Sermons tagged with Mexico

All right, well, like I said, good morning. It's good to be here, and I'm excited that you're here on this October Sunday. We've got a team down in Mexico now. We're gonna have a chance to catch up with them a little bit. Connor's gonna tell us a little bit more about what they're doing after the service, but I'm excited about that team. I'm gonna fly down there and join them on Tuesday of this week. But right now, we're gonna focus on the sixth part of our series called Feast. We did it. We made it. We've gone through the other five festivals in the Old Testament. We've arrived at the final one. This one is called the Feast of Weeks, or it's also known as Pentecost. It's the end of the first fruits celebration. Now, the trick here is you're thinking to yourself, why in the world do I care about the Feast of Weeks? This is the first time I've ever shown up for a sermon at a church, and they said, good news, everyone, we're talking about the Feast of Weeks from the Old Testament. So here's the thing. I think that if we learn what's happening here in the Feast of Weeks, if we learn what they're celebrating, then it can impact our life right away. It can impact the way that we understand that God loves us. It can impact the way we go about our days, and it can impact the way that we understand the Bible. If you've spent any time at Grace, you've heard me say that one of the most, not one of the most, the most important habit that anyone can ever develop is to spend time every day in God's Word and to spend time in prayer. The most important habit we can ever develop, eating well, exercising, being mindful, sleeping well, reading, whatever it is, any other habit, I would put this up against that one and say, this is the best one that any person could ever adopt is to spend time in God's Word and time in prayer every day. So if we're going to do that, it's incumbent upon us to understand the Bible. And what we're talking about today, I think, breathes fresh and essential life into our understanding of scriptures. And if we get it, will unlock for us a lot of the meaning of the New Testament. I would argue that the New Testament is not possible to be understood without the principles that we're talking about today. That's why I think the Feast of Weeks is so very important. Now, the Feast of Weeks, we see in Deuteronomy that it originally commemorated, it was a time to remember being in bondage or being in captivity. Over time, they looked at the timing of it and it became a celebration of something else because the Feast of Weeks is locked into the other spring festivals. The other spring festivals, for those who don't know, just so we catch up, is first Passover, and then that's on the Sabbath Friday, and then it starts on Friday night, and then that Sunday is the Feast of First Fruits. There's a timing thing there. It's two, three days after, and then you count 50 days from that period, from that time, and you arrive at the last holiday in the spring calendar, the Feast of Weeks, known as Pentecost. It's 50 days and counting. Penta means 50, and so in the Old Testament, it was known as Pentecost. Now, some of you know your Bible well enough that you're jumping to Pentecost in the New Testament. You know what that is, and Acts, we're not there yet. We'll get there. You're smart. But we're not there yet, okay? This is where we are. And what they realized after some years is that there wasn't a significant event that happened to be timed up perfectly with the Feast of Weeks and Pentecost. And that was the receiving of the law. And so traditionally, the Feast of Weeks has celebrated the reception of the law. You've got notes there in front of you. We handed those out. Obviously, we're not going to put those up this week. We didn't need one more thing to try to not mess up. But I'm going to say enough things that you can fill in your notes if you need to. So Feast of Weeks celebrates the reception of the law. And that timeline that you have at the top of your notes is really important. Now, why was it such a big deal to receive the law? Why did the Jewish people celebrate this every year? Well, one rabbi said that the law is so essential that it's what makes Jews Jewish, that following the law is what makes Jews Jewish. In it, it's their essence. It's who they are. Tradition says that the law was given in all 70 known languages, but the Jewish people were the only people that decided to take on the mantle of the law and begin to try to follow it. So first, the law gave them their identity. That's why it's a big deal. Another reason it's a big deal, I don't know if you guys have ever thought about this. I spend time with the Bible and try to think about stuff like this because I kind of get paid to do it. But have you ever thought what it would be like to be a believer in God before the law, before the scripture, before the Bible? To just be in Egypt and to know that there is a God. I'm pretty sure there's a God. He seems to be pretty tight with Moses. When Moses says stuff that usually comes from God, he encountered a bush one time. And so now he's telling us what to do. And I feel like that's authoritative. But have you ever thought what it would be like to be a believer before the law, before the Bible, before websites had statements of faith, right? Like if you're new to Grace or if you've checked out a church recently, one of the first things other church people do before they go to a church is they go to the website and then they click on statement of faith and they go, do these people agree with most of the things that I think, right? So that when they go to church, they kind of know what they're stepping into. Can you imagine just visiting someplace blindly? Can you imagine going to a church and the pastor's preaching and he doesn't have the Bible? There's no authority. There's nothing to check him on. I'm just telling you what I think is a good idea, what I heard from this guru in the mountains this one time, and now I'm telling you that this is the gospel truth. Can you imagine how murky and how confusing and how difficult that might be to try to follow and please a God that you know exists, but you're not sure how? I think it would feel like I felt at my old job, Greystone Church, one time. When I was at Greystone, I was the small groups pastor, and I was in charge of student ministry. I was in no way talented at graphic design or content creation. Yet, that's what I got assigned to do this one time. My boss, the lead pastor, Jonathan, he came to me and said, Nate, I want you to design a booklet that has all the information that somebody would need to know about Greystone Church. I want you to just put it together, do pictures, summaries, do a picture of Sunday morning worship, tell them what that's about, give them the mission of the church, student ministry, children's ministry. I want you to put this together and make it look nice. We're going to put it on the information table, and then when somebody new visits the church, we'll just be able to hand it to them, and they can know everything need to know about Greystone. And I'm like, all right, great. You got the right man for the job. I'm gonna knock this out of the park. So for the next two weeks, I actually worked and I tried hard at this. And I had my friend come in and they took pictures and I assembled the document. I figured out how to make it the right size, how to make it like a square, I think, is the shape that I went with. And there was pictures, and there was captions, and there was someone dynamically leading worship, and then a paragraph underneath about what worship means to us, and a verse to go along with it, and then the preaching, and then the small groups, and why we do that, and here's our vision for small groups. And it was excellent. And then I had to go print it out. And I realized, I don't know, I don't know if you guys have ever encountered this. I don't know how to make the printer do the thing I need it to do. Like, I don't know. I need it to print out in a square book that's folded. That's what I need. And what it's giving me is eight and a half by 11 that's not folded and not square. I don't know what to do. So we did like 200 of these things all day on the Saturday before because I didn't want to mess it up. It was due Sunday morning. I didn't want to let anybody down. And so I fear failure. That is my main driver. So like if you'll do this, it'd be great. I'll never do it. But if you don't do this, you will fail. I will stay up 48 hours to get it done. So I'm hand stapling each one of these things. I'm measuring them out and hand cutting to eight and a half by 11 and the borders around the whole thing and then folding them myself, like nice and neat. I get it done. I array them on the information table. Look at what Nate did. And then we get there Sunday morning, very proud of what I've just done. And Jonathan gets there. And I go, hey, dude, I finished these. Did you see them? And he takes a look at it. He's like, oh, yeah, that's good. Good job, man. Thanks. And he sets that down. About five minutes later, I look over, and the volunteers that day have been instructed to just sweep those into the trash can. Just throw them all away. These are garbage. And listen, you think that's mean. That was the right choice. Those things were terrible. They were, I knew as I was cutting them, I can't believe this. This looks like an eighth grade art project with someone with no talent. Like this is awful. And I knew it was awful. And really, I was grateful because in the decision to throw those away, he saved me the shame that was going to come from everyone discovering that, oh, isn't that sweet that Nate did these? Like, I didn't need that in my life. So it sounds mean, but he actually did me a favor, right? And then he put Kyle on it. Like three weeks later, there's this, not that Kyle. Kyle's not good at that stuff. Another guy named Kyle who is good at that stuff. Kyle's the student pastor here. He used to work with me at Greystone. But we had a worship pastor there named Kyle, and he was good at that stuff. He put it all together, and it was this nice glossy color pamphlet that unfolded and had minimal words and maximum pictures and looked way better. And Jonathan was like, great job, Kyle. And I think they still have that sitting over there, okay? Here's the thing. I didn't have the direction or the competence to do what I needed to do. I was groping in the dark to try to do a good job at this assignment, but I didn't know what I was supposed to do. I didn't know what he had in mind and I was ill-equipped to get it done. I did not have the talent to make it happen. I think that's how it would feel to try to follow God without the law. I think that's how it would feel to try to follow God without the Bible. Just this loose idea that we're supposed to obey him, we're supposed to love. I think we should probably love our neighbors. I think we should probably not steal things. This all seems good. But then in the nuances of the day-to-day, how do I please this God? I am ill-equipped and the mission is undefined. I don't know. And so the law brings clarity to a place that was unclear. The law says, okay, you want to be right with me? You want to know what it takes to please me? Here are the rules. There's 10 of them. The law communicates. Now, this is not what God communicated, but this is what they heard. And over time, this is what the law came to communicate. And this is actually in your notes if you want to write it down. The law came to communicate, if you obey me, I will love you. You want some clarity? You want to know what you need to do to please the God that talks to Moses? You want to know what you need to do day in and day out? Then here's the law. Here's what you need to do. If you do this, I will love you. And then the Jewish tradition, the rabbis, what they would do is the law is here. The line is here. Do not cross this line. So what they would do to make extra sure that they never crossed the line and faltered in the law is that they would draw their own line back here. And then somebody else would go, oh, that's not far enough. And then they would keep backing up and keep backing up and keep backing up so that they would stay away from this. And so God continued to add more laws like the fine print undergirding the other laws, like honor your father and mother. Here's the 38 laws that will help you do that. Honor the Sabbath. Here's the 150 laws about the Sabbath. And so over the course of history and in the book of Leviticus, we have over 630 laws that they accrued, and they lived according to the law. And so they celebrated this each year when they celebrated the Feast of Weeks at the conclusion of Pentecost, 50 days after the Feast of Firstfruits, because it gave them clarity. It gave them their heritage. It made Jews Jewish. It showed that God loved them and was communicating with them, and it gave them a clear path to be right with their Creator. The problem with the law is really twofold. It engenders exhaustion and it engenders frustration. Legalism. It engenders exhaustion and it engenders legalism. It engenders legalism because now our spirituality is defined by how well we follow the rules. Some of us have been in environments like this. I can remember growing up in the 90s in evangelical world in high school. For me, I don't know how it was in your high schools, but for me in the context that I grew up in Atlanta, if you're in high school and you don't do things you shouldn't do with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, and you don't cuss, and you don't drink, and you don't smoke weed, you don't do those four things, and you do go to church, you're an excellent human. You're the best possible version of Christianity. That was it. And if you did one of those things, then you're kind of okay, but you probably can't be a leader in your youth group. You probably wouldn't be an elder or a deacon one day in your church. That was the rules. I grew up in that legalism. If you don't cuss, you don't do inappropriate things with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, and you don't do drugs and you don't drink, then you are a phenomenal Christian. Never mind that you have all these bad habits going on in private. Never mind that you're pompous and you're filled up because you think you're better than everybody who does those things. Never mind all that. That's what the law does. It engenders legalism. And gray area. And then we start asking questions like, is it a sin if I do this? I know that this is wrong, but can I get away with this? Right? More dangerously, it engenders frustration and I think exhaustion. Because the law says, if you want to be right with me, here are the rules. Here's what you have to do. And so you set yourself about