Sermons tagged with Culture

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

Well, good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. Jordan, it is interesting to me that you think profundity is what's required to get up on the stage when they parade me out here every week, falling woefully short of the bar. This is the third part in our series called Big Emotions, where we're just kind of looking at times in Scripture where we see a blow-up or a blow-out or people with with just big overwhelming emotions because that is so much a part of our life. That is something that we experience just as we go through life. Sometimes our emotions are too big for us and they're overwhelming. And so this morning I wanted to take a look at big emotions in our prayers and what happens and how does God respond when big emotions creep into our prayers, when our prayers really become cries. And to do that, I want us to think about prayer together. It's really, when you consider it, one of the more interesting passages in the Bible, one of the more interesting interchanges that Jesus has with his disciples. They're following him around. They're watching him do ministry. And at one point, they look at Jesus and they say, hey, Jesus, will you teach us to pray? Now, this is a really interesting question coming from the disciples. And many of you have probably considered this before. The disciples knew how to pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed their whole life. They had gone to synagogue every week, maybe daily at different points in their life. I don't know. They had seen a ton of people pray. They knew how to pray. They had prayed many prayers before, but there was something different, so different about the prayers of Jesus that they had to stop him and say, can you teach us to pray like you pray? Because that's different than how we pray. And Jesus responds by sharing with them the Lord's prayer. You guys probably all know it. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. And so in that, Jesus gives the model of prayer to the disciples and to us in perpetuity. And if you break that down, I've always been taught prayer and I've taught prayer this way in church, in youth group, in camps, in different places, in men's groups, small group, when we talk about prayer, something that's always been really helpful for me is the acronym ACTS. And you guys have probably heard this before. Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. So the way that Jesus opens up the prayer. When we pray, the first thing we should do is adore God. God, you're great. God, you're good. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name. God, you are wonderful for this. God, you blow me away for that. And when we do this, it really puts us in the right posture for prayer, you know? It really reminds us who we're talking to. I had a Bible teacher in high school who was also my soccer coach, who was also my administrator because I went to a small school. And when he would pray in class, he would say, okay, everyone, let's pray, bow your heads. And we would bow our heads to pray, and he would wait 20 or 30 seconds. And so finally, I asked one day, Mr. Dawson, what are you doing? Like, that's awkward. Why do you make us just sit there in silence? What are you waiting on? Because it's almost like, does he want us to pray? Like, should we? And he told me what he was doing. He said he was taking his mind, whenever he would pause before prayer, to Isaiah chapter 6, where the throne room of God is described. And it says that God is on his throne, and the train of his robe is filling the temple with glory. And there's these six-winged angels flying around him saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. And it's just so overwhelming that he cowers in a corner. And Mr. Dawson said that when, he said, when I pray, I like to take myself there to put myself in proper posture before God to remind myself when I pray, where am I going? I'm going to the throne room of God, the King of the universe, and I'm addressing the creator of the universe. That's a serious, somber thing. That's a place for humility. That's a place for penitence. This is why when we teach our children to pray, we teach them to bow their heads and close their eyes. It's a sign of reverence. It's a sign of respect for knowing who we're talking to and where we're going. It's why I encourage you as much as you can to kneel when you pray. Because it's hard to put yourself in the posture of kneeling and not feel humble, at least a little bit. And so Jesus says we should start with adoration. We should adore God. We should praise him. And then we should go to confession. What are the things, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. How have we trespassed against God? What attitudes do we bring into this day and into this prayer? What sins do we carry with us that yet remain unconfessed before the Father? What do we need to confess to God before him? And then we move into this time of thanksgiving, praising Him. God, thank you for your goodness in my life. Thank you for my family. Thank you for a church that I love. Thank you for the rain. Thank you for the day, whatever it is. It's John's second birthday today. Thank you for a great two-year-old son and for friends watching him in the nursery right now. Thank you for all of those things. We praise God for things. And then, suffocation. Then we ask for what we need. And you guys know, and you've heard this, that the tendency when we pray is to skip act and go straight to S. Skip all the other stuff and just go, dear God, I really need blank. I really need you to show up here. I really need this to work out. I'm really worried about this. It's all the I need, I need, I need. And there's a place for that in prayer. But the way that Jesus teaches us prayer, it follows this pattern of first putting ourself in the proper place and then confessing our sins, which remind us of the humility we should carry into the throne room. And then thanksgiving, let's acknowledge all the blessings God's given us in our lives before we ask him for more, and then in that proper mindset, say what we need to say. That's kind of the proper way to pray. But sometimes we pray when our emotions are too big for propriety. Sometimes we pray prayers that become cries. And the emotions that we bring into that moment are too big for acts. I've shared with you guys before that the first time Jen and I got pregnant, we miscarried. And I'm not in the business of doing comparative pain for miscarriages and who has the right to the most sorrow. But for us, the pain was particularly acute because we had been praying for a child for years. For years. We had struggled mightily. Our moms and grandmas were praying for babies. We had the church around us at the time praying that we could have a baby. We knew that's what we wanted to do. On my mama's deathbed, a few years before we got pregnant, the very last thing she did for me was direct someone to the top of her closet to get a stuffed animal that she made to give to my child when we had them. She went ahead and made it, and I think my sister finished it up for her so that we would have that to give to our first child. So when we got pregnant, we were elated. And then we went to the checkup for eight weeks, and the baby wasn't there. I don't know how long it took me to pray after that. But the first time I did pray, it wasn't Acts. The first time I prayed, it didn't look very much like our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. It looked a lot more like God. What in the world? What the heck? I would say different words if I weren't on this stage and there weren't children in the audience. That's how I felt, and that's how I prayed. What are you doing? Because we, and we're not entitled to this. None of what I'm about to say really matters, but to us it did. Jen's a school teacher. She loves kids. She's teaching in a Christian school, leading people towards you. We still have relationships with some of the kids that she taught in those days. I was a school teacher. I taught high school Bible. And then I worked at a church. We had made good choices. We were good Christian people. We had checked all the boxes. We had done all the things. And there was people who were living lives way more rebellious than us who were just tripping accidentally into family. And then we get pregnant and then you take it? No, I'm not praying acts. I'm not following the pattern for this one. There are some prayers that we pray that become cries. When we hear of the terminal diagnosis and we go to the Father and we say, really? This one? Him? Her? Why not me in your jacked up economy? Why them? There's a girl in our community. She's a young woman in our community. Just last week or two. She battled cancer for five years and came to it a week or two ago. Beautiful family, young kids. I don't know when that husband is going to pray again. When he does, those prayers will be cries. We've all prayed prayers like that. Where we're walking through what feels to us like the dark night of the soul and we don't have time or patience for propriety. We just go to our God and we are raw and we are real and we cry out, what in the world? How is this right? How does this make sense? As parents that send their kids to school in that private school in Nashville, what do those prayers sound like when they start to pray again? We've all prayed those prayers that are so big and so raw and so emotional that they become cries. And so I think it's worth it to look and see how God handles these prayers in Scripture. Because we get to see some. God in His goodness left them for us in His inspired Word. And so what I want to encourage you with today is, I know that we've all prayed those prayers. If you've never prayed those prayers, I'm so happy for you. I hope you never do, but I think you will. And what I want us to know as we look into the scripture this morning is that God is not offended by our prayers that become cries. I don't think God in his goodness and in his grace and in his mercy is offended when I look at him after the deepest pain that I've felt up to that point in my life and I go, what in the world? That's not fair. That's not right. That doesn't make sense. I don't think God gets offended by those things. I don't think he's so small that our broken hearts offend our God. And I actually think that there's grace and space for those prayers because we see them in the Bible. We actually see Jesus pray one of these prayers, a prayer that is so raw and so real and so emotional that it becomes a cry. This prayer is recorded in all four Gospels. We're going to look at the account in the Gospel of Luke chapter 22. Beginning in verse 39. And he came out and went, as was his custom, to the Mount of Olives, speaking of Jesus. And the disciples followed him. And when he came to the place, he said to them, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw and knelt down and prayed, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, this scene, many of you know it, Jesus has just left the Last Supper with the disciples. He's instituted communion. He's told them, my body is going to be broken for you. My blood is going to be spilled for you. He knows what is going to happen. He knows when he gets done praying, he's going to be arrested. And he knows that when he's arrested, he's going to be tried. And after he's tried, he's going to be flogged and beaten, and he's going to be hung on a cross and left there to die and then face death and hell. He knows that. And so he brings the disciples with him, and he says, remain here while I pray. And he goes off a distance, one would assume, so that they couldn't hear him. And it is interesting that they all ended up hearing him, because there's nothing in the text to indicate that Jesus subtly knelt and clasped his hands and said, my Father who is in heaven. No, these prayers from Jesus that we see, in Luke it says he knelt. In another gospel it says that he fell with his face to the ground. And the disciples are a stone's throw away and they can hear him clearly. And then he gets so intense in his praying that sweat begins to mix with his blood, which we know is something that can actually happen in moments of incredibly intense stress in our lives. So the prayer that Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane was not, Dear God, if there's any other way, would you please point me in that? It wasn't that. It was Jesus on his face prostrate, God, Father, please don't make me do this. Please, is there any other way? Is there anything else I can do? I do not want to bear this. I do not want to be on the cross and hear you and see you turn your back on me. I do not want to say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I do not want the crown of thorns in my head. I do not want the nails in my wrist. I do not want to do this, Father. Is there any other way? Please, please take this cup from me. That's a prayer becoming a cry. That's Jesus sidestepping propriety and crying out to his heavenly father. And in there, he finds what we should find when we pray like this. No matter how deep, no matter how raw, yet not my will but your will be done. Please give me the strength to accept your will. So I know that God isn't offended by those prayers because his son prays one to him in full view and vision of the disciples. And then he tells us about it in all four gospels. And that made me wonder, where else in the Bible do we have prayers that are raw and real and emotional? Where else in the Bible do we have prayers that have become cries? And of course, I went to Psalms. And I just started reading them and flipping through and finding them, these things where people are just raw. I am weary unto death. I