Sermons tagged with OldTestament

All right, well, good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten the chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. Now's not a good time. I'm busy. Happy Mother's Day for those to whom it applies. As we were singing that last song, I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life. I think that's an excellent song for Mother's Day. I think about my wife, who's an incredible mother. I think about the mom that I got to grow up with. I think about the kids that we have and share together and see God's evidence, the evidence of God's goodness all over my life. And hopefully for Mother's Day, that's something that you get to reminisce and think about too. Hopefully you have a great mom. Hopefully you've gotten to experience being a mom if that's something that you want to experience. But I also know that for others, Mother's Day is hard. We had a lot of hard Mother's Days when we wanted the gift of children and we didn't have it yet. And so I always like to just acknowledge that and pray in gratitude for good moms, for good memories, for the blessing of motherhood, but also pray for strengthening for those for whom Mother's Day is difficult for myriad reasons. So if you'll join me in prayer, I'll pray, and then we'll dive into the sermon. Father, we're grateful for good moms, moms that love us,oms that love us enough to get on to us, to keep after us, to not give in. Moms who wake up in the night with us. Moms who are always there, who leave notes in our lunches and who pray with us every morning. We thank you for moms that we've seen read your word and seek you diligently. We thank you for moms who raised us to help see you. And God, we thank you for the gift of motherhood and parenthood. And those of us who have children, God, are so grateful that you've given us that gift. And so we pray that we would be the mom and the dad to them that we need to be. God, also lift up those for whom holidays like this are difficult. Maybe it's difficult because their mom's not here anymore, and that's hard. Maybe it's difficult because they want to be a mom and they're not. And that's hard. Maybe it's difficult, God, because we thought we were going to be a mom and then we weren't. So, Lord, I pray just for special strength, protection, grace, and peace onto those folks. And that, God, those of us who feel blessed by today would see you as the author of that blessing. In Jesus' name, amen. So this is part five of our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at different stories and instances in the Bible where we see these emotional flare-ups, these blow-ups and these blow-outs, and kind of just ask, what can we learn from that? Because this blowing up is a very part, it's a part of the human existence. It's something that we all experience. And so earlier in the series, we talked about, I talked about Peter cutting off the ear of one of the soldiers in the garden, and I kind of compared that to when we lash out at people. We just get angry, and we lash out, we're cutting off ears, and we should try to cut off less ears. And we talked about what can we do when we feel like lashing out. And so I thought it would be good to look at the other end of that and say, what do we do when we're the one whose ear just got cut off? What do we do when someone lashes out at us? So the question for today is, what should you do when someone blows up on you? When you are on the receiving end of unwarranted anger, of unjust frustration, of unfair lashing out, what should you do when someone blows up on you? And I thought that this would be appropriate for Mother's Day because what is being a mom if not getting blown up at eight times a day because you had the audacity to suggest that now might be a good time to brush your hair or not wear Crocs with a church dress or not get out of bed at 630 to make Mother's Day breakfast. Not that any of those things happen in our home, but with your children who are less good than ours, I'm sure that they blow up at you. And I can only imagine, you know, right now we've got a seven-year-old daughter. John is two. He doesn't really know how to blow up at anybody. He just clenches his fist really tight and you can just hear, he screams and you can just see this visceral anger coming from him, which is great. And, but Lily knows how to blow up. She's seven, but they're seven-year-old blowups, you know, like they're not, they don't really sting a little. I bet the 17-year-old blowups are rough. I bet those, I'm not looking forward to those. And then something tells me that the older your children get, the worse those instances become. And I also know that on the other end of the spectrum, I've talked with enough people, with aging parents, that sometimes as parents get older and older, their filter is just used up. It's just used up. They don't have a new one. There's no replacement. You can't get one from Amazon. It's just gunked up and they've tossed it aside. And they can say things that aren't so nice sometimes. And that's tough. It's tough when someone blows up on you. It's tough to be on the receiving end of unfair anger. Just a couple of weeks ago, I was going to pick up my dad at the airport. And I was at the airport and just kind of started to, I was near the terminal, so the traffic kind of starts to funnel in and slow down and whatever. And this cab, like a literal taxi cab, I don't even know, like, what are you guys even doing anymore? Like, who's using cabs? And not, why does it even exist in Raleigh? I don't understand this. It's like, it's like, it's like seeing the yellow pages on your front door or something. Like, didn't we, didn't we cover this? Anyways, cab comes blowing past me, swerves into my lane, like, and, and, and like slams on his brakes. Like he's mad at me. And I'm like, what in the world's going on with this guy? I have no idea. I did not see him anywhere in my rear view. I was not aware. I didn't even think that I had changed lanes recently. He just decided he was mad at me. He gets in front of me and I'm like, whatever. So I, I actually, I didn't even need to be in that lane and he was now going slow to mess with me. So I, I I just went around him like I got to go to the second terminal, buddy. And I look over, and he is aggressively hanging the bird at me. And I don't know how you do that non-aggressively, but this was aggressive. Shaking his fist, yelling things. I literally, like honestly, I'm on the stage, okay? I'm preaching to people. So before God, I have no clue, no clue what I did that upset this guy. And so I just kind of looked at him and went, and kept driving. I don't know. I wasn't mad, but he was really mad at me. So what do we do when someone gets really angry with us and we don't deserve it? We didn't do anything. We don't know what to do. How do we act in those moments? How does God want us to act? And what's really cool is not even how does God want us to act just so that we behave well, but how can we act in those moments that will actually draw people, the people who are angry and the people who can see that anger, that will actually draw them closer to our Father. What can we do in those situations when someone blows up on us? When I was thinking about that, there's one story that comes to mind in the Bible. To me, it's the best blow-up story in the whole Bible. It's one of the biggest ones. I can't think of many others that are like it, if any at all. But it's in 1 Samuel. We see the first part of it in chapter 18, and then I'm going to point us to chapter 19. So Saul is the king of Israel. He's the first king of Israel, but there's this kid named David who's been anointed as the next king of Israel. Normally, Saul's son Jonathan would take the throne from him, but God has used the prophet Samuel to anoint David as the next king of Israel. And then after getting anointed, David does this really annoying thing where he goes down in the valley and he kills a giant that everybody else in the whole country was afraid of, including Saul, and he does it without Saul's armor. And so Saul's a little ticked at him. And then he puts David in his army, and there's this song. This is the English translation of the song. Maybe it sounds better in the original Hebrew. I don't know. It's a pretty dumb song, if you ask me. But it was, Saul has killed his thousands, but David has slayed his tens of thousands. I don't know what the melody is on that. Maybe I should get Roburg to help me out. That seemed to work for you. But I don't, that was the song, right? So there's some jealousy there between Saul and David. And so Saul was a man that was given to what we would probably identify as anxiety or depression, bouts of despair and anger. And one of the only things that could calm him was David coming to the palace and playing the harp for Saul. That would calm him down. And so David's doing that one day, and Saul is just seized with anger and throws his spear at David to try to kill him two times. David dodges both of them and then gets out of there. Then after that, Jonathan, who was David's closest friend in the world, goes to Saul, his dad, and he's like, dude, this is a paraphrase. He says, dude, what are you doing? What's the problem here, man? This guy, he loves you. He serves you. He's a good servant. He's faithful. He's a good leader of men on the battlefield. He's there to play the harp when you need him to. I'm not mad at him. I'm happy that he's going to be my king. You don't need to be mad at him for me. Just like knock it off with David, with hating David. Can you do that for me? And Saul says, yes, I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Which just as an aside, if you ever in your life have to promise to stop trying to kill someone, you just need to take a look in the mirror. That's all. I'm not going to make a bunch of points about that, but that's a sentence that no one should say. I promise I will not try to kill him anymore. Then we pick up the story in 1 Samuel 19. Turns out Saul's a liar. He just really liked trying to kill David. So here we go. Then a harmful spirit from the Lord came upon Saul, and he sat in his house with his spear in his hand, and David was playing the lyre. And Saul sought to pin David to the wall with the spear, but he eluded Saul so that he struck the spear into the wall, and David fled and escaped that night. Saul sent messengers to David's house to watch him, that he might kill him in the morning. But Michal, David's wife, told him, If you do not escape with spear two times, leaves, gets invited back to the palace, goes back to the palace. He's playing the lyre again to try to soothe Saul. And Saul, for a third time, throws a spear at David. David eludes it and gets out of there. Which, as an aside, I'd just like to point out, this is one of the fundamental differences between David and I. I have a one-spear-throw policy. If you throw your spear at me one time in anyone's house, I'm leaving that house, and I'm not going to trust you around spears again. David has a three-spear policy, much more gracious than I am. So he eludes it for the third time. He leaves. McCall is actually Saul's daughter that was given to David in marriage, and she helps him escape. Later on, we see this poignant scene where David and Jonathan meet in a field, and Jonathan tells David, you're going to have to go until my dad dies. He's never going to stop wanting to kill you, so you got to go. So David, for I think about this 20 year period goes and he just lives in the wilderness with a band of some of his soldiers. And they just elude Saul at various times. Saul chases David through the wilderness, trying to capture him and kill him. And there's actually two really poignant scenes in the wilderness where David has a chance to kill Saul and he doesn't. There's one where they're in the En Gedi, the caves on the edge of the En Gedi plain, which is in the southern part of Israel, close to the Dead Sea. And Saul's army must have been close because David and his men were hiding in a cave. And Saul, now at my house, when someone says they have to go to the bathroom, we say, do you have to go to the bathroom or the bathroom bathroom? Saul had to go to the bathroom bathroom. So he goes into a cave to take care of business. While he's in there, just so happens, that's where David and his guys are. And David's guys are giving David the eyes like, dude, you could totally kill him right now. And David realizes this. But he says, shame on me if I harm the head of the Lord's anointed. So he takes his knife and he cuts off an edge of the robe and Saul leaves. And once he's a little ways off, within shouting distance at least, David feels terrible that he even did what he did. And he goes out and he gets Saul attention, and he shows him the robe. And Saul feels so bad about the grace and forgiveness that David shows him that he decides, I think I'm going to be done killing David for a while. And he goes back to the palace. It wasn't long before he started hunting for David again. This time, David and a guy named Abishai snuck into the tent at night, and Saul's laying on the ground asleep with all of his men around him asleep as well. And Abishai looks at David, and he says, let me strike him with the spear. It will only take once. It will not take twice, which is a really, like, it's one of the cool lines. Like, I only need to do it once, man. I won't need two on this one. I'll get him. And David says, no, shame on me if I touch the Lord's anointed. And then in a battle between some of David's forces and some of Saul's forces, Saul ends up being killed. And the person who takes Saul's life, David actually takes their life for being willing to do that to the Lord's anointed. So what we see from David is that although Saul blew up on him, had completely unjust, unfair, unwarranted anger at David, David always, his whole life took the high road. His whole life honored Saul. Never once did he raise to meet Saul where he was. And so if we're going to ask, what should we do when someone blows up on us, when we are the object of unwarranted anger and frustration, I think we can look to this example of the life of David and see what he did, and we can mimic those things in our own life. And what's really helpful about this is I think that there are three really important New Testament passages, verses or passages, because some of them are two verses. I think there are three really important New Testament passages that honestly, every Christian, if you're here and you call yourself a believer, you should have these memorized. You should be able to say these off the top of your head. These should be things that show up in your life that you think of often enough so regularly that you can quote them. You might not know where they're from. You might not know how to find them. You might have to type them into Google to figure out the reference like I did this week, but you should know them. You should know what to type into Google. And so I want to look at three verses that display three behaviors that David displayed in this story about his interaction with Saul. So let's look at three things that were true of David and try to make those true of us. The first thing we see in this story is that David was slow to anger. He was slow to anger. And I know he was slow to anger because David could have, by all accounts, by all accounts, he was a better warrior than Saul. By every measure, he was superior to Saul. When Saul is in his house and potentially drunk and throwing spears at him, David could have very easily taken that spear out of the wall and gotten his vengeance on Saul right there. Now, you might say, well, he couldn't do that. There's guards. He could have been killed. Yeah, maybe, but what we know is that he didn't raise up in red-hot anger and do what some of us would do if somebody tried to hurt us. He kept his cool. He was slow to anger, which is really not the typical response in the human experience, right? That's why James writes this verse to remind us to do it. In James 1, 19 and 20, he says, does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. This is one that we should know. This is one that we should have memorized. This is one that we should remind ourselves of, particularly when someone is blowing up at us. Because human nature is not to stay calm and stay down here. Human nature is to rise and meet the anger with anger, isn't it? You guys who are married know this. You know this. You've had those fights, those days, where you look at each other and you're just mad at each other. You're just mad. And finally, one of you goes, what are you mad about? What are you even upset for? And the other one says, I don't know. You're mad at me, and I don't know why you're mad, so I'm mad at you. Well, I don't know why you're mad. So I'm mad at you. And then you kind of go back and forth. You're like, what was the first thing that made us mad? And nobody knows. And like, can we just agree to just kind of set the arms down and slowly back away from this one? Are we done here? We're like, yeah, we're done here. But that's typical in human interaction to meet anger with anger. I remember years ago, very early on in our marriage, Jen and I were at each other's throats about something. I don't remember what. But as we were talking about it, she gets really upset. She storms up the stairs, slams our bedroom door. Now, what did I do? Did I, because of my maturity and wisdom, think to myself, she's probably overreacting, but I'm going to let her stay up there and simmer because we don't want to say words in anger. And, you know, I'm sure that she'll kind of calm down. She'll realize maybe that was a little bit too much, and she'll come and apologize and tell me I'm right. That's probably what I need to do. No, I did not do that. I did not do that. Instead, I thought, I'm going to go upstairs. I'm going to tell her that she does not need to be slamming doors in our house. So I go upstairs, and I open that door, and I start getting on to her for the way that she's expressing her anger. And she, again, I don't want to talk to you right now, and leaves the room and goes into the guest room and slams that door. Now listen. Here's what I know. I don't know what we were fighting about. But if I make that sweet woman act like that, it's my fault. I was wrong. I don't know what we were fighting about. I know I was wrong. That's what I know. Now when she went into the second room and shut that door, did I leave her be? No. Because I wanted to poke it. So I walk up to the guest bedroom and I open that door. And I said, you know, I can open this door too. I can open all the doors. I don't know what happened after that. Things just kind of went red, I guess. It was just a blur. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's mad at us. Oh, I'm going to get mad at you. Some cab driver hangs you the bird, you're like, hey man, forget you. You know, like whatever. Your kid snaps at you, you've had a stressful day, you meet them there and you snap at them. Your spouse, your co-worker, your parent. That's what we do, isn't it? Someone's angry with us, we raise to meet that anger. Well, James tells us, don't do that. Don't do that. Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. It's important to be quick to listen and slow to speak too, because in those moments when we're frustrated, we have things that we want to say. But if we'll calm down and listen, we'll probably learn new information that may change what we want to say, that may help us be slower to anger. So when someone's angry with us, wisdom says, I'm going to be quiet, I'm going to be patient, I'm going to listen, and I will not meet anger with anger. This is what David does. The second thing that David does is David was quick to forgive. He was slow to listen and quick to forgive. He moves to forgiveness very, very quickly. We see no evidence whatsoever in any of the texts that David was ever angry with Saul or that David could not forgive Saul ever through the rest of his life. We see David offer Saul quick forgiveness, which is right in line with what Jesus teaches Peter in Matthew chapter 18. When it says that Peter came up to him and said, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me that should I forgive him? As many as seven times? And Jesus says to as many times as you need to. Forgive again, forgive again, forgive again, forgive again. And it feels pretty generous for Peter to ask that. How many times, when my brother commits the same offense against me, how many times should I forgive him? Up to seven, which makes sense. Your friend comes over to your house, he gets too rowdy, he breaks your new TV. You forgive him that one time. How many more times should I forgive him? Seven? That's a lot of breaking TVs. And Jesus says, no, as many times as you need to forgive them, forgive them. The way that I think about it is, as many times as we hope God forgives us, forgive other people that many times. When someone offends us, when someone lashes out at us, when we are the object of someone's unfair anger and unfair frustration, we should as quickly as we can move to forgive that person. Because holding that grudge is only going to hurt us. It's not going to hurt them. Now, I will also say this. Last year at Lent, during the Lent season, I did a sermon on forgiveness. And I basically just preached to you from the perspective of my good friend, whose husband was having an affair on her, and she had to really learn what forgiveness looked like because they had five kids, and that was really, really tough. And one of the things that she said that was super helpful, if you're a person who's struggling with forgiveness or wants a more robust explanation of forgiveness and what it looks like, then I would encourage you to go back and listen to that sermon. But one of the things she said that I found very helpful and others have commented to me too that was very helpful is forgiving someone does not mean that you have to trust them again. And so I would say this to you. If the person who is blowing up at you is making a habit of that, if they do it regularly, if it's not just a one-off that you can ascribe to a set of circumstances that are no longer true, but you have someone in your life who's blowing up at you again and again and again, you should be slow to anger in those situations, and you should be quick to find a path to forgiveness in those situations. But let me tell you what David did not do. He did not go back into Saul's palace again. He did not make himself vulnerable to a spear the fourth time. He did not trust Saul again. Did he forgive him? Yes. Did he honor him? Yes. Did he give him grace? Absolutely. But did he put himself back in that home? No. No. If you have someone in your life who is habitually blowing up at you, it is perfectly good and wise to remove yourself from that situation until something changes and you feel like you can trust that that's not going to keep happening. As we talk about what do we do when someone blows up on us, it's... I'm mostly talking about people who aren't our spouses. If it's our spouse and they do it all the time, if it's our brother or sister or friend or mom or dad and they do it all the time, that's a separate sermon. But what I would say to that separate sermon is, it's okay to not put yourself back in a situation where someone's going to blow up at you all the time, where you feel like you're just around a ticking time bomb. We should seek to forgive, but we don't have to trust and keep putting ourself in a place where that is going to happen over and over and over again until we believe that something is going to be different. The last thing David does is David was a conduit of grace. He was a conduit of grace. He was connected to God's grace. He was pouring grace out onto others. Back in the fall, I did a series called The Five Traits of Grace, the five characteristics that make us who we are, The five things that we want every partner to exhibit. And one of those things is to be a conduit of grace. To be attached to the grace of God so that the grace that we receive flows out onto others. This is the verse that I think of when I think of this. This is probably, if you're going to memorize any verse at all, if you don't know any of these, start with this one. Start with this verse. Put it on your mirror where you get dressed. Put it on your dashboard if you get angry in the car. Put it next to where your emails are if those things make you angry. Whatever sets you off, whatever stokes your fire, just put this verse so that you can see it. And it's super easy to memorize and it's super impactful. For from his fullness, John says, we have all received grace upon grace. From God's fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. From the fullness of God's grace that pours out on us, we have all received grace upon grace. When we think about a couple of weeks ago on Palm Sunday, I did a sermon about the earned wrath of God on us for placing his son on the cross and that Jesus on the cross exhausts the wrath of God for his children. When we think of the wrath that we don't have to experience because God poured it out on Jesus instead of us, that's grace. And God knew, as I said, God knew that we were going to cheapen the blood of Christ by presuming upon the grace of God. He knew that we were going to do that. He knew what you were going to do after you prayed the prayer and after you accepted Jesus as your Savior. He knew that you were going to move through that awful season of your life that you'd like to forget. He knew that and he forgave that. He knows what lies ahead and he's forgiven that. When we think about the grace that we feel every week when we come to church and we sit here and we sing the songs and we have this voice in our head that reminds us of who we are and what we've done and where we've been and that if the people here knew what I was capable of, if the people here knew what I know, then I would have to find a different church to go to. And yet God chooses me and God loves me and God blesses me and he's given me grace upon grace. When we realize that, that that God is so good to us, that that God is so patient with us, that that God will watch us go through years where we don't have quiet times, where we're not praying to him, where we're not seeking him, where everything about our Christian life is compulsory and cursory. He will watch that zombie walk through life and still try to breathe spiritual life into us at all times, calling us back to him. He is excited every time we come home. He is excited every time we utter the words, dear God, and we begin to pray. He is thrilled in his heart every time he hears your voice praise your creator. When we receive from his fullness that much grace, it is very easy to pour grace out onto others. And this is what David did. He had grace for Saul. I think he understood Saul's plight. I think he had patience for him and his depressions and his moods, even in understanding his desire for his own son to be on the throne. And one of the best pictures of grace we see, maybe in the Bible, but definitely in the life of David, is once Saul has passed away, David has ascended to the throne. Anybody who's watched the History Channel or read any books about old kings and kingdoms knows that once a king takes over, one of the first acts of orders of business is to kill everyone associated with the bloodline that preceded him so that there's no threats to his throne. And there was no one left that they knew of, but then one day somebody found a relative of Saul's. It was a nephew or a cousin or something, I can't remember which. Named Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth, it says, had a disability. And that's important because that made it more difficult for Mephibosheth to earn money and provide for himself. So he was a person who needed help. And they brought him to David, expecting David to kill him, to put him to death, to be done with the line of Saul and move on. Instead, David, learning who he was, had mercy and grace on him, made a seat at his table for him, and invited Mephibosheth to live in the palace and dine with him and be with him and considered him a family member for the rest of his life. That was how David showed grace and honor to Saul. That's the kind of grace that we're to show to others. The grace that says, I'm not saying I did this in the moment, I'm not trying to give myself credit, but the grace that says, you know what? It would be super stressful to be a cab driver. I don't know how they do it. I went to Chick-fil-A and Home Depot the other day. I was about to lose my mind, and that's like five minutes away. I don't know how they do it to be a cab driver. And you know what? I bet I did something inconsiderate that I wasn't even thinking of. So I'm going to give them them that. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. They're probably in a hurry. They probably need to get where they're going. Or, if this helps, life would be really hard to be that dumb. So I'm glad that God didn't make me that dumb. Whatever you need. We offer others grace. And I'll tell you who's the world's best at offering other people grace. It's Jen, my wife. She will do this all the time. We will be in traffic. Someone will cut me off, cause me to have to slam on the brakes. Our children are crying. We're terrified. And I'll say, my gosh, can you believe that person? And she'll say, now, Nady, because she calls me Nady. If you want to call me Nady, too, you can. It'd just be weird. She says, now, Nady, you don't know. His wife could be in the passenger seat in labor right now. And we just need, tell me I'm lying. And we just, we don't know what's going on in their life. I could be walking down the road, I promise you. I could be walking down the road and some guy could just come up to me and dog cuss me in front of my family. And then I could get out of the situation and walk down there and be like, can you believe that guy? What a jerk. And she'd be like, now, lady, you don't know what's going on in his life. His wife may have just left him and his parents may have just passed away. You don't know. That kind of grace. And when we remind ourselves of God's goodness and grace to us every day, it is easy to pour that out onto others. And I say start with that one, memorize that one, because if we're full of grace and we're offering other people grace, can't we be more quick to forgive when they mess up? Can't we remember that hurt people hurt people and just assume that they're hurting and maybe actually help them get to the bottom of their hurt rather than piling on and making them feel shame for blowing up in a way that they regret? If we're full of grace, won't we be slow to be angry? Won't we stay here longer? Because we're trying to see the best in them and we're trying to give them the benefit of the doubt in the situation. I think if we just abound in grace that it takes care of the rest. And then the amazing thing that happens when we do this, when someone blows up at us unfairly or unjustly, if we do what this says, when someone blows up on you, be slow to anger, quick to forgive, and abound in grace. When we do that, what are the people around you going to notice? What are your children going to pick up on? It's the easiest thing in the world to match anger for anger. It's the easiest thing in the world to lash back out. It's the easiest thing in the world to let someone say something nasty to you, say something mean to you, to have a server who's curt with you, one of those servers who acts like they don't even want to be there that day. It's perfectly human to let them walk away and then you venture frustration to the people around you. But what if you meet them with grace? What if you're slow to anger when other people would meet? What if you're quick to forgive when other people would hold on? What if you're abounding in grace when other people would abound in suspicion and doubt? Then not only have you brought that person who blew up at you a little bit closer to Jesus, not only do you bring yourself closer to Jesus, but you bring the people around you who see that and who marvel at that closer to Jesus too. Simply by being someone who, like David, is slow to anger, quick to forgive, and always abounding in grace. Let's pray. Father, would we in this way be more like David? And so be men and women after your own heart. God, when we are the subject of unfair anger, unfair frustration, when people treat us in ways that we don't deserve to be treated, would you help us to be slow to anger? Would you help us to stop and to listen? Not meet frustration with frustration? Would you help us to be quick to forgive where we can, to give us an earnest desire to find a path to that forgiveness? And God, more than those things, would you help us be people who abound in grace, who walk in this acute awareness of the grace and the love and the mercy that we have from you. Let us be people who walk in an acute awareness that from your fullness we have received grace upon grace, and let us freely and excitedly and happily give that grace to those around us, even when those around us treat us unfairly. In Jesus' name, amen.