doing that, and you fail, usually within a couple of hours. You feel bad about your failure. You go to God in sorrow. You perform a sacrifice. You're forgiven. You're good with God again because the law has made that provision, and now you start over. And you try really hard this time. I'm really gonna honor God. I'm really gonna have the right attitude. I'm really not gonna do that thing. I'm not gonna mess up anymore. And then you mess up. You feel bad. You perform a sacrifice. You start over. Try hard, fail, start over. Try hard, fail, start over. It's the whole cycle of the Old Testament. And we've seen this in our life. We've seen this in our life. And what happens eventually when you try hard and you fail, eventually instead of starting over, you just quit. Instead of starting over, you just go, I'll never be able to do it. I can never be who God wants me to be. I can never be right with him. I can never follow the law well enough. I can never follow all the rules right enough. I can never be the person that I see in my church. I can't be those people. So I'm out. I'm done. And we walk away. I think this is what happens with a lot of kids who grow up in church and then they fall away in college. We know this story. it's very prevalent. It happened with a lot of us. A big part of that is we grew up in some version of faith where we were legalistic and we were told that God accepts us based on our behavior. And then we get off and we have a little bit of freedom and honestly, we're tired of trying. So we just stop. We know this frustration. And if we don't, if we still think one day I can be good enough, one day I can still, it's possible for me to behave in such a way that I will honor God with my behavior day in and day out. I would introduce you to what I call the torment of motives. There's this actually philosophical question. It's been, I mean, the debate's been going on for centuries. Is it possible to do anything that is truly good? Some of you guys may have thought about this before. And basically it states that there's no truly unselfish act. That when you do something good, and you're nice to somebody, you hold the door for someone, and you go, that's a good act, that's positive. And you go, yeah, that's great, why'd you do that? Well, I just want to be courteous. Why do you want to be courteous? Keep asking those questions, you know what you'll get to? I want other people to like me. That's selfish. You didn't hold that door for them, you did it for you. That's tough. There's actually a Friends episode about this. Joey and Phoebe debate this, like through the course of the show. If you don't know Friends, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna give you the context for Friends, but if you do, great. There's two people on a TV show and they're debating back and forth. And finally, Phoebe feels like she thinks of the one thing, the one altruistic act that she can do that's truly good. And so she goes to the park, and she lets a bee sting her. She said, look, I did it. This caused me pain. I got nothing out of this. It was good. And Joey says, well, the bee died, man. That's murder. Even if we think we're good, even if we have a good behavior week, if you get down to the heart of the matter and what motivated that behavior, that's still nasty. It's still muddy. It's still selfish. It's still self-centered. And so when the law says, if you obey me, I will love you, what we find out is that that leads to frustration and it leads to legalism and we end up exhausted. And it's in the middle of that exhaustion. That's not just for us, but the Hebrew people too. They lived that generation after generation. It's in the middle of that exhaustion that the second Pentecost shows up. Second Pentecost we find in Acts chapters one and two. What's going on here is that Jesus has come and he's lived his life. He's died on the cross. And then he ascends into heaven. The disciples gather in an upper room. And then they receive second Pentecost in the book of Acts. It's the you're supposed to do it when you get the gift. So they're just sitting there. The Holy Spirit appears in the form of flaming tongues. They go out on the balcony of this upper room and begin to preach. And gathered all around them are the citizenry of Jerusalem as other people from the surrounding areas in all kinds of languages and all different tongues. And they begin to speak. And these people hear the gospel in their language because they're still in Jerusalem. Because what just happened is 50 days ago, we murdered a guy named Jesus of Nazareth. We put him on the cross and we crucified him. But when he died, the sky turned black and the veil tore in two and some pretty seismic things happened. And then three days later, he wasn't in his tomb anymore. And we got to know what in the world is going on with this Jesus guy and what in the world is happening with these disciples. What did we just do? And so at Pentecost, Peter goes out and he tells them what they did. He said, that man that you crucified, that was the Messiah. And he shows how all the scriptures pointed to Jesus and prepared them for Jesus. And even the festivals prepared them for Jesus. And he helps them see what we've been seeing for the past six weeks. Everything points to Jesus. God's been prepping us for the Messiah. And he was the one and you killed him. And they go, what do we do? You're right. We believe you. What do we do? Peter says at the end of chapter two, repent and be baptized. Repent. Repent of who you thought Jesus was. You thought he was just a man. You thought he was just a teacher. You thought he was just a prophet, and because of that, you killed him. But he is the son of the living God. So repent of who you thought he was. Admit that he is Lord. Put your faith in him and be baptized. And it says that day that 3,000 were added to their number. Do you know what that is? That's the birth of the church. That's where we came from. It worked. We're on another continent 2,000 years later. It's pretty good. I've been on the southern tip of Africa in Cape Town in Masapumaleli, standing outside of a church, looking up at the clouds, listening to them praise God in a language that I don't understand and going, God, your plan worked. Pentecost worked. While I was there, there was a team there from Australia, from the other end of the globe. It worked. That's the birth of the church. And then we get the seminal passage in chapter 2, verses 42 through 47, that defines the early church. They gathered in their homes. Two days later, first fruits, Sunday. Then you count 50 days, and it's Pentecost, the receiving of the law. The Holy Spirit speaks, and he gives them the law. After Jesus dies and goes to heaven, on the day of first fruits, they count 50 days later, and what happens? Second Pentecost. You see? Passover. Jesus was celebrating Passover with the disciples. He's arrested and crucified. That's Friday. Two days later on Sunday, he raises from the dead. That's Easter. That's the feast of first fruits. He goes to God. He offers himself as the first fruits of the rest of the harvest that's about to come, that he's just one with his death and his resurrection. He counts 50 days. 50 days later, the disciples are holed up. They're supposed to be celebrating the feast of weeks, but they don't know what to do. They're waiting for a gift. The Holy Spirit speaks to them in the form, comes to them in the form of tongues, and they present the gospel instead of the law. Thousands of years ago, the law was delivered. The Holy Spirit spoke on the day of Pentecost and he delivered to them the law. And the law engenders frustration and exhaustion and legalism. And in the middle of that frustration and exhaustion, God delivers Jesus and it follows the same timeline. And on the feast of weeks at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit speaks again, except this time he speaks with the gospel. And if the law says, if you obey me, I will love you, then the gospel says, I love you, obey me. Totally different. The gospel says, I love you. I don't care what you do. I don't care what you're going to do. I don't care if you don't have your quiet time for the next 50 days. I don't care if you have it for the next 50 days. I love you. There's nothing that you can do to make me love you more. I don't care if you tithe 50% of your income in 2020. I will not love you more at the end of that year than if you tithe nothing. I don't care if you join eight small groups or if you join no small groups. I love you the same. You can go have the best week possible this week and be walking with the Lord and check all the boxes and do all the things you're supposed to do. And guess what? When you get to the end of this week, God will not love you any more than he does right this second because it's impossible because he loves you as much as he possibly can right now. And if you do nothing this week, if your life spirals out of control and all the things in the shadow are thrust into the light and you're a wreck, God will love you just as much at the end of this week as he did at the beginning. The gospel says, I love you. Obey me. I love you. You don't have to earn it. You don't have to perform. I'll clean you up. I'll get you right. Obey me. Do you know what else this does? This purifies our motives. Because now I'm obeying out of the sense of God loves me so much, I'm blown away by his love. I can't believe that he loves me in this way. I just want to go do what he asked me to do. I want other people to know this love. Can I tell you where I see this show up in my life? It's very few places, if I'm honest. But I see this show up in my sermons. When I'm not in a good spot, which is more regularly than you know, I'm not joking. It just is. There's all kinds of mixed motives laced into when I preach. I want you to think I'm good at it. I want you to tell your friends. I want my friends from back home to listen and miss me. I want it to be good. I want all the same ego crud wrapped up in what I do that some of you do. Some of you are pure of heart and you can't relate to this in any way. Jen, my wife Jen's like, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never done that in my life. But when I'm not totally healthy, my prep is laced with the desire to do good. But when I am healthy, when I'm overwhelmed by how much the Lord loves me in spite of myself, I care less about doing good. When it's really pure, there is this thing in the Bible that you guys have got to know. And I'm going to get up and I'm going to tell you. And I don't care if you think it's good or not. I don't care if I think it's good. I just want you to know this. Those are the good ones. I want to live my life like that. I want you to live your life like that. When someone says, why'd you do that thing? Why'd you give those people that money? Why'd you wait? Why didn't you yell at that person? Why don't you fight more with your children? What's going on? I want your sincere answer to be, God loves me, so I love them. How pure would our lives be? We wouldn't have to try to obey anymore. We would never ask the question, is this sin? Never. We would just walk in this reality that God loves us. Then we don't have to do anything. Do you know the whole point of the law was to get us to a place where we realized our need for that? That's what Paul says in Romans 8. Romans 8 starts out and he says, there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Okay, so that means that there's no blame. Everybody who's in Christ Jesus, everybody who has faith is right with God. They don't need to perform anymore or try anymore. They're good. He said, for God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, was unable to do. Which means that the law, the point of the law was trying to show us how to be pure and earn our way into heaven. But because we are human, we can't do that. The law, weakened by the flesh, was unable to do. So God sent his son in the likeness of sin and in flesh, who condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us. Jesus met the standards for the law so that you didn't have to. He broke the cycle of frustration and exhaustion so that you didn't have to. And he freed you up to walk in this freedom of simply being overwhelmed by the fact that God loves you and then loving other people. That's why he says this new command I give you. All 630 laws, this new command I give you. Just go love people as I loved you. Love others as I have loved you, is what Jesus says. That's the whole point of Second Pentecost. And here's the problem with this. We have a constant, nagging drift to the First Pentecost. We are a people of the Second Pentecost. We are a people who are not judged by how we act. We're judged by where we place our faith. We are a people who are not encumbered with required obedience. We get to obey out of love. We are a people of the second Pentecost. The problem is we're more comfortable with the first Pentecost. We're more comfortable drifting back towards law. And this is the tension in the entire Old Testament. I said this tension would help you understand your Bible better. This is the tension, excuse me, in the entire New Testament is the desire for the Hebrew people to go back to being first Pentecost people, to go back to following the law rather than living under grace. All of Acts is about the tension of, wait, wait, wait, wait, we know we have Jesus, but how many of the rules do we have to follow? Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Corinthians, the book of Hebrews, laced throughout all those books is a desire of the audience to go back and be first Pentecost people when the writers of the Bible are trying to go, no, no, no, forget about that. You're second Pentecost people. Walk in love. Walk in forgiveness. Walk in acceptance. Do that. We're people of the second Pentecost, not the first. God doesn't say to us, obey me and I love you. He says, hey, I love you. I love you so much that I sent my son for you. Now walk in obedience. We're people of the second Pentecost. And God didn't lay these over one another by mistake. Let's try to walk this week and not forget that. Let's try to do some pure things this week. And when we do the good that we do, and someone were to say, hey, why'd you do that? Let's let the sincere answer be, because God loves me. Let's pray. Father, we love you too. We are not worthy of it. We do not deserve it. We cannot earn it. God, I pray that we would be overwhelmed by it. Thank you for making us people of the second Pentecost. Thank you for seeing us in our frustration and telling us that your yoke is easy and that your burden is light. May we please live in light of the fact that we are loved by you, no matter what. And because of that, go and love other people for 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.

