Sermons tagged with Mark

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.

Grace, good morning. My name's Nate. I'm the pastor here of Grace's Virtual Church for at least the next eight weeks. We've never done anything like this before. Churches have never faced a problem like this before, how to do virtual church in the face of a pandemic, in the midst of social distancing and quarantining, but I happen to believe that grace was made for eight-week hiatuses. Grace was made to be sustained by just our connections. It makes me so sad that we can't all be together right now, seeing each other, enjoying one another, singing with one another. I think that's probably what I'm going to miss the most over the next eight weeks is the corporate worship. I can't wait for the Sunday that we get to come back and cry out to God together. But until then, this is where we are. And I believe that we're built for this. We are a church that is built on connections. We say we connect people to Jesus and connect people to people, and those connections matter now more than ever. I believe as the weeks and even the months roll on, we are going to feel potentially more and more isolated and increasingly desirous of connection with others. And so we're going to work very hard as a staff to provide these connection points during the week. I hope that you're watching this live so that you can have a sense of participation with everyone else. I hope that you even got here a few minutes early and were participating in what we think of as the virtual lobby or the chat feature and where this video is being watched. So I hope that you did that. If you're watching this on delay later in the day or in the week, I hope that in this upcoming week, you'll make it a priority to be a part of the church at 10 o'clock every Sunday. I'm excited about those opportunities. We're going to be doing devotions and worship moments. Steve's going to be doing worship moments on Facebook Live. Aaron and Kyle and I will be sharing things, and we're going to do everything we can to have lots of opportunities for interaction. So it's vitally important that if you have Facebook or you have Instagram, that you follow us in those places so that we can all participate and share and watch together. My hope is that as we're kind of allowed by the CDC and the governors to come out of our caves and maybe meet in small groups, that maybe we could progress to watch parties together as small groups in our homes for sermons and for different things. But we're going to get through this. We're going to weather this storm, and we're excited about the opportunities to meet as a virtual church over at least the next eight weeks. We're in a series now called Storyteller, and we're looking at the parables of Jesus. Jesus told short fictional stories to make moral points, and so we are in the middle of that as a church. And I have a parable that I had prepared last week when we had to cancel the services that I was ready to preach about this week. But on Tuesday of this week, I had my men's group here in this space at 6 a.m. surreptitiously against the better judgment of others, and we met. And there was only five of us, don't worry, and I'm going to follow protocol moving forward, and we'll do Zoom calls. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone's bedhead for those that still have hair. And we studied Mark 8 this week. And we went through Mark 8. And I've read Mark plenty of times. But this conversation in Mark 8 in verses 14 through 21, I've never noticed it before. It's a conversation between Jesus and the disciples. I've never really noticed it before. It's never really mattered to me before. And I'm not sure if I remember it, but this week as we read it and we looked at it as a group of men on Tuesday morning, it really hit me square between the eyes. And this conversation has really heartened me and encouraged me over the course of this week. And it's been a crazy week. New things come out every day. Every day we see new curves. We're all amateur epidemiologists. We all know what the words flatten the curve and extend the curve mean. We're all looking at other countries to see what's going to happen there. I feel like every day this passage gets a little bit more relevant because every day the fear gets ramped up just a little bit more. And so what I wanted to do for our first virtual service in the midst of a pandemic is take a break from the parables. We'll come back to those next week. I get to do the parable of the Good Samaritan and several others, and I'm really excited to share those with you. But this week, I just wanted to pause and maybe give us a word of comfort from a conversation that happens in the Gospel of Mark. So if you have a Bible there at your house, I hope you do. I hope you'll scramble and grab one and pull it out and be looking at this passage as we go through it together. But in Mark chapter 8, beginning in verse 14, there's this really important conversation with the disciples. I'm going to read part of it to you, and then I'm going to explain to you what's going on. So in chapter 8, verse 14, they had just fed 4,000 people, Jesus did, and now they were going across the Sea of Galilee on a boat. And even though it's called the Sea of Galilee, it's really a lake, but even though it's a lake, it's pretty big. I've been on it, and you can be in the middle of it and not really see anything but water. So it takes a long time to get across the Sea of Galilee. It says this, Now they, being the disciples, had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them, saying, this is Jesus, Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. When we read that passage, we normally focus in on the words of Jesus, which is the right thing to do, that they would beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And I've noticed that part before, and it's likely that most of you have too. But the part that never really mattered to me was the disciples' distress over having no bread. So they had just fed 4,000 people. Jesus decided to feed the 4,000 because he noted to the disciples that they had been with them for three days, and some of them were weary and might faint if they had to go home then. So it had been an arduous few days for the disciples as well. Then Jesus takes their bread and he breaks it up and he puts it in baskets and they serve all the people. They serve the 4,000 people. And then after that, they get in their boat at night and they're going back across the Sea of Galilee. And they realize collectively, we only have one piece of bread. And we're not talking like a big healthy loaf here. We're probably talking like a smaller piece of bread like this, and they've got 13 mouths to feed. And this isn't a small problem. This is not like when we're at work and things get jammed up and we realize I'm going to have to skip lunch today, I'm not going to eat until dinner, or I'm going to have to run out and get something, or we don't have any food in the house, or whatever it is. This is a legitimate issue because they're hungry. They've already been pushing themselves. They've already gone without food. They live in what we would understand to be is a third world country. So there's no guarantee that when they get to the other side that there's going to be anything open yet, because it might be the middle of the night or early morning. And there's no guarantee that there's even going to be things for sale. And we don't know what their financial situation was if they had the means to just go buy the bread that they needed. They don't have their fishing equipment with them. They don't have their gear with them. They can't just catch some fish and grill them up and be okay. And so in this moment, the disciples are filled with uncertainty and fear. In this moment, the disciples are filled with uncertainty and fear. They're holding this single piece of bread going, what are we going to do? How is this going to work? We're going to go hungry. How are we going to get out of this? We're in the middle of a lake. We're miles away from shore. We have no energy to sustain us to get there. We have no guarantee that once we get there, we're going to have food. What are we going to do? In that moment, they're filled with uncertainty and fear, and it's a legitimate fear. And it's that part of the story as I was reading it, and the disciples are wringing their hands over what to do because they are legitimately fearful and uncertain about their future, that I realized, my goodness, this is all of us right now. This is every one of us. Our culture, our society, our community is filled with uncertainty and fear. We are collectively the disciples on the deck of that boat in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, holding on to our last piece of bread going, what are we going to do? This week, I posted on Facebook, I asked people, hey, I don't even really know how to do this, but in the face of the coronavirus and pandemic and social distancing and market crashing, what are you fearful of? What are you scared of? And in a couple of days, I haven't checked it in a little bit, but in a couple of days, I got 53 comments. I've never gotten 53 comments about anything. And what it tells me is, man, people are scared. People are fearful. We are collectively very unsure about our futures. I have a pessimistic friend who regularly throughout the day sends me articles that are more and more depressing about how much longer this is going to take and what it's all going to look like and when things are going to spike. And I know that you have those friends too. You may be that friend. And it's a manifestation of this fact that we, like the disciples, are full of fear and uncertainty. And our fears are legitimate. I was talking to somebody this week. They are a family now of three because some of their kids have moved out of the house, and they overnight became a family of five. Her brother and her son had to move back. She's got a son who just started a job that he loves in New York City. But where he works has been shut down, and he's had to come home on furlough, and he doesn't know what his next step is. He's got to be filled with anxiety and fear. His mom is filled with anxiety and fear because she doesn't know how she's going to cope with five people in the house when there used to be three. It's a different dynamic. I was texting with someone who has kids in college, and he said that, I asked him, is everybody back home? Are you enjoying that? And he said, yeah, yeah, everybody's home. It's been great. So far, we've played games every night. And I thought, that's really great for week one. You're going to be real tired of games in week five. It's a legitimate fear to think through how is that going to look and how is that going to go. And those are small anxieties. Getting enough toilet paper, that's a small anxiety. There's ways around that. There are some things that we're fearful of that we know are going to work out, but there's other things that we're fearful of that we don't necessarily see a path for. My heart breaks. I think of a ministry called Refugee Hope for an apartment complex behind the Falls Village Shopping Center on the Falls of News. Everybody in that apartment complex is an immigrant. Almost everybody, up above 90%, they're immigrants. And almost everybody in that complex, it's my understanding, have jobs that are hourly and not salaried. And most hourly employees are facing a significant curtailing or total deletion of their hours. Wondering when their last paycheck is going to be. Wondering how they're going to make it from here. One of the guys that posted on the Facebook posted the question that I asked about, what are you fearful of? He identified with that fear. He said, man, I work a job that is relying upon new jobs, and I'm not getting any new jobs, and I don't know where the next paycheck is going to come from, and I'm concerned for my family and how I can provide for them in the midst of this economy. We have other people who are immunocompromised, and they live in constant fear. Because one of the really scary things about the coronavirus that we're learning is it seems like it's possible to be asymptomatic and feel entirely healthy, yet be someone who is carrying it and unknowingly infecting other people. We have somebody who comes into the office to process giving, someone from the church, and she had to ask the staff, would it be possible for you guys to just not come in for an hour and a half so I can get my work done? Because she doesn't want to carry something back from us who feel fine to her husband that has some challenges that the coronavirus would really aggravate. I'm walking down, I shop at Walmart at 5.30 in the mornings to get the things that we need, and someone coughs, and I turn around, and I walk in the opposite direction. We don't trust anybody. We can't handshake. We're sanitizing our hands all the time. We are fearful. And I've seen in the past times when we were fearful. I've seen people be anxious. Somebody loses their job and they're not worried about how they're going to make this up. But I'm not sure I've seen a time in which there was so much fear. There was so much uncertainty. I'm not sure I've ever seen a time when everybody could relate. Some people are in retirement or nearing retirement and looking at the stock market and may even be close to pulling the trigger on retirement until these last couple weeks happen, and now we don't know. We're just weathering the storm. And whatever it is that we are fearful of, whatever the disappointments are that we are facing over the next couple of weeks or months as we are in the midst of the uncertainty of a pandemic and how prolonged it will be and how profound the impact of it will be, it occurs to me that we are just like the disciples on the boat holding the piece of bread going, how is this going to be enough? How is this going to be okay? Which is why I believe that Jesus's response to the disciples in that moment is such a powerful response for us in this moment. This is what Jesus says. In the seven for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? And they said to him, seven. And he said to them, and I love this statement, do you not yet understand? Do you not yet understand? I want to be careful to point out here that Jesus' tone with the disciples is one of frustration. They've just freshly seen the miracle, the feeding of the 4,000. They've been walking with him for a year or more by now. They've seen plenty of miracles, yet they're holding this bread, and they don't seem to be piecing it together that they can have faith in Jesus providing them bread in the future. And so Jesus says, do you not yet understand? So his tone with them is frustration. I believe that Jesus with us in this moment would not take that tone. I think he would take a more empathetic tone. I think he would remind us that he is the God who sees. I think he would remind us that he is the God who weeps with us. I think he is the God that would remind us that he is close to the brokenhearted and he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. So I do not think that Jesus' tone with us in