Sermons tagged with Parenthood

It's good to see all of you this Sunday. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors here. I appreciate you being here on this December Sunday as we continue to gear up for Christmas together. I'm really excited about what we have in store for you, not only for Jingle Jam, but also for our Christmas Eve service. This is our series called Joy. Kyle, our student pastor, opened up the series talking about the joy of the light, of knowing Jesus and of sharing that light with others. Last week, I talked with you about the joy of forgiveness, and I really hope, my sincere prayer is and was, that God used that to bring about maybe some reconciliation in your life and in some of your relationships. I hope that you found that to be a helpful way to think about forgiveness. This morning, I want to talk about the joy of gratitude, the joy that we get when we can be people who are thankful, who are grateful people. The Bible has a lot to say about gratitude in the same way that it has a lot to say about forgiveness as it encourages us to forgive over and over and over again. The Bible encourages us to be grateful many, many times in many ways in many different places. In the Old Testament, David tells us that we are to enter God's courts with thanksgiving in our hearts, that we enter his gates with praise. And so it's kind of gratitude is the posture through which we approach the Lord. In the New Testament, we're told over and over again to be thankful in all things, be thankful always, pray without ceasing, and be grateful for everything. Everyone tells us that. As Jesus tells us how to pray in the Lord's Prayer, He models for us a daily gratitude, thanking God for the blessings that we have in our life. We're even told by at least three different authors in the New Testament to be grateful when life is hard, to be grateful when we are in struggles, to consider it pure joy when we endure trials. So the Bible has a lot to say about gratitude. And I think it's because gratitude is one of the more underrated things or character traits that we could have. Fostering a spirit or a heart or a character of gratitude, I think, is something that we forget to do, but it's underrated in its power and efficacy in our life. And I hope today, as we leave, as you guys go back out into your week, that you have a new appreciation for what it means to be grateful and to have a grateful heart. To do that, I want to first talk about a picture of ingratitude, what the opposite of gratitude looks like. So last week I was doing my weekly Sunday tradition, particularly in the fall, which is to kind of go home and collapse. My whole week, the rhythms of a pastor kind of build up to the sermon. You're stressed about the sermon all day. I hope it doesn't suck and that people aren't disappointed who brought their friends and the whole deal. And I hope this honors God. And I hope that I'm not an apostate and the whole deal. And so you just kind of, you focus on the sermon all week and then I give it and I go home and I'm like, ugh. And I just kind of want to shut down for a while. And so in the fall, it's perfect because I get to watch TV. And so last week I'm watching football and the four o'clock game comes on. It's the Chiefs and the Patriots. And something incredibly interesting happened at halftime of this Patriots game. Now, for those who don't know, you may not know who the Patriots are. You may not be, that's football, by the way. You may not be into football, and that's all right. You don't have to know football to appreciate what I'm about to say. I'm going to kind of lay some groundwork for you, all right? So for those who don't know, the Patriots have had what I think is the best 20-year run of any sports team in the history of sports teams. I'm not talking about the best 20-year run in the last 20 years. I'm talking about besides maybe the 1920s Yankees have had the best 20-year run of any team in the history of teams. It's been amazing. It's been absolutely historic. I went back and counted. In the last 20 years, the Patriots have made it to the Super Bowl nine times. They've played in almost half of the Super Bowls. The other years, they came almost just one game short almost every year. To be a Patriots fan is to over and over and over again get to cheer for a winner. It's an incredible privilege to be a Patriots fan. I know this because I'm a Falcons fan. Okay? It is not a privilege to be a Falcons fan. I'm from Atlanta, and statistically speaking, if you combine all of the seasons without a championship, so you take in Atlanta at one point, that was four seasons in one year, hockey, baseball, basketball, and football going consecutively without a championship. Atlanta is the losingest city in the country. And that's statistics. That's not hyperbole. I have longed to be a Patriots fan. I wish that I could celebrate that sort of success. During those 20 years, they've been to nine Super Bowls. They've won six of them. There's only one other franchise that's won six Super Bowls, and they would even trade their last 20 years for the Patriots' last 20 years. They have the best coach to ever coach a sport. They have the best quarterback to ever play the game, and that pains me to say because Peyton Manning's my favorite football player of all time, but Tom Brady, man, you can't argue with rings. To be a Patriots fan has been an incredible privilege for the past 20 years. Yet, on Sunday, the Patriots are playing, playing the Chiefs, and the Patriots this year are having a good season, not a great season. There's some rumblings in their fan base that they may not be as good as they once were. It's looking like they may not win the Super Bowl this year. And at halftime, the Patriots are running into the locker room down two scores, 21 to seven. And as they're running into the locker room at Gillette Stadium, do you know what those Patriots fans did? Booed. They booed them. Can you believe this? After one bad half of football, and it wasn't even that bad, they booed them. They let them know loudly and clearly, you stink and we're dissatisfied and we deserve more from you. And I sat on my couch in shocked disbelief and I thought, and I'm sorry, you bunch of entitled jerks. Do you have any idea what I would do for the last 20 years that you've just gotten to enjoy as Patriots fan? If you're a 10-year-old Patriots fan, you just figure that they win the Super Bowl. That's just what happens. It's your birthright. Do you know what I would do to trade places with you? Try being a Falcons fan for like a season, you jerks. Like, it made me mad. They were so entitled. And as I thought about that, and listen, we have some Patriots fans at the church. They're lovely people. Steve, our worship pastor, he's kind of a Patriots fan. He's not really a sports guy, but if he were, he claims to be a Patriots. From everything I can tell, he seems to be a great guy. And so I'm not trying to run down all Patriots fans, but the ones in that stadium that day, my goodness, the entitlement on them. And I sat on my couch and I was kind of stewing and calling the names in my head and couldn't get over the audacity of it, texting my friends, did y'all see that? But of course, as I sat there, anytime you cast blame on somebody else, my mind begins to go, well, am I guilty of the same thing? And I realized we all are. We're all of us in that way, this pains me to say, we're all in that way Patriots fans. We all act like that because they were simply entitled. And to be entitled is to be forgetful of the past and desirous of the future. To be entitled is to forget everything that got us here, is to forget all the blessings and all the things I've enjoyed up to this moment, and then to not be aware or cognizant in this moment and just desire us of the future. And isn't that what they were? As they're in the stands and they're watching this one singular bad half of football, totally forgetting the last 20 years that they've had, that they've gotten to enjoy being a fan like nobody else on the face of the planet. In that moment that they booed and expressed their displeasure, aren't they simply forgetting all the things that they've enjoyed up to that point and only thinking about what they want in the future? Haven't they forgotten their past and become desirous of the future? And isn't this what we do? Haven't in our lives, all of us, at different points, been entitled jerks? If you don't think you have, look at your kids at Christmas. Come on, your kids expect stuff, right? They're not like hoping that maybe they get a present. They gave you a list in September. My three-year-old already has this figured out. Everything she saw over the course of the list, can you make sure and tell Santa that that's a thing that I want? Our kids grow up entitled. Entitlement says, I deserve this. It's my birthright. This is something that I've earned. You should give it to me. I don't have to be grateful for it because I deserve this anyways. That's what entitlement is. If our kids aren't enough to help us realize that this is a path that we are all on, how long does it take you and your life right now to get tired of the new shiny thing? How many weeks or months after that promotion, you finally get the job, you finally get the promotion, you finally get the thing, you get the position that you wanted, you've closed the sale that you've wanted, you're so happy about it, praise God, this is great. How many weeks does it take you to resent those coworkers too? How long does it take you to think, I wonder what's next? How long does it take you to forget what got you there and be desirous of what's ahead? How long does it take for the new car to become the one that you want to sell? How long does it take after we buy a new house to put the Zillow app back on our phone and just see what's out there? How about this? How long did it take you after you got married and all the happiness and all the pomp and circumstance around that day to have an evening where you looked across the living room and you thought to yourself, I could have done better than this. For Jen, it was about three days. How long does it take us to be dissatisfied with the blessings that we have, to forget our past, to be totally lost to the present and be desirous of the future and in our own way be booing our life because of a simple bad half? To be shaking our fist at God and saying, God, why do I have to deal with this? Why do I have to go through this? Why can't I have that thing with no mind at all to everything that he's already given us? How long does it take us to become entitled? And the problem with entitlement is it's the antithesis of gratitude. If the Bible tells us to be grateful, to be thankful, to give thanks in all things and at all times and in all circumstances, if that's a characteristic that we're supposed to embody, then we should acknowledge that entitlement is the antithesis of gratitude. It's the exact opposite of gratitude. And we should also acknowledge that there is a natural drift towards it. You haven't all been entitled jerks because just in your soul you're a bunch of jerks and we're a bunch of brats. It's all us. We're all that way. Gratitude is something you have to choose on purpose. We don't naturally drift towards gratitude. We naturally drift towards, I deserve, I earn, this belongs to me. We naturally drift towards being forgetful of our past and desirous of what's in the future with no mind to what's going on in the present. That's a natural drift that we have. I don't think, and I'm not here this morning so that anybody feels badly about it. I'm just here so that we will acknowledge it and understand that entitlement is the antithesis of gratitude. Because entitlement says, I deserve this. And gratitude actually confesses something. I learned this in my research from an Irish monk, and I thought it was a good way to think about gratitude. Gratitude is a confession. To be grateful for something confesses that this is a gift that I do not deserve. Gratitude says, this thing that I have in my life, this person, this relationship, this material possession, this house, this opportunity, this skill set, this location in time and in space and in geography, all the things in my life, gratitude acknowledges this is a gift that I do not deserve. To go back to our original illustration, those Patriots fans have not done anything to win those Super Bowls. Nothing. They've not done anything that any other fan base hasn't done. They just have the luxury of being born in New England and getting to cheer for Patriots. And good for them. But it's a gift that they got that they did not deserve. Being a Falcons fan is a punishment that I've received that I do not deserve. God and I are still working that out. But to be truly grateful for something is to confess, this is a gift that I've received that I do not deserve. If you feel like you deserve it, if you feel like you've earned it, then you can't be grateful for the thing. If you're a salesperson and you go out and you slay the dragon and you get the big commission check that comes from slaying the dragon, you don't walk into your boss's office and go, thank you so much for this check. This is such a sweet thing for you to do. No, it was negotiated. You earned that. You deserve that. The gratitude comes in when we reflect on the skills and abilities that got that deal done, and we thank God for blessing us with those. But gratitude has to confess that the thing that I'm grateful for is a gift that I do not deserve. The other thing that gratitude does that I think is so very powerful is it anchors us in the present as we remember the past. Gratitude anchors us in the present as we remember the past. We're not fast-forwarding ahead. We're not looking to the next thing. We're not anxious or desirous about the future. We haven't forgotten the past. We're reflective on the past, the moments that conspired to bring us here. We're anchored in the present, and we remember the past. The best example of this I've seen that I think of often is, I call him my Uncle Edwin. He's really Jen's Uncle Edwin. Jen's dad, John, has a twin sister named Mary. She married a guy named Edwin, and they live in Dothan, Alabama. If