Sermons tagged with Conviction

All right. Good morning, everybody. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. If I hadn't gotten a chance to meet you, I'd love to do that in the lobby after the service. First things first, to my Wolfpack friends, no jokes this morning. Well done. That was a fun run. You guys should have enjoyed that. I hope you had fun. I'm sorry it ended with an 8'11 buzzsaw yesterday, but that was a good run, lots of fun. I tried, just so you know, I pulled out, I have one shirt that's Wolfpack colors, a black and red flannel. I pulled it out this morning, and I'm fat, so I had to switch it out to the big boy shirt, but I was with you in spirit, I promise. Also, before I jump into the sermon, I don't normally do this, but there's something coming up I want to tell you about, and I want to tell you about it because of what's been going on, excuse me, kind of behind the scenes in discussions with our missions committee and on our elder board. So you probably heard Aaron say a few minutes ago something that we say regularly, which is 10% of everything that's given goes to ministries happening outside the walls of grace. It's our conviction to be generous as we ask you to be generous. And so the missions committee, which predates me, that was here before I got here, is the group of people from the church with a heart and experience in missions who determines where that 10% goes. They determine who we partner with. So we have three local partners and three international partners, and they're the ones that make sure that we're partnering with the right people in the right ways. And one of the things that they've been talking about, and one of the things that the elder board has been talking about, and so as two separate bodies, we've been talking about this together, is how can we get the partners of grace, you guys, more involved with our ministry partners beyond just passively giving and seeing 10% of that go to ministries outside the walls of grace. And so we've been actively looking for opportunities for our partners, church partners, to get involved with our ministry partners outside the walls. And so we've got that opportunity coming up next Sunday. Addis Jamari is one of our ministry partners that we support. They're doing wonderful work with families and orphans in Ethiopia. The thing that's near and dear to my heart is poverty is so pressing there that when a young family or a young mother has a child, she's very often faced with the decision of, do we give this baby up for adoption because we can't afford it, or do we lose our home or lose something else? Do we keep this baby because we're not sure that we can feed it? Which, to my knowledge, no one in faced that choice that's an excruciating decision and so by supporting them we're able to provide those mothers the resources they need to to keep their babies at home and not have to give them up for adoption which is a huge huge deal so to that end as we seek to continue to support at a story there's a trip this summer some of the teens are going and beyond the teens we have three adults from our church who are also going and so there's a fundraiser for that trip and it's a trip this summer. Some of the teens are going. And beyond the teens, we have three adults from our church who are also going. And so there's a fundraiser for that trip, and it's a way to get involved. There's a barbecue next Sunday. Wes, where is the barbecue? It's at Falls River Slim Club. That's right. Okay, so Falls River, the Greenway Club over at Falls River. There's a barbecue. You can go there. You can get some food. You can take it home, watch the Masters. You can also contribute food to that, and you can just show up and volunteer. It'll probably be a good place to hang out. There's more information about that in the Grace Vine, and you can talk to Wes after. He's one of our elders, and he happens to be married to the lady running the joint, so he knows more answers than I do. So I just wanted you guys to be aware of that as an opportunity for us to begin to partner with our ministry partners. Now, as Mike alluded to, this morning we are starting a new series called The Treasury of Isaiah. I am particularly excited about this series because I think this series was Jen's idea. Jen's my wife. I think it was her idea back in the fall when I was asking her what we should talk about, and she said you should do some stuff out of Isaiah. And that's tough because Isaiah is 66 books. It's a book of prophecy in the Old Testament. It's got all the themes of prophecy in it, and it's 66 books long. And if I tried to preach through the book of Isaiah, you guys would probably find another church, and I would probably find a new job. So I don't think that's what we can do. But there's so many wonderful, rich texts in this book that what this series gives us an opportunity to do is to dive into those and begin to learn them and see them and appreciate what they are because we don't often spend time in Isaiah on a Sunday morning. So we're going to do that for the next seven weeks. Now next week, I'm going to work to give you an overview of the role of a prophet and prophecy and what it is. And we'll look at a big sweeping view of the messianic prophecies in Isaiah, the prophecies about Jesus. But before I can even do that, I have to jump into this text in Isaiah chapter 1. If you have a Bible, and I hope you do, I hope you're bringing your Bibles, I hope you're marking them up. This is a mark-up passage. If you don't have a Bible, there's one in the seat back in front of you. In Isaiah chapter 1, we have these nine verses in Isaiah 10 through 18. And I know that I say that things are my favorite, but this is, and I mean this without equivocation, my favorite passage in Isaiah. In Isaiah. Okay? Maybe in the Bible, but definitely Isaiah. And I'm not even interested in approaching the rest of the book before we talk about this because I love the deep conviction of this passage. This passage kicks you right in the teeth. If you didn't come for that this morning, I'm sorry a little bit. But we see God speaking to his people in this passage about as harshly as you see him speak. And I'm the kind of person that needs you to do that to me or I'm not going to listen. So I love this passage. I love the conviction of it. I love the challenge of it. I love the relief of it. And in this passage, we find the very nature of the gospel. So my hope and prayer is that this passage can become for some of you what it has been for me for so many years. This is a hugely important passage. For just the slightest bit of context before I start to read it, this book is written to God's people, to the Hebrew people, to the Israelites. It is written to them at a time when they are spiraling morally away from God, when they have lost their way. And the role of the prophet Isaiah is to convict God's people. And that will become a very clear goal of his as we read this text. But God's chosen people, they have every reason to be following God. They know are they to me, says the Lord. I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and of fattened animals. I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of your blood? Listen. your worthless assemblies, your new moon feasts and your appointed festivals. Listen, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Yo, God is big mad at his people. He's incredibly angry at his people. You can tell it with the way he starts off because he says, hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, you people of Gomorrah. Listen, Sodom and Gomorrah to the ancient Hebrew mind were synonymous with evil. Those cities represented what evil was. It would be like calling a conservative Southern Baptist the mayor of Las Vegas. All right. It's it's when they think of that place, they think of sin and evil and debauchery. And they think of themselves as a shining people city on the hill. We are the chosen people of God. And guys go, no, no, no, no, no. Listen, listen, you sinners. Listen, you evildoers. You've lost your way. And then he goes down and he details for them. Here's what's interesting. He's not mad at them for the traditional sins that we would think of God being angry about. He doesn't say you're debaucherous, you're gluttonous, you're filled with lust, you're sleeping around, you're selfish, you're greedy, you're hoarding, you're oppressing the poor, you're mean and unkind to one another. He doesn't say those things. He actually gets onto them for doing things that he's asked them to do. Did you catch that? Look. He says, God, you asked us to give these sacrifices. The blood of bulls and lambs and goats, they mean nothing to me. God, you asked us to do that, he says, I detest them. They are a burden to me. It wears me out to have to deal with you when you show up on Easter. These are harsh words from God. And the question worth asking, if God is this angry with his people, then why does God hate the very actions he's prescribed? They were told to do those things. There's a whole book, the book of Leviticus, that details in painstaking detail exactly what they're supposed to do. If you've ever tried to read through the Bible in a year, two-thirds of you stopped in Leviticus. And it was because the book of Leviticus is laying out all of these things. When do we offer incense? When do we offer prayers? When do we offer sacrifices? What kind? When? Bulls and lambs and goats. When do we do that? When are the calling of convocation? New moons, new Sabbath, all the festivals? How do we do those? That's all in Leviticus. God has given them in detailed instruction exactly what he wants them to do. And now here in the book of Isaiah, he is raining down fire on them for doing those things. So why is it that God hates the very actions that he's prescribed? Because what God wants is the heart behind those actions, not the letter of the law and the actions themselves. We are told by David that God can despise sacrifices, but a fearful and contrite heart he will not despise. That God requires mercy and brokenheartedness, not sacrifice. God is interested in the heart behind the actions and the motives behind the obedience. He wants to see day in and day out that they actually love him and care for him, not just when they show up at church and go through the motions. I think of it like this, how the people of Israel were acting and what God was frustrated about. When I was in college, I think Jen and I started dating when we were, I was 20. So somewhere around the age of 20, 21. We're dating. And I had not really been in a serious relationship before this. I had been in relationships, but they weren't serious. And I didn't really know how to be in a relationship. I'm still not positive that I do. I think it involves vacuuming. And so we're dating. She knew how to be in a relationship. And she looked at me one day and she said, I can tell something's wrong and I'm kind of probing. And eventually she just says, I just don't feel very special to you. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. You are. So I don't really know how I handled that conversation. But we parted ways. She went back to her dorm, and I went back to my dorm. I lived in an on-campus house named Beulah. She lived in a small women's dorm named Troy Damron, and they were kind of reasonably close to one another. I went back, and I thought, gosh, my girlfriend doesn't feel special to me. I need to figure something out here. So I came up with a plan. I went to Walmart, and I bought a king-size bed sheet. And this is not going where you think it's going. This is a Christian college. So I got a king-size bed sheet, and I lay it out on the living room floor. And my roommates are watching me do this, and I trace out in big block letters, Jen, you are very special to me. Love, Nate. I draw it out, and then I get the Crayola markers, and I'm coloring it in. I went through a whole pack. I was up to like 2 or 2.30 a.m. This is painstaking work here that I do, and then I sneak over to her dorm. We still have the sheet somewhere. I know that we own it. It's somewhere. I went over to her dorm and I tack it to the pillars on her front porch. So it's facing the front door. So everyone who comes out that door, the seven or eight girls that live there, they will see that clearly Jen is special to Nate and she will know beyond a shadow of a doubt what she means to me now. Let me tell you something. That did not get the response I thought it would. It turns out that what Jen wanted was for me, through the little things of day-to-day life, to indicate to her that I cared about her, that she was special to me. What she didn't want was a big, dumb, grand gesture with block letters that would provide sermon illustrations for decades to come. What they were offering God is the block letters. You are special to me, God. Happy? And God says, no, absolutely not. And what they were guilty of doing, and this is why God is coming down on them so hard, is they were going through the motions. They were going through the motions of their faith. They were doing the bare minimum required of them to be seen as in the faith. We're still good. I'm doing my sacrifices, God. I'm coming to the special assemblies. You know, can't make it every week, but Christmas and Easter, I'm your guy. And they were just going through whatever they decided was the bare minimum of what their faith required of them to prove to God and whoever else that they were in. And it's interesting to me that in the corporate world, we now actually have a term for this. It's a new term that we've been blessed with by the Gen Zers called silent quitting, where people who have corporate jobs understand that HR, God bless them, can sometimes make it really difficult to fire your butt when you deserve it. And they realize that they have some job security, not going anywhere, so they make a conscious decision to put in the minimal amount of effort possible that will still allow them to keep their job and collect a paycheck, while fairly clearly communicating to everyone around them, I couldn't care less about this job. Just in it for the check. Doesn't mean anything to me. Now, I know that's a harsh way of depicting that, and I do actually see some positives to it, but I'm not making a joke. I think work-life balance got ridiculous, and the next generation is course-correcting for us a little bit. It's just going to be wonky. Anyway, sorry, that's social commentary. What God is telling the Israelites is, you're silent quitting on me. You're putting in the least amount of effort possible to still appear as if you're a people of faith. But you don't really care about me and what I've asked you to do and where your heart should be. And if you are at all like me, in my old Bible, I had a note next to these verses that said, Dear God, please don't ever get this angry with me. I never want to give God a reason to be this frustrated with me. That he says to me that when you bow your head to pray for me, to pray to me, I will not listen to you. When you come to church, you are trampling my courts. When you get up on Sunday and you put on your church finest and you show up at church, it is a burden to me. I am weary of your hypocrisy when you show up and pretend like you love me. And I want to write, God, please never be this angry with grace. And if you're like me, you're wondering, when and how do I go through the motions? When and how in my faith have I simply been giving God lip service? When and how have I silently quit on my faith? When the things I'm doing are just to be seen, are just to be considered in. I thought about enumerating the ways we can go through the motions. But I really think the more interesting thing to bring up when we consider how we might do this is to think about two things. I know for me, if I want to be honest about examining my life, about when I'm going through the motions of my faith, when I'm giving God the actions but not my heart, is to think through what motivates me when I do spiritual things. When I get up in the morning early to read my Bible? Am I getting up to read it so that I can check a box and say I've been spiritual today? Or am I getting up to read it because I just want to know the heart of God more? Because I'm curious about the scripture and I want to dive in in a fresh way. Do I get up to read it so that my Bible can be on my desk and my daughter can come down the stairs and see it there and I get the good dad award for today? Or am I doing it because I want to pursue the very heart of God? When I listen to worship music in the morning with Lily in the car, am I doing it so that she thinks daddy listens to worship music in the morning? Or am I doing it because that's what sets my heart right for my day? When we go to Bible study, we attend small group. Am I doing that because I want the people around me to think that I'm spiritual and I'm the kind of person who reads my Bible and attends small group? Or am I doing it because I want to be spiritually nourished by my community of faith? When you come to church, are you doing it because you're supposed to and there's somebody that you want to see and you want to keep up appearances? Or are you doing it, are you getting out of the car with the thought, God, speak to my heart and move me closer to you today? When you perform spiritual actions, prayer for a service, prayer before a meal, leading a small group, attending a small group, showing up and partnering and serving with something in the community, what is motivating that service? Is it the way that service will make you appear? Is it how it positions you in the eyes of others? Or is it because you can't help but serve your God? Let me tell you. When we do spiritual things for the way it makes us look to other people, we are going through the motions, and our hypocrisy is burdensome and wearying to God. The other thing that we think about to assess if we're going through the motions. Can I say with authenticity that I'm the same person on Friday night that I am on Sunday morning? Is there one version of me that everyone in my life sees? And you see it on Sunday morning. You see it on Monday afternoon. You see it when my kids are driving me nuts. You see it on Friday night and I've got some freedom and I can cut loose. You see it on Saturday at the tailgate. Am I the same person everywhere I go? Or do I put on different faces for different people to appear in different ways at different times? Because if we are not the same person in all of the pockets and circles of our life, then somewhere we're going through the motions. Either we're faking being like the world, and we don't really mean it, or we're faking being godly, and we don't really mean that. And normally, people who are walking with Jesus and zealous about him don't bother faking it for the world. What motivates your spiritual actions? How consistent is your character with the people that you see? Are there different versions of you? Because if there are, you might be going through the motions too. And this temptation to go through the motions of our faith without meaning it with sincerity, without being properly motivated, is a trap into which the historical church has fallen in over and over again. There is not a single person here who's been a Christian for more than three days who has not at some point gone through the motions. You may be sitting right now in deep conviction, thinking, Father, I've been going through the motions for years. And if you are feeling that, good. I'm not going to disavow you of that. Sit in it. It's helpful. And we should be asking, if all of those things are simply going through the motions, then what things does God want from me? What does he want me to do? What actions does he require of us that can begin to shift our heart towards him and prove to him that we're in this for him? What does God actually want from us? I'm glad you asked because Isaiah answers that question. In verses 16 and 17, he says this, wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. What does God actually want me to do? If he doesn't want me to go to church and pretend, if he doesn't want me to just do sacrifices and tithe and go to small group, what does he actually want me to do? I'll tell you what he wants you to do. He wants you to stop doing evil. Learn to do right. Defend the