this moment would be one of frustration, but I do think the message would be the same. That the heart of what Jesus says to the disciples is the heart of what he would say to us. And I find it so interesting in this moment that Jesus didn't point to what he was going to do. He pointed to what he had done already. He didn't point to what he was going to do. He didn't say, I know there's only one piece of bread, but look, I'm going to break it. I'm going to fill these baskets over here. There's going to be enough for all of you. Don't worry about it. He didn't say, I actually stored away some fishing nets, cast them over that side of the boat, and you're going to catch a bunch of them. We're going to grill them up, and we're going to be fine. He didn't say, I know a shop owner on the shore. When we get there, we're going to have a feast. I've already got it set up. He doesn't paint for them what he's going to do. He just tells them what he has done. Because I miss sports so much already, I'll use the sports analogy. Jesus didn't point to the game plan. He pointed to the scoreboard. He didn't tell the disciples what the strategy was going to be. He didn't try to ally their fears by immediately resolving the situation. He didn't put them at ease by saying, don't worry, I have a plan. He just said, do you see what I've done? Do you remember the miracles? Jesus' message to the disciples, what he says is, I have given you bread before. I've given you bread before. He doesn't say, I'm going to give you bread in the future. He doesn't say, this is how it's going to go. He just goes, guys, listen, I've provided for you before. I've given you bread before. Do you remember the 5,000? And they say, yes. And it was more than 5,000. The Bible says there's 5,000 men, which means that there was women and children there. So the numbers are between 15 and 20,000. And on five loaves and three fishes, gee, if three fish, I don't even know, you guys can't laugh at me because you can't talk to me right now. With five loaves and three fish, he fed between 15 and 20,000 people. And there was 12 baskets left behind, an abundance, an overflow. And then a little while later, he did it again. He fed 4,000 and there was another abundance and another overflow. And when they are concerned because they only have one loaf of bread and they're filled with anxiety and uncertainty and fear, Jesus comes to them and he just gently says, hey, I've given you bread before. And I think that's such a powerful message for us right now. I think that's such a powerful reminder for us right now. That in the face of our uncertainty and fear, Jesus reminds us that he has given us bread before. In the face of our uncertainty and fear, in the midst of this pandemic, in the midst of an economic collapse, hopefully temporary, Mark 8 screams at us through the centuries, I've given you bread before. I don't think it was any accident that I stubbornly decided to meet with my men's group this week. I don't think it was any accident that we happened to be on Mark 8. And I don't think it was any accident that over the course of the week, I couldn't get it out of my head and just wanted to share that simple message with you that, hey, God has given us bread before. He's provided for us before. He's met us in the midst of our fear and uncertainty before, and He'll do it again. I think about Jen and I and where we sit right now. In 2007, in April of 2007, we bought our first house. And in May of 2007, the market crashed. And within a couple months, it was worth a fraction of what we paid. And we're sitting there going, great, this is not how it's supposed to go. We're supposed to buy a house and then develop some equity and then sell it and then we're living large. And that's not how it went for us. That wasn't our story. And so here we are 13 years later. We want to be real careful about when we bought a house and how we decided to do it. And we closed on a new one on March the 9th and then found out that day because someone texted me who's not my friend that the markets had crashed for the worst time in history, and we're going, great, clearly, it's terrible for the country for Nate and Jen to buy homes. And it makes us fearful, and it makes us uncertain, this sense of deja vu, and here we go again. But in this passage, God has whispered in my ear, hey, man, you never wanted for anything. You had all the things you needed. You made your payments fine. I sustained you with employment. I've given you bread before. And he'll give it to us again. And Jesus doesn't need for me, he doesn't need to point to exactly how it's going to all work out. I don't need to see the value of my home projected out over the next 10 years by Jesus himself to feel, okay, all I need to know is for him to point to the scoreboard and say, look what I've already done. I think about grace. The last time I preached, the last time I preached, it was a celebration. It was March 8th, and I was going, look at what God did. Look at the pledges that came in. It was above and beyond anything that we expected. Man, these are going to be high times for grace. It is green pastures and sunshine and rainbows ahead. I did not see global pandemic and market crash coming. It is an uncertain time for all churches. But here's what I know. Grace has seen harder times. We've seen thinner times. God has given us bread before, and he'll do it again. He has provided for us in the past, and he'll look out for us in the future. When we launched the campaign, I preached, I believe, on February 2nd, and the main point was me saying, hey, God's hand, in one one way or another has always been on this church, and we believe that it remains. And then when the pledges came in and we celebrated that together, we said, look, God's hand is on the church, and we're going to walk in faith into the future that he's painted for us. And pandemics and economic failures changed nothing. God's hand is still on this place. And we're still walking into the future that we believe he's created for us. And I don't know what your fear is. I don't know what your uncertainty is. And I wouldn't seek to mitigate it or minimize it or dismiss it by saying, hey, God's gonna take care of it. Because sometimes we don't know what it looks like for God to take care of things. But we do know that Isaiah 41.10 is true. We do know that we serve a God that says, do not fear for I am with you. Do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and hold you. I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. We know that's true and we know we can cling to that. I don't know how God's gonna provide bread for you and your family. I don't know how God is gonna see each and every individual of grace and of those watching. I don't know how God's gonna see us through this season of uncertainty. But I would be willing to bet that God has provided bread for you before. I would be willing to bet that each one of you watching and listening can remember a time when you felt like the disciples on the deck of the boat going, I don't know how this is going to work. And that was years ago, and as you reflect back, you marvel at the way that God provided in the midst of uncertainty. And just because now, instead of some of us feeling uncertain and some of us feeling good about life, just because all of us share this common fear and this common uncertainty, just because it's universal does not mean that we serve a different God or that God can't provide. And I don't know what the weeks ahead hold for us as individuals, as a faith family, as families. And I don't know the uncertainty that you face, but I would simply encourage you in moments of anxiety, in moments of fear and uncertainty, remember Jesus' simple message from Mark 8. Do you not yet understand? I've given you bread before, and I firmly believe that he will do it again. Let me pray for us. Father, we love you, and you are good. You are near the brokenhearted. You tell us that we do not need to be dismayed, that we do not need to fear, that you will strengthen us, that you will uphold us with your righteous and your mighty right hand. And so God, we pray for that. We pray for that strengthening. I pray for the heartening of those who call grace home. I pray for the encouragement of those who are watching this and listening to this right now. Help us remember the ways that you provided bread for us in the past. Help us remember the ways that you've come through for us before. And help us have faith that you'll come through for us again. In this time of trial, God, let us cling to you as I always pray for this church and for the people that you love. May everything that happens over the next eight weeks, over the next months, over this pandemic and this quarantine and this distancing and all these things that we're not used to, may you use these circumstances to conspire to bring us closer to you. And God, we faithfully pray for and anticipate the day when we can come together again and celebrate you. In the meantime, may we remember that you provided for us before. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Well, good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here, so it's good to see you on this February Sunday, the third Sunday in our Going Home campaign series. Last week, we kind of talked about the biggest question facing grace. I feel like because we have been brought to a place of health, last week I shared that for a long time the mission of grace has been grace. By necessity, we've looked inward and scrambled to get healthy and to get to a place where we weren't just trying to survive, but now we could thrive. And so in that place, believing that we are in a position of health, the question that we are collectively asking is, Father, what would you have us do in health? Say, God, what would you have us do now? We're in a position where we can really do your ministry. I feel like we're moving into a new season as a church. So the question becomes, what would you have us do in this new season? Part of that answer is to pursue a permanent home in the community that we care about so much. That's why we're having the campaign that's going to culminate on March the 1st. We're going to send out pledge cards this week to our partners, to people who call Grace family, and encourage everyone to bring those in or to send those in by March the 1st, and we'll have a celebratory pledge Sunday on that first Sunday in March. I think it's going to be a big celebratory Sunday for us. But that's kind of what we're pushing towards. But in the midst of that, as we ask God, what would you have us do in health? One answer is, one step is to pursue a permanent home. Now's the time to do that. But the bigger answers are the ones that we talked about last week and this week. Last week, I shared that if you asked Jesus, what would you have a healthy church do? I think he would point us to the Great Commission, to Matthew 28. And I shared with you that verse at the end of Matthew 28, as he is going into heaven and he tells the disciples, here are your marching orders. And I think he tells the church in perpetuity, for all church, for all Southern Baptist King James Church, so go ye therefore. Yeah, that's right. Some of y'all understand that. Let me go into the world and make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father. And so what Jesus would have us do as a church is to seek to grow in both depth and breadth, to see us grow deep and wide. And so the Christian word that we use for growing deep is discipleship. We see that model of ministry in the Bible. And so last week, we talked about how is grace going to grow deep? What is discipleship going to look like here? And I don't do this a lot. I don't promote my own sermons, but nor, well, I won't say that aside. I don't promote my own sermons, but if you missed last week, that was kind of the manifesto on discipleship and what we want it to look like. So I would encourage you to give that one a listen or a watch if you like staring at me for 30 minutes on your work computer. Do that too. And so this week, I want to look at how do we want to grow wide. We looked at depth last week. So this week, how do we want to grow wide? And the church term for that is evangelism. How does grace want to handle evangelism? What do we want our ministry of evangelism to look like? And evangelism is simply sharing the gospel. It's an effort to see other people come to know Jesus. We want to win converts to the faith. And so how does grace want to do that? And even as I bring that up, as I seek to talk about that this week, I felt the need to confess to you that I'm not good at this. I'm not good at evangelism. And not in a way where I think like, well, that's okay because there's other things that maybe I feel like I'm stronger at or whatever, so it's okay to be weak over here. No, no, I'm telling you that historically I have not been good at this discipline. It scares me. It makes me feel uncomfortable. I don't love the idea of going out and sharing my faith with people. We had a guy from another church show up at our door this week, and he is the evangelism minister at one of the churches. And I thought, good for that guy. You could not pay me enough money to go door to door. It scares me. And so if it scares you, if the idea of evangelism, of sharing your faith intimidates you, you have some company. It intimidates me too. Now, I don't think that's an excuse because I think that the Bible calls us all to be evangelists. If you know Jesus, your job, your expectation is to share it with others, is to be a part of other people coming to the faith. That's the only reason he leaves us on earth. I've said this before. Have you ever thought about when you get saved, when you become a believer, why doesn't God just snatch us right to heaven, into eternity forever, where we don't have to experience any of the cruddy stuff that happens here anymore, so that we can stay here and tell other people about Him? Evangelism is the only reason we're still here, right? Romans 10 says, how will people believe unless we tell them? And how will people tell them unless it's preached? And how will it be preached unless people are sent? How beautiful are the feet that carry the good news to the people who need it? There's a biblical imperative for those of us who know Jesus to be involved in the discipline of evangelism, of growing the church in breadth. So we all need to do this. So even though it's intimidating, what I want to do is try to talk about it today in a way that makes it more approachable, in a way that makes it more doable, and hopefully we are inspired to make this a part of our life in an intentional way. To do that, I think it will help us to look at the way that Jesus framed up evangelism in the book of Mark. So if you have a Bible, you can turn there. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. We're going to be looking at Mark chapter 4, starting in verse 3. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable. Now this is a little preview. I'm super excited for the next series. In March and April, we're going to be walking through the parables of Jesus, and I'm really excited to jump into those with you. A parable is a short story. It's totally made up to make a point. It's a short story to make a moral point. And Jesus did a lot of teaching in parables, and this is a very rough summation of why, but often we see Jesus preface things or follow parables like he does in Mark with, he who has ears to hear, let him hear. And so he often taught in parables because he was teaching to an audience of multiple motivations. In this one, he's talking to Pharisees, the religious leaders of the day who were closed off to him. He's talking to regular workaday folks, and he's teaching his disciples. And Jesus only wants you to get what he's saying if you really want to. I know that might sound weird, but he wants you to get what he's saying if you really mean it. If you're open to hear it, if you have a teachable spirit, then you're going to understand the parables. If you don't, then you won't. So he teaches in parables for a time while he does his ministry. And this parable is called the parable of the sower. And this is how he frames up evangelism for us. He says this. I'm going to start in verse 3. Verse 8 is going to be up on the screen because that's the one we're going to talk about for a little while. But this is what he says. Listen. So Jesus tells his parables to the general public and to his disciples. And a little while later, Jesus is with the disciples, and they kind of lean in as they often do, and they said, hey, what do you mean? Help us understand that. What do the different soils represent? And so Jesus explained it like this. He said, the sower is one who is spreading the word of God. He says, spreading the word. So when we sow seeds, we're telling people, Jesus loves you. Jesus died for you. God created you in his image. You are his beloved daughter or son. We're telling them truths from the Bible. We're opening up their eyes to the existence of Jesus and his love and care for them. And so that's what the word is. So the sower is spreading the word, telling people about Jesus and his love for them. And so sometimes that lands on the pavement, it lands on rocky soil, and the birds come and snatch it up. And Jesus says this is a picture of Satan actually snatching up those seeds before they can take root. And I've said before that we don't talk a lot about Satan here, but when we do, I like to remind you that if we believe the Bible, then we believe that he is real and he is against us. And so sometimes when people hear the gospel, Satan will bring things into their life to snatch that seed away so that it doesn't take root and they don't become believers yet. That's a thing that happens. Other times, it takes root immediately and the plant sprouts up right away. But because the soil isn't good, because it's shallow, because the roots aren't good, as soon as strife comes, as soon as difficulty occurs, as soon as tragedy happens, as soon as something challenges that new faith, it's scorched, it's washed away, it goes away just as quickly as it sprouted up. I've seen this dozens of times in ministry, and you probably have too. There'll be somebody who comes to the church for their first Sunday because of whatever's going on in their life. They're walking through a hard time. Guys just open their eyes up. They're just curious. They have a friend who invited them. Whatever it is, they'll come in, and on their very first Sunday, they sign up for all the stuff, man. They're serving on three teams. They wanna join three small groups. Is there anything else I can do? They're all the way in. They're coming to a meeting right after the service for the thing that they wanna do. And part of me says, that's great. But part of me knows because I've seen it so many times, they're gonna fall away just as quickly as they jumped in. Sometimes the soil just simply isn't ready yet for the gospel. And so we have to watch that and we have to know that and we have to try to tend to it. Other times it says, and this one is really tragic to me, that the seed gets into soil, the plant sprouts up, it's a good plant, but the thorns, it's among thorns, and the thorns choke it out so it doesn't produce seed. Jesus doesn't say it kills the plant, it just says this plant doesn't produce seed. It never does what it's supposed to do. This is the picture of someone who hears the Word of God, accepts the gospel, believes in Jesus, grows up, the plant sprouts, becomes a believer, but because of the concerns of the world, they never do what they're supposed to do. It's entirely possible to know Jesus, for the gospel to take root in your life, but for the concerns of the world to keep you from being effective in what God's asking you to do. For work to crowd out what life is really about. For the pursuit of money or power or possessions to crowd out what life is really supposed to be all about. For the pursuit of pleasure, for a habit or a hang-up that's in your life to choke out like a thorn the gospel that's in your life so that you never produce what you're designed to produce. That's a sad thing to see and to watch. It's one of my biggest fears that I'll be like that. But Jesus said, there's good soil. And when the seed, when God's word lands on good soil, the plant sprouts up and produces 30, 60, or 100 fold, which is another subtle way for Jesus to say the whole point of this exercise is for you to reproduce yourself. The whole point of the gospel being in your life, the whole point of knowing Jesus is to reproduce yourself in the life of others. It's so that other people can know Jesus and the gospel can take root in their lives as well. That's the whole point of it. So that's the parable of the sower and that's what it means. And as I read that parable, there are two questions to me that jump off the page. There's two things as I look at that parable that I immediately want to know the answer to as I'm thinking about it. The first one is, and this is just me being overly practical probably, is how do we share the gospel effectively? In the story, it seems so random that this sower's just throwing out seed willy-nilly. Just whoever can hear the word, however it goes, wherever it lands is fine with me. And I look at that and there's four options and three of them aren't so great. And I look at that and I'm like, there's gotta be a better way. How can I make sure I'm throwing it on the good soil? Because I don't know if you know this about me, this drives my wife Jen nuts, but my biggest pet peeve in life is inefficiency. Anybody that's taking too long to do anything, I lose my mind. Like parking lots are the worst. I hate inefficiency. I will be in an instant bad mood because something's going slower than it should be. And Jen's like, what in the world is wrong with you? And I'll give the eight step explanation about how this thing could go quicker if everybody would just get on the same page with it, right? And it drives her nuts and probably the people around me nuts, but I want to do things efficiently. So I'm not content with the idea of just throwing out seed and just letting the gospel take root wherever it lands. I want to know, how can we do this more effectively? How can we ensure that if we're going to be people who are going to share the gospel with others, who are going to spread the word of God to others, how can we be sure that that effort is going to be as effective as possible? To that end, after watching ministry for a number of years, watching people come to faith for a number of years, hearing stories of people come to faith, and talking to people about how they came to faith, I've come to the conclusion, you guys can try this on if you want to, but I've come to the conclusion that the human heart is best prepared through relationships and circumstances. The human heart becomes the best possible soil. It's best prepared and best work and best prepared for the reception of the gospel through relationships and circumstances. This is incidentally why I think the street preachers are incredibly ineffective. You're going to the ball game and there's that person on the corner and they're holding up the sign and they're yelling stuff at you about Jesus and maybe it's a good message and maybe it's just a threatening one, but it's almost always ineffective. And listen, I do, there is a part of me, I have a respect for those people because they got bigger guts than I do, you know? Good for you for believing so strongly in what you're doing. I think you believe it incorrectly. I think what you're doing is a terrible idea, but I admire your zeal, right? But it's so ineffective because there's neither a relationship nor the right circumstances for the gospel to be received, right? He doesn't have a relationship with any of the people walking by him. They don't know him, and if they do, they're probably not going to act like they do in that setting. And then it's the wrong circumstance, because people are like, bro, I'm just trying to make it to the game. Like, I'm trying to get into this concert, man. Like, it's not the right setting. But I think that relationship and circumstance works the soil to prepare the heart for the gospel. I cut my teeth in ministry doing Young Life, and there was a phrase in Young Life that we used all the time about ministering to students, and it's no different ministering to adults and to our friends. They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. You guys have heard that before. It was true. To walk with somebody, to do life with them, to show them consistently that, hey, I care about you as a person. You're not a target to me. You're not a project to me. You're not a holy tick box to me. You're a person that I love and care about tremendously. And then for them to watch you exude the gospel, do what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians, and it says that we are a procession led by Christ, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of God. If they're in your life and around you, and because of the relationship they have with you, that fragrance regularly passes by them. Or like Jesus says, that others would see our good works and so glorify our Father who is in heaven. There is a quote attributed to Francis of Assisi. He did not say this, and it is not the quote, but it still makes a good point. Share the gospel at all times. Use words when necessary. A relationship does this. It allows us into people's lives so they can get to know us and see how we live and see how we love. And it prepares them to trust us when we point them towards the gospel and plant the seeds of the gospel in their life. Now, here's the thing. We have to conduct the relationship in such a way that when we share the gospel with them, it makes sense. That when we share what Jesus does for us, they see that in our lives. That's the responsibility that we carry. As if one day I'm going to tell them I love Jesus and hear all the great things Jesus does for me, then it better not seem contradictory and hypocritical. But a relationship tills the ground so that they're ready to receive the gospel when we share it. The other thing that prepares us for the gospel is circumstances. If you think about what happened in your life that brought you to God, for many of us, it's life milestones. A lot of our stories are, we grew up, had some awareness of church. We were involved in it a little or a lot. But when we got to college, early adulthood, we kind of fell away from it. We deprioritized our faith. Not even really sure if we were Christians during that time. And then we got married and we had kids. And when we had kids, we looked at this baby and we went, oh man, I've got a responsibility here. And so we got back into church. And then when we got back into church because of the circumstance, because of this life event going on, our hearts were ready for the gospel, open to how to be good moms and good dads. And we began to grow spiritually. For a lot of us, that's our story. For a lot of us, we trace our faith back to a catalytic event in our life that made us question spiritual things. Sometimes it's when people hit rock bottom. Sometimes people have struggled so much and have made such a series of poor decisions that have led them to a place in life where they don't know what to do, and they are finally willing to go, you know what, God, my way of calling the shots is not working. I'm gonna start trusting your way. Circumstances. I don't think anything prepares the heart for the gospel better than relationships and circumstances. And here's a great illustration of how those two get married up so very often. I have a good buddy here who goes to the church named Ben. Ben's been at the same company for years. And Ben's kind of known in his work group, you know, in his peers, as he's the Christian guy. He's the one that loves Jesus. And so whenever anybody has a spiritual question, they go to Ben. And he talks to them about Jesus, and he kind of gives them the advice. Or when somebody has an issue going on in their life, often they'll go to Ben and say, what do you think about this? And he'll counsel them, right? I call him a pastor at his workplace. And there was somebody that he was buddies with that was a peer that would ask him these questions over the years, and Ben would give him books. And this guy was a total atheist, did not come from a spiritual background at all, didn't have any idea what he believed, but Ben tilled the ground with the relationship. And one day after years of doing this, the guy's wife got in some legal trouble. And so he came to Ben distraught. This is happening in my life. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of questioning everything. What do you think? I really want to have faith, but I don't know how to approach it. And so Ben gave him books and then they would talk about it. And then he would point them to a podcast and that guy would listen and they would talk back and forth. And months after this happened, the dude came to Ben's office one day and he kind of stuck his head in the office and he said, hey, I just want you to know that over the weekend I accepted Christ. I believe. I'm all in. And it was the kind of all in that now a year later, he and his wife are super involved in a church down south of the city. They do children's ministry down there. They're there every week. They give to the church. They're all in. The gospel took root in their life, and that ground was cultivated through years of relationship and then a circumstance that made them ready to receive the gospel. So I would say this to us. If we want to be people who are evangelists, if we want to share the gospel, see people come to faith, which is one of my big prayers for grace in 2020, that we would see more and more people come to faith this year, then I would encourage you to do it through relationships and be sensitive to circumstances. I think that evangelism is so intimidating because we think I'm going to have to convince somebody to become a believer. I'm going to have to have an answer for all of the rebuttals that they would have. I'm just going to have to approach a perfect stranger and say, hey, where would you go if you were to die today? And all that stuff is really intimidating. But really, I think the best possible evangelism plan, when I first started, somebody at the church said, hey, what's your evangelism plan for grace? And I said, not in a flippant, not in a way that I was joking, I was being serious, make friends. That's my plan. Go make friends. And I think that's still the best plan. Now the question becomes, do you have, those of you who are here who know Jesus and who love him and who want to tell other people about him, do you have friends in your life that are not church people? Do you have friends in your life that don't know him yet? Often in churches, we get in our little holy bubbles, our little holy huddles, and we don't know anybody outside of the faith. So the idea of sharing our faith forces us to go to strangers and have awkward conversations, but it's much more effective if we can have these conversations with people who know that we care about them. Do you have friends that don't know Jesus? That may be your step of obedience today, to start making some of those. The plan for evangelism at Grace is for you guys to go out and make friends on your tennis team, in your PTA groups, in your volunteer groups, in the things that you care about in your neighborhood. Stop and have a conversation when you go to the park. And listen, I'm preaching to myself here because I'm the very first one to just want to go to the park, watch Lily swing, and go back home. But stop and open yourself up to the opportunities around you and start having conversations and cultivating friendships with people. That's how we want to begin to share the gospel. And in those friendships, be sensitive to the circumstances going on in their life so that when they're ready to receive the word of the gospel, you can give it to them. Now, if that's how we're going to evangelize, if that's the best plan to do it, is to go make friends, be sensitive, have intentional conversations with them, and over time share the gospel with them and see them come to faith, which I do think is the most effective way to do it because it's the deepest roots. If that's what we're supposed to do, my question, the other question I ask as I look at this parable is, what's my motivation? Why am I supposed to do this? What should motivate me to share the gospel as much as possible? I think this is an important question because so often the motivator here is because we're supposed to, right? So often the motivator here, hey, you guys should go share the gospel. Why? Because Jesus told you to. And listen, that's enough, right? I mean, that's good enough. Jesus told us to. If you're a believer, you're living a life in submission to Jesus and what he wants for you, so go and do it. That should be enough. But if you're like me, because you ought to isn't very motivational to you. Matter of fact, I tend to hate that reason. Some of the biggest arguments Jen and I get into in our marriage are because she says we're supposed to do a thing, and I say I don't want to do the thing, and says, you're just supposed to do it. And I'm like, I just don't want to. Like Christmas, right? We're going to some gift exchange and everyone's doing a $30 gift card. And I'm like, why don't we all just keep our own $30 and spend it on what we want rather than I give you $30 at a place that you don't like and then I'll get $30 at a place that I don't like. It's dumb. And she goes, Nate, you ruin everything. I'm like, I know, but I'm right. I don't want to. And she sighs and she goes, and I said, why do we have to do this? And she sighs and she goes, because it's just what people do. You're supposed to. And I always push against it. There's never a motivator for me. Now in Christianity, Jesus is the Lord of our life because he said so is a good reason. But I think that there's even a better one. I think there's a better motivator that should inspire us to go be evangelists. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. The best motivation to evangelize is excitement about what Jesus is doing. And here's why I think this. Here's one of the things I learned at Grace. That first year at Grace, when I first got here, I didn't want you guys to invite anybody to church. People would be like, hey, hope it's good this weekend and we're inviting our friends, and I would think to myself, it's not gonna be. I wish you'd give us some time. I wish you'd just chill out a little bit. I'm glad you're excited, but this is still kind of a dumpster fire, so let's just chill out. We were lucky in that first year if my mic worked the whole time. I'll never forget that first Christmas Eve service. It was cutting in and out so bad that I shut it out and yelled at you. It wasn't good yet. I was scrambling to try to get all the pieces in place so that when you would invite your friends, I felt like we were giving them something that we could be proud of that would really serve them. We were trying to get other areas of the church set up. We were trying to lay the foundation for our small groups. We simply weren't ready for people. But you guys kept inviting them. Do you know why you did that? Because you were excited about what's happening here. You were excited about grace. And even though I never asked you to invite anybody, even though I would have preferred you just wait and give me a second. People kept inviting their friends. And what it taught me was the simple truth that we tell our friends what we're excited about. We tell our friends what we're excited about. If we're pumped up about something, we tell the people in our life about it. It's as simple as that. And because of that, what I know is that everyone is an evangelist for something. All of you are evangelizing something. All of you are spreading the good news about something. And here's how I know that's true. Take a look at this picture. This is my buddy Keith Cathcart in Mexico with somebody that's become a dear friend to his family that we call Chewy. Every year, Chewky, every year when we go down there, he's not my good friend, he's Keith's good friend. Every year when we go down there, Keith takes him more Steelers gear. And every year when I go down there, there are more Mexicans wearing Steelers gear. There's other churches that give t-shirts, you see those every now and again, but you see a bunch of guys working in Steelers gear the week that Keith is there, and I call him the Steelers evangelist. He's spreading the good news of the Steelers all over the place. And all kidding aside, he's excited about the Steelers. So he tells people about them, and he's evangelizing them. We're all evangelists for something. It might be the Netflix show. It might be the podcast. It might be the book. It might be the diet that you're on. It might be the job that you got. It might be your kids. We're all evangelizing something because we're all excited about something. So I think if we want to be effective evangelists, then we need to be excited about what Jesus is doing in our lives. As a matter of fact, I think the most effective way to evangelize is to have the mindset of, man, I am so blown away by what Jesus is doing in my life that I want you to experience this too. I am so excited, I am so impressed, I am so grateful that Jesus is a part of my life that I want you to experience this as well. That's the motivator to share Jesus. And when you're excited about him, this is why new converts share their faith the most, because they're the most excited. So I think for some of us, what we need is to pray a sincere prayer and say, God, make me excited. Excite me about what excites you. Find something to be excited about. If you're in a small group, to me, there's so much to be excited about. In the young couple small group that I'm in, we get to watch people come in. This last week, we had a couple come in. It was their second time in small group. Even though they kind of grew up around church, this is the first time they've been in a small group ever. And she's sharing something with the group and she starts crying. And I made fun of her and I said, typically we like to wait four groups before we cry, but you know, go ahead. She starts crying with what she's sharing. And then after she's done, her husband says, man, I'm so glad that we found a place where my wife can share things like that. And on the outside, I go, oh, that's so good. And on the inside, I'm like, yes! Like my pastoral heart is going crazy. That's exciting. I want other people to be a part of that. So I want to tell people and invite people to what's going on there. Sometimes the excitement is getting to watch what happens with other people. Sometimes the excitement is what's happening with you. But I think excitement about what Jesus is doing is the best motivator to evangelize. So that's what we do. We go and we make friends with people who don't yet know Jesus, and then we tell them about the things that are exciting to us in hopes that they come to Jesus. It's a simple plan of evangelism. That's how we want to do it. And you'll notice, nowhere in this that I tell you, go and make disciples and bring them to grace so that they sit in seats. That's not the point. But I will say this, you can let us help you. The community here, the camaraderie here, is the best thing we got going for us. Bring other, see? Bring other people. Was that Cindy? Bring other people here and expose them to the love and the friendships that are happening here. Can I tell you that that's why we do Big Night Out? We do Big Night Out now twice a year. Grace's Big Night Out. We go hang out. The other two times have been at Compass Rose. We've got one coming up March 27th. Mark your calendars. Be in town. It's going to be the best one yet. I'm super excited about it. I'm not going to let the cat out of the bag of what it is, but oh man, it's going to be good. We do those with no agenda other than to hang out and to give you easy invites. An easy way to reach out to your friends who don't know Jesus yet and say, hey, come hang out with me and my church at Compass Rose. Because maybe it would feel awkward to invite them to church. Maybe the soil isn't ready for that invite yet, but maybe they'll come hang out with us and they'll see the way that we do community. They'll see the way that we love one another. Let us help you in that same way. Grace, let's evangelize as a team. When somebody brings in a friend, let's be kind to them. Those of us who have been here for a long time, let's be cognizant in the lobby to not just talk with the people that we know at length every week. Let's have our heads on swivels and look around. And if there's folks that we haven't met yet, let's go meet them. Let's evangelize as a group. Let us help you. And really, that's all we're trying to do at Grace. We're trying to do things on Sunday morning and in our small groups and in our various ministries that are so exciting to you that you think to yourself, man, I am so grateful for what's happening for me and my faith and my family at Grace that I want it to happen for other people too. And then we go out, we plant the seeds and friendships that we've cultivated. We're sensitive to circumstances going on in their life. And we watch people come to Christ and we grow in your personal ministries in 30, 60, and 100 fold. So in the spirit of last week's sermon, I would ask you this week, what's your next step of obedience in terms of evangelism? Is it to go make some friends that don't know Jesus? Is it to simply pray an earnest prayer and say, Father, would you excite me about what's happening here in your church? Would you excite me about what your son is doing in my life? Is it to intentionally reach out to people and start extending those invites? I think everybody has a next step of obedience in terms of evangelism, and I would encourage you to identify yours and think about how you can begin to take it. And let's make this a church that's really good at inviting and then trust them when you bring them here that this is a team sport, that we evangelize together with the community that we have. All right, let's pray, and then you'll be dismissed. Father, thanks so much for this morning. Thank you for giving us a place where we can come in and slow down and focus on you. God, I pray that you would inspire us to share your word and your good news. Make us evangelists, God. Father, I pray that we would see people come to faith this year, that we would see conversions happen, that we would hear stories and repeat them of people who were far from you and over time came to know you and walk with you and grow in you. Give us courage to be the evangelist that you call us to be. Give us the words when we don't know them. Give us the insight when we lack it. Give us the sensitivity when we don't feel it. And help us be effective in the ministry of sharing our faith. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. It's good to see all of you. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to get to do that after the service. This is, as Kyle said, the second part of our series called Grace is Going Home. This is going to culminate in Pledge Sunday on March the 1st. And so the idea is that we're going to kind of spend five weeks thinking, dreaming, praying, talking about this. We're going to have the rhythm of the business meetings or the informational meetings over the course of the next five weeks. And then on March the 1st, what we're asking everyone to do is to bring a sealed pledge card with you. So those are in your seats today. Those are very likely going to get emailed or mailed out to you maybe in the middle of this week or next week if you'd like them to come to your home if you can't be encumbered with carrying that to your car. I understand. If it were me, I would be nervous that I would bend the corners and that it wouldn't be perfectly flat when I had it at my house, and I would prefer it show up in an envelope. So I totally understand that. I'm like that. But what we're asking is that even if you can't be here on March the 1st, that you, if you want to participate, would mail yours in and we'll keep those. And then we are on March the 1st, Tom Ledoux, our finance guy, is flying in from Florida. I've asked him specifically to bring a briefcase so it looks very official. And he will be totaling those up and we'll just see what God is going to do here. We'll find out how he's moved in our hearts. So that's how that's going to work. And if you want to take one of those home and begin to pray about that, that's fine. I also want to be very clear that if you're new here, you're just coming into Grace, and you're not yet sure if this is your home, or if you've been here for forever, we don't want anybody to feel any pressure. I don't want it to feel awkward for anyone as we go through this, but hopefully this is something that if we call grace home, this is something that we're excited about. So that's what we're going to be looking at for the next five weeks. You may be wondering, what in the world am I going to preach about for five weeks? Am I just going to do like giving and campaign and vision for the next four weeks? That would be a real bummer. I don't want to prepare for that any more than you want to hear it. So that's not what we're going to be doing. For the