you didn't follow that, Jen's aunt and uncle live in Alabama. And every Thanksgiving, we go down to Dothan, Alabama, and we have Thanksgiving with the Morrises. Jen's family, the Vincennes, go down with the Morrises, and we get together and we have Thanksgiving. And Edwin and Mary have three daughters that are about our age, and they have kids now too, and it's just a really great, sweet time. It's one of the great gifts in my life to have been grafted into that family. I'm very grateful for that. And when we go to Thanksgiving, we have the meal. It's a big, good meal. It's one of the best ones I have of the year. There's still an adult table and a kid's table. The parents sit at one table, and the average age of the kid's table now is like 36, but it's still the kid's table. And we have way more fun at the kid's table. There's always much more laughter going on as we swap stories and catch up and reflect on old ones and things like that. And at one point or another, I've caught Edwin doing this several times. He comes into, he leaves the adult table to have his cup of coffee or a camera or dessert or something, and he'll stand off in the corner. He's not trying to be noticed. He's not trying to speak. He's not trying to get anyone's attention. And he'll look at what's happening in his kitchen, And he'll just grin from ear to ear. And sometimes I'll watch him kind of wipe away a tear. And I've never spoken with him about those moments. But I know that Edwin is a man that loves God very much. And I'm certain that in those moments, he's standing there and he's just soaking in what he considers to be one of the great blessings in his life, of the family that he has. He's anchored in the present and he's thankful for the past. And in that moment, he's grateful, acknowledging this family is a gift that I did not earn. And it's tempting to jump ahead. It's tempting to be desirous of the future. It's tempting to be anxious about what could happen. And there's different times and different seasons of life with the Morrises that he could have jumped ahead. During one of those Thanksgivings, he had a daughter that was going to vet school who dropped out to go to art school, which no parent wants to hear. Now, fast forward that, and it worked out really well for her. Another time, he had a daughter who was dating a guy that he was actively praying against every day. Not in a funny way, even though it is funny, but in a very serious, concerned dad kind of way. And God answered those prayers too. But in that moment, when he's standing there, grinning from ear to ear, grateful for what's going on in front of him, he's not anxious about the future. He hasn't forgotten the moments that have got him there. He's anchored in the present, and he's grateful for God's gifts. But more than those things, more than humbling us so that we acknowledge that things in our life are gifts, more than simply anchoring us in the present and helping us reflect on and be grateful for the past, I think there's something far more powerful that gratitude does. And I think we see that in a story tucked away in one of the gospels, in Luke chapter 17. If you have a Bible, turn to Luke chapter 17. I'm going to start in verse 11, and verses 16 through 19 will be up here on the screen. I want to read it for you. On the way to Jerusalem, he was passing between Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a village, he was met by 10 leopards, talking about Jesus, who stood at a distance and lifted up their voices saying, Jesus, master, have mercy on us. Okay. So I want to say something very, very clear right here. He's going through Samaria. There's racial tension going on. The racial tension going on there. There's a whole separate set of issues that we could talk about. But there's 10 lepers. And in the ancient world, leprosy was the death knell. It was the death knell. It was the worst possible disease that you could get. It was the worst possible diagnosis that you can receive. If you received leprosy, it was contagious, so you were ostracized. You had to go live in a colony with a bunch of other depressed people who were losing their skin and their limbs and their digits all at once and just marching towards death together. It was a really, really difficult diagnosis. And so there's 10 lepers, and they cry out to Jesus. And look what they cry. They say, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. So what do all 10 of them already know? That's Jesus. He's the Son of God and he has the power to heal us, right? They already are acknowledging that that's Jesus and we believe he's the Son of God. They've admitted that. Then Jesus answered, were not 10 cleansed? Where's everybody else? Didn't I heal 10 of you? Where are the nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? Look at this, this is so powerful. And he said to him, rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. Let's not miss what's happening in this story as we reflect on gratitude together. These 10 lepers looked at him and they said, Jesus, Master, we believe in you. We believe that you are who you say you are. We believe that you have the power to heal. Will you please heal us? He says, yeah, go and show yourself to the priest and you'll be healed. And so they run off to go to the priest and on their way, they are healed. And as they are healed, we can only assume. Now, we don't know. There's not a lot of details. This is conjecture. But something happened in the minds of nine of them that they didn't think it was important to go back and thank Jesus for what he did. I like to think that their minds immediately became desirous of the future. They became desirous about who they were going to tell and what they were going to do and who they were going to see and all the next things that they wanted to do in light of this healing. Maybe in their head, they went, gosh, that Jesus is a great guy. And they went on and they did their thing. But what they didn't do is express gratitude. What they acted like was that they were entitled, was that they somehow deserved that healing. Jesus is the Savior of the world. He's the Son of God. He has the power to heal. He sees us. He should heal me. He owes this to me. That's what God does. God heals, so heal me. Thanks, great, and then they move on. Only one of them was so moved by his experience with Jesus that he went back to him and he said, thank you. Thank you for healing me. And in that moment, we see gratitude. We see an acknowledgement. This gift of healing is a gift that you gave me that I did not deserve. Thank you. And Jesus' response is fascinating to me. After he notes what the others did, he said, your sins are forgiven. Your faith has made you well. That dude just got saved. You understand that? We call it getting saved when someone is returned to harmony with God. Our souls were created to be in harmony with our creator God. They were designed to be in union with him. Our sin breaks that union. It is forever broken. There is no way to restore us into that union. So God sent his son to die on a cross so that we wouldn't have to, so that by placing our faith in him, we can be restored into union with our creator God. Your soul longs and clamors and claws for harmony with your creator God. That's what it does. If you're here this morning and there is an unease in your soul, if you're not a believer yet, but there is something that you just can't seem to wrap your mind around, if you've clawed for happiness in your life and then gotten there and found that it was empty, it's because your soul was designed to claw for harmony with our Creator God. And Jesus restored the soul of that leper. Gave him what his soul really longs for. And why did he do it? Because the leper was grateful. Don't you see? It wasn't enough to just go, hey, you're Jesus and you can heal me if you want to. Thanks, see you later. No, the leper came back and was grateful. Thank you for what you've done. And Jesus says, your faith, he doesn't say gratitude. He says faith because the faith is implicit in the gratitude. To be truly grateful, you have to admit, you've done something that I couldn't do for myself. Thank you, Jesus. Your faith has made you well. I'm worried as I read this story that we don't understand that gratitude is a gateway to harmony with God. Gratitude is the gateway to harmony with God. Don't you see that these nine lepers did what so many of us do, particularly in the South, just give mental assent, acknowledge, you're Jesus, you're the Son of God, and if you want to, you can do these things for me, but it never goes beyond that. They had the beginnings of faith, but they weren't truly grateful for who Jesus was and what he did. And because of that, they never received the actual blessing that Jesus came to give them. He didn't go through Samaria that day to heal people of leprosy. If he did, we would have seen him healing a lot more people. He walked through Samaria that day to bring some souls back into harmony with God. He walked into Samaria that day to save people. And the only one that got saved was the one that expressed gratitude for what he did. And I worry about how many of us can sometimes be like the lepers. And once we receive the blessing from God, once we receive the taste of Jesus, once we receive a little bit of the blessing, we go, thanks, that's good. And we don't stick around for the true blessing that God has for us because we're entitled. I don't want us to miss the power of gratitude. This guy didn't have to pray the sinner's prayer. He didn't have to have everything figured out. He didn't have to understand the ins and outs of the New Testament. He was from the priest that Jesus sent him to go see wasn't even a Jewish priest. It was a hybrid religion. He didn't even understand what it meant to have faith or to be a believer. He was simply grateful to Jesus for what he did. And to Jesus, that was enough. Your faith has made you well. We cannot miss the power of gratitude. It's a gateway to harmony with God. And I really think that what happens when we're grateful is that all paths lead to God. I think gratitude always leads to God, which in turn always leads to joy. I think gratitude is a gateway to harmony with God, is a guaranteed pathway to joy. That if we can begin to express gratitude in our lives for anything at all, that what that will ultimately bring us to is gratitude. It doesn't take me very long to do that in my life. If I look at the things I'm grateful for in my life, I look at Jen and I look at Lily. It doesn't take me very long to end up thanking God for those things and to find joy and harmony with God. If you look at the things in your life, it doesn't take you very long to think of the things that you're grateful for and find a path that leads us back to God. I think it actually kind of works like this. As I was thinking about it this week, I thought of this map that I remember seeing online. If we can put it up there. This is a map of all of the streams and rivers in the United States and how they all lead to the ocean. Every last one of them. You can pick any tendril that you want to and at one point or another, it's going to end up in the ocean. A brook is going to lead to a stream, is going to lead to a creek, is going to lead to a river, is going to lead to a bigger river, is going to lead to a basin, is going to lead to an ocean. And I think that gratitude works the same way. Even if you think about the things in your life that you think you've done, the accomplishments that you think you've made, the businesses that you think you've built, the children that you think you've raised, who gave you the gifts and abilities to do those things? Who decided in his sovereignty that you were going to be born in the United States in a first world and even have the opportunity to exercise those gifts? Who decided that you weren't going to be born in the slums of Delhi and instead were going to be born here? God did. Our very gifts, our very location, our friends, all of our blessings are a result of God's goodness in our life. That's why I think that all gratitude is simply a path that leads us back to God, that leads us to joy. That's why I think that the Bible tells us over and over again to be grateful in all things, even in the hard things. I think that even if Christmas is difficult, because for some of us, Christmas is a reminder of loss. If we want to find a path to gratitude, even in the midst of a Christmas that reminds us of loss in our life, that loss hurts so much because there were times that were so sweet. And we become grateful for those times. And we see God working in them. And it serves as a pathway that ultimately leads us back to God where our souls will find harmony with Him and we will find joy. Gratitude is incredibly powerful because it is a gateway to harmony with our creator. All paths of gratitude lead to him. And I am convinced that once we are in harmony with our God, once we are grateful to him, all those pathways lead to joy. So let's go and let's be grateful together. Let's be anchored in the present, remembering the past, and be grateful to our God for the things that He has done in our lives. Let's pray. Father, we love You. We truly are grateful to You. We're grateful for the memories that we have. We're grateful for the scars that we bear and the lessons that we learned as a result of those instances. God, we're thankful for all the different blessings that you've placed in our life, for the relationships, for the possessions that bring us joy, for the places that make us feel safe or cozy or happy. God, we're so grateful for all of those. We're thankful for the means to earn those things, to make the sale, to close the deal, to figure out the account. We're grateful for the discipline to go to work and to learn more and to sharpen our sword. We're grateful that you built us all with our gifts that allow us to go out and serve you and enjoy the blessings that you've given us. God, may we actively fight against entitlement. May we be people who acknowledge every day that the things in our life are gifts from you that we have not earned and acknowledge that in your goodness, you've given them to us anyways. It's in your son's name we pray, amen.