cause of the oppressed. Seek justice. Defend the widow and the orphan. Care for those who can't care for themselves. That's what he wants his Christians to do. That's what he wants his children to do. He wants you to go do the things you can't fake. Go do the stuff you have to really mean. And listen, this verse 16 and 17, this resolution, stop going through the motions. Stop faking your faith. Stop being insincere and burdening me with your hypocrisy. Go and do what I actually want you to do. And what is it that he actually wants us to do? It's to defend the cause of the fatherless and plead the case of the widow. It's to pursue justice and correct oppression. And I don't know of sitting with a group of men Friday morning talking about this topic and I became so frustrated with how I was taught my faith because I don't know where we decoupled justice and defending the cause of the fatherless and the widow and caring for those who can't care for themselves. I don't know where we decoupled that from the message of the gospel, but somewhere along the way in our churches, we made it optional and it's not. James tells us at the end of the Bible, true religion that is pure and undefiled before the Lord is to do this, is to take care of the widows and the orphans. Why is it widows and orphans? Because in the ancient world, those two were down and out. If you're an orphan, they did not have orphanages that you could go to that would feed you and care for you until you were 18 and send you to college. You begged in the street until you died. If you were a widow, your husband had died, and you did not have children to care for you and bring you into their home, you begged until you died. There's no social safety net. So when God says care for the orphan and the widow, does he mean specifically them? Yes, and he still does. But what he really means is those who can't care for themselves. That's why in the laws in the Old Testament over and over again, we see this principle of gleaning. When you're plowing your fields, leave the corners of them unharvested so that the sojourner, the alien, the homeless, the oppressed, the marginalized, the widow and the orphan can eat off of your field. That's theirs and it actually belongs to them. And if you harvest all of your field, then you're actually stealing from the oppressed and participating in the oppression. I'm not going to belabor this point too much because we may have a whole series about this coming up. But whenever we see the heart of God revealed, it is always for those who have less than us. When you see the idea of giving in the New Testament, it is almost always associated with giving to the poor. When you see Jesus handle the poor, he says, whatever you do to the least of these, you do unto me. When Jesus begins his ministry, he goes to the poor, blessed the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. You see him caring for the oppressed. So if we want to do the things that God really wants us to do, then we have to, in a non-nebulous, very specific way, get involved with caring for those who can't care for themselves. Go to the Ades Jumari thing next week. Dip your toe in it. See what it's like. Start to talk to people in your community and find out how you can be a part of that. This is not a theoretical, metaphoric instruction. This is a literal instruction. That if we are guilty of going through the motions and the thing that God wants us to do is to care for those who can't care for themselves. So let's get active about that. Now here's the thing that I love about this passage. Because you might be thinking to yourself, why is this one your favorite? This is a little rough. Here's why. Because it doesn't end in verse 17. In verses 10 through 15 we have this tremendous conviction. You're going through the motions and your hypocrisy is burdensome to me. I'm weary of you. And then in 16 and 17, we have this very high challenge. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Stop being dumb. Learn to be good. Go and do it. What do I want you to do? I want you to care for the poor. Go care for the poor. Go. But then we get verse 18. And verse 18 is the best. And verse 18 kind of, to me, feels like this. Sometimes in my home, my daughter Lily and I can clash. We're very similar. And that means that sometimes our words get sharp. And sometimes there's a little battle of will about whose words are going to be louder. And I win those. But sometimes I wish I hadn't. And whenever we clash, whenever she's gotten in trouble and she feels bad, I always go find her or she'll come to me and I'll pull her alongside of me and I'll hug her and I'll kiss her little head and I'll say, I love you. I'm proud of you. It's going to be okay. You're going to do better. I'm going to do better. Because I don't want it to end with the conviction and the challenge. I want to call her alongside and I want to comfort her. And when I read verse 18, to me it has the tone of God coming alongside us, putting his arm around us, and telling us it's going to be okay. Here's what he says in verse 18. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. I love that verse because we experience the conviction of 10 15. And the challenge of 16 to 17 to go make it right. But then in 18, God sidles up next to us, puts his arm around us, comforts us and says, but hey, this isn't all on you. You've messed up, sure. But though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. How does he do that? Through shedding the blood of his own son that's prophesied about later in this book. So that when God looks at you, he doesn't see all the times you've walked through the motions. He doesn't see all the times you've failed to help the poor. He doesn't see all of your shortcomings and misgivings. And he is not burdened by you or weary of you. He sees you clothed in the righteousness of Christ and he is happy to pull you up alongside him and put his arm around you. So really, this is the reason why I love this passage. Because Isaiah 1, 10 through 18 is the gospel. It is the gospel. Do you see this? See, I think a big problem with the American church is that we start the gospel message at verse 18. We start the gospel message at verse 18. We begin it right there. Hey, guess what? Jesus died on the cross for you, so you're not accountable for your sins. Hooray. Just accept him and walk with him. And I think that's the reason why we have people going through the motions in their faith. Because all they need to know is, what's the minimum amount I have to do to stay right with God for that salvation to count for me? What are all the things I can do over here that I'll be forgiven for eventually? What's the minimum amount of the things that I need to believe so that I'm in and God loves me and that salvation accounts for me? And what do I have to do? What's the get in the door price for this salvation? Because we started the gospel at verse 18. But when we do that, we cheapen the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel operates in direct proportion of our realization of our need for it. The power of the gospel resonates more deeply with you the more deeply your own sin resonates with you. The more deeply your own shortcomings resonate with you. And that's why we experience the relief of verse 18 because we have the conviction of 10 through 15. Oh my goodness, God is so angry. And then we have the challenge of 16 and 17. Go and start doing right, but God, that's so hard. And then we have the relief of verse 18. And so what I want us to do now is I'm going to read all nine verses in the tone and inflection in which I think they're intended. And we're going to collectively feel the relief of verse 18 when we get there. And you in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before me, who asks this of you, this trampling of my courts? Stop bringing me meaningless offerings. Your incense is detestable to me. New moon Sabbaths and convocations, I cannot bear your worthless assemblies. Your new moon feast and your appointed festivals, I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you. Even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening. Your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves. Make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight. Stop doing wrong. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case of the widow. Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. Though they are like crimson, I will make them like wool. That's the power of the gospel. The power of the gospel is to feel deeply the conviction in 10 through 15. And if you're here this morning, I've prayed that you would feel the necessary conviction. If you have been going through the motions, in part or in whole, it's not news to God. Confess it to him. If you're challenged by 16 and 17, and you think honestly about your life, and you go, gosh, I don't know what I'm doing for the poor and the oppressed. I don't know what I'm doing to correct injustice. Then let that conviction determine you to find ways to get involved in that. And then, and then, once we've sat in the conviction and we've sat in the challenge, then sit in the comfort of verse 18 and the gift of the gospel and allow that gratitude from his fullness. We have all received grace upon grace. Allow that grace that has been poured out from you from his fullness that it's not all on you to go do all the right things, but that God is already working in and through you and you are forgiven for the times when you've fallen short. Let the gratitude of that motivate the right behaviors and let the things that look like going through the motions be an outpouring of the faith that you've expressed through helping the poor and seeking justice for the oppressed. But we will never do those things if we do not allow God to bring us to a place of tremendous gratitude and comfort of the words of the gospel and the promise that we can reason together and though our sins are like scarlet, he will make them as white as snow. So I'm going to pray. And as I pray, if you need to pray to God on your own, do that. If you need to confess to God that you've been going through the motions of your faith, confess it. If you need to confess to God, I'm not doing anything for justice or oppression, confess it and ask that he would show you what to do. And if you are not overwhelmed with a sense of gratitude for the gospel and him covering over your shortcomings, ask God to fill you with gratitude. And if you are filled with gratitude, express that to him. As I pray, you pray, and then we'll have a chance to sing together. Father, thank you for your servant Isaiah. Thank you for the power of your words through him. God, we know that at different times and in different ways, our hypocr forget the conviction, but that we will allow the power of your word to rest on us. Father, I pray for myself and openly confess I go through the motions all the time. But Lord, I pray that you would imbue my actions with a sincerity filled with gratitude. I pray that for the people here as well. God, give us the courage to be convicted and to confess. Show us ways to get involved with what matters most to you. And Lord, would we leave here with just a deep gratitude for your sending your son to cover over our sins. And though they are like scarlet, you will make them white as snow. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning. Like I said earlier, my name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for making grace a part of your Sunday. I'm just stating this for the record. This morning, Jen went to Atlanta on Saturday with Lily, with our daughter Lily. And so I'm solo dadding with our two and a half year old son, John, which means this morning I got us both up, showered, product in our hair, presentable for church, and here on time. So I don't know if the sermon's going to be any good, but that was pretty good, and I'll take it. Yes. Thank you. And to boot, the sermon doesn't even have to be good because worship was so great, I could send you home now, and we've all been ministered to. So that was really good, too. You got one clap, two. There we go. Dang it. Aaron got a whole clap last week for his sermon, and now he's getting clapped for for worship. He's going to get a big head. Y'all don't know what it's like to deal with him during the week, I'm telling you. This morning, we arrive at this concept of abiding in Christ. And I think it's one of the most profound concepts in scripture. It's one that if we can grasp it, if we can instill it in our brain, if we can make it our mantra, it changes our entire life. This concept to me is so profound that when I was originally planning this series, the whole series was going to be called Abide. And we were going to look at what it meant for us every week to abide in Christ. But as I dove into the text, I realized that I wanted to talk about the broader conversation happening around those verses, which is why we ended up with a series called Final Thoughts. I'll remind you it's called Final Thoughts because this series is entirely in John chapters 13 through 17. In the back half of John chapter 13, Jesus has just been betrayed by Judas. They are at the Last Supper. It's the last time he is going to be in the room with his disciples before his death, burial, and resurrection. And before he goes, he has some final thoughts for them in what's referred to in theological circles as the upper room discourse. So in this discourse, Jesus is just telling the disciples all the things he wants them to know before he leaves. So it's worth it for every Christian to look into these chapters to see what Jesus has for them there. This morning, we arrive at the concept of abiding, but to help us understand why this is such a profound concept, I want to tell you about the life of my friend, Tripp. I thought about telling you about my own life, just the details and the stresses, but it feels a little bit self-serving and whiny for the pastor to get up and talk to you about how stressed he is and how much the church demands of him. So we're not going to do that. Plus you guys are really, really great and really don't demand a whole lot. Just show up on time and preach for 30 minutes. But my buddy Trip, he's probably my closest friend in the world, and we talk pretty regularly. And he's a couple years older than me. He's got a wonderful wife named Hannah, who I adore. She's wonderful. And they've got three kids, ages, I think, eight, six, and three. And then they made the decision about six months ago to add a Bernad Doodle to the lot. How do you show that you have money in America today? You have the name Doodle at the back half of your dog, and you have a lot of money if there's a Berna in front of it. It is a huge mammoth of a dog that's really annoying, and it was a terrible choice. And I'm not saying that because of my typical shtick of not caring for animals. I'm saying that because introducing that dog into that family in this season of life was dumb. And he knows it. He regrets it deeply. But Tripp and Hannah, they both have jobs. Tripp is an entrepreneur. He can work from anywhere. And he works very, very hard. But because he's running his own shop, he has to kill what he eats, right? So he's switching hats between being a salesperson, being a marketing person, closing deals, customer care. He's a creative guy. He's basically creativity for hire. He can do videos. He can host. He can help you brainstorm for your marketing thing or for an idea for you. So he's got a bunch of different irons in the fire. And to be a friend of Tripp's is to every, I would say, about 18 months, escort him through an existential crisis in which he questions what he should be doing with his career. It just always happens. And you kind of put his eye on the ball, and then he goes, but it's because he has so many different things going on. In the midst of that, Hannah, his wife, is a VP for a company that works with churches, and not just churches, but also schools and stuff like that, to create curriculum for students and children and for the parents. And her office is 30 minutes away, and her job is very demanding. And so when she goes into the office, she can't really be going back and forth, and sometimes she needs to stay late, which means that Tripp is going to be balancing the kids. And because they each have careers that they deeply care about, I think life is so much easier when there's one career in a marriage where you go, yeah, that's the more important one. For them, it's 50-50. Neither of them takes precedence over the other. So everything in their house, if you've got kids, you know, is highly negotiated, right? You are responsible for putting this one and this one to bed. I will get this one and this one up. If this one wakes up during the night, that's on you. If this one wakes up during the night, that's on me. If the dog wakes up during the night, I'll probably just let it out and hope it runs away. But they have to highly negotiate all these things. You take them to school. I'll pick this one up. And then one of them gets sick. And so when they get sick, they've got to sit down in the morning, and they've got to be like, okay, what are your meetings today? What are the things that I have to move if I'm going to stay home? They have to figure all of this out on the fly, and it is highly tense sometimes. So they're trying to juggle all of that, and I don't know what it is about them, but their kids are sick all the time. And then if one of them gets sick, you know how it goes, parents. They're upstairs down for the count. You should be at work, but instead you're taking care of the kids and the dog for three days on end. And one of their kids, they just got a diagnosis of some pretty strong ADHD. And they've been having some big behavioral things going on with this particular child. And it's been a real challenge, and it's put tension on them and on their marriage. And they're trying to balance that. They also, in their extended family, there's different tensions like there often is, and that's impacting them and how they balance all of those things. And then he's an extrovert. He loves his friends, so he wants to have time for them, but then everybody needs time to unwind and recharge, and so he needs his alone time as well. And for him, when I look at his life, it's just chaotic. And I think that our lives might not look exactly like that, but many of our lives are some version of that. If they're not now, they have been. And I know that I'm biased. I'm in the season of life where I have young kids and nothing ever gets done all the way. You can clean the house, but then this is going to go to pot. You can fix this thing, then the house is going to be a disaster. You can't do all the things when you have little kids. It's a profound season of hustle, I think. But I'm not naive enough to think that life gets a whole lot easier when they're teenagers. I'm sure that's a totally different set of stresses. I remember back to when I was like 26 and married and thought I was busy. If you're under 30 and kidless and we all just laughed, I want you to know we were not laughing with you, okay? Laughing at you. You don't know, man. But even then, even in that season of life, there's stresses and concerns. Am I going to get married? Are we going to have kids? Is this the right career for me? Is this what I want to be doing? How do I manage all of these things? And then when you're older and you have adult kids, am I doing the right, a good job with them? Am I being a good grandparent? Am I stewarding them along well? In life, we have, especially in 2024, so many concerns and things pulling us in so many different directions. I feel like we live now in a culture of confusion and chaos. There's so much stuff going on around us, and it's so hard to know the right thing to do and what to focus on and what to give our attention to in the moment. To that, to that confusion and chaos, we apply this principle that we find in John chapter 15. If you have a Bible, I would invite you to open there. If you didn't bring your Bible with you this morning, there's one in the seat back in front of you. You can open and read along there. I would encourage you, if you do have a physical Bible, I hope you do, to open it up when you get home and make sure that this passage is highlighted