My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. Thanks for being here on this Sunday, the last Sunday in our series called Best Practices. The idea behind this series is that I believe that there are some habits or some practices, some disciplines that we can develop in our life that are really the best disciplines or the best practices that anybody can develop ever. That if we'll develop these, if we will make these a part of our life, they will make us better wives and better mothers, better husbands and better fathers, better children, better employees and employers, better friends and better neighbors. They will make us better people. More importantly than that, if we will instill these disciplines in our life, we will know God better. We will know him more deeply. We will experience the joy and the peace that we believe God offers. So here's what I'm doing as we move through this together. I'm assuming that if you're here in June, that you care at least a little bit about your relationship with God, okay? I don't you know this in church parlance, in the church business, or whatever you want to call it, but summertime is not like high visitor attendance time. Summertime is people who mean it come to church. So if you're here, I'm assuming that you do care to some degree or another about your relationship with God. If you're here because you are checking it out and you're not sure yet and you wouldn't even say yet that I do have a relationship with God, then I hope that this is a way for you to just assess some things and analyze some things and kind of look at and get a peek at Christianity. But as we've been going through the series, we looked at some practices that are really best for us, like reading the Bible on a regular basis. We kind of looked at how to do that and what keeps us from doing that and how we can make that a part of our life. We looked at worship in the second week. Last week, we looked at prayer and this idea of reducing ourselves to the need to pray. Don't wait for life to do that to us, but go ahead and every day admit that there's things that we need God for and spend time in prayer. And in that way, we can move further to being obedient to that command to pray without ceasing, which is a really challenging instruction in Thessalonians. This morning, what I want to do is kind of clean up the series and mention a couple best practices, a couple spiritual disciplines that maybe are a little bit less heralded, a little bit less known, a little bit more forgotten. These all probably deserve their own week, but I'm excited about our next series. I wanted to get to it. This one's a tight four-week series, so we're going to kind of hit three different things this week. So my hope for you is maybe all three of these things are great for you and you can instill all of them. Maybe you're already doing one or two, but I hope that everybody today can take home something that they want to begin to instill in their life or a discipline that they want to renew in their life. So that's my goal for you. So as we look at these three practices that we're going to cover today, one of the less heralded spiritual practices or spiritual disciplines that I wanted to talk about is the practice of giving, the practice of being generous, the practice of giving of our finances. Now, as I say that, if you're thinking along with me, okay, if you're anything like me, then your thought process might go something like this, okay? We're doing a sermon on spiritual disciplines. First thing out of the gate is that I need to give to the church. It's pretty self-serving, dude. Like, you're going to get up there, you're going to tell me these are things God really wants me to do, and then the very first one is, bam, you should give to the church. Okay, listen, I don't blame you for thinking that. I would be thinking that if I were you, but a couple of things to clarify. First of all, when I talk about giving, it's only the second time I've talked about it since I became the pastor here two and a half years ago. But every time I do talk about it, I want to be sure that we cover this thing biblically. And I want to make some points. There's some ways that we talk about giving that just aren't true. The New Testament, which it doesn't mean the Old Testament isn't valuable, but the New Testament is our authority as we look for ways to live our life. The New Testament doesn't tell us to give 10%, and it doesn't tell us that we have to give to the local church. So when I say that we should give, that we should instill the spiritual discipline of giving, I'm not telling you that you should give 10% of your income to grace. That's not what I'm telling you. So in that way, it's not self-serving. What I'm telling you is the New Testament says that we should be a people who are generous, that we should be a people who give. Jesus talks about giving in such a way that he assumes that you will do it when you give. So it's to happen, when you give, give in such a way that the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. We see a story about a widow that gave out of her poverty, and Jesus says that's a better, that's a bigger gift, a more meaningful gift than the wealthy person who gives out of their wealth, because her gift required faith, right? We see these instructions about giving, and we know that to give is a good thing. We know that that's something that the Bible talks about. But again, we're to give to God, give to things that are building God's kingdom. So it doesn't necessarily mean the local church. Paul does talk about this idea that if somebody is ministering to you and you're benefiting from that, that we should make it possible for them to continue to do that, that we should support them. But that's as close as we come to me being able to leverage the Bible to say that you have to give your money to grace. So that's really not what I'm talking about. Now, if grace is doing things that you believe in, that you want to support, then support it. Like Mikey, the guy that did the announcements, which is so well, I mean, he knocked those out of the park. When Mikey did those announcements, he told you guys that we were in Mexico right now, that we had two, that we had a team of students down in Mexico and that we're building two homes. I'll just tell you, those homes are $6,000 a piece. The missions committee that we have here, in their generosity, said, we want to go ahead and pay for you guys to build two houses so that two families who live on a dollar a day or less can have a home that they so desperately need just across the border in Mexico. They were able to do that because 10% of everything that's given to Grace goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. So if you've ever given, then you are a part of that. If you'd like to be a part of that moving forward, then you can give and you will be. Or if you'd like to be a part of other things moving forward, give to Addis Jamari, a great ministry going on in Ethiopia where they are cutting off sex trafficking at the front. They're nipping it in the bud before it even starts. They take girls that age out of an orphanage and they put them in a home and they disciple them and they teach them skills because there's a very high likelihood that they would end up in some sort of trafficking industry if they did not. And now they're going to the families that have to put up kids for adoption because they simply can't afford the children that they're having, and they're giving them training and investing money in them so that on the front end, those kids don't even have to go to an orphanage. So be a part of something like that. Be a part of faith ministry where our kids are now building homes for families that desperately need them. The instruction in the New Testament is that we should give and that we should be generous, that we should be conduits of God's generosity. And you may think, how is this a spiritual discipline? I know that that's something that we're supposed to do. I get it that that's instructed in the New Testament, but how are we supposed to do that? Why is that a spiritual discipline? And I would just submit that maybe we don't think about giving as a spiritual discipline because we've heard it taught poorly, or we've thought about it in incorrect ways. I've sat in services and listened to sermons before where people talk about giving as if it's some sort of investment scheme. They'll quote a verse in Micah, and they'll say, if you bring your tithe into the storehouse, then God's going to bless you and fill your barns. And it's almost this idea that if you'll give to the church, God's going to give you even more money. That's dumb. That's not how that works. Charitable giving isn't some sort of divine investment scheme, okay, where God just makes you rich because you give to other people. That's how jerks take advantage of ignorant people. That's how that works. So that's not true. It's not some investment scheme. Will you get blessed when you give? Absolutely. Is it going to be by more money in your account? Probably not. So that's not how that works. The other thing is we get guilted into it, right? God's done so much for you, the least you could do is give a little bit for him. And then it feels like this thing that we have to do out of obligation when really that's not what giving is. The reason I think that giving is a spiritual discipline is because giving builds your faith while we participate in God's goodness. Giving builds our faith while we participate in the goodness of God. I'll tell you why I think this. This was, and I have to preface this story. Jen is against me sharing this story because in this story, we stumbled into some obedience. I feel obligated to remind you that I'm an egotistical jerk and that I don't always do good things. But in this story, I'm going to do something good, okay? But now I feel like everything's balanced and that we're fine. About four years ago, I guess it was, it was December. Lily was due in January. Our only child was due in January. And we had managed to save up some money to have the kid and take the hit of Jen not being in work. Jen worked part-time. I worked at a church. I was a student pastor, a small groups pastor. And believe it or not, I did not make a ton of money. So for us to have money set aside was a big deal. We had about $5,000 set aside. And I'll just be transparent with you. we had not had that much money set aside in our marriage ever. So we were pretty thrilled that we had this amount set aside to be able to have Lillian be responsible for us to miss because she worked part-time as an office manager and she wasn't going to get those hours and we're going to have medical bills and you know how it goes. So we're feeling good about that. Well, then in late November, her car stopped working. So I had it towed to a guy that went to the church, a guy named Kelly McCart. And Kelly was looking at the car. He calls me one day. I was on the golf course. I mean, it's hard. We didn't have any money. By the way, I was golfing during work hours. I was on the golf course. He calls me. I said, hey, dude, how you doing? He says, I'm doing better than you will be. And I went, oh, no. I said, what's up? He goes, it's the engine. I said, ugh. He said, it needs to be replaced. And I'm like, what do I do? Do you think I should do it, or do you think I should just trash it and buy a new car? He goes, I think you should replace it. It's a good car. It's a Toyota 4Runner. I said, all right, how much is it going to cost? He said, $5,000. Son of a gun. So I had to go home, and I think I waited a day or two to tell Jen. You know, like, how's the car? Eh, it's fine. You know, I didn't, I just didn't, she's a very pregnant lady and I didn't want her to have to deal with the stress that I was dealing with. Because it's like, my goodness, how, how are we going to pay our bills in January? Like, how are we even going to make it? I don't want to do the humiliating thing of going to my parents and be like, we're, we're screw ups. Can you please give us money? Like, I didn't want to do that. So I was just really stressed. In the midst of this, it was time to give the Christmas offering at the church that we went to. Jen and I had prayed about it, and we had conferred, and we had each agreed that we, that year, wanted to give $500. But then this thing happened, and now we don't have any money. But it's time for the Christmas offering to happen. And I prayed about it, and I just kind of felt, you know, if I can trust him with $500 when we feel secure about our finances, then I ought to be able to trust him when I don't. And I feel like this is what God has asked us to do. So we said, all right, we'll do it. And we gave the $500. Two days later, friends of ours from the church, our age, not like grandparents or something, peers come up to us, come up to me after a service, and they said, hey, we don't know why, but the Lord just kind of put you on our heart this week. So we just wanted to say Merry Christmas, and they handed me an envelope. I take the envelope home, and inside is a check for $500. Yo. So I kind of start crying a little bit. I show it to Jen. And to me, that was God's way of saying, I'm going to take care of you. I have 1,000 sheep on 1,000 hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I have a thousand sheep on a thousand hills. I have all the money that I can possibly need. I'm going to take care of you. You did the right thing. I'm going to take care of you. I wish I could chronicle for you the ways that God showed up in January and February so that we didn't have any need. The way that he just took care of all the things that we were concerned about. I think because we were able to stumble into obedience in that situation. But the reason I'm sharing that story is because do you not think that after we decided to give that money and then saw God deliver us in that way, do you not think that built my faith a little bit? Do you not think that helped me trust God even more? And then the cool part is the family that did it, a family called, named the Calders, they had no idea what was going on in our life. And then after they gave it, I shared with them our story. Do you not think that built their faith a little bit? Of them just sitting there going, I feel a prompting that we should try to take care of Jen