All right, well, good morning. Thanks for being here. My name is Nate. I'm one of the pastors. If I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. But thanks for being here on this September Sunday. I'm excited to be back in the fall in two services and to be in our new series called Feast. What's going on here is that God, using Moses, carrying the Israelites out of Egypt. They were a nation of slaves. The Israelites are God's chosen people. They're living in the desert. And we see this in the first five books of the Bible. And the books of Leviticus and Numbers really kind of give us the details of God's effort to help Moses kind of construct a civilization or a society. If you think about it historically, it's about 500,000 people coming out of slavery. It's all they've ever known. Now they're an independent nation or group of people, and they're trying to figure things out. So God gives them laws and the Ten Commandments. He gives them religion. They assign a priestly class, the Levites, to set up the tabernacle and put expectations and provision around how these people are supposed to interact with their God. They install a government. Moses names elders and everybody looks out for their tribes and it works kind of like that. And one of the things that God does for this new society is he gives them six festivals or six holidays, and he says, every year I want you to celebrate these six events. And last week we talked about this idea that really what a holiday does is it stops us in the midst of our year, in the midst of our crazy life, as everything just kind of gets going and blowing and we focus on all these other things. What a holiday does is it stops us and it narrows our focus in on things that are important to us. And so to me, it's really interesting to look at the six holidays that God installed in the Old Testament for his chosen people and ask ourselves, what is it in these holidays that God wants us to remember? What is it that he wants us to celebrate? What was it that he wanted his chosen people to stop and slow down and focus on for a little while? And so as we approach the holiday this week, last week was Feast of Trumpets. It kicks off the Jewish New Year, and I had a good time. We kicked the service off with a shofar. I thought it was a really fun service. I really went home last week going, man, this fall is going to be really, really great, really, really fun. As we approach this week and the festival that God had, I wanted to go back a couple of weeks to a podcast that I was listening to. There's a guy that does podcasts. I think it's called Armchair Expert, a guy named Dax Shepard. He's an atheist. He's not a believer. It is not a church-friendly podcast. I'm not like, go listen to this and you'll be spiritually enriched. But what he does is he talks to other people and he has these actual meaningful, vulnerable, deep conversations. And I've found in my life that conversations like that, where you can just really get down to things that matter and learn about people and be honest and vulnerable with people, those kinds of conversations really kind of give me life. I like those. And so I like listening to his podcast. And he had a guy on named Danny McBride, I think. He's an actor, comedian, whatever. And they're talking, and they were talking about growing up being forced to go to church. Danny grew up in the South, I think maybe even in North Carolina. And he was forced to go to church, but he never wanted to. And so as soon as he was old enough, he quit going. And he really doesn't claim to have much of a faith now. Dax grew up, sometimes his grandparents would make him go, but he is a devout atheist now. He's very open about his atheism. But they got to talking about going to church when they were young. And then one of them made the comment when they were old enough to not have to go anymore. I think it was Dax. He was like, you know, I kind of missed it. I liked having to do something, being made to do something that I didn't want to do. And Danny said, yeah, you know what? I found that I kind of missed it too. I wonder why that is. And Dax said this thing that I thought was incredibly interesting coming from an atheist. He said, I think that there is a human need to repent, a need to make ourselves right with our Creator. There's an author named C.S. Lewis who was around in the early 1900s, World War II. He was an English professor at Oxford and was an atheist as well. But he made this intellectual journey from atheism to theism to eventually Christianity. And he wrote a book that chronicles that journey called Mere Christianity. It's a Christian classic. If you've never read it, it's absolutely worth the time. The language is a little bit tough. It's hard to understand. Sometimes you're going to have to reread passages. If you're like me, you're going to have to really reread them a lot. But eventually when you understand it, man, it is one of the best books I think ever written. And in his argument for God and explaining how he arrived at a belief in the Christian God, the first thing he does is talk about, lay out some proofs for God for himself. Not trying to convince you, and I'm not going to go through those proofs this morning, but he starts making the case for why he came to the conclusion that there has to be a God. And then after he concludes that there has to be a God, he makes a reasoned argument that he has to be a perfect God. And then he says this, and it stuck with me. I've always thought it was so interesting. He said, and since there's a God, and since he is perfect, we have no choice but to conclude that he is offended by us, that he's angry with us, because we're not perfect. And we know intrinsically that there's a God who created us and that we have displeased him in the way that we've acted because we haven't lived up to his standards. And I just think that these two different thought processes by people who were or are atheists coming to the conclusion that, you know what, and they wouldn't say it like this, but I say it like this, written on the human heart is a longing to be made right with our creator God. I think it exists in each one of us. I think if you're here this morning and you're not even a believer, somebody drug you here or you're kicking the tires, I think that you might even agree with me that there is something that wants us to be right with God, right with the universe. If you're a believer, you know this feeling very well. And it's for this need, it's to address this feeling, this thing that was written on us, this need to repent that God placed on the calendar the holiest of holidays that we now know as Yom Kippur. And that's what we're going to look at this morning. Now, Yom Kippur is what it's called in the Hebrew culture. And those words together, Yom means day and Kippur means atonement. So it's become known as the day of atonement. But Kippur can also be translated as covering, the day of covering. And so it's the day on the calendar that God provides for his people so that you can be sure, so that the Hebrew people, the Israelite people can be sure that they are right before their God. It addresses this intrinsic need within us to repent and know that we are right before our creator God. And so it's on this day that all of the sins of the priesthood, of the high priest, and of the Hebrew people are atoned for in a ceremony that we're gonna go through that occurs at the temple in Jerusalem. It's the day of atonement or the day of covering. It's the provision that God makes so that his people can be right before him. And to me, it's a remarkable day. Most of you have probably heard of it before. Most of you who pay attention to cultural things probably know that it's a Jewish holiday and it's the holiest, it's the highest of the holidays. It's celebrated so reverently that every 50 years, the day of atonement becomes a year of Jubilee. And on the 50th year, on that year of Jubilee, all debts are canceled and all land is given back to the family. It's a really important holiday in the Hebrew calendar. And on this day, everybody went to the temple. So to help us as I kind of walk us through what happened at Yom Kippur, we have to kind of have a working knowledge of the temple. So I actually found this picture that I wanted to show you. This is the temple. If you go to Jerusalem right now, in the city is a museum that I've been able to go to. And in the middle of that museum is a replica that's probably about as big as this room of ancient Israel at the time of Solomon and immediately following. And in the middle of the city is the temple complex. And this is the temple complex. And so what you see here, I just kind of want to walk us through there for a couple of things. That big building in the middle, the tallest part of it, that is the holy place and the holy of holies. We're going to talk about it in a second, but that building was basically divided in two by a curtain. The front portion of it was the holy place. The only people allowed in the holy place were Jewish priests. And then the other side of that is the holy of holies. The only person allowed there is the high priest. And then outside of that through the door, you see the inner courtyard. The only people allowed there are Jewish males. And then outside of that building and more of the space is the outer courtyard. Only Jewish people are allowed in the outer courtyard. And then this roofed area to the left of the screen, that's where the Sanhedrin met. That was like their senate. That's where the government met. All the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Zealots, their representatives would meet there and decide on things. So that's kind of, when I talk about the temple for the rest of the morning, this is what I'm talking about. And it's important for us to know that on Yom Kippur, on the Day of Atonement, the focus of all of God's people was on the temple. On the Day of Atonement, on this day, on the holiest of holidays, the focus of all of Israel, of all of God's people scattered wherever they were, was on the temple. And so what they would do is they would come from all over the country. And having been there, it's not super far. You can get there in a couple of days if you're walking from the top of the country to Jerusalem in the center or from southern Israel to Jerusalem. So everybody has the chance to come and gather in the holy city at the temple, the holy place where the presence of God is. The presence of God was said to be in the holy of holies. And so on this holiday, the highest of days, all of Israel would gather and clamor into Jerusalem. And then on the Day of Atonement, as many people as could fit into that temple complex would fit into that temple complex and wait for the priest to perform the ceremonies and the rites and the duties that went along with Yom Kippur. And the priest was also a focal point of this day. And as I learned this stuff, I'm going to walk you through kind of what that day looked like. I was fascinated by all of these things. I hope that it doesn't bore you, but for me, I'm kind of a history nerd, so as I was reading this stuff, I really, really ate it up. But the priest would come out. First of all, he would start to fast the day before. Everybody would fast the day of. Every good Hebrew would fast the day of Yom Kippur, but the priest would fast a day early, and then he would stay up all night. Members of the Sanhedrin were assigned to watch him and make sure he didn't fall asleep, because he was likely an older guy, and our population of people who are the age of what the high priest would have been know that it's kind of hard to stay awake during one of my sermons. So I can't imagine staying awake all night. So the Sanhedrin would kind of watch him and poke him and make sure he didn't fall asleep. And then after that, they would hand it off to the priestly elders and they would make sure that he would stay awake. And then very early in the morning, the ceremony would start and he would go into the temple, I would assume surrounded by thousands of people, and he was wearing his traditional priestly robes, which were laced with gold as is detailed in the book of Leviticus. And he would go behind a curtain to like a bath and he would ceremonially bathe himself, which I'm guessing wasn't awkward for them. They would have been like, yeah, I mean, he's just taking a bath. For us, that's weird. But for them, he would take a bath behind the curtain and it was fine. And then when he was done, he would put on white priestly garments specifically for Yom Kippur, for the Day of Atonement. And he would begin to perform the ceremonies and the rituals of the day. And the first one was he would go to the altar in that outer courtyard in front of the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, and he would take a bull. And he would place his hands on the head of the bull, and