for you. This is an absolutely must-do highlight passage. But this is what it says. John chapter 15, verses 4 and 5. By the way, you may notice that I have a Bible that I've not used before. Last week, Gibby preached, Aaron Gibson preached, and when he did, he had a new Bible, and I touched it, and I was like, I have to have that Bible. So now I have a new preaching Bible, and I love it. So anyways, verse 4, Jesus says, Now this is what I get for switching from ESV to NIV in my Bible translation. Because the ESV and a lot of other translations, that word remain there And it actually goes along well with the picture that I use to explain salvation sometimes. But Jesus says in our vernacular, I am the tree trunk and you are the branches. And so the idea is we are, God created us and he attached us to him. We are a sprout off of him. He is the source of life. And that when we sin, when we act against the will of God, when we pretend to be God in our own life and follow our own rules, what happens is we are separated from God. And so the picture is the branch falls off the tree. It is cut off or sawn off. It falls off the tree and it is on the ground and it will surely die because it is no longer connected to its source of life. And when we are saved, what Jesus does is he picks us up and he grafts us back onto the tree so that now we are attached to our source of life. We will continue to live and continue to bear fruit. And in keeping with that imagery, Jesus here says, if you abide in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. If you are attached to me, if you remain attached to Christ, you will bear much fruit. And here's what I think is interesting about that. When a branch, when a healthy branch on a healthy apple tree remains there, it yields its fruit in season. That branch does not get to decide what it wants to produce, when it wants to produce it, or how much it wants to produce. That branch doesn't get to go, you know what? I'm feeling pears this year, and I'm going do it in December just for funsies. It doesn't get to do that. That branch grows apples and that branch grows apples when the tree decides it's supposed to. And that branch grows as many apples as it and the tree are capable of producing no more, no less. So what Jesus is saying is, if you abide in me, if you walk with me, if you remain attached with me, if you walk through every day with an awareness of my presence, if you begin and end your days with me, if you carry me into meetings with you, if you carry me into the workplace, if you carry me into interactions with your spouse and with your children and with your friends, if you abide in me, if you bring me along, then I promise you that you will bear much fruit. Here's why I think that's remarkable. And it's how I want us to think about the invitation to abide. The invitation to abide is a gift of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. The invitation to abide is a gift that God gives us of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. When it feels like there's so much pulling at us, when it feels like there's so much that we're supposed to do, so much that we're supposed to be good at, so many different irons in the fire or plates to keep in the air, there's so much put on us. Jesus says in the midst of all that, he sweeps it away and he offers us this invitation to abide. And he says, if you abide in me and I in you, if you pursue me and bring me everywhere you go, then you will produce the exact fruit that you're supposed to produce. I'm kind of reminded of Jesus's admonishment of Martha in Luke. In Luke, it might be chapter 10, but I should have looked it up and I didn't. Jesus goes to Mary and Martha's house. And it's a famous story. You probably know it. When he goes there, Martha is scurrying about. We call it bustling in our house. Just bustling. Every day I'm bustling. We bustle in our house. So Martha's bustling around, getting everything ready, making sure that everything's good for Jesus. I mean, if Jesus is coming over to your house, you probably want to be on your P's and Q's. You know, you probably want to look pretty good. So I don't blame her for the stress that she feels at hosting the Savior of the universe in her home. And so she's bustling around doing everything. Mary, meanwhile, is sitting at the feet of Christ, just taking him in, taking in his words, taking in his presence, being his friend. She's being with him. And Martha gets on to Mary. She says, what are you doing, lazy? Come help me. Don't you know Jesus is here? And Mary's attitude is like, yeah, I do know Jesus is here. That's why I'm sitting at his feet. And Jesus says to Martha some version of, Martha, Martha, you're worried about so many things, but only one thing matters. Mary's right. Focus on me. It's this gift of simplicity in a world of confusion and chaos. And I think it helps us a lot as we face life's big questions, as we assess ourselves. You know, this weekend, I had the opportunity to go to two funerals. One of them I led, the other one I attended. And it never ceases to arrest my attention of what's said about people at their funeral. The kinds of things that are always shared. I believe at a good funeral that a close friend or a family member who knew them well will share memories of the person who has passed. That's always my favorite part of the funeral. And they always talk about how that person loved. They always talked about how that person gave. They always talk about the good things. They don't typically talk about accomplishments. And whenever I go to a funeral, maybe because I'm a narcissistic jerk, I always wonder, what would people say about me at my funeral? What kinds of things would they mention? Who would come and what would they have to say about me? And I think about one was a funeral for a mom, one was a funeral for a dad, and so I think about my parents. If I were to share at my mom's funeral, what would I say? If I were to share at my dad's funeral, what would I say about him? And I think it's natural to wonder that and reflect on that and wonder at your funeral, what are your children or friends or family members going to say about you? Will they say everything that you wanted them to say? And I think in our life there's more big questions than this, but as we think about trying to do the right thing, trying to be the person God wants me to be, trying to live the right kind of life, I think we are, at least I am, constantly asking myself these two questions. There's two big questions we're asking ourselves. Am I making the right choice? And am I being a good fill in the blank? Am I making the right choice? Are we sending our kids to the right school? Am I handling this situation with my child in the right way? Am I doing a good job nurturing my child into adulthood as they are now adult kids and I'm trying to shift my role with them? Am I making the right choice in my career? This time, this space that I spend all of my time, a majority of my waking hours, I spend pursuing this career. Am I making the right choice? Is this the right career for me? Am I making the right choice by remaining in my career and not retiring? Am I making the right choice by retiring and not remaining in my career? Am I making the right choice in who I'm going to marry? Am I making the right choice in choosing that now is the time when we want to start trying for children? Are we making the right choice that now is the time that we want to buy the new house? Am I making the right choice in it feels like maybe it's wise to get rid of the old car and buy a new car. But as I do that, how much do I be indulgent and spend? And how much do I hold back and save? Am I making the right choice in those things? Are we making the right choices in who our friends are and how we assign our time and our talent and our treasure? Are we making the right choices? Are we doing the right things? I think if we don't, if you don't wonder that about yourself, I want to meet you and I want to know where you get your peace and your confidence. I think this choice, this question hounds all of us. Am I making the right choices in all of the right places? And then we're also hounded, or at least I am, am I being a good blank? Am I being a good pastor? What more can I do and give? Am I being a good father? Am I being a good husband? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good acquaintance? Am I just generally kind to people? Yes, of course I am. Are you being a good aunt, a good uncle, a good grandkid, a good grandparent? Are you being a good boss? Are you being a good employee? We're constantly assessing ourselves. Am I making the right choices? Am I doing the right things? And am I being good at the roles that God has assigned to me? All of that reminds me of one of the verses in Ephesians that I like to point out to you often. You can even jot this down in your notes if you're a note taker, but it's Ephesians 2.10. Ephesians 2.10 says, And it carries with it this idea that the Bible tells us that God knew you before you were knit in your mother's womb. So before you were even an idea in the eyes of your parents, God knew that you were going to exist. He knew that he wanted to claim you as his child, and he knew that he was going to imbue you with certain gifts and talents so that, because you're his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus. Why? For good works, for the purpose of doing good works, that you might walk in them. So before you were ever created, God knew you were going to exist. He was going to give you gifts and good works to walk in in your life. That was going to be the purpose of your life is to identify your good works. Hey, Father, what is my good work? And then how do I walk in it? Incidentally, parents, this is, I believe, how we are to parent our children. To raise them, to identify the good works that they're supposed to walk in, and to give them the courage and the competence to begin to walk in those good works. And another way of asking, am I making the right choice and am I being a good blank, is to say, do I know my good works and am I walking in them? Because God created us before time to build his kingdom, not our kingdom. We are all of us supposed to be kingdom builders. And so we've got to be asking ourselves, God, am I building it in the right way? Am I doing the right things? And as we wonder that, and likely beat ourselves up for not doing that as much as we think we should, we come back to this principle of abide. Abiding promises. We will be what we are supposed to be, and we will do what we are supposed to do. I love that promise. The promise isn't abide in me and I in you, and you will have the best possible shot at bearing fruit. Abide in me and I in you and you probably won't be disappointed. No. Abide in me. Follow me. Pursue Jesus. Bring him with you everywhere you go. Wake up. Spend time with him in word and in prayer. Carry him through your day. Talk to him. Pray to him throughout your day. Be a person who walks with Jesus, who abides in him. And the promise is you will bear much fruit. And here's the fun part. What fruit? Does the apple tree get to decide what fruit it produces? No, nor does it decide when, nor does it decide how much. You don't worry about what fruit you're going to produce. You don't worry about what it is you're supposed to do. You focus on Christ. You be merry. This one thing I will seek. This one thing I will give my attention to. And by focusing on Jesus, by following him every day, we are assured that we will do exactly what we are supposed to do. That we will be making the right choices. And we will be exactly who we are supposed to be, that we will be walking in, that we will walk as God's workmanship in the good works for which he created us. And we don't have to worry about what those are. All we have to do is worry about abiding in Christ, following our Savior. That's why I say it's a gift of simplicity and a world of confusion and chaos. Where do we send our kids to school? Well, the more you're abiding in Christ, the more clear that answer is going to be. Am I in the right career? The more you're pursuing Christ, the more clear that is going to be. Are we raising our kids the right way? Am I being a good spouse? Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good church partner? The more you abide in Christ and focus on him and invite him into your days and into your meetings and into your going and into your coming, the more you do that, the more certain you will be that you are walking the path that he has laid out for you. He gives us this remarkable gift of simplicity. You don't have to figure out if you're doing it the right way. You don't have to second guess if you've made the right decisions. You don't have to wonder if you're a good fill in the blank. All you have to do is abide in Christ and he will take care of the rest and you will produce much fruit. What fruit? Whatever fruit God has decided you're going to produce. We know the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So I think the fruit that we produce as we abide in Christ looks something like those increasing in our character. I think it looks like us expounding those into others in our life. I think it looks like us being used by God to do His work and build His kingdom. But the wonderful invitation is, hey, hey, hey, hey, you worry about focusing on Jesus, and he'll worry about everything else you're supposed to do. This is why I say, whenever we are evaluating or deciding, we should ask if we are abiding. As a general principle in life, whenever we are evaluating or deciding, we should stop and ask ourselves if we are abiding. I can't tell you how many times as a pastor that I've had a difficult conversation on the horizon. Somebody that I worked with that I was going to have to approach and say some hard things. Somebody with whom there was conflict and it needed to be resolved. Somebody who's disappointed in me and I need to reconcile. And how when those, I don't know about you, but when those hard conversations are on the horizon, I think about them all the time. I chew on them. I stress over them. I worry about them. I think, what angle are they going to take? And how can I be prepared for that? And how can I, I've got to get on to this person. How can I best do it and not demoralize them? Like, I think about them all the time. And I'll come up with an approach. This is what I'm going to do. This is what I'm going to say. This is how I'm going to attack it. And then something will happen and it will occur to me. Hey dude, have you been abiding? Not in this. Maybe I've had a couple of weeks where I've not been super consistent with my quiet times. Maybe I've been thinking about this conversation so much but I haven't prayed about it. And when I realize that's happening in my life, I put that conversation on the shelf. And I say, I'm not going to have that conversation until I'm prayed up on it. I'm not even going to think about how I want to approach that until I know that I have been spending some time with Jesus. And I put it on the shelf and I focus on my relationship with Christ. And then in that, I begin to pray about that conversation. Without fail, the conversation goes exponentially better than I ever thought it would when I have been abiding before I evaluate or decide. And also without fail. Funny how this works out. I'm always gentler after I pray. I'm always kinder and more gracious after I pray. If you're in your life faced with a big decision right now, what's the right thing to do here? Let me just ask you. Have you been abiding in Christ? Have you been walking with him? Have you been inviting him into your days? If you haven't, let me encourage you to put that decision on the shelf. Set it aside. Pursue Christ. Once you feel connected with Christ, pull it back off and see what he wants you to do. Have you been evaluating yourself? Which usually leads to beating yourself up. Are you someone whose voice in your head is a jerk? Is way meaner to you than anybody in your life? You're not good enough at this and you're not good enough at this and you're not good enough at this and you're failing at this and you're letting them down. If you have those voices, can I ask you, have you been abiding? Have you been pursuing Jesus and abiding him into all of your days? Are you listening to what he has to say about you? Or are you drowning out his voice with your own? Conversely, if you think you're doing great at everything right now, you're not. You abide in Christ. You're not. You need him to tell you. The question now becomes, as we look at this gift of simplicity that Jesus offers in a world of confusion and chaos, the question becomes, okay, Nate, I get it. I need to abide in Christ. I need to remain attached to him. I need to pursue him. I need to make him my singular focus. And everything else will kind of take care of itself. Decisions will become more clear. And his opinion of me is the one that I will adopt. That will all become more clear. I get it. I need to pursue Christ. How do I do that amidst the confusion and chaos? It's not like we get to call a time out on life and just do a spiritual retreat for the next two weeks so we're real connected. You all have stuff to do right after this. So how do we abide in Christ day in and day out in a practical way? That's what we're going to come back next week and talk about. So I hope you can be here for that, and I hope that it will be a tremendously useful and encouraging week next week. This week, I just want us focused on this gift of simplicity that Jesus offers, to simply abide in him. And in doing that, we can rest assured we will be who we are supposed to be, and we will do what we are supposed to do.. Let's pray and then Aaron's going to have some final thoughts for us. Lord, God, I thank you for a room full of people that do want to do the right thing, that do want to become who you created them to be. I thank you for a room full of people who do want to walk in their good works, who do want to build your kingdom. God, I pray that you would instill in us an increasing desire to do that. Lord, I pray that we would abide in you, that we would invite you into our days, that we would bring you along wherever we go, that you would give us your peace that passes understanding, and that you would create in our hearts a stronger and stronger desire for you. Lord, help us to abide, and in doing so, help us to enjoy the fruit that we produce by following you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Well, good morning and Happy New Year. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks so much for making grace a part of your New Year. For those for whom this represents a New Year's resolution to come to church with more consistency, I will try my best to not make you regret that while I'm preaching this morning. I've also, I feel like I should just address this, I've been told this morning that I look like I'm going on a ski trip, that I look snuggly, that I look like an author. And then Keith back there in the hat, he's wearing a hat in church. He's sacrilegious. He told me that the white balance was off and asked me if I could change my sweater. So this is, I'm going back to the quarter zips next week, but start off the year with a sweater. Here we are. Speaking of starting off the year, I wanted, I thought a lot in the fall about how to start 2024. What was the best way for us as a church to launch into a new year? And the passage that came to mind is maybe my favorite passage in the Bible. And I know that if you've been coming to Grace for any amount of time, you know that my favorites mean nothing. Because I play it pretty fast and loose with favorite. But this one is so favorite that when we moved into our house, we moved into a new house in July of 22. And I first time in my life, I had a committed space for my own office at home. The first thing I did is reach out to Jen, my wife, her cousin, who is a wedding calligrapher, or I guess just calligrapher in general. I got her to write this out for me. We framed it, and it's in my office. It's that favorite. It's a prayer that we find in the book of Ephesians. So if you have a Bible with you, I would love for you to open that up, turn to Ephesians chapter 3. If you don't, there's one in the seat back in front of you. Our worship pastor, Aaron Gibson, asked me if I could start to preach. Well, he said, can we buy new ESV Bibles for the church? Because you always preach from the ESV and it's confusing because you read from your Bible and it doesn't match anything anywhere. And I said, how about instead I'll just use my old NIV Bible and I'll preach from that. So you should be able to read along with me this year, which is a welcome change, I'm sure. So turn your Bible to Ephesians chapter three. What you'll find in verses 14 through 19 is a prayer. This is, this prayer has shaped almost everything about the way, and I'm tempted to say the way that I do ministry, but that's not really it. It's really the way I live life, the way I think about others, the way I pray for others. This prayer is what I pray over every new baby that's born to friends or to people at church. This is what I pray over people who are getting married, high school graduates, college graduates. This is what I pray over my children. It's what I pray over the church. It's what I pray over you when you're sick. It's what I pray over you when you are in times of plenty. It's what I pray over you when you are in times of need. This color is how I pray for everyone in my life. And so I wanted to start the year off by going through this prayer with you. So for the next four weeks, all the Sundays in January, we're just going to stay right here in Ephesians chapter 3, verses 14 through 19. It gives us a lot of time to pull it apart and look at it and understand it. Now one of the things that I think is really interesting about this prayer is you can find a prayer pretty similar to this in a lot of Paul's letters. This prayer is not dissimilar from what he prays for the rest of the churches. Now for those of you who don't know the Bible well enough to know Paul's letters, that's what I'm referring to, a significant part of the New Testament, two-thirds of it, is letters from Paul to churches. Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and 1 and 2 Corinthians. Those are letters to churches that Paul started on his missionary journeys, and then he writes a letter back to them for whatever reason, to admonish them, to encourage them, to convict them, to whatever, different purposes for different letters. And so in the middle of his letter to the church in Ephesus, he says, he prays this prayer. And what captures me, well there's a lot that captures me about the prayer, but one of the things I notice first when I read this prayer is the opening line. We're not going to read it just yet. But the opening line, we do read it, you'll notice. He says, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father from whom every family on heaven and on earth is named. So what he's saying in that first sentence is this. For this reason, I bow my knees. This is why I pray for you when I pray for you, which I do. This is what I pray. And if this is what Paul prays for all of the churches that he started, and if this prayer shows up in other letters, then isn't it worth examining the prayer and praying it over people in our lives? We're actually making this the prayer for grace in 2024. I believe there are some magnets involved. Are there magnets involved? Are we doing those? Yeah, yeah, we're going to do some magnets. In the next week or two, we'll have magnets with the verse printed on it so you can put it on your refrigerator, wherever you want to, so you can see it. And we would invite you to, along with us, make this your prayer for you and your family and the people you love and for grace in 2024. But when you think about what the prayer is, one of the things that stands out to me is what Paul does not pray for. I think almost as powerful as what he does pray for are the things that he leaves out. And this is what shapes the way I pray for people a lot. I want you to think with me, and I mean this. Do this exercise with me. Put yourself in Paul's shoes. The church in Ephesus is a church you started. You know the people there. You care about them. You spent time with them. You write them in other letters that you want to go there. But there's a wide door open for a great work where you are now. You can't go there now, but you long to be with them. And then you're writing them a letter. And you say, hey, when I pray for you, this is what I pray. What would you pray for them? We would probably pray for safety, right? Because persecution was rampant in the ancient world. So we'd pray for safety. We would probably pray for circumstances. I hope you heal up. I hope this works out. I hope God shores up your family. We'd pray for different situations going on in there. I think we would probably, if we're the leader of the church, pray for success. May God add to your numbers day by day, those who are being saved, that kind of prayer that we see in Acts. I think that we would pray for those things. And when we pray for people we know, what do we pray for them? Don't we pray those things for safety and for circumstances and for success for them? So it's interesting to me that Paul does not pray for safety, circumstances, or success in this prayer. You will not see those things in this prayer. And it stands out to me because I don't know if I have the right to call myself a history nerd, but I read a lot of it, and I listen to history podcasts, so do what you want with that. Thanks, I'm a nerd, Jeff says. But the ancient world knew what suffering was in a way that is totally anathema to us. Birth rates, infant mortality rates, most children, I mean a good number of children just dying in infancy or as really, really young kids. The average age is significantly down, suffering rampant across the board. And yet Paul does not pray for safety or for circumstances or for health. He's a church planter. He's ambitious, uniquely ambitious in the scope of human history. He wants this church in Ephesus to succeed. I know he does. I know he wants it to grow, but he does not pray for that. Look, look at what Paul prays for. And I think you'll understand why we're going to spend four weeks in it. I'm going to's the whole prayer. This morning, we're going to narrow down our focus to the first thing that he prays for. So there's a bit of an introduction. He says, this is when I pray for you, this is why I pray. For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father from every family on heaven and on earth is named. And then the first thing that he prays is that according to the riches of his glory, that you would be strengthened with power through the spirit in your inner being, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. The first thing that Paul prays for is salvation. The first thing that he prays for, for his church, is that they would be what we would call saved. That they would know Jesus. And it's interesting to me theologically, it's not much of a point, but I thought it was worth pointing out, the threefold involvement in the salvation process of salvation, what happens in salvation and how the Trinity, the God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit, the Godhead are all three involved in the salvation process. If you're a note taker, this is down in your notes, but I've moved it up to this point in the sermon because I felt like it fit better here. But just notice in the salvation process that salvation is the result of the Father's riches, the Spirit's power, and the indwelling of Christ. We see all three parts of the Godhead involved in the salvation process according to the riches of His glory, God the Father. That you'd be given power through the Spirit. That you'd be indwelled with Christ the Son. So it's interesting to me that the Trinity shows up in the salvation process. And it's interesting to me that the first thing that Paul prays for is that they, church in Ephesus, you, global church, would be saved. Now, we're going to talk about why I believe it's so important that this is the first thing he prays for. But before we do that, I want to stop and I want us to understand what it is to be saved. Because I've been in church world literally my whole life. And I've been in ministry world for over 20 years, which is crazy to think about. And I've had enough conversations with enough people who I know are good church Bible-believing people who in that conversation betrayed to me a lack of understanding around salvation and what it is. So while I know that it could seem rather elementary to start the year with these two fundamental questions, how do I get saved and what happens when I am saved? I also know that if I were to talk to all of you and ask you those questions, that the answers would probably not be clear and concise and unilateral. So I think it's worth defining those things here. So what does someone have to do to be saved? And when I say saved, what I mean is to exist in right relationship with God. And actually, we're going to define this in a little bit, what happens when we are saved. So I'll leave it for that. But what does someone have to do to be saved? Well, Paul answers this in the book of Romans. Romans is the most thick theological, densely theological book in the Bible where he goes to great lengths to explain what salvation is. For the first eight chapters of Romans, he is building a systematic argument, an understanding of what it means to be saved. So if it takes Paul eight whole chapters to help a church arrive at a fluency with salvation, then certainly we can say what I'm going to give you this morning is the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot more questions around salvation than I'm going to answer today. And if you have those questions, I would highly encourage you, talk to your small group leader. Talk to a friend who knows scripture. Come talk to me. Talk to someone you trust. Ask those questions. These are good questions to ask. But if we look at Romans chapter 10, verses 9 through 10, we can let Paul tell us what we have to do to be saved. Look at this with me. If you declare with your mouth, Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved. So, what do we need to do to be saved? We are saved when we confess and believe. That's what it is. We are saved. We become a Christian when we confess with our mouth and we believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord. This is a more concise way of saying what I say often. Often, you can probably complete these sentences, I hope that you can by now, but I say often that to be a Christian is to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he did what he said he did, and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do. A shorter way to say that is Jesus is Lord. Just within that is all that context. So we are saved. We are a child of God when we confess with our mouth and believe in our heart that Jesus is Lord. It's that simple. It's also worth pointing out, because of conversations I've had, what doesn't save us. Because I've been around church people long enough to know that we're not always trusting in the right thing to save us. Some of us put our faith in things that are ancillary, auxiliary to the salvation process. I know if you grew up in my tradition, it was really, really important that you nailed the prayer. You had to get the prayer just right. Anybody grow up praying the prayers? Yeah. And then you look at that as my salvation moment. This is when I asked Jesus into my heart. And then I'm saved. And then if you have a background like me, you're in church all the time. And so multiple times, I prayed that prayer for the first time at four and a half. I was at Sunday school. They told me about hell. That place seemed pretty bad. I was like, what do I have to do? You got to pray this prayer. I'm like, I'll pray it. I'm in. Seems easy. And then I told my parents about it. And my dad, who graduated from a Bible college, quizzed me. I passed the test. We went out for Butterfinger Blizzard. I was way more excited about the blizzard than I was that I was an adopted son of the king of the universe. So it's actually useful to point out that our understanding of salvation changes over our lifetime. What salvation was really clicked with me when I was 17. And I have a fresh and new depth of understanding of what it means to be a child of God every year that I walk with him. I think that's why Paul tells us in Philippians that we should work out our salvation with fear and trembling. When you're walking with God, your understanding of what it means to be his child and a citizen of heaven evolves and grows along with your faith. But I can remember, subsequent to praying that prayer when I was four, I'd be in other gatherings and there'd be a speaker, a youth event or a kids event or whatever. And at the end, he would do this thing. It was always a he in those days. He would do this thing and he would say, everybody bow your heads. Every head bowed, every eye closed. And then he'd say, if you don't know Jesus, would you just slip up your hand? I heard somebody over here say slip up your hand. We know slip up your hand. We know that. I have PTSD from slip up your hand. And then you're down and then the speaker would be like, I see that hand. Bless you back there. I see you. Do all that stuff. And who knows if hands are really going up or not. Some guys, I know for a fact, some guys fake it. Nobody's raising their hand. They just do it anyways. But you can't look, because if you look to know nobody's raising their hand, then it's like double whammy. You just sinned too, so you've got just trust the guy. Slip up your hand, and then he says, repeat after. If you just raise your hand, repeat after me. And so you repeat this prayer. And I can remember sitting there, and I would hear elements of that prayer that I didn't pray in my prayer. And I'm like, oh no. I'm damned. Like literally. This is a problem. So then I would pray that prayer just to make sure I was good. I've prayed the salvation prayer a bunch of times. I've gotten all the elements. Now here's the funny thing. The power of what saves me is in my desire to get the prayer right. It's confessing with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believing in my heart ardently, oh no, if he's not really my Lord, I need to say the prayer right. The belief and the confession is what God is working in to save my soul. I believe, I really do, my daughter Lily is almost eight. She's confessed with her mouth that Jesus is Lord. She believes in her heart, I know that she does, that Jesus is Lord. We've never sat down with her and prayed a prayer. I'm sure we will at some point. And that to her can be the marker of her salvation. That's fine. But Lily's as saved now as she can be because she's confessed and believed based on that passage in Romans. I'll tell you what else doesn't save you. And I don't say this lightly because I know that we have a lot of different traditions in here. And it's one of the things I love about our church, but baptism does not save you. It is not something that saves you is described as salvific. Baptism is not salvific. If,, and I say this very gently, if you are one who is sprinkled as a child, or you had your child sprinkled or baptized, and you're trusting that as what has saved them, I don't think you'll find that in Scripture. I don't think that's what we can cling to. We believe that baptism is actually, we teach that baptism is actually for people who have articulated a faith, who have articulated a confession and a belief, and that we baptize by immersion. I would stop here and say, if baptism is something that the Holy Spirit's been gnawing at you about, and you're hearing this at the beginning of the year right now, and you're going, oh shoot, he's talking to me. I am. I am talking to you. You should do it. Let's talk. But baptism doesn't save us. Baptism is a public profession of a private prayer. It simply declares that we're a child of God. Another thing that doesn't save us, and I bring this up specifically because I've been in conversations where parents have referred to this. And forgive me if I'm wrong on the wording. I did not grow up in a Presbyterian tradition or a tradition with this, but I believe somewhere around the age of 13, you take a confirmation class. Is that right, Lane? You nodded your head. Okay, good. You go through confirmation. And I've talked with parents before who are saying, how can my kids act like this? They went through confirmation. I know they're saved. And I had to say, to be saved, you confess with your mouth and you believe with your heart and isn't it possible as a 13 year old kid to be in a group of your peers going through class with the teacher that you respect and saying the things back to them that you're supposed to say and signing the papers that you're supposed to sign and being paraded up on stage like you're supposed to be paraded without ever actually believing what you're being taught. Doing it because this is what your peers are doing, this is what the teachers expect, this is what your parents expect. So that's not something I would cling to as evidence of salvation. We are saved by confessing and believing. That's what saves us. Now, what does it mean to be saved? When I say this word saved in right relationship with God, becoming a Christian, a believer, all the words, what do we mean? Well, Jesus tells us what he means in John chapter 5, verse 24. Look with me. These are the words of Christ. He tells us what it means to be saved. Very truly, I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from death to life. When we are saved, Jesus himself tells us we will not be judged and we will cross from death to life. What it means to be saved, the simple way to think about it is being saved means I am a citizen of heaven. That's what it means. Simple way to say it. And it's such an important concept. That's why I chose it, that we're a citizen of heaven. Once we are saved, we don't belong here anymore. Earth is not our home. We are aliens and sojourners in a foreign land. And one day, God will take us home. But right now, we are aliens here. And our job as aliens and sojourners is to take as many people as we can on our way home as humanly possible. That's what we're here for. But it means that this place isn't our place and it's a really important concept, but I'm going to get a chance to preach about this concept in the middle of March, so I'm not going to belabor it here. But that's what it means to be saved, that we are no longer judged. We are no longer judged for our sins. Scripture teaches us that when God looks at us, once we have confessed and believed, once we have become a Christian, that when God looks at us, we are clothed in the righteousness of Christ. That when he looks at us, he does not see our unrighteous deeds. He sees us covered in the sacrificial righteousness of Christ. The way it's phrased in Isaiah, and we're going to be in Isaiah after Easter. We're going to do a series called The Treasury of Isaiah, and I get to preach out of Isaiah 1, verses 10 through 18, and surprise, surprise, one of my favorite passages. The way it's phrased there is God says, though your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as snow. So when we are saved, we are no longer judged. We are no longer declared guilty for the things that we've done. And listen, this is, I know, I would say heady, but it's not, I don't know. I don't know how to describe it. This is esoteric. God does not exist in time. He exists outside of time. We think. Who knows? Because I don't even think anyone understands that sentence. But because that's true when we become Christians, when he brings us into the fold, he forgives us of our sins past, present, and future. He forgives you of all the dumb stuff he knows you're going to do 10 years from now. We act like it's just from this point back, and it's all points. He covers over you with his righteousness and does not judge you. And then it says we pass from death to life. Death, whenever we see it in scripture, is always descriptive of an eternity absent of God. Just being dead, being cut off from God. So we pass from death to life. This is the punishment and the curse in the Garden of Eden. In the first couple chapters of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 3, we see the fall of man. And because Adam and Eve chose to sin, God says, you will now experience death. You