I wonder, pals, how long's it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids' stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along, and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks mailman Kyle. Today, Jonah and the Whale. Well, good morning, Grace Raleigh. My name is Erin, or as I have affectionately somehow been now dubbed, Girl Erin. So I am so glad to be here this morning. I am excited to see these beautiful faces. And so thanks for joining us, whether here or online, or maybe later this week. We appreciate your time. So thanks for being here. I feel like I kind of need to start out our morning with a small confession. And that confession is, I'm a bit of a history nerd. And I'm in love with the Old Testament. And I know there's lots of you in here that are looking at me going, but the New Testament, Aaron, is where it's at. And you know what? Yes, it's the gospel. You know, we get to see all of the creation of the church and then the beautiful letters that show the church how to act and how to behave and how to love each other. And it's great. And I love that part too. But to me, the Old Testament, it just has me. It's got a special, special place in my heart. The 39 books that make up the Old Testament do a spectacular job of showing us the history of God and his people. And it shows us all about Jesus. It continues to point us in his direction. And then it just does a really cool job also of showing us how much God really kind of cares about us and thinks that we're special and our everyday lives mean something. So hear me out on this one because it really is like it's the cool place to be. It's full of really cool heroes that you guys have been seeing, some of them. And I know our world today has all kinds of great heroes too. We got a little Captain America over here. Maybe there's Thor. I think there's a new Thor movie out. There's also some Iron Man. I seem to be stuck a little bit in Marvel for DC folks. I'm sorry. But it's all the heroes. We have sports heroes. We have all these places that we could put and look to to put our faith maybe. But the Old Testament gives us really, really cool heroes too. And what I think makes them the coolest is the fact that they're big old mess-ups just like you and me. And so we have this place to land. The Old Testament tells us the good, the bad, the ugly. There's no filter put on these guys. You know, Instagram has that beautiful filter where everybody looks perfect and pretty and all of the other things. You're going to find in the Old Testament those heroes aren't filtered. They come to us raw and in their natural glory. We have Adam who was God's first creation, the man, but we find out later that Adam is a bit of a blame shifter who lacks some self-control. And then we also have Noah who was considered the last righteous man on earth and yet the minute that the ark landed Noah was over served and ended up falling asleep in his birthday suit and thus embarrassing his sons greatly. And then there's Jacob. We've learned all about Jacob in the past. Jacob from the very beginning was a manipulator. But you know what? Jacob's other name is Israel. So we think he's this big spectacular hero, which he was. But he also has his flaws. He convinced his brother to give him his birth, just like we are. And yet God chooses to use them in pretty spectacular ways. And I want to introduce you to another one of the heroes, I personally think is a hero, of the Old Testament. And his name is Jonah. And you're going to see as we talk about Jonah that Jonah was a little bit headstrong. And Jonah liked to do things his way. And that because of all this, Jonah gets to sit in some pretty stinky circumstances for a little while. But I've gotten ahead of myself. So let me introduce you, first of all, to Jonah before we jump into Jonah's story. You will find the book of Jonah in the back part of the Old Testament sandwiched in between Obadiah and Micah. And if you happen to have a Bible that has sticky pages, which mine can sometimes, you'll miss it because it's four short little chapters long. That's it. And it's back there waiting for us to dig into it. Jonah was a prophet. All that means is Jonah was God's mouthpiece. It was easy and simple. God gave instruction to Jonah. Jonah, in turn, then gave instruction to his people. And that was his job. He lived in a small little village outside of Nazareth. It was called Gas Heifer. Just to give you a little information, that's what it was called. It was called Gas Heifer. It's also speculated that he lived during the time of the Assyrian Empire's reign. And at this point in time, the Assyrian Empire was to the north and west or east, whichever. I'm directionally challenged, y'all. I'm so sorry. But it was up here to where he was down here. How about that? Does that work? And so he's, and this empire liked to try to take over all of the territory surrounding it, which included the lands where the Israelites lived. So unfortunately, or whatever, the Assyrian army was a huge enemy of the Israelite people. That becomes important later, so hold on to that one. The other thing to know about the Assyrians as people is they weren't nice. They were classified as idolatrous. They were proud. They were ruthless. They were bent on world conquest. They were known very specifically for their brutality and torture when it came to how they fought, as well as once they conquered an area, they were then known for their intimidation and fear factors that they used in order to hold these people in their control. So just the kind of people you would want to have as your neighbor. Just saying. Okay, so hold on to all that because, again, that information we'll come back to. So now let me introduce you to the book of Jonah. I did not prepare slides. So you have nothing to look at. I'm so sorry. But you do have your Bibles in front of you. So if you want to pull out and look at Jonah, again, it's towards the back of the Old Testament, you can kind of follow along there. We pick up in chapter one, verse 1, and it starts out and states that the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Amittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against it, for the evil has come up before us. Well, that sounds pretty simple, right? God's doing exactly what it is. He's giving instruction to his prophet, and he's telling his prophet to go talk to people, but the thing is that he's not saying go talk to the Israelites. He's telling Jonah, I want you to get up, and I want you to go, and I want you to go talk to the Ninevites. Any idea where Nineveh is? Ah, Nineveh sits right in the Assyrian Empire. Right in the middle, y'all. So here it is as God's telling him, I want you to get up and I want you to go over here to our mortal enemies and I want you to tell them that they're in trouble. So Jonah, being the good prophet he is, decides to get up, and he decides to go, right? Well, unfortunately, his compass is about as directionally challenged as I am, and Jonah did get up and go, and if you look in verse 3, it says, but, oh, that word in the Bible is never a good thing. But Jonah rose and fled to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa. He found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid the fare and went down into it to go with them to Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. So here it is. Jonah is just like all the other people that we've talked about. He's not the perfect little hero that we kind of would hope he is because he gets up and he goes in the direction that he wants to go, not in the direction that God has asked him to go. No, he has chosen, and y'all, this one makes me laugh a little. If he wanted to go from where he was in Joppa to Nineveh where God asked him to go, it's about 500 miles, which is about like going from Raleigh to Buffalo, New York. And instead, though, Jonah has said, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going my way. And his way, though, is to go 2,500 miles in the opposite direction. And 2,500 miles is like going from Raleigh to Los Angeles. So not only is he fleeing, he's fleeing really hard, really fast, and completely in the opposite direction. And why is he doing this? All because it says here he's fleeing the presence of the Lord. So how many times is it that we've done that? How many times is it that we've had some sort of call from God to go and do something, and we've chosen to go our way or to the opposite way? Be honest. What in here is your Nineveh? Everybody has a Nineveh. Everybody has some place that you're avoiding. For whatever reason it is. Maybe it's that it's just too hard to even think about. Maybe that it's a little too dangerous. Or maybe it's going to require a little too much sacrifice on your part. And it's just so much easier to do it your way, even if, like in Jonah's case, it's a whole lot farther in a different direction. Maybe it's a relationship that you're supposed to be mending. Maybe it's something to do with your job. I don't know what your Nineveh is, but you do. So what is it? And I know also you guys are thinking, well, I might have my Nineveh, but I definitely don't run from God. I would never do that. Well, I tell you what. How about if I give you a couple of things to think about to see if you possibly are running from God. What does it look like for you to run from his presence? Are you avoiding those places where he shows up? What does your church attendance look like? Are you avoiding being here on a Sunday morning because you don't want to listen to these worship songs because it may hit someplace? Or you definitely don't want to hear something that Nate may have to say because it's going to convict you and then you're going to have something to do because of it. What does your activity inside of Bible study or small group look like? Are you part of one? If you're not part of one, why? And if you are part of one, are you actively engaged? Are you participating? Or are you trying to stay away from where God may show up? And the last one is, what does your daily time with God look like? Are you spending time with him each day? Do you sit? Do you reflect? Do you pray? Do you allow him to speak to you? Or do you just continue to run? Because, you know, Scripture tells us he's not going to leave us. He's not going to forsake us. But it's us that turns and runs. Thankfully, though, when he sees us on the run, quite often he does something to stop us and move us back into his direction. He tries to fix our compass a little bit. And I don't know about y'all, but I can be stubborn. As my family agrees, I can be stubborn. I can be hard-headed and sometimes I just don't listen very well. So the way that God has to move me, unfortunately, can become a two-by-four situation, like right here between the eyes that says, hey, Aaron, wake up. But then there's others. Maybe y'all are lucky and his still small whisper is what will get you where you need to go. I don't know. But in Jonah's case, we find out that God does a pretty big work to get his attention. So Jonah has moved and he's now on this boat and this boat is heading 2,500 miles away to Tarshish. And all of a sudden, God says, it's time for you to come home. And he sends a mighty wind off to the sea, which creates what they call a tempest. So basically, y'all, this is a big storm unlike anything we would have ever seen before. And this poor little boat is out in the middle of it, rocking and shaking and probably being pushed really, really hard at the seams. The crew that's on this boat knows. They're sailors. They're seasoned sailors. They know that this is not any normal storm. They're trying to figure out how not to sink. So they start picking stuff up and throwing it overboard. Like, I got to get rid of this so that we don't go down in this storm. And all the while, the captain's like, oh, wait a second. We had somebody on board with us. Has anybody seen Jonah? The captain goes looking for Jonah. He goes, y'all, Jonah is down in the hull of the ship, sound asleep. Of all things, it's rocking and rolling and the wind is blowing and it's probably raining and the whole works. And I don't know about you, but I might have been a little seasick at that moment. But Jonah's taking himself a little nap. And the captain looks at him and says, hey, you need to wake up. And you need to start praying that we don't all perish in the middle of this storm. And I hate to say it, but Jonah doesn't pray at this moment. But he does get up, and he does go up onto the deck. And somewhere when the captain was looking for him, the rest of the crew is just trying to figure out exactly what has caused this supernatural storm that's around there. And so they do something called casting lots and it all comes to a point that it's Jonah is the problem. So when Jonah appears up back onto deck, these crew members look at him and they literally start throwing all kinds of questions at him about as fast as you can hear them come out of their mouths. Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation and where do you come from and what is your country and of what people are you? And then Jonah in turn responds, I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land. And right there, Jonah just told them everything that they needed to know about what was happening to him and why it was happening. He's a Hebrew, and he worships the one true God, the one true God who made the sea that they're sitting on that's now in this huge storm. And so they know it's Jonah's fault. And so they look at Jonah and say, what do we need to do in order to fix this? Because you're our problem. And Jonah just looks at him and he very calmly says, just throw me overboard. Okay. The crew members have probably got this going in their head though. Like the, the guy, God's already angry. He's already got this sea all churned up. And so if we pitch this guy overboard, don't we think he's going to be even more mad at us because we've just now killed this guy? And so instead of doing what Jonah said, they proceed to row as hard as they possibly can row because they're going to get him up on shore and kick him off and their problem is going to be solved. Well, the faster they row, the angrier the sea gets. And so finally they stop. But before they pitch Jonah overboard, these men stop and they pray. They don't pray to their idols or to their gods. They pray to Jonah's God. And they say, hey, Lord, we're going to do what he told us to do. And we're going to throw him overboard. And please don't let his blood be on our hands. Mind you, Jonah has still not prayed. But these pagans are praying to his God. And so they then pick up Jonah and they throw Jonah overboard and the seas stop. Whew. That was a whole lot in 12 verses. So I'm going to stop for just a second. I'm going to back us up and I want to look at something really fast. We've got our little rebellious prophet who has defied God. He's boarded his ship and I can only imagine what's going on in his head when he boarded the ship was I had a conversation with God. He told me to go to Nineveh. Nobody knows about that but me and God. And so it really doesn't matter that I'm going to get on this ship and I'm going the other way because nobody's for the wiser. It's just between me and God. But what do we see? This is that Noah's disobedience brought calamity to that ship and to all that were part of it. So ultimately what he shows us in this moment is that our obedience and our disobedience affects so many more people than we could ever begin to imagine. There are very, very few instances where our choices only affect us. Our choices echo through generations. A great example of these choices is, let's say, I'm the kids pastor, so I can use this as an example. But let's say you choose to volunteer inside of kids ministry or inside of Kyle's student ministry. You've made a choice to do it. In a lot of instances, it's not like you're getting a bunch for this choice. In most instances, there's a whole lot more sacrifice that happens on your part because you're giving up a Sunday to be hanging out with kids or a Sunday night on your couch to hang out with students. You get to laugh at all the 12-year-old humor, which, y'all, that's the best part right there. You get to answer crazy questions and weird texts and all of the above. But somewhere in there, that time that you spend with these kids or with these students is impacting that generation, which in turn will impact the next generation and the next and the next. You may never see the fruits from all those seeds that you planted, but I promise you heaven does. And there is a party happening because of your yes. And the same thing, though, goes with our disobedience. Let's say you've got that relationship that you know darn well you need to do something about. It's broken, and it needs some reconciliation. But by choosing the easy way and saying no, what have you told that other person? Maybe you've kind of told them that they're not lovable or that when the going gets hard, you're going to pack up and go the other way. What about your kids, your big kids, little kids, any of the above that are watching this. You know, this may be communicating to them too that it's really okay to give up on a friendship. It's really okay to hold a grudge. That forgiveness is not always the way to go. And maybe you have somebody else that's watching this in the background. Maybe it's a neighbor. And all of a sudden, by you choosing the easy way, it all of a sudden validates to them that Christianity is kind of a farce and that somehow most Christians are hypocrites. Our disobedience or our obedience affects so many more people than just us. So let's jump back into where Jonah is. We know Jonah is now overboard, but we also know that God is not done with Jonah. So God sends Jonah his little saving grace, which happens to be a rather large fish that swallows him up. And a bit of a side note, we don't know if this is a fish, a shark, a whale, or some creature that lives six miles down at the bottom of the ocean that we've never seen before. We have no idea. Scripture just calls it a big fish. So I'm going to call it a big fish. It just works that way. And Jonah is given now three days and three nights to sit in his circumstances and the consequences of his actions. And I don't know about y'all, but when I was little and I used to get in trouble, quite often my mama would look at me and say, hey, Aaron, and she used to call me Aaron Beth when I was in trouble. She's like, Aaron Beth, you need to go sit over there and think about what you've done, and then we're going to talk about it. Well, this is exactly what God is doing for Jonah. Hey, Jonah, you've messed up, and I'm going to give you some time to think about it and then we're going to talk about it. So that's what Jonah gets, three days and three nights in the belly of a very stinky fish. And while he's in there, Jonah does sit, Jonah does think, and then Jonah does what we hoped he would have done in chapter 1, and he prays. And all of chapter 2 is Jonah's prayer from his repentant heart as he pours out to God. And so I'm just going to pull out verse 2. I'm not going to give you the whole prayer. You guys can read it. But verse 2 says, I called out to the what that just says to me is that even after we've messed up and even after we're totally disobedient, God still hears our prayers. He still hears us. He still wants that relationship with us. Jesus is currently seated at the right hand of God, waiting to intercede for us, waiting to be able to say, hey, I'm going to give you a second chance or a third or a twelfth or a twentieth, whatever it is that you may need. He wants to give that to us because he longs to be in relationship with us and he longs to take the messes that are our lives and turn them into something very, very beautiful for his purposes. And that's exactly what he does for Jonah. After Jonah pours out his heart to him, God says, okay, it's time. And the fish deposits him on dry land. And again, some of the other reasons I love the Old Testament is it doesn't mince words. And my version says that he vomited Jonah onto dry land. So just add to the stinkiness, okay? So then we come to chapter 3, verse 1, and this is just so amazing because it says straight up, the word of the Lord came to Jonah the second time. Again, he loves us, wants a relationship, and he's going to give us second chances. He doesn't need us to accomplish his goals. God, at this point in time, y'all, he could have taken care of Nineveh all on his own. He didn't need Jonah, but he wanted Jonah to join in, and that's exactly what He wants from us. And the next part, if you look down into the second verse, it says, Arrive and go to Nineveh, the great city, and call out against in the message that I tell you. I think this is so amazing too because guess what? Not only is he a God of second chances, but he's also not going to let Jonah off the hook though because he's now telling him to do exactly what he told him to do back in chapter 1. Arise and go to Nineveh. You don't get to, you spent all that time and you were repentant. But you're still going to do what I need you to do. I need you to get up and I need you to go. And so this time, thankfully, Jonah gets up and Jonah goes. And he goes to Nineveh. But the really cool part or the hard part or whatever you want to say here is that Jonah has 500 miles to go. Jonah has some hard work that he needs to do. And that is this hard work of obedience. Because I can guarantee you in this five mile walk, or 500 mile walk that Jonah is about to take, he's going to do a whole lot of thinking. Because here he goes, stepping, hey God, like, I'm doing what you're asking me to do. I'm making this journey. I'm going. But what about like Amos and Hosea who were two other prophets at the same time as Jonah? You know, they're over there talking to the Israelites. Why can't I be over there like them? No, Jonah, keep walking. Jonah keeps walking. Okay, well, could you just send me a friend then so I don't have to do this by myself? No, no, Jonah, keep putting that foot in front of the other. And that's exactly what Jonah does in this act of obedience. And is it easy? No, it's not easy because guess what? Obedience doesn't come with a convenience clause. God doesn't make it easy because God wants you to have to rely on him with each step that you take. So like that broken relationship that we talked about, it may mean that to do the hard work of obedience is that you have to be the first person that puts out a hand and says, can we talk? Is it easier the other way? Of course it is. It's so much easier the other way. Because guess what? The other way is our way. And all we're trying to do is run the other way. He doesn't need our excuses. He just wants our obedience. The other thing to remember about Jonah at this point in time is he's probably a bit of a sight to see. There are actually two recorded versions of men who have been swallowed by a whale and later lived to tell the tale. And these men emerged hairless and covered in yellow and green splotches. And I imagine they smelled really good also. So now I'll get a picture of Jonah also in his 500-mile walk. We don't know if he bathed or not. We have no idea on that one. But he's also walking 500 miles, so we know he probably doesn't smell very good. We also know that he looks really, really strange. This is what he does. This is how he looks as he walks into the city of Nineveh. I'm here. And all that's going through his head at that point in time is like, really? Lord, are you sure about this? These people are going to run the opposite direction. I look pretty scary, and oh, I don't smell very good. And God's like, no, no, no, keep going, keep going. So Jonah keeps going, and he starts crying out, yet 40 days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. And he goes another step and yells again. And all I can think about is at this moment, the Lord is loving the position that he has Jonah in because he loves to put us in these challenging positions where he gets to be who he is. Jonah thinks it's impossible. Jonah thinks these people are not going to respond. There's no way this is going to come out for any kind of good. And God says, oh, but watch this. And in chapter 3, verse 5, it says, and the people of Nineveh believed God. And then verse 10 says, God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, and he did not overthrow them. So here's this one little guy who walks in smelling, and he's full of sores, etc. And yet because he did the work of obedience, these people believed God, and they turned from God. It was an unprecedented response because remember Ninevites are horrible people by nature and yet they turned to the one living God. It was a revival beyond all revivals. And I think it would just be fabulous if we could end right here. We're done. Let's have the baptism. We can call it a day. But the thing is, is if you remember correctly, I told you there's four chapters to the book of Jonah. And we just got to the end of chapter three. Because the fourth chapter does so much to show us Jonah's humanity in full color and full display. And, yeah, hear what happens. Because the beginning of chapter 4, verse 1 says, but, there's that word again, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. Come on, y'all. Seriously? Greatest revival ever, and Jonah is now mad because it happened. Why? Why would you be mad at something like that? I think what it really comes down to is Jonah is mad because God didn't do it his way. You see, back then the Israelites all believed that God's blessing and God's favor was for them and them alone. And it wasn't to be shared with others. But yet God said, oh, no, no. These Ninevites are part of my plan. And I need them to be taken care of. And so Jonah's mad. That's why Jonah's mad. But can I ask how many times we've done something like that. Where we've had our plan for ourselves. I am going to, and you know, you've just got it all written down. You know where your life's going. You know what your plan looks like. It's all great and good. And then you walk up to God and go, would you please just, will you sign off on this for me? Give it a good stamp of approval. Because it's my way, right? That's the way I want it to go. But we cannot. We cannot do that to God. We can't do that to ourselves because ultimately what happens is we're putting God in this box. And we're saying that your way, my way, has to be your way. That's not how he works. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. He knows what he wants to do. And we should be just getting out of his way instead. And so I don't know. You know, he's very good at what it is that he does. And I am so not sure why we choose not to trust him and what his plan is for us. And I kind of sat and thought about this. And the thing that I kind of came up with is I think that we're more concerned about ourselves than we are with actually showing others who God is. We don't believe that anything that we do, that the choices that we make, actually affect anybody around us. It's kind of an all about me. And I also think that, again, in that all about me, we don't want to be inconvenienced by having to do some hard work of obedience. But I'm so very thankful that God, in all of our ugly humanness, still chooses to use us. And in this case, we know he used Jonah in a mighty way. Chapter 4, unfortunately, does not tie up Jonah's story in a big red bow. We don't know if Jonah ever even got over himself. And I'm sorry. I like a good ending. This one's not a good ending, and I'm sorry about that. But that's just the way that it is. But I think that the lessons that Jonah brings to us before this ending are ones that we can hold on to for a really, really long time. God wants desperately to be in a relationship with us, but he doesn't need us. He wants us. He wants to use us to accomplish his goals. But the thing is, being the gentleman that he is, he's going to ask. And we, in turn, have to respond. We have to be willing to surrender to him. We have to be willing to do the hard work that he's going to ask of us. And when we choose to do that, we, in turn, bring glory to him. And again, maybe a little growth to ourselves. In the beginning of the book The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, there's an exchange between two characters, two of the main characters, Gandalf, who's kind of a kindly old wizarding folk, and then Bilbo Baggins, who is the hobbit. And the exchange starts like this. Gandalf says, I'm looking for someone to share an adventure that I'm actually in the process of arranging, and it's very difficult to find anyone. And Bilbo's response to him is, well, I should think so in these parts. We are plain, quiet folk, and we have no use for adventure. Nasty, disturbing, uncomfortable things make you late for dinner. So my question for y'all is, the next time God says to you, I'm looking for someone to share an adventure, or I'm looking for someone to step out to do something for me, are you going to be like Bilbo, and are you going to avoid it at all costs? Because it's uncomfortable. Because it doesn't quite fit in with your plans. Because you just might have to sacrifice something. And maybe something a little bit more than dinner. Or will you be willing to say yes, knowing that your yes is for God's glory and for your growth? And will you all pray with me? Lord, thank you. Thank you, thank you for these examples in the Old Testament, these human characters that give us such a beautiful picture of the fact that no matter how messed up we really are, you can use us. And we ask that as we go through this week that you give us what it is that we need to turn towards you to begin that beautiful walk of obedience, no matter how hard it might be, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us. Give us what we need to do that. And Lord, we love you. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.