and Nate. You don't think that built their faith to do that? I think that when we give, we create opportunities for God to show up and show us that he's going to take care of us. When we give, we create opportunities to be on the other end of stories like that, to know that what we gave was used for something far better than whatever we were going to spend it on to begin with. And when we do that, not only does it build our faith, but it allows us to experience the goodness of God as we are conduits of his generosity. That's why I think that giving is a spiritual discipline. Because I think it's something that builds our faith. So if that's not a part of your life, I know, I know that's a tough thing. That's a hard thing. Just practically, it's a hard thing. And there's questions around giving. Do I give 10%? I think that's the tithe. Listen, the New Testament doesn't really tell you a percentage. I think 10% is a good baseline. But I would tell you to just try to get into the habit of regularly giving anything to any ministry that's building God's kingdom. And let God show up. Let that build your faith. Get some experience in participating in the goodness of God in that way. If that's not a part of your life and you want to know God and you want to follow these steps and you want to instill these practices in your life, just find a way that feels right to you. Pray about it. Father, what would you have me do? And give in that way and watch God show up. So that's the first thing that I would encourage you in today is the practice of giving. The second thing is the practice, and you guys are going to be like, what in the world is he talking about? The practice of content consumption. The practice of content consumption. Here's the idea. I'm not going to spend long on this. I don't think I need to make a whole bunch of flowery points around it. I think that you guys can understand this, okay? There's a verse that I love in Philippians. It's one of my favorite verses. It's in chapter 4, Philippians 4, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Now that's a challenging voice. That's a challenging verse. If you think about the things that you allow into your life, the things that you watch, the things that... This steps on my toes, too. The things that you're not even sensitive to on Netflix anymore. Right? The shows that you watch. You're like, but that show has all that stuff in it. Yeah, it doesn't really bother me. Should it? Think about the stuff that you allow into your life. And if it's obedient to this, whatsoever things are just, pure, lovely, commendable, honorable, excellent, there's anything worthy of praise or praiseworthy. Think about these things. How good are we doing at that? And so I just kind of think, if this is something that I want to do, if I want my mind focused on things that are obedient to Philippians 4.8, that are praiseworthy and honorable, and all of those things, that's what I want. How do I do that? How do I organize my life around those things? I think part of it is the content that we consume. And I would ask you, for in your life, besides Sunday morning, besides whatever comes out of my mouth on Sundays, which, that's a low bar, what spiritually nourishing things are you getting in your life? What else is spiritually nourishing you? Outside of random conversations you might have with your friends that you do find encouraging or conversations that you might have with your spouse that you find encouraging, what is in your life that is there to spiritually nourish you, to build you up spiritually? For years and years and years, for centuries, the only option has been to read. And if you're not a reader, if you don't like doing that, which I totally understand, then it's really difficult to consume any spiritual content during the week that's spiritually nourishing in any way, because reading was the option. If you are a reader, I would encourage you, make books that are spiritually encouraging a regular part of your discipline. In my personal quiet time, when I'm really doing it well, when I'm really walking in consistency, I'll read the Bible. I'll let that push me into a time of prayer. And then when I'm done praying, I'll read a spiritually formative book until Lily wakes up. That's kind of how it goes. So if you're a reader, then choose books that nourish you spiritually. But if you're not, I just want to, on a practical level, let you know that there are some really great options out there for you. And I want to talk to you about this idea of harnessing the dead spaces in our schedules because we're all very busy. But there's these things called podcasts that you should really listen to. They're phenomenal. If you don't know what podcasts are, ask someone around you after the service. We will give you a one-day moratorium of not making fun of you or even calling you names for that. Just ask somebody around you, what's a podcast? How do I find them? How do I assess them on my phone. All of you have phones and you can get podcasts on all of them, okay? These podcasts are great because all of the sudden I can listen to sermons from all over the world. I can listen to people have discussions about things that are spiritually formative from all over the world. I can listen to all kinds of people. Do you understand that for centuries and centuries and centuries, the only spiritually building, nourishing thing that people got was whatever their pastor said on Sunday. And that's a bummer. Now you have access to the best pastors in the world who are preaching every week and you can listen to their sermons every week. So I want to encourage you to look for the dead spaces in your schedule. If you have a commute over 10 minutes, use that to listen to something that's spiritually formative. If you go on a walk with your dog, put in some headphones, listen to something that nourishes you spiritually. When you're at the gym, can we just all agree that almost everybody in this room is old enough to no longer need pump-up music? Nothing that you're doing requires you to be pumped up, okay? Nothing. Nobody in this room, I'm looking at you right now, nobody in this room, except for maybe Mikey, is lifting any amount of weight that requires you to be jacked. So just listen to something. Listen to something that's helpful. Listen to something that informs you, that nourishes you, that encourages you, that's spiritually formative. I have a buddy, he goes to the church, I'll tell on him. He's not here this week, and we'll see if he mentions anything to me because he listened to the sermon. But Shane Smith, and he has Smith, he has to drive to Durham every day for work, and he started listening to sermons on his drives. That dude texts me questions a couple times a week. He's asking me stuff. He's wanting to understand Scripture. He's saying, hey, I heard this taught to me. What do you think of this? He is chewing on it. He's considering it. He shows up to my 6 a.m. Bible study. I have watched his life change over the past several months. And one of the biggest things is because he takes time in his day, he looks at that drive not as a burden but as an opportunity to consume some content that's going to nourish him spiritually. And it's changed him and his family. Look for those opportunities in your life and find things that we can listen to. On your bulletin there, I emailed some people in the church who I know listen to podcasts, and I compiled some there for you. So there's recommendations there if you need some. The other thing I would say on this point is there's an app called Audible. And that you can subscribe for like 14 bucks a month and download books. You get one book a month and then they read it to you. You can listen to it. So if you're not a reader, but you're jealous of all the people you know who do read and seem to have things to contribute at parties and at like Bible study and stuff, and you'd like to be one of those people, you can game the system and have somebody else read it to you while you cut the grass. That's really great. So you can subscribe to Audible and you can get these books going in your headphones. So I just want to impress upon you this idea of consuming content that can help you. I think it's a discipline that we should all have and be careful with. The last one I want to talk about today is the practice of fasting. The practice of fasting. Now, fasting's an interesting thing. Fasting shows up in the Bible a lot. And fasting, if you spend any time around church, is something that we've heard of. If you grew up in a Catholic environment or an environment that observed Lent, then you know the idea of fasting for 40 days from certain things. And so we all kind of understand what fasting is. But as I thought about it this week, to put it in front of you, there's a couple things that I thought were interesting. First of all, we can fast for a bunch of different reasons. In 1 Samuel, we see David fast because he's mourning. He's lost his son. He's mourning the loss of his son. And so he fasts and he's brokenhearted before the Lord. We also see David fast in repentance. He's done something that he very much regrets. He made a moral misstep. He sinned before the Lord. And as a form of repentance, he pursues God by fasting. And maybe that's what some of us need to do. Maybe some of us have something in our life that's just eating our lunch that we'd love to not be a part of our life, but it just persists and it just pervades and it's just always there. Have we ever fasted over it and said, God, please take this from me? There's this really interesting passage in the New Testament in Matthew where Jesus says that this type of demon is only cast out through fasting and prayer. Like it somehow intensifies our prayer. We can fast when we're seeking guidance. In Acts chapter 13, it says that the church was getting together, and after a season of prayer and fasting, that they set aside Paul and Barnabas to go on their missionary journeys. We can, when we don't know what to do, when we don't know what's next, we can set aside some time to fast and pursue God in that. But I think maybe the most interesting thing that I saw about fasting is that Jesus just assumes that you do it. See, I think that when we hear fasting, there's a part of us that goes, okay, that's for like, that's for the ninja Christians, right? That's for the Navy SEAL Christians. Like, I'm just regular, just getting by, trying to not do dumb stuff Christian. That's for like super intense, big time Christian. Okay. Do you know in the New Testament, there's no delineation. There's no stages of Christians. You don't get to be like a white belt while that dude's a black belt. You don't get to do that. We're all on the same path moving towards the same goal of walking with God and being disciples of God. And part of that path is this assumption by Jesus that we would fast. Because he tells us in Matthew, he says, when you fast, don't do it like the religious hypocrites do it. Don't walk around with a sunken in face and all sad and be like, what's wrong with you? Be like, I'm fasting because I'm super spiritual. Don't do that. Splash water on your face. Fake it. Try to sneak it by people. Don't let anybody know what you're doing. But the interesting thing to me is this assumption by Jesus that it's a part of your life. And I know that for me, I'm not speaking for you. I'm sure that I'm behind the bell curve on this and you guys are all way ahead of me. But for me, until recent years, that was not a regular part of my life. I still, I fast with the elders from time to time, and I'm still bad at it. Honestly, half the time I fast with the elders, I have to email them the day before and be like, guys, I'm so sorry. I made a lunch appointment tomorrow, and I'm definitely going to eat tacos. So I kind of ruin that for us. It's true. The elders are nodding their heads at me right now, like, yeah, we know. And they're secretly grateful for it, so don't let them talk bad about me after this. They like it when I do that. But it's not really a part of our lives. We don't do it as a regular thing. I bet most of us in here can't remember the last time we did it. But see, Jesus assumes that we fast. And he doesn't assume that it's for, the super intense believers. It's for all of us. And the more I looked into it and thought about what it meant and what it was and why would Jesus assume that we did this, the more apparent it became that it's this picture of something. There's a book by a girl named Margaret Feinberg. I think that's her last name. Is that her last name? Yeah. And it's called Taste and See. Aaron Winston, our children's pastor, told me about it, and I started reading it. It's really good. It's gotten me firing on a bunch of different things. I'm really considering doing a whole series on food. I feel like I'm an expert on this. I could bring a lot to the table. See what I did there? Yeah. Okay, I feel like I could do a lot with that, and I want to expound more on this later. But fundamental to this book is this idea that God could have created us any way he wanted to. He could have had us nourish ourselves any way he wanted to. We could have gotten our energy from the sun. We could have worked on photosynthesis like plants. He didn't have to make people who had to eat. He didn't have to make people who had to eat so often, but he did. And it's interesting to think that maybe he did that as a constant daily reminder of our spiritual need for him. As a constant daily reminder that our appetite for food, our body's appetite for food should be the same as our spirit's appetite for God. And in that way, fasting is a physical reminder of a spiritual need. The more I started thinking about this, the more I realized that food is a picture. Every time we sit down at a table and we eat because we need it, that's a physical picture of what our spiritual body needs. And so when we fast, it's an acute reminder of that. It's an intense reminder of that. It forces us to focus on this picture that exists with us every day of our life. And every time we feel the hunger pangs in a fast, that's why some people say, well, you can fast from different things. You can fast from alcohol, or you can fast from social media, or I'm going to put down my phone, or I'm not going to do this, or I'm not going to do that. I'm going to fast from TV. And those are