will now be cut off. I think of it this way. I think of a tree and our sin, we're a branch on the tree, and our sin cuts us off of the tree and we fall to the floor helpless and essentially lifeless. Because we might not be dead yet, but we're going to die pretty quick. And then when we're clothed in the righteousness of Christ, we confess and we believe God and His goodness picks that branch up off the ground, grafts it back onto the tree, connects us to our source of life. We pass from death to life. That's what it means to be saved. We are now citizens of heaven, children of the King of the universe. So, if you didn't know that, now you do. If you did know that, then you just got to check the boxes. I'm good. Okay, I understood. Either way, that's a good outcome. Now, where I want to press us as a church in 2024 is thinking through the reality of where Paul chooses to put this prayer. This portion, this particular petition within the prayer. It's the very first thing that he prays. He prays for other things. He prays that we would be along with all of the saints. He prays for community. We're going to spend a week on that. He prays that we would know the surpass, that we would feel the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. We're going to talk about that. He prays that we would be filled with the fullness of God. We're going to talk about that. But before he can pray for those things, he has to pray for this thing. He prays for their salvation. I pray that you would know Jesus. It's the first thing that he prayed. It's the most important thing that he prayed. And it's interesting to me that he prayed it to a church, to a church full of people who very presumptively know Christ already. You don't just casually go to a Christian church in ancient Ephesus. It's not what the cool kids were doing. You don't just wander in there to try to make a sale. Like you go because you mean it and yet he prays for their salvation. I am deeply convicted that salvation was Paul's first priority and prayer for all he encountered. Salvation, that they would simply know God, that they would know Jesus, that he would dwell in their hearts through faith, was his first priority and prayer for every person that he encountered in his life. And it makes sense, doesn't it? Why would I pray anything else for you if I'm not praying that you know Jesus? Nothing in your whole life matters if you don't know Jesus, and everything after that matters in a completely different way once you do know Jesus. So why would I ever pray anything for you except that you would know Christ? And I said, this prayer shapes the way I pray for people. It shapes it in this way. Now when I pray for people, and some of you probably have heard me pray this, whether it's success or difficulty, I pray that all the events and circumstances in that situation would conspire to bring you closer to God, would conspire to bring you to a depth of Christ that's more full than you have now, that everything in your life would be, would conspire to bring you closer to Jesus. That's how this prayer color is my prayers. And I think it's incredibly important that Paul's first priority in prayer for every person that he meets is that they would simply know Jesus. Convicted of this, after I wrote the sermon this week, I emailed the elders. Every week, I come up with a prayer schedule for the elders. A little while ago, last year, I think sometime, we agreed. It's the dumbest agreement ever, because it's right there in Scripture, that one of the purposes of elders is to serve the church through prayer. So we said, how can we better do this? And we decided that every week I would make a schedule Monday through Sunday of here's what we should all be praying for today. Here's the one thing to include in our prayers as we pray for grace this week. And I write those on Mondays. And so when I finished writing the sermon this week, I wrote to the elders and, and it was the, you elders don't know, sometimes I sit there and stare at my screen for like 30 minutes. There's a huge hassle, but they're important to do. I did this in five minutes. And I don't remember the exact order, but it was Monday. Pray for your children that they would know Jesus. Just pray for your children that they know Christ. If you're sure that they already know Christ, pray that they would know him more deeply. Tuesday, pray for your small group, by name if you can. Pray that everyone in your small group would know Christ. If they already know him, pray that they would know him more deeply. Wednesday, pray for your service teams, the people that you serve with, including other elders, by name if you can, that they would know Jesus, that those who know Jesus would know him more deeply. And then it was community and neighbors. And then it was extended family. And then it was the people of grace, as many people as you can by name. And then the staff on Tuesday came in here and we went through the church. And one of the things I like to do sometimes, I don't do it as much as I need to, is I just sit in seats and I pray for the people who come to mind. Because you guys are creatures of habit, although the Morgans, you all are messing me up today. You guys are creatures of habit. You sit in the right seats. And I sit in your seats and I pray for you. And I go over there and I pray for you. And we pray that you would know Jesus. That's the prayer. Now here's the conviction. If that's Paul's first prayer and priority for everyone that he meets, shouldn't that be ours too? Shouldn't our first prayer and priority for every person we encounter be that they would know Jesus? What else are we praying for them if we don't do that? And then I started to think about this. What would happen if I shifted my perspective to Paul's perspective, and every person I encountered, the first and primary focus I had for them was I hope you know Jesus. How would that change my countenance? How would that change my life? How would that change my day to day? How would that change how I parent my children as they interact with others? How would that change my level of frustration in traffic? Think about that. If your first prayer and priority for everyone that you met, I think it's we did that, that what we would find is that we would begin to see people as objects of God's affection and not obstacles to our progress. We would begin to see people as objects worthy of God's affection, worthy of that reckless love that chases people down that we just sang about. And we would quit seeing them as obstacles to our progress. Now, I wrote this point specifically for me. So if it's helpful to you too, great. But I don't do so good with that sometimes. I was going to tell you guys a story about an interaction I had over the Christmas break, but the sermon's gone long enough, and I don't really have time to, and I don't really need to give you all the details. Just if I give you the premise, you'll fill in the blanks from there, I promise. I went to an AT&T store over the break. That's fun. I didn't say anything. Like if you just looked at the script, if it was a court transaction, and you just saw the words that I used, you wouldn't think I was being a jerk and that I had totally lost my patience. But if you hear them in a certain tone with a certain look on my face, you would understand that I was less than kind. And as I thought about this, I just deeply regret that interaction. And interactions like that that happened in my life. Where this person that I'm seeing is not an object of the Father's affection. This person that I'm seeing is an obstacle in the way of what I need to do. They're an annoyance. They're an obligation. Whatever word you want to fit in there. And so here's my encouragement to you. Make that your goal in 2024. That everyone you encounter, you would first think of as an object of the Father's affection. That your first priority for them would be that they would come to know Jesus. Pray that for your children. If they know him, pray they would know him more. Pray that for your coworkers. Pray that for your neighbors. And consider what would happen in your life, how your year would look different than 2023. If every person you encountered, your prayer was, God, I hope they know you. And if there's a way to move them towards that right now, I pray that you would use me to do that. How would that change your year? How would that begin to change your heart for others? So that's the challenge to you in 2024. As we make this our prayer for our families and our church and ourselves, we'll talk about the rest of what it means. But as we think about others and as we encounter others, let's let Paul's priorities be our priorities and make our first prayer and only priority for them be that they would know Jesus. As I finish, I'm going to pray. But before I do that, I'm going to leave some space for you to pray as well. I would encourage you right now to pray for the people that God's been bringing to your mind. Pray for the people in your life who might not know Jesus, that they would come to know Jesus. Pray with boldness and with faith. I love that we opened up the service with the song, There's Nothing That Our God Can't Do. Because some of us need to be reminded of that if we're going to continue to pray for that person to know Jesus. I have people in my life that I go through, I go through droughts of praying for them. Because sometimes I just don't think it's possible. But that's a faithless thought. Take a minute. Pray for the people in your life who don't know Jesus that they would know Jesus. If you're a parent, pray at first for your children. And just go out from there. And after a minute or two, I'll pray to close us up and Kyle's going to come up and we're going to have communion together. Heavenly Father, we just want to know you. Lord, would you give us your heart for those who don't know you? Would you give us just a portion of the desire that you have for us that we might feel that desire for you? God, for all the names that just got lifted up to you, we pray with faith and hope that they would come to know you. Lord, if there's a way to use us to bring others into a saving faith in you, I pray that we would open ourselves up to that. That we would be courageous, sensitive, bold, and caring. And we would share you with others. God, if you have an opportunity to use grace to bring people closer to you, we pray that you would do it. We offer you this space in our lives and ask that you use us in your plan to bring people into a saving faith with you. God, we thank you that you make it possible for us to know you. And we pray that you would give us the heart that you have to reach the people who don't. In Jesus' name, amen.

Grace, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be the pastor here. It's a big morning for us. Just to keep the tension going for you guys, I'm not showing you the building until after the sermon. So just relax. Because there's some stuff I want to say to you before we do that. And we get excited about that. If it's your first Sunday here, we as a church have been looking forward to this Sunday for a while. We started a campaign in February of 2020 to raise some money to build a building or to purchase a building to have our own permanent home after 20 years of wandering and wandering from rental to rental. And we were able to get some land, and now we have been developing some plans to put a building on that piece of land, and this is the morning that we're going to show the church what we intend to build. So if it's your first Sunday with us, this is not typical, and I'm going to say some stuff. You're kind of sitting in on a family meeting. So this feels a little bit different than a normal Sunday. And I've actually been talking about this sermon since I got back from sabbatical in July, which is probably a mistake because I think I've overhyped it. I can't possibly deliver on whatever you guys expect me to do this morning. But as I was thinking about what I wanted to share with y'all, it's really not helpful for me to think about it in terms of good or bad, but to think about this morning in terms of helpful and true and authentic. And so where I'd like to start is in that sabbatical. In the month of July, you guys were gracious enough to give me the month to not work and just kind of reflect and recharge and all the things that you'd like to do when you don't have to work. And I've felt, I've carried guilt for that all year and still do. And I'm not sure I'll ever do a sabbatical again because I still just feel bad because most professions don't get those. Most of you had to like keep working while I was in Chicago playing video games. But, but I've also known since being given that time that it would be appropriate at some point to share with you guys, the church, what God impressed upon me during that sabbatical break. And as I processed what it was and realized what it was, because it's not like I was going through sabbatical going, God, what do you have for me? What do you want me to see? What's like the one thing that you want me to take away? I was just, honestly, I was just going through sabbatical, enjoying pursuing God as a not professional Christian, having quiet times that I didn't have to then go and preach about just, just pursuing God for me. And I had a lot of great experiences. I went to churches that I wouldn't normally go to. And, and, and, and God kind of imparted on me a bigger vision for church and church world and Christendom and just how supportive we need to be of one another and how gross it is when we seek to criticize other churches for not doing it the way that we doing it with the way that we do it and that's a whole other thing but when I realized what the main thing was that I carried away from sabbatical I knew that this was the morning that I wanted to share it with you guys. It feels appropriate on NFL kickoff Sunday, the single greatest Sunday of the year every year, to start the sermon with an illustration from Hard Knocks. Hard Knocks is a show, it's an HBO show, and I know that pastors don't normally tell you to go watch shows on HBO on Sunday mornings, but that's not even the worst show I'm going to recommend this morning in this sermon, so get ready. But Hard Knocks is a documentary series. They follow a different NFL team every year through the preseason as they prepare for the regular season. And inevitably, I think this year is a little bit different. They framed this year's up a little bit different, but almost always in the show, they chronicle some rookies. They highlight some rookies that have come to training camp for the first time. They're trying to make their name for themselves in the NFL. And there's always in the show, two kinds of rookies. There's one rookie that sees this as the opportunity of a lifetime, who's hounding the veterans, asking tons of questions, taking diligent notes, coming to meetings early, getting to practice early, doing all the extra things, trying to get in all the extra reps, doing all the little things behind the scenes to be excellent and to make the team. And that rookie always makes the team. And then there's this other kind of rookie who's just kind of coasted on talent his whole life, didn't really have to work that hard in college, and he shows up to the NFL and he's playing. He wants to spend his money. He wants to goof off. He wants to make jokes in meetings. He's not asking the veterans questions. He's not doing the extra little things. He's not coming early and staying late. And I always watch that show and see that rookie with so much frustration because I think to myself, dude, what are you doing? This is the opportunity of a lifetime. If you can't pour yourself out for this, if you can't get pumped up about this, what are you doing? Like, do you know that what people would give to have the chance that you have, and you're just going to fritter it away having fun? Like, this is the time when you push. This is the time when you run. This is the time when you go. What's the matter with you? And I realized over sabbatical that that's me. That I'm the one coasting. I'm not saying I'm coasting on talent because I don't have much. My family likes to joke, me and Jen like to joke, that there's no one on earth with more confidence for less reason than me. Oh, by the way, the notes that you have in your bulletin, you can just fold those up and tuck those away. I'm not using those this morning. As I looked at them at the end of this week, they just felt too rigid. And I just want to speak to you guys from the heart. But I realized that that was me. Have you guys ever had a job where once you figured it out, you could do that job to the expectations of the people around you and your boss to the degree that it needed to be done without giving your whole effort. You ever had that job that you could just kind of shift it into autopilot? Do a couple of things and you don't have to give 100% every week because it doesn't require that of you. And you find yourself just kind of coasting in that job. That's me. That's what I realized I've been doing. And I wanted to say that publicly because I wanted to apologize to you publicly for not putting all of myself into this. And I know that you guys are kind and you're nice. And some of you are going to have a heart to tell me afterwards, Nate, you're doing great. We feel like you're giving 100%. Don't be so hard on yourself. You can't give 100% all the time. So to that, thanks. Keep it to yourself. I know me. And I know what I can do. And I haven't been doing it. Over sabbatical, I watch this show. This is the bad one. Called The Bear on Hulu. Bill's seen it. He's seen it. He knows. It's about a chef. I'm not officially recommending it because there's a lot of cuss words and it's rough. It's intense. I came across it a couple of years ago and started to watch it and liked it, but it was a little bit too intense and I let it go. And somewhere in the month of July, a buddy of mine that I really trust said, hey, this might be the best show I've ever watched. And I thought, okay, I'll give it another go. And I watched it in like three days. I was on sabbatical. I didn't have anything else to do. And I know that as a good Christian pastor, that inspiration is supposed to come through the book on prayer that I read or the commentaries that I was studying. But it didn't. It came from a Hulu show called The Bear. And in the second season, I cried every episode. Every episode I watched, I cried. Because what was happening is these people on this show were galvanizing around a purpose, a restaurant, and they were given everything they had. It's what they thought about when they woke up in the morning. It's what they sold themselves out to during the day. It's what they were thinking about when they went to bed at night, and they gave it everything they had, and it showed how just gradually their lives started to change as they pursued this, and they started to become better humans as they rallied around this thing, and I just found it, for whatever reason, I'm shaky now as I'm talking about it, for whatever reason, I found it so very deeply inspirational. And I came out of sabbatical more determined than ever to do my best work. Because if this isn't worth pouring yourself out for, what is? If God's kingdom isn't worth your whole life, then what's worth it? If this isn't the time for me to go, when is? What could be more important than building God's church, than declaring his word, than loving people towards Jesus? What could be higher stakes than that? There's this verse, it's a couple of verses in 2 Timothy. Paul is writing a letter to Timothy, this guy that he trained, and now he's left him as pastor of a church. And he's writing him two letters of advice, 1 and 2 Timothy. And at the end of 2 Timothy in chapter 4, Paul confesses and acknowledges that he's reaching the end of his life. I don't think he was reaching retirement because I don't think retirement was a thing for Paul. I think he knew that he was reaching the end of his usable years. And he writes this to Timothy and it's always to me been one of the most intimidating verses. He's encouraging him in verse 5. He says, the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith. And I have in my Bible, I don't know when I wrote this, years ago, just this little