Oh, hey there, pals. Don't you just love this music? It's nostalgic, isn't it? Takes you back to a simpler time, when you were a kid, and things were light and fun. I love times like that. I'll tell you what else makes me feel nostalgic is those old Bible stories. The ones that we learned in Sunday school or maybe just picked them up somewhere along the way. I love the heroes David and Goliath, Noah and the Ark,, Jonah and the whale. The list really does go on and on. And I wonder, pals, how long has it been since we heard those stories? I bet it's been a while. And if we could tell them again, I wonder if we would find out that those stories aren't really kids stories at all, but they were meant for grown-ups all along and that there's still lessons we can learn from them today. Let's find out together. Speedy delivery. For me? Thanks, mailman Kyle. Oh, this week is David and Goliath. Well, good morning. It's good to see everybody. Thanks for laughing along. Don't worry, we're not going to show you the full minute and 40 second version of that for the next 10 weeks. We can shorten it, but we'll let you watch it a couple more times. Thanks for being here this morning. Those of you who were able to make it in person, thank you. Watching online, wherever you are. I am excited about this series because I love these old stories from the Old Testament that many of us, as I said in the video, picked up when we were kids. Many of the stories that we're going to be telling over the next 10 weeks or so are stories that most, if not all of you could tell. I'm sure everyone in this room can tell some version of David and Goliath that wouldn't be wildly inaccurate. But the thing is about these stories that I'm willing to bet has probably been a long time since we've heard them, since we've read them for ourselves, since we've mined them for fresh details with a different perspective. And when you do read these stories and you look at the details of them and you look at the humanity of them, I think what you see is that the Bible really is unflinching in the details. That we teach these stories to kids. Here's a little secret in ministry. We teach these stories to kids because 1 Samuel 17 with the narrative story of David and Goliath goes over a lot better in the elementary school classroom than does a detailed theology mind out of Romans 8. Okay? So usually we teach kids stories because we put volunteers in there for the history of the church, and a volunteer just needs a story to tell because that's way easier to do than teaching theology to four-year-olds. So we tell stories, but make no mistake, these are not kids' stories. These are stories for everybody. And when you get into the details of it, you learn real quick, these are stories for grown-ups. So this morning, I get to tell you my favorite story to tell. It doesn't mean I'm good at it. It just means I really like this story of David and Goliath. So to set the scene, we're in 1 Samuel chapter 17. 1 Samuel is the ninth book of the Bible. It's sandwiched between Ruth and, you guessed it, 2 Samuel. So if you want to pull out the Bible in front of you and just kind of read along as I read, you're more than welcome to do that or grab your Bible at home and do the same thing. But the author of Samuel sets the scene at the beginning of chapter 17 and he says the Israelites and the Philistines are at war with one another. They're out for battle. The Philistines lived on what is now the coast of modern day Israel. So there was always tension and infighting and this battle between Israel and Philistia is pretty regular and pretty common. Eventually Israel wins because you've never heard of Philistia before and we all know where Israel is. But in this time they were big rivals. And so they assembled at a valley and drew up a battle line and the Philistines are on one mountain and the Israelites are on another mountain. And they're basically waiting for the other to get tired of waiting and come into the valley and give up the advantage. Neither army is going to go down into the valley and then try to fight uphill to a fortified enemy. So they're both just trying to wait the other party out. And in the midst of this steps a warrior named Goliath of Gath. And I'm going to read what scripture says about Goliath. This will not be on the screen, but I'm going to read what it says about Goliath and then try to sum it up for you because there's words like cubics and shekels and things like that, and we don't know what those are. So this is the description that we are given of Goliath. I'm in verse 4. Okay. So let me just paint a picture of what this actually describes. If you do the research and you look up the conversions and you try to figure it all out, I'm going to give you numbers that are in the middle, more conservative. Okay. Goliath was very likely between nine and nine and a half feet tall. Okay. That's really tall. That's almost a basketball goal tall, or it's about a foot and a half taller than a goal that I can dunk on. So however you want to think about that. I also instantly regret claiming that I can dunk on an eight-foot goal. I haven't done that in 15 years, and neglect and old age might have something to say about dunking on an eight-foot goal. So nobody put me to that. I'm crying uncle on that bet right now. But he was about nine, nine and a half feet tall. We'll call him nine feet tall. And if you're nine feet tall, just go with me on this, because I don't know. There's no guesses. But if you think about Shaq or a defensive lineman or these big behemoth dudes that we know of, and they weigh about 400 pounds or 350 pounds, and they're six feet tall, Shaq's seven foot tall. I don't know how much Goliath weighed, but 450? Five? 550? I don't think he was a skinny guy, nine feet tall and stocky. He was a heavy dude. And his armor, it says, if you add up all the shekels for his helmet, for his, for his breastplate that was made of chain mail and his bronze greaves, clocked in somewhere between 225 and 250. So that's like going to battle. I give my son John a ride on my shoulders and then you give us a piggyback ride. All right. That's what that's like. He goes into battle with an extra 250 on him. And not only that, he can walk down that hill apparently with ease. So he's walking down the hill. He's nine feet tall. He's somewhere around 500 pounds with an additional 250 pounds of armor, which makes me think that maybe Goliath was closer to 600, 650 pounds because of the ratios. Anyways, he is a walking giant tank. He's a bad dude. And it says that he's the champion. And when this tank gets down into the valley, this is what he says in verse 10. And the Philistine said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together. When Saul and all Israel heard the words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Now here's the challenge that he gives. And we see it in the verses above 10. I just can't read the whole chapter to you. But in the verses above 10, Goliath says, send me a man to fight. And it'll be winner takes all. You send me your champion. I'm the champion of the Philistines. Me and him will fight to the death. And if he wins, then all my brethren and all the people I'm fighting with and their wives and their children, we will be your slaves and servants. But if I win, if I defeat your champion, then all you guys up there on that hill and all your wives and all your children are our slaves and servants. So let's go. Who wants some? And this is what tells you that Goliath is a bad, this is how you know he was a bad dude. First of all, he comes down there and he says that to them. He says that to the Israelites. There's a whole army arrayed. They've been in a lot of battles. These are not new soldiers. They've all put their sword in something before. And he says, any one of y'all, come fight me. And if you win, then you win. The whole thing. Let's go. And all of them avoid eye contact like a kid in geometry class that's just been asked a question by the teacher. just straight down to the ground. They were afraid and greatly dismayed. When an entire army of men encountered another warrior, all of them and all their machismo and all their might and all their hoorah and all their battle cries and all that toughness, when push came to shove, they looked at Goliath and went, I think I'll just stay on the mountain. They were afraid and greatly dismayed. But what we don't think about that I actually think is pretty interesting is the response of the Philistines. Because if you're in the Philistine army and some dude walks out from amongst your ranks and goes down into the valley and yells up at the enemy, hey, if you got anybody who can take me, then you can have all them and their wives and their children as slaves. If you're in the Philistine army and you hear a dude do that and you think you can take him, are you going to let him say that for you? I'm not. If I'm in that army and somebody walks down and they say, hey, if anybody up there can defeat me, you can have Jen and Lily and John as your servants. If I can take him, no way. Not a chance I'm letting him say that for me. And let's just be real clear as I stand up here and be tough guy. Nate, I could take no one in either army. Probably in thumb wrestling, no way. But for the sake of argument, the Philistines just let him do it, which means they were just as scared of Goliath as the Israelites were. You got two full armies who don't want to mess with this guy. And the Bible says that he comes out every day and he offers that taunt every day for 40 days. It's interesting to me that the number 40 pops up in this story too. You've heard me say before, and my Bible scholars know, that the number 40 is pretty significant in Scripture. I don't know why. I'm not going to make any guesses. I just know it's significant, and here it is again in the story of David and Goliath. So while Goliath is coming out every day and challenging the Israelites to a one-on-one fight, there's this kid back home with his dad, Jesse, named David. And Jesse has some sons who are in the army, notably, and we'll see him in a minute, the oldest brother, Eliab. And so Jesse loads David up with cheese and grain and bread. And he says, I want you to take this to your brothers and to their commanders, which is interesting that the ancient world was into charcuterie. We thought that we invented it, but it was cheese and grains and bread. It was clearly arrayed on a nice wooden tray, and they all took pictures of it before they ate it, and it was great. So he takes that to his brothers, and while he's delivering it, he hears Goliath again. Goliath comes down. He does his daily taunt. And all the men of Israel are terrified. Except for David. David's response is different than the rest of their responses. Look at verses 24 and then 26. All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid. Then there's 25 and then in 26 it says, Okay, look at David's response. Every man there, again, hardened warriors, sees Goliath every day for 40 days and walks away dismayed and in terror. What are we going to do? What are we going to do? David, a shepherd boy, who we don't know how old he was, maybe between 14 and 16, so we'll call him 15. He could have been 12. I really don't know, but we'll call him a 15-year-old kid. Comes to the battle lines with his charcuterie, and he hears Goliath, and he sees him for the first time. And everyone else's response to Goliath is, please don't hurt me, Mr. Goliath. And David's response to Goliath is, who's that guy? Who does he think he is? You guys hear what he's saying? He's defying God. He's in trouble. I love that David's response to seeing Goliath for the first time in a sea of warriors is, who's that punk? Who does he think he is? God's going to be ticked. I would not want to be that guy. And then what follows, and I love this, is his oldest brother's response. Listen to what Eliab says to him. It's what every older brother in the history of mankind would say. It's also what all of us would say to David if we were in those battle lines and heard a punk 15-year-old saying this. Now Eliab, his oldest brother, heard when he spoke to the men, and Eliab's anger was kindled, yeah, no kidding, against David. And he said, why have you come down and with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil in your heart, for you have come down to see the battle. I love it, I love it. I love it. And you got to kind of read stuff into the Bible sometimes to pull out the details and make it come alive. This is his oldest brother of eight sons, his youngest brother, who is the shepherd. He has the lowest job, the easiest job, the least respected job in the family. comes to the battle line with meat and cheese and then says, who's this punk? And his brother's like, shut up. Who are you? How are you here? Who's watching those three sheep that you tend in the wilderness, that big important job you're doing? Who's doing it now? Get out of here. You're just here to see a fight that's gross and disgusting. These men's lives are at stake. Go home. It's a totally reasonable response. But I think David's response here, the first time he encounters Goliath is the most interesting. And I think it kind of tips our hand to the question that underlies this entire story. This whole story begets this question. What made David different from all of Israel? What was it about David that upon encountering Goliath for the first time, he responded completely differently from his entire nation? What is it about David as we move through the story and we see him make different statements? What is it about David that makes him act and talk like that? What is it about David that gives him this sense of calm and confidence that God's going to take care of things. What makes David different? A lot of people, and it's how I was taught when I was growing up, would say it was his faith. David had bigger faith than everybody. He had more faith than everyone in Israel. He had more faith than all of his countrymen. I don't think that's true. Samuel was still alive during this battle. You want to tell me that 15-year-old David had more faith than Samuel? Maybe, but I don't think so. How about the praying widows in Israel who had been seeking the presence of God on behalf of the army for days and hours on end. He had more faith than them. He was a better Christian in our vernacular than everybody in the whole country. He had more faith than everyone at 15. Maybe, but doubtful to me. So let's hang on to that question. What makes David different? As we move into kind of the next scene of the story. So he's on the front lines and he says, who does that guy think he is? What's going to happen for the person who kills him? They're like, you know, King Saul, who by the way, is head and shoulders above everyone else, the Bible says, and therefore is the most likely candidate to go and take on Goliath. And lest you think that this was an army full of guys who just weren't skilled fighters, that they didn't really have a champion, they had Joab and they had Abner in their armies. And we see later their exploits, that they are great warriors and great fighters. David's mighty men, the people who have become David's mighty men are no doubt in this army at the time. So let's not pretend that there aren't capable fighters in the army. There's just a bunch of scared fighters in the army and David is not. So David goes to the guy who should be picking the fight and taking the challenge. And he says, and he goes to Saul and he's like, hey, I'll take care of your Goliath issue. I noticed you got this giant, seems really annoying. I'm gonna handle it for you. Just cool. And this is the conversation that they have. Saul asks him, why should I let you do it? And David's response to me is remarkable. I'm going to pick it up in verse 34, and then verse 37 is going to be on the screen when we finish. And Saul said to David, go. And may the Lord be with you. Good luck, kid. Now here's what we miss in this passage that we just breeze right through. Because the point of the passage is, David said, God's been with me before. He'll be with me now. Except you missed the fun part. Look at this. Read it again. Saul says, why should I let you, why do you think you can defeat this giant? And David casually says, well, I don't know if you know this, I'm a shepherd. And so when I've been out in the wilderness and a lion or a bear would come and take one of the sheep, I would take my shepherd's staff, my stick, and I would chase down that lion or the