want to die. Take my life. And I put them in your notes, Psalm 142 and Psalm 13 and Psalm 77. I think of Hannah's prayer in the temple when she's praying so earnestly and fervently for a child that Eli the priest thinks she's drunk. I think of the book of Lamentations, which is a whole book of tough, raw prayers. And I was going to kind of bounce around between those prayers, but then I was reminded of another psalm that's really dear to my heart, Psalm 88. If you have a Bible, I would encourage you to turn there. I encountered Psalm 88 when I took a trip to Israel several years ago. One of the things most groups do when you go to Israel is when you're in Jerusalem, you go to Caiaphas' house. Caiaphas is the high priest that had Jesus arrested, had him tried, and had him murdered. And in the basement of Caiaphas' house is this makeshift small dungeon. And a portion of the dungeon is a cylindrical room that they would tie ropes under the shoulders of the prisoner and lower them into this pitch black, dark room. Now there's stairs that lead down, but in Caiaphas' day, in Jesus' day, that was not the case. They lower you in and they pull you up when they're ready for you. And most people believe that this is where Jesus spent the night after he got arrested, waiting on his trial before Pilate the next day. And when you go to Jerusalem, you can go down into that cell. And our guide pointed us to Psalm 88. Psalm 88 was written by the sons of Korah, we're told. But it's also believed by scholars to be a prophetic messianic psalm. And many scholars believe that this is meant to be the prayer that Jesus prays after he's arrested. If it's not the prayer that he prays after he's arrested, Jesus knew the scriptures, he knew the psalms, this could very well be a psalm that came to mind that he quoted. But when I picture Jesus arrested and alone and reading, crying these things out, it brings fresh meaning to it for me. And when we listen to it and read it, I think you'll be taken aback by how very real it is. So I'm going to read a good portion of it. Beginning in verse 11. Is your steadfast love declared in the grave or your faithfulness in Abaddon? Are your wonders known in the darkness or your righteousness in the land of forgetfulness? And then verse 13, They surround me like a flood all day long. They close in on me together. You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me. My companions have become darkness. That's a real prayer. That's not a prayer you pray in church in front of other people. That's not how we teach our kids to pray. We see accusations in this prayer. You have caused my friends and my loved ones to shun me. It is your wrath that beats against me and waves and covers me. The person crying out to God in this psalm feels the darkness closing in in such a way that they don't know if they will see the light again. My companions have become darkness, he ends with. And that's it. I am grateful to God for choosing to include in his Bible and his inspired word prayers that are that raw and that are that real. Prayers that show us that when our emotions are too big for propriety, that our God can meet us in those places and hear us. He appreciates those prayers so much so that he recorded them and fought for them and protected them down through the centuries so that we could see them too. So when we pray them, it's okay. When we need to cry out to God, we can. He's not offended by those prayers. He hears those prayers. He welcomes those prayers. And here's what else happens when we cry out to God, when our prayers become cries, when we lose all sense of propriety and we're just trying to figure it out. Here's what else happens when it's literally the dark night of our soul and the darkness is closing in around us and our life is falling apart and our children are making decisions that we don't understand and our husband is making decisions that we don't understand and everything that we thought was going to happen, this future that we had projected is not going to happen. This person that I love is not in my life anymore and I see reminders of them all the time and I don't know how I'm going to put one foot in front of the other. I don't know how I'm going to do it. When we pray those prayers, this is what happens. If we look back at Luke 22, there's a verse that I skipped. Verse 43. In the middle of his praying, and there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In the middle of Jesus crying out, Father, please don't make me do this. Please let there be another way. God says, son, you're going to have to walk that path. But he doesn't make him do it on his own. He sends an angel to strengthen Jesus in the dark night of his soul. And I can't help but believe that God will send angels to strengthen you too. When you pray those prayers, I think God sends his angels to strengthen you as well. And I don't know what those angels look like. Maybe it's a hug. Maybe it's someone's presence. Maybe it's a text or a phone call or an email. I know in our family it's cardinals. Maybe it's a southern thing, I'm not sure. But we believe that when a cardinal shows up in your view, that that's a lost loved one who's just stopping by to say hello. Just to check in on you. And so sometimes God sends cardinals just when we need them. Another big one in our family is Mallard Ducks. You know that we lost my father-in-law a couple years ago. And Mallard Ducks were really special to him. And I can't tell you all the cool places where we've just kind of looked and there's a duck there that doesn't belong there. And it's just God kind of reminding us that he loves us, that he sees our pain, that he walks with us in that pain. Maybe, for some of us, God's using this morning to strengthen you, to buoy you. I hope so. Maybe this is just what you need. My hope for all of you is that you never need this sermon and you never have to pray those prayers. But my suspicion is you have a better chance of dodging raindrops on the way back to your car in a downpour than you do of living a life without tragedy. And so I think all of us, at some point, need this sermon and this reminder that when our emotions are too big for propriety, God can hear those prayers too. And in the hearing, in those moments, he sends his angels one way or another to strengthen us. I just got done reading a book. It's actually Beth Moore's biography. I would highly recommend it. One of the best books I've read in a couple years. And in it, she was talking to someone who faced incredible tragedy. And she asked her, how is it that you have kept going through these years? And she said, God opens my eyes every morning. I have no other explanation than that. There are nights that I went to sleep and I did not want to wake up and God opens my eyes. And so I get up that day and for us today I use the breath that's in my lungs and I praise him and I go. We will all in different times and seasons and for different reasons and in different ways walk through dark nights of the soul. But when we do, we can cry out to God. And when we cry out to God, He will hear us. And when He hears us, He will send His angels to strengthen us. I'll finish with this verse from Isaiah, and then I'll pray, because it's one of my favorites. We're taught in Isaiah that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, and that he comforts those who are crushed in spirit. Let's pray. Lord, we love you. You're big, you're good, and you're gracious, and we are broken. We need you so much, and we have no right, we have no right to pound our desk and shake our fist and demand answers from you. We have no right to do that, and yet in your goodness, from time to time, you allow it, and you hug us, and you weep with us. I lift up the people today who might have recently prayed prayers like these, and I just ask that you would strengthen them, that they would feel your presence, they would feel your goodness, they would feel your love, they would be strengthened by you. Father, buoy us and tether us to you. God, we also thank you that Jesus did drink of that cup, that he did die for us, that he did conquer death and sin and hell for us so that we don't have to. And God, we look forward to a day when we understand things just a little bit better. But in the meantime, may your presence and your love be ever enough. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. We find ourselves at the end of a series called Known For where we're examining this idea of reputation. What are we known for as individuals? What are our families known for? Last week we talked about what our church is known for, and this week we want to talk about what our faith is known for. And this is a sermon for me that really means a whole lot to me. It's really very important. This is a message that when we set up this series and when I started writing the sermons each week, in the back of my head I wasn't really writing the other sermons. I was thinking about this one and what I felt compelled to say and what I felt needed to be said. When I go to write a sermon, I write down, I just sit down and I just write all of my thoughts that I have until there's one that seems good and then I go with that one, which sometimes doesn't take very much time at all. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time, but I wrote down more stuff for this sermon than I've ever written down for almost any of them, because the reputation of God's church matters very much to me. I love the church. I love this outpost of an eternal kingdom that we get to participate in with our lives. We are, we're told, the ambassadors of Christ to a lost and watching world. And so it is our job to carry that flag well. It is our job to be highly regarded in our culture and in the public square. And how God's children are perceived and how his kingdom on earth, the church, is perceived ought to matter very much to a believer. And so for me as a pastor who's dedicated his life to the church, who loves the church very much, it matters very much how we are perceived. And if we were to ask ourselves, how is Christianity in the American church perceived by our culture, the answer is not great. The answer is that for my lifetime, and for most of your lifetimes, we have been on a slow decline. Where the percentage of people over 60 who attend church and claim a faith has gotten lower and lower, and that's the highest percentage of our population that attends and prioritizes churches until you get down to people under 25 years old, and it's as low as 18% of people that claim of faith and attend church on any sort of regular basis. We are on a slow slide towards a post-Christian culture where the church has lost its position of prominence in our country. And the hard part is it's our fault. It's not them. People leaving church, rejecting church, are people who grew up in it. So what are we doing to make a bad name for our Savior? It's really the question that faces us, and it's an important one. To answer it, if you'll humor me, I would like to do a brief overview of all of Christian history. Also, I'm not kidding. So in the new church, after Jesus died, I almost wore, I used to teach Christian high school, and to make myself feel like more of a teacher, Jen remembers this, I bought a houndstooth blazer, and I wanted to wear it for you, but that thing don't fit, man. That would have been flapping open all day. That would have been bad news. So I couldn't do it, so I went with coral. Some people have called it salmon. I don't know which it is. But here we go. Humor me on this. I will try to move as quickly as possible. And I promise you, I'm getting to a point with this. And another reason I'm sharing this with you is because I'm assuming that most of us in this room are Christians, but that the vast majority of us didn't go to seminary and probably haven't taken a personal interest in exhaustive church history. And a lot of this might be new information for you, and I think it can be very helpful information to you. So the church began, obviously, in Jerusalem at the death of Christ. And then we see Pentecost and Acts. The disciples are the leaders of the church. Saul is converted to Paul and commissioned to plant churches throughout Asia Minor. He does this over four missionary journeys. And we see Christianity begin to flourish in the ancient world under the umbrella of the Roman Empire. Because Christianity claimed that there was a Lord who wasn't the emperor, it was reviled as a rebellious and revolutionary religion. And it was persecuted and attempted to be stamped out at every turn, sometimes really bad under Nero, sometimes a little lighter, but it was consistently persecuted in the early centuries of the church. Incidentally, the church always, always flourishes when it's persecuted and always messes things up when it's in power. We'll see that. So the church begins to flourish and grow and grow in prominence and God is blessing it. And in the midst of this flourishing in 313 AD, an emperor named Constantine decided to legalize Christianity. Many of you probably know that. What you may not know is that he did not legalize Christianity because he was a convert and was favorable towards it. All the evidence points to him continuing in the pagan faith that he claimed before he legalized Christianity. He simply legalized it to ingratiate himself to elements of his empire and political leaders and figures that were close to him whose power he needed so that it would be easier to be the emperor. He married the Christian faith for political expediency while feigning a faith that he didn't really have for the sake of his own political career and efficacy. And I would just like to say that I'm very grateful that only happened in 313 and definitely does not happen in the United States for any reason. So