note, oh, to say this, to get to the end of my race and say that, that I have been poured out like a drink offering, that I've fought the good fight, that I've kept the faith, and I finished the race. But that's an incredibly intimidating verse, isn't it? When in our lives have we felt like we were poured out like a drink offering? Besides parenthood, which by default forces you to pour yourself out like a drink offering, whether you want to or not, that kid is tipping you over, man. Besides that, what have we done? What experiences do we have? When we look back at something and we say, I poured myself out like a drink offering. I've fought the good fight. I've finished the race. When do we get to say that? And I'm coming out of sabbatical reminded of this verse,izing that there has certainly been more seasons, more weeks than not, where I've not been pouring myself out for grace. Where I've not been the pastor that I believe I'm supposed to be. Because I figured out how to do my job without giving it all that I've got. And I'm telling you guys, I'm sorry, and I'm done with that nonsense. I'm going to pour myself out like a drink offering. I'm going to give this place all I got. Because if I don't, the crap am I waiting on? So here we go. Now, what does that mean? This is an important question. And you'll see in a minute why I've opened up a sermon on the building about myself. Okay, just relax. What does it mean that I intend to try my best? I'm going to preach better sermons? No, because I'll be honest with you, I don't know how to preach better sermons. Okay, if y'all got tips, give them to me. But I don't know how to preach better sermons than I already preach. So I'm not going to tell you I'm going to preach better sermons. I can't do that. I'm actually trying as hard as I can on most sermons. It's all the other stuff that you don't see that I need to step up to the plate on. And so what I've committed to, and I pulled staff together and I told them this coming out of sabbatical, what I've committed to is that every spare minute that I have, that I could fritter away on something else, or I could go home and just not do as many hours of work that day. All the spare minutes that I have in my work week are going to go towards two things. Reading on behalf of the church, learning, and just being a learner and a reader, because when I read, it makes me better. I'm not going to get into all that. But the other thing is writing. I need to write. And there's a lot that I need to write. My first goal was to get three weeks ahead on sermons. I am. So if I preach a sermon and I look lost in the middle of it. It's because I wrote it three weeks ago. And I've not thought about it since. So sermons actually might get worse. I don't know. But what I really need to write is stuff that I'm thinking about. I kind of think about it as the discipleship pathway materials. Right now at Grace, if someone comes to the door and they're a new believer or non-believer, but they come into faith and like, how do I grow spiritually? Our answer is get in a small group. What are we doing in the small group? Whatever the small group leader wants to do. We're doing 1 Samuel this semester in my small group. Great. How do I grow spiritually? We just, you know, we just hope it happens. Just go to small group, get into some good relationships, come on Sunday, we'll preach the Bible, we'll sing together, and God's going to grow you. And God in his goodness has grown us. He's grown a lot of people at Grace. He's worked in that sanctification process. Sanctification has become more like Jesus in character. But that's no longer an acceptable answer to me. This conviction started last fall, and I won't get into all the things that led to it, but it was an unexpected trip where I made two unexpected friends, and one of the unexpected friends spoke for Ministry Partner Sunday, Ru Sin. And through my relationship with him, I've really seen and been inspired that the next thing that grace needs to do, the next stage of the growth at grace is to develop all the things that need to happen behind the scenes. So that church on Sunday is just something that we do where we gather together, but the real church is taking place all throughout the week. And so what we need at grace is a discipleship pathway. What we need is materials, Bible studies, sometimes curated books, sometimes curated studies that other people have done. Sometimes it will be things that I've written. Sometimes it will be things that people in the church have written. But what we need is a pathway, is materials to put in people's hands, directions to encourage people who come to grace, direction to encourage you so that everybody who walks through those doors within about three or five years of coming here, even if they didn't know anything about the faith walking into grace, three to five years down the road, we've given them everything that they need so that they can be someone who is spiritually mature enough to be an elder of the church. Now, I'm not saying that every one of you in this room should be an elder. But what I'm saying is I want a church full of people who are capable of it if God calls on them to do it, who are spiritually ready and spiritually mature and ready to get there. And my part in that is to quit hoping that spiritual growth happens organically and to start writing out a pathway for us to begin to pursue Jesus together with all that we've got. And here's why I think that this is really important work for me to do. Here's why I think it's the most important work for me to do. And I would even say, if my sermons do get worse, but I'm writing this stuff faithfully, and I'm going to send the staff what I'm writing every week, they're going to see and they're going to know. I'm being held accountable for this. I would say that actually serves the church better. Now, I'm going to try to not preach worse, but, you know, we'll see what happens. I think it's so important that I do that now because of what lays ahead for us. In a few more minutes, I'm going to show you the building that we think God wants us to build. And when we get there, we're going to get bigger. I've heard people say, not to me, because people don't say things like this to the pastor, but they say it to you, and then you tell me what they said. That you've had friends come here, and they'll be like, place is cool, like the vibe, like the church, music's good, preaching is acceptable, and we'd like to go there, but your facilities stink. I'd rather not get stuck behind a pole. Our location is not good. They'd rather not walk outside and sometimes in the rain to get their children past the aquarium store. And I've seen young families come in for the first time. And they'll go in that hallway when all the young families are here at once. And they're holding their two-year-old and they're looking at the zoo of two-year-olds in the room. And the tears and the three of them that want to break out. Sometimes it looks like they're prisoners of wars back there. They're like holding the bars and there's tears streaming down their face. Please anyone just get me out of here. These people are terrible. They're hitting me. Like it looks rough. And I've watched young families like reluctantly hand their child into that room. And I've thought like good luck next week when you try that other church because you ain't coming back here. Our facilities are sometimes a barrier between four people who would consider grace. And I understand that. And on one hand, we could say like, well, you know, they're not committed enough. And yeah, they're not. That's the whole point. Frankly, I think if you won't go to a church because of the facilities, that's silly and you need to grow up. But that's what church does. We grow people up in Christ. And so maybe that's part of the maturation process that needs to happen with folks. When we get into a new building, that barrier is down. When we get there, there's going to be people in the community that see us building it and they're going to want to come kick the tires. There's going to be old grace folks, some OG grace people who came over from St. Andrews and helped plant in 2000. They're going to hear about it. They're going to want to come see it. You're going to invite your friends because you're going to want them to see it. And we're going to have more people coming here than we ever had, at least for a little bit. And when that happens, I want to be ready. I want to have systems in place. I've said since the day, I said in my interview that I believe in the role of pastor as shepherd. And every person who walks through those doors is a soul that we need to be shepherds and stewards of. And I want to be good stewards of those souls. And if we don't have a plan in place to grow people through small groups and through relationships and through Bible studies and through educational materials and through access to information and through encouraging in their next step and by loving them closer to Jesus, if we don't have an intentional way to do that, then we're not being as good of stewards of those souls as we can be. And so I want to be ready. I'm reminded of the scene in Matthew chapter 4. I believe it's in verses 20 through 22, where Jesus is calling the disciples. And he goes and he finds James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and he finds them mending the nets. And I've always loved the imagery of that. Of the idea that before these men are going to be sent out to do a great work, they're mending the nets, getting ready for their catch. Now they think they're going to catch fish, and Jesus says they're going to go catch men. They're going to be fishers of men, but they're mending the nets. They're getting ready for the work that God has had them to do. There's another place in Scripture where Paul writes a church, and he says, I've been wanting to come to you. I think it's Ephesus. I've been wanting to come to you, but I have to stay here right now, for the Lord has opened a wide door for a great work. That building is opening for us a wide door for a great work, and I want us to be ready. I want us to be discipled up. I want us to be trained. I want us to be ready to lead the Bible studies. I want our families ready to accept the new families. I want the kids over there in that room to know what it is to be kind and generous and gracious when new children show up and to integrate them. I want our small groups to be ready and open for other people to come in as we take on their spiritual growth and their spiritual development. I want us to be ready. We need to mend the nets so that we are ready for the great work that God has for us. Now, here's my biggest fear with starting this campaign and looking to build a building. My biggest fear is that as a church, we start to think that the greatest thing we can do is build something. And in one way, we're right. But we're wrong if we think it's building a building. The most important thing we can do is build disciples. The most important thing we can do is build people who love Jesus, who know him, who follow him, who passionately pursue him and love others. And if we never get a building, we're still going to do that as hard as we can every week. I'm committed to it. And if we think that building a building is the most important thing that we can do as a church in this season of church, then what we're going to do is we're going to spend the next however long it takes, however long it takes to raise the money we need to raise. We need to raise $2 million to build that building. So however long it takes to raise $2 million, if we think that's the most important thing that we can do, we're going to sit in here week in and week out just kind of waiting for the one day and skipping over what's happening right now. It's not about one day. Church doesn't start when we build what I'm about to show you. Church has been going on for 2,000 years. It'll keep going on and it needs to happen every week here. We need to build ourselves up. We need to be ready. We need to grow in our faith. The most important thing that can happen in the church is that we build disciples, and we can do that right now as we mend our nets and get ready for this great work. But the great work doesn't just start when we get there. The great work starts right now as we galvanize around growing ourselves into disciples and really more pointedly, allowing God to grow us as we get out of his way and allow him to pour us out like a drink offering and we learn what that feels like. So I'm going to do my work behind the, to prepare the lattice to direct the growth that the Spirit is going to bring. And this is where this applies to you too. Here's my challenge to you over this time and kind of what could feel like the land between now and when we build. Is to not think of it that way. Think of this as time to prepare ourselves and to get our butts in gear too. Here's the challenge to you guys. I don't know if any of you have a background in karate. I have thought about this illustration for years. It's been something that rattles around in my mind, and I wish that I had a better one. I don't. This one makes my point better than anything else I can think of, so we're going with karate this morning. I don't know if any of you have a background in karate. I do not because I have friends, but if you do have a background in karate, then you know that there's a belt system, right? Like the first belt you get when you go do karate is you get a white belt, I think. You get the white belt, and that means like you're in the door, you're part of the dojo. I think that's a thing. You get the little thing that you wear, and you're in. You're a karate guy or a girl. Good for you. And then you start to learn skills, and you get like another belt. I don't know, a yellow belt, and then maybe a purple one, and then a blue one, and then I think there's a brown one, and I think there's a brown one. I actually researched this. There's a brown one with a black stripe. It's pretty fancy. That's real close to black belt. And then you get to be black belt, right? And I think some people, I don't know what the matriculation rate is for karate and the belts. I don't know where everybody stops. But not everybody becomes a black belt, right? Because black belts are bad jokers. I remember in elementary school that there was a rumor going around our school. Like I heard this old wives tale. Maybe it's true. I don't know. But I heard somebody said that whenever you achieved black belt, you had to register your hands with the federal government as deadly weapons, which is hilarious. And I went ahead and took care of it when I was younger so that I wouldn't have to mess with it later on in life. But black belts are like, man, they're the top. They're the best. But that's not for everybody. Some people get the blue belt, and they're like, that was fun. I'm going to try soccer now. I'm just going to go on to the next thing. And they don't keep progressing. They're not a yellow belt. They learned some skills. They did some stuff. Now they're a blue belt. And I'm good. I want to go do something else. I'm comfortable with my current level of karate skill. I see how I chopped like that. This is a layered sermon. The church, this one, all of them, church has a lot of blue belt Christians. Church has a lot of folks who got their white belt. They're new. They're in. Got the suit. Ready to go. And then they started learning a couple of things. Started attending church regularly, making that a priority. Prioritizing church and their schedules with their kids. Started making small group important. Maybe even started to give and tithe. Small groups, Bible studies. Maybe they even actually read spiritual books like on their own without anyone asking them to. And they're moving up the ranks. They get to about blue belt and they're like, you know what, I'm pretty good. Pretty good. I don't look like I did before I became a Christian. I've made some progress, doing some good things. Got some good habits. Got some good skills. And I see some black belts. Those men and women, those are some serious Christians. Those are like missionaries. Those people have degrees. They went to seminary. They got doctorates. They are serious about their faith. Like at my church, Nate, we got Nate. He's not even a black belt. Like he's definitely brown, maybe with a black star. Probably not. Black belts are serious Christians. And I'm comfortable. I got other things I want to do. I want to go try soccer now. A lot of us are cruising through our spiritual life, comfortable with who we are and where we're at. And every now and again, God will poke us and kind of tell us something that we need to work on. And maybe we even begrudgingly go, okay, all right. And we give in to that conviction. But we're not sold out for our faith. We're not giving it everything we have. We're not pouring ourselves out like a drink offering. We're going to get to the end of the race and we're going to be like, well, I finished it. I wasn't really trying to win. And here's the problem with blue belt, middle of the road, comfortable Christianity. The Bible makes absolutely no space for that. There is not one single inch of space in the Bible's description of a life of faith that makes room for one day in the middle road. There's actually a verse that haunts me, and it should haunt you too. Revelation 3.16, he convicts a whole church. Jesus says he convicts a whole church, and he says, the one thing with you is you are lukewarm. You're neither hot nor cold. You're sitting on the fence. You're right in the middle. You're comfortable Christianity. You're on cruise. And because you were lukewarm, I will vomit you out of my mouth. God makes no space for comfortable Christianity. He makes no space for people who are not all the way sold out. Listen, look, just a couple of the verses that I thought about that make this point. Jesus says himself, he's preaching, and his mother and brother show up, and they need him. They're worried about him because he's kind of making a name for himself, and they feel like he's embarrassing himself. And they tell him, hey, your mother and your brother are waiting for you. And he says something to the effect of, if you do not hate your mother and your brother compared to me, then you are not prepared to enter into the kingdom of heaven. You are not ready for this life. You are not ready to sign up for this. Somebody comes to him and they say, hey, Jesus, I believe in you. I want to follow you. What do I need to do? And he says, follow me. Let's go. And he says, okay, but my dad just died. I need to go do his funeral. And Jesus says, let the dead bury their own dead and let's get going. No one puts their hand to the plow of the faith and then turns their head and looks behind them. We have to go. We are moving. We are all in on this. Paul writes about the faith and he tells us that we are to run in such a way to get the prize. He says, all runners run, but we need to run to win the race, which is look that we don't get participation trophies in Christianity. And then he says to Timothy at the end of his life, I've poured myself out like a drink offering. I'm done. I'm spent. There is no more juice in this lemon. I fought the good fight. I kept the faith. I finished the course. I won. I don't know what it means to you or how it sits on you when I say that there is zero space in our faith for comfortable middle-of-the-road Christianity. All I know is that I'm the poster child for that kind of faith. And I need to let God get to work in here. And I don't know how you feel about it. But here's what I want to find out. What would happen in your life if you gave all of yourself to your faith? Last week I preached out of Jude and I said the message of Jude is that we should contend for the faith with our whole life, with everything we have. What would happen if you did that? What would you look like if you actually gave yourself all the way over to the faith and you said, Jesus, I'm all in. I'm two feet in on this, Jesus. Whatever you want me to do, wherever you want me to go, however you want me to do it, I'm in. I'll do it. What if you joined me there and we did this together? What if you joined the people on the row with you and you said, you know what, from here on out, all in. No