Sermons tagged with Righteousness

All right, I see no one paid extra for the splash zone this morning, but I feel like I should like just stand down here and preach, but no, it's good morning. My name is Kyle. I'm the student pastor here at Grace. As most of you probably know by now, the month of July, our head pastor, Nate, is actually taking a sabbatical. It's something that was afforded to him as he has spent diligent, full-time service to this church, ministering to all of us so lovingly and so well for seven years. And so he is taking some time during the month of July to refresh and recharge spiritually in all other ways, spending time relaxing with family, on vacation, all of those things. And so I'm super happy for them. I'm super excited that he's getting the opportunity to do that. And honestly, I'm really excited for us and what that means for Grace, because you know he's gonna come out of that time ready to run in August, ready to run alongside of us in August as he comes back spiritually, recharged, and re-energized. But that also means is I get to preach this morning, which is really cool. Yeah, like cool. All right. I wasn't fishing, but I am thankful for it. I will say, like, I am mostly very excited about it. We're in our series 27, and in 27, we are going through a different book of the New Testament each week. Now, the reason why I'm mostly excited is because I think that there's a small part of me that thinks that Nate might have set me up for failure for this. Because as we talked about this series, we knew that he was going to be on sabbatical. And so there were a lot of voices, a lot of people talking, discussing, hey, what should this series look like? How should we do this series? All this stuff. And one of the main things that Nate made very clear is, hey, don't worry about us going in order. We're not going to go in order all the way through the New Testament. Just choose books that you're going to love and that stand out to you in your preparation. Awesome. Thanks so much. Man, Nate's the best. He doesn't want to be holding us to a certain book. He wants us to pick the book. And then Nate decides for the first four weeks, he's going to do the first four books in order of the New Testament. So while we know in his office that he has decided we don't have to go in order, now you guys are coming ready for an Acts sermon, and I'm hitting you with 1 Thessalonians. And not only did he set me up for failure, but he also knew if there's rioting in the building because I go out of the order you guys are ready for, he's gone. He's on sabbatical. He doesn't have to worry about it. So if you will, please bear with me, and please put down your, you know, whatever pickaxes that you're going to come to me because I'm breaking out of order because I am this morning going to peel off the Band-Aid and we are going to jump into the book of 1 Thessalonians. Now, one of the distinct things about the New Testament, as a lot of you guys know, 13 of the books are attributed to Paul and to Paul's ministry, the Apostle Paul. He wrote these letters to these different churches in these different areas, and they were all named after the areas in the people that he's writing to. And those are, and they're all written by Paul. And so for a lot of this series, we're going to be bringing up this guy named Paul, the Apostle Paul. Now, the thing about Paul, he was not a big fan of Christians. He persecuted them. He wanted to kill them. He thought like, hey, like get rid of this ideology of Christianity that you think exists because this is not, this is not it. You're wrong. You're completely wrong. I'm not having it. Until God kind of hit him literally in just this, he blinded him. I don't know what else to say. I don't really know what word I was searching for, but he blinded him and sent a Christian to go spend some time with Paul, teach Paul the truth, and then literally God opened Paul's eyes, both literally and figuratively, to the gospel that, hey, Paul, you're right that I am God, but you're wrong about who Christ is. This Jesus who came and lived, came and lived because I sent him as my son from heaven to earth to live a perfect life and to die a death signifying the death of all sins of the people who believe him. And he was resurrected from the dead, just as you've heard people tell. And that resurrection signifies that all those people who would believe in him and believe in Jesus as king and trust him as their Lord and Savior, that they are raised to life as well. That when God looks at them, they don't see the imperfections of their lives and of their walks in their life, but they see the perfection of Christ and the holiness of Christ because they have entrusted Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And once the Lord told Paul that, Paul's life was then about one thing and one thing only, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Everything that Paul did, when you read about his ministry and acts, when you read about his ministry and read his writings to each of these different churches as we're gonna go through, he has one goal and one goal only, and that Paul's ultimate goal was to share the gospel to all people and call them to repent and live a life reflective of that gospel. It's the only thing that he cared about. I want to make sure everyone I come in contact with knows who Jesus is, and I want to make sure everyone that I encounter not only knows who he is, but will give their hearts to that Christ and give their lives to the ministry of that Jesus, just as I have. And that's a lot of what 1 Thessalonians is. That's the goal of 1 Thessalonians is Paul writing to the people in the church of Thessalonica, some as reminding himself and just reminiscing on his time there, some to say, hey, like I'm so excited that this is taken, and some to say, hey, continue and press on. That is the goal of this. But as I was going through each one of his letters, as I was going through each book in the New Testament, man, what really jumped out to me about 1 Thessalonians is outside of clearly this being the goal, as it so often is in Paul's writing, I think that he just gives a really, really excellent description of exactly what that looks like. I think that's super valuable, because I don't, if you're like me, there's times where I hear sermons, or there's times where I'm reading through Scripture, and it is abundantly clear what Scripture would have me do. It's abundantly clear, okay, yes, I do love God. Yes, I know that I should go and tell more people about Jesus. Yes, I know I should minister to these people. I know I should make disciples. I should do all of those things. But sometimes I feel like it's a lot harder through Scripture to find, okay, so what exactly does that look like? And I think we find a pretty excellent description of what it looks like when we read the book of 1 Thessalonians. And so before we jump in, I want to give you a little background, a little history. So Paul and one of his ministry partners named Silas, you can find in the book of Acts, Acts 17, where they spent some time in Thessalonica. They go and join their community and start preaching the gospel, telling people who Jesus is, telling people, hey, this Jesus who came and walked on earth died for you so that you could have eternal life, so that you could have this eternal relationship with God the Father, all this stuff. And boy, was it effective. I mean, as they were preaching the gospel, the Lord was just taking hold of the hearts of the people in Thessalonica. And man, I mean, there was, it was like wildfire the gospel was spreading in the area. And it's incredible to read about. It's incredible to see. I mean, literally, it's like, it's like, you know, one of those church revivals where you see the Lord clearly moving. But in this case, it wasn't necessarily a revival because these people are coming alive for the first time. This entire city is hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time. And so it would be more of just a vival, I guess. They're becoming alive for the first time. I don't know. I don't know words like that, but that seems right. But it's incredible to read about how the Lord was moving, but then that brought some consequences as well because there were still Jewish people in the area who, like Paul was prior, was not happy about Jesus taking over, wasn't happy to hear that there were these two guys that were spreading these claims that they felt to be inaccurate, and so they started persecuting the people and kind of looked like seeking out Paul and Silas to the point that the Christians felt, the Christians and Paul and Silas all felt so distinctly worried that they ended up smuggling them out of the city at night one night because they were like, hey, if they find you, I think they might kill you. And so it is best for you and it's best for everybody if you can go ahead and leave, if we can get you out. And so they got out, they got out safely, and they got out knowing, hey, we know that a lot of people love Christ and give themselves to Christ, but man, Paul is really pretty downtrodden about the fact that he had to leave. As you read in 1 Thessalonians, there's a bit, especially on the early part of 1 Thessalonians, where he's really upset. It kind of takes on this flavor of, some of you guys probably know this, when you were a kid and your parents let you know that one of them got a new job in a new town or a new city and you were going to have to move, which meant, hey, all of these relationships that you've built, all of these friends that you have that you dearly love, you're not going to be able to see them much anymore, and you don't really have much say in that matter. You're just not going to get the amount of time that you hope to get with these people that you love. And that's kind of how Paul starts off this writing, just kind of really sad and really upset about the fact that he was having to be pulled out of this place with these people who he had really grown to love and adore. Not only that, but he got to see the way that Christ had begun moving in that place, and that excited him, but he just, he almost felt like he was leaving them when they needed him most to really learn, and to really learn from him and imitate him what ministering to other people looked like, and establishing roots where they had built a foundation of Christ. And so he just kind of felt like he got the short end of the stick on that and was really upset. So what he did is he sent another ministry partner named Timothy to go check in on him. Timothy, go spend some time with these people. First and foremost, let them know that I am praying for them every day. I pray that the Lord is continuing to move in their hearts, move in their lives, move in their city. But man, I also just pray that soon enough I get to come and see them again, to see my friends, the people that I love so much, once more. Let them know that, please, and spend some time with them. See how they're doing. See how the church is doing. See if the gospel is continuing to move, and report back to me. And so he does. He goes, he finds out, and he comes back. And the response is really positive. It's really good and exciting news that while obviously there's still issues going on in Thessalonica, but the gospel has just absolutely taken off. Where a foundation was set and where Paul had ministered to these people and showed them Christ, they were building upon that foundation and continuing daily to bring more and more people into the faith under Christ. And not only that, but it was moving outside of the city walls as well. I learned actually in researching that Thessalonica, how it is set up, it's actually kind of a, it's a trade town. So a lot of people in the rest of Macedonia and all over those nations, and also in the Roman Empire, all congregate to Thessalonica to do trading. And so while there is this there's this vival happening amongst the Thessalonians, as the gospel is traveling and hitting and encouraging so many people in this city, it is also moving outside of those city walls because as people are coming in for trade consistently, those people that are there are spreading the gospel to them as well. I actually read in a William Barclay commentary. This is really cool and really interesting. He basically said that you cannot understate, you cannot downplay how important the Christianity expanding outside of Thessalonica was for Christianity becoming a world religion. That's how important Christ taking over the hearts of the people in Thessalonica was. One of the main reasons why Christianity spread worldwide. And so you can imagine how Paul wrote to these people in response to this. First Thessalonians is in response to Timothy coming and telling him this unbelievable news. And as you can imagine, he writes just completely joyful and absolutely elated, which we've been there too, right? You've got, I mean, a lot of you guys are parents. You've raised kids that are still alive, which is like unbelievable to me, but good job for y'all. But you have kids and you have people in your life that you love and that you invest so much time and energy in. And so when you see them do well, when you see them do the thing that you helped them be able to do, get to that next step, get to that next point in life, when you see them come to know Jesus Christ for the first time, there's nothing better, right? There's nothing better, one, because somebody that you love is doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well. But two, there's just a pride in knowing that, hey, I had some small part to play in people doing well, people getting to know Christ, Christ being shed and spread, Christ being spread through the nation and into other nations. And so that's how he writes. He reminisces on his time there spent with these people, building relationships, growing to love them, being a part of the culture, being a part of the community, and sharing the gospel through them, saying, hey, like, I'm so happy that I was able to minister to you in this way, and I'm even happier that the Lord is moving now, and that you guys are imitating the way that I ministered to you guys, and now you're ministering to other people in the same way, and it's effective, and I am so happy to hear it, and I think what that does is it opens up the door to asking a question. The question is, how did Paul minister to the people in Thessalonica? Okay, this is awesome. Paul ministered to these people. So many of them started giving their hearts and giving their lives to Jesus, and now they're doing the same thing that he did, and it's continuing to work incredibly well. And I think that 1 Thessalonians does an excellent job of telling us exactly what. And so as you go through, I think the whole book does a good job of sharing that, of sharing that directive, of giving, of saying, hey, this is exactly how it was done. I think in particular, chapter 2, verses 5 through 8, does a really excellent job as to making something that seems a little bit inaccessible very accessible, not only for the people in Thessalonica, but I think for the people in this room. It's a very doable strategy of ministering to people that we can emulate. And so we're actually going to start, we're going to start in verse 7, and then we're going to go backwards, because as we've established, I'm not going in order. So if you will, please just read with me verses 7 and 8. Let me read that one more time. So being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you have become very dear to us. We came and we brought you the gospel, but we brought you so much more than that. We brought you our whole selves. We gave you ourselves. I think it's a pretty excellent summation to say that Paul ministered gently and sacrificially through genuine relational love. He didn't share the gospel from a distance. It's not some guy who rolls up into this community during the day, sets up a pulpit, and preaches throughout the day, sharing the gospel, and then goes back to his place away from everybody afterwards. He immersed himself into this community. He built relationships with these people. He chose to serve them and love them well and intently. He goes after them, becomes a part of them, and builds through relational love these relationships and these friendships with these people so that they know without a shadow of a doubt that this person cares about me, that I am loved by this person. What's he doing? He's showing the love of Christ to these people so that he can share with them the gospel of who Jesus is, and they're going to be willing to hear it. I think what he realized is that we should strive to present the truth of Christ through imitating the love of Christ. We hear a lot about what it looks like to share the gospel, and I get a ton of questions about how am I supposed to do that. Like, I don't really think I'm meant to be Paul and go with a couple guys to different nations and different cities and preach to them until I'm thrown in prison and then write letters to them. But clearly what Paul is saying here, because Paul echoes a lot in his time and in his writing, I am ministering to you in this way and I am calling you to imitate and minister to other people in this way. How am I calling you to share the gospel? The same way that I'm sharing the gospel with you. I'm coming, and I'm going to be a part of your lives. I'm going to build friendships, and I'm going to love you well. I'm going to love you out of the love of Christ that I have received from Christ, and through that, through me loving you like Christ, I am going to share the truth of Christ with you in a way that is impactful, in a way that is