Christianity moves into this place of cultural power and primacy. And in the midst of this, eventually, while Christianity, and it's the Catholic Church, but I'm not picking on the Catholic Church because the Catholic Church was the only church until about 1050 when we had the Great Schism and that born Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism. So in that time, what we see is the crumble and the fall of the Roman Empire. And all of Europe is basically made up of Frankish and Germanic clans and tribes and nation states. The only transnational power in this time is the Catholic Church. And so the Pope, most pointed, Pope Gregory, becomes kingmaker. He decides who's going to be king of what tribe. He decides who's going to get promoted. And the Catholic Church decides what all these tribes have to believe and what they're going to think favorably of and what they're not. And so this is really historically the very height of power for the Christian church is the pope as kingmaker, as the most powerful force on the planet, single most powerful person on the planet. And out of this place of great power comes our worst and most egregious sins in history. Comes the Spanish Inquisition, where inquisitors are commissioned to go to towns and suss out the heretics and kill people who claim a Christian faith, they just don't articulate it like all the nuanced ways the Catholic Church insisted that they should, and so they kill them. This is when we started indulgences. Indulgences are some of the greatest evil to me in the history of the church. The church had this doctrine of purgatory, where you were taught that even if you're saved, even if you're going to heaven when you die, that since you've sinned here on earth to differing degrees, you have to pay penance in purgatory. Basically, we got to burn all the bad stuff off of you in purgatory before you can go to heaven. That was the idea. But there was this great system that they invented that's called indulgences. And what they said is you're probably going to burn for that for a little while in between this life and the next. But the more money you give to the church, God actually deposits that to your spiritual account, and you burn less. So this is just keep giving. And then they would tell you we're very sad that your mother just died died and we know you're grieving, but also she's on fire. So the more money you give, the quicker you can put out that flame. And there's this phrase, I'll never forget it. There was a guy who was the right hand of the Pope. I forget what his name was, but he used to go through small towns in Europe to collect money for indulgences. And he would ring the metal coffer and and he would say, for every coin in the coffer rings a soul from purgatory springs. And it is an egregious evil on a poor, illiterate populace. But it also paid for the Vatican City, so... And then the worst of our sins, the Crusades. Raping and pillaging our way across Europe for a holy war in the name of Jesus to try to conquer Jerusalem from the Muslims for what reasons I do not understand. Telling these young men who are again illiterate and uneducated that if they die in this holy war that they will go straight to heaven and skip purgatory altogether. At our time of greatest power, we committed our greatest sins. In the midst of these sins, towards the end of the 1400s, there was a guy named Ulrich Zwingli. He started to ask some questions. He was followed by John Calvin and then ultimately by a guy named Martin Luther, who we probably know, and you may have heard the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg Church door, where he says, hey, this church seems corrupt. I've got some questions. And out of their questions and in the corruption that they saw began the Great Reformation. And so that's when the Protestant church sprung off of the Catholic church. And in that Reformation, that was very necessary. And in asking those questions that did need to be asked, and in holding the powerful accountable, we see a spiritual flourishing again, where we have the Scottish Reformation and the English Reformation and the Swedish Reformation. And all of this was born out of Germany. So there's large reform going on in the German church. And so across Christendom, things start to get better, and churches start to be filled with more grace, and things get less corrupt. And so we kind of start to pick ourselves up again. Except what happens in the midst of this flourishing and this spiritual awakening? Well, Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin decide that what they need to do is establish a Christian nation state in Geneva where it's going to be this perfect society where all we do is follow God's laws. And if you don't follow God's laws, you're not allowed to live there. And what they do, they killed heretics. John Calvin had one of his closest friends burned alive. He pleaded with the authorities that it could be just beheaded, so it would be a quicker death. But they said, no, we've got to burn him alive for his heresies. He was a believer. John Calvin killed other Christians. Martin Luther was anti-Semitic and was responsible for the death of thousands of Jews, and he would go around commissioning people to kill Baptists. If you would baptize somebody, Martin Luther didn't agree with that, and so he'd just have you killed for your heresy. So at the height of their power, what did they do? They used it to try to get people to behave the way they thought they should behave, and they tanked it. And so Europe, in response to the Reformation and the behavior of the Christians of the Reformation, in response to the behaviors of the Christians from the Catholic Church, wholeheartedly began to reject religion and move away from it. And the church in Europe goes into atrophy. About this time, some people seeking religious freedom from the oppression of Europe come to Jamestown, and they start the American experiment. The American experiment, we found this country on Christian principles, and the church occupies this place of importance in our country. And then the 1700s, we have figures like Jonathan Edwards who led the Great Awakening. And Christianity begins to flourish again in good and wonderful ways, in ways that led to missionary journeys across the world, that led to the church in China and many churches in South Africa or in South America and Central America. There was a good movement of the Spirit that poured out of this great awakening. And then eventually, the church and Christianity moved into this place again of cultural prominence and primacy for all of our lives who are in this room. Christianity has occupied this position of cultural primacy and power where we have a lot of sway in the country in which we live. And I want us to see these historic ebbs and flows because I want us to understand that in the scope of history, and this is very important, that for Christians, cultural primacy always produces corruption, hypocrisy, and abuse. Always. Without fail. In the span of history. And you can take cultural primacy and you can just make that power to make it a little easier. In the span of history, when you put Christians in power as a group over a country or a people, that power always, without fail, produces hypocrisy and corruption and abuse. Always. Now, why is that the case? Well, I think it's largely because when we achieve that power, we start to take our eye off the ball. And we forget the kingdom and we forget what got us there and we just start to focus on maintaining power. Very, very often, almost without fail, what Christians do with that power is we try to make people who don't believe like us behave like us. And when they won't, we punish them. And when it's real bad, we kill them. And I just wonder if in your experience in our American culture, if you could pick out some examples of where Christianity in its place of power in our country produced hypocrisy and corruption and abuse. I'm not going to list any because I'm pretty close to the line already, but I'm pretty sure you can think of them. Those instances of corruption and abuse of power where we leverage everything we can to try to make people who don't believe like us behave like us. How do they make us look in the public square? How do those advance the kingdom we live for? So, if that historic cycle is accurate, how do we make sure we're not a part of it? How can grace make sure that we are not participants in this terrible historical cycle of being persecuted, rising to power in a position of prominence, using that power in ways that are inappropriate, that produce corruption and abuse and hypocrisy, and then watching Christianity fall from prominence. Because let's be honest about where we sit in history. We are on the downside. We have existed in prominence in this country, and now we are on the downside, where based on the statistics I told you at the beginning, where the younger you get in this country, the less likely you are to go to church. We are on the tail end of our cultural dominance. So in this moment in history, as we sit as a church, as you sit as Christians, what do we do? How do we act? How do we respond? What do we admit to and own? And how do we try to chart a path moving forward as Christians within a culture that is beginning to reject us because of the way that we have behaved? Not because of them. What do we do? Well, this will be the least controversial thing I say this morning. We focus on Jesus. And we ask how Jesus engaged with culture. What did he do when he came? Because he entered into a time and place that had its moral bankruptcy, that was rife with oppression, that saw more tragedy than we see, that saw more blatant corruption than what we see. He entered into a world with myriad cultural ills. And when he entered into that world, what did he do about the damaged culture that he saw? Well, how did Jesus interact with culture? He ignored it. He ignored it. He just almost acted as if it weren't there and it didn't matter. I've got some examples of this that I will share with you. The first is in Luke chapter 5, verses 29 through 32. This is when he's calling the disciples at the beginning of his ministry. There's a disciple named Levi that we also know as Matthew. And Levi was a tax collector. And tax collectors in ancient Israel were persona non grata. They were no good because a tax collector is someone who had turned tail on his own people and now worked for the oppressive Roman government and took your money and then a cut of that and then gave the other money to the Roman government. So he was by accounts, a traitor. This was a job that you took and you said, I'm going to be morally bankrupt, but I'm doing it for the money and it's going to be fine. He was that guy. And Jesus, not caring about any of that, calls him to be a disciple. And this is Levi's response to that call. And Levi made him a great feast in his house. And there was a large company of tax collectors and others reclining at table with them. And the Pharisees and their scribes grumbled at his disciples saying, why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners? And Jesus answered them, those who are well have no You can't be, we don't do that. Our type, we are religiously proper. We don't interact with their type. We don't go to their house and have feasts where there's food and beverages. And Jesus says, yeah, but I do because that's who I came for. I actually came to spend time with them. I'm not really that concerned with your cultural norms. I'm going to go love on them because they're the ones who need my love the most. So I'll see you later. Another instance, in the book of John at the beginning, we see Jesus talking to the woman at the well, and maybe we forget sometimes that the woman at the well was a Samaritan. And the Samaritans to the Hebrew were an ethnic cultural mutt. They were unacceptable. And there was wildly accepted and agreed upon racism amongst the Hebrew people that the Samaritans are the worst. It is right and good to hate them. They have intermingled with other countries and other religions. They are not like us. We are better than them. We should disdain them. It is okay. It is rampant, agreed upon racism by God's people, a lot like the late 1860s in the United States. And Jesus, supposed to avoid Samaria, just walks right through it, goes to the well in the middle of the day, encounters a woman who's basically known for her life of what we would think of as sin and impropriety, and has a conversation with her. Part of the conversation goes like this, John chapter 4, verse 9, the Samaritan woman said to him, how is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? The Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. And Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. So he goes to the Samaritan, and she says, Why are you talking to me? You're not supposed to be talking to me. Culturally, this is not allowed. And Jesus says, yeah, I don't care. I'm actually here for you. You're who I came for. I love you. And if you'll ask me the right question, I'll love you forever. I'll offer you living water. Touched by his love, the Samaritan goes back to her village, tells everyone who she's met, brings them all back out to Jesus, and they all convert. And he reaches a Samaritan village that would have culturally never been reached by a Jewish person because of the norms that he was expected to uphold. Another interesting time we see the Samaritans show up in Scripture is when this rich young guy comes up to Jesus in the public square, and he says, I know that the Bible says that I'm supposed to love my neighbor, but can you tell me who is my neighbor? And Jesus tells them a parable of a priest and then a Levite who walks past a dying man on a road to Jericho, And