next two weeks, actually, we're going to be answering what I believe is the greatest question facing grace. I believe that we're in a new season as a church, that we have new things to think about, new dreams to form, a new direction to go in. And so that as a church, collectively, we have a question facing us that, as I think about the church, I believe that we are posing this to God, whether we realize this or not. I think that this is the best thing to be asking God right now as grace, which is simply this, Father, what would you have us do in hell? I think that's the greatest question facing us right now. I think that pursuing a permanent home is the first step to walk in obedience to answer this question, but that really isn't the point of the campaign. That really isn't the point of the next five weeks. The point of the next five weeks, honestly, is to answer this question and have us move as a culture and as a church into what God would have for us in health. The reason I think that this is the question facing grace is that for many years, I don't know exactly how many, I wouldn't try to make a guess about that, but for many years, by necessity, the mission of grace has been grace. The mission of our church has been our church. The leaders of the church, the core of the church, those who have loved grace over the years, really our goal has been to get grace to a place where it was simply healthy, was to survive. By necessity for many years, the focus of grace has been turned inward on grace, going, how do we get healthy? How do we put the right structures and the right leadership in place so that we can be in a position where we are thriving? So for many years, the mission of grace has been grace. And now, in God's goodness, He's brought us to this place of health. He's brought us to a place where as a church, we are thriving. And I don't want to be gross about it, but by almost any statistical measure that you would look at a church and measure it, we're doing well. God is blessing us. And so we sit now in a place of health for the first time in a while. And instead of scrambling to get healthy and try to thrive one day, I think that we need to acknowledge as a body of believers that call this place home, that we are healthy, that we are thriving. And because of that, the question becomes, Father, what would you have us do in this health? On this foundation of health that he's built here, what would he have us do? And I believe his answer to that question is actually biblical. I believe it's the same for every church. And I believe that Jesus really gives us the outline of this answer in what's become known as the Great Commission. If you have a Bible, you can turn to Matthew chapter 28. This is the last chapter of the gospel of Matthew. The gospels tell the story of the life of Jesus. And at this portion of the Gospel, Jesus has been crucified for our sins. He has come back to life, risen from the grave. He has ministered to people for an amount of days. He's ministered to the disciples, set them about their task, and now he's going back up into heaven. And these are the final instructions that Jesus leaves for the disciples. These are the marching orders from God himself to his church. Jesus came, he stayed for three years, not only to die for our sins, but to establish his kingdom on earth, which is the church. And these are the marching orders that he gives to the church. He says, beginning in verse 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And it continues teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And then he says, I will be with you always. So if you were to ask Jesus, what would you have churches do in health? What do you want for your healthy churches? What should they set about doing? I think what he would tell us, I think his answer based on this passage, and not just this passage, but what he says over and over again about his kingdom, and what Paul and the rest of the New Testament, who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, what he teaches us about God's kingdom and what we see in what's called the general epistles or the general letters after those from the other New Testament writers, I think what they would all say is that what God wants for his church is to grow in depth and in breadth. I think what Jesus wants for us, if we say, God, what would you have us do in health? I think Jesus would say, I want you to grow deep and I want you to grow wide. I want you to grow in your spiritual depth, in your walks with the Lord, in your intimacy with God. I want a church that is full of mature, seasoned, loving, obedient, compassionate, gracious believers. And I want a church that reaches out into the community and grows wide. I think a healthy church is growing in both of those directions. So often churches do one well and not the other. They go deep. They teach the scripture. Everyone there is mature. The problem is they don't reach out into their communities and share the love of Christ with those in their different circles of influences. Other churches are great at reaching out, but not so great at growing deep. And I think that Jesus's answer to what would you have a healthy church do is to grow both in depth and in breadth. That's why in that verse, I highlighted, make disciples, grow deep, of all nations. Why? Everybody. And really, this is the goal of every church, and this is what we're going to talk about for the next two weeks. This week, we're going to talk about growing deep, and next week, we're going to talk about growing wide, and how we want to do that at at Grace and what the biblical model is for those things. So today, what we're really asking is, as we focus on growing deep, is God, how would you have us make disciples at Grace? What does it mean to be a disciple? How would you have us make disciples? And really, this is the goal of every church. Every Bible-believing church ever says that their goal is to make disciples. They say it in different ways. If you've been in church world at all, you've heard mission statements of different churches. You've heard it preached about a bunch of different times. Some churches just come out right and say it. They're very direct. Our goal is to make disciple-making disciples. Other churches will say, know God and make God known, or dominate the community with the love of Jesus Christ. Love your neighbor, love Jesus, and live faithfully, or connecting people to Jesus and connecting people to people. Churches say it in different ways, but the goal is to make disciples. That's what we all want to do. Every church shares that in common. It is like the white whale of all ministry. It's what everybody is going for, but here's the secret of church world that you may or may not have figured out already in your adult life. Churches tend to be not very good at it. It is really hard to make disciples. And the more conversations I've had with other pastors, not me because I'm excellent at it and my church never fails at anything, but with other pastors, what I learn is that this is a hard process. It's a difficult task. In my last church, I was there for seven years. When I started there, it was a church of about 11 or 1200. By the time I moved on to here, it was a church of about 2000. They kept me in the corner. I did nothing. And none of that growth has anything to do with me. So I'm not bragging. I'm just telling you, that's the season of the church that I walked through. And during that season, we would go to conferences with other churches that were similar in size and oftentimes larger. And I can't tell you how many times at these conferences, we had our little breakout sessions and you discuss all the things that are happening. And I would sit around a table with other people who were small groups pastors, or if you have a conservative church that's adult education pastor, some churches call it a discipleship pastor, whatever you want to call it. My job was to think about the discipleship process at my church. My job was to answer the question, when someone walks in that door for the very first time and they are far from God, but they're spiritually curious, what systems and programs do we have in place to move that person from spiritually curious to spiritually mature disciple, walking with the Lord, reproducing themselves and making disciples? That was my job. What's the process? Someone comes in, they don't even know if they're a believer yet, but they're curious. What do we do as a church to take them from spiritually curious to elder of the church? That's what we do. It was my job to think about that process. And I would sit around the table with other people who their entire job was to think about that process too. And we would talk about the different things that we're doing, the different structures in our church, how we do small groups, and what discipleship means, and all of those things. And inevitably, somebody would ask, what are you guys doing to make disciples? I never really heard that great of an answer. Very few churches had a good answer for that. I thought I had a good answer. It will surprise you none to know that I just bowled right in there with what we were doing, thinking this was the greatest thing in the world. But after seven years of doing it, what I realized is it seemed good on paper, but we're not really producing disciples. And it's kind of a discouraging thing to think about. It's not that the church isn't making disciples, it's just that it's inefficient and ineffective, and there's no systematic way to do it, and it gets messy, and it gets difficult. And so I've spent a lot of time thinking about when we commit to something at Grace, how do we want to make disciples here? What should that process look like? And because I've thought about that a lot, and frankly a lot and listened to whatever I can consume, I've tried my best to think through, well, what are the reasons that it struggles? What are the reasons that I see that churches so often struggle to produce disciples in a meaningful and in an effective and efficient way? And I think that so many churches struggle because our definition of discipleship is unclear and our expectations around discipleship are unrealistic. I think so many churches struggle because our definition is unclear and our expectations are unrealistic. Now, what I mean is, when I say our definition is unclear, I mean our definition of both the process, what does discipleship look like, and of the actual term. What does it mean to be a disciple? I think we're unclear about the process. Y'all, I have seen so many different discipleship programs, right? I remember one, and it's a good program out of a church called Twelve Stone near where I'm from, and it's called Joshua's Men. And it's this beefed up three-year study. You sign up for it, and you go like every week at the same time, and you go through this curriculum, and there's a guy that leads you, and there's like groups of six to eight men, and you go through this curriculum, and at the end of it, you're a disciple. And I just thought, what a corporate America way to approach discipleship. What a bunch of dudes getting in a room. We want to make disciples. What do we need to do? What do we need to know? How do we need to learn? What are the blanks we need to fill in? How do we systematize this nebulous relational thing? Joshua's men. And it works sometimes, but not all the time. Most of the time, people crap out. Very few people make it through all three years, right? Or I want to be discipled, and so we'll look for that one person that we're going to have coffee with every week. And we sit down and we say, will you disciple me? And they say yes, and then we don't know what to do from there. So you just get into a small group, and we get into a small group, and we're not sure if discipleship is happening. I've seen so many programs and so many efforts that I think we're unclear on the process. What does it take to produce a disciple? And I know that we're unclear at Grace, because over the past, I would say, year and a half, two years, I've had multiple conversations with people here who have wanted to meet with me. And when they meet with me, they say, hey, I'm looking for someone to disciple me. I'm looking for someone to mentor me. I'm ready to take the next steps in my faith. I'm ready to grow in my walk. What do I need to do? Who do you think I can talk to? Who would you recommend? Do you have, like, just a bank of disciple makers that you can just, like, plug me into? Do you have, like, a catalog I can talk to? Who would you recommend? Do you have like just a bank of disciple makers that you can just like plug me into? Do you have like a catalog I can choose from? And I'll have other people who will come to me and they'll go, hey, I'd love to disciple somebody. Do you have any young people who are just clamoring for it? And what those conversations tell me is that I have not been clear about our process at Grace. And so I wanted to try to bring some clarity this morning to both what the process is and what the definition of it is. Because on Tuesday, we had an elder meeting. And at the elder meeting, I just brought up the point, I think that there were six elders in the room. And I'm not being overly flattering. I mean this with all sincerity. I love our elders. I have a great amount of respect for our elders. I would put our elders up against any other, not that it's a competition, but I just think we have some really capable, smart people in that room, and I'm grateful for them. And to those people, I said, if I asked you guys to define discipleship, what are the chances I would get if I set each of them down, all six of them that happened to be there that night, and I got to talk with them individually and ask them, how would you define discipleship and what a disciple is? They all agreed that I would get six very different, likely meandering, probably unclear, lacking precision, lacking concision answers about what discipleship is. They would all be different versions of right. They would all wander there eventually. And these are people who love the church and who are committed to the idea of making disciples, but collectively as a group, we didn't have a concise way to explain it. And I think in so many places, the definition of what a disciple is and what discipleship, the process is, is unclear. So I wanted to try to bring some clarity to it for grace and come up with a new way for us to think about as we seek to become disciples and make disciples, which are God's instructions to us. About a year and a half ago, I went to a conference. It was a pastor's conference out in San Diego. It was a guy named Larry Osborne that was putting on the conference. He's got a big, huge church out there. He's in his mid-60s. I love the way this guy thinks about ministry. And he gave me a definition of discipleship that I had never heard before. I had spent most of my vocational life thinking about it, studying it, learning about it, trying to frame it up. And he gave me a definition that was so simple that it totally changed the way I thought about discipleship. And I've been waiting to kind of spring it on you and make this how we think