he would repeat this prayer of repentance because this bull was dying for the priest and for his family. This was his personal atonement and the atonement for the rest of the priesthood for all of the sins that had been committed in that year. And so he would atone for his sins, and his sins were symbolically transferred from him to the head of the bull, and that bull would die in his place and in the place of his family. It's a sacrificial system. And then the blood of the bull would drip into a bowl, and he would hold that, and that would be prepared for something in a second. Then, in this really kind of interesting ceremony, there would be two goats that were brought to the high priest. And he would take one goat, they would draw lots, which was their way of playing paper, rock, scissors. And he would decide which goat got designated as for the Lord and which goat got designated as the scapegoat. And the one that was designated for the Lord, they put a white cord around its neck. And the one that was designated as the scapegoat, they put a red cord around its neck. And then after doing that, the priest would then say a prayer. And in this prayer, the name of Jehovah was elicited. And I think it happened like eight times throughout the day. And every time the priest would say the name of Jehovah God, the entire assembly would fall on their face and worship God. And then stand back up and he would continue. to God, and then you would walk through this curtain. And this curtain I always heard about growing up separates the Holy of Holies from the holy place. And I always heard in Christian school and in Bible college that if you put a team of oxen on either side of that curtain and they pulled against one another, that they would not be able to tear that curtain. It was an impenetrable layer. And in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. It was a box that you weren't allowed to touch. Inside this box was the stone tablets that God gave Moses the law on and the staff of Moses. On top of this box were two golden angels. And it's thought that their wings were pointed out and their heads were bowed and that their wings were touching each other at the tips. And where they touched would create what was called the mercy seat. And it said that the very presence of God rested on that mercy seat. And there was only one person alive allowed to go in there, and that was the high priest. Because it was the very presence, the holy presence of God. And if you went in there and were impure, anything about you was imperfect and not worthy of God's presence, then you would fall dead in an instant. They were so worried about this. This was so sobering and such a concern that in the white priestly garments of the high priest, they wove bells into the hymns so that when he would move, you could hear him moving. And before he went into the Holy of Holies, they would tie a rope around his ankle so that if the bells stopped, they'd just start pulling. That's how serious it was. Can you imagine being guy number two? And they had to pull him out and be like, well, you've got to put on that robe now. That would be really scary. But that was the seriousness and the sobriety that surrounded going into the Holy of Holies. And it's only the priests that even saw the high priest enter. The Jewish males are outside. Maybe if they have a certain vantage point, they can peek in and see. But the other, the people, the throngs up on the walls and on the roofs, they can't even see him going into the Holy of Holies. And that's where the presence of God rested. And when he got in there, he would take the blood of the bull and he would sprinkle it on the mercy seat and he would sprinkle it on the curtain and he would say a prayer and that was for his family and then he would step out. And when he stepped out, he went and he took the goat that was designated as for the, and he sacrificed that goat. And this was the beginning of the atonement of the sins of the people of Israel. He would take the blood of the goat, he would pray a prayer, he would read a scripture, people would fall on their face and worship God, and then he would go back into the Holy of Holies, and he would sprinkle the blood of the goat on the mercy seat and on the curtain, and this was the atonement for the people. Then he would step back out and he would take the scapegoat. And there was a designated priest in a particular causeway of the temple. And he would send the scapegoat to that priest. And that priest would then walk that goat out of the city limits into the wilderness, traditionally 10 to 12 miles. I don't know how long this took, but I do know that if I were an ancient Hebrew person, that waiting for the goat to get to the place would be my least favorite part of Yom Kippur. I'm not a man of a lot of patience, and that's 12 miles away with an old priest. I would get pretty bummed out about that. All along the way, there was 10 stations, 10 booths where they would eat and drink and then move on. And once the scapegoat got far enough away, the priest would then sacrifice that goat. And then he would camp there overnight and not come back into the city until the morning. And it said that that scapegoat is the goat that died for the sins of the people of Israel. And it would cover over the sins of Israel. That's where we get the kippur, the covering. It would serve as the covering of the sins of Israel so that when God looked at the people of Israel, he didn't see their sin. He saw the covering. And this particular death was for sins of omission because all of these people, listen, if you're at Yom Kippur, if you've got prime seats and you're watching this, you probably have been going to temple every week and you've been doing your sacrifices every week and you've been making sure that you and God are good throughout the year. But this particular sacrifice were for the sins of omission of the people of Israel throughout the year. And we can relate to this. Those things that you didn't know were wrong until later, that thing that you've been doing for years, and then you find out like, oh my goodness, I shouldn't do that. That's not really pleasing to the Lord. I guess I should stop. Sorry, 2012. Like we know those things, or maybe those little like attitudes that show up, the little flecks of racism that we find in ourselves. And we go, oh my gosh, I can't believe that I used to think that way. These things where we've displeased the Lord and we don't even realize that we have. That's what the Day of Atonement was for, was to say, hey, everything is covered. Everything is taken care of. Once the goat had been sacrificed, there was a series of flags that would be waved by centuries all the way back to Jerusalem. And then once the word got back to the high priest, he would burn the remaining parts of the bulls and the goat that were sacrificed earlier. He would read three scriptures and say eight benedictions. He would invoke the name of the Lord and the crowd, the thousands of people would worship along with him each time. And when he was finally done, after a whole day's worth of ceremony late in the afternoon, he would ceremonially bathe one more time and put his personal clothes back on. And tradition says that he would go home and have a feast with his family to celebrate surviving that day because it was a stressful time for his family. And I do think it's interesting that after the high priest performs all of these duties on a somber holiday, the first thing he does is he goes home and he has a feast. So even on a holiday that's dedicated to fasting, there's still a feast to cap it off at the end. And so as I learned about these things this week and this process and this ceremony, I just began to think, man, what would it have been like to have been in the ancient Hebrew world? And watch this. What would it have been like to grow up with this tradition? What would it have been like to bend one of the throngs of people in the temple watching or listening or waiting and seeing the reaction of everybody else? At a time with no internet, at a time without published books, at a time where the only way you learn is through rote memorization, whatever the previous generation tells you, that's what you retain, and then you teach it to the ones who follow you. And for thousands of years, that's how it worked. What would it have been like to take in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, as an ancient Hebrew person? What would it have been like to just be surrounded, to be from the countryside of Galilee and to come in and be surrounded by all these people? To have grown up and have your grandpa or your grandma explain to you every year, Grandpa, we know the bull, like we get it, we know what it means. What would it have been like when you came of age and it was your responsibility to explain it to the younger generation and keep them along? To have grown up seeing this every year, to watch the same high priest perform the same rites every year. What would it have been like to have fallen on your face? Really picture it and worship at the name of the Lord every time. How totally separate and other must the high priest would have been? Don't think about it from the perspective of the Sanhedrin looking down from their VIP seats or from the other priests who would watch the high priest and think that might be me one day and kind of peek out of the holy place and watch his back as he performed in front of the crowds. But what would it have been like to be in the crowds, to be separated and other, to even be a Hebrew woman and not even be allowed in the part where you can see the priest and all you can do is listen. How distant would the priest have felt to you? I know over the years I've gone to different Christian conferences and in Christian world there's these celebrity pastors that write books and do podcasts and have thousands of downloads and tens of thousands of people that go to their church and they feel like little celebrities and you them down there on the stage, and you're like, oh, that's so-and-so, that's so neat. I'm really glad that I'm here, and that's as close as I'll ever get to them. And I imagine that at the best, that that's how the high priest felt, is so different and so other and so separated from you. What would it have felt like to know that he was going into the Holy of Holies on your behalf? To know that in the Holy of Holies was the presence of God, and we're so fearful of the presence of God that the holiest man among us, the most righteous among us, the high priest, is fearful that he might die. He's barely qualified to walk through that curtain. I know that I could never walk through that curtain. What kind of mystery surrounded the holy of holies? What kind of separation must they have felt from the high priest who was arguing to God on their behalf, who was interceding for them, who served as their intermediary? What kind of separation must they have felt from God? What kind of fear must have surrounded what they interpreted as the presence of God? Can you get yourself into the mystery and the wonder and the pageantry of Yom Kippur and what it must have been like to take that in as an ancient Hebrew person and pass that down from generation to generation? And I ask that because I wonder what it would have felt like to be one of these people at the time of Jesus. And to be a devout Jew, to celebrate Yom Kippur every year, it's the highest, the holiest of holidays. And the temple, the focus of all God's people is on the temple, and that's where the presence of God rests, and that's where his people work, his representatives, the priests work and intercede for us and serve as intermediaries for us. What must it have been like to be sitting there and to be a devout Jew and to watch this man who claims to be the Son of God die on the cross, and the moment he dies, you can look across the valley there from the eastern side and see into the Holy of Holies and watch that veil tear from top to bottom. Which is what the Gospels tell us happened when Jesus died. That veil was torn in two. How earth-shattering must that have been for a Hebrew people who grew up believing, rightly so, that the presence of God was on the other side of that veil. Something that was different and other and we're fearful of it and we're separated from it. How earth shattering would it have been for that veil to tear as the Son of God dies on a cross. What I want us to see is that Jesus' death on the cross was the final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur. Jesus' death on the cross, our God sending His Son to die for us, who lived a perfect life, who died a perfect death on the cross as our eternal sacrifice, is the final atonement. They needed this atonement every year. They needed the high priest to go through it all every year. They needed all the pomp and circumstance and pageantry and majesty and