middle of the road. no blue belt nonsense. I'm all in on this. What could happen if we allow God to build a church full of disciples who are sold out to him? Because we finally got ourselves out of the way, we finally let him make us uncomfortable, and we finally started doing the things that he asked us to do. What could happen in this new space if there was a church full of people sold out to him, ready to accept the community that's going to come there? What kind of generational ministry can we do in that place as we prepare ourselves for the great work that's going to be open to us? I am committing to you that I will pour myself out like a drink offering for our Jesus and for this place. I'm going to ask you to come with me Because Lord knows none of us can grow this place alone. None of us can proclaim Jesus alone. None of us can move this church forward alone. Least of all me. So who's with me? Who's all in? Who's ready to get to work? Husbands, go love your wives like you've never loved her before. Go model for your children what they should do and what they deserve. Let her see a man who loves God and who pursues him, who prays fervently and consistently. Wives, let your husband see a woman who loves the Lord, who loves his word, who's diligent in prayer. Let him know that there is no one who loves him and respects him more than you do. And show him the love of Jesus in the way that you treat him every day. Parents, love your children as hard as you can. Be present for them. Model for them what godly Christianity is. Show them what a godly man looks like. Show them what a godly mother looks like. Show them what a godly friend looks like. Show them what it looks like to steward and to marshal your finances the way that God wants you to do that. Show them what it looks like to love other people who don't look like you or think like you. Show them what it looks like to gracefully disagree. Show them what it looks like to be gracious lovers of others. Show them what it looks like to build a life passionately pursuing Jesus. It's not too late to start showing them. And it's not too late to admit to them, hey, I've been coasting and I'm sorry, but I'm all in on this and I'm all in on you and I want you to follow me. It's not too late to do that. You can do that anytime you want. But leave from here. If you're all in, leave from here and go love the people in your life well. Leave from here and dadgummit, if you don't have a devotional habit by now and you've been here for years and you've heard me say over and over again, the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. And you're still not doing it? Shame on you. Go do it. Come on. Go read your Bible. Darn it. Thank you. Get in God's word. Devote yourself to prayer. Let's be all in. Not on the building. I think that God wants us to build a building. I think the amount of money that we have to raise to build a building is absurd. And I think if we're going to build it, you guys are going to have to believe that too, and you're going to have to give. But I'm not going to talk about that a whole lot, because I think God's going to do the work that he needs to to do and that if he wants us to build a building, we're going to be in the building. If he doesn't want us to be in the building, we won't be in the building. I just kind of think he wants us to be in the building. In the meantime, you know what I really care a lot about? Us growing closer to Jesus together. Let's be all in on that. Come with me. Let's see what happens. And let's see what God does. Alright. Let me pray for us. Then we'll show you the stuff. God, on behalf of those who have cruised, who have set our faith on autopilot, I am sorry. We are sorry. God, we, I ask that if we feel a fresh conviction to pursue you relentlessly, that that conviction would not wear off as we leave this room, as we walk out of this space and the concerns of life begin to drown out the noise of this fresh conviction. God, would you put it at the forefront of our awareness and of our thoughts? Would you force us to wrestle this to the ground? Would you let it haunt them as it haunts me that there is no space in your gospel for half-hearted Christianity? I pray that for each person in this room, that you would lay before us the next thing you want us to do to pursue you, and that we would do it. Big or small, we would do it, eagerly and obediently. And once we do it, that we would say, God, what's the next thing? And what's the next thing? And what's the next thing? Let us not be a church full of cultural, casual, complacent Christians. But let grace be a place that is filled with people who love you and who desperately want others to love you too. Be with us as we go, God. In Jesus' name, amen.

All right, well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Thanks for being here with us this morning, especially on a holiday weekend. I always joke around about you being a better Christian if you're here on a holiday weekend, and while I do believe that is true, I also think that it's just really nice and impressive when it is a holiday weekend and you choose to make church a part of that. So that's touching for me and I think good for you on that. And good for you if you're watching online and making it a point to be with us in spirit this Sunday as well. We did it. We made it to the end of the summer. This is the last in our series for this summer called 27. We'll pick it back up next summer when we jump into Paul's letters and finish in Revelation. So this is the last one that we're going to do. We're focused on the book of Jude this morning. And as if you guys needed more evidence that my wife, Jen, is a better Christian than me, when she asked what the sermon was on this week or which one I was going to be writing for this week, I said, Jude. And she goes, what are you going to do it on? And I'm like, I don't know. It's Jude. Like, I don't know the last time I read Jude. And she was like, well, I love this verse. You should do it on this one. And I'm like, of course she knows a random verse from Jude. So that was humbling. And you'd be better off if she were your pastor. But you have to settle for me this morning until she can be convinced otherwise. When I sat down to study Jude, I saw very quickly that it was kind of a microcosm of the entire Bible, of one of the dynamics happening all through Scripture and in the way that we understand scripture. So I'm starting us off here. Jude is a perfect depiction of both the depth and approachability of the Bible. Jude is this kind of microcosm and a picture of both the depth and the approachability of the Bible. Jude in verses 5 through 19, that's 15 verses. I know that's 15 verses because I counted on my fingers to make sure that I would not be wrong when I said 15 verses. In those 15 verses, there are 18 references to other scriptures, to Old Testament scriptures, and even apocryphal writings. Within just those 15 verses in Jude, 18 references to Old Testament scriptures and apocryphal writings. Some of the quotes are from the book of Enoch. For many of you in the room this morning, you didn't even know that was a book. You didn't even know the book of Enoch exists. It's an apocryphal literature. You'll find it, I think, in the Catholic Bible, but you don't find it in the Protestant Bible. But in Jude, there's references to the book of Enoch. There's, again, 18 references and 15 verses. And so if you're looking at Jude and you're trying to understand Jude, which by the way, Jude is probably short for Judah, which was a brother, a half-brother of Jesus. So if you're trying to understand his letter to the churches, how could you possibly understand Jude without understanding those 18 references? And scholars believe that the audience that he wrote this letter to, the churches in Asia Minor, they were people of a Jewish background and had grown up with a Jewish faith. They understood these references. It was like when I would refer to you and I would say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. You know that, John 3.16. Most of you can fill in the rest of that. These references to them were that ubiquitous and that identifiable. And so as I'm studying Jude, again, I think to myself, how in the world could we seek to understand this book if we don't have any bearing for the 18 references found in the middle part of it that make it come to life and make it understandable. And this, I feel, is a depiction, too, of the depth of Scripture. I'm 42 years old. I've spent almost my entire life studying Scripture. I grew up in a Christian home. My dad was a deacon. He was important and fancy. I went to church every time the doors were open. And this was back in the day, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. I went to the church so often that my pastor felt totally comfortable calling me out in the middle of Sunday night service and telling me to quit talking. And then I would get in big trouble. I got spankings, is what I got. I would get struck with objects when I got home for that offense. Back when we raised kids right, you know. That's right. That's right, Jeffy. Let's let it all hang out here on Labor Day Sunday. Who cares? Beat your kids, Jeff just said. Don't do that. Don't do that. Totally off the rails. Jeff, this is your fault. Shut up, Jeff. But I grew up in church. I did Awanas. I memorized all the verses. I don't know if you guys did that when you were kids, but I memorized verses every week. I memorized them for the test, and then I promptly forgot them because I was eating candy right after that and then playing games. But some of them stick because sometimes I'll start to quote a verse, and it'll be in the King's English, and I'm like, oh, that's from Awana. That's from KJV back in the day, right? I went to Christian private school. I went to Christian high school. I've had a Bible class. I went to Bible college and studied theology. I got a master's degree in more theology. I've studied the Bible my whole life. Now, not as hard as I should have all the time, or maybe ever, I don't know. Not as consistently as I would like to all the time, but far and away, for the balance of 42 years, I've studied God's Word. And I'd be the first to tell you, there are myriad 42-year-olds who know way more about this than I do. But I can also say that I've devoted a life to studying it. And here's what I know. I'm embarrassed by how little I know. I'm humbled by how much more there is in this. I feel like God's word is an ocean and I've waded into it up to my waist and been like, yeah, okay. I think I get the gist. You can spend your whole life plumbing the depths of these pages and you will never get to the bottom. You will never stop learning from it. It will never return null and void. It will never not have more layers. You will never not see more connections, and there's so much of the Bible that's really impossible to fully understand without a grasp of the rest of the Bible. You can never understand the book of Galatians if you don't understand the books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers. You just can't do it. It's why, it's one of the reasons I say as often as I can, it's one of the reasons that one of the traits of grace is that we are people of devotion. It's why I say that the single most important habit that anyone can develop in their life is to wake up every day and spend time in God's word and time in prayer. Because the bottom of this is unfindable. The depths of this are unknowable. And some of you have spent your life studying it too. And you know I'm right. Your heads are nodding the most because you've done it. And it always leaves you wanting more. So there is a degree to which approaching the Bible feels a little bit like approaching Jude. You could read Jude on your own with no background and with no study, and you probably wouldn't recognize but a couple of the references, if any, in verses 5 through 19. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know that you're not getting the depths of it. And sometimes I think people get intimidated by the Bible and how deep it is and how much there is to learn because I know good and well. Not all of you grew up being exposed to scripture every day. Some of us, when I say, and you're good believers, you love Jesus, you love the word, but when I say turn to Galatians, you're like, I don't know yet where that is. I want to know, I just don't know yet. And you go to small groups and there's other in the small group, and they're not professional Christians. They don't get paid to be a Christian like I do. That's all being a pastor is, is I just went pro with my Christianity. I'm still doing the same things that you guys should all be doing. I just get paid for it. I don't know if that's right, but I do. And you're sitting there in your Bible study with the other amateur Christians, and somebody knows way more than you. Right? They just know the Bible. We have them in every small group. And maybe you think to yourself, gosh, I don't know how I will ever understand that much. It just, it can feel intimidating. But that's also why I think it's beautiful that Jude depicts the approachability of Scripture as well. Because sure, the Bible is complicated. It's challenging. It's difficult to understand. It's unmasterable. And yet, some of the messages that come from it are so simple as to make it immediately approachable. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. It's the whole gospel. That's all of Romans compacted into a sentence or two. Right? Jesus says this new commandment I give you, go and love one another as I have loved you. That's it. That's all the law and the prophets compacted into this one commandment. I don't really understand the rest of the Bible, but I believe in Jesus and I can go love people in his name. Okay. Then you get it. And so in Jude, again, we have this depiction of the depth of scripture, but also the approachability. Because even if you don't get the references from verses 5 to 19, there's a simple message in Jude that we can all understand. Sorry, I had to crunch the ice without you guys hearing. And that's what I want to look at now, is this simple message in Jude, and we're going to spend the rest of our time on it. What is this message that Judah, the half-brother of Jesus, wanted to give us, and why did he write this short little note and it get tacked into the end of the Bible as the penultimate book? Well, I think we see the beginning of this purpose in verse 3. This is the simple message of Jude. This is why he wrote the book. And even if we have no context, we can pretty much understand what this means. In verse 3, Jude says this, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. So here's why he wrote the book of Jude. He says that he had been eager to write to them concerning their common salvation. And so a lot of scholars believe that Jude was trying to write a letter that looked more like Romans or Hebrews, something long and formal where it kind of outlined this faith that they would share. And that's what he was eager to do, and that's what he was working on. But another matter began to press, and he thought it was so important that he put that large work on hold so he could write this short note to them. And what he wants them to do is, I wanted to talk to you about our common faith. I wanted to lay out all the things that we believe to give you some clarity. I don't have time for that now, so I'm just writing to you to urge you to contend for the faith. Why? Well, because in verses 5 through 19, what we learn is that there's false teachers. The early church, they didn't have an agreed upon Bible, an agreed upon book, agreed upon doctrines. They didn't have denominations in theology. They just had their faith and understanding in Jesus, which means that the populace in the church was very easily deceived, very easily misdirected in the wrong ways. And so the churches had false teachers that were entering into them, gaining clout, proclaiming that they knew the teachings of Jesus. And yet the morality of those teachers did not line up with the words that they were teaching. They were teaching a kind of hedonism that's clearly out of step with scripture and with God's will for his people. And so Jude was writing the churches to say, hey, you can't listen to those guys. They're trying to steer you in the wrong direction. They're wrong. You need to contend for the faith. And what's really interesting is I was thinking about it, at least this is interesting to me, is when in churches, especially in the South, you use phrases like we need to contend for the faith. That usually means go out and fight a culture war against the waves of culture that are trying to bash down and beat down the truth of Scripture. But that's nowhere in here with Jude. It's contend for the faith. Where? Well, it looks like, based on what he says, within yourself. Contend for your own faith. Fight for your true and sincere faith. Because God doesn't need culture warriors going out there fighting for the faith. Contend for it in your own heart and then guess what? You're abiding in Christ and you'll produce much fruit. Contend for it here and you will be who you need to be as we operate in culture. So I believe that Jude is telling us to contend for our faith. And the simple message of Jude then is to contend for the faith with your whole life. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And we're going to read the verses that make me think this is true here in a second. And really this is kind of a launching pad into what I'm going to preach about next week when we do our big reveal Sunday. Next week, we're going to show the plans for the new building. If it's your first Sunday with us, then you have no idea what we're talking about. But we have four acres over off of Litchford Road, and we're looking to build there. And so we're going to share the plans with the church next week. And I'm very, very excited to do that. And the message that I'm going to preach is basically this. We have to contend for the gospel with our whole life. Contending for the gospel, contending for your faith, takes everything you got, and you can't let up. And that is the simple message of Jude. It's interesting to me. Sometimes, I don't know if you guys get to see this from your perspective, but from my perspective, as I just kind of, we map out series and what we're going to teach and what we're going to cover. There's so often that God has woven things together and woven themes in week in and week out to kind of prepare our hearts for things that are coming and help our hearts respond to things that have happened. And I see him weaving things together as we approach next week as well. But I believe that's the simple message of Jude. Contend for the faith with your whole life. And I believe it because of what he says at the end. So he says, contend for the faith. Here's why. Here are the threats. Verses 5 through 19. And then he says, if you're going to contend for that faith in yourself, here's how you do it. But you, beloved, verse 20, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life and have mercy on those who doubt. So Jude says, contend for the faith. Here's what's threatening your faith. Here's what you need to protect yourself against. And then he ends with, and here's how you do it. And he gives us four things that we can do to contend for our faith. Now, here's the thing. If you're here on a holiday weekend, you didn't accidentally come to church. All right. Labor day Sunday is typically not the Sunday when non-church people decide, you know what I'm going to do on a holiday weekend? I'm going to try church. That's not normally how that goes. If you're here, chances are you are probably a church person. If you're here, if you're listening, chances are your faith matters to you or you're visiting people that drug you to church. Either way. But I'd be willing to bet that your faith matters to you. I'd be willing to bet that you are a people who want to contend for your faith. That when Jude says this, if we are believers, we lean forward and we go, yes, how? So I'm going to give you four ways that we contend for our faith directly out of scripture. But here's what I would say to you. I don't think that any of us, and maybe you will, and if you do, that's wonderful. But I don't think that any of us are going to take all four of these things, keep them in our heads and work on all four of these things this week. So here's what I'm going to ask you and challenge you to do. Pick one, one of the four things that I'm about to mention that we can do to contend for our faith. My hope and my prayer is that one of them will resonate with you, that one of them will move you, that you will lock into one of these as you move into your week. And between now and the 10th, you will turn the dial on this in your life in such a way that you are responding to the simple message in Jude and beginning to contend for the faith with your whole life. So like I said, there's four things that Jude tells us to do to contend for the faith. And the first one that we see right there at the very beginning is to strengthen your faith. When I contend for your faith, you need to strengthen your faith. This is an interesting idea to me. How do we strengthen our faith? I don't think our faith is too much different than like a muscle or a muscle group. I've joked before, and I do think it's true, that I've probably had more first days in the gym than just about anybody in history. I've had a lot of first days. Some of those first days were also my last days, and I just didn't know it yet. But I've had a lot of first days in the gym. And one of the things I like to do when I go to the gym is I like to do squats. Big muscle group. I like to do squats. I think it's important. I don't know anything about anything, but I see people in better shape than me. They do squats and like that seems smart. So I do squats, right? And I don't know how much longer my knees are going to hold out and let me like do this. I don't know how many more of those I have in me because I'm aging more like a light beer than a fine wine, but that's how it goes for me. And one of the things I notice when I go back to the gym on the first day, especially if my last day was the last day after like a lot of days and I was actually kind of like in good shape, when I put the weights on the rack and I go to do what I think is going to be a warm-up set. Okay, for those of you who don't work out a lot like me, a warm-up set is when you do a little bit less weight just to get the muscles going and then you put on the actual weight and then you do the exercise. So there's been a couple of times on my first day where I've put the weight on, you know, just like 375, 400 pounds, and I'm just doing a warm-up set. And I go down and I'm like, yeah, this ain't no warm-up set, man. I only got about four of these in me. This is the real deal. This is the real set that I'm doing right here. Because my muscles have atrophied. Because I haven't done that in a couple of, they go into atrophy and they shrink and they get weaker if we don't continue to use them. I think our faith works the same way. If we're not using our faith, living a life that requires faith, then the faith that we have, I believe, can begin to atrophy so that it's not even as strong as it once was. So Jude tells us to strengthen our faith, acknowledging that this requires a regular use of our faith. And I did not come here this morning with the intent of convicting you or making anyone feel bad, but I do just want to ask the question, when is the last time that your life required faith? When is the last time you took a step of obedience, knowing that if God doesn't come through and deliver, this is not going to go well? If we're not taking those steps, if we're not living a life of faith, then our faith is going into atrophy, and it's not being strengthened. It's being weakened. I thought back to 2015, December of 2015, Jen and I were pregnant with Lily and we were, uh, we were not wealthy people. I was an associate pastor at a church. She was a part-time office manager. Uh, we did not have a ton of money, but because Lily was due in January, we had about $5,000 set aside for medical expenses and all that stuff. That's what we figured would work and cover it. And at the beginning of December, her car, her 4Runner, started to make weird noises, and so we took it to our guy who goes to the church, a guy named Kelly. And Kelly called me one day, and after I took the car in, he said, hey, man, how you doing? I said, I'm pretty good. How you doing? I said, hey, Kelly, how are you doing? And his first words were, better than you. And I went, oh, geez, what's going on, man? And he goes, we have to replace the engine. And I said, ugh, this is terrible. How much does that cost? He said, $5,000. Which apparently is super cheap for an engine now, but back then it was not. He says, $5,000. And I'm like, well, you got to do what you have to do, I guess. So make it happen. And there goes our new baby cushion. And we're just looking at each other like, great, what do we do? And that same week, a little bit prior to that revelation, we had committed to giving a certain amount of money to the Christmas offering that year. We had talked about it, prayed about it, and there was an amount that God had laid on our heart to give. And so I went back to Jen and I'm like, I don't think we can afford to give that anymore. We just lost all of our cushions. Certainly God would understand that. But the more we talked about it, and mostly Jen thought this, I was against it. The more we talked about it, the more we thought, no, God put that on both of our hearts. He did it knowing that we would have to pay for an engine. And we should be faithful to that. We should walk in obedience. Okay. So we did. We gave the amount that we had agreed to give. The very Sunday that we gave that amount, some random person walked up to me in the lobby and just said, hey, just want to say thank you. You and your family have been such a blessing to us. And they handed me a Christmas card. And then the Christmas card was a check for the amount of money that we had given to the church that morning. And it was like God was winking at us going, I'm going to take care of you. All right, don't worry about it. Now, do you not think that my faith got stronger after that? When I took this step of faith and obedience, God, I feel like this is a thing that you want me to do. I'm going to do it. And then I watch him come through for us. That strengthened my faith. My faith got stronger. We made a decision that required God to come through in an incredible way. And he did. And so for many of us, I think it's very possible, particularly in our affluence and in our abilities to live lives that do not require faith. And so maybe what you need to take this morning is this little nudge from God to make that decision that requires some faith. To step out in obedience and trust him to come through. That's the first thing Jude tells us to do. Strengthen our faith. The next thing he tells us to do is to pray in the Spirit. I love this. Pray in the Spirit. He doesn't just say to pray. He says to pray in the Spirit. Now, why does he say to pray in the Spirit? And what does it mean to pray in the Spirit? We get an insight into this in Romans chapter 8. It's so funny to me that God laid Romans 8.28 on Aaron's heart for worship. And now just this morning I added in Romans 8.26 for the sermon because there's just so much good truth there. And God often speaks in stereo. But in Romans 8.26 it says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought. Meaning the Holy Spirit hears what comes out of our mouths and then communicates to God what we really need because we are spiritual babies and we don't really know how to pray for what we actually need. I don't think it's too dissimilar from when my two and a half year old son, John, says he needs a passy. I need a passy. I want a passy. He wants a passy, but what he really means is, I'm tired. What he really means is, I want to snuggle, which, come on, I got plenty of that. He can do that whenever he wants. What it really means is, I just feel a little bit off kilter and I want to be centered and I need some peace. That's what it means. We're praying to God for passes and the Holy Spirit's like, here's what they really need. And so to me, I think if we learn to pray in the Spirit, it's praying with an awareness that the Spirit is going to translate this to God anyway. So how do I change my prayer? How do I have an awareness within my prayer to pray according to what the Spirit will ask for, to pray according to what the Spirit will translate? How do I pray according to the desires of the Spirit and the very heart of God? To begin to put that filter on our prayers. Before we just blurt out what we need and what we want and what we're hopeful for, to put on the lens of, I'm praying in the Spirit, I'm praying through the Spirit, The Spirit is going to translate this to God. What is it that he's going to translate? I think this is why Jesus teaches us to pray by starting off praying for the will of God to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We need to put on this mindset when we pray of Holy Spirit, how would you have me pray for this? Which begins, I think, with praying for things that actually concern the Father. This is appropriate at the beginning of football season. I'm not entirely sure God is very interested in the outcome of football games. I could be jaded because I prayed fervently at the beginning of the Falcons Super Bowl a few years back. And he let me down, which means that he does not care about football at all, because certainly he would have come through for my Falcons if he did. It always makes me laugh at the end of a football game when the athletes and the coach want to give glory to Jesus for this victory. Because I just think like, man, you really lucked out playing that whole team of atheists over there so that God could very clearly pick a side. He had to have been against that football team. And if God really did care about football, how does LSU ever win? Like they're Cajun rednecks. It's the worst combination. And yet they're good. So God doesn't care. It's silly, but often we pray about things and God in heaven just has grace and patience for us. I wonder what the translation is when we pray that a certain team would win. I wonder if the translation is, this one's faith is weak, God. I'm working on it. And it's funny there, but there's other ways in which it applies and it matters. One of the things I've learned over the years and the way that I pray for people who are sick and maybe dying is when I have opportunities to go and pray for families over seemingly terminally ill loved ones. If the family asks me to pray for healing, I will because I think that's an honoring thing to do. So sure, I'll pray for healing. But when I pray privately for that family, I almost never pray for healing. I always pray, Father, help this family see and accept your will. Help them to be comforted by it. And help what they're about to walk through to conspire to make their faith in you stronger, not weaker. God, please don't let this path that they're walking shake their faith to a point where they question it. Would you make everything that's about to happen, whether you heal or whether you take, would you let everything conspire to make this faith stronger in this family? I could be wrong, but I think that's a more reflective prayer of what concerns the Holy Spirit. And I think if we can teach ourselves to pray in accordance with the will of the Spirit, we better acquaint ourselves with the heart of the Father. And we see a lot more answered prayer when we do it that way. So pray in the spirit to contend for your faith. The next thing we do is we walk in God's love. We walk in God's love. Now this is what we talked about last week. How do we walk in God's love? And it's actually in the verse, it actually says, keep yourselves in the love of God. So I probably, I should have said, keep yourself in God's love. How do we do that? That was last week's sermon. That's how God's weaving things together. That was first and second and third John. How do we walk in God's love? How do we walk in love for God? We obey him. Because when we obey God, we admit his expertise and that we trust in it. When we obey God, it proves that we trust him. Right? Obedience proves trust. So how do we walk in God's love? We walk in obedience to God. And some of us may have carried in the same sin and the same weight and the same thing that's entangling us. Last week when we preached a sermon on, hey, if you love God, obey him. Where are we being disobedient? Where do we need to walk in obedience? And maybe we brought that exact same disobedience into this sermon this week, into this place this week, and God is still after us. Hey, when are you going to hand that over to me and walk in obedience there? And so maybe this week is just a reminder for you that God really does care. He really does want you to let that go. And he really does want you to walk in obedience. And that's how we need to respond this morning. The last one I love, and I love that it seems to just be tacked on there, but it's such an important concept as we contend for the faith. Have mercy on doubters. There's not too many other places in Scripture where we're given instruction on how to handle doubt and doubters, but it's really interesting to me that Jude, as he's listing these other things that we would all agree with and expect to be there, walk in God's love, strengthen your faith, pray in the Spirit. Sure, we know that. We hear that kind of stuff every week and all the time. But then after that, just as importantly, have mercy on the doubters. And I love that this is in here because can I just tell you a secret about faith? If you are a thinking person, if you are an observant and thinking Christian, then doubts in your faith are unavoidable and absolutely necessary. They are essential and unavoidable parts of faith to run into places where you are experiencing doubt. And if you have never experienced doubt, you either have the strongest faith of anyone I've met, or you, I would gently say, have not really deeply considered your faith and what it means. Doubts, wondering if all this is true anyways, are an unavoidable and completely essential part of our faith. Why do I say that? Because I know personally from experience that the faith you find on the other side of doubt is more rich and more full and more vibrant than the previous version of your faith could have ever imagined being. I walked through a profound season of doubt in my early 20s as I was finishing up Bible college and doing ministries. And then I walked through another profound season of doubt during COVID in the summer of 2020 while I was pastoring. It felt like reassembling a plane in midair. So I know that doubts in our faith are unavoidable and absolutely essential. And I know that when we do the hard work to learn and to actually answer the questions, not let the questions drive us away. I don't understand this, so I'm done with faith, but I don't understand this, so I'm gonna dig in harder. I'm gonna look from new sources. I'm gonna look new places. I'm going to ask more people. And when we find the answers that actually satisfy the doubt, what happens is we emerge with this firm foundation and this vibrant faith that's more rich and more generous than what we could have ever imagined. And what we find on the other side of doubt is that we actually love God more because he gets bigger and more mysterious and we find out we can trust him. Doubts are good, but we shouldn't stop at doubt. We should work through them and talk through them. The problem in churches with doubt is that often doubts are met with condemnation and not mercy. I shared with you guys weeks ago, and we all know that this is happening, that over the last 12 years or 20 years, 40 million people have left the church or something like that. We know the church in America is shrinking. We are now very familiar with this term deconstructing, which refers to someone who grew up evangelical Christian, who grew up with faith and as an adult walked away from it. We're familiar with that. Why is this's going on in our culture it's something that i think about a lot but one of the big reasons it's happening is because doubts in our churches tend to be met with condemnation and not mercy because our pastors and our leaders are not obedient to jude's instruction to have mercy on doubters And when people raise their hand and they go, hey, what about, or how come, or I don't understand, but how could this be true if this is also true? When people express doubts, sometimes they're met with dismissals. Sometimes they're met with condemnation. When I grew up, you felt like this person with a weak faith if you had any doubts. If you didn't understand. That the people who were in charge, the spiritual leaders, the pastors and the deacons and the elders and all those people, they were the people with the fewest doubts. They were the people with no chinks in their armor. They were the people who had all the answers and understood it the best. And so having doubts made you weak. And I think we need to have a church where having and expressing doubts actually shows some strength because you're trying to fight through those rather than bury your head in the sand. And you have a desire to enrich your faith by working through those and finding answers. So if we're going to be obedient to Jude, we need to have mercy on the doubters, understanding it's a necessary process in faith to move through those and find answers. This means, parents, we create that environment in our homes where our children are allowed to doubt, and they are allowed to ask questions, and they are allowed to wonder, and they are allowed to learn other information that causes them to question things about their faith. And they are allowed to move through that in mature ways that are helpful for them, believing that on the other side of that doubt lies a rock-solid faith. So we give them mercy when they have questions. We create environments in our homes where we can have spiritual conversations, and they don't have to agree with mom and dad about everything. And then maybe most of all, for some of us, we have mercy on ourselves. And we allow ourselves to express those doubts. We allow ourselves to express that uncertainty. We give ourselves some grace and start to seek out answers. Not being afraid of the doubt, but knowing that pushing through it and seeking answers in the doubt is going to lead to a faith that we don't have right now, but we desperately want. So we have mercy on the doubters. That's the simple message of Jude. That's how we contend for the faith. The simple message of Jude is to contend for the faith with yourself, with your whole life, with everything you got. How do we do that? We pray in the Spirit. We walk in God's love. We strengthen our faith. And we have grace and mercy on those who doubt. And we walk through this together. I don't know which one of those resonates with you. But if any of them do, I pray that you'll take it from here and you'll leave and you'll work on that this week. And contend for your faith with your whole life in accordance with the message of Jude. Let's pray. Father, you love us. We know that you do. We feel it and we see it. It's all around us all the time. God, if anybody doubts today that you love them, I pray that they would see evidence of that sometime before their head hits the pillow tonight. Lord, we thank you for the simple message of Jude and ask that we would be people who would contend for our faith, that we would contend with our whole lives and our whole heart. Lord, if we have lived lives that don't require faith, would you help us take steps of faith and watch you come through? Lord, if we need to learn to pray more in the spirit and according to your will, would you make us aware that your spirit is with us as we pray? Make us sensitive to praying according to your will. God, if there are areas of our life we know are not in accordance with your word, that we know we are walking in disobedience, would you help us to walk in obedience and therefore walk in your love? Father, if we are experiencing doubts, would you help us be brave in those? To have mercy on ourselves. And to seek out the conversations that we need to seek out. To help us arrive at a stronger, richer, more vibrant faith. Help us contend for the faith that you've given us. In Jesus' name, amen.