about it at Grace. So this isn't from me, this is from him, but this is what he said. And this is how I want to define the process of discipleship at Grace. Discipleship is simply taking your next step of obedience. That's what discipleship is. Now, you're adults, you love Jesus, you can poke that and prod that, and you can think through that, and you can take it home and work it out and see if it makes sense to you, but to me it makes perfect sense that discipleship is simply taking your next step of obedience. That's what it is. We are on that course. It's a process of simply taking our next step of obedience. And with every step, we get closer to God. With every step, we sacrifice more of who we are and accept more of what God wants. With every step, we admit more and more that I am not the Lord of my life, that God is the authority in my life. So with every step, we are getting closer to God. So being on the course of discipleship simply means taking our next step of obedience. And if you think about it, this is what Jesus taught the whole time. In the scriptures, our love of God is irrevocably coupled with our obedience to him. Look at what Jesus says in the Gospel of John in two different places, a chapter apart. I love the happenstance of the references of these verses, 14, 15, and 15, 14. He says, if you love me, this is Jesus speaking, if you love me, keep my commandments. And the very next chapter, if you are my friends, do what I command. It's not complicated. Jesus wasn't trying to shroud discipleship in mystery. He wasn't trying to make spiritual growth difficult or hard to grasp or understand. He wasn't even trying to make it for the spiritually elite. He just said, if you love me, you know how I know? You obey me. You know who my friends are? The people that are close to me? The people who obey my father. In Mark that I'm going through with my men's group, his mom and his siblings show up to try to stop him from teaching because they thought he was crazy. This was early on in his ministry. And he's in the middle of teaching and they say, Jesus, your mother and your brothers are here. And he said, my mother and my brothers are those who obey the will of my Father. Jesus himself couples our love of God with our obedience to him. So discipleship is simply walking, taking steps of that obedience. John, the disciple, was, I would argue, the closest disciple to Jesus. I don't know that he was like the best believer. I have no idea to measure that. But relationally, he seems closer to Jesus than anybody else who is living. And at the end of his life, he wrote letters to the churches. And in the second letter that he wrote to the church, in 2 John 6, verse 1, he says, and this is love. He's talking about if we say that we know Jesus, but we don't have love, then we are liars. And then he defines love. This is love, that we walk in obedience to his commands. It is one thing to say that we love God. It is one thing to say that we believe. It is one thing to say that we love God above all else, heart, soul, and mind, amen. That's another thing to walk in obedience. That's why I'm increasingly convinced that what it means to be discipled is to simply take our next step of obedience. And here's what this means, and I love this. This means that discipleship is for everyone. Discipleship is for all of us. I think if you're in the church, sometimes you've heard the word discipleship. You may have been here long enough to have heard that word or been in Christian culture long enough to have heard that word but not really know what it means. I think some of us see that something like far off, that it's like the spiritual equivalent to buds training for the seals in the Navy, that it's like for the military elite, that it's for Christian black belts, and that's not the deal. Disciples are not people on mountainsides who don't talk to anybody but Jesus and just like eat grass. That's not what disciples are. Disciples are not unattainable figures like Elijah or Abraham. Those are pictures of disciples, but those are pictures of people who have been walking and taking steps of obedience for their entire life. But discipleship is for everyone. Has it ever occurred to you that the disciples were disciples before they were Christians? You ever thought about that? When Jesus goes to Matthew, the tax collector, and he says, hey, I want you to follow me. And Matthew puts down his instruments and he leaves his table and he follows Jesus. I don't think he yet fully understood that this is the Messiah, the Savior of the world. And one day he's going to die and I'm going to place my faith in that death so that it covers over my guilt and God accepts me and my relationship is restored. Matthew didn't know all that, but you know what he did do? He took a step of obedience. He said, okay, I'm going to follow you. Peter and James and John, when they put down their fishing nets, they didn't yet know the full magnitude of who this man was that they were following. I would argue that they weren't even yet believers. They simply took a step of obedience. And so what that means for you today is, even if you're here this morning and you wouldn't yet call yourself a believer, discipleship is still an option for you because it's simply an invitation to take your next step of obedience. And everybody has one of those. Your next step might be, okay, I've had some nagging questions about spiritual things for a long time. I'm going to take the step to begin to learn about answers to those questions. Maybe you've been gathering and learned some information about those questions. And maybe your next step is to get more serious about what it might look like to take on a faith. Maybe your next step is to accept Christ. Maybe it's to get baptized. Maybe your next step is to have that hard conversation that you've been needing to have. Maybe your next step is to confess something to your spouse or to someone you care about. Maybe your next step is to finally get locked into the discipline of waking up early and spending time in God's Word and spending time in prayer. Everybody's next step is different, but here's the thing about the Holy Spirit. I don't have to stand up here and guess at what they might be until I hit yours because he's already telling you. If you're a believer, we all have a next step of obedience at all times. So discipleship is for everyone, and it always beckons, and it always invites. It is not for the spiritually elite. It's for everybody. And if that's the process of discipleship, if that's what it means to be being discipled, then this is how we define a disciple at grace. This is actually something that I talked over with the elders. This is not my definition. This is our definition. The one that I presented to them at first, they said was too absolute and exclusive, and I came around to agreeing with them. So this is a result of a group think of not just me, but the leadership of the church. And what we believe that a disciple is, and how we want to define it as grace, is a disciple is one who is increasingly walking in obedience to God. A disciple is someone who is increasingly walking in obedience to God. Have you taken more steps this year than last year? As you progressed last year, did you continue to progress or did you stop? A disciple is one who is increasingly walking in obedience to God. At some points, we get off the train. At some points, we stop walking in obedience. At some points, we get into a bit of a spiritual rut, but when we get back onto it and we begin to take those steps again, then we are walking in discipleship again, which means that at grace, what we want to do, if we want to make disciples like Jesus told us to do, then what we want to do is constantly be showing ourselves and one another what our next step of obedience is, constantly encouraging one another to take those next steps of obedience and define a disciple as someone who is simply walking and increasing obedience to the Father. That's how we want to define those things. So that's how I want to bring clarity. If we say that one of the reasons that churches struggle is because we're unclear, I want to do what I can to bring some clarity to how we think about the process and the definition of the term at grace. But I also said that our expectations are unrealistic. I think what we expect around discipleship is something that doesn't always work in adult life. I think often we get locked into the single mentor paradigm is what I'm calling it. Often in church we get locked into the single mentor paradigm. We look at the way that Jesus discipled the disciples. And because the disciples had one person that was pouring into them for three years, then our expectation of discipleship is that we'll find this one spiritual mentor that we look up to in every way in life and that will sit under them and they'll teach us. It's this life-on-life model where they followed Jesus around and lived with him. It says, foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head. So the disciples just followed him around couch surfing for three years. I know it's crude, but it's true. That's life-on-life discipleship. We can't in our culture really mimic that. But we still exist in this single mentor paradigm that as adults, we're supposed to find the one person to follow and pour into us. And I've even said things. You've heard pastors say things like this before. I've said it. We see the model of it with Paul and Timothy. I've said before, everyone needs to have their Paul and everyone needs to have their Timothy. Everybody needs to have someone who's pouring into them and everybody needs to have someone that they're pouring into. This kind of single mentor paradigm. The problem is, in 2020, that's not very effective. With the staff this week, the full-time staff, Kyle and Steve and Aaron, in our staff meeting, I said, which of you have ever gone to someone and asked them to disciple you? And because there are people who care about their walk with the Lord, because it matters to them, all of them said, yeah, multiple times. And I said, how'd that go for you? And they said, eh, it was all right. I said, how many of you have had somebody come to you and ask you to disciple them? And they all said, yeah, we've had that before. How'd that go? They said, I don't really know what to do. I had somebody this week that I had coffee with, and he shared with me that years ago, there was a group of guys who were in their 20s, and he was in his 30s or maybe early 40s, and they went to him and they said, hey, will you disciple us? And he said, sure, and he started meeting with them, and then they didn't know what to do. We have a lack of clarity around the process. Our hope and our desire is to find the single mentor that can lead us for the next however many years and guide us through all things in life. And the truth of it is, that's a really rare find, particularly in adulthood. It's not impossible. It's not bad. It's great. And it happens. But if any of you have ever had someone that you said, yeah, I feel like that person discipled me, I would be willing to bet that nine out of 10 of us in the room, it was in high school or in college. I feel like I've discipled people, but they were always in high school or in college. It's a unique season of life that allows for that. But as adults, finding a single mentor to lead us in perpetuity becomes an ineffective thing. And I think hoping for that and expecting that is one of the reasons that we fail to make disciples. So instead of that, I want to propose to you guys the idea of seasons, topics, and communities of discipleship. Seasons of discipleship, topics of discipleship, and communities of discipleship. And here's what I mean. If you think about the disciples, if we understand discipleship as simply taking our next step of obedience towards God, yes, Jesus was the mentor. He was the guy pouring into those. He was the chief minister to the disciples in those three years. But do you mean to tell me that during those three years, the community that they had together of accountability and of encouragement and of challenge didn't help some of them take their next steps of obedience? Do you mean to tell me that as Jesus put different things in front of them, as he put different steps of obedience in front of them, go two by two and go into the surrounding towns and teach what I've taught you and perform the miracles that I've performed, do you mean to tell me that they didn't lean on each other to be encouraged towards that obedience? Do you mean to tell me that that wasn't a community of discipleship? I would argue that the disciples discipled the disciples. I think that's what they did. Furthermore, Jesus only spent three years with them. They had the rest of their lives to live. If you believe some research, they were at the latest in their early 20s when Jesus ascended into heaven. They had a long way to go. Who discipled Peter for those remaining years? Who discipled James and John? They did. They continued to encourage one another to take their next step of obedience towards God. So we want to have communities of discipleship here. We want to have topics and seasons of discipleship. I believe in seasons of discipleship because I believe that God puts people in our path for a season that we learn from during that time, and then at some point or another, that season's in, and each of you move into your next phase. We see that in Jesus's ministry and the disciples' ministry. We see Paul enter into John Mark's life and disciple him for a season. We see Paul disciple Timothy for a season. We see Paul and Barnabas work together for a season. I think that there are seasons of people in our life and things that God wants us to work on, and I believe that there are topics of discipleship. A great example of this is the small group that meets this afternoon. This afternoon, Steve, our worship leader, and his wife, Lisa, start their marriage small group. It's going to last for about six weeks, and then after that, they may continue to meet and discuss other things. But for those six weeks, absolutely what they are doing is discipling those couples in marriage. It's a topic of discipleship. What they're going to do is show them how to take their next steps of obedience in their marriage. It's a community of discipleship because it's 16 to 20 people who are getting together every week, and they're going to encourage one another in that direction. It's a season of discipleship. It's not going to go on forever. It's going to happen now, and then move on to another thing. I want us to reshape the way we think about discipleship, to move away from the single mentor paradigm. We might find that, but discipleship can happen outside of that. And start looking for people and communities and opportunities that can encourage us to take our next step in obedience to God. This is why we have small groups shaped up the way that we do. We sign up for our small groups every January and every August. And part of the design of that is to give you easy in-ramps and easy off-ramps. You try a small group for a semester. It works for you as a community of discipleship and a season of discipleship, maybe