meaningful, and in a way that you are going to be willing to hear from me because you know that I only genuinely care about you. He actually goes a little bit deeper in verses five and six. And so, hey, like, we're disciples of God. We could have come in and told you, hey, these are the things that you need to know. These are the things that you need to do. These are the things that you need to figure out so that you can be saved. But instead, he said, hey, that's not, that wasn't our goal. Our goal wasn't to share the gospel in this impersonal, in this formal, impersonal way. It was to share the gospel as personally as possible. Now, the wording of the greed part, I want to go dive into that a little bit, because as I kind of told you, he's a little bit repetitive with the things that he says throughout, and I think that is probably because they're important. Paul thought it was very, very meaningful and a very useful tool of ministry to, when he went into Thessalonica, not to establish a church and be the head of that church, not to be a guy who, what he did is, hey, I'm bringing you the gospel. I'm kind of going to be the minister here, and so please pay me, bring me food, give me shelter, so that I can bring this good news to you. Instead, Paul talks pretty distinctly about that he got a job in Thessalonica as soon as he got there, because he wanted to work amongst the people. He wanted the people in Thessalonica to know, hey, I care only's awesome that you're doing ministry and that that's your full-time job, but he's kind of saying all of you guys, y'all are doing it the way that he would do it. Y'all are doing it the way that he's calling here. That's how, I think that's ultimately maybe the thing that stuck out most to me in this is this is a message for the people of the church that aren't working in the church. I have to work hard to make sure I don't do that. I have to go out of my way to make sure that my students know that, hey, I'm going to minister to you and I'm going to love you while you're in this building, but I'm also going to go outside of these walls to make sure I'm a part of your lives, ministering to you, getting to know you so that you know without a shadow of a doubt that, yes, sure, this is Kyle's job to do this, but the only reason he's actually doing it is because he loves me, and he wants me to know the gospel. But you guys aren't beholden to those things, and I think that what Paul is saying is, y'all are doing it right. That's the way that he would call us to minister. And what I think he realized is that there is a purity of intention when you have nothing to gain from the people you are specifically loving and pouring into. How pure is your motivation when as you're building relationships and as you're building upon foundations of relationships, when you're loving people well, going out of your way to serve people, that you're asking of nothing in return, to where they know that you're only doing that because you care about them, just in the same way that you know that the only reason you're doing that is because, hey, the Lord loves this person, and so do I, regardless of who they are. And I think what I love about this is that this is a message that I, like, this is something that I see people in this church do really well. I think this is certainly something to be like, yes, I need to do this, whatever, but like, I see this all over, all over the place in this church. I got a buddy, Preston, that comes to the church that he's maybe one of the best possible, like, friend makers that I've ever met. Like, when I watch him in conversation, I'm just like, gosh, man, like, that dude genuinely cares about everything that everyone says to him. I don't know if that's true or not. I don't know if he's just trying to be like Jesus or whatever, or if he's just, well, you know, like, I don't know what it is, but I'm just so taken aback at how good he is at making people know, hey, you are my friend and I care about you. And recently we had a conversation. He said there was a guy in his office who obviously was his friend because he's been around Preston and that's what Preston does. He makes friends. And he was like, hey man, like, I just seem to notice you really care about people a lot. And you honestly seem to be a lot more content than I am with life. You don't seem to get quite as upset about stuff. You love people well. And I just kind of want to know what's your secret. I want to be more like that. I want to understand how to do that better. That opened up the door for Preston to be able to tell him about Jesus. That door doesn't get opened if Preston is just trying to give him the gospel but not give him any part of himself. But Preston gave of himself, built this relational foundation that that guy wanted to ask Preston that question. I think about my buddy Logan, another guy who comes to the church. He, two of his best friends are two people he served in the Navy with. Neither one are believers, actually. But Logan has loved them well and has built that friendship to a point that he's able to share the gospel with them, and they're not going to be turned off. They're willing to listen. Not only that, but they love him so much that they want to support him in whatever the way they can. So he's actually, he hosts every other Monday night, he hosts this film watching group where the point of it is to watch this film and then talk about how it relates to the gospel. And guess who's on Zoom every single week from all over the nation? Those two guys. They want to be a part. They want to talk about film, and they listen. They get to hear about the gospel every other week on Monday night where outside of that, they don't hear it at all because they have a friend that they love and want to support a cool thing that he's doing. They hear the gospel because Logan has loved them and has loved them well and has built that relationship to that point. My wife, Ashlyn, she rules. I don't know if I've seen more tears than watching her go from two offices, one in Garner and one in Cary, to just being in Cary. The people in that Garner office, there were just so many tears because Ashlyn is the friend on staff, on staff with those people who's going to always consistently love them well and encourage them, point them back to Jesus and be a light in their life. You don't know how effective you are at that until you leave and you find out that the response is everyone being so upset. She had a mom say, hey, I know we live in Garner, but we're going to be there in Cary. I can't stop crying. My daughter genuinely says that Miss Ashlyn is her best friend. We're going to stick with you. That happens because Ashlyn loves very well. She's got a person in the office who just, in the carry office, who just experienced a tragedy and reached out to everybody, said, hey, this happened. Please don't ask me about it. I'm not ready to talk. A week later, guess who's, guess who walked in, whose door she walked in because she wanted to talk? Ashlyn. Because Ashlyn, she knows that Ashlyn loves her well and is going to point her to Jesus and point her towards the light. And finally, I look at, I look at Karen and Chris. I know Chris isn't used to being praised on a Sunday morning, but since Nate's gone, we're just gonna, we're gonna break all the, we're gonna break all the molds here. But I mean, their, their youngest daughter is my age, graduated in 2011, and they right now have decided, you know what, we're tired of having all this stuff, we want to have somebody come and live with us. They have somebody from, a soccer player from South Africa currently living with them, a college student, which like, I don't know, can't be like insanely fun, and't be insanely easy. I mean like super nice dude, but like, you know, they've been living with a lot of freedom for a long time by themselves. And so they're just hosting kids over at their house all the time, college students, just college dudes, just rolling up, soccer players, probably acting a fool. I don't know. I'm just kidding. Definitely not acting a fool. I know you're not, bro. But I mean, how easy is it? How easy would it have been for Karen and Chris to love them well by supplying them with Chick-fil-A coupons so they feel like they have some other food? To bring them some candy, bring them some extra clothes, whatever, and just check in on them every once in a while. But what they recognize and what they realize, in the same way that Paul knew was incredibly important, is if I want to truly impact the people that are around me, then I need to truly be a part of their lives. I need to truly build relationships with these people built on a foundation of the love of Christ, loving them well, encouraging them well, and that is a true and ultimate way to make a gospel impact. And that is where then the door is open to truly not only share the love of Christ through your actions, but share the truth of Christ in your words, and to truly share the gospel to the people around you. And in Paul's writing, Paul kind of says the same thing. He's like, guys, I want to encourage you in this, but you're doing it really well. Actually, I want to read it because I think it's beautiful, and I think that the simple way that I want to encourage you, Grace, who does this so well, is the same way that Paul encourages the people of Thessalonica. So if you will, please, let's read verses, or 1 Thessalonians 4, 9 through 10. Now concerning brotherly love, you have no need for anyone to write to you. For you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, be able to show and share the gospel to so many other people. So my simple question for you that I want to close on is this. Who and where can you do this more and more and continue to do it more and more? So I want to close this morning in a prayer, but I want to, it's kind of a specific prayer. Ashlyn, my wife, she wants to be as helpful as possible in my sermons, and sometimes she feels like, I gotta like, you know, she feels like she's unhelpful. I'm like, Ashlyn, you're great. Just you loving me is very helpful. But she knew kind of what I was talking about this morning, and she was reminded of a song, it's actually by Casting Crowns, throwback, called The Bridge. And this song, I think, just does an absolutely beautiful job of just giving the same encouragement and the same prayer that we pray as we try to share the love of Christ so that we can share the truth of Christ. So if you will, we're just going to pray, and I'm going to pray over us these lyrics from this song. Bow with me. With love, we earn the right to speak your truth. It's not just what we say, it's what we do. I want to be a bridge, God, that leads to you. So reach through me and let them see, Lord, let them see. Lord, let us love like this. Let us share the gospel like this. Not formal, not impersonal, but as personal and as loving as we possibly can. We love you so much. Amen.

Good morning. My name is Doug Bergeson and I'm a partner here at Grace. It's exciting and a privilege to be up here this morning. So thank you all for coming and thanks as well to all those who are listening elsewhere. Although I probably shouldn't admit this, I wasn't initially excited about the prospect of speaking this morning. In fact, and as my wife Debbie will attest, when Nate first texted me to ask, my initial gut reaction was pretty much the same as it's always been when asked to speak. Texting Nate back, I wrote, hey, I was thinking that with Kyle and Aaron in the bullpen, perhaps my speaking days were coming to a close. And Nate replied, and I quote, we have a lot in the bullpen to be sure, but I think the church is best served through multiple voices, and I'd like for Grace to hear from you again, if possible. Now, I totally subscribe to the idea that hearing from a variety of voices is a healthy and good thing. But after a few moments, I thought to myself, hey, wait a minute, he didn't really answer my question. Why ask me and not the other more capable and willing voices? And this is where, if you're squeamish and like your safe spaces, you should cover your ears and avert your eyes, because I'm going to give you a glimpse into the seeming underbelly of church life. Nate's a gifted speaker and does a great job of conveying the truth of Scripture. He's also pretty smart. Not super smart, but pretty smart. And he's very clever. But most of all, he's cunning. Not pretty cunning. I mean really, really cunning. And he understands that no matter how good his sermons might be, it's an inevitable human tendency as night follows day for people to start taking things for granted, including his sermons. So for Nate, what better way to solve this problem than to remind everyone just how dry, pointless, and uninspiring a sermon can be if not done well. And what better way to do that than to trot me up here every six months or so. Voila. Presto change-o. Problem solved. Next Sunday morning, people will be streaming early to Grace just to get a seat, chomping at the bit to hear what Nate has to say. Not to worry, though. Despite being used in this way, it's not all bad for me. In fact, selfishly, two very good things have happened. The first is that I find preparing a sermon a big responsibility and a bit nerve-wracking, which in turn compels me to read more, study more, think more, pray more. I always feel completely inadequate, and that, paradoxically, turns out to be a very good place to be. So despite my early misgivings, by the time I'm finally ready and up here on stage, it's been such a spiritually rich experience for me that I'm truly excited and deeply grateful for the opportunity. Trying to get a little more light, excuse me. The other really good thing that's happened is that even though we are now in our third week of the sermon series on Jesus' Beatitudes, I got to pick which Beatitude to talk about. And I picked Jesus' first one, my favorite one. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It's the first Beatitude and my favorite because it reveals an absolutely essential truth for each of us, regardless of station or circumstance. I was raised in a modern split-level suburban house wedged between Chicago Proper and O'Hare Airport. Down in the family room, my father had a large bookshelf filled with all sorts of fabulous books. Works of Shakespeare, Winston Churchill's six-volume set on World War II, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Contiki by Thor Heyerdahl, Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, and on and on. I didn't actually read many of them, and for sure none of the Shakespeare's. I could not make head nor tail of his Elizabethan English. But I loved taking the books down and paging through them. However, there was one book I actually did read a lot. This little book, 101 Famous Poems. I came to treasure this little book so much that when I was leaving home for good, I just took it from my parents' house without a word, and obviously have kept it since. I have many weaknesses and vices, some of which I freely admit and openly share, and others which I only acknowledge to God as they are embarrassing and a source of personal disappointment and even shame. But I can confidently say that stealing is not one of them, except perhaps this one time. Vice of mine or not, I couldn't think of a more fitting way to introduce today's beatitude than by reading the following poem from a book that I stole from my own parents. The Fool's Prayer by Edward Sill. The royal feast was done. The king sought some new sport to banish care, and to his jester cried, Sir fool, kneel down and make for us a prayer. The jester doffed his cap and bells and stood the mocking court before. They could not see the bitter smile behind the painted grin he wore. He bowed his head and bent his knee upon the monarch's silken stool. His pleading voice arose, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. No pity, Lord, can change the heart from red with wrong to white as wool. The rod must heal the sin, but Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. Tis not by guilt the onward sweep of truth and right, O Lord, we stay. Tis by our follies that so long we hold the earth from heaven away. These clumsy feet still in the mire go crushing blossoms without end. These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust among the heartstrings of a friend. The old-time truth we might have kept, who knows how sharp it pierced and stung. The word we had not sense to say, who knows how grandly it had rung. Our faults no tenderness should ask, the chastening stripes must cleanse them all, but for our blunders, oh, and shame, before the eyes of heaven we fall. Earth bears no balsam for mistakes. Men crown the knave and scourge the tool that did his will. But thou, O Lord, be merciful to me, a fool. The rooms hushed, and silence rose the king and sought his gardens cool, and walked apart and murmured low, be merciful to me, a fool. There are a million reasons why I love that poem. It tells of a surprise, a reversal in the accepted order. The greater brought low and it is the jester, not the king, who is wise. Everyone is equal before God. Everyone is lost. Everyone in need. It resonates because in our heart of hearts, we know it's true. It is the Upside down and inside out in virtually every way imaginable. And if I was in a court of law having to prove that point, I might start with the Beatitudes as my exhibit A. or the happy and healthy or the beautiful or the self-sufficient. But blessed are those who know that before God, they are a spiritual dumpster fire without merit and utterly undeserving of God's favor and blessing. That is what it means biblically to be poor in spirit. And that is a