mystery every year to make sure that they were right with God. And then Jesus dies on the cross outside the city as a final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur. And what I want us to see here is, I said that for all of history up to the point of the death of Christ that the focus of Israel had been towards the temple. Did you know that even all the synagogues built in Israel are built so that they are facing Jerusalem, facing the temple? And that all the synagogues throughout the world and whatever other nation that exists, they are built facing Israel, facing Jerusalem, facing the temple. All of the Hebrew world, their focus is on what happens at the temple. But at the death of Jesus, at the final atonement and the perfection of Yom Kippur, there is a seismic shift in focus. There is a seismic shift in the focus of God's people because the focus of God's people no longer needs to be on the temple and what happens there. There's actually several shifts in focus and I want to walk us through them very quickly. Maybe the most significant one is there is a shift in focus from the temple to the cross. All of Israel, all of God's people, all of those who would declare faith and believe in God the Father are to shift their focus from what happens at the temple to what happens on the cross. And the cross becomes our focus. That's why we don't place any priority on the temple. That's why we don't have to go there because of what happened on the cross. That's why our church doesn't face Israel. It faces the parking lot. Because the focus is on the cross. So we shift our focus, God's people, from the temple to the cross. We shift our focus from an annual sacrifice to an eternal sacrifice. The book of Hebrews tells us that in this ceremony, in Yom Kippur, that all of the sacrifices are shadows that are cast by Jesus on history. That the bull represents Jesus and the goats represent Jesus. And particularly the scapegoat that was led outside the city into the wilderness to die for the sins of the people. Jesus, thousands of years later, was led outside the city on a hillside in the wilderness to be crucified for all the sins of the people. He is the scapegoat. He is the goat that is for the Lord. He is the bull. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. And so our focus shifts from annual temporary sacrifices to eternal ones, we're told in the book of Hebrews. Hebrews also tells us that Jesus is now our high priest. And so we switch our focus from a human priest to a holy one. We had a human priest who was fallible, who had ego to deal with, who had all the sins that we have to deal with, to a holy priest who is divine, who intercedes for us. And what I think is amazing about this priest is he's not other. He's not distant and far. He holds us and he weeps with us. And the Bible says he stands at the door and knocks and waits to come into our life. He dies for us. He serves us. He washes our feet. He walks amongst our poor. The high priest that we have doesn't sit and wait for us to come to him at a temple. Surrounded by all the other priests in the pomp and circumstance, he comes to us and he beckons that we come to him. And he offers us an intimate relationship. Not only that, but he advocates to the Father on our behalf. No longer is there this wall of separation between us and God, where the only way to approach the presence of God is to go to the priests, his intermediaries, other people who are our peers. You guys get to bypass me entirely and go right to God, which is good for you because I've got my own issues to deal with. We go right to Jesus and he advocates to the Father on behalf of us. So our focus shifts from a human priest to a holy one. Maybe most interesting to me is our focus shifts from covering to cleansing. Do you realize that in the Old Testament, all the language used to talk about us no longer being guilty of our sin is covering language, that the blood of the sacrifice covers over our sin. It makes us outwardly appear righteous as God looks at us. Even as we go back to the very first sin, the sin in the Garden of Eden by Adam and Eve. What is God's response to that sin? What does he do? He takes animal skins and he fashions them and he covers over their shame. He doesn't cleanse them. He covers it. But in the New Testament, there's a shift in language. He cleanses. He removes it from us. Because when it's just covered, it's still there. We're still sinful. If you get up on a Saturday and you go out and you work all day and you sweat in the yard and you're gross and you come in and you take off your yard clothes and you don't shower and you put on your nice going out clothes, you'll look nice, but you stink. When our sin is covered over, we are acceptable to God, but we are still sinful. And the miracle of Jesus on the cross is that he cleanses us. This is what Hebrews says. This is why the author writes this. Chapters 9 and 10 of Hebrews are really a statement on Yom Kippur. And what they're saying, what the author is saying is that whole deal was a big shadow cast by Jesus on history. It was a road sign pointing to our need for Christ. And what Hebrews 9 and 10 tells us is that Jesus is the sacrifice. He is the high priest. He is, like I said earlier, the final atonement and the perfection of Yom The Bible tells us that he removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west. We are clean and invited to walk with the Lord. And finally, and I love this one, our focus shifts from separate to intimate. Again, take yourself back to the place where you were the Hebrew person and you're watching all of this take place and you see the very holy priest, very pompous and pious, and I'm sure he was a righteous man, but he must have felt just very separate and other. You could never even approach him. And then he would walk into a holy place and then a holy of holies and you're three layers removed from the presence of God. And it's only once a year that you go into God's presence. And it's a fearful thing and an awe-inspiring thing. And then in an instant, the veil tears. And when that veil is torn, the separation that was felt between the people and God goes away. And the very presence of God rushes out of the Holy of Holies and into the lives of those of us who would believe. And Jesus becomes our high priest who begs for intimacy with us, who wants to know you. This presence of God that feels different and other and fearful and unapproachable, now we're told he knows the very numbers of hairs on our head. We're told that he weeps with us. We're told that he touches us when we are sick. And I don't think we have an adequate appreciation for what it must have felt like to feel so removed from God and his people to immediately transition into this intimacy that we're invited in so that this God that we would die if we went into his presence undeservedly because Jesus' blood now cleanses us. Romans tells us that we call that same God Abba, Father, Daddy, or Papa. The kind of intimacy that we are invited into. And so as I looked at Yom Kippur and just kind of reflected on what it means, it became very clear to me that what Yom Kippur really is, what we're really celebrating, what God is really doing here, Yom Kippur is God's ruthless and relentless effort to remove all the barriers that exist between He and us. You see? In the Old Testament world, there was priests that existed between us and God. There was sins that existed between us and God. There was sins of omission that we didn't even know about that existed between us and God. And Yom Kippur is when he gets everybody together and he says, look, look, everyone, I am putting things in place so that there is nothing between me and my people. I'm putting things in place so that you know that I want to be with you, so there is nothing that can separate us. There are no barriers between us now. And then when he sends Jesus, who is the perfection of Yom Kippur, he removes all of the barriers and his presence rushes into the lives of those who would believe. And Yom Kippur is God's relentless and ruthless effort to remove all barriers between you and him. He wants nothing to exist between you. And knowing that we are impotent to remove those barriers ourselves, he installed a celebration once a year to tell us, hey, there's nothing between me and you. There are no barriers. There's nothing keeping you from my presence. You are welcome here. And then by sending his son the perfection of Yom Kippur, he says eternally once and for all, you are invited into my presence, so much so that I am preparing a place for you in my very presence for all eternity. And as I thought about the spirit of Yom Kippur and this God who ruthlessly removes every barrier between he and I, what I realized is I am impotent to remove the barriers that are placed between me and God, but I am very capable of putting them there. And as I reflected on myself, it occurs to me that any barriers that exist between me and God are ones that I put there. They're man-made. I built them myself. Sometimes with doubt, because I walked through that. Often with faithlessness and inconsistency. The feelings of guilt that he's ridden me of that I still cling to. Because I can't understand how he could still love me. Oftentimes it's my sin that puts a layer, puts another veil between me and God. And then I got to thinking about you as your pastor and would submit to you. If you feel like there are barriers between you and God, things preventing you from being as close with him as you would like and he would like? I think it's very likely we put those there ourselves. I think based on the heart of God, I see in Yom Kippur that any barriers that exist between us and God are ones that we built. Because he removes all the ones he can. So maybe we have doubt. But we haven't asked God to remove that. So here's what I want to do. In a few minutes, I'm going to pray. And as I pray, the band is going to be playing through a song. And I want to invite you while they play to just stay in your seat and be quiet and pray and reflect. And invite you to pray a prayer for yourself that I've been praying this week. And ask God, are there any barriers between you and I? Ask for the faith and the courage to see those. And then if he's gracious enough to point them out to you, maybe you know them right now, maybe they're blaring in the back of your mind, then pray that God would give you the courage to take the steps of faith to remove them. And so, as we pray together, I want you to have this opportunity to ask God, God, are there any barriers between me and you? Have I hung any veils in my life that need to be torn down? And give him permission to do that. Give him permission to bring down those barriers. Maybe you came today and you don't know Jesus. Maybe you wouldn't call yourself a believer. And so the barrier between you and God is faith. If you're here today and you want to become a believer, you want to accept this atonement, you want to be made right with your creator, that human desire to repent and be made right resonates with you. Then maybe today is the day that you become a child of God. To be a Christian, all you do is admit that I've sinned. I've acted in ways that have displeased my creator. And my sin has placed a barrier between God and I. And because of that, I need the death of Jesus on the cross to atone for me. It's not just cover over my sins, but cleanse them. You pray and you tell that to God. And then you say, from this point forward, I'm no longer the Lord of my life. I'm no longer the decision maker in my life. God is. And I'll do my best to do what he says. Many of us in here have been Christians for a long time, but over the years, we've allowed barriers to develop between us and God, and we don't have the intimacy with him that we want. Take a few minutes and have the courage to allow God to point those out, and have the faith to ask Him to remove those, whether they be doubt, bitterness, or sin, or habits. And on the day that the church looks at Yom Kippur, God's visible effort to remove barriers between he and I and restore the intimacy that we both long for. Take a minute and approach God for that intimacy as well. I'm gonna pray and then you guys sit and pray. And when Steve thinks it's the right time, we'll all stand and we'll finish singing together. Let's pray. Father, we love you. We are floored and humbled that you have so intentionally removed all the barriers between us and you. God, we thank you for the day of atonement for Yom Kippur and all that it represents, for all the symbolism there. I ask that we would be touched by it, that we would be moved by it. God, I ask that for those of us who came in this morning with a veil that we hung ourselves, with a barrier that we built ourselves between you and us, God, give us the faith to see it and the courage to ask you to remove it. It's in your son's name we pray.