even a topic of discipleship then. And then the next semester, you do what seems most helpful to you. So maybe we stay in our small groups in perpetuity, and that becomes a community of discipleship for years to come. And maybe we shift into a different group. But our small groups are structured in such a way that we can move into and out of whichever groups are going to help us along our path the best. Which is again why I want us to start thinking about discipleship in terms of seasons and community and topics. And as we think about, man, I wish somebody would disciple me. If you're thinking about meeting with someone, if you're thinking about approaching someone, if you see someone and you respect some of the things that they do, I would encourage you to think in terms of a question, to think in terms of a topic. Don't go to someone and say, hey, would you disciple me? That's weird for everybody because we don't know what to do after that. But you may notice that this lady loves her husband in a way that I have not seen. So you might go to her and you might say, hey, I see the way that you love your husband. Will you teach me to be a wife the way that you are? It's a topic. It's an easy expectation. She can disciple you in that for a season. You may look at somebody and you may see the way that they run their business or the way that they orchestrate their career. And you may go, hey, listen, I see the way that you honor God, but you still achieve success. Will you disciple me in what it means to be a godly professional or a godly entrepreneur? That's a question. That's a topic. That's a season. You might, as a couple, go to another couple and say, hey, we see your kids. They're in college or they're adults and they seem to have their act together. We'd love to have kids that look like yours. Will you tell us your secrets? Can we have dinner at our house and you'll just tell us, we'll ask you questions about being parents. That's discipleship. It's a topic. It's a season. And if you do that, those things might morph into ongoing relationships of long-term discipleship, and that's great. But for those of us who are seeking to grow, I want us to start to think in terms of topics and seasons. For those of you who would seek to make disciples, your goal and your job is to simply help them see their next step of obedience and give them the courage and the ability to take it. And if someone does come to you and say, hey, would you disciple me? I would encourage you to try to get them to reframe the question in, what do you want to know? How can I help you best? What specifically do you want to get out of this to make sure it's fruitful for everyone? So at Grace, let's make disciples. Let's be disciples. Understanding that means we are a people who are committed to increasingly walk in obedience to the Father, that we are constantly thinking about our next step. I'm going to begin incorporating next step language in my sermons and pose to us what's the next step of obedience for us. What's your next step of obedience here? We want to see that language show up in our small groups. Small group leaders, as you shepherd the people who are in your groups, disciple them. Your job is to think for them. What is their next step of obedience and how can I help them take it? People who volunteer in the children's ministry every week, those kids that you love so much that you see once a month or every other week or however often it is, you're thinking actively for them. What is their next step of obedience and how can I help them take it? If you volunteer in the student ministry, if you pour into anybody in this church or anybody in your life, if you have kids, you are the chief discipler of them. Let me encourage you to shape up your parenting in such a way where you're thinking, what is their next step of obedience, Father, and how can I encourage them to take it? And in doing those things with clarity, let's be a church that grows deep. Let's be a church that is full of disciples, that is full of kind, generous, loving, knowledgeable, gracious believers who can all say that we are increasingly walking in obedience to our God together. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We thank you for loving us. God, I pray that Grace would be a church that makes disciples. Help us, God, from the leadership, to the partners, the volunteers, small group leaders, small group members, from people who would consider themselves on the periphery and even considering, help us all to take steps of obedience towards you. God, make us good at making disciples. If nothing else, God, if we stink at everything else as a church, I pray that this would be a place where if you come here, you will grow in a deeper knowledge of you. Father, for those of us who are facing steps of obedience that are difficult, please give us courage. Give us a faith to believe that even though we can't see what's on the other side of that step, even though we might fear bad consequences on the other side of that step, that ultimately, God, what you have for us when we take that step is better. Help us trust that you came to give us life to the full. God, build at grace a church of disciples that love you and help other people towards you. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.

Good morning, I'm Doug Bergeson. Wait, wait, you've got to be kidding me. Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it just a few months ago when Kyle Tolbert, our youth pastor, came up here to speak? And before he uttered a word, before a single word, good or bad, was out of his mouth, you were applauding him. What do I get? I'll tell you what I get. I get bubkis, nada, nothing. Let me tell you something. It's not lost on us, those of us who are asked to speak in the middle of July, but never ever at Christmas time, and for sure not at Easter. It's not lost on us that we're not on God's A-team. We get it. We're not stupid. So given that, it might be nice if you tried to be a little bit more encouraging and supportive. So let's try this again. I would not have done that. You know, the Bible's very clear that we're to test and approve what we hear, to be discerning about what's being taught, not just to accept it willy-nilly. And here you all are already clapping for me, and you haven't the faintest idea what I'm going to say. Come on, people, you're better than that. Anyways, hopefully it's obvious that I'm just goofing around, as I'm not only thrilled to be here, but I feel immense privilege to be sharing this morning. And just for the record, far from expecting applause, my desperate and sincere prayer and hope is that God will make what I say clear and useful to you all. I'm really excited about this new sermon series that we're starting. In the past, when I've been asked to speak, I've always kind of hemmed and hawed, wanted to think about it. But when Nate called me this time and explained that the new series was going to be on the obscure heroes of the Bible, I was, for some strange reason, I was enthused, and I immediately jumped at the chance. A big part of it might be that it's just different than the norm, and different is sometimes really good. Mix it up a little bit, move off the beaten path. But more than simply serving as a nice change of pace, there's a much more consequential reason for studying these obscure heroes. They have a lot to teach us. Now, there are plenty of times when I wish the Bible was easier to understand and didn't avoid so many questions that I'd like answers to. Wish that it explained a whole bunch of things better. A little less ambiguity and mystery would sometimes be nice. But in response to that wish, I've heard it said that God, whose Spirit inspired every word written, must have included what He thought was important, what He thought we needed to know. So rather than worrying about the stuff that wasn't included, we'd be much better served paying attention to the things and those people and those events that God did include in his word to us. And that brings us back to our sermon series. God saw fit to tell us about these characters and their stories. And for that reason, we are not going to ignore or gloss over or relegate these heroes to a footnote any longer. Instead, we're going to exploit them for all their worth and see what they can teach us, what they can reveal to us, how they might strengthen and encourage us. The Apostle Paul said it this way, for everything that was written in the past, even obscure heroes that maybe we've never heard of, was written to teach us so that through endurance and the encouragement of the scriptures, we might have hope. As I said, I was surprisingly enthused when Nate called me. Not only was I pumped for the series, but one name immediately popped into my head and I knew that was my guy. That was who I was going to talk about, Gamaliel, the great Pharisee and teacher of the law, and what he wisely concluded when confronted by the incredible boldness and defiance of Peter and the other disciples in the earliest times of the Christian movement. Now, how many of you have heard of Gamaliel? You don't have to raise your hands. You know, just wink or smile as I look around the room. Nothing but a sea of blank, expressionless faces. That's perfect. But before we get to Gamaliel, I need to set the table a bit for you, provide the backdrop to help explain why what he does, what he acknowledges is so valuable to me, that his was the first name in all the Bible that popped into my head. In other words, I need to make sure that we're on the same page with respect to one significant foundational point in order for us to see why Gamaliel, who himself is not even a believer in Jesus Christ, is a hero for us today. The key foundational point is to identify the overarching story of the Bible. Some of you are probably going, oh, sheesh, we're not going to be out of here until Tuesday. Not to worry, not to worry. It's not that daunting a task. In a nutshell, the opening chapters of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, reveal that God's loving intent was to provide all that we, His creations, need. Our job, our part of the bargain, is to trust that He is both able and willing to do that on our behalf, and for us to resist the temptation to want to decide for ourselves what's best. The rest of the Bible is just a long and involved telling of our incredible struggle to trust in God rather than ourselves, as well as the remarkable lengths God goes to to make it possible for us ultimately to place our full and abiding confidence in Him. Now, most of you are probably familiar with the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The garden was a fantastic place. Those two have a great life. It's a really sweet setup. There's only one rule, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Now, growing up in church, I didn't fully understand the significance of the boundary God established for humankind. My general sense was, you know, God likes rules. He's kind of a stickler about rules. And Adam and Eve got in pretty big trouble because they broke one of them. Well, as I've later come to understand, what actually happened was a much bigger deal than simply breaking a rule. What actually happened struck at the very heart of God's intent for creation. In allowing them to eat from any tree but the one, God was establishing the critical boundary for Adam and Eve and for every human since. God was saying, if you want to enjoy all of the good of my creation and live in my kingdom, you have to trust that I and I alone know what's best for you. And even more than that, you have to trust that I'm both able and willing to provide it to you. And so the questions that's faced Adam and Eve, as well as you and me, is do you believe that? Are you convinced that God knows what's best for you and that He is intent on providing it at all times and in all circumstances? When Eve first faced that question, the fate of all humanity hung in the balance. And what did she decide? Well, it turns out Eve wasn't completely convinced that God could be trusted. And she decided and felt the need to trust in someone else. Eve, that's who she decided to trust. She just trusted in herself instead. And now the serpent was cunning and planted the seed in Eve's mind that although God was certainly able to provide what was best for her, He wasn't willing but was holding something back. The serpent said, come on, Eve, you won't die. God's only worried that if you eat that fruit, you'll be like Him and be able to decide for yourself what's best, then you'll be your own God. And that has been humankind's struggle ever since. In the last book of the Bible, Revelation, it wasn't a question of God was willing to provide for his people, but if he was even able. Written at a time when Christ followers were just undergoing terrific persecution, with their very lives at stake, the facts on the ground were so difficult and so dire that only a nut job would conclude that somehow God was still in control and still in charge. And into that terrifically difficult and stressful situation, the Apostle John shared a vision of being transported up to the throne room of heaven where God sort of pulls back the curtain for a second just to show what's really going on behind the scenes. The message, no matter how things look from your perspective, I am God and there is no other. I have your back now and I have it for all eternity. Nothing can ever separate you from my loving care. Your faith and trust are well placed. God is asking each of us, do you believe, are you completely convinced that I'm both able and willing to provide the very best for you? That's the central question running throughout the entire Bible, and it's the central question of our human existence. But our struggle, our temptation, is to say in all different ways, well, God, to tell you the truth, in this particular area of my life, or in this particular relationship, or in this circumstance at this particular time, I'd like to have a say. I'd rather decide for myself what's best for me, what will make me most content, most comfortable, most safe, most fulfilled, most affirmed, most successful, most happy. After all, wouldn't I know better than anyone else what's in my best interest? That's exactly what Eve did. That's exactly what I do. And that is the root of all sin, a failure to trust in God's promise. We're just not entirely convinced, not enough to give up complete control. A famous passage from Proverbs that many of you probably know by heart is, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight. But that's not easy. Our world and our culture constantly bombard us from every conceivable angle with arguments that God, even if he does exist, is neither able or willing to provide what's best for us. That life demands we take charge and we're better off when we do. Non-stop appeals to be our own little lords of our own little lives. Now we're going to do a little audience participation here for just a minute. I'd like you all to close your eyes. Alan, keep your eyes closed. Okay. Imagine that you're on the seventh floor of an office building. You are alone, and it's dark. An electrical short