bear, and then I would hit it with my stick. And it would drop the sheep, and I would take it home. And then if he arose against me, if the lion bowed up and wanted a piece, then I would grab him by the mane and beat him with my stick until he died. And I've done that multiple times because the Lord has delivered them into my hands. And I don't see any reason why this giant would be any different. And listen to me, if you don't think that's a big deal, go to the zoo. It's like an hour and a half. It's a wonderful drive. It's really worth it for your kids. Go to the zoo. Go to the lion's exhibit and choose a stick, any stick you want. Do research about it beforehand and buy one on Amazon for maximum density and flexibility so it doesn't snap the first time you hit the lion. Do whatever you want to do. Jump in the habitat and hit it, and then you see what happens. Hit a girl one, see what happens. And then David says, the Lord has delivered those into my hand and this giant will be no different. And I love the humility there of David. Takes no credit at all for it. If I did that, if I killed a lion with a stick, I would take a picture of the lion and me with the stick. And I would put it on 14 different colored t-shirts. And it would say, I killed this lion with this stick. And I would wear it every day. And I'd be Nate, the lion killer. But I'm not. I'm just Nate. I've killed zero lions. He's so humble about it. He gives the credit right to God. And Saul says, okay, all right, go ahead. And then there's that famous scene where he tries to put his armor on David. And David, if we had to guess based on archeological data, because I wanted to know the height comparison, so I did the research one time, 5'4", 5'6". Saul was probably closer to six foot. Saul's armor is not going to fit David. Saul has grown man strength. That strength you have when your wife has your first baby, your strength grows by 10. It just happens. It's old man strength. It's just a thing. David didn't have that yet. He's just a 15-year-old kid who later we hear is ruddy in complexion. He was a good- kid and ruddy, we think, some Hebrew scholars indicates ginger, redheaded. So for my redheaded friends, you and David, y'all are pals. So he tries on the armor, it doesn't fit. He's like, no, I'm good. And he goes to battle in the equivalent of a t-shirt and jeans. On his way, he goes down to the brook and he grabs five smooth stones. And there's a lot of ideas about why he grabbed five smooth stones. Goliath had five brothers, so it was one stone for each brother. Maybe, I don't know, it's fine. He was being prepared. I've heard pastors make this a lesson on preparedness. Even though you have faith, do all the work. I don't think that's true, which is nice because I don't like to do all the work. So he just, he got five stones and I don't know why, but he got them and he goes. And by the way, the sling that he's using is a leather strap with a pouch in the middle of it. You put the rock in there and you sling it around and then you let go of one end of it and the rock comes flying out at 90, 95, sometimes a hundred miles an hour or more. And this weapon, the sling was a common weapon and is the precursor to the bow and arrow in ancient battle. So it was not uncommon to have slingers as units in your army. So David had a sling and that's what he was going to use. So he goes into battle with Goliath. And this is where the good stuff happens. He goes down into the valley and approaches Goliath as Goliath is there issuing his daily taunt. And when Goliath turns and sees him, he responds in A, the most predictable way possible, and B, the stinking scariest way possible. Look at what Goliath says in verse 42 when he sees David. And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him, for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance. And the Philistine said to David, am I a dog that you come at me with sticks? Which is a fair question. And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. The Philistine said to David, come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. That's ancient smack talk. I don't know if you know that or not, but that's ancient trash talk. The large tank of a man, Goliath of Gath, turns and he sees a 15-year-old snot-nosed punk walking at him. And he says, this, this, this is what you're sending me for your country? This, this kid? What am I, a dog? Are you going to hit me with your stick? And David's like, it's worked before. You're going to hit me with your stick? And then he says, I am going to kill you. And then I'm going to watch the birds of the air and the beasts of the field pull apart your carcass. And we're going to have a party. It's going to be great, David. Let's go. To which 100% of us, if we were in David's shoes and Goliath said that to us, would immediately lose control of our bodily functions and scamper back up the mountain just as quickly as we could. I'm sorry, Mr. Goliath, there's been a big misunderstanding. I've got to tell you, from up there, you really look a lot smaller, and this is a huge mistake. I don't know what I was thinking. My bad. Listen, the one advantage David has over Goliath is that he's very likely quicker. So just go back up the mountain. That's not what he does. David's response is epic. And I get chills every time I read it. Verse 45 and 46, then David said to the Philistine right away, he responded, you come to me with sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day, the Lord will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down and cut off your big fat head and I will give the dead beast, I will give the bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel. You done boogered up, Goliath. You've been defying the wrong God for too many days. And it's time to pay the piper. Goliath says, what am I, a dog? Are you going to hit me with your stick? And David, unflinching, unflinching, he says, you come at me with weapons that man made for you? I come at you in the name of the Lord God Almighty, and he's not happy. And I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to cut your head off, and then this army is going to run down the hill and kill everyone in this army. And then we're going to have a party while we watch the birds pull their carcasses apart. How do you like them apples, big fella? Goliath, it turns out, liked those apples as much as you would expect and enraged, charges at David to kill him. David, in this moment, as the story goes, puts the rock in his pouch, whips the sling around, and sinks it right in between the eyes of Goliath as he charges. And I know that he charges because the Bible tells us that after he got hit in the front of the head, that he landed on his face. He fell face first in a big dusty thud, I imagine. And how else could he fall face first unless enraged at David's response? He just grabbed his spear and started to yell and charge directly at David, who couldn't have been further away from me than the back of the room. And David calmly, confidently, puts that rock right between his eyes. And then David did what he said he was going to do. He walks up to the shield bearer, and he says, give me Goliath's sword. Give me the sword. He takes the sword. He cuts off the head. I bet that took a few swings. And then the armies of Israel rush down, killing the armies of the Philistines all the way back to their village. And when David gets done with that, he carries the big, fat, ugly head of Goliath into Saul, and he says, here you go. I told you what God would do. That's the story of David and Goliath. But the question remains, what made David different? What was it about David that at every turn allowed him to respond differently than everyone else around him? And really the question is, is there anything that David did there that we could possibly emulate in our life? And I said that I doubt that the answer is that he was the most faithful. I really think, and this is my opinion, you chew on it, you do with this what you like, but my opinion is that what made David different was his perspective. David's perspective made him unique amongst his peers. It was David's perspective that made him unique amongst his peers. And here's what I mean by perspective. The armies of Israel, they would gather every day and every day Goliath would come down and he would challenge them. And they would look at Goliath, and they would look at themselves, and they would go, that problem is too big for me. That is, my skill cannot handle that, my ability cannot handle that, my just natural genes cannot handle that. I cannot take that guy. I cannot overcome this. I cannot climb that mountain. I cannot get past that obstacle. I cannot solve that problem. I cannot fix that situation. I can't do it. I'm not big enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not good enough. I'm not bright enough. I'm not young enough. I'm not old enough. I'm not enough. I can't handle that. It's bigger than me. So I'm scared and I'm dismayed and I'm going to avoid it. That was their perspective. David's perspective was, you are nothing compared to Almighty God. See, everyone else, when they looked at Goliath, they saw a problem and compared it to themselves and knew that they weren't enough for it. But when David saw Goliath, he compared the problem to God himself and thought, oh my gosh, God is overwhelmingly going to destroy you. He is so much bigger and mightier and smarter and capable than any one of us are. God is sovereign. He is all knowing. He is all powerful. And what he wants to happen will happen. So Goliath, you're in trouble. Everyone else, when they saw Goliath, compared Goliath to themselves and got scared. And David saw Goliath and compared him to God and had faith. His faith didn't come from just doubling down and being more determined that he was going to love God and trust God more. His faith came from his perspective. When he encountered lions and bears in the wilderness, he didn't think, I'm going to take down this animal. I've got what it takes. He thought, I think God wants me to have that sheep. He's on my side. I'm going to go get it. When he saw Goliath, he didn't think, I think I could put one between his eyes. I think I'm a pretty good shot. I've done this a couple of times. He thought, God has helped me before and he will help me again. God is not happy with that. He's bigger than Goliath. He's going to handle it. And if you think about it and you go back to the story, what else could it be besides perspective? The very first time he sees Goliath, who's this guy? He goes to Saul, how are you going to kill him? Well, you know, God's done this stuff before. He'll do it again. And then he's down on the battlefield in the heat of it, and he says, you're going to come at me with man-made weapons? I'm here as God's representative. It doesn't matter what weapon I use. At no point did David compare Goliath to David. It was always a comparison to God. And God wins every comparison. He made sure of that when he sent Jesus to conquer death and sin. And if that's not the biggest victory in the history of the universe, I don't know what is. He's already proven to us that he overcomes everything. And if this sermon sounds familiar to you, it's because I did it five years ago with most of the same jokes. I didn't have charcuterie in there, but the rest of them. And it was about my fourth or fifth Sunday at Grace. And we put rocks underneath all the seats. And then we had markers up front, which apparently in five years, my preparation has slacked. I'm sorry, you have no rocks under your seats today. Just this one. And the encouragement was to get that rock and whatever you have going on in your life that feels too big for you, as cheesy as it is to say, whatever your Goliaths are. If it's raising your children, if I had these rocks today, I would write Lily and John's name on them. It's too big for me. I don't know how to raise kids that love Jesus and want to hang out with me who I respect. I don't know how to do that. Maybe it's your career. Maybe it's an illness that you or your family is facing. Maybe it's a tough decision or a broken relationship or just a big task that you've got in front of you and it just feels too big. Or maybe you're in a period of grief and you don't know how you're going to pull out of it and how life is going to feel the same and the sun is ever going to shine bright enough again. Maybe you just don't know, but everybody's got something in their life that when we look at it and we compare it to ourselves, we know that we know that we know that we are inadequate for it and that we cannot overcome it. And whatever that is, I would encourage you to take something that can remind you of that. I did five years ago. I took and I wrote grace on this rock. It was five weeks into being a senior pastor. I knew and still know it's far too big for me. I don't know how to lead a church. I don't know what we're supposed to do all the time. And every day I see this rock. It sits on the shelf right above my computer screen. And every time I see it, I'm reminded, yeah, this place is too big for you, man. So just worry about following God and God's going to handle the church. Just worry about pursuing him and loving people well and treating people right and having a heart for God and letting him inflame it more and more. Most of the time when I pray before my sermons, I'm really not praying about my sermons. I'm just praying that God would fill me up with a desire for him. It's just a weekly reminder that God, I want to want you more. That if we do that, if we just pursue him, God's going to take care of everything else. So the big problems in our life that feel insurmountable, that keep us up at night, that stress us out, that give us anxiety, maybe part of the problem is we're just comparing those things to ourself and admitting our inadequacy, when what we need to do is compare those things to God and admit His supremacy. And what we don't need to do in these moments when we feel overwhelmed is just double down on being better Christians. I've got to have more faith and then everything's going to work out. No, that's not fair. You need to change your perspective. And when you change your perspective and you have the perspective of David and we compare these things in our life not to ourselves, but to our Father, that brings us a peace and a confidence that in turn builds our faith. A few minutes ago, Aaron made the great point that David declared that he would always worship God. Even in the valleys, he would worship God. We said your praise will ever be on our lips. The only way we can possibly mean that is if even in the most dire of circumstances, we compare those circumstances to God, we have the perspective of David and we know, somehow we know that God is going to make a way. And so even though we don't feel the emotion of crying out in praise, we will go through the act of crying out in praise in faith because we have the perspective that God can handle whatever comes up in our life and we hand it over to him and we exist in that peace. And because we exist in that peace, our faith grows and we want to worship God more. So I hope that moving forward, when you remember the story of David and Goliath, that you won't think of a young man that had more faith than the rest of the country, but you will think of a young man who had a different perspective from everyone around him, who had the wisdom to compare his problem to God's ability, and that you'll be reminded to have the perspective of David. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for the stories that you've chosen to share with us down through the centuries. Thank you for the bravery and courage of David. But God, I pray that we would always be well aware of where that bravery and courage and faith came from. That it came from comparing his obstacles to you instead of himself. I pray that you would give us the strength to do that. That we would see through your eyes our sin that we don't think is possible to overcome. Maybe be convinced for the first time that it is possible to overcome that. That we would see our grief, our desires, the decisions that we have to make, our careers, our children, our marriages through your eyes and know that you are more than capable of piloting us through any circumstance. And God, thank you for overcoming death and sin for us and winning the greatest victory that could be won. It's in the name of the winner of that victory, Jesus, that we pray these things and we praise you. Amen.