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

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

Well, good morning, First Service. My name is Nate. I am the lead pastor here. It's so good to see all of you. Thanks for being here on this May Sunday, on the last Sunday of our regular schedule. Next Sunday for Memorial Day weekend, we're going to go to our summer schedule and have one service that meets at 10 o'clock through the summer, and then we'll kick in two services again after Labor Day when things pick back up in September. So I'm kind of looking forward to the one big family feel that we can afford ourselves over the summer and the things that that's going to provide for us. So I'm excited about that. So again, next Sunday, 10 o'clock, if you get here at the 9.30 time, then we'll just hang out with you until the service starts. And my feelings won't be hurt if you leave 30 minutes early. Like right when the sermon starts, you just bolt because that's been your hour. That's fine. But that's going to be our summer schedule. I'm excited about that. This morning is the second part in our series about the Holy Spirit called The Forgotten God, because we talk a lot about God the Father. We learn a lot about God the Son. But in some church circles, in a lot of church circles, we often forget about the Holy Spirit. And so we wanted to take four weeks and slow down and focus our energy and our effort and our intellect on the Holy Spirit and what he does for us and what his ministry is to us. So last week, we started off by looking at this absurd statement that Jesus makes in John chapter 16, when he tells the disciples, and by extension us, hey, it's better for you that I go, that you don't have my physical presence next to you all the time, because if I don't go, then you will not receive the helper or the comforter that we know as the Holy Spirit. And that feels absurd, because we talked about, man, how much different would life be if we had Jesus right next to us all the time? But then we went through the reasons that that's true. And what we discovered is that it's better to have the Spirit because the Spirit is omnipresent and with us all the time. If I want to be in the presence of the Spirit and the Spirit is at your house, I don't have to convince Him to come to my house. He's in me. We are the temples of the Spirit. So He's with us all the time. And then we realize that the role or the job of the Spirit is to continue the ministry of Jesus, both through us in the form of spiritual gifts that we're going to talk about this morning, and to us as He grows us and sanctifies us. It takes us through the process of becoming more like God in character. That's his ministry to us. That's the roles of the Spirit that we're going to talk about next week. And then the last week, we're going to answer a really difficult question. How do we synthesize what we've learned about the Spirit with what we've experienced of the Spirit? Because sometimes those aren't the same things. But this week, we're looking at the spiritual gifts, how the Holy Spirit continues the ministry of Jesus through us. To do that, I want us to think about the idea of this word privilege, okay? And I don't mean privilege in the politically charged, like CNN, Fox way, where individuals may or may not be more than others. I don't mean that. I mean it in just the good old-fashioned way of, man, what a privilege this is to be doing this thing. When I think about privilege, I thought about a couple of weeks ago, somebody in the church, one of our great grace partners, who is now incidentally my favorite grace partner, emailed me and said, hey man, I've got four tickets to the Champions Club at PNC Arena for the Carolina Hurricanes' last home game. If they win this game, we may go to the playoffs. They're probably going to clinch the playoffs at this game. Would you like to come and bring some staff members? Yes, I would. I would love to. I don't care what sport is playing. When you say Champions Club with free buffet, I'm there. It can be women's field hockey. I'm in. Let's go. Right? So I went. We brought a couple other folks with us. And we get there. And you walk through the arena. Well, first of all, you park like right outside the arena. Like if they had valet parking, we would say, no thanks. This is better. Like you're right outside. It was unbelievable. And you walk in. You're walking through the arena. Like if they had valet parking, we would say, no thanks, this is better. Like you're right outside. It was unbelievable. And you walk in, you're walking through the arena, and then you get to this part where they have a concierge like behind these booths, and they're very important. And you give them like blood and urine and social security, and then they let you in, right? They let you in. And then once you're in, it's carpeted, and there's fireplaces and mahogany, and it is swanky, man. And then they have these buffets of food, so you don't have to pay $12 for the Cruddy Stadium Burger. Like, you get the buffet right there. And then all the ice cream and cookies that you can eat. They give you little tickets to go to the bar and get you a drink if that's what you want to do. You can, like, float out of there on Coke if you want to. It's amazing, right? And then you sit down. You get your food, and you go, and you sit down. And you're in these plush leather seats as you look at the ice and then the other peasants that don't get to sit where you get to sit. And this really ruined me. I don't think I can ever watch a hockey game with poor people again. But it was just an incredible experience, right? And, like, towards the end of the game, the team that they needed to lose lost, and the Hurricanes were winning, and then they scored another goal to kind of cinch the game, and the whole crowd knows, oh my goodness, we're going to the playoffs. I haven't been to the playoffs in a long time, so the place is going nuts, and it was super fun, and it was a really kind of electric atmosphere to be in. And the whole time, I thought, my goodness, I don't deserve this. This is too nice for me. You know, there's a proverb where Solomon says, if the king invites you to dinner, don't look at the food. Like, don't get used to that. That's going to suck you in. Like, don't get used to that. Keep your eye on what you can afford for yourself. And the whole time, I'm trying to remember this proverb, don't get used to this because you're one of those people, right? You don't deserve to be here. And then I thought, man, there are other people who love the Hurricanes so much that this would be a huge deal for them to be able to be a part of this excitement. And I'm not a Hurricanes fan. I mean, I watched the playoff games. I cheered for them. But I went to the gift shop that night and thought, I should get something And then I looked at like the $26 hat and I thought, I don't want this $26 worth. I want this about $12 worth. So then I left. So like, I'm not even a fan, but I get to be here, part of this electricity. And I realized, man, what a privilege this is. Because a privilege is something that you haven't earned and you don't deserve, but you get to experience anyways. You get invited into this experience anyways. And you guys have had different privileges in your life. We could probably all tell stories about times when we got to do a thing or meet a person or be in a conversation or have an experience that we kind of looked around and thought, gosh, I don't deserve to be here. This is really incredible. So as we think about this idea of privilege, life has some pretty great privileges. I think of parenthood. Parenthood's a phenomenal privilege, isn't it? We have a three-year-old daughter named Lily. And daily I'm reminded of the privilege that it is to be her parent. Like I'm the one that gets to watch her. Like right now we're learning to go to the bathroom the right way. And so she's celebrating and she gets her M&Ms and she's figuring that out on her own. And like we get to celebrate that with her and be happy with her as she does that. We're the ones that when she wakes up in the middle of the night, we get to comfort her. We're the ones that when she's scared, she runs to. When she gets here for the second service, she's going to see me and yell, Dad, and she's going to run to me, and it's going to be really fun. And what a great privilege it is to be the recipient of those hugs. And if you're a parent, then you know that parenthood is one of life's great privileges. Well, I want to submit to you this morning this idea that ministry is one of life's great privileges. Ministry, being involved in the building of the church, is one of life's great privileges. And here's what I mean. Jesus spent three years on this earth. He could have come into adulthood, lived a perfect life, died on the cross for us and go to heaven, but he spent three extra years on this earth, I am convinced, to train the disciples to do ministry, to build the church, to leave to them the keys to the kingdom and say, this is my kingdom on earth. It is your responsibility to grow it and nourish it and grow others and love people towards me. And then the disciples trained the next generation, and then they changed the generation after that. And it got passed on down as this holy responsibility, a holy mantle that we carry until each living generation of Christians, it becomes our responsibility to carry the mantle of ministry. That's why Peter says in his letters at the end of the New Testament that we, Christians, if you call God your Father and Jesus your Savior, then Peter tells you that you are a part of a holy priesthood, that you are a chosen nation, that you are cut from the same quarry as Abraham and David and Moses, and that it is your responsibility to carry on the ministry of Jesus. And when I talk about ministry this morning, it's an important thing to understand. I don't mean something that's organized. I don't mean vocational ministry, going pro and getting paid to be a Christian. I don't mean it like that. I don't mean something that's organized where you have to volunteer for something. I don't mean structured ministry. When I think of ministry, I think true ministry is simply loving others towards Jesus. When I say that we get invited into ministry by Jesus, when we get called to holy priesthood, when we get told that we are the torchbearers to carry on the legacy of the church, all I mean is nothing structured. All I mean is simply loving others towards Jesus. That's how we talk about ministry at Grace. That's what that means. And I believe it to be one of the great privileges in life for several reasons. One reason is this is God, the creator of the universe, who created you and knows the number of hairs on your head, who knows everything that's ever happened, and he is chiefly concerned with his kingdom and bringing other people into his kingdom and into a knowledge of him. That's his chief concern. That's what he wants. That's the whole reason you're left on this earth after you become a Christian is to bring as many people to heaven with you as you go, to love as many people towards Jesus with you as you possibly can on your way to spend eternity with God. That's the reason that we are here. And in ministry, Jesus has invited you in to participate in that plan. He's given you a front row seat to the most important thing happening in the universe. And here's the deal. He's going to get