circuit has knocked out the lights and started an intense fire, which has engulfed the entire floor and will soon breach the room you're in. The smoke coming in under the door and through the vents is overwhelming, forcing you to drop to your knees. Your eyes are burning and you're beginning to cough uncontrollably. You can open your eyes now. Suddenly, off to your right, you hear a violent pounding on the outside of the far wall. Then the blade of an axe comes crashing through and soon the shape of a firefighter appears in the opening and he shouts, come on, follow me, I'll get you out. Wouldn't he be surprised if you yelled back, oh, thanks, buddy. I'm good. I got this. Of course, no one would do that. No one trapped and on the brink of perishing would respond that way. We would not only listen to the firefighter's commands, we would literally cling to him. We would follow his every word because we implicitly trust him. Not only does he know what he's doing, but he went to great lengths to find and rescue us. And it's plain as day that we desperately need his help. My illustration borders on the ludicrous because we'd never do that. Yet that's what we say to God all the time. I'm good. I got this. Now maybe some of us hear this illustration and say, that's not me. I'm good at trusting. My faith is rock solid. Maybe that's true, at least on the surface. But even for those of us who trust God fully in most areas of our lives, I bet that there are little nooks and crannies. I appreciated you using that earlier. Little pockets where we don't. A relationship, a decision, a priority, a behavior, perhaps, for which we're not convinced God's preferred course of action serves us best. So we plot the course by our own wisdom. We decide for ourselves what's best. And when we do that, we forfeit some portion of the abundant life that God so desperately wants for us. Sadly, doubting God's promises, not being fully convinced that he is both able and willing to provide the best for me in all of life's situations, happens far more than I even recognize. The decision to trust in my own judgment is typically very subtle. So subtle, in fact, that I don't even realize that I'm doing it much of the time. I'll share an example from my own life, but first I have to give you some context. Twenty-six years ago, we moved down here from New Jersey. I quit a really good job on Wall Street. We sold our dream house that we only lived in for two years. We left our beautiful little town and all our friends. We had a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a newborn. We moved for a lot of reasons, but chief among them was my concern that it was all too consuming and that only over time does the true cost of that kind of investment in one's career become apparent? And by that point, it's often too late. The damage has been done. I believe back then, as I still do today, that wherever your treasure is, wherever you invest most of your time, your energy, your ambition, that's where your heart will ultimately be found. And I knew that for me, I couldn't keep doing that job in that city for very long without it, for all practical purposes, becoming my treasure and stealing my heart. Okay, so we did everything they tell you not to do all at the same time. Moved to a different part of the country, changed careers, sold houses, bought houses, had another baby. Deb had just turned 33, and I was 35. The plan was that I would invest our modest nest egg in the financial markets to support our new downsized life, and we'd live happily ever after. Now, fast forward 15 years. I'm meeting Jeff Hancock, who is Grace's teaching pastor at Carolina Ale House. I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon because that's when they had their specials. It's true. Jeff and I had a relationship built largely on a strong and abiding shared love of beer and for the places that happen to serve beer. Is there any stronger foundation for a friendship? Nevertheless, that was ours. So we'd get together every so often. And that particular afternoon, as soon as I sat down, Jeff asked if there was something wrong. And I started weeping and began to share with him how I was in the midst of suffering what for me was a breathtaking financial loss in the futures market. How I couldn't sleep, how it had stolen all of my joy, how it affected all of my personal interactions, including my most cherished ones with my wife and kids. Excuse me. With the child in college and two in high school, how it jeopardized everything Deb and I had planned. That loss was wreaking havoc in my life. Now, I shared with Jeff that afternoon that, yes, I was obviously sad to have lost so much of our nest egg at such a critical time. Yes, I was sorry for my stubbornness, my stupidity. Yes, I was sorry for my arrogance not to respect the markets. All that was true. Yet the reason I was weeping, what most undid me, was what the loss revealed about where I placed my trust. How it betrayed the fact that much of my confidence, my security, and my hope was wrapped up in our little nest egg, and that the notion that I trusted God was clearly not true, if not a bald-faced lie. And that is what makes it so tricky, because a lot of the time our struggles to trust are in those gray areas, things which in and of themselves don't strike us being all that bad or sinful. Nevertheless, we are not doing what God is asking us to do, to trust him with everything and in every situation. We simply aren't convinced that his way is always the best way. In answer to his question, do you believe that I am both able and willing to provide all that you need, we are saying no, not always. In the example I just shared from my own life, my answer was clearly no, I'm not completely convinced. In addition to trusting you, I would like my nest egg back. When we worry about things, even very serious things, we are wrestling with the question, will I trust God with my crisis? Is He capable to handle it on my behalf? Once again, our worrying says no, as it reveals that we're simply not convinced that God can handle the situation, or at least not to our satisfaction. According to the Bible, worry is the opposite of trust. When we choose not to forgive someone, contrary to God's clear desire and instruction, what are we doing? In not so many words, we are saying, I don't believe that God knows what's best for me. What about how we spend our money? I like to think that I include God in those discussions. But what I really do is only involve him in the discussion about the small portion that I might realistically earmark for charity. Concerning the other much bigger chunk, the 80, 90, or 95%, I say, wait just a second, God. Stay in your lane, buddy. I gave you some. This over here is for me to decide what to do. Scripture encourages us to confess our sins to one another, even and perhaps especially the deepest, darkest, and most shameful ones. My immediate response is to say, no, thank you, over my dead body. No way can that possibly be in my best interest. We're encouraged as believers to always be prepared to share why our hope is in Jesus Christ. I don't do it. I don't want to offend this person or turn them off. I don't want to be thought a weirdo or a creep. I'm a confident person generally. I'll share my opinion on almost any topic with almost anyone. But for some strange reason, I don't trust that God will have my back if I share my faith. God says be thankful at all times and in all circumstances. But I don't want to always be thankful, and there just so happens to be things in my life that I'm not thankful for. Yet having a spirit of appreciation and thankfulness is one command of God's that I've come to acknowledge clearly leads to joy and abundant life. I think of the people I know who are most pleasant and encouraging to be around, the ones that are most nutritious for me. Almost without exception, there are people who live life in a spirit of thanksgiving. The old saying is true, it's not happy people who are thankful, it's thankful people who are happy. Ironically, even knowing this, there are still times when I choose to defy God's good intent for my life and instead choose the way of the woe-is-me, self-pitting grumpus. Now, I could go on and on, but if each of us took a deep dive into our motivations for doing some things and not others, for worrying about things over which we have little control, for habitually engaging in certain behaviors or responding in certain ways, for placing so much importance on what others think, we would understand more clearly that, at least in those instances, we're not fully convinced that God always has our best interests at heart or that His way is always best, that He is completely trustworthy in all of life's circumstances, that He is intent on giving us life to the full, the life that is truly life, if only we would trust. And that, at long last, brings us to our hero, Gamaliel. What he offers is a simple proof, evidence to bolster our conviction that the God we worship deserves our full confidence and trust. I've never been a fan of belief for belief's sake. Don't care how sincere it might be. In other words, if I'm going to believe that God always has my best interest at heart and is able and willing to provide it to me, I want it to be true. More than that, I need to be convinced that it's true if I'm ever going to fully trust in it. Otherwise, as we've seen this morning, I'm going to succumb to the temptation to lean on my own wisdom and judgment. This is where the battle lines are drawn and the war for my trust is waged. And this is where Gamaliel's cool logic and reasoning come through in the clutch. Now let's go to the story in the book of Acts and jump into the action. Our story takes place in Jerusalem, not long after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. The Christian church is in its infancy and growing rapidly. The Jewish establishment is nervous and on edge. The disciples, Peter and John, have just healed a beggar who had been crippled from birth. Everyone was amazed, and when Peter saw their reaction, he said, men of Israel, why does this surprise you? Why do you stare at us as if it's by our own power or godliness that we had made this man walk? You killed the author of life, but God raised him from the dead. We are witnesses of this. By faith in the name of Jesus, the man you see and know was made strong. It is in Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him, as you can all see. While they were still speaking, the Jewish leaders, none too pleased with Peter and John's message, arrested them and threw them in jail for the night. The next day, they were brought before their rulers and elders and teachers of the law who questioned them about the healing. By what power or what name did you do this? And Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, replied, Let me interrupt our story for just a second to point out what remarkable change can happen in the hearts and minds of ordinary men and women when convinced of God's truth and imbued with His Spirit. Just a short time ago, these same disciples were the gang that couldn't shoot straight, timid and wavering, untrusting, unreliable, and unconvinced. Now look, there's hope for all of us. Now back to our story. The Jewish leaders were astonished by the courage of Peter and John, especially when they realized they were ordinary unschooled guys and weren't sure what to do as they had to admit that the healing was a fantastic, outstanding miracle which they couldn't deny. And they couldn't really punish them because everybody was running around praising God because of that miracle. So they issued some threats and ordered Peter and John not to speak about this Jesus. However, even after the imprisonment and threats, the disciples continued to preach, teach, and heal until the high priest and his associates could not stand it any longer and arrested them again. But that night, an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail in order the disciples to go back to the temple and tell the people the full message of this new life. When all the rulers assembled the next morning and sent for Peter and John, they were surprised to learn that although the jail was locked and secure, nobody was inside. The Bible says they were puzzled by this. I love the understatement. I bet they were puzzled when they later learned that the men were back in the temple court preaching and teaching. They went and got them, but not by force for fear of what the people might do. The high priest again questioned them, and now reading from Acts 5, 28 through 39. This is the high priest. We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, he said. Yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and are determined to make us guilty of this man's blood. Peter and John and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him. When they heard this, they were furious and wanted to put them to death. But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. Then he addressed them, men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. Some time ago, Thudas appeared, claiming to be someone, and about 400 men rallied to him. He was killed, and all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too wasailed, and the apostles were let go. And now here, for you all this morning, is the $64,000 question of the day. If Gamaliel, the wisest and most esteemed teacher of the day, could be here with us this morning, is there any doubt that he would conclude if their purpose is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men. You will only find yourselves fighting against God. Well, it hasn't been stopped. There has been nothing like it in all of human history. No other power or movement or belief system has come close. Down through all the centuries, across every people group and culture on earth, and reaching the furthest corners of our planet, God has been on the move, faithful to all his promises. The prophet Isaiah wrote about God's faithfulness this way. and my thoughts than your thoughts. As the rain and snow come down from heaven and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. And that's why Gamaliel is a hero to me. His wisdom and insight remind me again that God is true to his word always and is going to do what he promised to do. If I'm going to trust God completely and not rely on my own wisdom, but surrender control in all areas of my life, not just some of them, I need that assurance. Our God is both able and willing to provide all that we need. My hope and prayer for all of us this morning is that the words of the Apostle Paul might be our words. I know whom I have believed, and I'm convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day. Thank you. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for loving us. Thank you for all these people who carved out time on a hot Sunday morning to come to know you better and to worship you. Lord, thank you for pursuing us. Obviously, forgive us for all the times that we are trust wavers. We're simply not convinced that you're completely trustworthy in all of life's situations. Thank you for the hope that you give us through your son. And it's his name we pray. Amen.