then he says there was a Samaritan that came up. And the Samaritan healed him. Or paid for him and cared for him. Covered his bills at the hotel. Made sure he was squared away. And then he looks at the rich young guy and he says, and who was his neighbor? That is not dissimilar at all from Jesus showing up in Birmingham, Alabama in 1958 and talking with a group of white churchgoers and them asking him, who is our neighbor? And Jesus tells a parable where a black man is the hero and the moral exemplar over the pastor and the doctor that's respected in town. It's noteworthy to me that though this rampant racism was present in his culture, he did not seek a large audience to decry it, nor did he tacitly approve of it. He just called it out in instances where it made sense. Not really caring who was around and what they thought and what the culture expected of him at the time. We see Jesus greatly concerned with the behavior of others, but first he was concerned with loving others. The adulterous woman that's brought to his feet. Caught in the act of adultery. Asked in front of Pharisees if she should be stoned. And Jesus says, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. And then I am convinced began to write the names of ladies in the sand. And all those guys went, oh, okay, see you later. And so he shows her great grace, but does he in that grace approve of the behavior? No. He looks at her and he says, your sins are forgiven. Now go and sin no more. There's another example that I have here that we'll just go through really quickly. Luke 5, 12, there is a leper that came to him. While he was in one of the cities, there came a man full of leprosy. And when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and begged him, Lord, if you will, you can make me clean. And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, I will be clean. I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him. This is a big deal because if you've got leprosy in the ancient world, it was because of a sin that you or your family committed and you deserved it and you deserved the death that you were going to die. So they isolated them into communes where no one of any righteous standing would go. Because it was culturally incorrect to do so. And Jesus didn't care. He went and he healed the lepers. When I look at Jesus' life and I understand that he existed in a culture that had its ills, and I think about what he came to accomplish. Listen, if Jesus wanted to, have you ever thought about this? If Jesus wanted to, he could have come and established a nation state. He had the horses to do it. He could have overthrown the Roman Empire. He could have sat on the throne of David. He could have made Israel the moral exemplar for the whole world. He could have established a nation state and made people behave the right way within that nation state if that's what he really wanted to do. He could have done what Zwingli and Calvin and Luther tried to do. He could have done what the Catholic Church tried to do. He could have done what we in America sometimes tried to do, but he doesn't do that. He establishes a church, an eternal outpost of an eternal kingdom and a temporal world. And he didn't get all caught up in the culture wars of his day. Because Jesus fought kingdom wars, not culture wars. Jesus came to fight for a kingdom, not win over a culture. And he died on the cross to lay the cornerstone, to lay the foundation of that kingdom. And in a little bit, we're going to have communion and we're going to celebrate the establishment of this kingdom in which we get to participate. But if we want to encounter our culture like Jesus does, and if we want to care about the reputation of our faith within our culture, then I would contend very simply that we need to love as Jesus did. And that we need to concern ourselves with the things that concern Jesus. And that we ought not think that it is our job to fight culture wars to try to convince people who don't believe what we believe to behave how we behave. But instead, we build God's kingdom. And we build it the way that Jesus did. He fought for his kingdom one opportunity, conversation, and person at a time. That's what he did. When I say opportunity, sometimes Jesus had ministry opportunities or opportunities to love where he fed 5,000 or he gave a sermon, like the Sermon on the Mount, to thousands of people. And so not every interaction that Jesus had was isolated to the individual, but what my point is, we all have opportunities to minister. We all have opportunities to love. God gives us all a chance to show his love to our neighbor and to people within our culture. And when he does, we should seize it. And so Jesus fought for his kingdom, one opportunity, one conversation, and one person at a time. Very simply, Jesus loved. He didn't seek a bully pulpit in the Sanhedrin and try to convince all the Pharisees that they needed to go to Samaria and do ministry. He just went to Samaria and he did ministry. He didn't argue for time in the synagogue and try to convince them that they should care deeply about the lepers. He just went and loved on the lepers. He didn't enter into a debate in the public square about the validity of racism against the Samaritans. He just set them up as a hero and a parable to make a very clear point to the few people who were around him. It's not as though Jesus doesn't care about bad behavior. He just knows that the right behavior is never going to follow the wrong beliefs. And so as Christians, the most important thing we can do is fight for God's kingdom, which as we defined it in the fall, was to strengthen and add to the souls who are following Jesus. So what can grace do in our culture to make sure that we are not a part of the terrible historical cycle of abusing power and producing corruption and abuse and hypocrisy. I think that we can examine long and hard the culture wars that we feel like we need to fight as Christians. And start wondering what it might look like to fight kingdom wars like Jesus did instead. To fight for individuals and their souls, not principles. We can carefully and prayerfully consider the value of trying to get people who don't believe like us to behave like us. And we can ask, when we do find ourselves in a situation where we can legislate them to behave like we do, does that push them closer to or further away from our Savior? And if it's further away from our Jesus, did we really win anything? Or have we just perpetuated the historical cycle? So Grace, let's be a church that fights for God's kingdom. Let's fight for it one person at a time, one conversation at a time, one opportunity at a time. And if we do that, you know what I think we'll see? In this little outpost of God's eternal kingdom? Revival. Revival in our hearts. Revival in our neighbors. Revival in our friends. Let's pray for that. Father, we love you. We are sorry for making your good name look bad. We are sorry for the times that we, as individuals, have carried your banner poorly. We are sorry for the times that we have been a part of churches that have carried your banner poorly. God, we know that grace has not always displayed you perfectly in our communities, and we know that we will fail you again, but God that we would see it and that we would care and that we would try and that we would be like your son and try to win people to your kingdom one person at a time. God let us see and be very afraid of the potential damage that can be done when we are put in positions of power. Let us hold it well and honorably. Let us honor you in our interactions. And let our biggest priority, God, for everyone that we encounter be that they would know you, that they would love you, and in turn, eventually, they would begin to love others as you love them. Be with us in our small groups this week as we discuss this. Be with us as we drive and we think and we pray and we reflect. And God, for what it's worth, we really want this church to be a place that you're proud of. Would you give us the courage to be that? In Jesus' name, amen.

I felt like maybe I should dance a little bit at the end of that. Good morning, everybody. Like I said earlier, my name is Nate. It's so good to see you. If you are here when it's 39 degrees and raining, you really want it. So I'm glad to see you. I really do appreciate your being here. A round of applause for yourself, I guess. That was fun for those watching at home. We are in the middle of a series here at the beginning of the year called Known For, where we're just thinking about what are we known for? What is our reputation? In the first week, week one, we looked at ourselves. What are we known for? What do we want to be known for? And then most importantly, what does God want us to be known for, which is our love. And then last week, we talked about family. What does God want your family to be known for? What do you want your family legacy to be? And then next week, we're going to look at what does God want his children to be known for? Our faith in our culture, within the American culture, what does God want his children to be most known for? And how can we as individuals and as a church contribute to building that reputation in our culture that frankly does need to be rebuilt. And then this week, we're going to look at grace. What do we want grace to be known for? This church, right? And we talk about this a lot. We talk about what's our vision and what's our focus. I open the service by reminding us that we do everything that we do to connect people to Jesus and connect people to people. In the fall, in September and October, we did a new series called Five Traits of Grace where we said, hey, if you're a partner of grace, if you're someone who calls grace home, here are the five things we want you to exhibit in your life and be building towards. And we believe in those things so much that we actually have scrapped our material for Discover Grace, our kind of our newcomers class, and we placed it with talking through what those five traits are. If you come to Grace, here's what we want to try to build you into spiritually. Which, speaking of Discover Grace, that's going to be the first Sunday in February. It's where you can just find out more about grace, who we are, what makes us tick. If you want to become, you probably think of it as a member. We don't have members, we have partners, because real quickly, members tend to consume and partners tend to contribute. So we ask for partners of grace. If you want to become a partner, then that's how you do it. You can attend that class and there'll be some stuff to fill out. Or you can just come find out more about who we are. Or I would say if you've been coming here for a really long time but you've never been to one and you're curious about what happens there, you're welcome to come. There are snacks involved. You know you have to sign up. You can just come eat snacks and say hey to everybody and leave. I don't really care. But that's going to be in two weeks. So sign up for that if you want to do that. There's plenty of ways that you can sign up for that. But as we thought about reputation for this week, what do we want grace to be known for? And I kind of meditated on that as a pastor, thinking about the reputation of a church. My mind immediately went to Revelation chapter 2 and 3. Now, some of you know why I instantly thought of Revelation chapter 2 and 3, the Bible scholars in the room. Others of you are thinking, why Revelation, weirdo? Well, here's why. Because yes, Revelation is about the end times, and we did a series on that a little while ago. And in that series, I skipped over chapters 2 and 3, because I said chapters 2 and 3 are kind of parenthetical to the discourse in Revelation where Jesus kind of takes a break and he writes seven letters to seven churches. And in those letters, he tells those churches what they are known for. When I think of you, here's what you're doing well. Here's where you can improve. So when I thought about what does God want the reputation of his church to be, individual small little churches, I thought what better place to go than the one place in the Bible where he addresses seven of them and says, here's what you're known for. And some are good, some are bad. There's only one that gets totally good marks, and that was a church that was being persecuted the entire time. And so they were just bearing up under that persecution, and Jesus praises them for that. But there's another church, probably the most famous church in this discourse, the church in Ephesus, where Jesus tells them that they are known for a lot of things, but there's one thing in particular they're not known for, and they need to get their act together again. This is what Jesus says through the disciple John in the book of Revelation as he addresses the church in Eph false. I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my namesake and you have not grown weary, but I have this against you that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember, therefore, where you outside in, you're doing a bang-up job. You're doing, the words that we would use, you're doing great ministry. You're doing great ministry. You're firing on all cylinders. Everything's great. Your Sunday morning services are good. You're really ministering to people well. You got things cranking in small groups. Children and students is going really well. Your care is really good. You are doing ministry well. You are executing church well. And on top of that, you have really good theology. You don't let bad theology get into that church. You guys are really nailing it there. You're executing church at a very high level. Good job. However, you have, in that execution, fallen away from the things you did at first because you've fallen away from your first