radically different take on how one goes about getting on God's good side. But a bit differently, the only thing that qualifies you or me to experience God's blessing is to honestly confess that we don't deserve to experience it at all. And why is that admission that we are utterly undeserving and without merit such a big deal? Because it's an acknowledgement that we are not okay, that we are separated from God and in desperate straits. And that, although it might seem initially like a depressing admission, in fact is a magnificent, mind-blowing blessing from God because it creates and fosters in us a posture receptive to his free offer of mercy, grace, and forgiveness through his son, Jesus Christ. In the book of Luke, Jesus tells a very famous story, the parable of the prodigal son that illustrates precisely this point. As many of you might recall, a man has two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance, an act of enormous disrespect and outright rebellion in those days given that the father was still alive. The younger son then takes his share to a distant land where he proceeds to completely squander it on wild living. Predictably, he eventually falls on to hard times. Poverty, hunger, utter destitution. When he finally hits rock bottom, he has an epiphany. Realizing that he had sinned against his father and was no longer worthy of being called his father's son, he decides to return home and beg for mercy. But the father, seeing his son approaching in the distance, runs to him and hugs and kisses him and then throws a lavish party in the younger son's honor. All the while, the older son was having a fit, refusing to go into the party despite his father coming out and pleading with him to do so. The father tried to explain that everything he had was the older son's and that he was always with him. But all the older son could think about was the unfairness of it all. How obedient and hardworking he had been, how deserving, certainly compared to his brother. Although the extravagant, unmerited love and forgiveness the father offered his youngest son is breathtaking in that story, there is another key takeaway, the remarkable contrast between the fates of the two sons, a complete reversal of what we would suspect. The younger son failed spectacularly, but in so doing was brought to a place in which he clearly acknowledged that he stood before his father without a claim. Albeit not by his design, and certainly not something he signed up for, the younger son, through his ordeal, had become poor in spirit. And as a result of that condition, that posture, he experienced the mercy, forgiveness, and grace freely offered to him by his father. Tragically, his older son, convinced of his own righteousness and merit, was blinded to what his father was always offering him. And at the end of the day, it was the younger, the prodigal son who was advantaged and blessed, and it was the older who remained lost. Admittedly, those takeaways are somewhat nuanced and subtle, so I'll read another parable from Luke This is in Luke 18. some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked downterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get. But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus goes on to say, I tell you that this man, the tax collector, rather than the other, went home justified before God. That word means made right before him, declared not guilty. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. It's pretty straightforward. The Pharisee thought he was okay and was not. The tax collector knew he was not and was blessed. Over the previous two weeks, Nates explained that our English translation of blessed doesn't do justice to what Jesus was talking about in the Beatitudes. More than happy, more than good fortune, more than favorable circumstances. Biblically, the word refers to an eternal security and well-being that aren't at all dependent on our feelings and circumstances. Regardless how difficult or unpromising things might seem at the time. And to be given the kingdom of heaven is simply another way of referring to salvation, redeemed by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It's the ultimate blessedness, beginning first in this life, but ultimately culminating in an eternity with God. So this first beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, is second to none in importance as all roads to God's blessing and favor run through it. And there's a lot at stake, as it's my belief, that realizing one's desperate need is the single biggest stumbling block for people coming to faith to Jesus Christ. After all, salvation doesn't mean much if you're not convinced you need saving. But as critical as it is to recognize one's need, it's not sufficient. It's necessary, but just like in the story of the prodigal son, one must, in faith, return to the father to experience his goodness. Now, some may feel the urge to protest. Hey, Doug, I'm not that bad a person. In fact, I'm a pretty good person. In response, I'd say, that may very well be true. You may be a good person. Not only is that a very low bar, it's also the wrong bar. So why do we have to admit that we're spiritually bankrupt? The simplest answer is that it's true. I've often made the point that if I ever meet someone who seems like they have their act totally together, I simply conclude that I must not know them well enough. Although trying to be funny when I say that, I believe it's true. You might accuse me of being overly cynical, but I don't think so, and neither does Scripture. As the Apostle Paul writes in the book of Romans, there is no one righteous, not even one. And a few verses later, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified, there's that word again, declared not guilty, made right with God, freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ. And in his letter to the Ephesians, Paul makes the so that no one can boast. The kingdom of heaven, God's ultimate blessing and desire for each of us is simply not attained by the good things we might do, no matter how many or how good. Rather, it's reserved for the poor in spirit. Now, why is it so hard for us to admit our poverty and desperate need? There are lots of reasons, but the biggest is sin itself. In a massive, universal catch-22, it's our own sinfulness which keeps us from seeing how sinful we actually are. Virtually everything in our nature is singing a different tune. Hey, I'm really not that bad, and I'm certainly not totally helpless. I have agency. At its core, it's human pride, an implicit assertion of our own sovereignty, that we can steer our own ship. Thank you very much. We can figure out what's best for us. Confessing one's spiritual bankruptcy and abject need so completely rubs against the grain of everything our world tells us that even among the world's great religions, Christianity alone invokes such a confession. In all the others, there are things one can and even must do to get in God's good graces. It's transactional in a sense. I've done this or that. I've earned it, so God owes me. And I should get at least some of the credit. In essence, I'm the one in the driver's seat. Whereas the Christian gospel in polar opposition asserts that God did it. Everything. And he gets the credit. All of it. I did absolutely nothing and am in his debt. Truly being poor in spirit has always been a challenge for humankind, and it's not getting any easier. Virtue signaling is a term that's gained a lot of traction in our popular culture, and although the term may be relatively new, the concept is not. As human beings, since time immemorial, have sought ways to assert their own virtue. Perhaps it's where we live, who we associate with, the church we attend, the good things we do, our families, our social setting, our vocation, our possessions, our education, our politics, you name it, we find a way to do it and have always found ways to do it. But But the temptation of virtue signal today is greater than ever. Advances in technology and communication, though life-changing and transformative in many, many ways, have a dark side. The platform, audience, and access each of us is now afforded are unrivaled in human history, and not all for the good. Without a doubt, there's great value in having a marketplace for ideas, social discourse, advocacy, and the like. But the ease with which we can now signal our virtue is nectar to our innate human desire to build ourselves up. It seems as if our entire society, certainly our media, entertainment, politics, commerce, have all become performance art. Everyone morphing into little Torquemadas, Spanish inquisitors, casting about, looking for those not thinking right, not speaking right, not acting right, not looking right, not voting right, not caring enough about the right things, caring too much about the wrong things, we've become quicker than ever to accuse and condemn. I'm not even on social media to speak of, yet I'm still caught up in this overall mood of the times. On my news feed each morning, I'll read something about an entertainer or politician or businessman or some journalist, and I'll immediately think to myself, what a twit. What a moron, an idiot. It's judgment. It's pride. An implicit comparison between me and the object of my ridicule and scorn. An assertion of my own virtue. I'm marinating in my rightness, goodness, and wisdom when I do that. How different is that from the Pharisee and the parable I read earlier? Thank God I'm not like that tax collector. I'll tell you what virtue signaling is not. It's not like anything resembling Jesus Christ and is absolutely antithetical to the gospel news, excuse me, to the good news of the gospel. Virtue signaling has a corrosive effect on us and social media hasn't helped but only amplified. After all, I already have these impulses to want to be right and viewed as smart and virtuous. I don't need them so easily catered to. It turns out the Pharisees, the Jewish religious leaders of the day, were the first century's poster children for what today we call virtue signaling. Everything they did was performative for others to see and admire, totally wrapped up in an external righteousness rather than the real deal. And if one reads a little further in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reserved his harshest and most withering criticism and contempt for them, declaring that when Pharisees gave, prayed, and fasted in public for the praise and affirmation of men that they had received their reward in full. Convinced and satisfied with their own righteousness, they could not see their desperate need. They were far, far away from being poor in spirit and far, far away from the kingdom of heaven. Personally, I do not find these times we live in very helpful if I genuinely desire to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk of my faith. They do not cultivate in me a posture receptive to grace, nor encourage me to offer grace, empathy, and mercy to others. Rather, what is cultivated in me is a spirit of judgment, superiority, and disdain. Very hard to reconcile with Jesus' words, for whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. Although we all virtue signal in some form or fashion, it's especially harmful when done by believers, those of us who profess to be followers of Christ. The temptation to signal our virtue has always been and continues to be an enormous Achilles heel for Christians and for the church. We are susceptible, because we still sin, to moving away over time from our initial confession of brokenness and need, of being poor in spirit, to something quite different. For example, I'm an elder here at Grace. I lead a couple of small groups. I volunteer in the toddler room. Man, I even went on a mission trip last fall. Sure, Christ died for my sins, but look at me now. I think we can all safely agree that I'm nailing it, right? Go me! Now those things I'm doing aren't bad. In fact, they're good things. It's my pride that's a problem. My lens has moved stealthily, covertly from my need to my merit. What I'm now presenting in my life is not the gospel and it's not the truth and is terribly misleading to anyone genuinely searching for the truth. So what can we do about this state of things? As I reflect on today's beatitude, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. I'm convinced we'd be better off signaling our vices more and our virtues less. More emphasis on what Christ has done on our behalf and less of what we've done on his. Being poor in spirit, confessing our spiritual poverty and need is not intended to be a one-time event, but only the beginning of a lifelong transformation empowered by God's Holy Spirit. We tend to underestimate the amazing power and ongoing blessing being poor in spirit offers to each of us individually and to the church as a whole. When we embrace our weakness and need, it's a much more honest and compelling witness of Jesus Christ than when we don't. I find it very revealing that the following brief little episode was deemed important enough to be included in three of the four Gospels, accounts of Jesus' life and ministry. Matthew, the disciple and former tax collector, was hosting a great banquet at his house for Jesus, along with a large crowd of tax collectors and other unsavory sorts. The Pharisees complained. Of course they did. Every party needs a poop. Asking why Jesus was dining and hanging out with these sinners, Jesus answered them as follows. It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If the church is to be a welcoming, grace-filled infirmary that it's designed to be, rather than an exclusive enclave for the moral and virtuous. It's a shame that we so often act and are perceived as if we're the latter rather than the former. There is no advantage to clinging to these pretenses. We in the church are far more appealing and credible when we don't. One of the things I've always loved and valued most about grace is that we have, for the most part, leaned into the notion that we do not have our act together and hold such a confession to not only be self-evident, but hopeful, attractive, and life-giving. And though admitting one's abject spiritual poverty and desperate need might be a giant, depressing downer in the world's eyes, it offers great comfort and new life to those who actually know themselves to be sinners. Now, it's important to note that we can't make ourselves poor in spirit. It's not something we can do or become on our own. It's the work of God's Holy Spirit who convicts us of our sin and draws us to Jesus. But we can certainly cooperate with the Spirit. How we respond matters. We can remind ourselves through prayer, study, and worship that we are now in Jesus Christ not through anything we've done. When we embrace that defining fact that we are not Christ due to our being either moral or good, but because we've been forgiven, rescued, and redeemed, it unlocks the door to the magnificence of grace and grows our appetite to extend grace to others. Speaking only for myself, when I'm poor in spirit, there is a softening in my heart, a little more empathy and tolerance of others, a little less focused on others' deficiencies, a little more patient, a little more inclined to forgive. I'd like to close with one final remarkable and eye-opening parable from the book of Luke, which has such profound implications that I don't think it gets the attention that it deserves. Jesus was invited to dine at one of the Pharisees' houses. Learning of this, a woman from town who had led an immoral life brought perfume and stood behind Jesus at his feet, weeping. Wetting his feet with her tears, she then wiped them with her hair, kissed, and poured perfume on them. The Pharisee was indignant, thinking to himself that if Jesus was truly a prophet, he would have known that the woman touching him was a sinner and how wrong this entire situation was. Knowing what his host was thinking, Jesus asked the Pharisee a question. He supposed the one who had the bigger debt canceled. You have judged correctly, Nor did she put oil on my head, but she has covered my feet with perfume. Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven, for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little, loves little. Jesus then said to the woman, your sins are forgiven. Once again, the gospel turns everything we know on its head. It's not the upstanding and righteous who are most inclined and most able to love, but those who most appreciate the depth of their need for forgiveness, mercy, and grace, the poor in spirit. It literally is the gift that keeps on giving and the blessing that keeps on blessing. This moment in our culture, with all its acrimony and angst, presents an opportune time for us to offer something different, to truly be salt and light in a lost world that really just seems like it's thrashing about. In addition to being biblical and true, it's a lot more attractive and inviting to others when our lives reflect a healthy circumspection and wariness of our own virtue. And a well-founded confidence and well-placed trust in the righteousness and redemption offered through Jesus Christ. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Not only is poorness in spirit key to God's kingdom for us, it's the key to the kingdom for the world. There's a lot at stake. Let's pray. Dear Lord, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your love. Thank you for the fact that we can stand before you without a claim, and you love us. That's what you expect. You're our God. You, your righteousness, your love, your grace and mercy are sufficient for us. Thank you for this morning. Pray that you'll use it to however you see fit. And I thank you for being merciful to me, a fool. Amen.