it done. The church is going to grow. And I hate to say it this way because I don't want to be overly flippant about it, but the church is going to grow with or without you. The church doesn't need your talent. Church doesn't need your money. Church doesn't need your intelligence. God doesn't need your ability. He's going to grow up with or without you. He's definitely going to grow up with or without me. But he's invited us in to participate in what he's doing. And that, to me, is amazing. He's invited us in to be conduits of the love that he shows us. He shows us a perfect love that is boundless, that is reckless, that knows nothing that can stop it. Nothing can take us away from that love. He offers that love to us and he invites us to be conduits of that love as we show it to other people. And I believe ministry to be one of life's great privileges because one of our biggest fears in life is to live a life that doesn't matter, right? One of our biggest fears in life, what all people do and what I've experienced in my friends and in my parents and in people that I've seen hit the back nine of life. I don't know how you define that. I don't want to throw out a decade and make anybody feel old. So people who begin to think about their legacy once they get through their really productive years, what do they always begin to think about? What's my legacy? What am I going to leave behind? What kind of difference has my life made? We want to know that we matter, and ministry ensures that our life matters. There's this great quote. I heard it from D.L. Moody, but it's attributed to a bunch of different people. But he said, one of the most tragic things in life you'll see is for someone to spend their entire life climbing the ladder of success only to get to the top and find that it was propped against the wrong building. Ministry insulates us against that. It makes us matter. It's an offer from God. Here's something that you can invest your life in that will matter for all of eternity. Here's a way to ensure that when you die one day and you look back on your life, you can be sure that you're sure that you're sure that it mattered that you invested your life well because he's invited you into the process of loving other people towards him. And I think that this promise, this insurance that our life will matter is incredibly important and maybe increasingly so in a world that lurches for ways to matter in all kinds of ways and screams out to everyone paying attention, we just want to matter. Jen and I were in New York City this last week, and it was very fun. It was pretty much an eating vacation. I walked about 11 miles a day and gained four pounds, so I don't know how I managed to do that, but it was fun. And one of the things we noticed everywhere we went, and as girls, I don't mean to pick on girls, but it was girls. It was girls posing for Instagram pictures. Everywhere. Like every tourist site that we went to, Central Park, we went to this thing called the Vessel at Hudson Yards, and everywhere we went, there was a couple of girls who were dressed nicer than everybody else there, had on the makeup and the hair and the fake eyelashes and the whole deal, and they're posing. They got their friend taking pictures of them. And they're posing like for all of these candids, you know, like that kind of thing, you know, and they're kind of like doing their hair. And Jen and I just started like, we laugh at it. We find them and we're just sitting over there going in this hilarious. But after a while, it started to break my heart because you know what those girls are saying? I want to matter. I'm going to post this somewhere. Will you please tell me that I'm pretty? This is how I gain my sense of worth. Will you please tell me that I matter? And we all do that in one way or another. We all preen to matter in one way or another. We all lurch for significance in one way or another. And ministry says, here, here's a way to ensure that your life matters and that it matters for all eternity. And I think intuitively we know that ministry is one of life's great privileges. I talked to Jen, who a lot of you guys don't know this, but Jen for her entire adult life has poured into groups of young girls, middle school, high school age girls. And I asked her, what brings you joy? What have been your privileges as you've done ministry? And we talked about one of her close friends, this girl named Elizabeth. When Jen got out of college, she began to teach fifth grade. And when those fifth grade girls graduated from elementary school and moved into middle school, Jen started a Bible study for them, and they would meet in her classroom early one day. And one of those girls was named Elizabeth. And Jen's gotten to watch Elizabeth grow into a young woman who loves the Lord, into a young woman who leads her own Bible studies and her own discipleship groups and pours into young women on her own. And she tells those young girls who have never met Jen some of the things that Jen shared with her. And so now there's multi-generational love and wisdom going on because Jen had the opportunity to pour her life into those girls. And she still gets texts from them and calls from them. And she still gets to celebrate with them. And she still gets to mourn with them. And when you minister to people and when you love on people, you get invited into these situations that feel like such a privilege, like, my goodness, I don't deserve to be here. This is incredible. We know experientially that when we minister, when God uses us in the life of others, we come alive. That's why I think it's one of God's great privileges that he offers us to be in ministry. The deal with ministry, however, once we become Christians and God says, okay, go grow the church, is that we're grossly unqualified to grow the church. We are grossly and radically unqualified to do ministry because ministry requires supernatural power. Someone has to realize that they're a sinner, that they need Jesus, and then come to Jesus and repent. Ministry is hard. Sometimes ministry requires saying the exact right word at the exact right time. Sometimes loving on people requires you to say challenging things to them that are really difficult and awkward and uncomfortable to say. Sometimes it means that you have to apply grace to them and not say the thing that you want to say because they need more time to develop on your own. Sometimes ministry means discerning between spirits so we really know what's going on here. Sometimes it means being able to explain the Bible in ways that are really difficult or difficult concepts that we're not sure what they actually mean. Ministry is difficult. Ministry works kind of like your first job. For most of us, we went to college, and after we went to college, we got our job. And at college, what'd they tell you they were doing? We're preparing you to go into the workforce. We're preparing you for your job. And then you get to your job, which is most of the time outside of your major, and you begin to work, and you realize oh my gosh, they did not prepare me for the workforce. I got to figure this out. And you do on-the-job training, right? Spiritual gifts that the Spirit gives us so that we can do ministry are God's on-the-job training. This is why we have spiritual gifts. God has called each of us to minister. He's invited us into and bestowed upon us the privilege of ministry, and he's acknowledging that we are grossly inept for this ministry, kind of like me finishing that sentence. We don't have what it takes sometimes, right? And so God acknowledges you don't have the expertise you need to do the job I want you to do. So here, through the Spirit, is a gift to make you more effective at ministry. And this is where we get the spiritual gifts. Now, the spiritual gifts we see at different places in the Bible. There's four or five places in the New Testament where they pop up. There's two really definitive lists, kind of more authoritative lists that we see in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans 12. And in your notes there, I've listed out some of the gifts that I found in those passages. In 1 Corinthians 12, we have a longer list. We have wisdom and knowledge, faith, healing, miraculous power, prophecy, discernment, tongues, interpretation, apostleship, teaching, and administration. And then in Romans 12, we have some of those and then some extras, right? And so those are the lists of the gifts. And I would say this about the spiritual gifts that God gives to us. These are not exhaustive lists. I don't think that Paul's intention when he begins to write the spiritual gifts, who's the guy that wrote these books, I don't think his intention was to make an exhaustive list of the gifts. I don't think he was trying to list all of them for you. I think he's more giving you categories of what they could be. I think it's possible that there's more gifts outside of what's mentioned here. I don't think either list is definitive. I've seen places where guys try or girls try to make one list more authoritative than the other, and I don't think that it's fair to do that. My personal view is that there's no exhaustive list in the New Testament of what the gifts are. But these are what he gives us, and he gives us these gifts, the Spirit does, so that we can continue the ministry of Jesus. And now every time you talk about spiritual gifts, you really have two questions. There's really two questions that come up in the church. If this is your first time hearing about the spiritual gifts, then maybe you're already forming these questions. If not, then you know how to anticipate these questions. What are they? Like, what are the gifts? What do they mean? How do we define them? And which one's mine? Right? That's what we want to know. We want to know how do we define these gifts and which one are mine? Which one's mine? Well, to answer those questions first, how do we define these gifts? How do we explain them? Some of these are pretty self-explanatory, okay? When it says the gift of serving, you are smart adults, most of you. You don't need me to explain to you what that is. It would be patronizing to do it. The gift of hospitality, what's that? You don't need me to explain that to you. You know. And I don't think it would be a very wise investment of our time to go down the list of gifts and tell you how to define them. You're pretty smart. You can figure it out. If you don't, Google's the thing. There are some, however, that are more confusing. Usually people want to know about the gift of tongues. That's one that we've heard. People speak in sometimes known languages, sometimes languages that we don't know that sound like utterances. What's the deal with those? How do we figure those out? And then we also want to know about this gift of prophecy. What's that mean? What are prophets? Do we still have them? How does that work? And so because I don't have time in this sermon to talk about those, and because that's really not the point of this sermon, what I'm going to do this week, sometime this week, is I'm just going to write up my thoughts on what the gift of tongues is and what the gift of prophecy is and how those work. And I would invite you, if you look through these lists or you can think of others that you've always had questions about that you'd like to know more about, write that on your connection card and put that in the offering when it comes by or email me and I'll add