fine. But there's nothing quite like fasting from food. Because it's a physical reminder of a spiritual need. And as we feel those pangs of hunger, gosh, I wish I could eat right now. That's a reminder. This is how your spirit longs for God. I've even gotten to the habit of, on the occasion when I'm actually good at fasting, I'll get a little headachy. And it's really tempting because I still have a lot to do in my day. I'm usually still about to go to an elder meeting. I have other things that I have to accomplish. I'm trying to get a sermon done, whatever it is. And it's tempting to eat something because I've got to stave off this headache because I can't really do my job if I'm not feeling well. So I need to take care of myself. And I'll start to go down that road. But it's a reminder. The way that your body begins to ache because you haven't had food is the way that your spiritual body begins to ache when you're not locked into God. We don't feel it as acutely, and we don't feel it as immediately. And I think that's why God gives us this physical reminder all the time. When we don't eat, we know it. And when food is good, and the meal is good, and we're around other people, and we're around our friends, it's one of the best experiences in life. And I just think it's this one-for-one picture of our need for God. So fasting serves as an acute reminder of our spiritual need. And if nothing else, it brings to the forefront of our mind our spiritual need for God. And so if fasting isn't a regular part of your life, I would encourage you to try it. Try it and let that drive you into prayer. Try it and let that take you into a place where you admit and acknowledge your spiritual need for God. I had a friend who, he's got three boys. This is the worship pastor I used to work with in another church. For all three boys, the week they were born, he fasted for a week and prayed for them. Because those were his boys, and he wants them to grow up to be godly men, and so he pursued the Lord after them. If you've got a big decision coming up and you don't know what to do, have you fasted about it? If there's a sin in your life that's just kicking your tail and you'd love to be done with it, have you fasted about it? If you'd like to get into these spiritual disciplines more but can't seem to find that in yourself, have you fasted about that? I want to encourage you to consider the spiritual discipline of fasting. Now, as we wrap up the series, to me, there's this key question, the answer to which dictates all of our actions after being asked the question. So as we wrap up the series in light of all of these practices, the practice of reading scripture, the practice of worshiping God, the practice of prayer, of giving, of consuming the right content, of fasting, all these different things that we can instill in our life so that we could pursue God better, I think that there is a key question. And when I say key question, what I mean is the answer to this question really determines all of your actions after you answer it. And I get this idea from a book that Jen and I have recently been given. A lot of you know that cancer has become part of our reality and our family in 2019. And so when that became a part of our reality, people started giving us different things and somebody gave us a book. It's called Chris Beats Cancer. And at the beginning of this book, there's a question. And the question is, do you want to live? And it may seem like a simple enough question, but it's really profound in how you answer it. Do you want to live? Because what's about to follow in that book, what he's about to tell you to do, is for most people a radical change in your lifestyle and your diet and your habits. So he sets it up with, do you want to live? The implication is, if the answer is yes, then you'll be willing to do whatever it takes to live. If the answer is no, that's a different conversation. And for those battling that disease, that's a more tricky question than you would think. So I think it's this key question. Do you want to live? If you do, then you will do whatever it takes to accomplish that. And I think that there's a key question for us as we consider our relationship with God, and it's this. Do you want to know God? Do

Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. My name's Nate. I am one of the pastors here. This is a really great crew to have on a June Sunday. So thanks for being here, everybody. Real quick before I get launched into the sermon, wanted to bring your attention that we every year take a adult trip to Mexico. There's a barbecue after the service. That's for the student trip going to Mexico in July. And so we hope that you'll stick around and be a part of that and have lunch with us and hang out. It's kind of what we do. But there's also an adult trip coming up in October. And the deadline to sign up for that is in the middle of this month. If that's something that you've never experienced before, you've never done with Grace, it's a really great trip. We have a really fantastic relationship with the folks at Faith Ministry down in Reynosa, Mexico. And it's a lot of fun. So I hope that you'll consider being a part of that. You can go online if you have any questions. There's different links all over our website, but I did want to mention that before I just got started. This is the last part of our series called The Forgotten God, where we're focusing on the Holy Spirit. Often we talk a lot about God the Father, talk a lot about God the Son, but we kind of forget or are fearful of or have some questions or some doubts surrounding the Holy Spirit. And so sometimes it's easier just to kind of back away from the Holy Spirit or to just kind of live in mystery about the Holy Spirit. But for the last three weeks, and now this is the fourth week, we've really been focusing on who He is and what He does. And so the first week we looked at this idea that Jesus said it was actually better for us to have the Spirit than it was to have Him right next to us, which is an audacious claim. But we determined that that was true because the Spirit continues His ministry through us, which is the spiritual gifts that we looked at in the second week, and then also to us, which was the roles of the Spirit that we looked at last week as the comforter or the helper. But this whole time, I've been setting up this sermon on the last Sunday of the series to answer this question that I think, to be a Christian who's paying attention very much at all is to have this question. If you're a believer and you've learned about the Spirit and you've seen the different things that the Spirit does and you hear what Scripture has to say about the Holy Spirit, we can't help but wonder at times how come my experiences with the Spirit don't line up all the time with what I've learned to be true of the Spirit? How do I sync up what I've learned about the Spirit with what I've experienced of the Spirit? I think very often there is a disconnect there. And I think that it's important to be willing to tackle that question because to be a believer of any, I think, I don't want to offend anybody, but to be a believer of any intellectual integrity is to have doubts, is to encounter things that you don't understand and that you can't make sense of. And I think there's really three ways to respond to that. When we encounter something that doesn't make sense, when someone close to us gets sick or hurt and we don't understand how God can let that happen, a doubt creeps in. When there's someone who's incredibly sinful and incredibly successful and we're trying to do the things the right way and we can't seem to catch up to them, sometimes we kind of go, God, that doesn't seem fair, and doubt creeps in. When we see big tragedy on a grand scale happen, we kind of look at that and we go, God, how could you let that happen? And doubt creeps in. Or we read passages in scripture that don't seem to sync up with what we've experienced in life, and doubt creeps in. We go, gosh, how can this be true in the Bible and this be true in my life? And so I think to be a Christian is to doubt. And really, we can do three things with those doubts. A lot of us just stuff them, right? We just ignore them. Dudes are good at this. That doesn't seem to make sense. Don't worry about that. Just go sing the songs. Okay, that's fine. And then we go do that. We just kind of stuff them. Or we seek out answers, or we let them drive us away. And so what we're going to talk about this morning, which is really best framed up, the more I thought about the question, how come what I've learned of the Spirit doesn't always sync up with what I've experienced of the Spirit, really the better way to ask this question is, how come I'm not experiencing the Spirit the way I think I should? And so that's what's at the top of your bulletin there, is five reasons why maybe we're not experiencing the Spirit the way we think we should. And I put this one last because I said it up front, I don't know what I'm going to say here. I mean, I do now, but I didn't then. And if this is a question that you've seriously asked yourself, I'll just tell you up front, this is not gonna be wholly satisfying to you. You're not gonna leave today going, oh man, that makes tons of sense. Well, I don't have that question anymore. But hopefully it'll push you in the right direction. It also occurred to me this week that even though I'm not 100% certain how to answer this question, and even though I know I'm not going to do it to the satisfaction of some of you to whom it is a burning question, that it's to our detriment if I'm not willing to engage areas of text and scripture and spirituality that I'm not 100% sure on. Because if I only ever get up here and tell you things I'm certain about, then I develop within us collectively a very shallow faith. So we've got to be willing to talk about things on Sundays that might not make sense to us yet. So this morning, I feel like it's less of a sermon, me preaching to you, and I really approached it as if you and I could sit down across the table and talk about this. So if you're here this morning and you're a believer, and you're like me, and you read these passages, because I read passages and I still have doubts. This question still forms in my mind. How come I don't experience that? I read 1 Corinthians 12 that we talked about two weeks ago with the gifts of the Spirit. And Ephesians 4 and the chapter in Romans, I think it's 6 or 7 that talks about the gifts of the Spirit. And I begin to wonder, how come I don't experience those? I don't feel like I have any supernatural gifts. If I were supernaturally good at teaching, I would hope I would be better than this. I don't feel like I have supernatural gifts. I'll be honest, I've not seen tongues. I've not seen authentic prophecy. And so I read about those in the New Testament and in the back of my mind, I kind of go, how come I don't see that? How come I don't see healings and casting out demons? How come that's not a part of my life? How come I don't see that? Or I'll read in Romans 8, where it says that if by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live. And I've been a Christian for as long as I can remember. I prayed to accept Christ when I was four and a half years old, and then God matured my faith over time. I've wanted desperately to put to death deeds of the body, those sinful proclivities that exist in all of us, that if we're being honest, we wish we could get rid of. I've wanted desperately to get rid of those. I've prayed that God would take them from me. I've appealed, based on Romans 8, to the Spirit, help me put these to death. And they're not put to death. They still exist in me as much as I want them to not be a part of me. So then I see that in Scripture, and I'm like, well, how come that's not happening in my life? Or, my goodness, you read the book of Acts. Pentecost, the disciples are sitting in this room, and the Spirit descends on them like flaming tongues, and then they go out and they preach a sermon in their own language, and the people there from all over the world hear it in their own language. And again, we see these healings and these casting out of demons, and we see people who, there's a guy named Simon the Magician who tries to pay the disciples for the Spirit because he wants to be able to do the cool tricks that they do. How come I don't experience that? And if it's a question that I have, and it's a question that one of my elders had as I was talking about the series with him, it's got to be a question that most Christians have. And so if we could sit across a table from each other and you would just say, Nate, what's your take on this? How come those things seem incompatible? How come I'm not experiencing the Spirit in that way? After some thought, I think these are the five things that I would suggest to you. I wish that we could have a discourse about this. And if you're here this morning and you're not a believer, you wouldn't call yourself a Christian, then you can just kind of pretend that you're at the coffee shop or the pub at the next table over and you're eavesdropping on us and kind of getting a little insight into this faith of weirdos, right? But this is kind of what I would offer you if we could have a conversation, five reasons why maybe we're not experiencing the Spirit the way we think we should. The first three are really taken from the book that I encourage you guys to read as we went through the series, Forgotten God by Francis Chan. So for some of you, this may sound familiar. And the first one is the most accusatory. I don't mean it to be. I worked really hard to find reasons that weren't just because you stink at being a Christian. I don't want that to be the answer. But if we're being honest, that's part of it sometimes. And that's really the first one. I don't mean to say it like that, but that's the implication. And so as we think about why don't we experience the Spirit the way that it seems that people did in Scripture, the way that we feel like we should, what's going on here, I think maybe one of the first things I would suggest, and it's not the only reason, and it may not be applicable to you at all, but I think it's applicable to some of us, is maybe we don't actually want the Spirit. Maybe if we're just being gut-level honest, we don't actually want the Spirit in our life. We