love, which is to be Jesus. And you're no longer doing the stuff that you used to do that poured out of a love for Jesus. So you need to refocus yourselves and start doing the things that are fueled by the love of Christ. See, they stopped doing the very deeds that can only be done when they are fueled by a focus on and love for Jesus. They lost their way. They started doing the business of church well. And if you think about church, you can do a lot of church and you don't need Jesus' help at all, right? We have very sophisticated marketing strategies now. We have people in the church who are marketers. We could form a group and we could find out how to do a social media blitz and we could send out mailers and we could get people here. We could have more butts in seats. This row would be so full right behind the Turnburgs there. It would be great if we marketed. It would be fantastic. There are strategies with children. There are things that you can do. You can put on a song up here. You can play songs three in a row together with good transitions and excellent thoughts in between. And you can do all that without Jesus. And I hate to admit this, but it's true and you guys know it's true, so let's just all fess up together. I can preach without Jesus. I can just get up here and get worked up about stuff and tell funny ha-ha jokes and then we can all leave and everybody will be like, I guess that was good, and we'll just all go home. I can do this without having to pray about it. And I know that because I've failed you over the years and done that a couple of times. It's possible for churches to lose their way and start to execute ministry with excellence, forgetting their first love. And then they stop doing those little things that are only done, that are only fueled by a love for Jesus and his love for us. And so as I thought about grace, and I thought about what our reputation is, I thought, you know, in some ways, it's kind of like the opposite of the church in Ephesus. Because I do think that we love pretty well. And I do think that we stay focused on Christ. And it's almost like, hey, at grace, how's your Sunday morning service? Well, there's a poll. And sometimes, sometimes our sound just cuts out. Sometimes, we've been in here when Aaron just like bailed on a song. He's like, we gotta restart this. This is garbage. And then we just, we start again, you know. Sometimes it doesn't go exactly as we want it to go. But man, those people love each other. What if we were known for that? How's your children's ministry at Grace? Well, listen, we've got the best children's pastor. She loves those families really, really well. But, you know, hallway's a little tight, and sometimes there's just random grown-ups back there, because it's the only place we have restrooms. We do our best. And, you know, if you've got a kid in kindergarten to third grade, you're going to have to walk through the rain past the aquarium store down a dark hallway. I don't know why the hallway's always dark. We have lights there. We still turn them on on Sundays. But let me tell you something. The volunteers back there, man, they love your kids. It's the same faces that show up every week, and they love our kids. How's your small groups ministry? Well, Nate keeps saying he's gonna do better at it and then he doesn't. But we always have room for more people and we always find uncommon community there and we love well. When I think about grace, I think about a church that does love well. Now, are we just going to let everything else go? No. We're going to pursue excellence in everything. But we're going to stay focused on loving well. And it just kind of made me think, like, what if we were known for how well we loved? What if that's what we were known for? As a church, when people come in and out of this place, when they visit for one time or they visit for a month, as you talk about church with your friends who don't live here, as people who have moved into grace and then maybe they had to move away, different part of the state or different part of the country or whatever, what if the way that they remember grace is how well we loved? Because I'll tell you, that's all I've ever wanted to be known for. I grew up in church. I've seen a lot of church. At a young age, I began to become aware of what kind of goes on behind the scenes sometimes and how that can hurt people and how egos and agenda can come out there. As a member of a church staff, frankly, I've been a part of a church that lost its way. Started executing ministerially very well, but took our eyes off of Christ. And so all I've ever wanted in leading a church is to lead a church that loves well. All I've ever wanted in leading a church is a church that every week we focus on Jesus. We declare him. Every week our prayer for you is that you leave this room a little closer to Jesus than you were when you walked in. All I've ever wanted to do is be a part of a church that loves well and loves authentically. We say what we mean, we mean what we say. All I've ever wanted to do is be a part of a church that if you start to serve more, if you start to get a peek behind the curtain, if you become an elder or a committee member or you serve during the week and you see us do our day-to-day stuff, that what you find out is there's nothing going on back there that ain't going on up here. It's just an authentically loving place. And what's so great is the church that hired me wants exactly that too. I think that's why it's been such a good marriage for nearly six years now. And so when I think about the church that I've always wanted to be a part of, I hope very sincerely that it's the church that you've always wanted to be a part of. That it's a church that we can say about ourselves, you know what, whatever else is true, we love well. We always focus on Jesus. And we always love one another well. Before the service, the worship team kind of gathers, and we just kind of talk through the service, and then we pray. And Aaron says, is there anything we should pray about? And I said, yeah, today feels weird. Today feels weird. I won't tell you why. It's just family stuff. Kids are sick and yada, yada, yada. But I'm coming in here with my hair on fire this morning. Erin Winston, our children's pastor, she's coming in here with her hair on fire. Things just kind of, they just kind of felt weird this morning and we just stopped and we prayed as a worship team, God, would the things that matter to you go really well this morning? Would the things that don't matter to you, would they not matter to us at all? Would we not care about them at the end of the day? And at the end of the day, God, would you just focus us on you? We want that to be our prayer every week. We want to love Jesus and love others really well every week. And so I thought, you know, it's one thing to make the point that we want to be a church that's known for loving well. Sure. That's great. I don't think any of you would disagree with that. I'm not going to make more arguments that that's what we need to do. If you don't want to be a part of a church that's known for how well it loves Jesus and loves others, then this ain't the place. But if you do, I thought what I would do is now use the rest of my time this morning to give you some practical ways to love others. What can a church practically do? How can we put meat on this bone? What can we actually do to love others well as a church and to build our reputation in the community and in the people we serve as a church that loves well? And so actually what I've done is I've come up with a list. And if you've been here for a while, you know I don't like listy sermons because listyy sermons are disengaging and boring and frankly, lazy in their preparation. But this one needed a list. And then I went extra pastor on you and I alliterated it. How about that? Each point starts with the same first two letters. Point number two, just know that when I get to point number two, I'm really proud of both of those words that I was able to think of them and make them mean what they need to mean. Okay, this is where unusually listy and alliterated today, but let's go. Let's go through our list. Now listen, here's why I don't like listy sermons, because you can't remember a list of five things. All right, no one's going to leave here and commit them to memory. The whole series I did on the five traits of grace, I'd be surprised if any of you could list more than one of them. So I know you're not going to remember all these. So my encouragement on the front end of the list is that you maybe take one and think, yeah, I can lock onto that and I can do that. And that's how I can love others well while I participate in grace. So let's go through the list. How can we love well? How can we build a reputation of loving well as a church? Number one, unselfish attendance. Unselfish attendance. Here's what I mean. Here's what I thought about it. I, for almost 20 years now, have been getting paid to go to church. I don't know if you realize that, but pastors, we get paid to be here. And I don't really know what motivates people to go to church. I was trying to think about that this week and I just had to be honest. I don't know. I have to go. So I don't, I haven't walked in your shoes. I don't know why you got up and showered and braved the elements. I assume you showered and then braved the elements to come in today. But I would imagine for many of us, if not most of us, we're kind of thinking about ourselves. I want to go to church because I'm going to get something out of it. Because God speaks to me there. Because I kind of get some Jesus. See my friends, and that's good. I'm not saying that that shouldn't motivate you. I'm happy that motivates you if it does. Maybe we're serving somewhere. Maybe we want to just see our friends. Maybe church or our people. I've talked to some folks who have kind of fallen into the habit of over COVID watching the service online, but every now and again they come back to church because it's like those are our people. We miss them and we love them. Maybe it's to participate in corporate worship. That's my favorite part of every Sunday morning service is just standing right there and getting to sing. Getting to worship with the rest of you guys. Hearing my church praise my God. Maybe it's like an obligation. You kind of feel like you just need to do it. I got a big sale coming up this week and I'm going to need a big man's blessing so I'm going to go and check the church box. Maybe it's for your kids. I don't know. But I would bet that there's some sort of, and I use this word but I use it because it's accurate. I don't use it to be derogatory. There's some sort of selfish motive to come here. And it's okay. Church should serve everyone who comes. But can we also add to that some unselfish motives? Can we begin to think about what it looks like to come for other people as well? A great example of this happened this morning. Some of y'all got here and it was raining. And there was people out there with umbrellas walking you to your car. My hope is that they prioritize the mamas with babies and maybe the older ladies who aren't quite as quick as they used to be and the dudes that are about their age. You just stood there and laughed at them and watched them walk through the rain without offering them umbrellas. That would be ideal out there. But I was out in the lobby as the first song started taking care of something, and I saw Phil over here, our head usher, who I give a hard time for his huge ego about being our head usher. He's out of control, man. He's soaked. His hair's soaked. I fist pounded him. I was so excited. I saw how wet he was and how much he had just been out there just serving people without ever being asked to. Nobody asked him to grab an umbrella. He just did it. And I fist pounded him really hard. And he was like, that stung really bad. My hand's freezing. Also, Phil's a sissy. But Craig Holiday was out there. He grabbed an umbrella. And one of my favorites, Kyle and Ashlyn, now Ashlyn Tolbert, yes, they got married last weekend. They got back from their honeymoon last night, decided to come to church. He's not even being paid for this. He's not on the clock. He got here and then said, I gotta get an umbrella and just immediately started walking people in. All that is unselfish church attendance. Say hey to somebody you don't know. Long time grace people, I'm being serious about this. If you come to church and the only people you talk to at church are your people that you already know, they're the only people you acknowledge or shake hands with, that's a little selfish, isn't it? Let's reach outside of our circles. We're small enough that we know new faces. Let's say hey to them. Let's make sure they feel welcome. Unselfish church attendance looks like serving in the children's ministry so that mamas and daddies can sit in here and experience what God has for them in the worship service. It looks like inviting people to sit next to you that you might not know. To me, this is going to sound weird, one of the things that unselfish church attendance is, is singing loud. I can do this. When Aaron lays out and he's not singing and it's just our voices, which is always really beautiful to me, I sing extra loud. If you sit around me, you know. That's the penalty for getting here late. You got to hear my voice. But I'm singing loud to make space for you to sing too if you don't want to sing so loud. When we come to church on Sundays, let's not just think about our experience and what God has for us, but let's think about ways that we can be used by God even while we're here so that the folks who come here can feel loved every week. The next one. The second thing we can do to love well is to offer untethered inclusion. How