I was so caught up in worship and prayer that I forgot I was supposed to come up here while she was praying. Whoops. Hey guys, I'm Nate. I'm the normal pastor here. I'm just bad at stuff sometimes. If I haven't gotten the chance to meet you, I would love to get to do that in the lobby afterwards if you're up for it. Also, after the service today, we're having Discover Grace in the kids' room next door, which is an opportunity just to learn more about who we are, what we do, what makes us tick as a church. If you're new here or you've never done that and you'd like to, even if you haven't signed up for it, you're invited. We've got space for you and snacks for you. We'd love to see you over there. This morning, we are launching into our new series called The Blessed Life. I always have to double check what the title of the series is because I always tell Carly and Aaron, here's what I'm going to be talking about. In my head, I'm calling it this, but do whatever makes the most sense graphically and then just tell me what you've called it. And then I always call it the wrong thing and they always make fun of me. So this morning I looked, it's the blessed life. I see it there and that's what we're gonna go with. This is a look at the Beatitudes. Jesus's first recorded public address is the most famous sermon ever given. It's the greatest sermon ever given. As a matter of fact, a few years ago, we did a series called The Greatest Sermon, where we looked at the Sermon on the Mount. He begins the Sermon on the Mount with this series of blessings, nine blessings that we refer to as the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are Georgia Tech fans, for you understand suffering. Things like that. I went to the NC State game yesterday with Lily and watched Georgia Tech play NC State in regular season college basketball. And my biggest takeaway from going to my first NC State basketball game is, everybody just calm down, all right? Just take it easy. A, it's middle of the season. B, you're NC State. Like, nothing's going to happen. What are you going to do, win the regular season? Who cares? Just relax, people. Just get a Coke, watch the game, talk to your friends. I don't understand what all the noise is for. Anyways, and I'm wearing NC State colors, incidentally. Yeah, yeah. I don't know why I told you that. But we're getting into this series, The Blessed Life. And we're looking at these blessings that Jesus opens with. And I think it's so interesting and poignant and worth pointing out that for the very first time that Jesus addresses the public that we see, he meets them right where they are. He blesses them. He offers them comfort. And he basically says through his words, hey, I see you. I understand your struggles. But as we look at the Beatitudes, and it says blessed are these nine different groups of people, we've got to wonder what it means to be blessed. What is it to be blessed? What is it to be blessed by God? This is something that can be misconstrued in terrible ways, and we can warp our entire theology out of a pursuit of a misunderstood blessing. So when I've understood being blessed historically, normally I kind of think of it as a time in life when you receive unreasonable favor or unreasonable access, and you didn't earn it. Someone just gifts you with it, gifts you with their favor, gifts you with their access, gifts you with this special portion of joy that you would not have otherwise experienced. I kind of think, when I think of being blessed, I kind of think of the spring of 2013. I was on staff at a church called Greystone. I had a really good friend on staff who's still a good friend to this day, a guy named Heath Hollinsworth. And Heath and his family, they have tickets to the Masters and they go every year. Now in 2013, I was not a golf fan. I didn't really keep up with it. This is to my detriment. I missed all the good Tiger years focusing on Peyton Manning and football in general. But I missed some good years, and I wasn't really a huge golf fan at the time, but Heath, in late March, picked up the phone, and he said, hey, I've got some tickets to the Masters. I'm going to go Friday of the tournament. Do you want to come with me? And now, like I said, I wasn't a golf fan at the time, but I've always been a sports fan, and I knew enough about the Masters that if someone says, hey man, you want to go to the Masters with me? You immediately answer yes. Okay? Just life advice for all of you. If you've never heard of it before, if you don't know what it is, and someone says, would you like to go to the Masters with me? Yes, immediately I would. Cancel whatever you have. I'm getting married that day. Doesn't matter. Postpone it. Go to the Masters. You can get married any day, okay? You're not going to get invited back to the Masters again. And so I'm like, yeah, I'll go. And I said, dude, are you sure, though? I don't deserve this. We have friends who are going to be really angry when they find out that you invited me. They deserve to go. They've been watching. They love the Masters. They know the lore of Augusta National, the whole deal. I do not deserve this. He's like, no, I want you to go. I like taking people who have never been before, and I really want to see you just experience it with fresh eyes. I'm like, all right, cool. So we go, and for those of you who don't know what the Masters is, it really is the greatest sporting event on the planet that you can attend in person. It really is. Maybe Wimbledon, I would put up there as like maybe that's neck and neck, but going to Augusta National and experiencing what it is to be a patron, not a fan, is amazing. And if you've seen it on your TV, on CBS with Jim Nance's soft voice, hello friends, and the birds chirping in the background, whenever they start to play the promos in like February, I get all nostalgic in my living room. I'm like, oh man, this is going to be great. And it's a beautiful, beautiful course. I just spent so much money on making it look good. It looked so good that when I got there and I stepped onto the course, I literally had to bend down and touch the grass to make myself believe that it was real. It looked that good. And you walk around all the places and you see all the things. And holes 11, 12, and 13 are called Amen Corner. And when you see it, you understand why. And I'm telling you, it looks like walking around in a painting. It's just, it's unbelievable. And the whole day I'm thinking, I don't deserve this. This is as close to heaven on earth as it possibly gets. When we get to heaven, I'll be like, this feels like hole number eight. This makes sense. The front of Augusta National, there are pearly gates. Do you understand? It's an amazing place. And I couldn't believe that I got to go there. And ever since then, I've loved golf. I play golf. I thought for the rest of my life, I want this to be a part of what I get to experience. And it really did impact me in a great way. But when I think about being blessed, I think about opportunities like that where you're walking around and I'm realizing in every moment, I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be here. This is amazing. But then I started to dig into what being blessed really means, because I think that we probably all think about blessing being that way. When we have some unearned favor in our life, and we go, gosh, I don't deserve this, but this is great. And there's a part of that that's absolutely true and absolutely is reflective of what it means to be blessed. But when you actually study the words that Jesus was using here, and if you've been a part of Grace for a while, you know I'm not like an in the Greek pastor. That's not really my deal because what that really means is on the Google because people don't know Greek. They just Google it and then they sound smart and be like, the original Greek word is this thing I read this week. But this time it's important because the word that Jesus chose to use there really means fully satisfied. So to be blessed is to be fully satisfied. It's not to experience undue favor, although that is a part of it. It's not to experience unearned access, although I'm sure that is a part of it as well. To be blessed, and this is really how we need to understand it as we move through the series. To be blessed, according to the words that Jesus himself chose, the best we know, means to be fully satisfied. And when you think about it that way, it's a hugely powerful concept. It's a hugely powerful concept that to be blessed means to be fully satisfied. I have a friend who we make fun of for this, but he is never satisfied. We can be having the most fun. I've got this group of eight friends that I've been friends with for over, some for as long as 35 years, some for 25 years. That's still the new guy in the group. And we go on trips, we talk every day. We do all kinds of stuff. And we've had a lot of fun together. We can be in a moment where we are having apex fun. We're at the golf course. We're goofing off. We're around a lake. We're on a boat. We're in Vegas. We're wherever we are. We're having apex fun in the middle of Wrigley Field. And my buddy, Trip, will look at us and he'll say, is there anything we can do to make this more fun? And we're like, no, shut up. Like this is, what you're doing right now is making it less fun. Just soak in the moment, man. This is great. But his mind is always going, is there anything that we could be doing that would make us more satisfied than we are right now? Like, no, man, just chill out. Just enjoy it. That's what being blessed is, is to realize in this moment, in this season, in this time, I don't need anything else to be completely satisfied, to be completely happy, to be completely fulfilled. And when you think about it that way, you see that God has blessed all of us tremendously no matter what season we're in. That more often than not, if we'll just stop and look around, what we'll see is that God has given us everything we need for happiness, for peace, for contentment, to really feel as though we're experiencing blessing. I'll have these moments with Jen where we're sitting in the house and the kids are being sweet. No one's whining. No one's complaining. She and I are joking back and forth. We're laughing at something that Lily or John are doing. Those are our kids. And I'll look at her and I'll just go, who's got it better than us? And she'll go, nobody. And I'm like, no, nobody. This is so happy. This is so great. There's nothing else that could be added to this moment to make me feel more blessed. I have all the things I need in life to experience your blessing. That's why Jordan jokingly pointed to me and said, hey, you love this song. I will build my life upon your love as a firm foundation. But I do, because it reminds me that the foundation of love that God gives us in our life is a foundation of everything that we need to feel blessed, to feel fully happy and fully content and fully satisfied. Our problem is we start to look outside of the blessings of God to experience a joy that we don't need to grasp for, and we just don't see ourselves doing that, which is why this first beatitude this morning might be so helpful for us in how we frame up our thinking around blessing and around what God provides for us. So now that we understand what it means to be blessed, I want us to look at this, the fourth promise. It's the fourth blessing of the nine that Jesus gives when he says this in Matthew 5, verse 6. By the way, if you want to read the Sermon on the Mount, you can find it in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. But it says this in verse 6, Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, can mean some different things. In most New Testament contexts, what that means is right standing before God. But in this context, really what it means is, I believe, it's a placeholder for God himself. God bless you. I need the Spirit today. Would you fill me for this conversation? Blessed are those who literally hunger and thirst for righteousness, for God himself, for you will be satisfied. And this beatitude and this idea in scripture is always particularly challenging to me because I'm not one to read this and think to myself, oh yeah, that's me. That's me. When I read through the beatitudes, blessed are those who mourn. I can relate to that. That one's fine. But when I see blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. I don't read this and be like, I'm blessed because I hunger and thirst. I always feel challenged by that. Don't hunger enough for God. I'm not thirsty enough for his word. And I would bet that you feel similarly. This beatitude always reminds me of a psalm, Psalm 42, where David writes, as the deer, and I memorized this when I was young, which means I did it in the King's English, not the ESV, I did it in the KJV. As the deer panteth for the water, so my soul longs for you, O God, the living God. And it just makes me wonder, have you ever pantethed? Have you ever just panted because you were just so thirsty? If I don't have a drink, I really might fall out right here because I have, and I'll tell you where. I was in Johannesburg, South Africa. And some of y'all, if you were around in the fall, you know that I had the opportunity to go to South Africa and that part of coming back was I had to make a difficult decision to leave my luggage behind in Johannesburg. That particular piece of luggage had my Crocs in there, and some of y'all know that those have kind of become a part of Grace's subculture. My toothpaste-colored Crocs have been on multiple continents. Jen was elated that those were over in Africa and will never be seen again. But the good African people sent me my bag. I fetched it at RDU and the Crocs live on, baby. So you may know that I went through a couple of tenuous days there where I really thought I'd lost something special. And then the Lord in his goodness brought them back to me. But you may not know why the bag was in Johannesburg. So that's what I'm going to tell you this morning. We go to catch the flight out of Cape Town. And as we get to the Cape Town airport, we're told that our flight is delayed and we're not going to get to Johannesburg at the time that we think we're going to get there. And so we start to do the math and we realize that the window is pretty small because the two flights are not associated with each other. We're flying from Cape Town to Johannesburg on some local South African airline, and then we're flying back on Delta. So they're not associated. So I'm going to have to land in Johannesburg, go to baggage claim, get my baggage, then go back through security and whatever else, and get on the plane and recheck my bag. And that takes a long time. And so we're looking at this window and we're like, we're barely going to make it. And then the flight gets delayed and then it gets delayed and then it gets delayed. And my buddy that I was traveling with looks at me and he's like, how much do you care about what's in that bag? And I said, I mean, it's just clothes. So I guess not very much. And he's like, because you can spend the night and get a new flight or you can make this flight, but you can't do both. And I'm like, I guess we'll just leave it. So it keeps getting tighter and tighter. We are going all over the Cape Town airport to every ticket booth that they have, asking if there's a flight, if we could get on it to get to Johannesburg 20 minutes sooner, because we're starting to worry that we're going to miss our flight back home too, and now we're going to be stuck in Africa for another day. There was talk of just bailing and flying to Amsterdam and spending a day there and then flying back and then telling our wives, like, it's just how the airlines worked out. But we didn't do that. But we're very, very stressed about whether or not we're going to be able to make it home. So we get on the flight and the flight attendant walks past me and I get her attention and I said, ma'am, this particular airline I knew from flying in, they just dismissed you row by row and they asked you not to even stand until you got dismissed, which is an incredibly un-American, non-aggressive way to exit a plane and I hated it because it takes forever, you know. But I know that we're in the middle of the plane. It's going to take a long time to get off this plane and we need every second. So I grabbed the flight attendant and I said, ma'am, could you, here's the situation, could you please help me and my buddy get off the flight first? And she said, what time is your flight? And I said, I'm making these times up, I don't know. I said 9.15 and she goes, we're supposed to land at 9.05. I said, yeah, it's going to be tight. And she goes, listen, you're probably not going to make your flight. And I said, I know, but we've got to try our best, right? She's like, yeah. So she goes, tell you what, will you write down your name and his name and the flight information that you're going to be catching, and I'm going to take it to the pilot. So I'm like, yeah, sure. Here you go. So I write down her name, flight information, the Delta flight, and she takes it up to the cockpit. I'm like, oh, we're getting serious now. So she comes back, and she kneels down next to me, and she's like, okay, listen, I don't want to give you false hope. You are not going to make this flight, but we're going to do everything we can. The pilot is going to radio the pilot of the Delta flight and let them know what's going on. And if they have an extra staff member, they can send that staff member to our gate. And if that staff member wants to help you, then they can try to get you through the airport quicker so that you can get to the Delta flight. But we can't guarantee that any of this is going to work. And I'm like, all right, works for us. So the flight lands, we get to the gate. She does not help us get to the front. So we just get up and walk to the front. And everyone's staring at the Americans like, what's the matter with you? We're like, I know, we're the worst. I get it. And we stand there. The door opens. There is an African angel standing in front of us named Masi. I will never forget this in my whole life. She looked like she was early 20s. She was like 6'2". And she goes, are you so and so and so and so? And we go, yes. And she goes, come, we must hurry. And I'm like, yeah, no kidding. So she takes off through the Johannesburg airport and she is wearing heels, those kinds of heels that the flight attendants wear that are like block heels. And she's taller than both of us. And she's just gliding through this airport. And we've got our bags, and we're stubby Americans who are out of shape, and we're like just fighting along, and I'm looking at my buddy. We're laughing. I'm like, I can't keep up. I need to jog. And he's like, I know, I can't. So we kind of break into this slow jog, and we're going through these back tunnels, and she's scanning things, and people are waving at us, and I'm seeing areas of the airport that I'm not supposed to see, and we're just weaving and going through this, and I'm like, this is amazing. I can't believe this is going to work out, and then we get to security, and security's like, we need your boarding pass, so he hands the phone to her. There's the boarding pass. They scan it in, and I'm like, I don't have a boarding pass. I tried to check in when we landed. It's too late. It will not let me check in. I don't have a boarding pass on my phone. And the lady at security is like, I can't let you through, sir. And I'm like, please, can you just let me through the ticket booth? I know it's right there. I can get a boarding pass. I have one, I promise. And so we're going back and forth. And eventually, a large man walks around the corner. And he looks at me in such a way that told me very clearly, this conversation's over. And I'm like, my buddy's already through. And I look at Masi, and I'm like, Masi, is there anything we can do? And I can see the hurt in her eyes. She hurts for me. And she's like, no. And I'm like, well, what if I give you my passport and my cell phone, and my buddy checks in for me at the gate and gets the boarding pass? Can someone bring that back to me? And she goes, that might work. And I'm like, all right. She goes, give me your phone. Gave her my phone, gave her my passport. They go checking through security. And it occurs to me. And I yell at my buddy, hey. He looks at me and I go, she has my cell phone and my passport. I have nothing. And I'm in a back hallway in the Johannesburg airport. Do not leave me. And he's like, I got you, man. Okay. Little detail about the guy I was traveling with. I had only talked to him like four times in my whole life prior to it. We both went on a whim. I don't even know if I can trust this guy. He takes off, but clearly I can't. So I'm sitting there for about 15 minutes. It's like the loneliest 15 minutes of my life. I'm going through, like, I've still got my wallet. I have an ID. I can go to the U.S. consulate. Maybe I can get some money wired to me. I'm not just totally stranded. As I'm sitting there, another dude comes walking around the corner, and he says, what's your name? And I tell him, and he goes, like that. And so I get up, and I'm going through security, and he literally grabs my bag, shoves my computer in it as I'm going through security, throws it to my chest, and goes, we must run, brother. And I'm like, okay. So we take off. I strap up. I've got my belt in my hand. I'm wearing pants that are intentionally too big because I've got a 19-hour flight. I don't need the belt tucking into my belly, you know? They're a little bit bigger than they need to be. And I'm running through the Johannesburg airport, and he is just gliding, and I am not. It is everything I can do to run behind this guy. And I'm trying to keep up. I'm trying to keep up. I start to huff and puff. I'm, like to keep my pants up and I'm holding my backpack together. And I realized that I might die right here. And I'm regretting every hamburger and every day that I haven't run and every poor choice that I've made for the last two years of my life that led me to this moment of my imminent death. And he keeps stopping and turning and like waiting for me to come around a corner. And I'm, you I'm just terrible, just clotting along. I'm breathing so heavily. We finally make it to the gate. I swear it was a half mile away. On my life, I swear there was the largest distance between the two there could possibly be. We get there. I'm huffing and puffing. I'm giving people stuff. I finally get onto the plane. I get onto the plane, and my buddy's drinking champagne already. He's just standing there. Oh, hey, welcome. I'm like, what in the world's going on here? He's been on the plane for 20 minutes, I guess. First class sees me. They've kind of been alerted to the story. So they kind of like, hey, the dummy's here. And then I go and I sit in my