want the good things. We want the peace. We want the happiness. We want the guidance. We want to know what to do in this business decision. We want to know which city that we should move to. But we don't really want the submission that comes with it. We don't really want all of the spirit. I'd like you here, but not over here. God, I'll do anything you want me to do except that. God, I'll move anywhere. Our family will move anywhere you want us to move besides over there. God, I'll give you anything I have besides my finances. Sometimes we feel like the rich young ruler, right? The one that went up to Jesus and he said, Jesus, I'm ready to follow you. What do I need to do? And Jesus says, great, sell everything that you have and follow me. And then we go, I'm not ready to follow that. If we're being honest, often we parcel out our submission. Don't we? Often we parcel out our submission. We divide it up and we say, God, you can have these portions of my life, but you can't have these. I'll trust you here, but I won't trust you with my kids. I'm going to keep them pretty close to the vest. I'll trust you. I'll do anything you want me to do within these parameters, God. And so what that proves, and again, I don't know some of you well enough at all to put this in your face and say, you don't experience the Spirit because it's your fault. But I think it's a truth of Scripture and a truth of life that we have to examine and at least do an inventory on in ourselves. Is this true of me? James tells us that it's possible. James was the brother of Jesus, which is pretty much like the only evidence you need that Jesus was the actual Son of God, because what would it take for you to convince your brother that you were divine? So he convinced his brother that he was divine, and then James wrote a book of the Bible. And in that book, he said, you don't have the things you pray for because you ask for the wrong reasons. You ask for your own selfish reasons. And again, that's awful accusatory. But is it possible that we want the Holy Spirit and His guidance in our life to bring about the things that we want and maybe not to bring about the things that He wants? And so when we think about why don't we experience the Spirit, I think a very viable reason is for some of us, if we're being honest, maybe we don't really want him. Now, that's not the only reason. I said that was the most accusatory. There's others. I think for some of us, maybe we've simply eliminated the need for the Spirit in our life. Maybe we've orchestrated our life and organized our life in such a way that the Spirit's just not very essential. That we can kind of do it on autopilot. We can just kind of get by week after week, day after day. And we really don't need the Spirit very much. And so we just kind of cruise through life. A couple years ago, I was reading a book. I think it's by Malcolm Gladwell, but I'm not certain. And it was in this book, he was describing a study on the brain activity of mice, because I'm a nerd and I read books like that. And so they were studying the brain activity of mice. And what they did is they put them at the beginning of a maze and they would open the door for the maze. And the end of the maze was cheese. And the mouse would have to like find its way to the end of the maze to get to the cheese. And the first time this mouse did this maze, the brainwaves were going nuts. They were just all over the place. He was redlining for the entire maze experience until he found the cheese, and he calmed down because he's trying to figure out where to go, right? And what they found is the more he did the maze, the less he thought about it, the less his mind was engaged. Until the very last time this mouse did this maze, the gate opened and there was this flurry of activity while he tried to figure out where he was. But as soon as he realized it was the same old maze that he's always done, there was virtually no brain activity until the very end when he had finished the cheese and then began to look for the next thing to do. And what it showed them is your brain can learn these behaviors and learn these functions so that it essentially goes on autopilot when you're doing something. It just kind of learns and files away these behaviors so that it doesn't have to critically think about it again and can kind of rest and relax and just go through the day. And that's what was happening to this mouse. He was just going on autopilot, going through the maze. I think that's a pretty good picture of how a lot of us can set up our lives. We get up in the morning. We do our routine. We take a shower. We go to work. We do the thing. We interact with the people. We talk to the clients. We send the emails. We come home, we say hey to the husband or the wife, we deal with the kids or we call the kids or we text the kids and we watch the show and we do the thing and then we go to bed and we get up and we do it the next day. And maybe one of the nights we go to small group and we pray for somebody and then we go to church maybe and we interact and we do the church deal and we'd go home. But for a lot of us, I think it's possible that we kind of have orchestrated life in such a way that we can do it on autopilot. And if we're being honest, our life really doesn't require the Spirit very much. And I think the encouragement there is that we need to be taking steps in our life that require the Spirit's aid, that if we are not reliant on the Spirit to help us and intercede with this, that we are going to be in serious trouble. I think about the life of grace. When I got here two years ago, let me tell you something, we needed the Spirit, man. For those of you who don't know the story, it was not going well. And we didn't really know. I got here in April. We didn't really know if we were going to make it out of May. We were just kind of figuring this thing out together. We needed the Holy Spirit to intervene, and He did in incredible ways. Two years later, we're a lot healthier. And I'll be honest with you. If I stop praying every week, if the elders stop praying, if staff stop praying, if our partners stop praying, I'm pretty sure we could keep going through the motions of church for several weeks without anybody feeling any big difference. And I think our life is like that too. Think about when you rely on God the most. The times in your life when you're most drawn to him, when you're most consistent in prayer, when you feel closest to the Father, when you feel a need for his presence more than any other. Aren't there times when you're anxious and when you're hurting? Aren't there times when you're not sure if something's going to work out? Isn't that when you run to the Father? Aren't there times when you're hurting and you feel like you need Him? Isn't that when you run to the Father? I know having a three-year-old daughter, I can't get her to slow down for anything. Lily is running around 90 to nothing all the time. The only times I can get her to settle down and sit on my lap and just be still with me is when she's hurting, when she's crying about something, when she's upset about something, when she's hurting herself. And sometimes we treat God the same way. And I think that it's possible that we just live these comfortable lives that don't require the Spirit to help us very much. And I would simply ask you, if the Holy Spirit's the comforter, how can He comfort us if we're never uncomfortable? How can the Holy Spirit comfort if we're not uncomfortable? If we're not taking any steps of faith in our life that require the Holy Spirit to show up, we're going to look real silly. If we're not branching out and having the conversation or starting the ministry or praying the prayers or dreaming the big dreams, how can we rely on the Holy Spirit if we only ever stay comfortable? So for some of us, I think we've eliminated the need for the Spirit in our life. For others, maybe this one is more applicable to you, I don't know. For others, I think it's possible that our lives are just too noisy. Maybe our lives are too noisy. Maybe we just have so much going on in our life that we just don't have any time to hear the Spirit anyways. I was reading an article the other night in bed, and it was about the sounds that we hear. I think it was in the New Yorker or something. And it was just talking about now with technology and everything going on that we are constantly assaulted by and bombarded with sounds. And like humans aren't really used to this. We just hear so much noise all the time. We hear so much noise from all the different things going on and all the technology that we have in our life that we now have more technology to add on top of that technology so we don't hear the other technology spilling into our lives. It's crazy. We've got noise canceling headphones. On my phone, I have a white noise app. And when I'm on a plane and I'm tired of listening to other people talk, I put that in and I crank up the white noise and I can't hear a thing. I also do that in my office. Sometimes in meetings. I'm just playing around. We have these, we have devices to drown out the noise that the world is already making. We are just constantly assaulted with and bombarded by noise and other things. And our lives are so busy. We don't have any dead time. We don't have any downtime. And then even when we do, even when we find ourselves with 10 minutes with nothing to do, pull out the phone. Now I've got something to do. We are a perpetually distracted people. We constantly have something to divert our attention, to take it, to look at. And we very rarely sit alone with our thoughts. And so I would ask you this, and this may be my favorite question from today. This may be my favorite question from the series. It's one that I've been thinking about this week. If the Holy Spirit wanted to speak to you, when would you hear him? If the Holy Spirit were trying to speak to you, when would you hear him? What time have you carved out of your day where that can happen? I've said since I started here that the most important thing any of us can do in our life, the most important habit that we can develop is to get up every day and spend time in God's word and spend time in prayer. And if you've done that with any consistency, then you would say that's a time when the Holy Spirit could speak to me. And we know, and we're going to talk about this, I think, next week, we all have various degrees of success with that. But for most of us, for most of our Christian life, and I'm not saying this as an accusatory thing. I'm just being honest with you because I've been around church for a long time, and a lot of y'all are my friends, and we kind of know each other's patterns. For a lot of us, the only time we get where the Holy Spirit can actually speak to us is on a Sunday morning in church. And if I pitched a dud that week, oh well, we'll have to wait until the next time we come. And sometimes we don't even come every week. I mean, grace, God bless us, we have kind of an every other week congregation. And I'm not trying to make anybody feel bad about that. That's why we have podcasts and stuff online. And you'll never hear me beating the drum of you've got to come every week. That's what good Christians do. But if that's the only time we have in our life to hear from God, when do we expect to do it? And if we're walking through our lives and we're upset because we don't feel like our experience of the Spirit really syncs up with what Scripture teaches, we don't really feel His guidance and direction in our life, I would just ask you, if He were trying to speak to you, when would you hear Him? Have you carved out time in your life regularly to be quiet and to focus on God? Which leads me to the next thing that I might suggest if our experience with the Spirit isn't what we think it should be. Maybe we're simply looking for the wrong things. Maybe we're looking for the wrong things. One of my favorite stories in the Bible is in Kings. I think it's 1 Kings chapter 19. Elijah has just finished this showdown with the prophets of Baal. If you don't know what that is, for the purpose of this morning, don't worry about that. He did a really cool thing and he beat 450 other prophets. He's a stud, but he was exhausted. And so God tells him, go to a cave and wait for me. I'm going to talk to you there. So Elijah goes to this cave and he's waiting for God. And it says that there was a mighty wind that passed over the front of the cave. This big noise, a lot of things rattling. I imagine rocks falling and trees falling over. But then it says God wasn't in the wind. And then there was an earthquake. The ground shook, more rocks fell, more trees fell. I'm sure it was very noisy, incredibly loud. And if you're Elijah, you're going, oh, certainly this is God. But God wasn't in the earthquake. And then it says there was a fire. A big conflagration outside the cave. He could kind of watch it be torched and sweep by. And if you're Elijah, you're thinking this has to be God. But it says that God wasn't in the fire. And then there was a gentle whisper. And we find that God was in the whisper. So often in life, God is in the whispers, speaking to us softly, speaking to us through things that almost seem coincidental. Can I just tell you that the Holy Spirit's not a drama queen? He's not a Kardashian. He's not looking for the best way to be seen by anybody. He's quiet and he's subtle and he works in the background. And he's typically pretty good with not bringing a lot of attention to himself. He's like the wind. We don't know where he's coming and where he's going. And so sometimes I think that we're simply looking for the wrong things and if we would pay attention a little bit better, if we would listen for the whispers, we would see all the places in our life where the Holy Spirit is actually interjecting and ministering to us as we speak. The easiest example of this is your salvation. If you're here this morning and you call yourself a believer, that's the Holy Spirit acting in your life. That's you literally experiencing the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 2 tells us that we can't understand spiritual things without the Spirit. Romans teaches us that the Spirit actually ignites our desire for salvation, that we walk around before we know Jesus as spiritually blind people, and we cannot open our own eyes, and the