Good morning, everybody. It's good to see you. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here on this cold February morning on Super Bowl Sunday. I hope everybody's got fun plans, or if you don't care about the Super Bowl at all, I hope you have a nice dinner planned for yourself. This is the third part in our series going through the book of Colossians. And this week, as we approach it, I wanted to approach the text with this kind of idea in mind. We're going to be in Colossians chapter 2 and then on through chapter 3 in some different portions of it. So if you have a Bible, go ahead and turn there. And then if you're at home, please turn there. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. I would also call your attention to the bulletin. The bulletin looks a little bit different this week. There's no place for you to take notes. So note takers, you're going to have to get creative. Instead, I've put a prayer on the bulletin that we're going to pray at the end of the service together. You'll pray silently as I pray it aloud. And by the time we get there, hopefully the prayer makes a lot more sense and is meaningful and is something that you will carry home with you. But we'll talk more about that at the end of the service. If you're watching online, this bulletin is attached to the grace find that you should have received this week. So you can download that if you want to, or you can just email someone on staff and we'll be happy to send it over to you if you find it helpful and want to pray it throughout your week. But as we approach the text this week, I wanted to start here. I'm not sure if any of you have ever tried to eat healthy, okay? By the looks of most of us, this has been an effort at least at some portion of our life, but there have been a lot of times in my life when I have decided that I'm going to begin to eat with some wisdom. I'm going to start to eat well. I'm a person who's had a lot of day one workouts, and I've had a lot of day one diets. Okay, there's more in my future. Maybe tomorrow. Who knows? Not today. It's Super Bowl Sunday. This is not the day to start a diet, but tomorrow is fresh and hope springs eternal. But whenever I decide that I'm going to eat well, right? I'm going to eat responsibly, which is like a rabbit. Whenever I decide I'm going to do that, I feel like I am a person who is at war with myself. I feel like I am two separate people. I am one person who wants to eat well, and I am another person who just loves food so much that he's angered by me who wants to eat well. Because I love food. I don't know about your relationship with food. Mine is probably not healthy. If I know that I'm going to have a certain dinner that night or that we're going somewhere like a restaurant or something like that, I already know what I'm getting and I wake up thinking about it. Like I look forward to it throughout the day. That's how much I love food. For the Super Bowl tonight, we're going to have pigs in a blanket. I'm going to dip them in spicy mustard. I'm going to eat more than I should. I'm already excited about it, okay? That's just how I am about food. So when I decide that I want to eat well, it's really difficult for me. And I don't know about you, but I have certain stumbling blocks. It's pretty easy for me to eat well around the house. I kind of do a good job not snacking when I'm not supposed to. I don't drink the soda and stuff when I'm not supposed to. I drink black coffee and water, and that's pretty much it during the day. That's not very challenging. But what is challenging is when I'm trying to eat well, and my sweet wife on a Friday or Saturday will say, you want to go Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do, okay? I always want to go to Chick-fil-A and get a biscuit. That answer is never no, okay? You ask me, Nate, do you want a biscuit? Yeah, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. But you just had three. I don't care. You're offering me one. I want another biscuit. I like biscuits in the morning. So that's tough, all right? The other time it's tough is when I go out to eat. Because I'll go out to eat. I'll go to places that I like, and they have food there that I like. And one of the places I think of is Piper's. I go to Piper's because I meet people there for lunch with a lot of regularity. That's kind of my default spot. And they have salads, like I see them on the menu, right? They got grilled chicken and some fruit or some whatever, some balsamic whatever, less delicious thing that they have there. And I know that I need to order it. And I have girded my loins. I'm ready for this choice. And I go in there and I don't even look at the meat. I look at just the salads. I don't look at the other things. But see, here's the thing. This Piper's has one of the best Reuben's in the city. They really do. It's delicious. And that's what I want, right? I want the Reuben. And I've been thinking all day about how I shouldn't have the Reuben. And I've made the decision, I'm going to get the salad. I'm going to eat the thing that I don't want. But then it's like Satan's working against me or God's just giving me a special grace and telling me it's okay. I'm not sure which sign. And the table next to me will receive a piping hot, crispy toasted Reuben. As I'm sitting there trying to muster up the discipline to order my salad. And I look at that Reuben and I look at those fries and I look at that ketchup and the waitress says, what do you have? That! I want that Reuben. I did not want a salad. And I cave, right? So for me to be on a diet is for me to live at war with myself. I bring that up because I think that you'll know that this is true. Those of you who have been a Christian for any amount of time, to be a Christian is to be at war with yourself. To be a Christian, to be a believer, is to know the good you ought to do and yet still struggle to do it. I even think, and this is a sad reality, it should not be the case, and hopefully God can deliver us from this, and hopefully this sermon moves the needle on this a little bit, but I even think that to be a believer is to be constantly disappointed with how spiritually mature you are and how spiritually mature you think you should be by now. Because we know the good things we're supposed to do. We know the kindness we're supposed to show. We know the greed we're not supposed to have and the pride that we're supposed to iron out. And we know all the different things and our hidden sins and the stuff that we look at and whatever it is, the stuff that we consume. We know what we're not supposed to do and we know what we are supposed to do. And we try like heck to be that person, but we are a person who feels at war with ourself because there is the person within us who wants to eat right and there is the person within us who really loves a good Reuben, whatever that might be for you. And they exist at war with each other. I am convinced that to be a believer means to live in a state of tension within yourself of who you know you should be, of who you know God created you to be, of who you know God designed you to be, and yet not being able to walk in that. There's a verse that's super challenging for me where Paul tells us that we should live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. And I don't know about you, but I don't get to the end of too many days, much less weeks, where I look back on that week and I go, yeah, this week I was obedient to that verse. And if we're honest as Christians, it gets tiring to know that that's true. It gets exhausting to constantly fall short. Paul actually describes this tension in one of my favorite passages. It's one of the most human things to me that's written in the Bible, particularly by Paul in Romans chapter 7. In Romans chapter 7, Paul writes specifically about this tension in the Christian life when, in my inner being, but I see in my members another regenerated person as God has rescued my heart and claimed it and one day will whisk me up to heaven. He's given me eternal life and I'm living as a new creature that we're going to talk about more in a minute. I feel in this inner being a desire to live the righteous life that God has called me to live. And yet, also in my body, is a desire to revert back to my old self. It is a desire to revert to who I am without Jesus. It is a desire to indulge the flesh. It is a desire for the things that I used to consume that I know I don't need to consume anymore. That exists within us. And then he exclaims at the end of it, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will finally give me victory? How will I finally live the life that I'm supposed to live? And so that's where we arrive this morning. In Colossians, is this age-old question that all Christians face, that Francis Schaeffer, an author in the 20th century, framed up in a book entitled, How Should We Then Live? Meaning, in light of the gospel, in light of what we talked about in week one, the picture of Jesus that Paul paints for the Colossians, remember, they're facing pressure from within and without to go back to rules and aestheticism and to be legalistic and add on more rules than what is necessary so that they can live a righteous life, and then pressure from the more liberal part of their community to say none of the rules matter, how we live doesn't matter at all. You have total grace to do whatever it is you want to do. And so Paul, to that pressure, paints a picture of Christ as the apex of history and the apex of hope, as the connection point and nexus between the spiritual realm and the physical realm, how he is the creator God over everything, this majestic picture of Christ. And so the question becomes, how do we live in light of that picture? How do we live in light of the gospel? I am saved. I am a new creature. God has breathed new life into me. I am no longer a slave to sin, as Paul describes in Romans, but now I have this option to move forward with the power of Christ and the Holy Spirit in me and to live a life worthy of the calling that I have received. Now, how do I do it? How do I do it? That's the question that we come to in Colossians. And it should be a question that matters to each and every Christian. Father, how do I live a life worthy of the calling that I've received? How do I grow into spiritual maturity? What do I do practically? How do I live the Christian life? And it's an important question because it dictates how we pursue God. And to this question, I think we often answer it in the same way that we're trained to answer any other question in our life about how we get better at a particular thing. If you want to get better at exercising, what do you need? You need more discipline. You need to wake up. You need to do it. You need to be more disciplined in the way you pursue exercise. If you want to eat better, what do you need to do? You need to be more disciplined. You want to do better at time management. You need more discipline in time management. You want to be more focused. You want to be more productive. You want whatever it is, however it is, you want to grow and be better. What is the fundamental requirement of that pursuit of better? It's discipline. We need to do better. We need to come up with structures and systems that we follow, and I'm going to white knuckle my way to success here. And the most disciplined people within our field, they achieve the most success. The most disciplined people at the gym look the best in a t-shirt. The most disciplined people, when they go out to eat, they have the healthiest hearts. Like discipline is the root to how we accomplish success. And so, because that's true, and so very many areas of our life, even though we could philosophically talk about whether or not that's true, because we think that's true in so many areas of our life, we also just by default apply that to our spiritual life. If I want to be more godly, then I need to be more disciplined. I'm going to set up more rules, more regulations. I'm going to get up at this time. I'm going to do these things. I'm going to be the type of person that is defined by these things. We focus on our behavior and our self-discipline. And I think when we are faced with the question of how do I then live? How do I become the Christian that God has created and designed me to be? I think that in our culture, our default answer is to attempt to white-knuckle discipline our way to godliness. And here's what Paul says about that knee-jerk reaction that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. Listen, these have indeed an appearance of wisdom and promoting self- we be the people that God asks us to be? And their response, it seems, at least initially, was white-knuckle discipline, aestheticism, following the rules. The better you follow the rules, the more God loves you. It's a very simple exchange. That's what legalism says. And so they're just going to be try-hards. They're just going to be do-betters. That's just what they're going to do. And to help them try really hard, they set up all these rules and parameters around their life. And they say, whoever can follow these rules the best is the greatest Christian. But Paul says, that's fine. Set up your rules. Have all your standards. Set the boundaries really far away from the actual boundary. He says, but all those rules and all that, the way that it looks, the way that you're living, just dotting all the T's and crossing all the I's and really, really, really having these policies in life that keep you on the straight and narrow. Paul says, yeah, those have the appearance of wisdom. And I would add in our vernacular, godliness, but they do nothing. They do nothing to stop the indulgence of the flesh that is the reason for the sinning that we need the rules for. For instance, let's say that what you struggle with is pride. Okay, I'm having to make some assumptions here because I don't have the struggle, but if you do, let's say that something that you struggle with is pride and you go, you know what, God, I gotta get rid of this. I gotta be better. I'm gonna be better at being more humble. I'm gonna try to push out my pride. And so we take intentional steps. Maybe we're people who will maybe kind of fish for compliments sometime, or maybe we'll ask people what they thought about something. And really all we want them to do is tell them that we did a good job or that we're good at this or that we're good at that. And there's ways, if you're a prideful person, there are ways to go through your life and get the people in your life to affirm you. And if you are this person, you're exhausting, okay? I've exhausted others. I say that as a friend. That's not a good road to walk. But let's say that you're a prideful person, and so you need other people to affirm you all the