obedience that are far beyond what you thought you would be capable of sacrificing before. I want to see a church with their hair lit on fire for Jesus and begging him every week that his kingdom would come here and that he would move here and that he would do great things here. And that starts with our individual decision to be consumed by the body of Christ and by the identity of being his bride, and then it culminates in a corporate culture of pursuing him and of prizing him and of doing the things of Jesus because we love him and because it's our identity and because we're consumed by him. I don't want to tread water anymore. I want to move. I want to do ministry. I want to see salvations. I want to see people come to know Jesus. I want to see marriages rescued. I want to see children discipled. I want to see hurt people cared for. I want to see people prayed for. I want to see small groups blossom and multiply. I want to see discipleship happen intentionally. I want to see the great friendships that God has planted in this church do more than just make us feel good about ourselves, but point us back towards our Father and enhance our spiritual walks. And how can any, and here, you're all looking at me and I know that you want that too. And how can it happen if we're consumers? If we continue to just slide towards thinking of church as a commodity to be consumed? It can only happen if we say, here I am, Lord, and allow ourselves to be consumed for His purposes. So if you're at grace, be all in. And listen, I say that knowing and being humbled by the fact that we have a bunch of people who are all in. I know that we do. I'm humbled by your service every week. And we have people who have watched online faithfully for two years who simply have health issues that will not allow them to come and be a part of us. And I know you're all in. I know it. And so my prayer has been that the Holy Spirit would be whispering in each of your ears. And if you are someone who is all in, and if you are someone who has been consumed by the local church, that the Holy Spirit would be whispering into your ear right now, and he would be telling you, hey, this is not for you. This is to bring you some help. You don't need to feel convicted by this. Similarly, my prayer for the rest of us is that the Holy Spirit would whisper to us too. And he would be telling you right now how you need to listen. You need to hear this. For the sake of your marriage and your kids, you need to hear this. For the sake of your anxiety and your peace and your joy and your angst, you need to hear this. For the sake of being swept up and knowing how much I love you and experiencing my goodness as being part of a kingdom, part of my kingdom on earth before eternity, you need to hear this. So next week, we're going to come back and we're going to talk about what it looks like to be all in. I hope that if the Holy Spirit is telling you right now, hey, this is not you, that you will pray with me this week. For those to whom it may apply a little more. If the Holy Spirit is talking to you right now and telling you that you need to listen, I pray that you will. And if any of you are mad at me, my door is open. I'd love to chat. But next week, we're moving forward with who we got and we're gonna do some cool things this year. I believe it with all my heart. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church. Thank you that we are invited to participate in it. Thank you for the way that it wraps its arms around us. Thank you for the way that it is your presence in our life. Thank you for how it trains our children. Thank you for how it strengthens our marriage. Thank you for how it points us towards you. God, we pray that grace would be the church that you want it to be. We pray that we would be consumed by building your kingdom here. We pray that we would understand in our bones what it means more and more to be your bride and to be your body. God, if I've said clumsy things, I just pray that you would grant grace and forgiveness where it's needed. God, we offer you ourselves. We offer you this place. We thank you for creating it. And we just ask that you would give us the faith and courage to serve you and to be consumed by you as we move through this year. It's in your son's name we ask. Amen.

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

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