chair and one of the flight attendants brings me this thimble of water, right? I'm huffing and puffing. I can barely breathe. I'm trying not to cough. She gives me a thimble of water. I said, you're going to need to bring me more than that. She goes, she brings me a bottle of water. I pound the bottle of water. Between that bottle of water and takeoff, I'm just trying not to cough. I can't catch my breath. I literally can't breathe. I'm sweating. I feel like the fattest oaf that everyone is staring at. And I'm just trying not to cough because I don't want to be the American that has COVID and is giving it to everyone. And all I could think about was how badly I needed water. And as soon as that plane took off, I went to the galley and just started pounding Dasanis, right? Until I couldn't drink anymore. I panteth. I was that thirsty. When is the last time you truly hungered and thirsted for righteousness? When is the last time you needed Jesus as badly as I needed water on that plane in Johannesburg that day? When is the last time someone gave you a little bit of God? You hear a Bible verse, sing a song. Somebody says something encouraging to you. You're scrolling through social media. Somebody posts something that you find spiritually nourishing. You have a small group or a church service or a good conversation. And it feels like that thimble of water they brought me. And you look at whoever gave it to you and you're like, you're going to have to give me more than this. That ain't enough. When's the last time you just took it all in as much as you could where you needed, geez, my soul longs for God. It pants for him like a deer pants for the water. When is the last time we wanted God that bad? Which is why this beatitude and verses like that always convict me. Because I rarely feel like I need God as bad as I needed water that day. And so my reaction to this beatitude from Jesus, my reaction to the psalm from David, is to just pray for a greater hunger, to pray for more thirst, to pray that I would want it more, that my soul would only be satisfied in Jesus, and to just kind of want it more. But as I thought about it this week, for me and for you, I realized something that I've never really thought about before. The body has ways of telling us when it's hungry and thirsty, right? Our body will let us know, hey, it's time to drink something. It's time to eat. Remember the last time my body told me I was hungry without me really realizing I was hungry. We were driving down the road. Jen and I were running errands, and it was getting a little bit into the early afternoon. I hadn't had lunch yet, and I hadn't had breakfast that day. And I hadn't really thought about it. I was just kind of focused on the things that we were doing, and I'm driving down the road, and all of a sudden, every restaurant looks good, right? I'm like, oh, I wish we could stop there. Could really go for whatever, marinara sauce. And then the one that got me, the one that I realized like, whoa, buddy, you're hungry, you've got a problem here, is when I saw Burger King. And I was like, I could go for a chicken sandwich. I mean, it's been a while, but they get long and flat and they kind of taste like salt. Give me some onion rings and some zesty sauce. I'll be a happy camper. And then I was like, whoa, buddy. You got an issue. There's something else going on here. You're real hungry. And I told Jen, I'm very hungry. Let's get home quick before I stop at a Burger King and make decisions I'm going to regret for a few days. Your body has ways of telling you that you're hungry, right? Sometimes it'll be the middle of the day and I'm just focused on what I've been doing and I'll start to get shaky and feel weak. That's my body saying, hey man, you're hungry. You need to eat something. Sometimes we get a headache in the middle of the day. Two or three o'clock in the afternoon, we get just a little dull headache. Maybe it's our body telling us we haven't had any caffeine. Maybe it's our body telling us, hey, you've had too much caffeine, you're dehydrated. You need to drink a little something. Our throat will get dry. It'll get scratchy. We just won't feel good. We won't feel energetic. We'll feel like we just need a little something. Our body has ways of telling us, hey, you're thirsty. You need to drink something. Hey, you're hungry. You need to eat something. And sometimes we misread the signals and we cover over them. Sometimes we're dehydrated, so we have a headache. And instead of doing what our body needs, instead of drinking water, because we have a headache, we'll take an ibuprofen, or we'll take an Aleve, and we'll make the symptom go away, but we haven't treated the problem, right? Or you hear those terrible stories of people who are lost at sea, and they're thirsty, and the only option they have is to drink the ocean water, so they drink the ocean water, but the salination in the water only makes them thirstier. And so they essentially drink themselves to death because they're drinking the wrong thing. Or we're hungry. And because we're so hungry, we lose our judgment and we eat whatever we eat, Burger King. We eat whatever we can get our hands on. And it's not really what our body needs and it's not really helping us, but it makes it go away in the moment so we can focus on other things. And at its worst, I think this is interesting. When we're starving, when we're experiencing literal famine, when our body hasn't had something to eat in such a long time, it will literally start to eat itself. It will literally start to harm itself. And in thinking about this, how God equipped our physical body with warning lights that tell us that we are hungry and we are thirsty, so did he equip our soul with the same thing. If you listen and you watch for it and you pay attention, your soul tells you when you are hungry and when you are thirsty for righteousness. We just have to learn to see the signs. If you're someone who struggles with anger, you're frustrated all the time about something. And that anger begins to leak out on the people that you love the most who are supposed to love you the most. And you're frustrated at your kids and you're frustrated at your wife and you're an ogre to be around and you're hard to keep pleased and you just think everybody around you is dumb all the time and if they could just get on your level, then life would be so much easier and you start, that anger starts to spill out on the people around you in such a way that the next morning you think to yourself, that's not who I want to be. That's not who I am. I see the way my kids cower from me. I see the way my wife or my husband tries to tiptoe around me and say just the right thing, and I don't want to make the people around me live in discomfort. What is my deal with anger? That's your soul telling you you need Jesus, that you're not living out the passage in James that says that everyone should be quick to listen and slow to speak and slow to become angry because anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires. If you're revving, if you're redlining on anger in your life, if you're frustrated with everybody all the time, that's your soul telling you there's a check engine light going and it's saying you need Jesus, man. You need his peace and his patience and his grace in your life. You need to calm down. There's something going on in you, not everybody around you, that needs to push you closer to Jesus. If you're someone who struggles with anxiety, and I don't mean clinically diagnosed anxiety where there really is a chemical imbalance that needs to be corrected medicinally, but I mean someone who is just prone to worry. And you found yourself in a season of life where you constantly scan the horizon for the next thing to worry about, for the next thing to keep you up, for the next thing to Google, for the next lead to make you end up on WebMD. That's a warning light going on in your soul that's been calibrated to tell you, hey, you need Jesus. You've forgotten Philippians 4, 6, and 7 that says, be anxious for nothing but in everything with prayer be anxious about all the things that you were anxious about when you came in here. You don't have to let them keep you up. You don't have to let them drive your thoughts and chase you like shadows. Jesus offers you peace. That anxiety is your soul telling you that it hungers and thirsts for God. It's your soul telling you you need more of the Spirit and His peace and His presence. Those addictions that we develop, we develop an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. We have some pills that we've been prescribed, and we take them whether we need them or not. And sometimes we take them when we know we don't need them, we just want them. What can that be but your soul telling you, hey, things aren't right. You need more Jesus. You need more righteousness. And the thing is, we know it. We know we need something. We know it's not right. We know life isn't good. We know that we're not doing the right thing. But instead of listening to our soul and giving it what it needs, we do the same thing we do when we get a headache. And what we need is water, and instead we take ibuprofen. We can do the same thing with our souls, where the check engine light is going off, and it's going, hey man, you need Jesus. You need more God in your life. You need to pursue him. You need to experience the peace of the Spirit. And instead of doing that, we salve the wound with the wrong medicine. We pour another bourbon. Or we cut the grass again when it doesn't need to be cut. Or we indulge ourself. We just fall headlong into the hobby that doesn't matter because in the hobby we can escape life. If the thing you want, let me just say this, because I've walked through it and I know, if when you wake up in the morning, the thing you want most in your life is to escape your life, that's your soul saying, hey, you need Jesus. You've lost your way. You need to come back to me. What I want us to see this morning is that our souls were created to hunger and thirst for righteousness. You were made to desire God. You were made to long for him. You were made to need him. Things happen all the time in your life that ought to alert you to, oh my gosh, I need more Jesus. I'm hungry for him. I'm thirsty for him. But we've forgotten how to read those signs. And we're told this throughout scripture that our souls were made to hunger and thirst for righteousness, that our souls were made to hunger and thirst for God. I just have one example for you here, but there's myriad others. In Isaiah, he writes in chapter 26, my soul yearns for you in the night. My spirit within me earnestly seeks you, for when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness. We don't have to pray for more hunger and thirst for God. We have to pray that we would recognize it, that we would see it, that we would acknowledge it for what it is. I do not think that anybody came in this room not hungry enough for God, not thirsty enough for Jesus. I don't think anybody came here not wanting righteousness enough. I think we all came in here not realizing how badly we need it and what our souls are screaming to us. C.S. Lewis sums it up this way. I thought this was a very appropriate quote. He's a theologian and author from about the World War II period. He says, meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. I think you and I have warning lights that go off throughout our lives every day that remind us, hey, your soul was created for Jesus. Your soul was created to commune with God. And you're hungry, man. You're thirsty. You're famished. And the thing that's the hardest is when we don't recognize it for what it is, when we don't see those indicators for what they are, when we misread them and we misappropriate them, we end up handling them in some of the most damaging ways possible. We're drinking salt water, making it worse until we drink ourselves to death. At its worst, when we are most famished, the body begins to do things that harm itself just for the sake of what it believes will be survival. And really, your soul is just saying, hey, I'm in atrophy here. I have nothing. I need Jesus desperately. So my prayer and hope for you this morning is that rather than praying for a greater desire, let us learn to listen to the hunger pangs of our soul. When our soul is crying out for more Jesus, when our soul is crying out for God, and we're just drinking more salt water, we're just taking more medicine, we're just avoiding more signs, let us not pray in those moments, God, give me a greater hunger and thirst for you. No, he's given it to you. Let us pray that we see it and that our souls will only be satisfied in him. And when we hunger and thirst for righteousness, when we see what it is that our souls are telling us, what does God promise? You will be filled. What does it mean to be blessed? You will have all that you need to be fully satisfied. Let us be fully satisfied in our Jesus as we go. Let me pray for you. Father, we love you and are grateful for you. Lord, we need you. We acknowledge that you created in our very souls a hunger and thirst for you, and I pray that we would realize more and more that that can only be filled by you. I don't pray, God, that you would give us a greater desire for you, but we acknowledge that you have intrinsically written that onto our souls, and so I simply pray that we would acknowledge it, that we would see our longings for you as what they are, not salves or substances or substitutes, but that we would see the longing of our soul for exactly what it is, a longing for you. Let us run to you and seek you this morning. Let us run to you and seek you this week. Let us acknowledge that our souls do pant for you whether we realize it or not. And would you please fill us, satisfy us, bless us so that our souls will find rest in you. We ask these things in your son's name. Amen.

Good morning. Good to see everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Happy New Year. If I had known that worship was going to be that good, I would have prepared a better sermon. So we just had the best part of the service already. And let me just say to you, if coming to church more regularly is one of your New Year's resolutions, I am rooting so hard for you. I am happy for that. And we are doing everything we can to make it worth your while and enriching and good to get up and get ready and come and hopefully be pushed a little bit closer to Jesus when you left than when you were when you came through the doors. And I would also say this, if that is a New Year's resolution for you, and so grace is the place that you're choosing to do that, if you get a couple weeks in and this just ain't cutting it, man, this is not doing it, can you just please go visit another church before you just quit church? Because there's a lot of great churches in the area, and some of them are probably hitting notes that we're not. And I would really love to see everybody involved in a church family. It's such an important part of life. So I would just throw that out there to you. This series that we are focused on now for this month is called Known For. And we're going to be talking about this idea of reputation and what we're known for. So in week one, to be known for, and then we're going to say, what do we want our faith, big C church, Christianity, and our culture today, what do we want it to be known for? And so if you're a praying person, you can be praying for me for that fourth week, because there's things I want to say that I shouldn't. There's things that I need to say that I'm going to be scared to, and I'm going to have to find a good balance there because there's a lot to say about how Christians posture themselves in our current culture, and I want to talk to Grace about how we can be on the right end of that, helping Christianity in our culture. But that begins with focusing first on ourselves and on our reputations. Now, everybody, I would think, is known for something. Everybody has a bit of a reputation, right? I think when we think of people who are known for things, that maybe we think of people who have lived bigger lives than most of us. Politicians or athletes or celebrities or authors or people who influence in some way, but I would argue that everybody's known for something. I mean, if you think about it this way, what would you say your dad's known for? When you think about your dad, what do you think of? What's your mom known for? When you think about your best friend, your husband or your wife, what are they known for in your circles? Right? Something comes to mind. When you think about your favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? When you think about your least favorite co-worker, what are they known for in the office space? In this office space, it's youth ministry is what they're known for. That was the joke of me making fun of Kyle, our student pastor, just in case you guys didn't catch on to that. He's the worst. He's getting married in six days. Yay, Kyle! Everybody is known for something. You're known for something. You're known for something by your acquaintances, kind of concentric circles of concern. By your acquaintances, you're known in certain ways. By your close friends, you're known in certain ways. And by your family, you're known in certain ways. And so the question that I would put in front of you this morning, and it's a good question to consider at the beginning of a year, the time when we do New Year's resolutions, What are you known for? What is your reputation? And I think those concentric circles of concern are important to consider because it's really easy to be known for certain things, to put on a good face with your acquaintances, with the people that you interact with at work sometimes, with your neighbors that you see sometimes, with your friends that you hang out with when you want to. We can put on a good show for those kind of outer edge people, right? And then our friends who may text with us more, call us more, interact with us more, they kind of know us a little bit better. I was 17 years old, and I had this really incredible experience at camp. And I was really moved towards Jesus. I grew up in the church, but God kind of got a hold of me, just reinvigorated me, and I was really just, it was one of those spiritual highs, right? And my dad was, he was the chairman of the board growing up. He was a big church guy. All my memories are church memories, and I was so proud to tell him, Dad, I'm really going to choose Jesus. I'm really going to push after him. He totally changed me while I was there, and he looked at me, and he said, that's great, son. Be nice to your mom. I was like, dang you. He just crutted on my spiritual high, but he was right. Our families know us best. We can't fake it with our spouses. We can't fake it with our kids. They grow up in our homes. They see us at our best and our worst. What are we known for in our families? And so then I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? What would you hope to be known for? When people hear your name, what do you want them to think? Your kids growing up in your house, what kind of stories do you want them to tell about you? When your coworkers talk about you behind your back when you leave the room or when you're in the meeting, what do you want them to say? When your friends that you play tennis with or you do trivia night with or you do whatever neighborhood stuff with find out that you're really involved in your church, what do you want them to think? Do you want them to go, yeah, that checks out? Or do you want them to go, really? Him? Huh. What do you want your reputation to be? Now, some of you could be like my wife, Jen, who's not here this morning. John's got a little bit of a fever, so we're kind of tending to that. So I can say this and not embarrass her. She's got a pretty good reputation. If you know Jen, you know that everybody calls her Sweet Jen. She doesn't have a lot of work to do on how she's perceived by the general public, nor does she have work to do with how she's perceived by me. She's got a pretty good name in our house. And so maybe that's you. And as you think about your reputation and you think about what you want to be known for, God and his goodness and you and your humility have done a good job in actually making a good name for yourself. And so we just need to continue there. That's great. But maybe you're like me. Jeff, what are you laughing at, man? Yeah, maybe you're like me and Jeff. And you've got some rough edges. You have probably a good reputation. You're known for positive things. People think of you well, but there's also some parts about you, and you know them, and they know them, that, man, you'd love to shave off. I know for me, I think I'm known at all three levels of my life. I think I'm known for being loyal, being honest, hopefully for being a good and loving friend, being present. But I can also be known to be gruff and grumpy. And if I'm being honest, one of my least favorite things about myself right now is I can get into moods that begin to affect the tone and tenor of everything around me, whether it's at staff or an elder meeting or at my house or with my friends. And I don't like those moods, man. I don't like being that grumpy sometimes. I don't want to be known for that. And maybe you have some things in your life that you don't want to be known for either. So as you move into this year, I would ask you, what do you want to be known for? And there are others of you who may just feel like no matter what you do, you're known for your mistake. You're known for screwing up. You're an addict, and you'll never not be. You're a cheater, and you've just got to live with it. You've made a big, huge mistake. And you feel like that when everybody sees you, all they see is that mistake, and all they'll ever see is that mistake. And I just want to tell you that it's never too late to rebuild your reputation. I told you guys at Christmas Eve, and I've mentioned stories about him before, about my pawpaw. And I hesitated to share this because it's, first of all, I don't want to talk about him all the time, and second of all, this is his business, it's not ours, but he's in heaven now, and I don't think he'd mind too much. I think when you get to heaven, you get a lot of grace for people's humanity. But I told you guys, he's my favorite person that's ever lived, and that's true. I've told you I have glowing memories of him and how present he was and how much he loved me. But his name was Don. Don also grew up real poor in South Georgia, I guess in the 30s. Had a daddy that was abusive, had a dirt floor. And then he had kids in the 60s and 70s, and he raised them. And he raised them like a man without a good daddy, without Jesus, would. And he had a temper, and sometimes it got the best of him. So the kids who grew up in that home did not know him like I knew him. But at one point, he came to know Jesus. And I don't know that he did it intentionally, but he began to rebuild his reputation. So that now, I don't know that part of him. I don't know that side of him. I never experienced it. And his children all have fond memories of him, all love him, all continue to mourn him. It's never too late to choose a new reputation. So the answer to that question, what reputation do you want to have, if it feels impossible to you, it is not. By God's goodness and through your humility, you can begin to work towards it. And there are others of you who fall into this camp. I'm not going to linger here long, but it is worth saying. There are some of you in here who have a good reputation. You have a good name. And that's good. And people think highly of you. And that's good. But you got a secret. You got some stuff going on in the shadows. And if people found out about it, you wouldn't have that good reputation anymore. So you look good, but you're not. And you know it. Maybe this can be the year that you finally leave those shadows behind. You finally leave those in the past. And you finally walk as the person that everybody believes you are and that God created you to be. And maybe it's possible that God in his goodness and his love for you has kept those things in the dark for you to give you opportunity to move away from them and be who he wants you to be this year and moving forward. I pray that none of us have stuff going on in the shadows that could ruin what everybody sees in the light. But if we do, let's be done with that too. But as we consider this question, what do you want to be known for? Not what are you known for, what do you want to be known for? I think it's actually way more important to ask the question, what does God want you to be known for? What does God want you to be known for? If you're a believer, if you're a Christian, if you're a child of God, which means to be someone who is a Christian, you believe that Jesus is who he says he is. He's the son of God and he came to earth. That he did what he said he did. He died on the cross and he rose again on the third day. And that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. He's going to come back one day and he's going to make all the wrong things right and the sad things untrue. If you believe those things about Jesus, then you are a Christian. You are a child of God. And what does God want your reputation to be? What does he want you to be known for? And that might sound like a little bit of a silly question, but I actually believe, based on the counsel of scripture, that this is an important question, that it matters to God deeply what your reputation is. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your co-workers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to your heavenly father very much how you're known with your friends and in your coworkers and your good friends and in your family. I think it matters to him a lot how you're known. And I don't just think that intuitively because as I was thinking about it this week, of course God cares what his children's reputations are because don't you care what your kids' reputations are? Doesn't your heart fill with pride when the teacher says, you've got a great kid here, they're doing wonderful? Isn't it filled with shame when your teacher says, your kid is terrible, I wish they weren't in my class? We want our children to have good reputations, not just because they're a reflection on us, but because we want them to have a good name. So does God care about the reputations of his children. But again, it's not just intuitively that I believe this. It says so in Scripture. In Proverbs 22, verse 1, it says, God says if you have the choice between great wealth or a good name, choose a good name. I do not have that choice. I get to choose a good name or nothing. It's not an either or situation for me. But if you do have the opportunity to choose wealth or to choose name, choose name, choose reputation, choose standing, choose favor. That's how important it is that you have a good reputation to God. It's so important, in fact, that in the New Testament, when they start to name church officers, things for people to do within the church, they make reputation one of the requirements. In the book of Acts, there's this scene, I believe in chapter 6, where they had to choose deacons, people to do the ministry of the church, kind of think church staff, because the disciples were getting, they were trying to focus on prayer and teaching, and they were getting so caught up in the daily needs of the church, they could no longer meet them. And so God instructed them, go and choose seven men to be deacons and to meet the needs within the church. And there was two requirements to be a deacon. One was to be faithful and filled with the Spirit. The other one was to have a good reputation in the community. God didn't want anyone in leadership in his church that wasn't well-known and well-thought-of in the community in which they were serving. And then to further that, to choose elders, Paul writes to Titus, when you're choosing elders, when you're choosing the leaders of your church, among the things that I want to be true of them, that God wants to be true of them, they need to have a good reputation amongst outsiders. There's another place where God says in 1 Peter, God says through Peter, that Christians are to be a good example, to set a good example, to have a good reputation amongst the Gentiles, amongst non-believers, so that they can find no fault in you. Your reputation and what you're known for matters a lot to your God. So what does he want you to be known for? Well, this is an interesting question, because there's so many instructions about this all over scripture. There's so many different times in scripture where we are told what he wants us to do and who he wants us to be. I think of Philippians 4, 5 when it says, let your reasonableness be known to all people. So God, and I think this is interesting and worth pointing out, God wants his children to be thoughtful, reasonable people. I don't think that we often associate that with a Christian trait, but it is. We need to be thoughtful, reasonable people. And let me just kind of put a finer point on that. If you learned everything you needed to learn in your life by the age of 33, and you don't have any new opinions since then, and no new information has entered your brain since then, you're not being a thoughtful, reasonable person. Or you're a freaking smart 33-year-old. You really nailed it. God calls us to be thoughtful, reasonable people. In the Beatitudes that we're going to focus on next month in February in a series called Blessed, he calls us to be meek, to be peacemakers, to hunger and thirst for righteousness. In different areas of the Bible, he gives us different lists of characteristics that we are to pursue. In Galatians, he tells us that we will be known by our fruit, either the fruit of an evil life or the fruit of a life filled with the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I think you can make a very strong argument that God wants his children to be known for those fruit. And then in Ephesians, we get kind of a seminal passage of what is the picture of what a Christian should be? What is the picture of what God wants us to be? Read with me in Ephesians chapter 4, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this, I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. So Paul kind of lays it out there in Ephesians. Be humble, be gentle, bear with one another, be loving, be patient. And we see these kinds of verses over and over again through scripture. And the reality of it is, it's really hard to wrap your mind around all the things that God wants us to be known for. I grew up, I don't have any memories of my life without church. We were there every time the doors were open. My parents were highly involved. I went to a Christian elementary school and high school. I went to a Bible college. I went to seminary. I've been in ministry for 20 years. And I don't think I could get 50% of all the characteristics that are listed out in the whole of Scripture as to what God wants His children to be. It's a lot there. So when you ask, what does God want us to be known for, that's a tricky answer because it gets long. And it can be confusing and intimidating, which is why God boiled it down for us. And the more I thought about this, the more I thought there really is a simple answer here for all of us. What does God want us to be known for? God wants his children to be known for loving well. That's what he wants you to be known for. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be known for loving well. And I didn't put a person there, loving him well, loving your neighbor well neighbor well. Loving your spouse well. Loving your church well. Just loving well. To be an excellent lover. That's why we're told in scripture that God tells us that we should love him with all our heart, soul, mind. Amen. And that we should love our neighbor as ourself. And then he says, on this rests the whole law and the prophets. The entire Bible. All the commandments in the Bible are summed up in those two, love God well, love others well. And then Jesus makes it even easier. He tells the disciples this new commandment I give you towards the end of his life, love others as I have loved you. And then John, 30 years later, writing his letters to the general church, 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, basically says, if you say you know Jesus and you do not love, then you are full of it. Now that's a loose paraphrase, but the spirit of it is there. He says you're a liar and the truth is not in you. What does God want his children to be known for? He wants us to be known for loving well. And if you think about it, it makes sense. How can I love someone well if I'm not humble? How can I love someone well if I don't bear up their burdens? Well, if I don't bear up their burdens, if I'm not patient with them, if I don't listen to them? How can we love people well if we are not reasonable and we will not listen to what they say or what they think? If we're not open to new understandings and new ideas. How can we love people well if we're not meek but we're just brash all the time? And so the reality of it is there's a lot of different characteristics that a lot of us need to work on, but what God wants us to be known for and what I want you to be known for in 2023 is to love well. And that looks different in different seasons of life, but I can tell you this. If you have a spouse, God wants you to love them well, to respect them deeply, to serve them, to live for them and not yourself. God wants you to choose them. God wants the people who see your marriage to go, man, they love each other so much. He serves her so well. She honors him so much in the way she talks about him. That's what God in your marriage, if you have children in your home, God wants for your children to look at your marriage and say, that's what I want when I grow up and I'm not going to settle for anything less. So what do you want to be known for? What does God want from you this year? He wants you to be a good husband and good wife. He wants you to be present for them. If you have kids, if they're at home, what does God want for you there? He wants you to love them well. He wants you to be present with them. He wants you to get off your phone and turn off the TV and get on the floor and play with them. He wants you to listen to them. He wants you to be interested in them or feign interest the best way you know how. When the Bible says in Isaiah that you will run and not grow weary and walk and not be faint and will soar on wings like eagles, I think he's talking to parents who have seven-year-olds and have to watch the seventh thing of the day. What does God want you to be known for? He wants you to be the person in the office that people come to and share with. He wants you to be the consistent one. He wants you to be the one that will listen to other people be human but will not run down your boss or their coworker just for the fun of it. He wants you to be the one that exists above that fray. He wants you to be the one who honors him in all that you do, who loves your co-workers well. He wants you to be the one in your friend group who loves well, who points people towards Jesus. He wants you to be the one in the neighborhood that's the most patient with the other kids, that's the most giving and hospitable with your time. He wants you to be known for how well you love. And I wondered why this was so important to God. And why is reputation so important that we're going to spend four weeks on it? And this occurred to me, and I'm going to throw this out here. You guys try it on. You see if you agree with this, because it's going to come up every week. I'm going to remind us of this. We're going to tie back into these two ideas. Into one, that God wants us to be known for loving well. And then this idea too, that there is nothing more persuasive than a name. I don't think there's anything in life more persuasive than somebody's name. And here's what I mean. Think about recommendations that you get from people. Some people you get bad recommendations from, some good. There's somebody who was in one of my small groups a couple years ago, and in that small group we were sharing about this experience we had with sushi in New York City. And if you want to hear about it, I'll tell you about it, because it was amazing. It was the best food I ever had in my life. It was a great meal. And we were kind of telling them about that. And he pipes up and he says, oh, yeah, I know where to get great sushi. I said, really, where? He goes, yeah, there's this place in Boone. It's the best sushi in the world. And I'm like, Boone? Five hours from the ocean, Boone? Like that Boone? Hill country of App State? Where they're still nailing chicken fried steaks? Like that boon? That place? And I said, did you mean like best in, like boon? Or like Western North Carolina? He's like, nope, the world. Better than like New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Tokyo? Like the place where they invented it? Better than those places? Yes, way better. You'll never have better sushi. And in that moment, I realized I will never listen to you again in my life. That dude could tell me, dude, I tried this great barbecue restaurant down the street. I will never, ever go there. I do not trust. Now, he can tell me about other things. This book is good. These things are nice. But if he tells me about food, you can shove it, buddy. I've got this other friend who I've been really close friends with him for 30 years now. And I trust his recommendations on TV shows and movies and podcasts and books so much that he doesn't even have to talk me into them anymore. He can just text me the name of a show and I will just go binge all 12 seasons of it right there. Like I know it's going to be good. He doesn't even have to do anything. If Tyler tells me I should do this, I will because I trust him. Over time, he's built a good reputation of taste and I know that it's not to let me down. There is nothing more convincing than a name. And where this becomes particularly important is when we are trying to reach a lost world. I've mentioned this to you before, but if you are a believer, the only reason God doesn't snatch you right into heaven the very second you come to faith is so that on your way to that eternity for which he created you, you can bring as many people with you along the way as possible. The only reason you still draw breath is so you can bring as many people to eternity in heaven with you as you go as is humanly possible. If there was anything else to do, if that wasn't true, he would just snatch you right to heaven just as soon as you accepted him. Why wouldn't this place with so much pain and hurt and whisk you right up away to heaven immediately so you can begin to experience paradise with him? Why wouldn't he do that unless he's leaving you here so that on your way to that place that he's preparing for you, you can bring as many people with you as possible. That's why you're here. And if you want to bring other people with you, what could be more persuasive than a good name? What could be more persuasive than someone who claims to love Jesus and then loves them like they actually do love Jesus? Because in our culture, in 2023, your neighbors and your coworkers and your friends who do not embrace Christ, maybe they've outright rejected him. Maybe they're one of those people who say that they've accepted Jesus, they believe in him, but they're good and they don't really prioritize their faith at all and it makes us wonder if there is genuine faith there. If you have people in your life like that. You know, in the past, we talked about evangelism, this act of sharing our faith and pushing people towards Christ and hopefully seeing them come to faith. In the past, we were told about how to tell people about Jesus. 2023, guess what? They've all heard of him. It's very likely they have a reason. Can I tell you it's pretty likely it's a good reason? That deserves a thoughtful response? Are those people that you know who do not embrace faith, are they more likely to be won over by a theological argument? By digging into the science so that you can try to disprove atheism? By sending them to a blog post or a website or a case for faith by Lee Strobel? Or are they most likely to be won over by a name that's loved them for years? By someone who says they love Jesus, who says they love others, and in your marriage, and in your relationship with your children, and in your relationship with them, they see it. I'm not saying you're faultless, but I'm saying what's more convincing to the outside world than someone who actually practices what they preach and walks what they talk and has a good name that can be trusted. So that when that name says, hey, my church is pretty special to me, I'd love for you to come too, That actually carries some weight, and they go, because they think there's something different about this family. And I don't know what it is, but if it's their faith, then I want to understand that. A good name gets your foot in the door when you say, yeah, I do actually have a faith. I do believe in Jesus, and let me tell you why. If you have a good name and a reputation that supports that statement, they're going to listen to you with a lot more attention than if you don't have a good reputation with them, if the video does not match the audio. So I believe that God cares deeply about your reputation and what you are known for because a good reputation is more persuasive than anything else on the planet. So I hope that 2023 will be a year that you choose to ask yourself regularly, what am I known for and what do I want to be known for? How am I loving? Am I loving well? Am I being lazy? Am I being sloppy? Am I being selfish? Or am I being someone who loves like Jesus loves? Understanding that as we love in that way, there is nothing more persuasive to those around us than a consistent love of Christ and love of them. And please understand that the only way, you're not white knuckling your way to good love. You're not doing that. You have to wake up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. You gotta pursue him. You gotta seek him. You gotta have friendships in your life that feed you spiritually. You gotta talk about Jesus to your children and to your friends've got to focus your eyes on Christ, the found love, and that love will be noticed. And people will come to faith because God is using you in their life. I went this year at Grace. We're back open. This is hopefully the first normal year we've had in three years. We're ready to run. We're ready to do ministry. We're ready to go. I want to see a lot of new faces at Grace. I want to meet a lot of your neighbors. I want to meet a lot of your coworkers. And listen to me. I don't want to do that because of church growth. And the people who know me best know I don't give a flip about church growth for the sake of church growth. I don't care about that. Can I just tell you this? Here's what I realized last year. If we just stay this size with this size staff and you guys all just keep coming, my life is so easy. But I want to see new faces here. Because new faces mean you're out in your community and you're sharing about your faith. New faces mean that you're trusted. New faces mean that you have a good name and you're using it to bring people to eternity with you. I want to see a lot of baptisms this year. Because baptisms mean people have been awakened to or have come to faith. I want to see the way God moves in our church this year when we are people who focus on loving well. I want this to be a year where we reach our community well, and I think that's done through building a good reputation. So we're going to take the next three weeks. I'm actually excited about this series because often in a series we'll have kind of a list of topics, reputation, faith, grace, love, whatever it is. And I'll kind of hit those and then move on. But this time we're going to spend four weeks in what we're known for and really deep dive into it. And I'm excited at the opportunity to do that. And I hope that you'll come along with me. And I hope that people will come to love your Savior because of how well you have loved them. Let's pray. Father, we always say that we love you, but we acknowledge that we love you because you first loved us, because you first cared for us, because you created us, because you created us to share yourself with us, and that you have designed for us and purposed us for in eternity. God, I pray that we would bring as many people as we can with us on our way there. Father, for those who feel like their reputation is tarnished, I pray that you would give them a vision for a new one and a belief that if they simply love you and love others well, that that will change. God, for those with secrets or rough edges, would you move us away from those and towards you? Would we embrace your goodness in our life? Would we embrace the firm foundation of love that you have given us and walk in that love and trust you alone and not other things to bring us happiness and joy. But would we lean into you more this year and in doing so be a magnet for those around you and God for those that you're using with good names already. Would you just keep on giving them energy as they go. Father we pray at the beginning of this year for a lot of new faces in this church so that we can have the opportunity to love on them and see them come to know you and that because we love them well, they open their eyes to how much you already love them and they come to love you too. It's in your son's name we are able to pray all these things. Amen.