Spirit actually opens our eyes and activates our faith. So if you're here today and you feel like you have a faith and you believe in Jesus, the Holy Spirit gave you that faith and opened your eyes to have that faith. That's the Spirit. And so it's not totally fair to say, gosh, I'm not sure if I've experienced the Spirit. If you know Jesus, you've experienced the Spirit. We say that the Spirit guides and directs. But I think sometimes we fail to pay attention to the ways that he does that. That time that you went to church, and maybe you hadn't been in a while, but the sermon was exactly what you needed. I'm not talking about this morning. I'm talking about other mornings. The sermon was exactly what you needed. That's the Spirit. That time you got that phone call from a friend totally randomly who just said, hey, you're on my mind. I just wanted to give you a call, see how you were doing. That's the Spirit. That time that you emailed somebody or you called somebody or you texted somebody and you said, hey, just thinking about you, I hope you're doing good. And they get back to you and they say, oh my goodness, I was just thinking of you. I needed to hear this so much. That's the Spirit. Can I just tell you anecdotally that question of if you're going to hear the Spirit, like when are you going to hear him? He's trying to speak to you. When's he going to talk to you? Like when have you made time? When I'm making time in my life to hear the Spirit, when I'm really consistent in my time in the mornings, in my quiet times, without fail, He puts people on my heart to just stop and jot down and make a note about and send them an email or a text later that day. Without fail, He does that. And without fail, they're appreciative of getting that. Those things in your life that seem like coincidences, that perfect neighbor that you have that just suits you, that is just so nice that we ended up in this community, that perfect job that you have where you're around people that, man, it really makes sense. Maybe the job's not perfect, but you know that God's using you in the lives of these people. That great relationship that you're in, those are all works and moves of the Spirit. I think about myself here at Grace and my relationship with this church. Jen and I looked for a church for a year. We started looking in February of 2016. And that entire year, my prayer was, Father, prepare me for a place and prepare a place for us. Prepare us for a place and prepare a place for us. And we just waited. And when I got to grace, it was the Holy Spirit answered that prayer. We were ready to go. One of the things I hate doing is being patient. I don't like taking my time and making slow decisions and getting everybody on board and kind of just talking to everybody. Comfortable with this as we move forward. Everybody good. Like, I don't like doing that stuff. I just like, let's go. Let's go. And when I got to Grace, guess what we needed to do? There was no time to sit around and be like, is everybody comfortable right now? We just had to go. It was great. And when people now, my friends that I knew before Grace, when they check on me, hey man, how's Raleigh? How's it going? How you like in the church? I get to tell them, dude, I love it. I love these people. There's about two of y'all I wouldn't want to go to lunch with. The rest of you, man, I love so much. I love grace. I've never been more myself in ministry than I am here. You guys afford me with your gracious attitudes. I'm permitted to be the same person here that I am at dinner that I am on my couch. I couldn't be more comfortable. And it's not lost on me that that's the Holy Spirit preparing us and knitting us together. Now, I'm not trying to paint the picture that I'm some like God-sent pastor that's going to like carry us into the sunset. But for now, what I'm saying is it's a good marriage. And I see the Holy Spirit moving in that. You have your stories too. And I think sometimes we dismiss what the Holy Spirit does as coincidence, but if we're paying attention, what we'll realize is that was the Holy Spirit moving and directing in my life. So sometimes we simply need to open our eyes and notice what the Spirit is doing. Now, if you're here and this is a burning question for you and you're not yet satisfied, I only have one thing left for you. And you're not going to like it. But it's true. Maybe we simply have to wonder. Maybe we simply have to wonder. Both wonder just a little bit longer. How is this going to make sense? How has this come together? God, I don't understand it yet. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the answers I've gotten. And maybe for you, you're just going to have to wonder just a little bit longer how it all makes sense. But I also mean wonder in the sense of wondering at the awe and the grandeur of God. And maybe you're here and you're like, man, listen, I'm telling you, I've done all that stuff. I want the Holy Spirit in my life. I want all of his leadership. I'm not trying to parcel out my obedience. I desperately want the Spirit. I'm listening for the Spirit. I have made time for the Spirit. I am noticing the little things that the Spirit does, and I'm telling you, I want more of the Spirit, and I don't understand why I don't have it. Well, then you're in good company. Because David, one of the most influential believers that's ever lived, one of the greatest lives that's ever been lived, left us his spiritual diary. And in the 13th chapter of that diary, in Psalm 13, he says, how long, O Lord, will you hide your face from me? How long will you forget me? At different places he says it is so groans for the Father. We can find a lot of those psalms where David is going, how come I don't feel you? And all David was left to do was wonder just a little longer when God was going to arrive. And Jesus actually describes this to Nicodemus in John chapter 3. He tells Nicodemus that the Spirit is like the wind and those who are born of the Spirit are like the wind. We don't know where they're coming from or when they're going or what they're going to do. We can't understand or harness. The Spirit is something that we cannot grasp. And I think sometimes with our Western minds, we try to wrap our mind around the Spirit and who He is and systematize Him. And I've done these things, so I should be experiencing these things. And what Scripture teaches us is He's wilder than that. He's bigger than that. He's more wondrous than that. And so sometimes we have to be content to wonder for just a little longer. To that end, I've been reading a book by a girl named Rachel Held Evans called Searching for Sundays. And there's parts of it that, gosh, I just really love. And she wrote a chapter in it about the Holy Spirit where she describes him based on the different descriptors that we find in the Bible. He's fire and he's breath and he's wind and he's a label, he's a seal for us. And she describes how the Spirit is like wind and it's one of the best descriptions I've ever heard and so I thought that I would finish today by sharing this with you. She writes this. It travels to every corner of a cornerless world and amplifies the atmosphere. It smells like honeysuckle, curry, smoke, sea. It feels like a kiss, a breath, a burn, a sting. It can whisper or whistle or roar, bend and break and inflate. It can be harnessed but never stopped or contained, its effects observed while its essence remains unseen. It says, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it's going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit. We are born into a windy world where the Spirit is steady as a breeze and as strong as a hurricane. There is no city, no village, no wilderness where you cannot find it. So pay attention. And as we finish our series on the Spirit, I think that would probably be my final admonishment to you. It's better that we have the Spirit than if Jesus himself would have stayed here with us. The Spirit gives us gifts to do ministry through us. And if we don't feel those gifts, we should just love on people until they affirm them in us. The Spirit is moving in His roles to comfort us and to help us and to guide us. And if we don't see that, we're not experiencing that, maybe there's some inventory that we need to do. Maybe we need to pray that our eyes will be opened a little bit. Maybe we need to make space in our life for the Spirit. But I hope that what we'll do as we go from this space is that we'll know, and we go from this series, that we'll know that the Holy Spirit is real, that he is active, that he is moving like the wind, and that he is carrying us with him, and that even if we don't feel him, maybe as we leave here, all of us collectively can pay a little bit more attention to the Spirit and invite him more and more into our lives. And maybe we can wonder just a little bit longer and be satisfied in that wondering. Let's pray. Father, thank You for this morning. Thank You for Your Spirit. Thank You for the parts of Him that we can understand. Thank You for the parts of him that we can't. God, I pray that we would pay attention to where you're working in our lives. That we would lean into you. God, if there's anybody here who doesn't know you, I pray that they would feel invited in. I pray they would know that they are welcome, that you're not waiting for them to get anything together, that you're not waiting for them to somehow deserve you, that you're not waiting for them to get all the other things out of their life that they think need to be out of their life, but that you're just simply waiting and inviting. For those of us who are believers who feel uninvited because of what we've done or who we are or what we've let crowd into our lives, God, let us just come to you as our Father and feel the love that you lavish on us. Help us to pay attention to your Spirit, to notice Him when the wind is blowing, and to be led by Him and submitted to Him more and more. It's in your Son's name we ask these things. Amen.

Well, good morning. Happy Easter to you. My name is Nate. I'm the lead pastor here. It's great to see everybody in their bright Easter colors. My wife picked this shirt out for me. She told me that she was going to get the dry cleaning done because there was that pretty Easter colored shirt in the dry cleaning to be done. And I said, oh, which one was that? And she described it by saying, oh, it's the nice one that you got a couple of years ago. It was too big for you then. I think it'll fit you now. And as I buttoned it up this morning, I thought, dang it, if she's not right. So here I am. Listen, this is the 11th part of our series in John. We've been moving through John together. We've been timing it up to arrive at this sermon on this Sunday because this is Easter, man. This is the best day of the year. It really is. This is my favorite day of the year. This is the day where Jesus wins everything for all of eternity. This is the day when the disciples find an empty tomb, and what it means is that Jesus conquered death, and what it means is that we have a way to be reconciled with our Creator God for all of eternity. It is the victory of victories. It is absolutely, as Christians, what we claim, what we stake our hope on, and what we hold fast to no matter what. And Easter celebrates that day. So it is like the Super Bowl of Sundays to be able to preach to you on Easter. This is my third Easter that I've gotten to spend with you at Grace. And back in the fall, I knew that we were going to be going through John in the spring. And so I was reading through John in part in preparation for this series. And I arrived at a story in John chapter 20 about doubting Thomas. Some of you probably know the story. Thomas was a disciple of Jesus who, when he heard that Jesus had resurrected from the dead, he said, I don't really believe that. And then Jesus appears to him and he gives Thomas the proof that he needs to show him that he's actually Jesus and that he's actually risen from the dead. And I thought, man, what a great thing to be able to share on Easter how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts. And so that's what we prepared for, and that's what I prepared for, and that's what I had in mind as we approached Easter, and we mapped out the series, and I knew what all 12 weeks were going to be. And a couple of weeks ago, we made a video, and we showed it in here, and we said, hey, on Easter Sunday, Nate's going to preach about Doubting Thomas and how Jesus responds in the face of our doubts, and it's going to be great, and you should invite people. And that's been the plan. We even, we put it on Facebook and then Steve told me, Steve's our worship pastor, who they did great. Steve told me, hey, we boosted it on Facebook. I don't even know what that is. But I've been boosted on Facebook. I'm kind of a big deal now. I mean, some of you may even be here because we boosted it. And if you did, you're going to be bummed out because I'm not preaching what I told you I was going to preach. Last night at about 10.30, I'm not making this up, I saw a tweet of all things, and I knew that I had to do a different message. My wife is out of town. She's at home with her family, and you'll find out why in a second. And I was going to bed. I grabbed Ruby, Jen's dog that I don't like, and I went to take Ruby outside as just the final hassle of the day to let her go to the bathroom. And while I'm outside, I grab my phone. And my buddy, who I used to work with, a guy named Heath, had tweeted this out. And I saw it in the morning, but I really just kind of passed over it. But for some reason, it was at the top of my Twitter feed, and I saw it. And this is what it says. It says, Holy Saturday, silence, sadness, sorrow. At some point in our lives, we all go through a season of this day. Darkness surrounds us. Nothing is happening. Hope seems lost. Today is the best reminder that the silence of God does not equal the absence of God. Sunday's coming. And as I read that and reflected on what's going on in my own life, I knew that I could not trot out here this morning and preach to you about how Jesus responds to our doubts. Which is a shame because I had a nice alliterated point at the end. It was very pastory. It said, in the face of our doubts, Jesus responds with patience, pursuit, and provision. And I was really happy about that. Isn't that fancy? But I knew as I