about that? I'm telling you. Untethered inclusion. One of the ways that I think about grace, and I've thought about it like this from the beginning, and it's not something that I articulate a lot, because frankly, it wasn't something that I was totally comfortable with. But the more I think about it, the more I embrace it. I really think about grace as kind of a triage unit for those who have been hurt by church. We all know, we all have stories of people who got used up and spit out and burnt up at church. Of people who did get behind the scenes and find that there were egos and agendas involved and those hurt. Of people who served faithfully at church and then hit a rough patch or a hard time and the people they thought were close to them abandoned them. Or maybe they watched leaders fail. Or maybe they watched elder boards disappoint. Or maybe they watched their kids be mistreated. Or any number of things that churches can screw up. But here's the thing. We're not above any of that. Matter of fact, we're going to do something this year to hurt somebody in this room. And I hope when it happens that we're the first ones to see it and apologize and make it right. So I don't want to pretend like grace is some bastion or oasis where we do everything perfectly. But we try. We try really hard to be authentic and to love well. And one of the ways that we can do that is to make this a place of respite and rest for those who have been hurt by church. Does that make sense? Untethered inclusion means you come here and we're going to include you in everything we do. We're going to love on you. We're going to invite you to things. We're going to fold you into small group. We're going to talk to you on Sunday morning. We're going to treat you like you give the most, like you serve the most, like you love the most, and we're just going to let you rest. Our inclusion of you into circles and pockets in the church has nothing to do with what you give to the church or how you serve the church. I've been a part of churches in the past where everybody was just made to feel like a cog in the machine, right? We're reaching the community for Christ. We're doing this. We're going to go plant this thing. We're going to go do this thing. And what's your part that you can do? And the people in the church who were valued the most were the ones who showed up the most often and served the hardest and gave the most. And I just don't think that's the way that God wants his church structured. I just don't think that those in leadership in the church should care the most about the people who do the most for them to scratch their back. I think our inclusion and our love of other people needs to be untethered to whatever service they're offering the church. So we love without expectation of reciprocity here. It is untethered to any other requirements. We're just going to include you and love you. So if you have been hurt by church, come and rest here. I've had meetings with people where I'll go out to lunch with a guy and he'll say, yeah, you know, I used to play an instrument back in the day. I used to play for churches. I got burnt out on that, so I don't do it anymore. And I'll tell them. You can ask them. I'll tell them. All right, I'll give you a year. I will not tell Aaron on you so he doesn't come after you. I will not bring it up again. I will not ask you to serve in that way for a year. At the end of the year, I'll just check on you. See if you want to serve. And I mean it. And we'll let people come here and we'll let people rest. Now what I would say to the people that are resting, resting is not retirement. At some point or another, we've got to get to work. But if you need rest, you can rest here. Because we're going to offer you untethered inclusion. Next thing we're going to do to continue to build a reputation of love is we're going to offer unforgettable care. Not required care. Not bare minimum care. We're going to offer unforgettable care. Last year, somebody brought a gentleman to our attention who lives in Capitol Towers. He's confined to his wheelchair. He can't even get out of his wheelchair on his own, so he sleeps in it. And he lives in an apartment over there. And we were told that he would want to come to church with us, and so we made some arrangements to come to church. It was very easy to do. But there was two people in our church that wanted to go see him and meet him. And so they went to this man's apartment. And I can only imagine what an apartment would look like when the sole occupant of it cannot get out of his wheelchair. But I'm guessing to say that it was not tidy is probably the most generous description of the way that it looked. Those people cleaned that apartment for six hours on their own. No one asked them to do that. They just saw a need and they met it. That's unforgettable care. That man will never forget what they did for them. I have seen in our church unforgettable care offered time and time and time again. People who don't just meet the minimum requirement of, yeah, I am praying for you, but who actually show up and do the thing. You know what Stephen ministry offers? Unforgettable care. To walk with you in life in a way that you'll never forget the time Jesus put that little angel in your life to walk with you through that hard part. So every church has opportunities to care. All of us will have opportunities to care at some point or another, and my challenge to you is when you do, offer care that is unforgettable. And do it because your desperate hope is through offering that care, they will see Jesus in how much you cared. The fourth thing we can do to continue to build a reputation of love is offer uncommon community. I think it's one of the things that defines grace. Uncommon community. At the first Sunday of the year, well, that we met, because the first one was the first, and we didn't meet because, you know, we chilled out. But on the 8th, we met. And I got into a conversation with somebody afterwards who wanted to talk about the Christmas Eve service. They're like, man, listen, I got to tell you. He said his brother-in-law was in town. He lives in South Carolina. So his brother-in-law was in town. And after the service, which he praised and thought was good, and I said, which one did you come to? And he said, the 330. And I said, oh, that wasn't even a good one. The five was way better. And he said that after the service that his brother-in-law was like, man, what's the deal with this place? He's like, what do you mean? He's like, the people are incredible. The service was great. Sermon was good. Worship was good. But the people are unbelievable. I've never experienced community like this. And my buddy was just like, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's cool. We love each other here. It's really great. He's like, no, no, no, I've never experienced anything like it. And he's like, I know, we feel really lucky. And they just kind of moved on. Two full days later, brother-in-law's still at his house, grabs him, pulls him aside. And he's like, no, listen, man, I'm not kidding. What's the deal with that place? I've not been a part of church for a while. I want to be involved in a church like that. How can I find what you have? That's you guys. That's the people. And I thought this week, how do I describe what that person experienced on a Christmas Eve service, the community that he saw, and put that into replicatable behaviors that we can do moving forward. And I don't know. So here's the thing, okay? Here's the really smart thing I'm going to tell you so that we can continue to have uncommon community. Just keep really liking each other is the thing. This church here is a church that's built on friendships. I would be thrilled to have lunch with anybody. I don't know if I want to take an eight-hour road trip with anybody in here, but I'd be thrilled to have lunch with anybody in here, talk to you, get to know you. I see rich and deep friendships in this church. I see the way new people are incorporated. I'm so proud of how well we love each other and how much we really do genuinely like each other. And so maybe that uncommon community beyond just liking each other a lot comes with being intentional about spending time with each other outside of church. Just, you know, being like friends. But whatever it is, whatever's there, that's what makes grace go. It's not me. It's not the worship. It's the people. That's why we have Big Night Out. We're doing another one. March 24th. First one in three years. Mark your calendars, baby. It's going to be a big one. Where's Doug Funk? Is he in here? Hey, Doug. We're doing your retirement party, baby. We were supposed to have a retirement party in 2020, and then the Lord sent COVID, and we didn't get to do it. But we're going to do it now, man. It's going to be really fun. March 24th, we're going to hang out. And when we hang out, we go somewhere. We go to Compass Rose or somewhere like that, and the owners say, do you just want us to reserve the whole space? And we say, no way, because we want other people from the community to come and see our community. And we want to invite them into it. We want you to invite your friends so they can look around and be like, you guys all like each other. Yeah, we do. We're pretty tight. At Grace, we want to continue to have an uncommon community that comes from having a genuine affection and appreciation of each other. And then finally, you can't make this list of what we can do to build our reputation of loving well without noting this. We need to be a church of unbroken focus. Unbroken focus on Jesus. I quote this passage a lot, Hebrews 12, 1 and 2. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us throw off the sin and the weight that so easily entangles and run the race that is set before us. As grace, we are running a race. We are doing our part. It is our time on the field. We are going and we are loving and we are trying hard. How do we run our race well? Throw off the sin and the weight that entangles? 12.2, by focusing our eyes on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. We forsook all things for the sake of the cross. Guys, none of this, none of this is possible without Jesus. Nothing that we do as a church is possible without Jesus. And I hate to break it to you, we don't have any strategies here. We did a campaign a while back. We did it all wrong. We had no strategy. We just thought, well, you know, if it's important to God, we'll raise the money. If it's not, we won't. It'll be all right. We're going to do another one. We're going to have the same attitude. There will be no strategies. We have no strategy for church growth. We have no strategy beyond just loving well and loving Jesus. That's all we got. We're just going to do it every week. And none of these things are possible, unselfish attendance, offering untethered inclusion. None of this is possible if it's not fueled by Jesus. What was Ephesus guilty of? They lost sight of their first love, and because they lost sight of their first love, they stopped doing all the little things they did at first that can only be fueled by a love of Christ. So this is the one. I told you there's going to be five and just pick one. You can't do all of them. Everybody has to do this one. Everybody has to do this one. We can only be a church that loves well if we have an unbroken focus on our Savior. On a personal level, on a corporate level. I'll say it again. I always say it. There's nothing more important that we can do in our whole life than wake up every day and spend time in God's Word and time in prayer. We need to pursue Jesus on our own. We need to come every week and we need to celebrate Jesus. We need to walk out these doors and be determined to show people Jesus. And in those ways, we will love in all the little ways and we will do all the little things that the church in Ephesus forgot to do that will keep our eyes focused on Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. And we will be a church that is known for exactly what God wants us to be known for which is loving others as Christ loved us. So that's my commission to you. Let's continue to be a church that's known for loving well. Let's do it by leaning into those things that I mentioned and by never forgetting to keep our eyes focused on Christ in a way that is unbroken, in a way that is consistent, and in a way that is urgent. Trusting that love to fuel all the other things he wants us to do as a church. Let's pray. Jesus, we love you. I pray that everything that happens here would draw us more close to you. God, I pray that a desire for you, a desire for your spirit, a desire for your son, a desire for your word would burn in all of us. That we would be fueled by it, that we would wake up because of it, That we would love well because of it. And that that love that we have for you would spur all of these little things that conspire to make this church a place that's known for loving well. God, would you use grace however you see fit? Would you use this little church with our little community and our friendships to advance your kingdom? And would people who come here week after week, whether it's their first week or their hundredth, would they leave this place a little bit closer to you than when they came? Would they leave this place with a greater desire for you, Jesus, than what they walked in here with? And will you just give us a heart to repeat that every week? We love you and we need you. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. That was great, Kirk and the band. It was really good. My name is Nate. I get to be one of the pastors here. So if I haven't gotten a chance to meet you, I would love to do that. And sincerely, thank you for being here on this cold holiday weekend. It's really great to look out and see faces, ones I hope will be smiling and not yawning here shortly. If you're wondering why is Nate limping around and on a stool, well, to much of your glee, I have gout again. So I know the worst part of gout, which is very painful, is not the pain. I can limp around for a couple of days and really not fuss about it very much. It's you. It's the jackals here, the hyenas that circle my pain-ridden corpse as I have to admit things like this. But that's what's going on. And I'm only telling you now because I'm referring to him as Uncle G. Uncle G's come for a visit. He's going to show up later in the story this morning. So it's important that you have this preface right now. We are in the fourth part of our series in Colossians, where we've moved through the book of Colossians together. And admittedly, it's portions of the book of Colossians. We've not moved through the whole thing. We've just kind of moved through and selected the things that seem to me most relevant to grace. And I've really enjoyed being able to do this in ways that were unexpected. I've really enjoyed this series. And so what we've been through so far is to look at this church in Colossae and acknowledge that they were a church that existed with some pressure. They were doing a good job. They were loving God well. They loved one another well. And in that way, I felt like they were similar to grace, but they're also similar to grace in the pressures that they were facing from within and from without. In the culture in which they sat, there were pressures for them to skew legalistic in their practices and in their theology. And then there was pressures for them to skew liberal in their practices and in their theology. So Paul's goal is to write them and encourage them to stay true to the true faith. And so how does he do that? Well, he does that in the opening chapter and for us week one by painting a soaring picture of Christ and who he is and focusing us on him. And then he lets us know that we are actually our brother's keeper, that the spiritual health of the people around us who we love and care about is your responsibility as one of God's children. And so we carry that together to try to bring everyone to spiritual maturity. And then last week, we talked about this idea of living as a new creation, as focusing on Christ, daily letting His love and His grace and His mercy and His compassion wash over us and so put to death in us the things that would have us behave as our old self or the bad, less healthy versions of ourself. And so this week he finishes up the letter with what's commonly referred to as the household codes. And they show up a couple different places in Pauline epistles or in Paul's writing. Okay. And so we're going to be looking at those this morning and I'm going to start start to read the passage. And immediately you're going to think to yourself, oh boy, this is a sticky one for 2022. What's he going to do? I'll tell you. But let's read together and then we will look at the meaning of the passage together. I'm picking it up in Colossians chapter 3 verse verse 18, and I'll read through the very beginning of Colossians chapter 4. Read with me, if you will. Paul writes this, For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality. Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a master in heaven. All right, there's a lot there and a lot of dynamics covered there. The dynamic covered between husband and wife, between father and children, and then between master and slave. And some versions have the word bond servant put there. And really that's an attempt of the editors of that particular translation to soften the original text and say, no, no, no, it didn't mean slave, it meant bond servant. And that's intellectually, okay? So as believers, we should encounter what it says in Scripture and deal with it with honesty without trying to artificially soften it. So the word there is slave, which is problematic, and we're going to refer to that in a second. But as we read this passage, and as you hear it, my anticipation is that you would expect me now to break that down. What does it mean? Wives, submit to your husbands. What you going to do, sucker? That one's pretty sticky, right? In 2022. And then we read the rest ones, and then there's the problematic things for Christians about provisions for masters and slaves and the whole deal. So what are we going to do with that? Well, the answer is we're not going to talk about that. All right. I'm going to talk about something else. Now, why am I going to talk about something else? Well, two reasons. The first one is the one that you're assuming right now, because I don't want to. I don't want to do that. That's too much work and too much effort and too much thought and too much parsing out all the words. And honestly, I don't think it's what Grace needs to hear most right now. So we're not going to camp out on gender roles in the home, okay? We're just not going to do that. Second, I think that there's a bigger theme here to these verses that is super important to us, that is very relevant to us, and that is worth camping out on. Before I just jump to that, though, I will say this to fight back just total cowardice on my part about the first verse, wives submit to your husbands, gender roles in the home, things like that. I will tell you two things, and only these two things, and I will not offer much explanation. If you want more, talk to me about it. Email me. I've never once turned down a lunch opportunity, especially if you're buying. I've never once done that. I always respond to emails. So if you want to talk more about this and these themes, I'm open for that. That's just not where I want to camp out this morning. But since we're there, I will say these two things. I will say it is my personal understanding and belief based on not just this scripture, but myriad passages, that in the structure of marriage, God has chosen to give men the tie-breaking vote. But it is also my belief based on other passages, particularly Ephesians 5, where men are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church, who laid himself down for it. That men are to sacrifice everything we have for the sake of our wives, and therefore, though we have the tie-breaking vote, it is our holy responsibility to use it as little as possible so that when it is used, it can be trusted. Okay. The other thing that I will say about that on kind of the opposite end of the spectrum is we cannot just pluck that verse, wives submit to your husbands, out of context and understand it at face value. We have to put it in the context in which it rests. And the context in which it rests is in the following verses, there's a lot more provisions about how slaves are to behave and how masters are to behave towards slave than there is about family codes. So if we're going to contextualize and culturalize the instructions about masters and slaves, then we can't just do it to one part of the passage. So the whole passage is best understood with the nuance of the culture going on around it and with some good academic study, not simply plucked out of context. We cannot understand verse 18 in a way that we would not use to understand the passages that follow. That's what I'll say about those two things, or about that thing, those two things. Now, to the bigger point. There is something going on in this text that I think applies to all of us right now and is a far more relevant sermon than just how do we parse out these particular things. And to get to that point, we do need to understand the cultural context in which these things rest. These are, again, household codes, where Paul is saying, in light of the gospel, in light of Jesus and who he is, in light of the provisions that I'm giving you, in light of putting on a new self and how do we live this Christian life, how are we to organize our lives? And what we need to understand is these codes that he gives out here in these verses, these instructions, and the ones that we find in other Pauline writings, like Ephesians, are given in a Roman context. These cities are Roman cities with a Roman heritage. And those cities and those cultures are incredibly patriarchal. They are man-centered. The man of the house, the father, the patriarch of the family, is a king of his little fiefdom. Now, they're little pathetic kingdoms. I mean, there's nothing to be proud of, but he is the king. The wife is the property. She is subservient to him. Everything is built around him. Everything focuses on him. Everything exists under his direction with no question and with no questioned authority. The wife is someone that is there for use or not use, for purpose or no purpose, and she can be cast aside just as quickly as she is added into the family. The marriage covenant is a marriage contract, and he can terminate it whenever he wants. She can terminate it never. Children are accessories to the marriage. They are future heirs. They are not little people. They do not have rights. The rights that they have exist under the authority of the father, and they have no more rights than he wants to give them. Slaves, likewise, have no rights. They exist under the rule of the man of the house. They exist under the rule of the master. They have no one to appeal to. They have no other authority. He literally is the king of his small kingdom. That's the way that the Roman culture and society was set up. As an aside, can you imagine the abuse and misogyny that went on in that culture, where a man is in charge with unquestioned authority of all of the people in his life. Thank God we have figured out how terrible of an idea that is. My heart breaks for the women and children that were in that culture. And all of that makes Paul's writings incredibly radical in the time that they were received. He says, husbands, treat your, love your wives and do not be harsh with them. More on top of that, in Ephesians, he says, love your wives as Christ loved the church, laying himself down for them, giving himself up for them, which is totally radical to the Roman view of wife as accessory. It's a completely different train of thought. I can't be harsh with them. I have to consider them. I have to be nice to them. I have to listen to them. Yes, man, it's called being a human. You have to do all those things. And then it says, do not provoke your children to anger, which is not something that a Roman father would ever consider. He doesn't care if he makes his kids angry. He doesn't care if they don't like him. He doesn't have to. They're just there as accessories to the marriage. And one day there'll be heirs. And one day maybe they can contribute to the wealth of the home. But right now I don't have to care about them, Which, having a nine-month-old, I understand that mentality sometimes. John likes to play a really fun game of, hey, I'm going to kind of cry all day, and you just figure out how to make me stop doing it. Fun. Let's go, buddy. But children were accessories to marriage. They had no rights. And then slaves, I don't need to explain to you how much they could be mistreated. We know the crimes over the centuries. And so for Paul to come in here and say, hey, masters of the house, you treat your slaves, paraphrase, treat them however you want, but God's watching you. And however you treat them is how he's going to treat you. However you judge them is how he's going to judge you. The mercy that you apply to them is the mercy that he will apply to you, which again is radically different than what's happening in the rest of Roman culture. So Paul is telling the church in Colossae, if you want to be believers in light of Jesus and the fact that he is now in your life, your family needs to look radically different than the families that are around you. And bigger than that, he's telling them this. He's telling them that right now, your family life, your life is centered on the man. It's centered on the father. It's centered on the husband. It's centered on the master. He needs to be decentralized, and Christ needs to become the central figure and tenant in your home around which everything revolves. And he's primarily addressing the man here because the rest of them are under no auspices that they are the focus of the home. They don't need to reorient how they expect others to treat them. They need to reorient where they put the father of the home and put Jesus in the center of that. So what's going on here is radically different than everything in the Roman home. And this is the larger theme, I believe, of the household codes that we find in Colossians and in Ephesians, which is to say this, that Jesus invites us to radically reshape our lives around him. That's the point, I think, of this passage, the larger point that is more applicable and important for us to consider this morning, that when we become believers, Jesus invites us to radically reshape our lives around him. So to these cultures, to these families that were entrenched in this patriarchic, unhealthy culture in ancient Rome, Paul says your life needs to look completely different. You need to completely reorient your family and household life around Jesus and not around the Father, not around the man. It's got to look radically different. And I actually, in those notes, I said Jesus invites us to radically reshape our lives. And I don't know why I did this. I intentionally softened it a little bit when I turned in the notes on Thursday. But in thinking about it over the weekend, it's not invites, it's insists. Jesus demands that we would radically reshape our lives around him. And it's so much so that I would say that our lives after Jesus need to look a lot different than our lives before Jesus. Our lives with Jesus as Lord of our lives by necessity will look a lot different