time and the things that you're good at, but you realize in light of the gospel and in light of God's word that pride is not good, and so we need to iron this out of our life. So we go, I'm not going to do that anymore. I'm not going to ask other people for compliments. I'm not going to ask other people to affirm me. I'm not going to seek my value in other places. And then once you get really good at that and you haven't done that in a couple of weeks and you still feel good about yourself, then what do you do? Boy, I am proud of myself for not needing other people to tell me I'm good. Now we're taking pride in a new thing. What Paul says is there is this part of our flesh that is going to manifest negative things in our life, pride, greed, selfishness, lust, whatever it is. And we can put parameters around those things, but they're going to leak out somewhere. You can follow whatever rules you want to follow. You can white knuckle yourself into some good discipline. I've seen some people who can keep themselves on the straight and narrow for years, but those negative traits that exist within you, those things are going to leak out somewhere else. And I know this because I've met a lot of people who can follow the rules really well, and they're jerks. It's just their flesh leaking out in other ways. So what Paul says is we cannot white knuckle our way to godliness. Discipline, self-control, more rules, more standards. Those do not get us to spiritual maturity. Those do not put us in a place where we can live a life worthy of the calling that we have received. That's not the answer. In chapter 3, thankfully, I believe that he gives us the answer. And I think it's a refreshing one. Because when we try to get to godliness by white-knuckle discipline, just I'm going to be a try-hard, I'm going to be a do-better, what happens is not good. Because if you have ever in your life decided, yeah, I'm going to be a better Christian, and I'm going to do it by taking these steps. I'm going to do it by instilling these standards in my life. I'm going to do it by my own effort and me trying hard. And maybe we pray a prayer, God, I am never going to do this again. God, I am always going to do this moving forward. God, I swear that that will never be a part of my life again. And we make these big promises and we make these big claims. And listen, we mean them. But here's what I know about you. If you've ever promised God that you will never or that you will always, then you have failed. That's what I know about you. If we ever have promised God, I will never do blank. I will always do blank, we have failed in those promises because we can't keep those commitments, because we're broken. Because of Romans 7, the things that I do not want to do, I do, because it's part of our nature to fail in that way. And because that's true, after we make up our mind enough times that God, I'm never going to, or God, I'm always going to, and then we fail, we get to a place where either we just feel like this broken, wretched Christian, and we're thinking, God, I'll never be good enough for you. I don't think I'll ever be good enough for you. Just please let me be saved. Just please let me just hang on until I get to the end of my life. Please usher me into heaven. I know I'll never be who I'm supposed to be. I know that I can't pursue those things, but please just accept me as I am. And we kind of just live this broken down, hopeless Christian life where we feel like we're limping our way to heaven. Or worse than that, we try so hard and we fail so many times that we get so tired of trying that we can't find it within ourselves to do it anymore. And then we conclude, God, your word says that I'm a new creature. Your word says that you will help me. Your word says that you will empower me. And yet I fail over and over and over again. So I can only conclude that you don't keep your word. And then we just wander away from the faith and we give up on God because righteousness is too hard because we've only ever tried it by ourself and we've never invited God in in the way that he needs to be invited in, and our white-knuckle disciplining to try to be better and more godly to pursue the faith that we want so earnestly ends up costing us our faith. So that's not the way. We find the way in Colossians 3. And I would sum it up like this. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving. We grow to maturity by focusing on being rather than behaving, by focusing on who we are rather than how we behave. And here's what I mean. In this chapter, we're going to see this idea introduced here by Paul, but introduced in plenty of other places by Paul in the New Testament, of the old and the new. The old you and the new you. The old you is who you were without Jesus. The new you is who you are with Jesus. The old you, the Bible says, was a slave to sin. I had no choice but to do things that displeased God. I had no chance at all. But the new you infused with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit does have the chance every day when you wake up to walk that day according to the life that God has called you to. We have a chance when we wake up to live today in honoring God and actually finish the day living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day. We've got a chance. There's a new us. And the new us desperately wants to please God. And so this is what Paul says about old self and new self in Colossians chapter three. This is what he says about being versus behaving. Look at Colossians chapter three, verses five through eight first. Put to death, Paul says, therefore, what is earthly in you? Sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which is idol rules. But here's what we need to do. We need to put to death these things, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desires, covetousness, anger, slander, all these things. And at first, it sounds like that's a little bit in tension with what he just said. He said, if you want to be godly, if you want to be who God created you to be, it's not about following the rules. It has an appearance of wisdom, but that's not really helping any indulgence of the flesh. And then the very next chapter over, he's saying, put to death these things, which feels like rules and standards that he's giving us, except he's not giving us behaviors. He's telling us to put things to death. Remember how I said that if you follow rules, if you're trying to break yourself of pridefulness and you put rules around your pridefulness and then it just leaks out and into another area of your life. Jesus is, Paul is acknowledging that. See, it's not about trying to follow the rules because those unhealthy things just leak into other portions of your life. It's about actually putting the pride to death. It's about actually putting greed and lust to death in your heart so that in your heart there is no place for them to dwell. And if there is no place for them to dwell, then they will not produce the behaviors that you're trying so desperately to control. So the first thing is to acknowledge that we don't need to put parameters around our old self. We need to put our old self to death. And we do this by focusing on being. How do we put those things to death? This is what Paul says in Colossians 3. I'm going to read verses 12 through 17. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you. So you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body, and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, we live a life worthy of the calling that we have received? In the phrasing of Hebrews 12, verse 1, What the world do I live the life that you want me to live? I think what Jesus would say is, look at me. Look at me. Look at me. Jesus, what rules should I follow in this new life that you've called me to? How do I run the race that you've set before me? Jesus says, just look at me. Just keep your eyes on Christ. This is actually in complete harmony with Romans 12 that tells us that we should run the race and that we should throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles us by, in verse 2, focusing your eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of your faith. So how do we live the life that God calls us to live? We daily make ourselves aware of Christ's love for us. We daily make ourselves aware of what God has done for us. If we will daily reflect on the fact that Jesus in heavenly form condescended and took on flesh and lived amongst us for 33 years and put up with everything that we have to offer and continues to walk with us and continues to love us and continues to sit at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for you as an individual, leans into God's ears and says, she's good. She's with me. She loves you, Father. I died for her. If we will let that reality wash over us daily, how could we not put to death the pride that exists in us by walking in humility at the love of God that we receive? If we are struggling with anger towards other people and frustration and impatience, how is it possible to spend a portion of your day every day focusing on the reality of God's patience with you? Focusing on the reality that as many times as you've said, God, I will never, or God, I will always, and then you failed, that God has been right there to help you clean up the mess every time. How can we not grow in forgiveness of others when we constantly remind ourselves of how forgiven we are? How can we not grow in patience to others when we constantly are focused on the patience that God has to us? If we will focus on God's overwhelming grace, that he died for us while we were still sinners, that he pursues us while we run away from him, that even though we fail him over and over again, he continues to love us with a reckless love, that God loves us while we were unlovely, that God sees us fully and knows us completely and still loves us unconditionally. If we let those things wash over us every day, how could we not look at other people and be more loving and patient towards them in light of how loving and patient God is towards us? Do you understand that these things that we clothe ourself with in Colossians 12 through 17 necessarily put to death our old self that Paul tells us to rid ourself of. So if we want to get rid of malice, what do we do? We focus on Christ. If we want to get rid of pride, do we put parameters around our pride? No, we focus on Jesus and who he is and realize that we have no right to our pride. If we want to be more gracious people, what do we do? We focus on Jesus' grace to us. Say, Jesus, how in the world do I live the life that you call me to live? Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? And Jesus says, focus on me. Focus on me. So I would tell you, if you are a Christian who lives at war with yourself, you do not have a discipline issue, you have a focus issue. If you are someone who struggles with greed, you don't have a greed issue. You have a focus issue. If we try to be more godly and more pleasing to him by focusing on the behaviors that we need to do better, we will fail over and over and over again. But if we can put our focus on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith and let his grace and goodness and mercy and love wash over us daily, then those things will necessarily put to death the very root of the behaviors that we do not like. So again, if we are struggling in our walk with God, we do not have a discipline issue. We do not have a sin issue. We have a focus issue. We need to focus our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We need to pursue him more with more urgency. We need to let the truths of how he loves us wash over us more. And those will necessarily put to death the elements of our character that we do not like, that produce the behaviors that we do not want to do. You can think of it this way. Our old self cannot survive where our new self thrives. Our problem is we have a new self and we have an old self and we feed them both the same amount of food. We give in to them both equally. And so they both just exist in this tension and if we ever want to put to death our old self, then our new self has to thrive. And our new self thrives by clothing ourselves in the characteristics of Christ and we clothe ourselves in those characteristics by focusing him and daily letting his goodness wash over us. So it's very simple. How should we then live? How do we get to the end of a single day? Living a life worthy of the calling that we have received that day? By focusing our eyes on Jesus on that day. By looking at him that day. And letting everything else fade away and take care of itself. Because it's that simple, and because that's what we need to do, I wrote a prayer for us as a church. In a few minutes, I'm going to read it and pray it over us as a church and invite you to read it along with me. If you find it helpful, I would love to invite you to put this prayer somewhere where you can see it, where this is a thing that you will pray daily. Put it on your desk, or in your car, or on your mirror. If this is helpful to you, I would encourage you to pray this every day until it's not helpful to you, until the principles of this prayer are so ingrained in you that it is part of your daily prayer. But if we want to live a life as Christians that we are called to live, then I am convinced that this needs to be a fundamental prayer that we focus on very regularly. Not necessarily the words that I've chosen here, but the ethos and the attitude and the posture that's presented in this prayer and the acknowledgments of the truths that are in this prayer that are from Colossians chapter three and other portions of scripture as we seek to live the life that God calls us to live. So I'm gonna pray this over us and invite you to pray it along with me. Father, I know I am your child and that in you I am a new creation. Though I know this, I struggle to believe it. Because I struggle to believe, I struggle to walk as you would have me walk. So Father, help me learn to walk in this new self. As I put on the new self, I ask that you would help me see others through your eyes and so clothe me in your compassion. Help me regard others as your beloved children as you clothe me in your kindness. Remind me of the way you love me when I am unlovely in order that I might humbly love others in the way I am loved. Remind me today, Father, of who I am in you. As you clothe me in these things, let them put to death in me the remnants of my old self. Let your humility drive out my impatience, my anger, and my pride. Let your compassion and kindness suffocate my jealous and selfish heart. Let the way you see me overshadow and obscure the way I see myself. Help's name, Father. Amen.

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