read that, I can't, on Easter, that because my life feels like a Saturday right now. At Grace, we're real. We're authentic. We're honest. I feel like it's part of our secret sauce. I feel like it's what makes us us. And as a pastor, it's what makes me me, that we tell the truth and we go from our gut. And I felt like to preach what I had planned to preach would be dishonest with you this morning because my life feels a little bit like a Saturday and I need Easter this year. I don't know if you've ever thought about the disciples' perspective on Saturday, but we've been going through Holy Week. And in Holy Week, Jesus on Palm Sunday enters into Jerusalem and sets in motion some mechanisms that are going to ultimately lead to his crucifixion. And he knows to his resurrection the following Sunday. And each day during that week over history has been given a name like Ash Wednesday or Maundy Thursday or Good Friday. And Saturday is called Holy Saturday. And I don't know if you've ever thought about Saturday from the perspective of the disciples. But the disciples were men who had walked with Jesus every day. They woke up every morning with him. They listened to him. They followed him. They loved him. They left their jobs for him. They left their lives for him. They put everything on hold for Jesus. The Bible tells us that Jesus says that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. So they followed Jesus even though they were basically couch surfing for three years because they believed so much in what he was doing. And over the course of those three years, they came to love that man and respect that man and want to mimic and emulate that man. And they had high hopes for that man. And on Friday, it all came crashing down. On Friday, they watched that man put up on the cross and get crucified. And we talked about that last week. They watched their hopes and dreams die on that cross. And I imagine on Friday, though there was sadness, there was also shock, not really knowing what to do, trying to process what had happened. But on Saturday, the disciples are sitting in a room with the door locked because they're fearful of the authorities that they're going to come in and get them and arrest them. And so they're sitting there with the door locked in sorrow and in silence, not knowing what to do. And it feels very much like their God let them down. It feels very much like God is not present. We had hoped in him, we had believed in him, and now he's dead and we don't know what to do. And they look to each other for hope and there was none there. And what the disciples don't know is what we know is that the next day they're going to find an empty tomb and that Sunday is coming. But on Saturday, they didn't know that there was hope for Sunday. On Saturday, it's just death. And on Saturday, death wins. And on Saturday, evil wins and despair wins and sorrow wins on Saturday. Because that's where they are. And that's what they know. And Saturday is sorrowful. It's solemn. And it's silent. And as I thought about that, and thought about how much my life feels like Saturday right now, and thought about how much I need Easter right now, I thought I can in good conscience roll out there and talk about doubts tomorrow morning. My life feels like Saturday right now because three weeks ago, they found a mass on my father-in-law's pancreas. My father-in-law is a man named John. I love John a lot. I have a deep and abiding respect for John. I've said this to some people and I mean it. He has, to me, character that looks more similar to Jesus than anybody I've ever met. There are times in my life when I don't know what to do, and I think, I wonder what John would do. And I try to emulate that. Jen loves her daddy very much. They're very close. Lily calls him Papa. That's what I called my Papa. And so it's been a tough three weeks. Three weeks ago, they found a mass, and then it's just a series of appointments and different things, and you don't get the answers that you want. If you've walked through it before, you know it's painfully slow. And then yesterday, on Saturday, we find out that it's stage three. The Internet doesn't have a lot of good things to say about people with stage three pancreatic cancer. And so it's sad, and it's hard, and we're hopeful. On Monday morning, he meets with one of the best pancreatic surgeons in the world who has devoted his whole life to eradicating cancer from the pancreas. If anybody can help him, it's this guy. And so we hope in that, and we're happy about that. And I was on the phone with his wife, Terry, yesterday, telling her, listen, we don't know anything for sure yet, so we cling to hope. But it's hard. And I'm texting with Jen yesterday because she's down there with her family. How you doing? How's it going? And she just says, it's really hard. My daddy's really hurt. He's not really himself. He doesn't have any energy. And for three weeks, we've been doing a lot of praying, but we don't feel a lot of answers. And so my life feels like a Saturday. God, where are you on this one? He's a good man. It doesn't feel like it's the time. And here's the thing. You have your Saturdays too. You've walked through some Saturdays, haven't you? You've walked through some times in your life that were hard, where it felt dark, where you looked around and you said, where's Jesus here? And you didn't know where the hope was going to come from. You've sat in some Saturdays. Some of you are in them right now. And Saturdays don't all look like loss. I know since I've been here for two years, I've walked with some people. I've watched some people in the church walk through Saturdays. We've walked through the stories of miscarriages together. That's a Saturday. That Saturday's happened in my life before. There are people here who have lost spouses far too soon and walked through that Saturday. One of our very special partners lost his 58-year-old brother a couple of weeks ago out of nowhere. That's a Saturday. Our old pastor lost his son this year. That's a Saturday. Those are Saturdays. And they come in other ways too. I had breakfast with somebody on Monday of this week. And he said, man, my life has just been really hard since about December. I really need to hear from God and I can't. I don't know where he is and I don't know what's going on and I don't know how this is going to get better. It's kind of hard to cling to hope right now. And I wish that I'd had my mind wrapped around this sermon when I met with him because I could have just said, dude, it's Saturday. It's Saturday. And sometimes it's sin that brings it on, right? I was prepared. Sometimes it's not just things that happen around us. Sometimes we bring on our own Saturday, if we're honest. Sometimes our life feels so dark because of the things that we've allowed into it, because of the addictions that we walk with, because of the private shames that we hold close to us, because of the things in our life that are in the dark corners of our life that we don't want to shed light on, that feel like they're owning us and feel like they're eating our lunch. And what we really feel like is we're hopeless in this situation. And I see the freedom that other people walk in, but I don't think I'll ever walk in that. I don't think I'll ever be a whole person. I don't think I'll ever experience the happiness and the freedom that the Bible talks about because I don't believe if you were to ask me, can I overcome this sin, you would say, I don't think so. That's a Saturday. And so last night, at about 1045, I realized, I got to talk about Saturdays, man. Because here's the thing. The disciples had a Saturday too. And they got up on Sunday and they went to the tomb. Actually, it was Mary. And she was expecting to go in and find the corpse and dress the corpse of Jesus with some perfumes and some oil and maybe pray over it. And she found an empty tomb there. Jesus wasn't there. But there was an angel there who looks at her and says one of the greatest lines in the Bible. Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, for he is risen. What are you doing here, Mary? Jesus isn't here. He's alive. And she rushes back and she finds the disciples locked in that room in sorrow and silence. And she tells them and they run to the tomb to see it for themselves. Peter and John run out there. And in John's account, he makes sure to tell you, we started out neck and neck, but I dusted that old man. I beat him to the tomb. I had plenty of time to look around and get my bearings. And when they get there, they find that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has conquered death. And that's Sunday. And they realized for all of eternity, Jesus has taken the sting out of death. Jesus has given us eternal life. Jesus has beaten all the things that would seek to take us down. It's why Paul can write in Corinthians, why he can quote the Old Testament and say, oh death, where is your sting? Where are your shackles? You have no power over us anymore, death, because Jesus rose on Sunday. Because on Sunday, the tomb was empty. Because Jesus overcame it and gave us victory and gave us hope. A hope that we can cling to. A hope that Paul says in Romans 5 will not put us to shame. Jesus won eternal victory on Sunday. And the sadness that was Saturday became the joy of Sunday because Jesus has conquered the grave and conquered hell and conquered sin and death and he's delivered that victory to you for all of eternity. All you have to do is believe that he did it. And then death can't touch us anymore. And then sorrow can't touch us anymore. And I knew that I had to preach about this and I knew that I had to tell you this story and I knew that I had to tell you about Saturday going into Sunday because here's what Sunday means. You understand? Here's what Easter means. Easter reminds us every year that Jesus always comes through. He always comes through. Without Easter, the internet tells me and my family that we have a 12% chance at happiness. Easter says, I've already beaten it. You've got 100% chance of joy. Without Easter, there's no hope. But Easter tells us that Jesus always comes through, that he never fails and that he never lets us down. And here's what I know. Because of Easter, because that tomb was empty, and because Jesus conquered death and delivered eternal life to all of us, including John, here's what I know, that because of Easter, he's going to come through for John too. It may be in the form of giving him some more years. He may get to watch Lily grow up a little bit longer. It may be in the form of taking him to heaven where he will wait, but make no mistake about it, John's going to hold Lily some more. And he's going to hug Terry some more. That's the victory of Easter. That's what today means. And if you're on a Saturday, today is a reminder that Jesus always comes through. Jesus always wins. And even if you can't see how he's going to come through, I will just tell you that he will. Either in this life or the next, he's going to come through. Either now or in eternity, you place your faith in him and he's going to come through. And now I don't have a 12% chance of happiness. I have a 100% chance at joy. And so does Jen, and so does Terry, and so does her sister Lauren. Because 2,000 years ago, Jesus beat cancer. And he beat sadness, and he beat tragedy, and he beat heartache, and he beat your Saturday too. That's what Easter is. Last night, when I decided I was going to be the least prepared pastor on Easter Sunday in America, I made a pot of coffee because I was tired. And I went outside and was just thinking and drinking the coffee. And I looked up and it was cloudy, but on the other side of some clouds I could tell the moon was there. And I knew that on the other side of those clouds was the light of the moon. And I kept my eye on it, and wouldn't you know it, in a couple of minutes the clouds parted, and it was a full moon, and it was bright. And it was like this little reminder from God. It's Saturday now, and it's dark, But that's my sun shining on that moon. And in the morning, it's going to be bright. Because in the morning, it's Easter. In the morning, it's Sunday. And on Sunday, we're reminded that I always win. And it may feel like night in our lives sometimes. We may feel the darkness of Saturday in our lives sometimes. If you do, look to that moon that's reflecting the light that God created and know that whether we know it or not, whether we understand it or not, in a way that we might not be able to predict, that Sunday is coming and the sun will shine again. And 2,000 years ago, Jesus won a victory for us over all the things that would seek to darken our days. And that's what we celebrate on Easter. Pope John Paul said, we do not give way to despair. We are the Easter people. And hallelujah is our song. So no matter how dark it gets, Christians, we sing because we know that Sunday is coming. No matter how silent God seems, Christians, we listen because we know that God will speak. No matter how sad we are on Saturday, Christians, we know that Sunday is coming and Jesus always comes through. And that's why Easter is the greatest day of the year, because it reminds us that Jesus has come through for us in more ways than we can possibly imagine. So I'm gonna pray for you. And my prayer is that you have a good Easter. And my prayer is that if you're in a Saturday, that you will know that because of Easter, you can know that Sunday is coming and Jesus is gonna come through for you too. Let's pray. Father, you're good. You're good to us. More than we deserve, more generously than we deserve, you love us in ways that we don't deserve. You are good. We thank you so much for Easter. We thank you for what it means and for what it represents, for the hope that you won when you conquered sin and death, when you came roaring like a lion out of there, giving us hope for all of eternity. Father, I pray that those of us who feel like we are in a Saturday would take solace in Easter, that we would cling to the hope of Sunday, that we would cling to the hope of you. Let us believe, God, that you've won this victory already, that it's yours. Let us celebrate Easter in the hope that it brings well. Let us reflect on you as we do it. Be with those who are sorrowful, God. Let them hold on just a little longer until your light shines. We thank you for Easter. In Jesus' name, amen.