those into what I write up. Now, please, you can mention them to me in the lobby afterwards, but I'm just telling you on Sundays I forget everything. So if you mention it to me, I'll go, yeah, that sounds great. And then it will not be written up. Okay, so email me or put it on the connection card and I'll give some more detail to those this week. That's how we're going to address how do we define the gifts. But then the other question is, what's mine, right? What's my gift? And we like this question because it's about us. This kind of feels like the personality test that we like to click on on Facebook, right? This is like, which friend are you? Are you Ross or Rachel or maybe Chandler? Like, what color is your personality? Like, what's your spirit animal? And we don't tell anybody. Like, we take the test and it says, do you want to publish to Facebook? Lord, no, I don't want to publish to Facebook. I don't know why. I don't want anybody to know that I actually spent 15 minutes doing this and learned that I was a horse. Like, that's not what we want to do. And so when we see spiritual gifts, we approach it the same way. Ooh, which one am I? And we actually did this, a church that I used to work at, we did a series on the Holy Spirit. And whenever you do a series on the Holy Spirit, you do a sermon on the spiritual gifts as part of the deal. And we covered it like that. And at the time I was younger in ministry and my job, what was assigned to me was to find a test that everybody could take so that we could send you to a website and you could take a test and then you would know how best to serve at that church. And it all felt just very self-serving and kind of ridiculous. And the truth of it is, when I got online to look for these tests, they were all stupid. There were none of them good. They were all ridiculous. I ended up calling them spiritual preference tests. What do you want to do? Everybody comes out with the gift of teaching, right? It's silly. And it was self-serving because the gifts are not about serving the local church. It's about serving the big C church. That's what they're for. And the more I looked at it and the more I examined the passages, the more I realized Paul's goal here is not to help you figure out which one you are. It's the reason why we spent 20 minutes on the introduction of ministry as an incredible privilege and the last 10 minutes on spiritual gifts when the sermon's supposed to be about spiritual gifts. Because guess what? It's not really about the spiritual gifts. If you look at the passages where he's talking about them, in 1 Corinthians 12 and in Romans 12, in both passages, the context around the spiritual gifts is, hey, we are a body. We are the church, and we have a job. Incidentally, it's why at Grace we have partners, not members, because we believe that we are a part of the body and that we are partnering together for ministry, for the purpose of loving other people towards Jesus. And in both chapters where he talks about the gifts, Paul is saying we are part of a body and we have a job and we are to build the kingdom of God through the church. And everybody has a part to play. Everybody's been invited in. Everybody is a part of the royal priesthood. And to some people, he gives the gift of serving and to others, hospitality, and to others, contributing, and to others, teaching, and to others, leading, and to others, mercy, which is my gift, and to others, compassion, which is another one of my strong suits, right? That's what he gives people. And the whole point of it is so that we can build the church together. The point is not which gift do I have? The point is you have the gift of ministry. That's the point. In fact, following this in 1 Corinthians 12, he talks about all the gifts at length. There's two different sections where he mentions them. He says, but those are the gifts and those are great and you should desire those. But then he finishes 1 Corinthians 12 this way. He says, and I will show you a still more excellent way. And then he opens up with the famous love chapter in 1 Corinthians 13. If I speak in tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I'm a noisy gong or a clinging cymbal. And he goes through and he lists the gifts. If I have prophecy, if I can teach, if I can do all these things, but I have not love, then my life doesn't matter. And it is not the point. The gifts are not the point. The point is loving on others. And then he goes into the love passage and defines it. Love is patient and is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It keeps no record of wrongs. And then in the end, it says it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things. Love never fails. The whole point of him going through the gifts is him showing you that you've been invited into the privilege of ministry, gifted to do the ministry of loving on other people, which is the whole point anyways. I feel like we always miss the point when we approach the spiritual gifts because we go, what do they mean and which one's mine? And that's not the point of any of the passages where they're mentioned. The point is that we're called into ministry to go love on other people. I do still think it's important to know what our gift is, but if you really want to know what your gift is, don't go take a test. That's a waste of time. You'd have more fun figuring out which animal you are. If you really want to know what your spiritual gift is, then go love other people. And what you'll find is that your gift is what others affirm in you as you love them. Don't worry about what your gift is. What's my gift? Am I serving? Am I compassionate? Am I hospitality? Am I teaching? Am I leadership? Don't worry about that. Just go love people. The people that are in your life, go love them towards Jesus. That's your ministry. Go love them towards Jesus. And as you love them towards Jesus, they will affirm in you what your gift is. I can only share with you my own path through that realization. As far back as I can remember doing ministry, I was invited to teach in different settings. Nothing big or extravagant. I mean, I've shown up to a lot of 6 a.m. FCA's where there's 20 kids who don't care. I've talked to a lot of youth groups. I've done youth group retreats with like 18 kids in North Georgia woods. Like I've showed up to a lot of places to teach, but I kept getting invited to teach. And people would affirm in me, hey, that was effective. You were good at that. And I began to suspect that maybe that's how the Spirit has gifted me. But honestly, I'm so uncomfortable with that. It took me a long time to maybe kind of admit that maybe that's how the Spirit has gifted me. Now, some of you are sitting in here and you're going, dude, this is super boring. This is not your gift. And you may be right. We may find that out together as we go down in flames of glory here in a couple of years. Who knows? But enough people began to say, hey, that was effective. Hey, you're good at that. Hey, I appreciate that. But at some point or another, I quit fighting against it and just acknowledged, I think maybe my gift is teaching. And that's what I need to do. But you don't need to worry about what your gift is on the front end. Just get busy loving people towards God. And they will affirm in you whatever your gift is. And that's how you'll identify it. And what I want us to see as we think about the spiritual gifts and how often we miss it and go, oh, what's mine? How do I do this? What do they mean? How do we talk about them? We miss the point. When we think about spiritual gifts at Grace, I want us to think about them in this way. Spiritual gifts are an affirmation of and an invitation into the privilege of ministry. If we believe ministry to be one of the great privileges in life, to be invited into the lives of others, to be able to be the person that they call on when they mourn, to be the person that they call when they don't understand something, to be the person that gets to celebrate with them when they get pregnant or when their kid does something great or when they get a promotion. If we want to be invited into people's lives in that way, if we want to love on people in that way, if we want our life to matter, to know for certain that it's going to matter and that what we're going to do will ring for all of eternity, then we believe that ministry is a privilege. And we understand that the gift that the Spirit gives us to be more effective at that ministry is an affirmation of the fact that we are saved, that he calls us his child, and that we are to be used in that ministry, and it is an invitation into one of life's great privileges. So here's what I want you to do this morning in light of the spiritual gifts. I want to ask you, what's your ministry? Not organized, not structured, your ministry is not the coffee bar. Now that's a way to love on people, but let's not reduce your life to that. The people who serve the coffee are lovely, wonderful people. They are far more capable of other things besides brewing coffee. On some Sundays, they're not very capable of brewing coffee. Am I right? Not today. Today it's good. That's right, baby. What is your ministry? Meaning, who has God called you to love? Who is it that God has placed in your life that you are to love towards him? Sometimes it's structured. It's your small group. It's the kids that you volunteer to lead and to watch. It's the students that you pour into. It's the other people on your board or on your committee. Sometimes it's unstructured. It's the people at work. It's your family. It's your friends. It's your tennis team. It's the folks you hang out with. But I think this morning the question is not, what is my gift? But it's a realization of, man, I have been invited into one of the great privileges of life. And as I'm invited into that privilege of loving others, God, who have you assigned to me to love? And in that way, we are all ministers. And if you're not sure who that is, then my encouragement to you this week is to just beg the Spirit to show you. Who do you want me to love? Who do you want me to love? Who do you want me to love? And as you get busy loving other people towards Jesus, they will affirm in you whatever your gifting is, and you can lean into that more and more and experience the joy in being exactly who you were created to be. All right. I'm going to pray, and then we're going to continue with the service. Father, thank you for loving us. Thank you for your spirit. Thank you for the gift of ministry, for the gift of being conduits of your love to other people. Lord, I pray that we would get to, all of us, experience the incredible privilege that it is to be used by you. To know that you're using us in a way that makes our life matter. To know that you're using us in a way that when we get to the end of our days, we will look back and know and get to say like Paul did, that we were poured out like a drink offering. Father, I pray that you would show us who to love, that you would give us the courage to love them well, that you would gift us exactly how we need to to love them effectively, that we would be comfortable with whatever shape that love takes based on how you've wired and gifted us. God, I pray that Grace Raleigh would be a place where other people feel loved. I pray for those who go on from this place to different areas, God, that they would love people there as well. It's in your son's name we ask these things. Amen.