than our lives without Jesus as the Lord of our lives. And if those two versions of ourselves and our lives and our priorities look pretty similar, there's probably a problem going on there. And the problem is this. I think we often attempt to fit Jesus into our lives rather than reshaping our lives around him. We often attempt to find ways to kind of shove Jesus into our life in this predetermined shape in a way that he will fit. And we're more interested in making Jesus fit into our life than we are about reshaping our life so that Jesus takes it over. There's kind of two illustrations I would use here. The first is pretty simple, but maybe it's the one we need this morning, so I'm just going to leave it in. But it's as if we become a Christian and when we become a Christian, Jesus is going to move into our house and he's going to now live with us. He's now a part of our life. And so a lot of us probably have a guest room. And when we realize that Jesus is going to be moving in with us, we're like, well, I got to update this thing. The thread count is too low for Jesus. So we go and we get the finest Egyptian, we get 800 or more thread count for Jesus is what he needs. And we get all the best things and we make sure that there's a good charger. We don't give him the one that's chewed on or frayed. We give him the nice charger for the nightstand. And we buy, maybe we buy a new small TV and we put it over there and we hook it up to an Apple TV and the whole thing and we go ahead and we cover his Apple TV subscription because it's Jesus and he probably wants to watch Ted Lasso. And so we kind of set up everything for him, right? And we're ready. And then Jesus moves in. And he says, look at this guy, this is a nice guest room. And we're like, well, yeah, I mean, you're moving in. So we wanted to make sure it was up to your standards. And he's like, well, no, I mean, I'm taking the master. That's your room. I think some of us just prepare a nice guest room for Jesus, and then everything else stays the same. Another way to think about this, that I actually wanted to do a visual aid illustration of, and so I need to beg your forgiveness and your imagination, because I'm going to invite you to imagine this illustration with me, since I'm not able to do it. And here's why I'm asking you for your forgiveness. I was not able to do it because I had to go get some materials and prepare it, and I had a couple afternoons where I probably could have, and I just didn't. I'll do it this weekend. And then over the weekend, you know, we had a kid get sick, and some unexpected things happened, and my old buddy Uncle G came to visit, and it's not really a time to be walking around stores, and I just didn't have time to do the things that I needed to do. So I failed you as a pastor. I did not budget my time wisely, and I sit up here illustrationless. So if you'll accept that tepid apology, then I will invite you to use your imagination, because here's what I wanted to do, okay? Here's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go get like a big block of like modeling foam, if that's even a thing that exists, and get a square one, and then have a board with a big hole cut out of it, and say the foam block represents Jesus, and the board with the hole in it represents us. That's our life. And what happens is we take Jesus, the square, and we try to fit it into the circle, and it doesn't work out. And so we're faced with a choice. I can reshape Jesus according to who I think he ought to be and to what my life already is and just kind of shove it in there and make it work, or I can change my life. And what most of us do, all of us in different ways, choose to do is we choose to reshape Christ according to who we already are and just assume that he probably is too. And we remake Christ in our image and then we make him fit the life that we've already chosen to live. And there's a bunch of examples of how we do this. I'm just going to give you a couple this morning. When I was thinking about how is it that we do this, what are practical ways that we kind of reshape Jesus in our own image to make him fit into our existing life, the very first thing that occurred to me, as touchy as it is, is politics. I know people on both sides of the political spectrum, Democrats and Republicans, and everything in the middle. I don't know if libertarians in the middle or if it's like over here on the other side of Republicans. I don't know where that belongs, but all of the parties. I have known people who just assume that because this is my political affiliation, certainly Jesus agrees with me. Certainly because this is the most important moral value for me, it's also the most important moral value for Jesus. And sure, my party doesn't champion some of the causes the way that it talks about in Scripture, but we cover the important ones the exact same way that Jesus wants to. And so I know that my political party is the right political party. And further, the other political party, those people are not even Christians. They think they are. They're stupid. And if they went to my church, my pastor would tell them. No, I would not. I would not. I'd tell them in person, but not corporately like this. And it's funny to chuckle at, but what's really disappointing to me, and I've seen it more and more, if we don't think that this is true, is the fact that I have seen a lot more Christians change their faith than change their politics. I have seen a lot more Christians who are, they are clinging to their political party, they are clinging to their social justice paradigm, to the way that they think about cultural issues and the way that they think about political issues and then be met with places where it seems to clash with their faith and one of them has to give way way, and it's not their politics. It's not their faith, rather. They choose their politics. I've seen a lot more Christians adjust their view of who they think Jesus is according to what their certain politics should be. And I've seen very few believers, just being honest, I've seen very few believers who change their politics in light of the Jesus that they learn about. And I think that that's a big problem. Another way we do this is with our time, right? We become Christians and we see that Jesus makes certain demands of our time. Jesus says, I'd like to meet with you every morning. I'd like to meet with you every day. I'd like to meet with you in prayer. I'd like you to study me. I'd like you to get to know me. I'd like to spend some time with you. And our response is, listen, Jesus, I do too. I want to spend time with you. You seem great. But I'm sleepy, okay? So I'm not going to set that alarm. Jesus, listen, I want to spend time with you too. But it's the playoffs, all right? So I'm going to be up late. Jesus, I know that I need to prioritize church. I get it, and I'm going to. But it's football season, and I'm going to be tailgating. You know what happens at tailgates. So I'll see you during basketball season, Jesus. And he says, hey, I'd like to spend this time with you. I'd like to do these things. I'd like you to reprioritize your life. And we're like, I will, but not right now because there's other things that I'm doing. I'd love for you to connect with people in small group who can encourage you and push you towards me. Jesus, I'm gonna, but right now I'm just kind of tired. And so even though we know that he places certain demands on our time, we just decide we can't give those right now. Sometimes we reshape Jesus by hanging on to just blatant sin in our life and just excusing it away and being like, listen, I need a Jesus who accepts me as I am. I just need someone who just takes me in as I am. And listen, Jesus does love you as you are. But he also tells the adulterous woman, after he loves her as she is, to go and sin no more. He balances grace and truth. But some of us just hang on to sins that we have in our life, figuring it's not that big of a deal, and Jesus couldn't possibly mind. Yeah, I mean, maybe I'm drinking too much. I know I'm drinking. It's not healthy. I'm starting to hide it from people. This is not very good. But Jesus has bigger fish to fry, so I'm just going to hold on to this one. Yeah, maybe I regularly look at stuff I don't need to look at, but it's better than actually cheating. So I'll just hold on to this one for a little while. Maybe, and this one's personal, maybe I drive like a jerk. Maybe it's possible that I bought a nondescript Honda Accord that does not have the church sticker on the back of it so that I can continue to drive however I want and not make anyone think poorly of the church that I lead. Maybe I sometimes can drive in such a way that the pastor of a church ought not drive, but certainly Jesus has bigger fish to fry than that. And so I just hang on to it like a dummy, like it's okay to just weave through traffic with my six-year-old in the car. He says, Daddy, you drive fast. Like, yeah, no, I like driving fast. But we have these things that we just allow in our life as if Jesus doesn't call us to repentance. And I know that last week we talked about let's just focus on Christ and that will kill the nature in us that wants to sin. And that's very true. But on the same hand, we are called to repentance, to walk away from the sin that Jesus shows us in our life. And so very often we handle it casually and we just allow it in our life as we just move on. And Jesus says it has no place there. And we're like, well, this has a place in my life or you don't. So come on and make some space for it. Another easy example I think of is our sexual standards. Scripture's, I think, pretty clear. Sexual activity outside the bonds of marriage is classified by Scripture as sexual immorality. And Scripture teaches against sexual immorality. But we go, yeah, I mean, I got loud and clear. Makes total sense. Jesus, I get it. But it's 2022. Come on. We don't really still mean that, do we. And for each one of these examples, as we talk about shaping Jesus to fit our politics, just trim off a corner of the block and to fit our standards on sexuality and trim off a corner of the block, and to fit into our schedule, and for his goals to fit in with our goals, and for his priorities with my life to fit in with my priorities of my life, and just trim off portions of Christ until he became a rounded circle that was able to fit into our pre-existing life. And I think that this is what so many of us, including me, do to Christ. As we look at the rough edges, we look at the things that don't fit into how we've already organized our life and our priorities, and we say, certainly you don't mean that, and certainly you understand it can't fit. And so we change our Jesus rather than changing ourselves. When what we need to do, and I was gonna have another fresh square and another fresh board with a square hole in it, is not change who Jesus is, but fundamentally change who we are. Fundamentally reshape our lives for the standards of Christ. Not clinging to the things that we used to cling to, not prioritizing the things that we used to prioritize, but opening up our life to Jesus and saying, Jesus, what's in here that doesn't fit? Show me the parts of my life where I need to make space for you, but Lord, please don't let me insist that you reshape yourself for me to have the audacity to say, well, now I'm willing to include you in my life. And so that's the question I wanted to invite you to this morning. What is it that we have in our life that we refuse to reshape? What are the things that we are clinging to? Political thought? Sexual purity? Blatant sin in our life? Our time? Our goals? Our talents? What is it that we're claiming to where we're kind of keeping Jesus in the guest bedroom? We're kind of saying, you just stay over there. When you fit into my life, I'm gonna let you come in. When you don't, I'm gonna expect you to change. What are the places in our life where we're asking Jesus to change who he is instead of being willing to allow him to change who we are? That's what I'd like us to prayerfully consider as I close here in a second. Is to say, Jesus, where are you not fitting? And how can I change to accommodate you and quit insisting that you accommodate me? As I read through this radical reshaping of the Christian family in a Roman context, I can't help but think that the most important thing for us to draw out of this passage is our very human tendency to reshape Christ in our own image and our refusal to be reshaped in his. So this morning, let us open ourselves up in prayer to where we might need to reshape our lives around who we know Jesus to be. And let us further pray that as we pursue Jesus and know him more and learn more about him and he becomes more real to us, that different aspects of him are opened up to us that then demand that we make more space for him. And let us be generous and quick in making that space. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this morning. We thank you, God, for grace, for all that you're doing here, for what I think is a palpable sense of enthusiasm and energy as we move forward and maybe, maybe finally begin to think about what a post-pandemic world looks like and what grace might look like in that world. God, thank you for Colossians and all the truth that's found in it. I pray that we would be people who are focused on you, who radically reprioritize our life around you, God. We give you permission to reshape us in your image and we repent of trying to reshape you into ours. Give us courage and honesty and integrity this week as we examine our lives and ask where we need to make space for you. And God, when we do that, I pray that we would be met with your grace and with your peace and with your joy. It's in your son's name we pray these things. Amen.