Thank you. Hi, good morning, friends. My name is Yasmeen Reese, and I'm a partner here at Grace Raleigh, along with my sweet husband, Brandon Reese. Had to give a shout-out. Today's reading comes from Matthew 28, 18 to 20. I can confirm Brandon is lovely. We do miss him this week. We remember Brandon's with our team down in Mexico right now, so we remember them and keep them in our prayers and hope that the Lord speaks to them as they go and encourages our partners in Mexico while they're there through Grace Raleigh. This is the fifth part of our series called Traits of Grace. The genesis of this series was last fall, when as a staff, we began talking about what makes grace, grace. And as we want to define what it means to be a partner of grace, which we don't have partners we have, or we don't have members, we have partners. When we talk about what it means to be a partner of grace, a person who calls grace home, what do we expect of grace people? What do we want to be as a church? And so we kind of threw a bunch of stuff on the whiteboard, and we ended up with these five traits that we've gone through these last five weeks. And I would tell you that we want you, I know that this is a lofty goal, but we want you to know all of these. We want you, if you call grace home over time, to be able to say all of these, to understand what these are, to be able to explain them to people. If they say, hey, what's your church all about? We can tell them this. Our mission statement is to connect people to people and connect people to Jesus. But the ways that we do that are in these five traits. So in the first week, we'll see if I can remember them. In the first week, we talked about the fact that we are kingdom builders, right? We're all building a kingdom somewhere. We're either building God's kingdom or our own kingdom. So we asked, whose kingdom are you building? At Grace, we want to build God's kingdom. And then in the second week, we talked about being conduits of grace. This is where we get our authenticity. This is where we're kind of real. This is how we can be accepting of others and loving of others who come in here because we receive God's grace. We know that we're messed up. You're messed up too. We love you too. We are conduits of God's grace as we receive it, we offer it. And then we talked about how we're people of devotion, that the single most important habit anyone can have in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. And so we are people who believe in that devotional habit and pursuing God on our own and allowing the Sunday morning experience to simply be supplemental to what God is doing in our life every day as we pursue him. And then, which one have I forgotten? Did we do last week? You're nodding your head at me. You're like, yeah, you got the first one. Now you're not there on the fourth one. Okay, last week, partners. We talked about being partners, right? We're not just partners at the church, but we're partners in ministry and what we do at Grace. We're partners in life. At Grace, no one should walk alone through any season of life. And then we're partners in faith. We hold up one another. We help each other cling to faith as we move through life. And so this week, our last trait, we are step-takers at grace. We are step-takers. And I'll tell you what that means. This is really a Sunday morning focused on our discipleship model at grace. When we talk about discipleship at grace, this is how we talk about it. We talk about it in terms of being step-takers. And as I was preparing this sermon, it occurred to me that this is really more of a seminar than a sermon. This is really more informative where I teach you than it is about being a sermon. A sermon kind of changes us and inspires us and teaching informs us. And so this morning I'm teaching you and I want to teach you about what discipleship is because I don't know if you've realized this or not, but discipleship is the goal of every church. Every church ever, discipleship is the goal because of the verse that Yasmeen read to us just a few minutes ago. Because when Jesus is leaving the disciples, going back up to heaven, he gives them his final instructions. Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the job of the disciples of the church that Jesus left behind. He says, my work here is done. I'm going to go to heaven. I'm going to sit at the right hand of the Father. I'm going to intercede for you. I've done what I came to accomplish here on earth. And now I am going to, I'm going to heaven and I'm leaving you with your instructions. I'm leaving you with the keys to the kingdom. I'm leaving you in charge. The church is my kingdom here on earth and you are going to be in charge of it. And here's what I want you to do. I want you to go make disciples in every nation. And so those instructions are not just for the disciples, but for every church and every body that would follow the disciples, every body of believers that would follow the disciples. So that commission is called the Great Commission, and it is our commission. And so every church ever has the goal of making disciples. They say it in different ways. We want to produce multiplying disciples. We want to produce disciple-making disciples. We're a discipleship-focused church. We want to produce disciples. Like, whatever it is, this is the goal of every church, and it's the goal of every church that I've ever been a part of, except, and here's the thing, this is a well-kept church secret that you probably only know intuitively, but you've probably never heard a pastor admit it, we're not very good at it. No church is really super great at making disciples. And I learned that this was true at my last job. My last job, I was at this church outside of Atlanta. It became this big three-campus church where when you preach, you're simulcast out to all the people and whatever, whatever. And because I was a part of a big growing church like that, I got to go to church conferences. So for seven years, I would go to church conferences, and I was the discipleship pastor, right? Now, it was small groups, but my job was to think about the process by which Greystone Church made disciples. And so we're getting into the weeds a little bit in here, but if you've been a part of church for any number of years, you've heard language like this before. You know churches are trying to make disciples. You know what small groups are all about. So this is what we were doing, and it's what I was tasked with. I was in charge of thinking through and implementing the discipleship process at Greystone Church. So I would go to these conferences where other big churches with big staffs would go as well, and there would be breakout sessions. I don't know what happens in your different industries, but in my industry, there's breakout sessions where you choose different things and you go to what's most applicable to your particular position. And so I would always find myself in rooms about this size with round tables, sitting around with other small group pastors or adult education pastors or discipleship pastors or associate pastors that were in charge of these things. And we'd sit around the table and we'd listen to the guru up in front who had small groups and discipleship all figured out and he would tell us exactly how he did it or she did it. And then we'd sit around our table and we'd have some time to talk to each other. And I'm telling you, without fail at these tables, somebody every time, every conference would say, what are you guys doing for discipleship? Because we're rethinking our model. It's not working, right? I don't know in corporate terms what it means when you rethink a model, but in church terms, it means we are totally messing this up. So we're rethinking our model. What do you guys do for discipleship? What we've been doing is not working. We're not really producing disciples. And the answers, I listened to them for seven years. I offered some of them when I thought I was smart. I'll help you guys, you ministry veterans. Let me tell you how we're doing it at Greystone. But the answers were always the same. Well, we're trying this for these reasons. We hope it works. If it doesn't, we might pivot to this, which means nothing. Nobody said, we've been doing this program for years and it's working. Because what churches are looking for is a funnel to put people in. When we put you into this funnel, small groups, volunteering, men's Bible study, women's Bible studies, whatever it is, when we put you into this funnel, you're going to go through these systems and you're going to bounce through these walls and you're going to come out the end of the funnel, a disciple, a mature believer in Jesus. That's the goal. We're giggling about it now, but that's the goal. And that was my job is to design the funnel. What do we put people in so that when they go around, when they come out, they're mature believers in Jesus who are now producing other disciples in their life? And there's all kinds of ideas for this. Some of you have been, I want to ask you to raise your hand. I don't want to delineate good Christians and bad Christians, but some of you have been in discipleship programs. You've been in discipleship groups. You're serious. Some of you have had people disciple you. Some of you have even, and you're the big dogs. Some people have come to you and said, will you disciple me? And here's the thing. I would bet my next paycheck that when someone asks you, if you've ever had someone come to you and say, hey, would you disciple me? That your very first thought was, how? I don't know how to do that. But you don't want to let them down. Clearly they think you're somebody. You got stuff figured out. You're like, yes, I will. I will do that. I will disciple you. Great. How do you want to disciple me? Let's meet for breakfast. I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to meet for breakfast once a month, and I'm going to find a book, and we're going to read it. And we'll probably miss a month or two. So in a year, we'll meet like 10 times, finish that book up, and chip, chop, chip, you're going to be a mature believer. This is going to be great. Let's do it. You're giggling because you've done it, man. And here's what you know. Here's what you know is that it didn't work. It didn't work. I've asked poor men over the years to disciple me. I remember, I'm just gonna say his name publicly. There was a facilities guy at Toccoa Falls College that I worked for when I kept the grounds named George Champion, who was just a phenomenally good man. And I worked for him and I asked him, will you disciple me? And he said, sure, let's have breakfast. I thought we had, in Toccoa, we had the huddle house. We weren't even big enough for a waffle house. We had the huddle house with literal bullet holes in the hood vent. There was three of them, but I only went during safe hours. It was fine. And Mr. Champion said, let's meet at hud House, but I got to meet there early, so we'll meet at five. I said, okay. Old college Nate made about two of those. And then I slept through the next two, and I couldn't look George in the eye anymore, so I bailed out on discipleship. There's been others through the years. Maybe you've tried that too. And we're taught about this thing when you try to figure out how do you make disciples? I could ask you to raise your hand. Who's heard of life-on-life discipleship? Don't raise your hand. But there's that phrase because in the Bible, that's how Jesus makes his disciples. They live together. I used to listen to the teachings of this guy named Ray Vanderlei, who's great, and I would highly endorse his teachings. But his teachings is called the dust of the rabbi, or his website's like the dust of the rabbi, because there's this phrase, may you be walking so closely behind your rabbi that as he kicks up the dust from the trail that is getting on you, that you're around him all the time. And in the first century, that's great, man. In the 21st century, that's not super practical. I had people at student ministry conferences tell me, when you're discipling high school guys, you just invite them into your life. Invite them over to dinner. Let them see how a godly man talks to his wife. Let them see how a godly man buys milk. Take them to the grocery store. Just let them see how you do your life. Like I've heard that phrase before. Like let them see how a godly man grocery shops. I'm like, I don't know, probably the same as a nice atheist, I would assume. I don't know how that's helpful. And so if you've been in church world, what you understand is that all the discipleship models that we work with haven't really worked. And you know how I really know that's true? Because of this question. Those of you who've been in church a while, those of you who have grown in your faith and consider yourselves to have a mature faith, who discipled you to get there? Who is it that's been meeting with you regularly, speaking into your life? What book studies have you gone through that produced you into maturity? Now, some of you lucky ones, you have a girl, you have a guy, and they've been guiding you well. And God's been using that relationship in your life in remarkable ways, and that does happen. But for a vast majority of us, like me, who's discipled me, it's just a hodgepodge of people that move in and out of my life as God directs. There's no single program that I went through to grow in my faith. There's no single relationship that I would say that man discipled me. Besides maybe my dad. But that's what dads are for. So those programs, they don't really work. And we're still left with this task, this holy task from Jesus to make disciples. The question becomes, how do we do it? It's this question that I had in my head when I went to another conference. I'm talking a lot about conferences today. I'm painting this picture like all I do is go to conferences. I'm going to a conference this week. So maybe that's what I do. Maybe I just go to a bunch of conferences. I don't know. I have no idea. But I went to a conference back in, I think, 2019, 18 or 19, in the fall. And it was a pastor's conference out in San Diego. You guys paid for it. Thank you so much. And when I went out there, I went to see this pastor named Larry Osborne, who's written a couple of books, who thinks about church in this really practical way that resonates with me and that seems in line with grace. And we've gone through some of his books and stuff at the elder level and the staff level. And I was tired of just big, huge conferences. This one was 25 senior pastors in a room with this guy, and he just taught us for two days. And it was really, really great. It was so good. I took copious notes. And then our elder meetings are structured as such that we have a business meeting on the first Tuesday of the month where we just make decisions for the church. And then on the third Tuesday of the month, we get together, we fellowship, we have fun, we enjoy each other. Sometimes we'll do communion, we'll pray together. And we have something that we're kind of going through just to edify one another and learn more about church in general. And so for seven weeks, we walked through the notes that I took in this conference. It was really valuable. But the most valuable thing I took out of there was the way that Larry thinks about discipleship, and it shaped the way that we as a church at Grace think about discipleship, because we're all called to be disciples, and we're all called to make disciples. So how do we do it? And if it doesn't work to get in the programs, and if it doesn't work to read the books, and if it doesn't work to do life on life, all those things are good and can supplement, but what is it that we need? Well, the way that Larry explained it was that if we really look at Jesus and his life, what we see is that Jesus is always equating our spiritual maturity with the degree to which we are obedient. Jesus is always telling us over and over again in scripture, over and over again in the gospels, we can see Jesus point to this idea that if you love me, you will obey me. And so when Jesus offers us discipleship, when he says he wants to make disciples of us, really he's beckoning us into obedience. Look at just a couple statements from Jesus. We see this, John 14, 15. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. If you love me, if you want to walk with me, if I'm really the Lord of your life, then you will obey me. He says it more pointedly in Luke. Listen to this. Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I tell you? Gosh, that one cuts, doesn't it? This is not the point of the sermon, but just as an aside, how many times could Jesus whisper that in our ear and it bring conviction? Why are you singing this song if you don't obey me? Why are you acting holy in small group if you're acting unholy everywhere else? Why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do what I tell you? Why do you call me Lord and yet not let me be the Lord of your life? And so what we see all throughout the gospels is Jesus teaching us, if you're mature, if you're walking with me, if you're abiding in me, you know what you'll do? You'll obey me. You'll do what I say. You'll follow my commands. And this made such an indelible impression that 30 to 60 years later, one of his best disciples, the apostle John, who may have been as young as 10 when he was following Jesus, is writing letters to the churches, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John. They're called general epistles or general letters, which means they were for all of the churches in Asia Minor around the Mediterranean at the time. They were written to be circulated amongst the churches. And so at the end of his life, when John has now made disciples in Erasmus and Polycarp, the early church fathers who carried on after the disciples had all left, John was the last living disciple. So he had successfully made disciples. He had handed the keys to the kingdom to other mature believers. And at the end of his life, writing on the topic of spiritual maturity, because I'm not sure they would have called it discipleship. They would have called it growing in faith. But at the end of his life, when he's writing about this to tell people, how do we know if someone has a genuine faith? John says this in 1 John 2. And by this, we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. Listen, whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word in him, truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. So John, discipled by Jesus, having produced disciples in his own life, says, if you know Jesus, you'll obey him. Whoever says they know Jesus, whoever says they love Jesus and isn't increasing in their obedience is lying. The truth is not in them. That's pretty stark. But what we see is that Jesus and then his disciple John equate spiritual maturity not with theological acumen, not with acts of great service, not with piety and prayers, not even with effective ministry or charismatically drawing other people. What we see is that Jesus and John equate spiritual maturity with increasing levels of obedience in someone's life. So here's what we understand, that we are growing as a disciple when we are growing in our obedience. So if we know that we're called to be disciples, we're called to grow and mature in our faith, and we've been in discipleship groups, and we've read the books, and maybe we've asked somebody to disciple us, maybe we've met with somebody, maybe we have a mentor. Here's how we are disciples. We grow in our obedience. As we grow in our obedience to God, we grow in our maturity with Him and are being formed into more godly disciples. And so the way we think about it at Grace is to be step-takers, to simply know what our next step of obedience is and be working towards taking that step or being in the process of taking that step. So to define it, when you say, what is a disciple? Here's what it means at grace. At grace, being a disciple means we are someone who is seeking out and taking our next steps of obedience. At grace, how do we define what a disciple is? When Jesus says, go and make disciples. If you're a small group leader and you're trying to figure out, do I have disciples in my group? Am I a disciple of Christ? The easiest way I know to think about it is, is your obedience to Jesus increasing or decreasing? If you're gradually giving Jesus more and more bits of your life, more and more of your submission, more and more of his lordship, and taking steps of obedience whenever he puts them in front of you, then you are growing as a disciple. If there is a step of obedience in front of us and we have not taken it, as a matter of fact, we step back from it, then we are probably fading as disciples. And it's interesting to me that this is really the process that Jesus took his disciples through. If you think about it, yeah, he taught them all along the way, but if you read through the gospels, what you'll see is that Jesus simply put steps of obedience in front of them. He says, here you go, here's the next thing I want you to do, do it or don't. If you do it, we'll grow. If you don't, you'll stay. If you flip through Luke, and I put these references in your notes there just parenthetically so you can make sure I'm not making stuff up. Luke chapter 5, he goes to Peter. Peter's just got done with the day of fishing. He's not Jesus' disciple yet, but he says, hey, he goes to Peter and he says, hey, go back in the water and cast your nets in the deep part. Now, that's a hassle. And Jesus knows it's a hassle. Jesus grew up around Galilee. He knows fishermen. He knows they just got done. They've been out there all day. They've been casting the nets. They've been reeling them back in. They've been casting the nets. They've been waiting. They've been mooring. They've been doing all the stuff they're supposed to do. And now it's the end of the day. They've worked a long shift. They haven't caught anything. They're discouraged. They're looking forward to whatever the rest of their night holds. Maybe some falafel. I don't know if they had it back then, but I've had falafel over there. And if I were there, I would be looking forward to more falafel. So I don't know what they're looking forward to, but they're on with their day, right? And then Jesus sees them at the dock, and he's like, no, I want you to go get back in the boat. I want you to go back out, and I want you to cast in the deep waters. That's the step of obedience. They do it. They have the greatest catch they've ever had. Jesus rewards their obedience with faith. He meets them where they are, and they become his disciples. A few verses later, Jesus calls Levi, or Matthew, the tax collector. And his step of obedience is different. He says, I want you to pick up and follow me. I want you to follow me. And Levi gets up from whatever he's doing, gets up from his desk, leaves his office behind, and he goes and he follows Jesus. He leaves his old life behind, and he goes and follows Jesus. Now, the first step that Peter had to take, get back in the boat, go back out, cast the net, that's annoying. That's not what Levi had to do. Levi's first step of obedience was leave that life behind, follow me. Jesus is always beckoning us with steps of obedience. Down the road, he's trained the disciples a little bit. They've seen him teach. They've seen him cast out demons. They've seen him heal people. And he looks at them and he says, all authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me. I want you to break off two by two. I want you to go into the surrounding towns and I want you to cast out demons and I want you to heal people. Go. That's your next step of obedience. That's your thing to do now. Go. The great restoration of Peter. Oh, that's Jen's ring. Did you comb it? The great restoration of Peter. Peter, at the end of Jesus' life, fails him, denies him three times as Jesus is being tried. It's a great failure of Peter. I love this passage, and I love the sermon that you get to preach out of it, and I need to revisit it sometime soon. But this restoration of Peter, he goes to him. Jesus has died. He's resurrected. The last time he saw Peter, Peter rejected him three times and then ran off, brokenhearted at what he had done. Jesus raises from the dead. He shows back up. Peter's on the coast. He's getting ready to fish again because he's disqualified from ministry. He can't do what Jesus asked him to do. And Jesus goes to him and he says, Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Then feed my sheep. Obey me. Do what I've told you to do. Go take the next step. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Then obey me. Then go do what I've told you to do. Feed my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Yes, Lord, you know I love you. Why do you keep asking me? Obey me. There's three times you denied me. There's three times I've restored you. Now go and do what I've asked you to do. Go walk in obedience, Peter. Go feed my sheep. Go be a pastor, what he says. And then the last one, the last step of obedience. Yasmeen read to us, go and make disciples. Do it. Go. What we see in the life of Jesus, when we ask, looking at Jesus' life, how do we make disciples? How do we become disciples? That what we need to pull out of him, out of his life, is not this impractical, clumsy, mysterious, life-on-life discipleship that we need to basically live in a commune with each other and learn from one another. It's we need to take our next steps of obedience. And here's the thing about these next steps of obedience. I don't know what yours might be, but I do know that we all have one. And some of yours are pretty scary. Some of you, if you're thinking about it, if I were to ask you, what do you think is your next step of obedience? Some of it, it's, hey, go back in the deep and cast again. For a lot of us, it's become a person of devotion. Get up every day, spend time in God's word, time in prayer. Just do it. I say it a lot. You hear it a lot. Just do it, man. That's your next step of obedience. Quit worrying about the other stuff and take that one. That's an easy step. That's go back and cast in the deep. I know you're tired. I know it's a hassle. Get up, do it, okay? Maybe that's your step. Maybe it's forgive my mom. Maybe it's confess the sin. Maybe it's seek to restore a relationship that's been broken. Maybe your next step is to get help. Those are hard next steps. Those are the kinds of next steps that we don't know what's on the other side of them. But what we know is that if Jesus is asking us to take it, he will be there to meet us when we do. Which is why we know that the scarier the step, the deeper the faith. The bigger the step in front of you that God's asking you to take, the greater your faith will grow when you're met there. And this is how we become disciples. Not because we become obedient robots to Jesus, but because with every step we take, our faith is deepened, our trust in him is deepened, and we are less hesitant to take steps in the future. Because all we have to do is look at our past and see every time Jesus met us when we took that step. To know that if he's beckoning me to this again, I can take it. So that's how we become disciples at grace. How do we disciple others? If that's how we become disciples, we just increase in our obedience. We take our next step of faith. That's what discipleship looks like. God, what would you have me do? What's the step of obedience you would have me take in my life? And then faithfully take it. And then once you do it, do it again. And once you do it, do it again. If that's how we are disciples, then how do we make disciples at grace? Here's how. We disciple someone by helping them identify and take their next step. That's it. That's it. Maybe their next step is to read a book. For some of you, it's been a few years. You should just try it on. Just read a chapter of something. Maybe the next step is to read a book. Maybe the next step is to start listening to sermons. I don't know. Maybe the next step is to get into a discipleship group, but that's not how we make disciples. We make disciples by helping other people identify their next step and then encouraging them to take it. Small group leaders, you ought to know the next step of everyone in your small group. Or at least know that someone knows what their next step is and that they're being encouraged to take it. This also opens up the doors of clumsy one-on-one discipleship to be discipled in segments or areas of our life, right? Instead of one person just telling us all the things we need to know about everything, we can identify a woman who has a good marriage and ladies, you can go to her and you can say, you seem to have a great marriage. You seem to love your husband well. You seem to honor Jesus in your house. Can you teach me how to do that? Here's some struggles we're having in my house. How would you deal with that? You're more seasoned than me. Your kids are older. You've managed to produce children that like you and that love Jesus and that you like too. How'd you do that? That person, you have that conversation enough times, that person is discipling you in motherhood. You're a young entrepreneur. You're starting something out. You see somebody, you see a guy who's been running his own business for a while. His employees like him. He seems to run it in a godly way. And you go to him, you go, hey, I'm starting a business. Will you help me run this according to the standards of Christ? Can I ask you questions about how to do my business? That man is now discipling you and how to be a godly employer and how to have a Jesus-centered career. You're struggling with an addiction. You're struggling with a particular sin. You're struggling with knowing the Bible. You can go to someone and you say, hey, listen, I've heard you talk. You lace it into conversations. You seem to know the Bible really well. Can you just help me learn it better? Can you tell me what you do? A person's discipling you in your knowledge of Scripture. This allows for communal discipleship, discipleship by a body instead of an individual that we all need to find. This allows people, and this is what's in line with our life experiences, to come in and out of our life and push us towards Jesus in different ways and in different avenues and in different areas of our life without being the person who's discipling us. And I think that this is how Jesus has been shaping his church all along, is by different people being placed in our life that show us our next step of obedience, and then it's up to us to have the willingness to take it. So here's the commission at Grace. Here's what we would ask of Grace partners as we understand what it means to be step-takers. We should all have someone in our life who isn't our spouse, who knows what our next step is and has permission to encourage us to take it. We should all have someone in our life who knows what our next step is and has permission to encourage us to take it. Now, this is important. Now, here's why it can't be your spouse. I'm not anti-marriage, okay? I just know I'm married, and I know that if you added that layer to what Jen and I manage already, and now, in addition to, hey, did you remember to take out the trash and lock up the door? Also, did you have your quiet time this morning? That's not good. That's not helpful, right? That's probably not going to go great. So we find someone outside of our marriage, if we're married, who knows our next step of obedience. We've confessed to them, this is where I think God is pushing me, this is what I need to do. And that's a good step. But the next step is probably even more important. And has permission to encourage us to take it. Someone who's invited into your life to say, hey man, have you done that yet? Have you had that conversation? How is your relationship with so-and-so? How are those safeguards that you put in place? Have you messed up? Is it going okay? How can I encourage you there? That's how we are step-takers at grace. That's how we think about discipleship, not as a program, not as a funnel, not as something that you enter into and then you get spit out as a mature believer, not even necessarily this life-on-life idea that someone would mentor you through all the stages and phases of your life as you work towards maturity, but this communal idea of discipleship, that it's simply framed up exactly as Jesus framed it up, that the more mature we grow in our faith, the more we will grow in the consistency of our obedience. And so to be a disciple means to be someone who is constantly aware of and taking their next step of obedience. And to disciple, to make disciples means to know what someone's next step is, to help them identify it, and then consistently and lovingly encourage them to take it. So at Grace, we are step-takers. And what that means is we understand to grow in maturity, we grow in obedience. So we all have someone in our life who knows what our next step is and has permission to encourage us to take it. Let's pray. Father, I pray that grace would be a church that's full of disciples. That it would be a church that's full of disciple-making disciples who are passionate about you, who are grateful for your son, who want nothing more than to know you better and to know you deeper. I pray that there would be fewer and fewer times that Jesus would need to whisper to us, why do you call me Lord, Lord, if you don't do what I say? Jesus, simply help us to do what you say. Help us to be disciples who take steps of obedience towards you and let us experience the goodness that we're met with as we take steps of faith. God, give us the courage to invite people into our life who know our next step. Give us the humility to invite them to encourage us to take it. If someone entrusts us with that for them, God, make us good stewards of your disciple for that season. Be with us as we go through our week. Be with our team in Mexico as they do your work down there. May they minister as they are ministered to. In Jesus' name, amen. If you guys would stand with me as we depart. I thought it appropriate to end this series, the five traits of grace, with this little stanza that I wrote for the sermon on conduits of grace that kind of captures who we are and what we believe. So I would bless you with this as you go into your week. At grace, we understand. We are yet forgiven. We are broken yet restored. We are deeply flawed and yet deeply loved. We are only good because of the Father. We are only righteous because of the Son. And we are only wise because of the Spirit. And all of this is grace. Go, have a great week. We'll see you next week.